He looked away, across the garden, feeling awkward. It was difficult to know what to say. It was difficult to voice any comment whatsoever, since the whole thing was an absurdity and since he had so much on his mind anyway. He wished he could tell her about his visits to the boardinghouse, and how he couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that he was being watched from beyond the grave. For a moment he considered telling her about the carpentry instructor’s unprovoked attack on Asquith-Jones because he thought it might amuse her, but in the end he desisted. He heard her say there would be no children, but he didn’t want to think about that and didn’t listen to her voice when it continued. He would not return to the Rose of Tralee boarding-house, he resolved. As long as he lived he would never again find himself staring up at the bunches of lilies on the wallpaper.

5. Mr Coyne Changes His Mind

Tom’s mother told him he had grandparents. There would be grandparents on his father’s side, in Dublin somewhere: she had never known them, they had never been in touch with her. He had other grandparents, her own mother and father, living nine miles inland beyond the town. ‘Your grandmother wants me to take you over one day.’

‘Is my grandmother nice?’

‘She is, Tom.’

‘Is she like Mrs Rolleston at all?’

‘She’s half the age of Mrs Rolleston. Will we go over and see her?’

‘We will.’

‘I’ll arrange it so.’

When there were holidays from the convent Tom’s daytime world was the yard and the outhouses at Carriglas, and the sculleries, where he sometimes helped Patty to clean vegetables, and the fields, where sometimes he assisted Haverty. He roamed the island on his own, clambering down the cliffs to the rocks and the shrimp pools. He looked to see that the rosary crucifixes and the coins the women left at the holy well, on a ledge above the saint’s pillow, remained undisturbed. He rarely climbed up to the standing stones.

‘Mrs Rolleston wants you upstairs, Tom,’ Patty said, coming to find him in the yard on the morning of the day he and his mother were to meet his grandmother. Overhearing Patty’s delivery of the summons, his mother said that Mrs Rolleston would have a message for him to do.’If that’s the way of it wait over there for me, Tom. Wait down on the quays till you’ll see me coming.’ Mrs Rolleston would give him twopence for himself, as she always did, and a penny for the ferry. He should spend the twopence on broken biscuits in Meath’s, his mother said, and eat them while he was waiting.

‘Fold the postal order, Tom,’ Mrs Rolleston said in her bedroom. ‘Then stick the envelope and put a stamp on it.’

‘Fifteen shillings, is it?’