Evening Class

'A half pint to end the day?' Robin said, jerking his head towards the nearby pub.

'Great,' Lou said with fake enthusiasm. He sometimes feared Robin could read minds, he hoped he couldn't see the insincerity in Lou's tone.

'How are things?'

'Great, I've got a smashing girl.'

'So I see, she's a real looker, isn't she?'

'Absolutely. We're quite serious about it all.'

Robin punched him on the arm. It was meant to be a punch of solidarity but somehow it hurt. Lou managed not to rub where it felt bruised. 'So you'll be needing a deposit on a house soon?' Robin asked casually.

'We're not in any hurry with that, she's got a grand bedsit.'

'But eventually, of course?' Robin wasn't taking any argument.

'Oh yes, way down the line.' There was a silence. Did Robin know that Lou was trying to get off the hook?

Robin spoke. 'Lou, you know I always said I liked you.'

'Yes, and I always liked you too. It was mutual. And is mutual,' Lou added hastily

'Considering how we met, as it were.'

'You know the way it is, you forget how you met people.'

'Good, good.' Robin nodded. 'What I'm looking for, Lou, is a place.'

'A place. To live in?'

'No, no. I've got a place to live in, a place that our friends the Guards turn over with great regularity. They sort of regard it as part of their weekly routine, go in and search my place.'

'It's harassment.'

'I know it is, they know it is. They never find anything, so they know well it's harassment.'

'So if they don't find anything…?' Lou had no idea where all this was going.

'It means that things have to be somewhere else and that's getting increasingly difficult,' Robin said. In the past Lou had always waited. Robin would say what he wanted in time. 'The kind of place I want is somewhere that there's a lot of activity two or three times a week, a place where people wouldn't be noticed going in and out.'

'Like the warehouse where I work?' Lou asked nervously.

'No, there's proper security there.'

'What would this place have to have, in terms of facilities?'

'Not very much space at all, like enough for… Imagine five or six cases of wine - packages about that size, in all.'

'That shouldn't be hard, Robin.'

'I'm watched like a hawk. I'm spending weeks going round talking to everyone I know that they don't have a file on, just to confuse them. But there's something coming in soon, and I really do need a place.'

Lou looked anxiously out the door of the pub in the direction of his parents' shop.

'I don't think it would be possible in my Ma and Da's place.'

'No, no that's not what I want at all, it's a place with bustle, doors in and out, lots of people moving through.'

'I'll think,' Lou said.

'Good, Lou. Think this week will you, and then I'll give you the instructions. It's very easy, no driving cars or anything.'

'Well actually, Robin, this is something I meant to bring up, but I'm thinking of… um… well not being involved any more.'

Robin's frown was terrible to see. 'Once you're involved you're always involved,' he said. Lou said nothing. 'That's the way it is,' Robin added.

'I see,' said Lou, and he frowned hard in response to show how seriously took it.

That night Suzi said she wasn't free, she had promised to help the mad old Italian woman who lived as a lodger in their house to do up an annexe up in Mountainview school for some evening class. 'Why do you have to do that?' Lou grumbled. He had wanted to go to the pictures and then for some chips and then back to bed with Suzi in her little bedsitter. He did not want to be on his own thinking about the fact that once you were involved you could never get uninvolved again.

'Come with me,' Suzi suggested,'that'll make it quicker.' Lou said he would, and they went to this annexe attached to the school but slightly separate from it. It had an entrance hall, a big classroom, two lavatories and a small kitchen space. In the hall there was a store room with a few boxes in it. Empty boxes.

'What are all these?' he asked.

'We're trying to tidy up the place so it looks more festive and not so much like a rubbish dump for when the classes start,' said the deranged woman they called Signora. Harmless but very odd, and some most peculiar coloured hair, like a piebald mare.

'Should we throw out the boxes?' Suzi suggested.

Slowly Lou spoke. 'Why don't I just tidy them up and leave them in a neat stack in there? You'd never know when you might need a few boxes.'

'For Italian classes?' Suzi said in disbelief.

But at this moment Signora interrupted. 'No, he's right. We could use them to be tables when we are learning the section on what to order in an Italian restaurant, they could be counters in the shops, or a car at the garage.' Her face seemed radiant at all the uses there would be for boxes.

Lou looked at her with amazement. She was obviously missing her marbles but at this moment he loved her. 'Good woman, Signora,' he said, and tidied the boxes into neat piles.

He couldn't contact Robin but he wasn't surprised to get a phone call at work.

'Don't want to come and see you, the toy soldiers are going mad with excitement these days. I can't move without five of them padding after me.'

'I found somewhere,' said Lou.

'I knew you would, Lou.'

Lou told him where it was, and about the activity every Tuesday and Thursday, thirty people.

'Fantastic,' Robin said. 'Have you enrolled?'

'For what?'

'For the class, of course.'

'Oh Jesus, Robin, I scarcely speak English, what would I be doing learning Italian?'

'I'm relying on you,' said Robin, and hung up.

There was an envelope waiting for him at home that night. It contained five hundred pounds and a note. 'Incidental expenses for language learning.' He had been serious.

'You're going to do what'?'

'Well you're the one who said I should better myself, Suzi. Why not?'

'When I said better yourself, I meant smarten yourself up, get a better paid job. I didn't mean go mad and learn a foreign language.' Suzi was astounded. 'Lou, you have to be off your head. It costs a fair amount. Poor Signora is afraid that it will be too dear for people and suddenly out of the blue, you decide to take it up. I can't take it in.'

Lou frowned a mighty frown. 'Life would be very dull if we all understood everyone,' he said.

And Suzi said that it would be a lot easier to get on with.

Lou went to the first Italian lesson as a condemned man walks to Death Row. His years in the classroom had not been glorious. Now he would face further humiliation. But it had been surprisingly enjoyable. First the mad Signora asked them all their names and gave them ridiculous pieces of coloured cardboard to write them on, but they had to write Italianised versions.

Lou became Luigi. In a way he liked it. It was important.

'Mi chiamo Luigi,' he would say, and frown at people, and they seemed impressed.

They were an odd bunch, a woman dripping in jewellery that no one in their sane senses would have worn to Mountainview school, and driving a BMW. Lou hoped that Robin's friends wouldn't steal the BMW. The woman who drove it was nice as it happened, and she had sad eyes.

There was a very nice old fellow, a hotel porter called Laddy though he had Lorenzo written on his badge, a mother and daughter, a real dizzy blonde called Elizabetta who had a serious boyfriend with a collar and tie, and dozens of others that you'd never expect to find at a class like this. Perhaps they wouldn't think it odd that he was there. They might not even question it for a moment why he was there.

For two weeks he questioned it himself, then he heard from Robin. Some boxes would be coming in on Tuesday, just around seven thirty when the classroom was filling up. Maybe he could see to it that they got into the store cupboard in the hall.

He didn't know the man in the anorak. He just looked out for the van. There were so many people arriving, parking bikes, motorbikes, the dame with the BMW, two women with a Toyota Starlet… the van didn't cause any stir.

There were four boxes, they were in in a flash, the van and the man in the anorak were gone.

On Thursday he had the four boxes ready to be pulled out quickly. The whole thing was done in seconds. Lou had made himself teacher's pet by helping with the boxes. Sometimes they covered them with red crepe paper and put cutlery on them.

'Quanto costa il piatto del giorno'?' Signora would ask and they would all repeat it over and over until they could ask for any damn thing and lift knives and say 'Ecco il coltello't'

Babyish it might have been but Lou liked it, he even saw himself and Suzi going to Italy one day and he would order her a bicchiere di -vino rosso as quick as look at her.

Once Signora lifted a heavy box, one of the consignment.

Lou felt his heart turn over but he spoke quickly. 'Listen, Signora, will you let me lift those for you, it's the empty ones we want.'

'But what's in it, this is so heavy?'

'Could you be up to them in a school? Come on, here we are. What are they going to be today?

'They are doing hotels, alberghi. Albergo di p'rima categorìa, di seconda categoria.'

Lou was pleased that he understood these things. 'Maybe I wasn't just thick at school,' he told Suzi. 'Maybe I was just badly taught.'

'Could be,' Suzi said. She was preoccupied. There had been some trouble with Jerry; her mam and dad had been called to see the headmaster. They said it sounded serious. And just after he had been getting on so well and doing so well since Signora had come to the house, and actually doing his homework and everything. It couldn't have been stealing, or anything. They had been very mysterious up at the school.

One of the nice things about working in a cafe was listening to people's conversations. Suzi said that she could write a book about Dublin just from the bits of overheard conversation.

People were talking about secret weekends, and plans for further dalliances, and cheating their income tax. And incredible scandal about politicians and journalists and television personalities…

»!

maybe none of it true, but all of it hair-raising. But it was often the most ordinary conversations that were the most fascinating. A girl of sixteen determined to get pregnant so that she could leave home and get a council flat, a couple who made fake ID cards explaining the economics of buying a good laminator. Lou hoped that Robin and his friends would never use this cafe to discuss their plans. But then it was a bit up market for them, he was probably in the clear as regards this.

Suzi would spend a lot of time clearing a nearby table when people were saying interesting things. A middle-aged man and his daughter came in, good looking blonde girl with a bank uniform. The man was craggy and had longish hair, hard to know what he did, maybe a journalist or a poet. They seemed to have had a row. Suzi hovered nearby.

'I'm only agreeing to meet you because it's a half hour off work and I'd love a cup of good coffee compared to that dishwater we get in the canteen,' the girl said.

'There's a new and beautiful percolator with four different kinds of coffee waiting for you any time you would like to call,' he said. He didn't sound like a father, he sounded more like a lover. But he was so old. Suzi kept shining up the table so that she could hear more.

'You mean you've used it?'

'I keep practising, waiting for the day you'll come back and I can make you Blue Mountain or Costa Rica.'

'You'll have a long wait,' said the girl.

'Please, can't we talk?' he was begging. He was quite a handsome old man, Suzi admitted.

'We are talking, Tony.'

'I think I love you,' he said.

'No, you don't, you just love the memory of me and you can't bear that I don't just troop back there like all the others.'

'There are no others now.' There was a silence. 'I never said I loved anyone before.'

'You didn't say you loved me, you only said you thought you loved me. It's different.'

'Let me find out. I'm almost certain,' he smiled at the girl.

'You mean let's get back into bed together until you test it?' she sounded very bitter.

'No, I don't, as it happens. Let's go out for dinner somewhere and talk like we used to talk.'

'Until bedtime, and then it's let's get back into bed like we used to do that.'

'We only did that once, Grania. It's not just about that.' Suzi was hooked now. He was a nice old guy, the girl Grania should give him a chance, just for dinner. She was dying to suggest it but knew she had to say nothing.

'Just dinner then,' Grania said, and they smiled at each other and held hands.

It was not always the same man, the same van or the same anorak. But the contact was always minimal and the speed great.

The weather became dark and wet and Lou provided a big hanging rail for the wet coats and jackets that might otherwise have been stacked in the hall cupboard. 'I don't want to drip all over Signora's boxes,' he would say.

Weeks of boxes in on Tuesday and out on Thursday. Lou didn't want to think about what was in them. It wasn't bottles, that was for sure. If Robin were involved in bottles it would be a whole off licence full of them like the time in the supermarket. Lou couldn't deny it any more. He knew it must be drugs. Why else was Robin so worried? What other kind of business involved one person delivering and another collecting? But God almighty, drugs in a school. Robin must be mad.

And then by chance there was this matter of Suzi's young brother, a young red head with an impudent face. He had been found with a crowd of the older boys in the bicycle shed. Jerry had sworn that he was only being their delivery boy, they had asked him to pick up something at the school gates because they were being watched by the headmaster. But the Mr. O'Brien who terrorised them all nearly lifted the head off Suzi's entire family about the whole thing.

Only the pleas of Signora had succeeded in keeping Jerry from being expelled. He was so very young, the whole family would ensure that he didn't hang around after school but came straight home to do his lessons. And in fact, because he had shown such improvement and because Signora gave her personal guarantee, Jerry had been spared.

The older boys were out, expelled that day. Apparently Tony

O'Brien said that he didn't give one damn about what happened to their futures. They didn't have much of a future, but what they had of it would not be spent in his school.

Lou wondered what hell would break loose if it were ever discovered that the school annexe was acting as a receiving depot for drugs every Tuesday and was passing them on the next stage of their journey on a Thursday. Perhaps some of these very consignments were the ones that had been handled by young Jerry Sullivan, his future brother-in-law.

Suzi and he decided that they would marry next year.

'I'll never like anyone more,' Suzi said.

'You sound fed up, as if I'm only the best of a bad bunch,' Lou said.

'No, that's not true.' She had become even fonder of him since he had taken up Italian. Signora always spoke of how helpful he was at the class. 'He's full of surprises certainly,' Suzi had said. And indeed he was. She used to hear him his Italian homework, tlie parts of the body, the days of the week. He was so earnest about it, he looked like a little boy. A good little boy.

It was just when he was thinking of getting a ring that he heard from Robin.

'Maybe a nice jewel for your red-haired girl friend, Lou,' he said.

'Yes, well, Robin, I was thinking of buying it myself, you know, wanting to take her to the shop so that we could discuss…' Lou didn't know if there were to be further payment for his work up in the school. In one way it was so simple that he didn't really need any more. In another he was doing something so dangerous that he really should be paid very well for it. To make it worth the risk.

'I was going to say that if you went into that big place near Grafton Street and chose her a ring, you'd only have to leave a deposit on it, the rest would be paid.'

'She'd know, Robin. I don't tell her anything.'

Robin smiled at him. 'I know you don't, Lou, and she wouldn't know. There's this guy who'd show you a tray of really good stuff, no prices mentioned, and then she'd always have something really nice on her finger. And paid for absolutely legitimately because the balance would be sorted out.'

'I don't think so, listen, I know how good this is, but I think…'

'Think when you have a couple of kids and things are hard how glad you'll be that you once met a fellow called Robin and got a deposit for a house and your wife is wearing a rock that cost ten big ones on her finger.'

Did Robin really mean ten thousand pounds? Lou felt dizzy. And there was the mention of a deposit for a house as well. You'd have to be stark staring mad to fly in the face of this.

They went into the jeweller's. He asked for George.

George brought a tray. 'These are all in your price range,' he said to Lou.

'But they're enormous,' hissed Suzi. 'Lou, you can't afford these.'

'Please don't take away the pleasure of giving you a nice ring,' he said, his eyes big and sad.

'No but, Lou, listen to me. We save twenty-five a week between us and we find it hard going. These must be two hundred and fifty pounds at least, that's ten weeks' saving. Let's get something cheaper, really.' She was so nice he didn't deserve her. And she didn't have an idea she was looking at serious jewellery.

'Which one do you like best?'

'This isn't a real emerald is it, Lou?'

'It's an emerald-type stone,' he said solemnly.

Suzi waved her hand backwards and forwards, it caught the light and it flashed. She laughed with pleasure. 'God, you'd swear it was the real thing,' she said to George.

Lou went into a corner with George where he paid over £250 in notes and saw that an extra nine and a half thousand pounds had already been paid towards a ring to be bought by a Mr. Lou Lynch on that day.

'I wish you every happiness, sir,' said George without changing a line of the expression on his face.

What did George know or not know? Was George someone who once got involved and now couldn't get uninvolved? Had Robin really been in to a respectable place like this and paid all that money in cash? Lou felt faint and dizzy.

Signora admired Suzi's ring. Tt's very, very beautiful' she said.

'It's only glass, Signora, but wouldn't you think it was an emerald?'

Signora, who had always loved jewellery but never owned any, knew it was an emerald. In a very good setting. She began to worry about Luigi.

Suzi saw the good looking blonde girl called Grania come in. She wondered how the dinner with the older man had gone. As usual she longed to ask but couldn't.

'Table for two?' she enquired politely.

'Yes, I'm meeting a friend.'

Suzi was disappointed that it wasn't the old man. It was a girl, a small girl with enormous glasses. They were obviously old friends.

'I must explain, Fiona, that nothing is settled, nothing at all. But I might be calling on you in the weeks ahead to say that I am staying with you, if you know what I mean.'

'I know only too well what you mean. It's been ages since either of you called on me to be the alibi,' Fiona said.

'Well, it's just that this fellow… well, it's a very long story. I really do fancy him a lot but there are problems.'

'Like he's nearly a hundred, is that it?' Fiona asked helpfully.

'Oh, Fiona, if only you knew… that's the least of the problems. His being nearly a hundred isn't a problem at all.'

'You live very mysterious lives, you Dunnes,' Fiona said in wonder. 'You're going out with a pensioner and you don't notice what age he is. Brigid is obsessed with the size of her thighs which seem perfectly ordinary to me.'

'It's all because of that holiday she went on where they had a nudist beach,' Grania explained. 'Some eejit said that if you could hold a pencil under your boobs and it didn't fall down then you were too floppy and you shouldn't go topless.'

'And…?'

'Brigid said that she could hold a telephone directory under hers and it wouldn't fall.'

They giggled at the thought.

'Well, if she said it herself,' said the girl in the enormous spectacles.

'Yeah, but the awful point was that nobody denied it, and now she's got a complex the size of a house.' Suzi tried not to laugh aloud. She offered them more coffee. 'Hey, that's a beautiful ring,' Grania said.

'I just got engaged.' Suzi was proud.

They congratulated her and tried it on.

'Is it a real emerald?' Fiona asked.

'Hardly. Poor Lou works as a packer up in the big electrical place. No, but it's terrific glass, isn't it?'

'It's gorgeous, where did you get it?'

Suzi told her the name of the shop.

When she was out of hearing Grania said in a whisper to Fiona, 'That's funny, they only sell precious stones in that shop. I know because they have an account with us. I bet that's not glass, I bet it's the real thing.'

It was coming up to the Christmas party in the Italian class. They wouldn't be seeing each other for two weeks. Signora asked them all to bring something to the last lesson and they would make it into a party. Huge banners with Buon Natale hung all over the room, and banners for the New Year too. They had all dressed up. Even Bill, the serious fellow from the bank, Guglielmo as they all called him, had entered into the spirit of it all and had brought paper hats.

Connie, the woman with the car and the jewellery, brought six bottles of Frascati which she said she found in the back of her husband's car and she felt that he might have been taking them off somewhere for his secretary so they had better be drunk. No one quite knew whether or not to take her seriously and there had been this restriction about drink earlier. But Signora said it had all been cleared with Mr. O'Brien the Principal so they needn't worry about that aspect of things.

Signora didn't feel it necessary to add that Tony O'Brien had said that since the school seemed to be crawling with hard drugs and kids laying their hands on crack with ease, it seemed fairly minor if some adults had a few glasses of wine as a Christmas treat.

'What did you do last Christmas?' Luigi asked Signora, for no reason except that he was sitting near her when all the salute and molto grazie and va bene were going on around them.

'Last year I went to midnight mass at Christmas and watched my husband Mario and his children from the back of the Church,' Signora said.

'And why weren't you sitting with them?' he asked.

She smiled at him. 'It wouldn't have been proper,' she said.

'And then he went and died,' Lou said. Suzi had filled him in on Signora, a widow, apparently, even though Suzi's mother thought she was a plain-clothes nun.

'That's right, Lou, he went and died,' she said gently.

'Mi spiace,' Lou said. 'Troppo triste, Signora.'

'You're right, Lou, but then life was never going to be easy for anyone.'

He was about to agree with her when a horrifying thought struck him.

It was a Thursday and there had been no man with an anorak. No van. The school would be locked up for two weeks with all of whatever it was in the store cupboard in the hall. What in the name of God was he to do now?

Signora had brought them the words of Silent Night in Italian and the evening was coming to a close. Lou was frantic. He had no car with him, even if he could get a taxi at this late stage what on earth would he do to explain why he was carrying four heavy boxes from the store cupboard. There was no way that he could come in here again until the first week of January. Robin would kill him.

But then it was Robin's fault. He had given no contact number, no fall-back position. Something must have happened to whoever was due to pick up. That was where the weak link was. It wasn't Lou's fault. No one could blame him. But he was paid, very well paid, to think quickly and stay cool. What would he do?

The clear-up was beginning. Everyone was shouting their goodbyes.

Lou offered to get rid of the rubbish. 'I can't have you do all that, Luigi, you're far too good already,' said Signora.

Guglielmo and Bartolomeo helped him. In no other place would he have been friendly with two fellows like this, a serious bank clerk and a van driver. Together they carried black sacks of rubbish out into the night and found the big school bins.

'She's terribly nice, your one, Signora, isn't she?' said Bartolomeo.

'Lizzie thinks she's having a thing with Mr. Dunne, you know, the man in charge of the whole thing,' Guglielmo whispered.

'Get away.' Lou was amazed. The lads speculated about it.

'Well, wouldn't it be great if it were true.'

'But at their age…' Guglielmo shook his head.

'Maybe when we get to their age we'll think it the most natural thing in the world.' Lou somehow wanted to stand up for Signora. He didn't know whether he should deny this ridiculous suggestion or confirm it as the most normal thing in the world.

His heart was still racing about the boxes. He knew he had to do something he hated; he had to deceive this nice kind woman with the amazing hair. 'How are you getting home, will Mr. Dunne be picking you up?' he asked casually.

'Yes, he did say he might drop by.' She looked a little pink and flustered. The wine, the success of the evening, and the directness of his question.

Signora thought that if Luigi, not the brightest of pupils, had seen something in the way she related to Aidan Dunne then it must be very well known in the class. She would hate it to be thought that she was his lady friend. After all, it wasn't as if words or anything else except companionship had been exchanged between them. But if his wife were to find out, or his two daughters. If they were to be a subject of gossip that Mrs. Sullivan would hear about, as she well might considering how her daughter was engaged to Luigi.

Having lived so discreetly for years, Signora was nervous of stepping out of her role. And also, it was so unnecessary. Aidan Dunne didn't think of her as anything except a good friend. That was all. But it might not look that way to people who were, how would she put it, more basic, people like Luigi.

He was looking at her quizzically. 'Right, will I lock up for you? You go ahead and I'll catch you up, we're all a bit late tonight.'

'Grazie, Luigi. Troppo gentile. But be sure you do lock it. You know there's a watchman comes round an hour after we've all gone. Mr. O'Brien is a stickler for this. So far we've never been caught leaving it unlocked. I don't want to fall at the last fence.'

So he couldn't leave it open and come back when he thought up a plan. He had to lock the bloody thing. He took the key. It was on a big heavy ring shaped like an owl. It was a silly childish thing but at least it was big, no one would be able to forget it, or think they had it in a handbag if it weren't there.

Like lightning he put his own key on to the silly owl ring and took off Signora's. Then he locked the school, ran after her and dropped the key into her handbag. She wouldn't need it until next term, and even if before, he could always manage to substitute something, get the real key back into her handbag somehow. The main thing was to get her home thinking she had the key.

He did not see Mr. Dunne step out of the shadows and take her arm tonight, but wouldn't it be amazing if it were true. He must tell Suzi. Which reminded him, he had better stay with Suzi tonight. He had just given away his mother and father's key.

'I'll be staying with Fiona tonight,' Crania said.

Brigid looked up from her plate of tomatoes.

Nell Dunne didn't look up from the book she was reading. 'That's nice,' she said.

'So, I'll see you tomorrow evening then,' Grania said.

'Great.' Her mother still didn't look up.

'Great altogether,' Brigid said sourly.

'You could go out too if you wanted to, Brigid. You don't have to sit sighing over tomatoes, there are plenty of places to go and you could stay in Fiona's too.'

'Yes, she has a mansion that will fit us all,' Brigid said.

'Come on, Brigid, it's Christmas Eve tomorrow. Cheer up.'

'I can cheer up without getting laid,' Brigid hissed.

Grania looked across anxiously, but her mother hadn't registered it. 'Yes, so can we all,' Grania said in a low voice. 'But we don't go round attacking everyone over the size of our thighs which, it may be said in all cases, are quite normal,'

'Who mentioned my thighs to you?' Brigid was suspicious.

'A crowd of people came by the bank today to protest about them. Oh, Brigid, do shut up, you're gorgeous, stop all this anorexic business.'

'Anorexic?' Brigid gave a snort of laugher. 'Suddenly you're all sweetness and light because lover boy has materialised again.'

'Who is lover boy? Come on, who? You know nothing.' Grania was furious with her younger sister.

'I know you've been moping and moaning. And you talk of me sighing over tomatoes, you sigh like the wind over everyone and you leap ten feet in the air when the phone rings. Whoever it is he's married. You're as guilty as hell.'

'You have been wrong about everything since you were born,' Grania told her. 'But you were never more wrong in your life about this. He is not married, and I would lay you a very good bet that he never will be.'

'That's the kind of crap people talk when they're dying for an engagement ring,' said Brigid, turning the tomatoes over with no enthusiasm.

'I'm off now,' Grania said. 'Tell Dad I'll not be coming in so that he can lock the door.'

Their father was hardly ever at the kitchen supper any more. He was either away in his room planning colours and pictures for the wall, or up in the school talking about the evening class.

Aidan Dunne had gone to the school in case Signora might be there but the place was all locked up. She never went to the pub on her own. The coffee shop would be too crowded with last-minute shoppers. He had never telephoned her at the Sullivans' house, he couldn't start now.

But he really wanted to see her before Christmas to give her a little gift. He had found a locket with a little Leonardo da Vinci face inside. It wasn't expensive but it seemed entirely suitable. He hoped she would have it for Christmas Day. It was wrapped up with Buon Natale printed on the gold paper. It wouldn't be the same afterwards.

Or perhaps it would, but he felt like talking to her for a while. She had once said to him that at the end of the road where she lived there was a wall where she sat sometimes and looked across at the mountains, and thought how different her life had become, and how vista del monte meant the school to her now. Perhaps she might be there tonight.

Aidan Dunne walked up through the busy estate. There were Christmas lights in the windows, cartons of beer being delivered at houses. It must be so different to Signora from last year, when she had spent Christmas with all those Italians in the village in Sicily.

She was sitting there, very still. She didn't seem a bit surprised. He sat down beside her.

'I brought your Christmas present,' he said.

'And I brought yours,' she said, holding a big parcel.

'Will we open them now?' He was eager.

'Why not?'

They unwrapped the locket and the big coloured Italian plate with yellow and gold and a dash of purple, perfect for his room. They thanked each other and praised the gifts. They sat like teenagers with nowhere to go.

It got cold and somehow they both stood up at the same time.

'Buon natale, Signora.' He kissed her on the cheek.

'Buon natale, Aidan, caro mio,' she said.

Christmas Eve they worked long hard hours in the electrical store. Why did people wait until then to decide on the electric carving knife, the video, the electric kettle? Lou toiled all day and it was at closing time that Robin came in to the warehouse with a docket. Lou had somehow expected him.

'Happy Christmas, Lou.'

'Buon natale, Robin.'

'What do you mean?'

'It's the Italian you made me learn, I can hardly think in English any more.'

'Well I came to tell you that you can give it up any time you like,' Robin said.

'What*'

'Sure. Another premises has been located, but the people have been very grateful indeed for the smooth way your premises were organised.'

'But the last one?' Lou's face was white.

'What about the last one?'

'It's still in there,' Lou said.

'You are joking me in this matter.'

'Would I joke about a thing like this? Nobody ever came on the Thursday. Nothing was picked up.'

'Hurry along there, get the man his appliance.' The foreman wanted to close up.

'Give me your docket,' hissed Lou.

'It's a television for you and Suzi.'

'I can't take it,' Lou said. 'She'd know it was nicked.'

'It's not nicked, haven't I just paid for it?' Robin was hurt.

'No, but you know what I mean. I'll go and put it into your car.'

'I was going to drive you back to her flat with the surprise Christmas present.'

It was, as Lou would have guessed, the most expensive in the whole store. The top of the range. Suzi Sullivan would never have accepted any explanation for something like that being carried up the stairs into her bedsitter.

'Listen, we've much bigger problems than the telly, wait till I get my wages and then we'll see what were going to do about the school.5

'I presume you have taken some steps.'

'Some, but they mightn't be the right ones.'

Lou went in and stood with the lads. They got their money, a drink and a bonus; after what seemed forever he came to where the big man sat in his station wagon, the huge television set in the back.

'I have the key to the school, but God knows what kind of lunatics they employ to walk round and test doors at odd times. The Principal there is some kind of maniac apparently.'

He produced the key which he carried with him at all times since the day he took it from Signora's key ring.

'You're a bright boy, Lou.'

'Brighter than those who didn't tell me what to do if a bloody man in an anorak doesn't turn up.' He was angry and aggrieved and frightened now. He was sitting with a criminal in the car park of his workplace with a giant television set that he could not accept. He had stolen a key, left a shipment of drugs in a school. He didn't feel like a bright man, he felt like a fool.

'Well, of course there are always problems with people,' Robin said. 'People let you down. Somebody has let us down. He will not work again.'

'What will happen to him?' Lou asked fearfully. He had visions of the offending anorak who hadn't turned up ending up dead, weighed down with cement blocks in the River Liffey

'As I said, he will never work again for people.'

'Maybe he had a car crash, or maybe his child went to hospital.' Why was Lou defending him? This was the man who had broken all their hearts.

He could have been off the hook if it hadn't been for this. Robin's people had found new premises. Oddly, he thought he might have continued with the lessons. He enjoyed them anyway. He might even have gone on the trip that Signora was planning to Italy next summer. There would have been no need to have stayed on as a cover. Nothing had been proved. It had been a successful resting place. No accusation of an inside job would have been made because nothing had been discovered, apart from this fool who had not turned up on the last Thursday.

'His punishment will be that he never works again,' Robin shook his head in sorrow.

Lou saw a chink of light at the end of the tunnel. That was what you had to do to get uninvolved. Just screw up on a deal. Just do one job badly and you were never called again. If only he had known it would be so simple. But this job wasn't his to falter on.

The anorak man was already suffering for this, and Lou had got the key and probably saved the day. It would have to be the next one.

'Robin, is this your car?'

'No, of course it isn't. You know that. I got it off a friend just so that I could transport the television to you and Suzi. But there you are.' He looked sulky, like a child.

'The Guards won't be watching for you in this car,' Lou said. 'I have an idea. It might not work but it's all I can think of.'

Tell it to me.'

And Lou told him.

It was almost midnight when Lou drove up to the school. He reversed the station wagon up to the door of the annexe, and looking left and right to see was he being watched he let himself into the school annexe.

Almost afraid to breathe, he went to the store cupboard and there they were, four boxes. Just like they always were, looking indeed as if they held a dozen bottles of wine each but there was no sign saying this way up. Nothing saying handle with care. Tenderly he lifted them one by one outside the door. Then, straining and panting he carried the huge television in to the classroom. It had a built in video, it was state of the art. He had written the note already in coloured pencils which he had bought in a late night shop.

'Buon natale a Lei, Signora, e a tutti,' it said.

The school would have a television. The boxes had been rescued. He would drive them in Robin's car to a place where a different man in a different van would meet him and take them silently.

Lou wondered about the lifestyle of people who were suddenly available on Christmas Eve. He hoped he would never be one of them.

He wondered what Signora would say when she saw it. Would she be the first in? Perhaps that madman Tony O'Brien, who seemed to prowl the place night and day, would find it first. They would wonder about it for ever. The number had been filed off it. It could have been bought in any of two dozen stores.

The box revealed nothing of its origin. They would realise it had not been stolen when they began to enquire. They would guess for ever and not be able to come up with a solution. The mystery of how the place had been entered would fade in time. After all, nothing had been stolen. There had been no vandalism.

Even tetchy Mr. O'Brien would have to give up eventually.

Meanwhile there would be a great television and video for the use of the school and presumably the evening class where it had appeared.

And the next job that Robin asked Lou to do would be botched. And then sadly Lou would be told that he could never work again, and he could get on with his life.

It was Christmas morning and he was exhausted. He went around to Suzi's parents' house for tea and Christmas cake. Signora was there quietly in the background playing chess with Jerry.

'Chess!' whispered Suzi in amazement. 'That fellow can understand the pieces and the moves of chess. Wonders will never cease.'

'Signora!' he said.

'Luigi.' She seemed delighted to see him.

'You know, I got a present of a key ring just like yours,' he said. They weren't all that uncommon, it was hardly something to be marvelled at.

'My owl key ring.' Signora was always pleasant and responded to any conversation that was presented to her.

'Yeah, let me see, are they the same?' he said.

She took it from her bag and he pretended to make a comparison as he made the switch. He was safe now, and so was she. No one would ever remember this harmless little conversation. He must talk about other gifts and confuse them.

'God, I thought that Lou would never stop talking tonight,' Peggy Sullivan said as she and Signora washed up. 'Do you remember when they used to say people were vaccinated with a gramophone needle, they can't say that today I suppose, what with CDs and tapes.'

'I remember that phrase. I once tried to explain it to Mario, but like so many things it got lost in the translation and he never knew what I meant.'

It was a moment for confidences. Peggy never dared to ask this odd woman a personal question but she had sort of lowered the guard here. 'And did you not think of being with your own people at all, Signora, on Christmas Day?' she asked.

Signora did not look at all put out. She answered the question thoughtfully, with deliberation, as she answered Jerry's questions.

'No, you know, it wasn't something I would have liked. It would have been artificial. And I have seen my mother and sisters many times and none of them suggested it. They have their own ways and customs now. It would be hard to try and add me to them. It would have been very false. None of us would have enjoyed it. But I did enjoy myself here today with your family.' She stood there calm and untroubled. She wore a new locket around her neck. She had not said where she got it and nobody had liked to ask. She was much too private a person.

'And we liked having you very, very much, Signora,' said Peggy Sullivan, who wondered nowadays what she had ever done before this odd woman had come to live there.

The class began again on the first Tuesday of January. A cold evening, but they were all there. Nobody was missing from the thirty who had signed on in September. It must be a record in any evening class.

And all the top brass were there, the Principal, Tony O'Brien, and Mr. Dunne, and they were beaming all over their faces. The most extraordinary thing had happened. The class had been given a gift. Signora was like a child, almost clapping her hands with pleasure.

Who could have done it? Was it anyone here? Was it one of the class? Would they say so that they could thank him or her? Everyone was mystified, but of course they all thought it was Connie.

'No, I wish it had been. I really do wish I had been nice enough to think of it.' Connie seemed almost embarrassed now that she hadn't been responsible.

The Principal said he was delighted but he was anxious in terms of security. If nobody owned up to having given this generous present then they would have to have the locks changed because somebody somewhere must have a key to the place. There had been no sign of a break-in.

'That's not the way the bank would look at it,' Guglielmo said. 'They'd say leave things as they are, whoever it is might give us a hi-fi next week.'

Lorenzo, who was actually Laddy the hotel porter, said that you'd be surprised how many keys there were walking round the city of Dublin that would open the same doors.

And suddenly Signora looked up and looked at Luigi and Luigi looked away.

Please may she say nothing, he said. Please may she know it will do no good, only harm. He didn't know if he were praying to God or just muttering to himself, but he meant it. He really meant it.

And it seemed to have worked. She looked away too.

The class began. They were revising. What a lot they had forgotten, Signora said, how much work there was to be done if they were all going to make the promised trip to Italy. Shamed, they struggled again with the phrases that had come so easily before the two-week break.

Lou tried to slip out when the class was over.

'Not helping me with the boxes tonight, Luigi?' Her look was unfaltering.

'Scusi, Signora, where are they? I forgot.'

They lifted them into the now blameless store cupboard, an area that would never again house anything dangerous.

'Is um… Mr. Dunne coming to walk you home, Signora?'

'No, Luigi, but you on the other hand are walking out with Suzi who is the daughter of the house where I stay.' Her face looked cross.

'But you know that, Signora. We're engaged.'

'Yes, that's what I wanted to discuss with you, the engagement, and the ring. Un anello di fidanzamento, that's what we call it in Italian.'

'Yes, yes, a ring for the fiancee,' Lou was eager.

'But not usually emeralds, Luigi. Not a real emerald. That is what is so strange.'

'Aw, go on out of that, Signora, real emerald? You have to be joking. It's glass.'

'It's an emerald, uno smeraldo. I know them. I love to touch them.'

'They're making them better and better, Signora, no one can tell the real thing from the fakes now.'

'It cost thousands, Luigi.'

'Signora, listen to me…'

'As that television set cost hundreds and hundreds… maybe over a thousand.'

'What are you saying?'

'I don't know. What are you saying to me?'

No schoolteacher in the past had ever made Lou Lynch feel like this, humbled and ashamed. His mother and father had never been able to get him to conform, no priest or Christian Brother, and suddenly he was terrified of losing the respect and the silence of this strange woman.

'I'm saying…' he began. She waited with that curious stillness. 'I suppose I'm saying it's over, whatever it was. There won't be any more of it.'

'And are these things stolen, the beautiful emerald and the magnificent television set?'

'No, no they're not, as it happens,' he said. 'They were paid for, not exactly by me but by other people that I worked for.'

'But that you don't work for any more?'

'No, I don't, I swear it.' He desperately wanted her to believe him. His soul was all in his face as he spoke.

'So, no more pornography.'

'No more what, Signora?'

'Well, of course I opened those boxes, Luigi. I was so worried with the drugs in the school, and young Jerry, Suzi's little brother… I was afraid that's what you had in the store cupboard.'

'And it wasn't?' He tried to take the question out of his voice.

'You know it wasn't. It was ridiculous filthy stuff, judging by the pictures on the covers. Such a fuss getting them in and out, so silly, and for young impressionable people probably very harmful.'

'You looked at them, Signora?'

'I told you I didn't play them, I don't have a video, and even if I did…'

'And you said nothing?'

'For years I have lived silently saying nothing. It becomes a habit.'

'And did you know about the key?'

'Not until tonight, then I remembered the nonsense about a keyring. Why did you need it?'

'There were some boxes accidentally left over Christmas,' he said.

'Couldn't you have left them there, Luigi, rather than steal keys and get them back?'

Tt was always a bit complicated,' he said repentantly.

'And the television?'

'It's a long story.'

'Tell me some of it.'

'Well, it was given to me as a present for… er, storing the… er, boxes of tapes. And I didn't want to give it to Suzi because… well, you know I couldn't have. She'd know, or guess or something.'

'But there's nothing for her to find out now.'

'No, Signora.' He felt as if he were four years old with his head hanging down.

'In bocca al lupo, Luigi,' said Signora, and locked the door behind them firmly, leaning against it and testing to make quite sure it was closed.

INNOD

When Constance O'Connor was fifteen her mother stopped serving desserts at home. There were no cakes at tea, a low fat spread was on the table instead of butter, and sweets and chocolate forbidden from the house.

'You're getting a bit hippy, darling,' her mother said when Constance protested.

'All the tennis lessons, all the smart places we go, will be no use at all if you have a big bum.'

'No use for what?'

'To attract the right kind of husband,' her mother had laughed. And then, before Connie could persist, she said: 'Believe me, I know what I'm saying. I'm not saying it's fair, but it's the way things are, so if we know the rules why not play by them?'

'They might have been the rules in your day, Mother, back in the forties, but everything's changed since then.'

'Believe me,' her mother said. It was a great phrase of hers, she ordered people to believe her on this and on that. 'Nothing has changed, 1940s, 1960s, they still want a slim, trim wife. It looks classy. The kind of men we want, want women who look the part. Just be glad you know that and lots of your friends at school don't.'

Connie had asked her father. 'Did you marry Mother because she was slim?'

'No, I married her because she was lovely and delightful and warm and because she looked after herself. I knew someone who looked after herself would look after me, and you when you came along, and the home. It's as simple as that.'

Connie was at an expensive girls' school.

Her mother always insisted she invite her friends around to supper or for the weekend. 'That way they'll invite you and you can meet their brothers and their friends,' Mother said.

'Oh, Mother, it's idiotic. It's not like some kind of Society where we are all presented at court. I'll meet whoever I meet, that's the way it is.'

'That's not the way it is,' her mother said.

And when Connie was seventeen or eighteen she found herself going out with exactly the people her mother would have chosen for her; doctors' sons, lawyers' sons, young people whose fathers were very successful in business. Some of them were great fun, some of them were very stupid, but Connie knew it would all be all right when she went to university. Then she could really meet the

I

kind of people she knew were out there. She could make her own friends, not just pick from the tiny circle that her mother had thought suitable.

She had registered to go to University College Dublin just before her nineteenth birthday. She had gone in and walked around the campus several times and attended a few public lectures there so that she wouldn't feel nervous when it all started in October.

But in September the unbelievable happened. Her father died. A dentist who spent a great deal of his time on the golf course, and whose successful practice had a lot to do with being a partner in his uncle's firm, should have lived for ever. That's what everyone said. Didn't smoke, only the odd drink to be sociable, took plenty of exercise. No stress in his life.

But of course they hadn't known about the gambling. Nobody had known until later the debts that existed. That the house would have to be sold. That there would be no money for Connie or any of them to go to university.

Connie's mother had been ice cold about it all. She behaved perfectly at the funeral, invited everyone around to the house for salads and wine. 'Richard would have wanted it this way,' she said.

Already the rumours were beginning to spread, but she kept her head up high. When she was alone with Connie, and only then, she let her public face fall. 'If he weren't dead I would kill him,' she said over and over. 'With my own bare hands I would choke the life out of him for doing this to us.'

'Poor Daddy.' Connie had a softer heart. 'He must have been very upset in his mind to throw money away on dogs and horses. He must have been looking for something.'

'If he were still here to face me, he would have known what he was looking for,' her mother said.

'But if he had lived, he would have explained, won it back maybe, told us.' Connie wanted a good memory of her father who had been kind and good-tempered. He hadn't fussed as much as Mother, and made so many rules and laid down so many laws.

'Don't be a fool, Connie. There's no time for that now. Our only hope is that you will marry well.'

'Mother! Don't be idiotic, Mother. I'm not going to get married for years. I have all my college years to get through, then I want to travel. I'm going to wait until I'm nearly thirty before I settle down.'

Her mother looked at her with a very hard face. 'Let's get this understood here and now, there will be no university. Who will pay the fees, who will pay your upkeep?'

'What do you want me to do instead?'

'You'll do what you have to do. You'll live with your father's family, his uncles and brothers are very ashamed about this weakness of his. Some of them knew, some didn't. But they're going to keep you in Dublin for a year while you do a secretarial course, and possibly a couple of other things as well, then you'll get a job and marry somebody suitable as soon as possible.'

'But Mother… I'm going to do a degree, it's all arranged, I've been accepted.'

'It's all unarranged now.'

'That's not fair, it can't be.'

'Talk to your late father about it, it's his doing, not mine.'

'But couldn't I get a job and go to college at the same time?'

'It doesn't happen. And that crowd of his relatives aren't going to put you up in their house if you're working as a cleaner or a shopgirl, which is all you can hope to get.'

Maybe she should have fought harder, Connie told herself. But it was hard to remember how times were then. And how shocked and upset they all were.

And how frightened she was going to live with her cousins whom she didn't know, while Mother and the twins went back to the country to live with Mother's family. Mother said that going back to the small town she had left in triumph long ago was the hardest thing a human should be asked to do.

'But they'll be sorry for you so they'll be nice to you,' Connie had said.

'I don't want their pity, their niceness. I wanted my pride. He took that away. That's what I will never forgive him for, not until the day I die.'

At her secretarial course Connie met Vera, who had been at school with her.

'I'm desperately sorry about your father losing all his money,' Vera said immediately, and Connie's eyes filled with tears.

'It was terrible,' she said. 'Because it's not like the awfulness of your father dying anyway, it's as if he were a different person all the time and none of us ever knew him.'

'Oh, you did know him, it's just you didn't know him liking a flutter, and he'd never have done it if he thought you were all going to be upset,' said Vera.

Connie was delighted to meet someone so kind and understanding. And even though she and Vera had never been close at school they became very firm friends at that moment.

'I think you don't know how nice it is having someone being sympathetic,' she wrote to her mother. 'It's like a warm bath. I bet people would be like that to you around Grannie's home if you let them and told them how awful you felt.'

The letter back from her mother was sharp and to the point. 'Kindly don't go weeping for sympathy on all and sundry. Pity is no comfort to you, nor are fine soft words. Your dignity and your pride are the only things you need to see you into your middle age. I pray that you will not be deprived of them as I was.'

Never a word about missing Father. About the kind husband he was, the good father. The photographs were taken out of the frames. The frames were sold in the auction. Connie didn't dare to ask whether the pictures of her childhood had been saved.

Connie and Vera got on very well at their secretarial college. They did the shorthand and typing classes, together with the bookkeeping and office routine that were all part of such a comprehensive type of training. The family of cousins that she stayed with were embarrassed by her plight and gave her more freedom than her mother would have done.

Connie enjoyed being young and in Dublin. She and Vera went to dances where they met great people. A boy called Jacko fancied Connie and his friend Kevin fancied Vera, so they often went out together as a four. But neither she nor Vera were serious while both the boys were. There was a lot of pressure on both of them to have sex. Connie refused but Vera agreed.

'Why do you do it if you don't enjoy it, if you're afraid of getting pregnant?' Connie asked, bewildered.

'I didn't say I didn't enjoy it,' Vera protested. 'I said it's not as great as it's made out to be and I can't see what all the puffing and panting is about. And I'm not afraid of getting pregnant, I'm going to go on the Pill.'

Even though birth control was still officially banned in Ireland in the early 1970s, the contraceptive pill could be prescribed for menstrual irregularity. Not surprisingly a large number of the female population were found to suffer from this. Connie thought it might be a good idea to go the same route. You never knew the day or the hour you might need to sleep with someone, and it would be a pity to have to hang around and wait until the Pill started to work.

Jacko had not been told that Connie was taking the contraceptive pill. He remained hopeful that she would eventually realise that they were meant for each other just like Kevin and Vera. He dreamed up more and more ideas that he thought would please her. They would travel to Italy together - they would learn Italian before they left at some night school or from records. When they got there they would Scusi and Grazie with the best of them. He was good looking, eager and besotted with her. But Connie was firm. There would be no affair, no real involvement. Taking the Pill was just part of her own practicality.

Whatever version of the Pill Vera was taking did not agree with her, and in the time when she was changing over to another brand she became pregnant.

Kevin was delighted. 'We always meant to get married anyway,' he kept saying.

'I wanted to have a bit of a life first,' Vera wept.

'You've had a bit of a life, now we'll have a real life, you and the baby and me.' Kevin was overjoyed that they didn't need to live at home any more. They could have their own place.

It didn't turn out to be a very comfortable place. Vera's family were not wealthy and were very annoyed indeed with their daughter having, as they considered it, thrown away her expensive education and costly commercial course before she ever worked for a day in her life.

They were also less than pleased with the family that Vera was about to marry into. While they considered Kevin's people extremely worthy, they were definitely not what they had hoped for their daughter.

Vera didn't need to explain this tension to Connie, Connie's own mother would have been fit to be tied. She could imagine her screaming: 'His father a house painter. And he's going into the business! They call that a business to be going into.' It was useless for Vera to point out that Kevin's father owned a small builder's provider and decorator that in time might well become fairly important.

Kevin had earned a living every week of his life since he had been seventeen. He was twenty-one now and extremely proud of being a father. He had painted the nursery of the two-up two-down house with three coats. He wanted it to be perfect when the baby arrived.

At Vera's wedding, where Jacko was best man and Connie was the bridesmaid, Connie made a decision. 'We can never go out with each other ever again after today,' she said.

'You're not serious, what did I do?'

'You did nothing, Jacko, except be nice and terrific, but I don't want to get married, I want to work and go abroad.'

His open, honest face was mystified. 'I'd let you work, I'd take you away every year to Italy on a holiday.'

'No, Jacko. Dear Jacko, no.'

'And I thought we might even make an announcement tonight,' he said, his face drawn in lines of disappointment.

'We hardly know each other, you and I.'

'We know each other just as much as the bride and groom here, and look how far down the road they are.' Jacko spoke enviously.

Connie didn't say that she thought her friend Vera was very unwise to have signed on for life with Kevin. She felt Vera would tire of this life soon. Vera, with the laughing dark eyes and the dark fringe still in her eyes, as it had been at school, would soon be a mother. She was able to face down her stiff-faced mother and father, and force everyone to have a good time at her wedding party. Look at her now, with the small bump in her stomach obvious to all, leading the singing of 'Hey Jude' at the piano. Soon the whole room was singing 'la la la la la la, Hey Jude.'

She swore to Connie that it was what she wanted.

And amazingly it turned out to be what she did want. She finished the rest of her course and went to work in Kevin's father's office. In no time she had organised their rather rudimentary system of accounts. There was a proper filing cabinet, not a series of spikes, there was an appointment book which everyone had to fill in. The arrival of the tax man was no longer a source of such dread. Slowly Vera moved them into a different league.

The baby was an angel, small and dark-eyed with loads of black hair like Vera and Kevin. At the christening Connie felt her first small twinge of envy. She and Jacko were the godparents. Jacko had another girl now, a pert little thing. Her skirt was too short, her outfit not right for a christening.

'I hope you're happy,' Connie whispered to him at the font.

'I'd come back to you tomorrow. Tonight, Connie,' he said to her.

'That's not only not on, it's not fair to think like that,' she said.

'She's only to get me over you,' he pleaded.

'Maybe she will.'

'Or the next twenty-seven, but I doubt it.'

The hostility that Vera's family had been showing to Kevin's had disappeared. As so often happened, a tiny innocent baby in a robe being handed from one to the other made all the difference… the looking for family noses and ears and eyes in the little bundle. There was no need for Vera to sing 'Hey Jude' to cheer them up, they were happy already.

The girls had not lost touch. Vera had asked: 'Do you want to know how much Jacko yearns over you or not?'

'Not, please. Not a word.'

'And what should I say when he asks are you seeing anyone?'

'Tell him the truth, that I do from time to time but you think I'm not all that interested in fellows, and certainly not in settling down.'

'All right,' Vera promised. 'But for me, tell me have you met anyone you fancied since him?'

'Ones I half fancy, yes.'

'And have you gone all the way with them?'

'I can't talk to a respectable married woman and mother about such things.'

'That means no,' Vera said, and they giggled as they had when they learned typing.

Connie's good looks and cool manner were an asset at interviews. She never allowed herself to look too eager, and yet there was nothing supercilious about her either. She refused quite an attractive job in the bank since it was only a temporary one.

The man who interviewed her had been surprised and rather impressed. 'But why did you apply if you didn't intend to take it?' he asked.

Tf you see the wording of your advertisement, there was nothing to suggest that my job would be in the nature of temporary relief,' she said.

'But once with a foot in the bank, Miss O'Connor, surely that would be to your advantage.'

Connie was unflustered. 'If I were to go in for banking I would prefer to be part of the natural intake and be part of a system,' she said.

He remembered her and spoke of her that night to two friends in the golf club. 'Remember Richard O'Connor, the dentist who lost his shirt? His daughter came in to see me, real little Grace Kelly, cool as anything. I wanted to give her a job, out of decency for poor old Richard, but she wouldn't take it. Bright as a button though.'

One of the men owned a hotel. 'Would she be good at a front desk?'

'Exactly what you're looking for, maybe even too classy for you.'

So next day Connie was called for another interview.

'It's very simple work, Miss O'Connor,' the man explained.

'Yes, but what could I learn then? I wouldn't like to do something that didn't stretch me, require me to grow with it.'

'This job is in a new top-grade hotel, it can be what you make of it.'

'Why do you think I would be suitable for it?'

'Three reasons: you look nice, you talk well, and I knew your dad.'

'I didn't mention anything about my late father in this interview.'

'No, but I know who he was. Don't be foolish, girl, take the job. Your father would like you to be looked after.'

'Well, if he would have, he certainly didn't do much during his lifetime to see that this would be the case.'

'Don't talk like that, he loved you all very much.'

'How do you know?'

'He was for ever showing us pictures on the golf course of the three of you. Brightest children in the world, we were told.'

She felt a stinging behind her eyes. 'I don't want a job from pity, Mr. Hayes,' she said.

'I would want my daughter to feel the same way, but also I wouldn't want her to make a big thing about pride. You know it's a deadly sin, but that's not as important as knowing it's a very poor companion on a winter's evening.'

This was one of the wealthiest men in Dublin sharing his views with her. 'Thank you, Mr. Hayes, and I do appreciate it. Should I think about it?'

'I'd love you to take it now. There are a dozen other young women waiting for it. Take it and make it into a great job.'

Connie rang her mother that night.

'I'm going to work for the Hayes Hotel starting on Monday. When the hotel opens I'll be introduced as their first hotel receptionist, chosen from hundreds of applicants. That's what the public relations people say. Imagine, I'm going to have my picture in the evening papers.' Connie was very excited.

Her mother was not impressed. 'They just want to make you into some kind of little dumb blonde, you know, simpering for the photographers.'

Connie felt her heart harden. She'd followed her mother's instructions to the letter, done her secretarial course, stayed with her cousins, got herself a job. She was not going to be insulted and patronised in this way. 'If you remember, Mother, what ,' wanted was to go to university and be a lawyer. That didn't happen so I'm doing the best I can. I am sorry you think so poorly of it, I thought you'd be pleased.'

Her mother was immediately contrite. 'I'm sorry, I really am. If you knew how sharp tongued I'm getting… They say here I'm like our great Aunt Katie, and you remember what a legend she was in the family.'

'It's all right, Mother.'

'No, it's not, I'm ashamed. I'm very proud of you. I just say these hard things because I can't bear to have to be grateful to people like that Hayes man your father played golf with. He probably knows you're poor Richard's daughter and gave you the job out of charity.'

'No, I don't think he would know that at all, Mother,' Connie lied in a cool tone.

'You're right, why would he? It's nearly two years ago.' Her mother sounded sad.

'I'll ring and tell you about it, Mother.'

'Do that, Connie dear, and don't mind me. It's all I have left, you know, my pride. I won't apologise to any of them round here, my head is as high as ever.'

'I'm glad you're pleased for me, give my love to the twins.' Connie knew she would grow up a stranger now from the two fourteen-year-old boys who went to a Brothers school in a small town and not the private Jesuit college which had been planned.

Her father was gone, her mother was going to be no help. She was on her own. She would do what Mr. Hayes said. She would make a great job of this, her first serious position. She would be remembered in the Hayes Hotel as the first and best receptionist they ever had.

She was an excellent appointment. Mr. Hayes congratulated himself over and over. And so like Grace Kelly. He wondered how long it would take before she met her Prince.

In fact it took two years. There were of course endless offers of all kinds of things. Businessmen staying regularly in the hotel longed to escort the elegant Miss O'Connor at the front desk to some of the smarter restaurants and indeed night clubs that were starting up around the city. But she was very detached. She smiled and talked to them warmly and said she didn't mix business with pleasure.

'It doesn't have to be business,' Teddy O'Hara cried in desperation. 'Look, I'll stay in some other hotel if you just come out with me.'

'That would hardly be a good way to repay Hayes Hotel for my good job here.' Connie would smile at him. 'Sending all the clients off to rival establishments.'

She would tell Vera all about them. She called every week to see Vera, Kevin and Deirdre, who was shortly to be joined by another baby.

'Teddy O'Hara asked you out?' Vera's eyes were round. 'Oh please marry him, Connie, then we can get the contract for all the decorating on his shops. We'd be made for life. Go on, marry him for our sake.'

Connie laughed, but she realised she had not been putting any business in her friends' way which she could have been doing. Next day she said to Mr. Hayes that she knew a very good small firm of painters and decorators if they wanted to add them to their list of service suppliers. Mr. Hayes said that he left all that to the relevant manager but he did need someone to do a job for him in his own house out in Foxrock.

Kevin and Vera never stopped talking about the size and splendour of the house, and the niceness of the Hayes family, who had a little girl themselves called Marianne, Kevin and his father had done up the girl's bedroom for her with every luxury you could think of. Her own little pink bathroom off it, for a child!

Vera and Kevin never sounded jealous, and always grateful for the introduction. Mr. Hayes had been pleased with the work done and because of that recommended the small firm to others. Soon Kevin drove a smarter van. There was even talk of a bigger house when the new baby arrived.

They were still friendly with Jacko, who was in the electrical business. Could I put a bit of work his way? Connie had wondered. Vera said she'd test the water. What Jacko actually said was: 'You can tell that stuck-up bitch to take her favours and stuff them.'

'He didn't seem keen' was the way Vera reported it, being someone who liked to keep the peace.

And just when Vera and Kevin's new baby, Charlie, was born Connie met Harry Kane. He was the most handsome man she had ever seen, tall with thick brown hair which curled on his shoulders, very unlike the business people she mixed with. He had an easy smile for everyone and a manner that seemed to expect that he would get good attention everywhere. Doormen rushed to open doors for him, the girl in the boutique left other customers to get him his copy of the newspaper and even Connie, who knew she was regarded as an ice maiden, looked up and smiled at him welcomingly.

She was particularly pleased that he saw her dealing with some difficult business travellers very efficiently. 'Quite the diplomat, Miss O'Connor,' he said admiringly.

'Always good to see you here, Mr. Kane. Everything's arranged in your meeting room.'

Harry Kane with two older partners ran a new and very successful insurance business. It was taking a lot of business from the more established companies. Some people looked on it with suspicion. Growing too big too fast, they said, bound to be in trouble. But it showed no signs of it. The partners worked in Galway and Cork, they met every Wednesday in Hayes Hotel. They worked from nine until twelve thirty with a secretary in their conference room, then they entertained people to lunch.

Sometimes it was government ministers, or heads of industry or of big trade unions. Connie wondered why they didn't have their meeting in the Dublin office. Harry Kane had a big prestige office in one of the Georgian squares, with almost a dozen people working there. It must be for privacy, she decided, that and lack of disturbance. The hotel had strict instructions that no calls whatsoever be put through to the conference room on a Wednesday.

Obviously this secretary must know all their secrets and where the bodies were buried. Connie looked at her with interest as she went in and out with them each week. She would carry a briefcase of documents away with her and never joined the partners at lunch. Yet she must be a highly trusted confidante.

Connie would like to work like that for someone. Someone very like Harry Kane. She began to talk to the woman, using all her charm and every skill she could rustle up.

'Everything in the room to your satisfaction, Miss Casey?'

'Certainly, Miss O'Connor, otherwise Mr. Kane would have mentioned it to you.'

'We have just stocked quite a new range of audio-visual equipment, in case any of it would be of use for your meetings.'

'Thank you, but no.'

Miss Casey always seemed anxious to leave, as if her briefcase contained hot money. Maybe it did. Connie and Vera talked it over for hours.

'She's obviously a fetishist, I'd say,' Vera suggested, as they bounced baby Charlie on their knees and assured Deirdre that she was much more beautiful and much more loved than Charlie would ever be.

'What"?' Connie had no idea what Vera was suggesting.

'Sado-masochism, whips them within an inch of their life every Wednesday. That's the only way they can function. That's what's in the case. Whips!'

'Oh, Vera, I wish you could see her.'

Connie laughed till the tears came down her face at the thought of Miss Casey in that role. And, oddly, at the same time she felt a wave of jealousy in case the quiet, elegant Miss Casey did have an intimate relationship with Harry Kane. She had not felt that way about anyone before.

'You fancy him,' Vera said sagely.

'Only because he doesn't look at me. You know that's the way of it.'

'Why do you like him, do you think?'

'He reminds me a bit of my father,' Connie said suddenly, before she realised that this was what she had felt.

'All the more reason to keep a sharp eye on him then,' said Vera, who was the only person allowed to mention the late Richard

O'Connor's little gambling habit without getting a withering look from his daughter.

Without appearing to ask, Connie found out more and more about Harry Kane. He was almost thirty, single, his parents were from the country, small farmers. He was the first of his family to get into business in a big way. He lived in a bachelor apartment overlooking the sea, he went to first nights and to gallery openings, but always in a group.

His name had been mentioned in newspaper columns and always as part of a group, or sharing a box at the races with the highest of the land. When he married it would be into a family like that of Mr. Hayes. Thank God that his daughter was only a young school girl, otherwise she would have been ideal for him.

'Mother, why don't you come up to Dublin some Wednesday on the train and take a few of your friends for lunch in Hayes Hotel? I'll see they make the most enormous fuss of you.'

'I don't have any friends left in Dublin.'

'Yes, you do.' She listed a few.

'I don't want their pity.'

'What pity would there be if you invited them to a nice lunch? Come on, try it. Maybe they'll suggest it another time. You can take the day excursion ticket.'

Grudgingly her mother agreed.

They were placed near Mr. Kane's party, which included a newspaper owner and two cabinet ministers. The ladies thoroughly enjoyed their lunch, and the fact that they seemed to be even more feted than the amazingly important people nearby.

As Connie had hoped it would be, the lunch was pronounced a huge success and one of the others said that next time it must be her treat. It would also be a Wednesday, in a month's time. And so it went on, her mother becoming more confident and cheerful since nobody mentioned her late husband apart from saying Toor Richard', as they would to any widow about the deceased.

Connie always arranged to pass their table and offer them a glass of port with her compliments. Very publicly she would sign the docket for it so that everyone knew it was accountable for. She would flash a smile at the Kane table too.

After the fourth time she realised that he really did notice her. 'You're very kind to those older women, Miss O'Connor,' he said.

'That's my mother and some of her friends. They do enjoy their lunch here, and it's a pleasure to see her, she lives in the country, you see.'

'Ah, and where do you live?' he asked, his eyes alert waiting for her reply.

It was her cue to say: 'I have my own flat,' or 'by myself. But Connie was prepared. 'Well, I live in Dublin of course, Mr. Kane, but I do hope to travel sometime, I would love to see other cities.' She was giving nothing away. She saw further interest in his face.

'And so you should, Miss O'Connor. Have you been to Paris?'

'Sadly not yet.'

'I'm going next weekend, would you like to come with me?'

She laughed pleasantly, as if she were laughing with him not at him. 'Wouldn't that be nice! But out of the question, I'm afraid. I hope you have a good time.'

'Perhaps I could take you to dinner when I come back and tell you about it?'

'I'd like that very much indeed.'

And so it began, the courtship of Connie O'Connor and Harry Kane. And throughout it all she knew that Siobhan Casey, his faithful secretary, hated her. They kept the relationship as private as they could, but it wasn't easy. If he were invited to the opera he wanted to take her, he didn't want to go with a crowd of singles hand-picked for him. It wasn't long before their names were linked. She was described by one columnist as his blonde companion.

'I don't like this,' she said when she saw it in a Sunday paper. 'It makes me look flashy, trash almost.'

'To be my companion?' He raised his eyebrows.

'You know what I mean, the word companion and all it suggests.'

'Well, it's not my fault that they're not right about that.' He had been urging her to bed and she had been refusing for some time now.

'I think we should stop seeing each other, Harry.'

'You can't mean it.'

'I don't want it but I think it's best. Look, I'm not just going to have a fling with you, and then be thrown aside. Seriously, Harry, I like you too much. I more than like you, I think of you all the time.'

'And I of you.' He sounded as if he meant it.

'So isn't it better if we stop now?'

'I don't know what the phrase is…?'

'Get out in time,' she smiled at him. 'I don't want to get out,' he said. 'Neither do I, but it will be harder later.'

'Will you marry me?' he asked.

'No, it's not that, I'm not putting a gun to your head. This isn't an ultimatum or anything, it's for our own good.'

'I am putting a gun to yours. Marry me.'

'Why?'

'I love you,' he said.

The wedding was to be in Hayes Hotel. Everyone insisted, Mr. Kane was like part of the family there, and Miss O'Connor was the heartbeat of the place since it had opened.

Connie's mother had nothing to pay for except her outfit. She was able to invite her friends, the ladies with whom she had regained contact. She even invited some of her old enemies. Her twin sons were ushers at the smartest wedding Dublin had seen in years, her daughter was a beauty, the groom was the most eligible man in Ireland. On that day Connie's mother almost forgave the late Richard. If he turned up alive now she might not choke him to death after all. She had become reconciled to the hand that fate had dealt.

She and Connie slept in the same hotel room the night before the wedding. 'I can't tell you how happy I am to see you so happy,' she said to her daughter.

'Thank you, Mother, I know you've always wanted the best for me.' Connie was very calm. She was having a hairdresser and beautician come to the room in the morning to look after her mother and Vera and herself. Vera was the matron of honour, and utterly overawed by the splendour of it all.

'You are happy?' her mother said suddenly.

'Oh, Mother, for goodness' sake.' Connie tried to control her anger. Was there no occasion, no timing, no ceremony, that her mother could not try to spoil? Yet she looked into the kind, concerned face. 'I'm very, very happy. But just afraid I might not be enough for him, you know. He's a very successful man, I might not be able to keep up with him.'

'You've kept up with him so far,' her mother said shrewdly.

'But that's a matter of tactics, I didn't sleep with him like everyone else did from what I hear. I didn't give in easily, it might not be the same when I'm married.'

Her mother lit another cigarette. 'Just remember this one thing I said to you tonight and don't ever talk about it again, but remember it. Make sure he gives you money for yourself. Invest it, have it. Then in the end whatever happens won't be too bad.'

'Oh, Mother.' Her eyes were soft and filled with pity for a mother who had been betrayed. A mother whose whole life had to be rewritten in the light of the fact that her husband had frittered away the future.

'Would money have made that much difference?'

'You'll never know how much, and my prayer for you tonight is that you will never have to know.'

'I'll think about what you say,' Connie said. It was a very useful phrase, she used it a lot at work when she had no intention whatsoever of thinking about what anyone said.

The wedding was a triumph. Harry's two partners and their wives said it was the best wedding they had ever been at, and this was like a seal of approval. Mr. Hayes from the hotel said that since the bride's father was sadly no longer with us, could he say that Richard would be so happy and proud to be here today and see his beautiful daughter so happy and radiant. It was the good fortune of the Hayes Hotel Group that Connie Kane, as she would now be known, had agreed to continue working until something might stop her doing so.

There was a titter of excitement at the thought of such a rich man's wife working as a hotel receptionist until she got pregnant. Which would be in the minimum time it took.

They had a honeymoon in the Bahamas, two weeks that Connie had thought would be the best in her life. She liked talking to Harry and laughing with him. She liked walking along the beach with him, making sand castles in the morning sunshine just by the water edge, hand in hand at sunset before they went to dinner and dance.

She did not enjoy being in bed with him, not even a little bit. It was the last thing she would have expected. He was rough and impatient. He was terribly annoyed with her failure to respond. Even when she realised what he would like and tried to pretend an excitement she did not feel, he saw through it.

'Oh, come off it, Connie, stop all that ludicrous panting and groaning, you'd embarrass a cat.'

She had never felt more hurt or more alone. To give him his due he tried everything. He was gentle and wooing and flattering. He tried just holding her and stroking her. But as soon as penetration seemed likely she tensed up and seemed to resist it, no matter how much she told herself it was what they both wanted.

Sometimes she lay awake in the dark warm night listening to the unfamiliar cicadas and the Caribbean sounds in the distance. She wondered did all women feel like this. Was it perhaps just a giant conspiracy for centuries, women pretending they enjoyed it when all they wanted was children and security? Was this what her mother had meant by telling her to demand that security? In today's world in the 1970s, it didn't automatically exist for women. Men could leave home now without being considered villains, men could lose all their savings in gambling like her father and still be remembered as a good fellow.

In those long, warm, sleepless nights when she dared not stir for fear of wakening him and starting it all over again, Connie wondered too about the words of her friend Vera. 'Go on, Connie, sleep with him now for God's sake. See do you like it. Suppose you don't - imagine a lifetime of it.'

She had said no, it seemed cheating to hold back sex as if it was a prize, and then deliver it in consideration of an engagement ring. He had respected her wish to be a virgin when she married. There had been times in the last few months when she had felt aroused by him. Why had she not gone ahead then instead of waiting for this? A disaster. A disappointment that was going to scar both of them for life.

After eight days and nights of what should have been the best time for two young healthy people but which was actually becoming a nightmare of frustration and misunderstanding, Connie decided to become her old cool self, the woman who had attracted him so much. Wearing her best lemon and white dress, and sitting with the fruit basket and the china coffee pot on their balcony, she called to him: 'Harry, get up and shower will you, you and I need to have a talk.'

'That's all you ever want to do,' he muttered into his pillow.

'Soon, Harry, the coffee won't stay hot for ever.'

To her surprise he obeyed her and came tousled and handsome in his white towelling robe to breakfast. It was a sin, she thought, that she could not please this man and make him please her. But more than that, it was something that had to be dealt with.

After the second cup of coffee she said: 'At home in your work and indeed in my work, if a problem arose we would have a meeting and a discussion, do you agree?'

'What's this?' He didn't sound as if he were going to play along.

'You told me about your partner's wife who drank too much and would talk about your business. How you had to make sure she knew nothing important. It was a strategy… you all told her in deepest secrecy things that never mattered at all. And she was perfectly happy and is perfectly happy to this day. You worked that out by a strategy, all three of you. You sat down and said we don't want to hurt her, we can't talk to her, what do we do? And you solved it.'

'Yes?' He didn't know where this was leading.

'And in my job, we had this problem with Mr. Hayes' nephew. Thick as two short planks… he was there, being groomed for a position of power. A vet with a curry comb couldn't groom him. How do we tell Mr. Hayes? We talked about it; three of us who cared sat down and had a meeting and said what do we do? We found out that the kid wanted to be a musician not a hotel manager. We employed him to play the piano in one of the lounges, he brought in all his rich friends, it worked like a dream.'

'So what's all this about, Connie?'

'You and I have a problem. I can't understand it. You're gorgeous, you're an experienced lover, I love you. It must be my fault, I may need to see a doctor or a shrink or something. But I want to sort it out. Can we talk about it without fighting or sulking or getting upset?' She looked so lovely there, so eager, explaining things that were hard and distasteful to articulate, he struggled to

'Say something, Harry, say that after eight days and eight nights we will not give up. It's a happiness that's there waiting to happen for me, tell me that you know it will be all right.' Still the silence. Not accusing, just bewildered. 'Say anything,' she begged. 'Just tell me what you want.'

'I want a honeymoon baby, Connie. I am thirty years of age, I want a son who can take over my business by the time I'm fifty-five. I want a family there over the next years; when I need them I

come home to them. But you know all this. You and I have talked of aims and dreams for so long, night after night before I knew…' he stopped.

'No, go on,' she said, her voice quiet.

'Well then, before I knew you were frigid,' he said. There was a silence. 'Now, you made me say it. I don't see the point of talking about these things.' He looked upset.

She was still calm. 'You're right, I did make you say it. And is that what I am, do you think?'

'Well, you said yourself you might need a shrink, a doctor, something. Maybe it's in your past. Jesus, I don't know. And I'm as sorry as hell because you're absolutely beautiful and I couldn't be more upset that it's no good for you.'

She was determined not to cry, scream, run away, all the things she wanted to do. She had got by by being calm, she must continue like this.

'So in many ways we want the same thing. I too want a honeymoon baby,' she said. 'Come on, it's not that difficult. Lots of people do it, let's keep trying.' And she gave him the most insincere smile she had ever given anyone and led him back to the bedroom.

When they got back to Dublin she assured him she would get it sorted out. Still smiling bravely she said it made sense, she would consult the experts. First she made an appointment with a leading gynaecologist. He was a very courteous and charming man, he showed her a diagram of the female reproductive area pointing out where there might be blockages or obstructions. Connie studied the drawings with interest. They might have been plans for a new air-conditioning system in the hotel, for all the relevance they had to what she felt in her own body. She nodded at his explanations, reassured by his easy manner and discreet way of implying that almost everyone in the world had similar problems.

But at the physical examination the problems began. She tensed so much that he could not examine her at all. He stood there despairing, his hand in its plastic glove, his face kind and impersonal at the same time. She did not feel that he was a threat to her, it would be such a relief to discover some membrane that could be easily removed, but every muscle in her body had seized up.

'I think we should do an examination under anaesthetic,' he said.

'Much easier for everyone, and very probably a D and C, then you'll be as right as rain.'

She made the appointment for the next week. Harry was loving and supportive. He came to the nursing home to settle her in. 'You're all that matters to me, I never met anyone like you.'

'I bet you didn't,' she tried to joke about it. 'Beating them off was your trouble, not like you have with me.'

'Connie, it will be fine.' He was so gentle and handsome and concerned. If she couldn't be loving to a man like this there was no hope for her. Suppose she had given in to the persuasion of people like Jacko in the past, would it have been better or worse? She would never know now.

The examination showed that there was nothing physically wrong with Mrs. Constance Kane. At work Connie knew if you went down one avenue and came to a dead end you had to go back to where you started from and go down another. She made an appointment with a psychiatrist. A very pleasant woman with a genuine smile and a matter-of-fact approach. She was easy to talk to, she seemed to ask shortish questions and expected longer answers. At work Connie was more accustomed to be in a listening mode, but gradually she responded to the interested questions of the psychiatrist, which never seemed intrusive.

She assured the older woman that there had not been any unpleasant sexual experiences in her past because there hadn't been any. No, she hadn't felt deprived, or curious or frustrated by not having had sex. No she had never felt drawn to anyone of her own sex, nor had an emotional relationship that was so strong it overshadowed anything heterosexual. She told the woman about her great friendship with Vera, but said that in all honesty there wasn't a hint of sexuality or emotional dependency in it, it was all laughter and confiding. And how it began because Vera was the only person to treat the whole business of her father as if it were a normal kind of thing that could happen to anyone.

The psychiatrist was very understanding and sympathetic and asked more and more about Connie's father, and her sense of disappointment after his death. 'I think you're making too much of this whole business about my Dad,' Connie said at one point.

'It's quite possible. Tell me about when you came home from school each day. Did he get involved in your homework, for example?'

J

CI know what you're trying to say, that maybe he interfered with me or something, but it was not remotely like that.'

'No, I'm not saying that at all. Why do you think I'm saying that?'

They went around in circles. At times Connie cried. CI feel so disloyal talking about my father like this.'

'But you haven't said anything against him, just how kind and good and loving he was, and how he showed your picture to people at the golf course.'

'But I feel he's accused of something else, like my not being able to be good in bed.'

'You haven't accused him of that.'

'I know, but I feel it's hanging there over me.'

'And why is that, do you think?'

'I don't know. I suppose it's because I felt so let down, I had to write my whole life story all over again. He didn't love us at all. How could he have, if he was more interested in some horse or dog?'

'Is that the way it looks now?'

'He never laid a hand on me, I can't tell you that enough. It's not that I've suppressed it or anything.'

'But he let you down, disappointed you.'

'It couldn't be just that, could it? Because one man let us down as a family I'm afraid of all men?' Connie laughed at the notion.

'Is that so unlikely?'

'I deal with men all day, I work with men. I've never been afraid of them.'

'But then you've never let any of them come close to you.'

'I'll think about what you say,' Connie said.

'Think about what you say,' said the psychiatrist.

'Did she find anything?' His face was hopeful.

'A load of nonsense. Because my father was unreliable I think all men are unreliable.' Connie laughed in scorn.

'It might be true,' he said to her surprise.

'But Harry, how could it be? We are so open with each other, you would never let me down.'

'I hope I wouldn't,' he said, so seriously that she felt a shiver go the whole way up and down her spine.

And the week went on. Nothing got any better, but Connie clung to him and begged, 'Please don't give up on me, please Harry. I love you, I want our child so much. Maybe when we have our child I'll relax and love it all like I should.'

'Shush, shush,' he would say, stroking the anxious lines away from her face, and it wasn't all repulsive or painful, it was just so very difficult. And they had surely had sex often enough now for her to have become pregnant. Look at all the people who got pregnant who were doing everything on earth to avoid it. In the wakeful night Connie wondered could fate have also decided that she be infertile on top of everything else. But no. She missed her period, and hardly daring to hope she waited until she was sure. Then she told him the news.

His face lit up. 'You couldn't have made me a happier man,' he said. 'I'll never let you down.'

'I know,' she said. But she didn't know, because she felt sure that there was a whole part of his life that she could never share and that sooner or later he would share that side at least with someone else. But in the meantime she must do all she could to shore up the parts of his life she could share.

Together they attended many public functions, and Connie insisted that she be described as Mrs. Constance Kane of Hayes Hotel as well as just Harry's wife. She raised money for two charities with the wives of other successful men. She entertained in her own new and splendid home, where all the decorating had been done by Kevin's family.

She told her mother nothing about the situation between them. She told Vera everything. 'When the baby's born,' Vera advised, 'go off and have a fling with someone else. You might get to like it and then come back and do it properly with Harry.'

'I'll think about it,' said Connie.

The baby's nursery was ready. Connie had given up her job. 'No hope we could tempt you back, even part time, when the baby is old enough to leave with a nurse?' Mr. Hayes pleaded.

'We'll see.' She was more calm and controlled than ever, Mr. Hayes thought. Marriage to a tough man like Harry Kane hadn't taken away any of her spirit.

Connie had made a point of keeping well in touch with Harry's family. She had driven to see them more often in one year than they had been visited by their son in the previous ten. She kept them informed about all the details of her pregnancy, their first grandchild, a very important milestone, she told them. They were quiet people, in awe of the hugely successful Harry. They were delighted and almost embarrassed to be so well included and to have their opinions sought about names.

Connie also made sure that she had the partners and their wives well within her own area. She took to giving light suppers in their house on a Wednesday night. The partners would all have wined and dined well at lunchtime after their weekly meeting, they would not want a huge meal. But each week there was something delicious for them to eat. Not too fattening because one of them was always on a diet, and not too much alcohol served since the other was inclined to hit the bottle.

Connie asked questions and listened to the answers. She assured these women that Harry thought so highly of their husbands that she was almost jealous of all his praise. She remembered every tiresome detail of their children's examinations and their home improvements and their holidays, the clothes they had bought. They were almost twenty years older than her. They had been resentful and suspicious at the outset. Six months after her marriage, they were her devoted slaves. They told their husbands that Harry Kane could not have found a more suitable wife, and wasn't it great that he hadn't married that hard-faced Siobhan Casey who had such high hopes of him.

The partners were unwilling to have a word said against the entirely admirable Siobhan. Because of discretion and male bonding they didn't see any need to explain that Miss Casey's high hopes might not have resulted in marriage but there was distinct evidence that a romantic dalliance that had once existed between them had begun again. Neither of the partners could understand it. If you had a beautiful wife like Connie at home, why go out for it?

When Connie realised that her husband was sleeping with Siobhan Casey she got a great shock. She hadn't expected anything like this so soon. It hadn't taken long before he had let her down. He hadn't given the life they had together much of a chance. She was seven months married, three months pregnant, and she had kept her part of the bargain perfectly. No man ever had a better companion and a more comfortable lifestyle. Connie had brought all her considerable knowledge of the hotel industry to bear on their house. It was elegant and comfortable. It was filled with people and flowers and festivity when he wanted. It was quiet and restful when he wanted that. But he wanted more.

She could possibly have put up with it if it had been a one-night stand, at a conference or visit abroad. But this woman who had obviously always wanted him! How humiliating that she should get him back. And so quickly.

His excuses were not even devious. 'I'll be in Cork on Monday, think I'll stay,' he had said, only the Cork partner had rung looking for him. So he wasn't in Cork after all.

Connie had played it down, and appeared to accept Harry's casual explanation. 'That fellow couldn't remember his own name if it wasn't written on his briefcase. I must have told him three times I was overnighting in the hotel. That's age for you.'

And then shortly afterwards when he was going to Cheltenham the travel agency sent the ticket around to the house, and she saw there was a ticket for Siobhan Casey as well.

'I didn't realise she was going.' Her voice was light. •

Harry shrugged. 'We go to make contacts, to see the races, to meet people. Someone has to stay sober and write it all down.'

And after that he was away from home at least one night a week And perhaps two nights a week so late that it was obvious he had been with somebody else. He suggested separate bedrooms so as not to disturb her, let her have all the sleep she needed in her condition. It was, Connie realised, as lonely as hell.

The weeks went on and their communication grew less. He was always courteous and praising. Particularly of her Wednesday suppers. That had really helped to cement the partnership, he told her. It also meant that he spent Wednesday night at home, but she didn't tell him that was her aim. She arranged taxis to take the partners and their wives to Hayes Hotel, where they had suites at a special discount.

She would sit with Harry when they left and talk about his business, but often with only part of her mind. She wondered did he sit in Siobhan Casey's flat and talk about his successes and failures like this. Or did he and Siobhan feel such a swelling of lust that they took the clothes off each other as soon as they got in the door and were at it on the hearthrug because they couldn't wait until they got to the bedroom?

One Wednesday evening he stroked the large bump of her stomach and there were tears in his eyes. 'I'm so sorry,' he said.

'What for?' Her face was blank. He paused as if considering whether to tell her something or not, so she spoke quickly. She wanted nothing admitted, acknowledged or accepted. 'What are you sorry about? We have everything, almost everything, and what we don't have, we may have in time.'

'Yes, yes of course,' he said pulling himself together.

'And soon our baby will be born,' she said soothingly.

'And we'll be fine,' he said, unconvinced.

Their son was born after eighteen hours of labour. A perfect healthy child. He was baptised Richard. Connie explained that by chance this was Harry's father's name and her father's name too, so it was the obvious choice. The fact that Mr. Kane senior had been called Sonny Kane all his life was never mentioned.

The christening party in their home was elegant and simple at the same time. Connie stood welcoming people, her figure apparently slim again a week after the birth, her mother overdressed and happy, her friend Vera's children Deirdre and Charlie honoured guests.

The parish priest was a great friend of Connie's. He stood there proudly. Would that all his parishioners were as generous and charming as this young woman. A middle-aged lawyer friend of Connie's father was there too, a distinguished member of the Bar, with a very high reputation. He wasn't known for losing cases.

As Connie stood there in her elegant navy silk dress with its smart white trimmings, flanked by the priest and the lawyer and holding his baby son, Harry felt a frisson of alarm. He didn't know what it was and dismissed it. It might be the beginnings of flu. He hoped not, he had a lot of work in the weeks ahead. But he couldn't take his eyes off the tableau. It was if they represented something. Something that threatened him.

Almost against his will he approached them. 'This looks very nice,' he said in his usual easy manner. 'My son surrounded by the clergy and the law on his christening day, what more does he need as a start in life in Holy Ireland?'

They smiled and Connie spoke. 'I was just telling Father O'Hara and Mr. Murphy here that you should be a happy man today. I was telling them what you said eight days after we were married.'

'Oh yes, what was that?'

'You said you wanted a honeymoon baby that would be able to take over your business when you were fifty-five, and a family that would be there for you when you needed it.' Her voice seemed pleasant and admiring enough to the others. He could hear the hardness of steel in it. They had never discussed that conversation again. He had not known she would recall the words which, he remembered thinking at the time, were untempered. He had never believed it possible that she would repeat them to him in public. Was it a threat?

'I'm sure I said it more lovingly than that, Connie,' he smiled. 'It was the Bahamas, we were newly-weds.'

'That's what you said, and I was just pointing out to Father O'Hara and Mr. Murphy that I hope it doesn't seem like tempting fate, but it does seem to be more or less on course so far.'

'Let's just hope that Richard likes the insurance business.'

It was some sort of threat; he knew it but didn't realise where it was coming from.

It was months later that a solicitor asked him to come to a consultation in his office. 'Are you arranging a corporate insurance plan?' Harry asked.

'No, it's entirely personal, it's a personal matter, and I will have a Senior Counsel there,' the solicitor said.

In the office was T. P. Murphy, the friend of Connie's father. Smiling and charming, he sat silently as the solicitor explained that he had been retained by Mrs. Kane to arrange a division of the joint property, under the Married Women's Property Act.

'But she knows that half of mine is hers.' Harry was more shocked than he had ever been in his life. He had been in business deals where people had surprised him, but never to this extent.

'Yes, but there are certain other factors to be taken into consideration,' the solicitor said. The distinguished barrister said nothing, just looked from one face to the other.

'Like what?'

'Like the element of risk in your business, Mr. Kane.'

'There's an element of risk in every bloody business, including your own,' he snapped.

'You will have to admit that your company started very quickly, grew very quickly, some of the assets might not be as sound as they appear on paper.'

God damn her, she had told these lawyers about the group that was dodgy, the one area that he and the partners worried about. They couldn't have known otherwise.

'If she has been saying anything against our company in order to get her hands on something for herself she'll answer for it,' he said, letting his guard drop completely.

It was at this point that the barrister leaned forward and spoke in his silky voice. 'My dear Mr. Kane, you shock us with such a misunderstanding of your wife's concern for you. You may know a little of her own background. Her father's own investments proved insufficient to look after his family when…'

'That was totally different. He was a cracked old dentist who put everything he got from filling teeth onto a horse or a dog.' There was a silence in the law office. Harry Kane realised he was doing himself no good. The two lawyers looked at each other. 'Decent man by all accounts, all the same,' he said grudgingly.

'Yes, a very decent man as you say. One of my closest friends for many years,' said T. P. Murphy.

'Yes. Yes, of course.'

'And we understand from Mrs. Kane that you and she are expecting a second child in a few months' time?' the solicitor spoke without looking up from his papers.

'That's true, yes. We're both very pleased.'

'And Mrs. Kane of course has given up her successful career in Hayes Hotel to look after these children, and any more you and she may have.'

'Listen, it's a goddamn receptionist job, handing people their keys, saying have a nice stay with us. It's not a career. She's married to me, she can have anything she wants. Do I deny her anything? Does she say that in her list of complaints?'

'I'm really very glad that Mrs. Kane isn't here to listen to your words,' said T. P. Murphy. 'If you knew how much you have misrepresented the situation. There is no list of complaints, there is a huge concern on her part for you, your company and the family you wanted so much to create. Her anxiety is all on your behalf. She fears that if anything were to happen to the company you would be left without the things you have worked so hard for, and continue to work so hard for, involving a lot of travel and being away from the family home so much.'

'And what does she suggest?'

They were down to it now. Connie's lawyers wanted almost everything put in her name, the house and a certain high percentage of the annual pre-tax profit. She would form a company with its own directors. Papers were shuffled, obviously names were already in place.

'I can't do that.' Harry Kane had got where he was by coming straight to the point.

'Why not, Mr. Kane?'

'What would it mean to my own two partners, the men who set this thing up with me? I have to tell them "Listen lads, I'm a bit worried about the whole caboodle so I'm putting my share in the wife's name so that you won't be able to touch me if the shit hits the fan"? How would that look to them? Like a vote of confidence in what we do?'

Harry had never known a voice as soft and yet effective as T. P. Murphy's. He spoke at a barely audible level and yet every word was crystal clear. 'I am sure you are perfectly happy for both of your partners to spend their profits as they wish, Mr. Kane. One might want to put all his into a stud farm in the West, one might want to buy works of art and entertain a lot of film and media people, for example. You don't question that. Why should they question that you invest in your wife's company?'

She had told them all that. How had she known anyway? The wives at the Wednesday evenings… Well, by God, he'd put an end to this.

'And if I refuse?'

'I'm sure you won't do that. We may not have divorce on the statute book but we do have Family Law Courts, and I can assure you that anyone who would represent Mrs. Kane would get a huge settlement. The trouble, of course, would be that there would be all that bad publicity, and the insurance business is so dependent on the good faith and trust of the public in general… ' His voice trailed away.

Harry Kane signed the papers.

He drove straight back to his large comfortable home. A gardener came every day, he was wheeling plants across towards a south-facing wall. He let himself in the front door and looked at the fresh flowers in the hall, the bright clean look of the paintwork, the pictures they had chosen together on the walls. He glanced into the large sitting room which would host forty easily for drinks without opening the double doors into the dining room. There were cabinets of Waterford glass. Only dried flowers in the dining room, they didn't eat there unless it was a dinner party. Out to the sunny kitchen where Connie sat feeding baby Richard little spoonfuls of strained apple and laughing at him, delighted. She wore a pretty flowered maternity dress with a white collar. Upstairs there was the sound of the vacuum cleaner. Soon the delivery van from the supermarket would arrive.

It was by any standards a superbly run home. Domestic arrangements never bothered him nor intruded on his life. His clothes were taken and returned to his wardrobe and drawers. He never needed to buy new socks or underpants, but he chose his own suits and shirts and ties.

He stood and looked at his beautiful wife and handsome little son. Soon they would have another child. She had kept every part of her bargain. In a way she was right to protect her investment. She didn't see him standing there and when he moved she gave a little jump.

But he noticed that her first reaction was one of pleasure. 'Oh good, you were able to get home for a bit, will I put on some coffee?'

'I saw them,' he said.

'Saw who?'

'Your legal team.' He was crisp.

She was unmoved. 'Much easier to let them do all the paperwork. You've always said that yourself, don't waste time, pay the experts.'

'I'd say we'll be paying T. P. Murphy well to be an expert, judging by the cut of his suits and the watch he was wearing.'

'I've known him a long time.'

'Yes, so he said.'

She tickled Richard under his chin. 'Say hallo to your Daddy, Richard. He doesn't often get home to see you in the daytime.'

'Is it going to be like this all the time, barbed remarks, snide little references to the fact that I'm not home? Will he grow up like this and the next one, bad daddy, neglectful daddy… is that the way it's going to be?'

Her face was contrite. And in as much as he understood her at all, he thought she was sincere.

'Harry, I can't tell you how much I didn't mean that to be a barbed remark. I swear I didn't. I was pleased to see you, I was speaking stupid baby talk telling him to be pleased too. Believe me it's not going to be full of barbed remarks, I hate it in other people, we won't have it.'

For months she hadn't approached him, made a gesture of affection to him. But she saw him standing there desolate and her heart went out to him. She crossed to where he was standing. 'Harry, please don't be like this, please. You are so good to me, we have such a nice life. Can't we get the best from it, get joy from it, instead of acting watchful and guarded the way we do?'

He didn't raise his hands to her even though her arms were around his neck. 'You didn't ask me did I sign,' he said.

She pulled away. 'I know you did.'

'Why do you know that? Did they call the moment I left the office?'

'No, of course they wouldn't.' She looked scornful of such a thought.

'Why not, a job well done?'

'You signed because it was fair, and because you realise it was for your own good in the end,' she said.

Then he pulled her towards him and felt the bump in her stomach resting against him. Another child, another Kane for the dynasty he wanted in this fine house. 'I wish you loved me,' he said.

'I do.'

'Not in the way that matters,' he said. And his voice was so sad.

'I try. I try, you know I'm there every night if you want me. I'd like you to sleep in the same bed in the same room, it's you who wants to be separate.'

'I came home very, very angry, Connie. I wanted to tell you that you were a bitch going behind my back like that, taking me for every penny I have. I kept thinking you were well named Connie, a real con woman all right… I wanted to tell you a lot of things.' She stood there waiting. 'But honestly I think you made just as big a mistake as I did. You are just as unhappy.'

'I'm more lonely than unhappy,' she said.

'Call it whatever you like,' he shrugged. 'Will you be less lonely now that you've got your money?'

'I imagine I'll be less frightened,' she said.

'What were you frightened of? That I'd lose it all like your old man did, that you'd have to be poor again?'

'No, that's totally wrong.' She spoke with great clearness. He knew she was telling the truth. 'No, I never minded being poor. I

could earn a living, something my mother couldn't do. But I was afraid of being bitter like she became, I was afraid that I would hate you if I had to go back to a job that you made me leave, and go in at the bottom rung again. I couldn't bear the children to have grown up in expectation of one kind of life and end up in another. I know that from experience, so those were things I was frightened of. We had so much going for us, we were always so well suited, everywhere except in bed. I wanted that to go on until we died.'

'I see.'

'Can't you be my friend, Harry? I love you and want the best for you, even if I don't seem to be able to show it.'

'I don't know,' he said, picking up his car keys to leave again. 'I don't know. I'd like to be your friend, but I don't think I can trust you and you have to trust friends.' He spoke to the gurgling Richard in his high chair. 'Be good to your mummy, kid, she may look as if she has it nice and easy, but it's not all that great for her either.' And when he had gone Connie cried until she thought her heart would break.

The new baby was a girl. She was called Veronica, and then a year later there were the twins. When the scan showed two embryos Connie was overjoyed. Twins had run in her family, how marvellous. She thought Harry too would be delighted. 'I can see you're pleased,' he said very coldly. 'That makes four. Bargain completed. Curtains drawn on all that nasty, messy business. What a relief.'

'You can be very, very cruel,' she said.

To the outside world they were of course the perfect couple. Mr. Hayes, whose own daughter Marianne was growing up as a young beauty much sought after by the fortune-hunting young men of Dublin, was still a good friend of Connie's and often consulted her about the hotel business. If he suspected that her eyes were sometimes sad he said nothing.

He heard rumours that Harry Kane was not an entirely faithful man. He had been spotted here and there with other women. He still had the pathetic devoted secretary in tow. But as the years went on the watchful Mr. Hayes decided the couple must have come to some accommodation.

The eldest boy, Richard, was doing well at school and even playing on the first fifteen in the schools rugby cup, the girl Veronica was determined to do medicine and had no other aim since she was twelve, and the twins were fine boisterous boys.

The Kanes still hosted marvellous parties and were seen together in public a lot. Connie went through her thirties more elegantly than any other well-dressed woman of her generation. She never seemed to spend much time studying fashion, nor did she specialise in buying the designer outfits she could well afford, but she always looked perfectly groomed.

She wasn't happy. Of course she wasn't happy. But then Connie thought that a lot of people lived life hoping that things would get better, and that lights would turn on, or the film turn into Technicolor.

Maybe that's the way most people lived, and all this talk about happiness was for the birds. Having worked in a hotel for so long she knew how many people were lonely and inadequate. You saw that side of life amongst the guests. Then on the various charity committees she saw many members who were there only to banish the hours of emptiness, people who suggested more and more coffee-morning meetings because there was nothing else to fill their lives.

She read a lot of books, saw every play that she wanted to, and made little trips to London or down to Kerry.

Harry never had time for a family holiday, he said. She often wondered whether the children realised that his partners went on family holidays with their wives and children. But children could be very unobservant. Other women went abroad with their husbands, but Connie never did. Harry went abroad a lot. It was connected with work, he said. She wondered wryly what work there could be for his investment company in the south of Spain or on a newly developed resort in the Greek Islands. But she said nothing.

Harry only went out for sex. He loved it. She had not been able to give it to him, it was unfair of her to deny it to him elsewhere. And she was not at all jealous of his sexual intimacy with Siobhan Casey and whoever else there might be. One of Connie's friends had once cried and cried over a husband's infidelity. She said that the very thought of him doing with another woman what he did with her made her sick to the point of madness. It didn't bother Connie at all.

What she would have liked was for him to get that side of things over with outside the home and be a loving friend within it. She would have been happy to share his bedroom and his plans and hopes and dreams. Was this utterly unreasonable? It seemed a hard punishment to be cut off from everything because she wasn't able to mate with him in a way that gave him pleasure. She had after all produced four fine children for him, and surely he could see that this rated some way in his evaluation of things.

Connie knew that some people thought she should leave Harry. Vera, for example. She didn't say it straight out, but she hinted at it. And so had Mr. Hayes in the hotel. They both assumed she stayed with him only for security. They didn't know how well her finances were organised and that she could have left that house a woman of independent means.

So why did she stay?

Because it was better for the family. Because the children needed both parents there. Because it required so much bloody effort to change everything and there was no guarantee that she would be any happier elsewhere. And it wasn't as if this was a bad life. Harry was courteous and pleasant when he was there. There was plenty to do, she had no trouble filling the hours that turned into weeks, months and years.

She visited her own mother and Harry's parents. She still entertained the partners and their wives. She provided a home for her children's friends. The sound of tennis balls on the court, or music from their rooms, was always in the background. The Kane household was highly regarded by the next generation because Mrs. Kane didn't fuss and Mr. Kane was hardly ever there, two things people liked in their friends' parents.

And then when Richard Kane was nineteen, the same age that Connie had been when her father died and left them bankrupt, Harry Kane came home and told them the dream was over. The company was closing the very next day with the maximum of scandal, and the minimum of resources. They would leave bad debts all over the country, people whose investments and life savings were lost. One of his partners had to be restrained from committing suicide, the other from fleeing the country.

They sat in the dining room, Connie, Richard and Veronica. The twins were away on a school trip. They sat in silence while Harry Kane laid out how bad it would be. Across seven or eight columns in the newspapers. Reporters at the door, photographers struggling to capture images of the tennis court, the luxurious lifestyle of the man who had swindled the country. There would be names of politicians who had favoured them, details of trips abroad. Big names associated once now denying any real relationship.

What had caused it? Cutting corners, taking risks, accepting people whom others had thought unreliable. Not asking questions where they should have been asked. Not noticing things that should have been noticed by more established companies.

'Will we have to sell the house?' Richard asked. There was a silence.

'Will there be any money for university?' Veronica wanted to know. Another silence.

Then Harry spoke. 'I should say to you both now at this point that your mother always warned me that this could happen. She warned me and I didn't listen. So when you look back on this day, remember that.'

'Oh Dad, it doesn't matter,' Veronica said in exactly the same tone that Connie would have used had her own father been alive when his financial disasters emerged. She saw Harry's eyes fill with tears.

'It could happen to anyone,' Richard said bravely. 'That's business for you.'

Connie's heart felt glad. They had brought up generous children, not little pups expecting the world as a right. Connie realised it was time to speak. 'As soon as your father began to tell me this bad news I asked him to wait until you could be there, I wanted us all to hear it together and react to it as a family. In a way it's a blessing the twins aren't here, I'll sort them out later. What we are going to do now is leave this house, this evening. We are going to pack small suitcases, enough to do us for a week. I'll ask Vera and Kevin to send round vans to pick us up so that any journalists already outside won't see us leaving in our cars. We'll put a message on the machine saying that all telephone queries are to be addressed to Siobhan Casey. I presume that's right, Harry?'

He nodded, astounded. 'Right.'

'You will go to stay with my mother in the country. Nobody will know where she is or bother her. Use her phone to call your friends and tell them that it's all going to be fine in the end, but until it dies down you're going to be out of sight for a bit. Say you'll be back in ten days. No story lasts that long.' They looked at her, open-mouthed.

'And yes of course you'll both go to university, and the twins. And we will probably sell this house but not immediately, not at the whim of any bank.'

'But won't we have to pay what's owing?' Richard asked.

'This house doesn't belong to your father,' Connie said simply.

'But even if it's yours, wouldn't you have to…?'

'No, it's not mine. It was long ago bought by another company of which I am a director.'

'Oh Dad, aren't you clever!' Richard said.

There was a moment. 'Yes, your father is an extremely clever businessman, and when he makes a bargain he keeps it. He won't want people to be out of pocket, so I feel sure that we won't end up as villains out of all this. But for the moment it's going to be quite hard, so we're going to need all the courage and faith we can gather.'

And then the evening became a blur of gathering things and making phone calls. They moved out of the house unseen in the back of decorators' vans.

A white-faced Vera and Kevin welcomed them both into their home. There was no small chat to be made, no sympathy to be offered or received, so they went straight to the room that had been prepared for them, the best guest room with its large double bed. A plate of cold supper and a flask of hot soup had been left out for them.

'See you tomorrow,' Vera said.

'How do people know exactly what to say?' Harry asked.

'I suppose they wonder what they'd like themselves.' Connie poured him a small mug of soup. He shook his head. 'Take it, Harry. You may need it tomorrow.'

'Does Kevin have all his insurance tied up with us?'

'No, none of it,' Connie spoke calmly.

'How's that?'

'I asked them not to, just in case.'

'What am I going to do, Connie?'

'You're going to face it. Say it failed, you didn't want it to happen, you're going to stay in the country and work at whatever you can.'

'They'll tear me to pieces.'

'

'Only for a while. Then it will be the next story.'

'And you?'

'I'll go back to work.'

'But what about the money all those lawyers salted away for you?'

'I'll keep as much as I need to get the children sorted, then I'll put the rest back in to pay the people who lost their savings.'

'God, you're not doing the Christian martyr bit on top of everything else?'

'What would you suggest I do with what is after all my money, Harry?' Her eyes were hard.

'Keep it. Thank your lucky stars that you saved it, don't plough it back in.'

'You don't mean that. We'll talk about it tomorrow.'

'I mean it. This is business, it's not a gentleman's cricket match. That's the whole point of having a limited company, they can only get what's in it. You took your bit out, what in God's name was the point if you're going to throw it back in again?'

'Tomorrow,' she said.

'Take that prissy po-faced look off you, Connie, and be normal for once in your whole goddamned life. Stop acting for five minutes and let's have less of the pious crap about giving the poor investors back their money. They knew what they were doing like anyone knows. Like your father knew what he was doing when he put your university fees on some horse that's still running.'

Her face was white. She stood up and walked to the door. 'Very high and mighty. Go on, leave rather than talk it out. Go down to your friend Vera and talk about the pure badness of men. Maybe it was Vera you should have moved in with in the first place. Could be that it was a woman you needed to get you going?'

She hadn't intended to do it, but she hit him right across the face. It was because he was shouting about Vera in her own house, when Vera and Kevin had rescued them, asked no questions. Harry didn't seem like a person any more, he was like an animal that had turned wild.

Her rings drew blood from his cheek, a long smear of red. And to her surprise she felt no shock at the blood, no shame at what she had done.

She closed the door and went downstairs. At the kitchen table they had obviously heard the shouting from above, possibly even the words he had been saying. Connie, who had been so calm and in control during the previous hours, looked around the little group. There was Deirdre, Vera's handsome dark-eyed daughter, who worked in a fashion boutique, and Charlie, who had joined the family business of painting and decorating.

And between Kevin and Vera in front of a bottle of whiskey was Jacko. Jacko with a collar wide open and red wild eyes. Jacko who had been crying and drinking and hadn't finished doing either. She realised in seconds that he had lost every penny in her husband's investment company. Her first boyfriend, who had loved her simply and without complication, who had stood outside the church the day she was marrying Harry in the hope that she wouldn't go through with it, he sat now at his friends' kitchen table, bankrupt. How had all this happened, Connie wondered, as she stood there with her hand at her throat for what seemed an age?

She couldn't stay in this room. She couldn't go back upstairs to where Harry waited like a raging lion with further abuse and self-disgust. She couldn't go outside into the real world, she would never be able to do that again and look people in the eye. Did people attract bad luck and encourage others to behave badly? She thought that the statistics against someone having both a father and a husband who lost everything must be enormous unless you decided that it was something in your own personality that drew you to exactly the same kind of weakness in the second as you had known in the first.

She remembered suddenly the open-faced friendly psychiatrist asking all those questions about her father. Could there have been anything in it? She thought she had been there a long time but they didn't seem to have moved, so perhaps it had only been a couple of seconds.

Then Jacko spoke. His voice was slurred. 'I hope you're satisfied now,' he said.

The others were silent.

In a voice that was clear and steady as always, Connie spoke. 'No, Jacko, this is an odd thing to say, but I have never been satisfied, not in my whole life.' Her eyes seemed far away. 'I may have had twenty years of money, which should have made me happy. Truthfully, it didn't. I've been lonely and acting a part for most of my adult life. Anyway, that's no help to you now.'

'No, it's not.' His face was mutinous. He was still handsome and eager. His marriage had failed, she knew from Vera, and his wife had taken the boy he cared about.

His business had been everything to him. And now that was gone. 'You'll get it all back,' she said.

'Oh yes?' His laugh sounded more like a bark.

'Yes, there is money there.'

'I bet there is, in Jersey or the Cayman Islands or maybe in the wife's name,' Jacko sneered.

'Quite a lot of it is in the wife's name, as it happens,' she said.

Vera and Kevin looked at her open-mouthed. Jacko couldn't take it in.

'So I got lucky by being an old boyfriend of the wife, is that what you're telling me?' He didn't know whether to believe it was a lifeline or throw it back in her face.

'I suppose I'm telling you that a lot of people got lucky because of the wife. If he's sane enough in the morning, I'll get him to the bank before his press conference.'

'If it's yours why don't you keep it?' Jacko asked.

'Because I'm not, despite what you might think, a total shit. Vera, can I sleep somewhere else, like on the couch in the television room?'

Vera came in with her and handed her a rug. 'You're the strongest woman I ever met,' Vera said.

'You're the best friend anyone ever had,' said Connie.

Would it have been good to have loved Vera? To have lived together for years with flower gardens, and maybe a small crafts business to show for their commitment. She smiled wanly at the thought.

'What has you laughing in the middle of all this?' Vera asked.

'Remind me to tell you one day, you'll never believe it,' said Connie as she kicked off her shoes and lay down on the couch.

Amazingly she slept, and only woke to the sound of a cup and saucer rattling. It was Harry, pale-faced with a long dark red scar standing out from his cheek. She had forgotten that particular part of last night.

'I brought you coffee,' he said.

'Thank you.' She made no move to take it.

'I'm so desperately sorry.'

'Yes.'

'I am so sorry. Jesus, Connie, I just went mad last night. All I ever wanted was to be somebody and I nearly was and then I blew it.' He had dressed carefully and shaved around the wound on his face. He was up and ready for the longest day he would ever have to live through. She looked at him as if she had never seen him before, as the people who saw him on television would see him, all the strangers who had lost their savings, and the people who had come across him in business deals or at social gatherings. A handsome hungry man, all he wanted was to be somebody and he didn't care how he got there.

Then she saw he was crying.

'I need you desperately, Connie. You've been acting all your life with me, could you just act for a little bit longer and pretend you have forgiven me? Please, Connie, I need you. You're the only one who can help me.' He laid his face with the livid scar on her knees, and he sobbed like a child.

She couldn't really remember the day. It was like trying to put together the pieces of a horror movie that you have covered your eyes for, or a nightmare that won't go away. There was some of it set in the lawyer's office, where the terms of the trust she had set up for her children's education were explained to him. The money had been well invested. There was plenty. The rest had been equally well placed for her. Constance Kane was a very wealthy woman. She could see the scorn that the solicitor had for her husband. He hardly bothered to disguise it. Her father's old friend T. P. Murphy was there, silent and more silver-haired than ever. His face was set in a grim line. There was an accountant and an investment manager. They spoke in front of the great Harry Kane as they would before a common swindler. In their eyes this is what he was. This time yesterday morning, Connie reflected, those people would have treated her husband with respect. How quickly things changed in business.

Then they went to the bank. Never were bankers more surprised to see funds appear from nowhere. Connie and Harry sat silently while their advisers told the bank that not one penny of this need be recovered, and that it was being given only if the bank promised a package to rescue the investors.

By midday they had a deal. Harry's partners were summoned and ordered to remain silent during the press conference at Hayes

Hotel. It was agreed that neither of the partners' wives would attend. They watched it together on a television set in one of the hotel bedrooms. Connie's name was not mentioned. It was just stated that emergency funds had been put aside against just such a contingency.

By the one o'clock news the morning papers' headlines were obsolete. One of the journalists asked Harry Kane about the wound on his face. Was it a creditor?

'It was someone who didn't understand what was happening, who didn't realise we would do everything under the sun to safeguard the people who had trust in us,' Harry said, straight to camera.

And Connie felt a little sick, a wave of nausea sweeping over her. If he could lie like that, what else could he not do? As part of the audience Connie saw Siobhan Casey at the back of the big hotel room where the press conference was being held. She wondered how much Siobhan had known, and whether money would be taken from Connie's fund to provide for her. But she would never find out. She had assured the bank that since the whole thing would be administered by them, there would be no need for a policing operation from her side. She knew the money would be fairly and wisely distributed. It wasn't up to her to say that Siobhan Casey's shares should not be honoured because she was sleeping with the boss.

They were able to go back to their house. In a week they were all beginning to breathe again. In three months things were almost back to normal.

Veronica asked him from time to time about his poor face. 'Oh that will always be there to remind your father what a foolish man he was,' he would say, and Connie saw the look of affection pass between them.

Richard seemed to have nothing but admiration for his father as well. Both children thought he had grown from the whole experience.

'He spends much more time at home now, doesn't he, Mum?' Veronica said, as if asking for Connie's approval and blessing on something.

'Indeed he does,' Connie said. Harry spent one night away each week and came home late to his bedroom two or three nights. This was going to be the pattern of their future.

Something in Connie wanted to change it but she was tired. She was weary from the years of pretence, she knew no other life.

She telephoned Jacko one day at work.

'I suppose I'm meant to go down on my knees to thank her ladyship for the fact that I got my own money back.'

'No, Jacko, I just thought you might want to meet or something.'

'For what?' he asked.

'I don't know, to talk, go to the pictures. Did you ever learn Italian?'

'No, I was too busy earning a living.' She was silent. She must have made him feel guilty. 'Did you?' he asked.

'No, I was too busy not earning a living.'

He laughed. 'Jesus, Connie, there'd be no point in our meeting. I'd only fall for you all over again, and start pestering you to come to bed with me as I was doing all those years back.'

'Not still, Jacko, are you still into all that sort of thing?'

'By God I am, and why not? Aren't I only in my prime?'

'True, true.'

'Connie?'

'Yes?'

'Just, you know. Thank you. You know.'

'I know, Jacko.'

The months went by. Nothing had changed very much but if you looked closely you would know that a lot of the life had gone out of Connie Kane.

Kevin and Vera talked about it. They were among the few who knew how she had rescued her husband. They felt strongly that he was not showing any serious gratitude. Everyone knew that he was seen publicly with his one-time personal assistant, the enigmatic Siobhan Casey, who was now a director of the company.

Connie's mother knew that her daughter had lost a lot of her spirit. She tried to cheer her up. Tt wasn't permanent, the damage he did to you, not like in my case, and he did have that emergency fund ready. Your father never had that.' Connie never told her. A sort of loyalty to Harry was one reason, but mainly she didn't want to admit that her mother had been right all those years ago about demanding her own money and getting independence from it.

Her children didn't notice. Mother was just Mother, marvellous

S

and always here when you wanted her. She seemed happy in herself and meeting her friends.

Richard qualified as an accountant and Mr. Hayes got him a splendid position with his son-in-law's firm. The beloved only daughter Marianne had married a handsome and very charming man called Paul Malone. The Hayes money and his own personality had helped him high up a ladder. Richard was happy there.

Veronica was racing through her medical studies. She was thinking of specialising in psychiatry, she said, most of people's troubles were in the heads and in their past.

The twins had finally separated in identity, one to go to Art College, one to join the Civil Service. Their big house was still in Connie's name. It had not been necessary to sell it when the money was being raised for the rescue package. Connie's solicitors kept pressurising her to draw up another formal document with similar provisions to the original arrangement, guaranteeing her part of the profits, but she was loath to do it.

'That was all years ago when I needed to assure the children's future,' she said.

'Strictly speaking it should be done again. If there was a problem a court would almost certainly decide for you within the spirit of the law, but…'

'What sort of problem could there be now?' Connie had asked.

The solicitor, who had often seen Mr. Kane dining in Quentin's with a woman who was not Mrs. Kane, was tight-lipped. 'I would much prefer it done,' he said.

'All right, but not with big dramas and humiliating him. The past is the past,'

'It will be done with the minimum of drama, Mrs. Kane,' the solicitor said.

And it was. Papers were sent to Harry's office to be signed. There were no confrontations. His face was hard the day he signed them. She knew him so well and could read his moods. He wouldn't tell her straight out, he would somehow try to punish her for it.

'I'll be away for a few days,' he said that evening. No explanation, no pretence. She was preparing their supper but she knew he wasn't going to stay and share it. Still, old habits die hard. Connie was used to pretending everything was fine even when it was not. She went on tossing the tomato and fennel salad carefully, as if it were something that required a huge amount of care and concentration.

'Will that be tiring?' she asked, careful not to ask where and why and with whom.

'Not really,' his voice was brittle. 'I decided to combine it with a few days' rest as well.'

'That will be good,' she said.

'It's in the Bahamas,' he said. The silence hung between them.

'Oh,' she said.

'No objection? I mean you don't consider it our special place or anything?' She didn't answer but went to take the warm bacon flan from the oven. 'Still, of course you'll have all your investments, your handcuffs, your share of everything, your rights, to console you when I'm away.' He was so angry he could hardly speak.

Only a few short years ago he had cried to her on his knees with gratitude, said that he didn't deserve her, sworn that she would never know another lonely hour. Now he was white-lipped with rage that she continued to protect her investment after it had been shown to be only too necessary.

'You know that's only a formality,' she said.

His face had turned to a sneer. 'As this business trip I'm going on is a formality,' he said. He went upstairs to pack.

She realised he was going to Siobhan's flat tonight, they would leave tomorrow. She sat down and ate her supper. She was used to eating supper alone. It was a late summer evening, she could hear the birds in the garden, the muffled sound of cars out on the road beyond their high garden walls. There were a dozen places she could go this evening if she wanted to.

What she would like to do was meet Jacko and go to the pictures. Just stand in O'Connell Street looking at what was on and arguing with him over which film they would choose. But it was such a ludicrous notion. He had been right, there was nothing left to say now. It would be playing games, going up to the working-class estate where he lived and hooting the horn of the BMW outside his house. Only fools thought they might have been happier if they had taken a different turning and wasted a lifetime regretting it. She might not have been at all happier if she had married Jacko, she would possibly have hated being in bed with him too. But somehow it might have been less lonely.

She was reading the evening paper when Harry came back downstairs with two suitcases. It was going to be a serious holiday in the Bahamas. He seemed to be both relieved and piqued at the same time that there was going to be no scene about his leaving.

She looked up and smiled at him over her glasses. 'When will I say you'll be back?' she asked.

'Say? Who do you need to say it to?'

'Well, your children for one thing, but I'm sure you'll tell them you're going, and friends or anyone from the office or the bank.'

'The office will know,' he said.

'That's fine, then I can refer them to Siobhan?' Her face was innocent.

'Siobhan's going to the Bahamas too, as you very well know.'

'So, to someone else then?'

'I wouldn't have gone at all, Connie, if you'd behaved reasonably, not like some kind of tax inspector, hedging me here and confining me there.'

'But if it's a business trip you have to go, don't you?' she said, and he went out, slamming the door. She tried to go on reading the paper. There had been too many scenes like this, where he left and she cried. It was no way to live a life.

She read an interview with a schoolmaster who was setting up an evening class in Italian up in Mountainview school, a big community school or college in a tough area. It was Jacko's area. Mr. Aidan Dunne said he thought people from the neighbourhood would be interested in learning about the life and culture of Italy as well as the language. Since the World Cup there had been a huge interest in Italy among ordinary Dubliners. They would offer a very varied programme. Connie read the piece again. It was quite possible that Jacko might enrol. And if not, she would be in his part of the forest two nights a week. There was a telephone number, she would book now before she changed her mind.

Of course Jacko hadn't signed on for the class. That kind of thing only happened in fantasy. But Connie enjoyed it. This wonderful woman, Signora, not much older than she was, had all the gifts of a born teacher. She never raised her voice, yet she had everyone's attention. She never criticised but she expected people to learn what she marked out for them.

'Constanza… I'm afraid you don't know the clock properly, you only know sono le due, sono le tre… that would be fine if it was always something o'clock-'but you have to learn half past and a quarter to.'

'I'm sorry, Signora,' Mrs. Constance Kane would say, abashed. 'I was a bit busy, I didn't get it learned.'

'Next week you will know it perfectly,' Signora would cry and Connie found herself with her fingers in her ears saying sono le sei e venti. How had it come about that she was going up to this barracks of a school miles away and sitting in a classroom with thirty strangers chanting and singing and identifying great paintings and statues and buildings, tasting Italian food and listening to Italian operas? And what's more, loving it.

She tried to tell Harry about it when he returned tanned and less acerbic from the West Indies. But he didn't show much interest.

'What's taking you up to that bloody place, you want to watch your hubcaps up there,' he said. His only comment on the whole undertaking.

Vera didn't like it either. 'It's a tough place, you're tempting fate bringing your good car up there, and God, Connie, take off that gold watch.'

'I'm not going to regard it as a ghetto, that would be patronising.'

'I don't know what has you there at all, aren't there plenty of places nearer to you where you could learn Italian if you want to?'

'I like this one, I'm always half hoping I'll meet Jacko at one of the classes,' Connie smiled mischievously.

'God Almighty, haven't you had enough trouble in one lifetime without inviting more in?' Vera said, raising her eyes to heaven. Vera had her hands full, she was still running the office for Kevin and minding her grandson as well. Deirdre had produced an enormous and gorgeous baby but had said that she didn't want to be shackled by outdated concepts of marriage and slavery.

Connie liked the other people in the class, the serious Bill Burke, Guglielmo, and his dramatic girl friend Elizabetta. He worked in the bank which had put together the rescue package for Harry and his partners, but he was too young to have known about it. And even if he had, how would he have recognised her as Constanza? The gutsy young couple of women Caterina and Francesca, hard to know if they were sisters or mother and daughter, they were good company.

There was the big, decent Lorenzo with hands the size of shovels playing the part of a guest in a restaurant, with Connie as the waitress.

Una tavola vicina alla finestra, Lorenzo would say, and Connie would move a cardboard box to where there was a drawing of a window and seat him there, waiting while Lorenzo thought up dishes he would like to order. Lorenzo learned all kinds of new dishes, like eels, goose liver and sea urchins. Signora would remonstrate and tell him to learn only the list she had provided.

'You don't understand, Signora, these people I'll be meeting in Italy, they'll be classy eaters, they wouldn't be your pizza merchants.'

Then there was the terrifying Luigi with the dark scowl and particular way of murdering the Italian language. He was someone she would never have met in the ordinary run of things, yet sometimes he was her partner, like the time they were playing doctors and nurses with pretend stethoscopes, telling each other to breathe deeply. Respiri profondamente per favore, Signora Luigi would shout, listening to one end of a rubber hose. Non mi sento bene, Connie would reply.

And gradually they were all getting less self-conscious and more united in this far-fetched dream of a holiday in Italy next summer. Connie, who could have paid for everyone in the class to take a scheduled flight, joined in the discussions of sponsorship and cost-cutting and putting down early deposits for a group charter. If they got the trip together she would certainly go.

Connie noticed that the school was improving week by week. It was getting a definite face-lift, a new coat of paint, trees planted, the school yard smartened up. The broken bicycle sheds were replaced.

'You're doing a real make-over here,' she said approvingly to the shaggy, attractive looking Principal Mr. O'Brien, who came in from time to time to give his general praise to the Italian class.

'Uphill work, Mrs. Kane, if you could put a word in for us to those financiers you and your husband meet we'd be grateful.' He knew who she was all right, there was no calling her Constanza like all the others. But he was pleasantly incurious about what she was doing there.

'They are people without hearts, Mr. O'Brien. They don't understand about schools being a country's future.'

'Tell me about it,' he sighed. 'Don't I spend half my life in bloody banks and filling in forms. I've forgotten how to teach.'

'And do you have a wife and family, Mr. O'Brien?' Connie didn't know why she had asked him such a personal question. It was out of character for her to be intrusive. In the hotel business she had learned the wisdom of listening rather than enquiring.

'No, I don't as it happens,' he said.

'Better I suppose, if you're kind of wedded to a school. I think a lot of people should never marry. My own husband is a case in point,' she said.

He raised an eyebrow. Connie realised she had gone too far for pleasant casual conversation. 'Sorry,' she laughed. 'I'm not doing the lonely wife bit, I was just stating a fact.'

'I would love to be married, that's a fact too,' he said. It was polite of him to exchange a confidence. One had been given, it was courtesy to return one. 'Problem was, I never met anyone that I wanted to marry until I was too old.'

'You're not too old now, surely?'

'I am, because it's the wrong person, like she's a child. She's Mr. Dunne's child actually,' he said, nodding his head back at the school where Aidan Dunne and Signora were saying goodnight to the members of the class.

'And does she love you?'

'I hope so, I think so, but I'm wrong for her, far too old. I'm so wrong for her. And there are other problems.'

'What does Mr. Dunne think?'

'He doesn't know, Mrs. Kane.'

She let out a deep breath. 'I see what you mean about there being problems,' she said. 'I'll leave you to try and sort them out.'

He grinned at her, grateful that she asked no more. 'Your husband is a madman to be married to his business,' he said.

'Thank you, Mr. O'Brien.' She got into her car and drove home. Since joining this class she was learning the most extraordinary things about people.

That amazing girl with the curls, Elizabetta, had told her that Guglielmo was going to manage a bank in Italy next year when he had a command of the language; the glowering Luigi had asked her would an ordinary person know if someone was wearing a ring worth twelve grand. Aidan Dunne had asked her did she know where you could buy brightly coloured second-hand carpets. Bartolomeo wanted to know if she had ever come across people who committed suicide and did they always try it again. It was just for a friend, he had said several times. Caterina, who was either the sister or the daughter of Francesca, impossible to know, had said that she had lunch in Quentin's one day and the artichokes were terrific. Lorenzo kept telling her that the family he was going to stay with in Italy were so rich that he hoped he wouldn't disgrace himself. And now Mr. O'Brien said that he was having an affair with Mr. Dunne's daughter.

A couple of months back she had known none of these people or their lives.

When it rained she would give people a lift home, but she didn't do it regularly in case she became an unofficial taxi service. But she had a soft spot for Lorenzo, who had to take two buses to get back to his nephew's hotel. This was where he lived and worked as an odd job man and night porter. Everyone else went home to bed or television or to the pub or a cafe after class. But Lorenzo went back to work. He had said that the lift had made all the difference in the world, so Connie made sure she drove him.

His real name was Laddy, she learned. But they all called each other their Italian names, it made it easier in class. Laddy had been invited by some Italians to come and visit them in Rome. He was a big, simple, cheerful man of around sixty who found nothing odd about being driven back to his hotel porter's job by a woman in a top-of-the-range car.

Sometimes he talked of his nephew Gus, his sister's boy, a lad who had worked every hour God sent, and now there was every possibility he would lose his hotel.

There had been a scare a while back, an insurance and investment company that had failed. But at the last moment hadn't it all come right and they were all to get their money after all. Lorenzo's sister was in the Hospice at the time, and it nearly broke her heart. But God had been good, she lived long enough to know that her only son Gus would not be bankrupt. She died happy after that. Connie bit her lip as the story was being told. These were the people that Harry would have walked out on.

So what was the new problem, she wondered? Well, it was all part of the old problem. The company that had been in trouble and that had honoured its debts in the end had made them all re-invest, a very large sum. It was as if to thank the company for having stood by them when it hadn't needed to. Lorenzo's understanding of it was vague, but his concern was enormous. Gus was at the end of his tether, he had been down every avenue. The hotel needed improvement, the Health Authorities had said that it could well be a fire hazard, there were no resources left. Everything that he could have called on was gone in this new investment, and there was no way he could cash it in. Apparently there was some law in the Bahamas that you needed an unholy amount of advance notice before you could get at it.

Connie pulled the car into the side of the road when she heard this.

'Could you tell me about it again, please, Lorenzo.' Her face was white.

'I'm no financial expert myself, Constanza.'

'Can I talk to your nephew? Please.'

'He mightn't like my telling his business…' Lorenzo was almost sorry he had confided in this kind woman.

'Please, Lorenzo.'

During the conversation with the worried Gus Connie had to ask for a brandy. The story was so squalid, so shabby. For the last five years since their investment had been saved Gus, and presumably many, many others like him, had been persuaded to invest in two entirely separate companies based in Freeport and Nassau.

With tears in her eyes Connie read that the directors were Harold Kane and Siobhan Casey. Gus and Lorenzo looked at her uncomprehending. First she took out her chequebook and wrote Gus a very substantial cheque, then she gave them the address of builders and decorators who were good friends of hers and would do an expert job. She wrote the name of an electrical firm as well, but suggested that they should not use her name in this context.

'But why are you doing all this, Constanza?' Gus was totally bewildered.

Connie pointed at the names on the stationery. 'That man is my husband, that woman is his mistress. I have turned a blind eye to their affair for years. I don't care that he sleeps with her, but by God I do care that he has used my money to defraud decent people.' She knew she must look mad and wild eyed to them.

Gus spoke gently. 'I can't take this money, Mrs. Kane, I can't. It's far too much.'

'See you Tuesday, Lorenzo,' she said, and she was gone.

So many Thursday nights when she had let herself into the house she had hoped he would be at home and he so rarely was. Tonight was no exception. It was late, but she telephoned her father's old friend the barrister T. P. Murphy. Then the solicitor. She fixed a meeting for the following morning. There were no apologies or recriminations. It was eleven o'clock at night when they had finished talking to her.

'What will you do now?' she asked the solicitor.

Thone Harcourt Square,' he said succinctly. That was where the Garda Fraud Investigation Unit was based.

He had not come home that night. She had not slept. She realised that it had been a ridiculous house to have kept for so long. The children all lived in their own apartments. Pale-faced, she drove herself into the city and parked her car. Taking a deep breath she walked up the steps of her husband's office to a meeting that would end his life as he knew it.

They had told her that there would be a lot of publicity, most of it unfavourable, the mud would stick to her too. They suggested she find somewhere else to stay. Years ago she had bought a small apartment in case her mother had ever wanted to come and live in Dublin. It was on the ground floor and near the sea. It would be ideal. She could move her things in there in a matter of hours.

'Hours is what it will be,' they told her.

She saw him on his own at her request.

He sat in his office watching as files and software were taken away. 'All I wanted was to be somebody,' he said.

'You told me that before.'

'Well, I'm telling you again. Just because you say something twice doesn't mean it's not true.'

'You were somebody, you were always somebody. That's not what you wanted, you wanted to have everything.'

'You didn't have to do it, you know, you were all right.'

'I was always all right,' she said.

'No, you weren't, you were a tense frigid jealous bitch and still are.'

'I was never jealous of what Siobhan Casey could give you, never,' she spoke simply.

'So why did you do it?'

'Because it wasn't fair. You had your warning, you were rescued, wasn't that enough?'

'You know nothing of men. Nothing.' He almost spat the words.

'Not only do you not know how to please them, you actually think that a man could be a real man and accept your money and pats on the head.'

'It would be a help if you were strong for the children's sake,' she said.

'Get out of here, Connie.'

'They loved you all through the last time, they really did. They have lives of their own but you are their father. You didn't care much about your father, but most people do.'

'You really hate me, don't you, you'll rejoice that I'm in gaol.'

'No, and you probably won't serve much time, if any. You'll get away with things, you always do.' She left the office.

She saw Siobhan Casey's name on a brass plate on her door. Inside that office files and software were also being removed. Siobhan apparently had no family or friends to give her support. She was sitting with bankers, inspectors in the Fraud Squad and lawyers.

Connie's steps never faltered as she walked out the door and pressed the remote switch that opened her car. Then she got in and drove to her new apartment on the sea.

r

X

LADDY

When Signora was choosing Italian names for people she tried to make sure that they had the same initial rather than being too purist about the translation. There was a woman there called Gertie. Strictly speaking that should have been Margaret, then Margaretta. But Gertie would never have recognised her own name in that form so she was called Gloria. In fact, she decided that she like the name Gloria so much that she might keep it ever after.

The big man with the eager face said he was called Laddy. Signora paused. No future in trying to work out the origins. Give him something that he might like to roll around. 'Lorenzo,' she cried.

Laddy liked it. 'Is that what all the people called Laddy in Italy call themselves?' he asked.

'That's it, Lorenzo,' Signora rolled out the name again for him.

'Lorenzo, would you credit it?' Laddy was delighted with the name. He said it over and over. 'Mi chiamo Lorenzo'.

When Laddy was christened in the 1930s the name they gave him at the font was John Matthew Joseph Byrne, but he was never called anything except Laddy. The only boy after five girls, his arrival meant that the small farm would be safe. There would be a man to run it.

But things don't always turn out the way people think.

Laddy was coming home from school, the mile and a half through puddles and under dripping trees, when he saw his sisters coming out to meet him and he knew that something terrible had happened. He thought first that something had happened to Tripper, the collie dog he loved so much. Maybe it had hurt its paw or been bitten by a rat.

He tried to run past them, the crying girls, but they held him back and told him that Mam and Dad had gone to heaven, and that from now on they would look after him.

'They can't have both gone at the same time.'

Laddy was eight, he knew things. People went to heaven one by one and everyone wore black and cried.

But it had happened. They had been killed at a level crossing, pulling a cart that had got stuck in the rails, and the train was on top of them before they realised it. Laddy knew that God had wanted them, that it was their time, but all through the years he wondered why God had chosen that way.

It had caused such upset and hurt for everyone. The poor man who had been driving the train was never the same again and went to a mental home. The people who had found Mam and Dad never spoke of it to anyone. Laddy once asked a priest why God couldn't have given his Mam and Dad heavy winter colds if He had wanted them to die. And the priest had scratched his head and said that it was a mystery, and that if we understood all the things that happened on earth we would be as wise as God Himself, which of course couldn't happen.

Laddy's eldest sister Rose was a nurse in the local hospital. She gave up her job and came back to look after the family. It was lonely for her, and the boy who was courting her didn't continue the romance when it meant a mile and a half walk to see her and a family of children in the house dependent on her.

But Rose made a good home for them. She supervised the homework every night in the kitchen, she washed and mended their clothes, she cooked and cleaned the house, she grew vegetables, kept hens, and she employed Shay Neil as the farm man.

Shay worked with the small herd of cattle, and kept the place ticking over. He went to fairs and markets, he did deals. He lived silently in a converted outhouse separate from the farmhouse. It had to look right when people called. No one would like to think of a man, a working farm-hand, living in the same house as all those girls and a child.

But the Byrne girls did not stay on the little farm. Rose made sure they got their exams and with her encouragement one by one they left. One for nursing, another to be trained as a teacher, one to a job in a shop in Dublin and one to a post in the Civil Service.

They had done well for the Byrne girls, the nuns and Rose. Everyone said that. And she was making a great fist of bringing up young Laddy. A big boy now, sixteen years of age, Laddy had almost forgotten his parents. He could only remember life with Rose, patient and funny and never thinking he was thick.

She would sit for ages with him at his books going over and over a thing until he could remember it, and she was never cross if he sometimes forgot it the next morning. From what he heard from other fellows at school, Rose was better than any mother.

There were two weddings the year that Laddy was sixteen, and

Rose did all the cooking and entertaining for her younger sisters. They were great occasions and the photographs hung on the wall, pictures taken outside the house which had been newly painted by Shay for the festivities. Shay was there of course, but in the background. He didn't really mix, he was the hired man.

And then Laddy's sister who was working in England said she was having a very quiet wedding, which meant that she was pregnant and it would be in a register office. Rose wrote and said that she and Laddy would be happy to come over if it would help. But the letter back was full of gratitude and underlined words saying that it wouldn't be at all helpful.

And the sister who was nursing went out to Africa. So that was the Byrne family settled, people said, Rose running the farm until poor Laddy grew up and was able to take over, God bless him if that were ever to happen. Everyone assumed that Laddy was slow. That was, everyone except Rose and Laddy himself.

Now that he was sixteen Laddy should have been right in the middle of all the fuss getting ready for his Intermediate Certificate, but there seemed to be no mention of it at all.

'Lord, but they take things very easily above in the Brothers,' Rose said to him one day. 'You'd think there'd be all sorts of revision and plans and studying going on, but not a squeak out of them.'

'I don't think I'm doing it this year,' Laddy said.

'Well, of course you are, fourth year. When else would you do it?'

'Brother Gerald didn't say a word about it.' He looked worried now.

'I'll sort it out, Laddy.' Rose had always sorted everything out.

She was nearly thirty now, a handsome dark-haired woman, cheerful and good-natured. Over the years there had been a fair share of interest in her. But she never responded. She had to look after the family. When that was all sorted out she would think of romance… she would say this with a happy laugh, never offending anyone because overtures were turned down at an early stage before they had become serious and before anyone could be offended.

Rose went to see Brother Gerald, a small, kind man who had always been spoken well of by Laddy.

'Ah Rose, would you not open your eyes, girl,' he said. 'Laddy's the most decent boy that ever wore shoe leather into this school, but the poor divil hasn't two brains to rattle together.'

Rose felt a flush of annoyance come to her face. 'I don't think you understand, Brother,' she began. 'He's so eager and he wants to learn, maybe the class is too big for him.'

'He can't read without putting his finger under the words, and only with difficulty then.'

'That's a habit, we can get him out of it.'

'I've been trying to get him out of it for ten years and I haven't got anywhere.'

'Well, that's not the end of the world. He hasn't failed any exams. He hasn't had any tests that he did very badly in, he'll get the Inter, won't he?' Brother Gerald began to speak and then paused as if changing his mind. 'No, go on, Brother please, we're not fighting over Laddy. We both want the best for him. Tell me what I should know.'

'He's never failed a test, Rose, because he's never done a test. I wouldn't put a humiliation like that on Laddy. Why let the boy be last all the time?'

'And what do you do with Laddy when the others are doing a test?'

'I ask him to do messages for me, he's a good-natured reliable lad.'

'What kind of messages, Brother?'

'Ah, you know, carrying boxes of books and stoking up the fire in the teachers' room, and bringing something down to the post office.'

'So I'm paying fees in this school for my brother to be a skivvy to the Brothers, is this what you're telling me?'

'Rose Byrne,' the man's eyes were full of tears. 'Will you stop getting the wrong end of things. And what fees are you talking about? A few pounds a year. Laddy's happy with us, you know that. Isn't that the best we can do for him? There isn't a notion of putting him in for the Inter or any exam, you must know that. The boy is slow, that's all I'm saying. I wish that was all I had to say about many a boy that went through the school.'

'What will I do with him, Brother? I thought he might go to an agricultural college, you know, to learn about farming.'

'It would be over his head, Rose, even» if J*e were to get in which he wouldn't.'

'But how will he run the farm?'

'He won't run the farm. You'll run the farm. You've always known that.'

She hadn't known. Not until that minute.

She came home with a heavy heart.

Shay Neil was forking manure into a heap. He nodded his usual dour jerk of the head. Laddy's old dog Tripper barked a welcome home. Laddy himself came to the door.

'Did Brother Gerald say anything against me?' he asked fearfully.

'He said you were the most helpful lad that ever came into the school.' Without realising it she had almost started to talk to him as if he were a toddler, speaking down to him in soothing baby talk. She fought to check it.

But Laddy hadn't noticed. His big face was one huge smile. 'He did?'

'Yes, he said you were great to make up a fire and carry the books and do the messages.' She tried to keep the bitterness out of her tone.

'Well, he doesn't trust a lot of them, but he does trust me.' Laddy was proud.

'I've a bit of a headache, Laddy. Do you know what would be great, could you make me a cup of tea and bring it up to me with a slice of soda bread, and then maybe make Shay's tea for him?'

'Will I cut him two bits of ham and a tomato?'

'That's right, Laddy, that would be great.'

She went upstairs and lay on her bed. How had she not seen how backward he was? Did parents feel this about children, fiercely overprotective?

Well she'd never know now. She wasn't going to marry anyone, was she? She was going to live here with her slow brother and the dour hired man. There was no future to look forward to. It would always be just more of the same. The light had gone out of a lot of what she did now.

Every week she wrote a letter to one of her sisters, so they all heard from her once a month. She had been telling the little titbits about the farm and about Laddy. She found the letters hard to write now. Did they realise that their brother was slow? Was all their praise and gratitude because she had given up her life to look after him?

She hadn't known this was what she was doing; she had thought she had taken time out of her youth, cut short her nursing career because of the accident. She felt bitter about her parents. Why were they pulling a bloody cart across, and why didn't they leave it and run to save themselves?

She had a birthday card for a niece with a ten-shilling note to send, and as she put it in the envelope she realised that the others must think she was well paid for her trouble. She had a farm of land. If they only knew how much she didn't want it, that she would have handed it to the first person who passed by if she thought they would give Laddy a happy home for the rest of his life.

The carnival came to town every summer. Rose took Laddy and they went on the bumpers and the chair-o-planes. They went in the ghost train and he clung onto her with cries of terror, but then wanted another shilling so that they could do it again. She saw various people from the town, all of them saluting her warmly. Rose Byrne was someone who was admired. Now she saw why. They were praising her for having signed on for life.

Her brother was having a great day

'Can we spend the egg money?' he asked.

'Some of it, not all of it.'

'But what would be better to spend it on than a carnival?' he asked, and she watched him go to the Three Ring stall and win her a statue of the Sacred Heart. He carried it back to her bursting with pride.

A voice beside her said, 'I'll take that back to the farm, you won't want to be carrying it round all day,' and there was Shay Neil. 'I can put it in the bicycle bag,' he said.

It was kind of him, because the big statue, hopelessly wrapped in newspaper, would have been a cumbersome weight to carry.

Rose smiled at him gratefully. 'Well, Shay, aren't you the great fellow, always there when you're wanted?'

'Thank you, Rose,' he said.

There was something about his voice, as if he had been drinking. She looked at him sharply. Well, why not? It was his day off, he was allowed to drink if he wanted to. It couldn't have been a great life for him either, living in that outhouse, forking dung, milking cows. He didn't have any friends, any family that she knew of. Wasn't a few whiskies on a day out only a bit of comfort to him?

She moved away and directed Laddy towards the fortune teller. 'Will we give it a try?' she asked.

He was so pleased that she was staying at the carnival. He had feared she might want to go home. 'I'd love my fortune told,' he said. Gypsy Ella looked for a long time at his hand. She saw great successes at games and sport ahead for him, a long life, a job working with people. And travel. There would be travel over the water. Rose sighed. It had been fine so far, why had she mentioned travel? Laddy would never go abroad unless she were to take him. It didn't look like anything that would happen.

'Now you, Rose,' he said.

Gypsy Ella looked up, pleased.

'Ah, but we know my future, Laddy.'

'Do we?'

'My future is running the farm with you.'

'But I'll be meeting people and going over the water travelling,' he said.

'True, true,' Rose agreed.

'So have your hand read, go on, Rose.' He waited eagerly.

Gypsy Ella saw that Rose would marry within a year, that she would have one child and that this would bring her great happiness.

'And will I be going over the water?' she asked, more from politeness than anything else.

No, Gypsy Ella saw no travel for Rose. She saw some poor health, but not for a long time. The two half crowns were paid and they got another ice cream before going home. The walk seemed long tonight, she was glad she didn't have to carry the statue.

Laddy talked on about the great day and how he wasn't really frightened by the ghost train. Rose looked into the fire and thought about Gypsy Ella, what a strange way to make a living moving on from town to town with the same set of people. Maybe she was married to the man in the bumpers.

Laddy went to bed with the comics she had bought him and Rose wondered what they were all doing in the carnival now. It would be closing soon. The coloured light would be switched off, the people would go to their caravans. Tripper lay beside the fire snoring gently, upstairs Larry would have fallen asleep. Outside it was dark.

Rose thought of the marriage and the one child and the ill health late in life. They should really put a stop to these kind of sideshows. Some people were foolish enough to believe them.

She woke in the dark thinking she was being suffocated. A great weight lay on top of her, she began to struggle and panic. Had the wardrobe fallen over? Had some of the roof fallen down? As she started to move and cry out a hand went across her mouth. She smelled alcohol. She realised in a moment of sick recognition that Shay Neil was in her bed, lying on top of her.

She struggled to free her head from his hand. 'Please Shay,' she whispered. Tlease, Shay, don't do this.'

'You've been begging for it,' he said, still pushing at her, trying to get her legs apart.

'Shay, I haven't. I don't want you to do this. Shay, leave now we'll say no more about it.'

'Why are you whispering then?' He spoke in a whisper too.

'So as not to wake Laddy, frighten him.'

'No, so that we can do it, that's why, that's why you don't want him to wake.'

'I'll give you anything.'

'No, it's what I'm going to give you that we're talking about now.' He was rough, he was heavy, he was too strong for her. She had two choices. One was to shout for Laddy to come and hit him. But did she want Laddy to see her like this, her nightdress torn, her body pinned down? The other choice was to let him get it over with. Rose made the second choice.

Next morning she washed every item of bedclothes, burned her nightdress and opened the windows of her room.

'Shay must have come upstairs in the night,' Laddy said at breakfast.

'Why do you say that?'

'The statue I won for you is on the landing. He must have brought it up,' Laddy said pleased.

'That's right, he must have,' Rose agreed.

She felt bruised and sore. She would ask Shay to leave. Laddy would ask endless questions, she must get a story together that would cover it, and cover it for the neighbours too. Then a wave of anger came over her. Why should she, Rose, who was blameless in all this, have to invent excuses, explanations, cover stories? It was the most unjust thing she had ever heard in her life.

The morning passed as so many mornings had passed for Rose. She made Laddy's sandwiches and he went to school, to do errands for the teachers, as she now realised. She collected the eggs, fed the hens. All the time the sheets and pillowcases flapped on the line, the blanket lay spread on a hedge.

The custom had been that Shay ate bread and butter and boiled tea in his own quarters at breakfast time. After he heard the Angelus ring from the town he washed his hands and face at the pump in the yard and came in for a meal. It wasn't meat every day, sometimes it was soup. But there was always a bowl of big floury potatoes, a jug of water on the table and a pot of tea afterwards. Shay would take his plate and cutlery to the sink and wash it.

It had been a fairly joyless business. Sometimes Rose had read through it, Shay had never been one for conversation. Today she prepared no lunch. When he came in she would tell him that he must leave. But the bells of the Angelus rang and Shay did not come in. She knew he was working. She had heard the cows come in to be milked, she had seen the churns left out for the creamery to collect.

Now she began to get frightened. Maybe he was going to attack her again. Perhaps he took the fact that she had not ordered him out this morning as encouragement. Perhaps he took the whole of last night's passivity as encouragement, when all she was doing was trying to save Laddy from something he would not understand. That no normal sixteen-year-old would understand in relation to his own sister, but especially not Laddy of all people.

By two o'clock she was very uneasy. There had never been a day when Shay had not come in for his midday meal. Was he waiting for her somewhere, would he grab her and hurt her again? Well if he did, by God this time she would defend herself. Outside the kitchen door was a pole with some curved nails in it. They used it to rake twigs and branches off the thatched roof. It was the perfect thing to have to hand. She brought it inside and sat at the kitchen table trying to plan her next move.

He had opened the door and was in the kitchen before she realised it. She moved for the stick but he kicked it out of her way. His face was pale and she could see his Adam's apple moving up and down in his throat. 'What I did last night should not have been done,' he said. She sat trembling. 'I was very drunk. I'm not used to strong drink. It was the drink that made me do it.'

She searched for the words that would make him leave their lives, the actual phrase of dismissal that would not goad him into attacking her again. But she found she still couldn't speak. They were used to silences. Hours, days, weeks, of her life had been spent in this kitchen with Shay Neil and no words being said, but today was different. The fear and the memory of the grunts and obscenities of last night hung between them. 'I would like if last night had not happened,' he said eventually.

'And so would I, by God so would I,' she said. 'But since it did…' Now she could say it, get him out from their place.

'But since it did,' he said, 'I don't think I should come in and eat dinner with you any more in your house. I'll make my own food over beyond. That would be best from now on.'

He seriously intended to stay on after what had happened between them. After the most intimate and frightening abuse of another human being, he thought that it could be put aside with just a minor readjustment of the meal schedule. The man must be truly mad.

She spoke gently and very deliberately. She must not allow the fear to be heard in her voice. 'No, Shay, I don't think that would be enough, I really think you had better leave. It would not be easy for us to forget what happened. You should start somewhere else.'

He looked at her in disbelief. 'I can't go,' he said.

'You'll find another place.'

'I can't go, I love you,' he said.

'Don't talk nonsense.' She was angry and even more frightened now. 'You don't love me or anyone. What you did had nothing to do with love.'

'I've told you that was the drink, but I do love you.'

'You'll have to go, Shay.'

'I can't leave you. What is to happen to you and Laddy if I go?'

He turned and left the kitchen.

'Why didn't Shay come in for his dinner?' Laddy asked on Saturday.

'He says he prefers to have it on his own, he's a very quiet sort of person,' Rose said.

She had not spoken to Shay since. The work went on as it always did. A fence around the orchard had been mended. He had put a new bolt on the kitchen door, for her to fasten at night from the inside.

Tripper, the old collie dog, took to die.

Laddy was very upset. He sat stroking the dog's head and trying to administer him little sips of water on a spoon. Sometimes he would cry with his arms around the dog's neck. 'Get better, Tripper. I can't bear to hear you breathing like this.'

'Rose?' It was the first time that Shay had spoken to her in weeks.

She jumped. 'What?'

'I think I should take Tripper out to the field and shoot him through the head. What do you think?' Together they looked at the wheezing dog.

'We can't do it without telling Laddy.' Laddy had gone to school that day with the promise that he was going to buy a small piece of steak for Tripper, it might build him up. He would call at the butcher's on his way home. The dog would never be able to eat steak or anything, but Laddy didn't want to believe this.

'So will I ask him then?'

'Do.'

He turned away. That evening Laddy dug a grave for Tripper and they carried him out to the back field. Shay put the gun to the dog's head. It was over in a second. Laddy made a small wooden cross, and the three of them stood in silence around the little mound. Shay went back to his quarters.

'You're very quiet, Rose,' Laddy said. 'I think you loved Tripper as much as I did.'

'Oh I did, definitely,' she said.

But Rose was quiet because she had missed her period. Something that had never happened to her before.

In the week that followed Laddy was anxious. There was something very wrong with Rose. It had to be more than just missing Tripper.

There were three routes open to her in Ireland of the fifties. She could have the child and live on in the farm, a disgraced woman, with the gossip of the parish ringing in her years. She could sell the farm and move with Laddy to somewhere else, start a new life where nobody knew them. She could bring Shay Neil to the priest, and marry him.

There was something wrong with all these options. She could not bear to think of her changed status after all these years, if she were to be known as the unwed mother of a child for whom no father had ever been acknowledged. Her few pleasures like a visit to the town, a coffee in the hotel, a chat after Mass, would end. She would be a matter of speculation and someone to be pitied. Heads would shake. Laddy would be confused. But could she sell the farm and leave under such circumstances? In a way the farm belonged to all of them, her four sisters as well. Suppose they were to hear that she had taken all the proceeds and gone to live with Laddy and an illegitimate child in some rooms in Dublin? What would they feel about it?

She married Shay Neil.

Laddy was delighted about it all. And overjoyed to think he would be an uncle. 'Will the baby call me Uncle Laddy?' he wanted to know.

'Whatever you like,' Rose said.

Nothing had changed much at home except that Shay slept up in Rose's bedroom now. Rose went less often to town than she used to. Perhaps it was because she felt tired now that she was expecting the baby, or maybe she had lost interest in seeing people there. Laddy wasn't sure. And she wrote less to her sisters even though they wrote more to her. They had been very startled by the marriage. And the fact that there had been no big wedding breakfast as Rose had organised for them. They had come to visit and shaken Shay's hand awkwardly. They had found no satisfactory explanations in the conversation of their normally outgoing eldest sister.

And then the baby was born, a healthy child. Laddy was his godfather and Mrs. Nolan from the hotel his godmother. The child was baptised Augustus. They called him Gus. The smile came back to Rose's face again as she held her son. Laddy loved the little boy and never tired of trying to entertain him. Shay was silent and uncommunicative about the baby as well as everything else. The strange household got on with their lives. Laddy went to work for Mrs. Nolan in the hotel. The grandest help she ever had, Mrs. Nolan said. Nothing was too much trouble for him, they would be lost without Laddy.

And young Gus learned to walk and staggered around the farmyard after the chickens, and Rose stood at the door admiring him. Shay Neil was morose as ever. Sometimes at night Rose would look at him while pretending not to. He lay for long times with his eyes open. What was he thinking about.? Was he happy in this marriage?

There had been very little sexual activity involved. Firstly she had been unwilling because of her pregnancy. But after the birth of Gus she had said to him very directly: 'We are man and wife and putting the past behind us, we should have a normal married life.'

'That's right,' he had said, with no great enthusiasm at all.

Rose had found to her surprise that he did not revolt or frighten her. It did not bring up memories of that night of violence. In fact it was the only time they seemed to be in any way close. He was a complicated, withdrawn man. Conversation would never be easy with him, on any subject.

They never had alcohol at home, apart from the half bottle of whiskey on the top shelf in the kitchen to be used in an emergency or for soaking cotton wool if someone had a toothache. The drunkenness of that one night was never mentioned between them. The events had such a strange nightmarish quality that Rose had put them as far from her mind as possible. She didn't even pause to rationalise that they had resulted in the birth of her beloved Gus, the child that had brought her more happiness than she would ever have believed possible.

So she was entirely unprepared to face a drunken, violent Shay when he came home from a Fair almost incapable of speech. Slurred and maddened by her criticism of him he took his belt from his trousers and beat her. The beating seemed to excite him and he forced himself on her in exactly the same way as the night she had managed to put out of her mind. Every memory came rushing back, the disgust and the terror. And even though she was familiar with his body now and had welcomed it to her own this was something horrifying. She lay there bruised and with a cut lip.

'And you can't come the high and mighty lady tomorrow telling me to pack my bags and go. Not this time. Not now that I'm married in,' he said. And turned over to fall asleep.

'Whatever happened to you, Rose?' Laddy was concerned.

'I fell out of bed, half asleep and I hit my head against the bedside table,' she said

'Will I ask the doctor to come out to you when I'm in town?' Laddy had never seen a bruise like it.

'No Laddy, it's fine,' she said, and joined the ranks of women who accept violence because it's easier than standing up to it.

Rose had hoped for another child, a sister for little Gus, but it didn't happen. How strange that a pregnancy could result from one night of rape and not from months of what was called normal married life.

Mrs. Nolan of the hotel said to Doctor Kenny that it was strange how often Rose seemed to fall and hurt herself.

'I know, I've seen her.'

'She says she's got clumsy, but I don't know.'

'I don't know either, Mrs. Nolan, but what can I do?' He had lived long enough to notice that a lot of women claimed they had got clumsy and had fallen over.

And the strange coincidence was that it often happened after the Fair Day or the market had been in town. If Doctor Kenny had his way alcohol would be barred from fairs. But then, who listened to an old country doctor who picked up the pieces and was rarely if ever told the truth about what happened?

Laddy fancied girls but he was no good with them. He told Rose that he'd love to have slicked-down hair and wear pointed shoes, then the girls would love him. She bought him pointed shoes and tried to grease his hair. But it didn't work.

'Do you think I'll ever get married, Rose?' he asked her one evening. Shay was in another town buying stock. Gus was asleep, excited because tomorrow he would start school. It was just Rose and Laddy by the fire, as so often in the past.

'I don't know, Laddy, I really never expected to, but you remember that fortune teller we went to years ago, she said I'd be married within the year and I was. I certainly didn't expect that, and that I'd have a child and love him, and I didn't think that would happen. She said to you that you'd be in a job meeting people and you are in the hotel. And that you'd travel across the water and be good at sport, so all that is ahead of you.' She smiled at him brightly reminding him of all the good things, glossing over what was left out, deliberately not mentioning that Gypsy Ella had forecast ill health for Rose, but not yet.

When it happened, it happened very unexpectedly. There was no Fair, there would be no drinking, none of those large whiskies thrown back in the company of men who were more jovial and who were made merry by drink. She didn't fear his return that night which was why it was such a shock to see him drunk, his eyes blurring, not focusing, his mouth drooping at one side.

'Don't look at me like that,' he began.

'I'm not looking at you at all,' she said.

'Yes, you are, yes you bloody are.'

'Did you get any heifers?'

'I'll give you heifers,' he said taking off his belt.

'No, Shay, no. I'm having a conversation with you, I'm not saying a word against you. NO!' Tonight she screamed rather than speaking in the demented pleading whisper to prevent her brother and her son knowing what was happening.