They got up at seven and dressed for dinner. He hailed a taxi from the hotel steps and told the driver to take the scenic route, naming streets and squares. They crossed the river, passed Trinity again. An old woman drinking from a bag by a canal, swans drifting on its oily surface. The hump of a bridge, a lock, the stench of stagnant water. Elegant iron streetlamps, the flat face of a Georgian terrace. Crackled doors under dirty fanlights, rows and rows of doorbells.

Such a beautiful street, said Cushla.

It’s a kip, said the driver. Sure the houses are falling down.

They went down metal steps to a basement. The room was cavernous and warm, the tables laid with silver and starched linen, lit by candles. Michael knew the waiters by name, although that’s not what he called them; they were Joe the sommelier and Paddy the maître d’. She let them choose for her, signature dishes she would remember, they said.

A slow meal, lulls between courses when he asked to see the wine list and noisily sloshed their recommendations around in his mouth. She thought of the lunch at Easter that degenerated into a row, how little they cared about what they ate, the crumble untouched amidst the main-course plates. Her gut burned with want. That she might get away from her family, her mother, and be with this man.

Sounds she could feel on her skin. His voice. Silver tinkling against porcelain. Corks popping. He said the last time he ate here Stanley Kubrick was at a table in the corner. He had been in Dublin filming Barry Lyndon. The IRA sent him a death threat, ordering him to leave in twenty-four hours; he left in twelve. Maybe there were too many scenes of redcoat encampments, he said, British soldiers tramping around Ireland, Union Jacks billowing behind them. His actor friend, the man who was in A Clockwork Orange, said some of it had been filmed by candlelight and it looked like an Old Master. Michael couldn’t wait to see it. The chiaroscuro. The slowness of it. We’ll come back when the film is released, he said, go to see it in one of the big cinemas. We can eat here again, maybe in the winter when they serve wild things.

We’ll.

Another bar on a side street, a back room with a tubercular-looking jazz band, dressed in dark suits with drainpipe trousers. A woman wearing scarlet lipstick joined them to sing a song. Cushla recognised it.

Saudade, she said.

She closed her case and put it on the floor, beside Michael’s. The room was as it was when they arrived a couple of days earlier. Except the bed, which had a tumbled look about it. Michael came out of the bathroom, patting at his pockets for wallet and keys.

Are you right? he said.

Yeah.