For a long time they let her lie on her bed, feeding her at intervals, attending to her needs: it was easier to keep her there than have her blundering round the house, knocking into things and hurting herself. Now, three and four months after the explosion, she was the same as when she was brought in, except that she could move more readily, and seemed free of pain. “A massive shock to the central nervous system,” the doctor from Dublin had said … and the phrase was repeated round the village with the wise head-shaking of baffled men to accompany it. But ‘massive’ was a fine word, for sure … So Esther lay there, eating whatever was put in her mouth, pointing when she wished to be set on the chamber pot: sometimes, with her parents out of the house, and no one by, she would point and point for hours, and then, helpless, relieve herself where she lay.

She came to recognize her mother’s touch, and would sometimes reach up and put her hand on the curve of Mrs Costello’s chin, and nod, and even attempt a smile. But the touch of anyone else – her father, or a compassionate neighbour who came to sit with her – startled her pitifully; and by and by these others gave up trying to reach her in any way.

God alone knew what Esther was making of the lonely darkness and silence in which she lay: a lively girl of ten, suddenly plunged into a blank world, hideously null, with nothing in it save food coming into her mouth, and presently leaving her again, and her mother’s chin as the only thing she could recognize without fear. For the most part she kept her eyes closed; but now and then, for no reason that she could communicate, her face would begin to work, and a tear would creep out from under her lid, and fall upon the pillow. If her parents saw it, they would wonder for a moment what was going on inside the pretty, blank head, and if she could be helped, and how … But Mrs Costello, dull and slatternly, was not equipped to deal with anything save the simple necessities; and her father – who had been a cobbler, and a good one, but had drunk away his skill and his trade for ten wasted years – her father took himself more and more frequently to the private bar of the Cloncraig Arms, and gave less and less thought to something which puzzled, angered, and defeated him.

The only person who tried to bring effective aid to Esther was Father Haggerty, the parish priest; and he was the last one who kept on trying.

“We must do something for her,” said Father Haggerty, time and time again, prodding himself and his flock to a proper remembrance of their duty. “We must help her. She must get out and about.” But he was an old man, long past his best; and though he and Esther had been friends in the past, and she could now recognize him from the feel of his straggling white beard, and the musty smell of his cassock, yet there was little enough he could do to help, and nothing to cure.