You’re not, she said, checking her watch under the table. It was a quarter past eleven.

Gerry says your ones have a pub? said Harry.

Yeah, said Cushla.

There’s hardly a bar left up our way, said Joe. Most of them have been blown up.

The ones that haven’t don’t inspire a lot of confidence, said Harry.

Aye, said Joe. They just haven’t been blown up yet.

They both laughed.

Cushla did not care for the accusation that was implicit in their patter, that her family’s lives were easy because the town they lived in was ‘mixed’ and had seen little trouble. In the pub, Cushla had heard people say it was ‘very mixed’, pursing their mouths in distaste because they had to share the place with Catholics who barely made up ten per cent of the population. Eamonn didn’t even buy a Belfast newspaper for the pub any more because of what the selection might say about him.

It’s not that great over our way either. My brother stands behind the bar every night afraid to open his mouth in case he offends somebody and ends up on a loyalist hit list.

Do me a favour, said Joe. It’s not exactly a war zone. Try getting stopped and searched by British soldiers every time you go out the door.

If it was a competition, Joe had won.

She went upstairs to use the bathroom. One of the doors off the landing was open, the bedroom bunged with fake Louis XIV-style furniture, white with gold beading. On the bed there was a mound of coats, sheepskin and leather and fake fur. She heard a moan and went into the room. The furry man was facing the corner, in a gap to the left of a wardrobe. Cushla was about to ask if he was all right when she noticed a leg, frilled at the shin with partially removed hosiery, clinging to the back of his thigh. She fled, the wardrobe creaking rhythmically in her wake. She felt a lick of desire.

4

They pushed through the foyer, the smell of face powder and cigar smoke cut sometimes by the damp night air that swept in every time the doors opened. They found a spot at the edge of the room, by a ledge that ran the length of a vast window, and Gerry went to the bar. A couple sidled in beside Cushla, murmuring appeasements. They appeared both well-to-do and scruffy, the woman in an astrakhan coat that glistered under the strong lights, the man with fine bones and floppy, thinning hair. They were looking towards the entrance as though they were waiting for someone. The man raised a hand and they shuffled a little away from Cushla to make room for a tall man with a broad back. As he moved, his elbow jabbed Cushla’s arm. He turned to apologise and said, There you are. Her heart lurched up into her throat. It was Michael Agnew.

He introduced her to Penny and Jim, remembering her name and telling her they were great friends of his.