'No, Niall. It wouldn't work out... this fellow is as mad as a wasps' nest. You wouldn't know what he'd do if I brought anyone else. I've only got as far as I have because I go on my own and put in endless bloody hours with him.'

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Well, can I see the file on him?' Niall asked.

Why? What do you want to bother yourself with that old fart for, there's plenty of other work to do ...'

'But won't we need to know when ... ?'

The words remained unfinished, the sentence hung in the air — when ... Richard went back to Dublin - something they all knew would happen. There wasn't room for two partnerships in the firm. The business simply wasn't there; even two salaries was beginning to strain Bill Hayes. Niall was the son of the family.

Surely Richard would be going back any day now.

Only Richard knew that he could never leave Shancarrig and the woman he loved.

'I do love you,' he said defensively to Gloria, as they sat smoking a cigarette by their little oil stove one cold evening in the gate lodge.

'I know.' She sat hugging her knees.

'No, you don't know. You said we shouldn't talk of love, that I only felt it at the moment of taking you. That's what you said.'

'Stop sounding like a schoolboy, Richard.' She looked beautiful as she sat there in the flickering light.

What are you thinking about?' he asked.

'About you and how good you make me feel.'

What are we going to do, Gloria?'

Well, get dressed and go home, I imagine.'

'About everything?'

We can't solve everything, we can only solve things like not letting the light be seen through the windows and not getting our death of cold in all the rain.'

What wiD you say ... about where you've been?'

'That's not your concern.'

'But it is, you are my concern.'

'Then let me handle it.' Again he saw the warning in her eyes, and he felt frightened.

They had met in late summer and continued through autumn and a cold wet winter; soon it would be spring. Surely some solution would have to be found.

But for Gloria spring meant that she could wear fresh yellow and white flowery dresses, and white sandals and take her lover to hidden parts of Barna Woods, to dells with bluebells and soft springy grass. Again an ache came over him. How did she know where to find such

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places? She hadn't grown up in this place — had other men taken her here? Not only could he never ask, he must never think about it. He hated that the shop was doing so well, he wanted to be her provider and give her things but she would never take them.

'What would I say, Richard? I mean I could hardly say that the handsome young solicitor who drops in to buy an inordinate amount of razor blades bought me a silver bracelet, now could I?'

But with increased prosperity Mike Darcy bought his wife jewellery. There was an emerald pendant, there were diamonds. Nobody in Shancarrig had ever known such extravagance. Quite unsuitable, Richard's Aunt Ethel had said, shaking her head about it.

Richard agreed from the bottom of his heart but was careful not to express this.

To his surprise young Niall had the opposite view.

What do people work for if it isn't to get themselves what they want?' he asked.

'I hope you wouldn't throw your money away on emeralds for Gloria Darcy and her like,' his father said in ritual dismissive vein to his son.

These days Niall Hayes answered back. 'I'm not sure what you mean "her like", but if I loved someone and I earned my money lawfully I would feel very justified in spending it on presents for her,' he said.

Suddenly the room was silent and drab. Aunt Ethel looked at her son in some surprise. On her cardigan there was no jewellery; there never had been any except the engagement ring, wedding ring and good watch. Perhaps life might have been better if Bill Hayes had visited a shop and looked at jewels.

'Let's celebrate our anniversary,' Richard said to Gloria.

'Like what? Dinner for two in Ryan's Shancarrig Hotel, a botde of wine?'

'No, but let's do something festive.'

'I find what we do is fairly festive already.' She laughed at him.

"You must want more, you must want more than creeping around.'

She sighed. It was the weary sigh of a mother who can't explain to a toddler how to tie his shoe laces. 'No, I don't want any more,' she said resignedly. 'But you do, so we'll do whatever you like for the anniversary.'

It was hard to think what they could do. The mystery was that they

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had spent a year as lovers without being discovered. In a place of this size and curiosity it was a miracle.

Perhaps they could go to Dublin. He would find an excuse and she would surely be able to think of some reason to go away as well.

Before he suggested it he would plan what they would do, otherwise she would shrug and say that they might as well stay here. He wanted to take her into Dublin bars, restaurants, he wanted people to admire her and be attracted by her beautiful face and sparkling laugh. He wanted to see her against some other background, not just the grey shapeless forms of Shancarrig. In all his years there Richard had never been able to like the place, it was lit up only by Gloria and he wanted to take her away from it.

He planned the visit to Dublin, how he would meet her off the train in Kingsbridge in his car — he would have gone up the day before so that there would be even less suspicion - how he would show her the sights -she didn't know Dublin well, she had told him. He would be her guide.

They would check into one of the better hotels. He would check out the room first, make sure it was perfect ... they would walk arm in arm down Grafton Street. If they met anyone from Shancarrig they would all laugh excitedly and say wasn't it great coming to Dublin how you ran into everyone from home.

The more he thought about it the more Richard realised that he did not want Gloria in Dublin just for one night, he wanted her there always. He didn't want them in a furtive hotel room, he wanted them in a home of their own. Together always.

There were the most enormous difficulties in the way. The biggest, most handsome and innocent was Mike Darcy, smiling and welcoming with no idea that his wife loved another.

There were the children. Richard loved the look of them, dark boys with enormous eyes like Gloria. They had their father's slow, lopsided grin too, but it was silly to work out characteristics and assign them to one parent or the other.

He wished he could get to know the children, but it had been impossible. If he could get to know them then they would find it easier to come as a little family to Dublin to live with him. Richard realised suddenly that he was no longer planning an illicit trip to celebrate an anniversary, he was planning a new life. He must take it more slowly.

He must not rush things and risk losing her.

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The anniversary was all that he could have wanted and more.

The hotel welcomed them as Mr and Mrs Hayes with no difficulty. Gloria's large rings did not look as if they had been put on for the occasion, they had a right to sit on her hand.

They had champagne in their room, they walked the city. He showed her places that he had loved when he was a boy, the canal bank from Baggot Street to Leeson Street. It thrilled him to be so near Waterloo Road. It was quite possible that his father could walk by on his way to the bookshop on Baggot Street Bridge, or his mother going to the butcher's shop to say that last Sunday's joint had not been as tender as they would have expected and the Doctor had been very disappointed.

He didn't see his parents but he did see Elaine pregnant and contented-looking, getting out of her mother's car. She hadn't seen him, and under normal circumstances he would have let her go on without stopping her. But these were not normal times. He wanted to show her Gloria, he wanted her to see the magnificent woman on his arm.

He called and she waddled over.

'Oh, Mummy will be sorry to have missed you,' she said. He had waited carefully until her mother had driven off. He didn't think his name was held in any favour in that family.

Td like you to meet Gloria Darcy.' The pride in his voice was overpowering.

They talked easily. Gloria asked her was it the first baby. Looking Richard straight in the eye Elaine said yes it was, she was very excited.

Gloria said she had two little boys of her own, and that you wished they'd never grow up and yet you were so proud of every little thing they did. She was saying all the things that Elaine wanted to hear. She also told her that the old wives' tales about labour were greatly exaggerated - it was probably to put people off having children before they were married.

'Oh, very few of us would be foolish enough to do that,' Elaine said, looking again at Richard.

He realised with a shock that he had been a monster of selfishness. Suddenly he was glad that Elaine had lied to him, that she had never carried his baby. But Olive Kennedy had. She had gone to England and given birth to their child. Where was this child now? A boy or girl in an orphanage, in a foster family, adopted.

How could he have not cared before? He felt his eyes water.

They had drinks in the Shelbourne Bar, and lunch in a small

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restaurant near Grafton Street that he had heard was very good.

He managed to meet three people he knew slightly. That wasn't bad for a man four years in exile from the capital city. He had chosen the place well.

'Did you love that girl Elaine a lot?' Gloria asked.

'No, I have never loved anyone except you,' he said simply.

'I thought you looked sad when you left, your eyes were full of tears ... but it's not my business. I'd be very cross with you for asking prying questions,' she said, squeezing his hand warmly.

He could barely speak.

'I'll die if I can't be with you always, Gloria,' he said.

'Shush now.' She put her finger in the little glass of Irish Mist that she was drinking and offered it to him to suck. Soon the familiar desire returned, banishing for the moment the sense of loss and anxiety about returning her to real life in Shancarrig. They went back to their hotel and celebrated their anniversary well and truly.

He never asked what excuse she had made to Mike, whether it was shopping, or a visit to a hospital, or seeing an old friend. He knew she didn't want him to be a party to her lies. It could not have been hard to lie to Mike, his enthusiasm and simplicity wouldn't take into account the deviousness of the world around him, a wife who would betray him, a casual friend Richard Hayes walking in and out of his shop not for the errands he pretended but to feast his eyes on Gloria, to remind himself of the last time and look forward to the next time.

Kevin Darcy was at Shancarrig school. Sometimes Richard stopped him on the road just for the excuse to talk to him.

'How's your mammy and daddy?' he'd say.

They're all right.' Kevin hadn't much interest.

'What did you learn at school?' he might ask.

'Not much,' Kevin would say.

One day Richard saw him with a cut head. He fell off the tree, Christy Dunne explained. Richard went to the shop to sympathise. Mike was out in the yard supervising the building of the new extension. Darcy's was now almost three times the size it was when they had bought it first.

'Oh, for God's sake, Richard, it's only a scrape. Don't be such a clucking hen,' Gloria said.

'He was bleeding a lot, I was worried.'

'Well, don't worry, he's fine. I put a big plaster on him, and gave

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him two Crunchies, one for him and one for Christy. There wasn't a bother out of him.' He looked at her with admiration. How was she so calm, so good and wise a mother as well as everything else?

He was still more admiring when the burglars came the following week and stole all the jewellery that Mike Darcy had bought for his wife.

Sergeant Keane was in and out of the place, inquiries were made everywhere, tinkers had been in Johnny Finn's pub, you couldn't watch the place all the time.

Gloria was philosophical. It was terrible, particularly the little emerald, she loved the way it glowed. But then what was the alternative? You watched them day and night, you made the place into something like Fort Knox. It would be like living in a prison; she shivered. Richard remembered how she had once said that to be married to a suspicious husband who checked up on her would be like living with a gaoler. She needed to be free.

Maura O'Sullivan, who minded the Darcy children and cleaned the house for them, also worked in his aunt's house. He tried to find out more about the household, but Maura, unlike the rest of Shancarrig, was not inclined to gossip.

'What was it exactly you wanted to know?' she would say in a way that ended all inquiries.

'I was just wondering how the family were getting over the loss,' he said lamely.

Maura nodded, satisfied. She always brought her son with her, an affectionate boy called Michael who had Down's syndrome. Richard liked him and the way he would run towards whoever came into the room.

'Daddy?' he said hopefully to Richard.

The first time he had said this Maura explained that the child's father had had to go to England, and that consequently he thought everyone he met was his father.

'Daddy, my daddy?' he asked Richard again and again.

'Sort of, we're all daddys and mammys to other people,' Richard said to him.

Niall had heard him.

"You're very kind, Richard. It comes naturally to you. I mean it, you're terribly nice to people, that's why you're so successful.' Richard was surprised, the boy had never made a speech like this.

'No I'm not. I'm quite selfish really. I'm surprised it doesn't show.'

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'I never saw it. I was jealous of you of course with women, but I didn't think you were selfish.'

'Not jealous of me any more?'

'Well, I only like one person and she assures me that she's not under your spell ... so ...' Niall Hayes looked happy.

'She never was. I thought she was lovely like anyone would, but it was admiration from afar, I assure you.'

'That's what she says.' Niall sounded smug and content.

'I'm not cramping your style in work here, am I?' Richard wanted to have it out. This seemed a good rime.

'No. No of course not, it's just that I suppose we expected ... everyone thought that sooner or later ...'

"Yes, and one day I will but... not just yet.'

'You're saving, I know.' Niall was understanding.

'How do you know?'

"Well, you never go anywhere, you only have a shabby car. You don't buy jazzy suits.'

'That's right,' Richard admitted. 'I'm saving.' This was his cover, he realised. He was putting together a stake to buy a practice in Dublin.

The months went on. Gloria bought him a silk tie.

"You said no presents.' He fingered the cream and gold tie lovingly.

'I said you weren't to buy me any, that's all.'

'I want to buy you a piece of jewellery. Not an emerald, a ruby - a very small ruby. Let me,' he begged.

'No, Richard. Seriously, when could I wear it? Be sensible.'

He bought it anyway. He gave it to her in the gate lodge.

Their Wednesday afternoons there were totally secure. Major Murphy walked with his uncle rain or shine, and Leo had got a job working in the office of one of the building contractors' firms in the town. It seemed an unlikely job, but Gloria told him that she heard Leo was still in touch with that mad Foxy Dunne, who was going from strength to strength on the building sites in England. The word was that he would come back and set up his own firm. The word was that he and Leo had an understanding.

'Foxy Dunne, son of Dinny Dunne?'

'Oh, Foxy Dunne is like the papal nuncio in terms of respectability compared to his father. You know him falling out of Johnny Finn's most nights.'

'Well, well, well.' He realised he was getting a small-town mentality;

²37

he was finding serious difficulty in believing that Major Murphy of The (ilen would let his daughter contemplate one of the Dunnes from the cottages. 1 le was glad however that it meant Leo worked far away. It left the coast much more clear.

Gloria looked at the ruby for a long time.

'You're not angry?"

'How could 1 be angry that you spent so much on me? I'm touched, but I'll never wear it.'

'Couldn't you say ... ?'

'We both know there's nothing I could say.'

'You could wear it here with me.'

Tes, I will.'

She took the ruby away and had it made into a tie pin, then she gave it back to him. Til put on a chain to wear it when I am with you, but for the rest of the time you keep it. Wear it on the tie that I gave you, then you'll think of me.'

'I think of you always,' he said.

Too much perhaps.

It was the beginning of the withdrawal. He saw it and blinded himself to it. He feared that someone else had come to town, but he knew there could be no one. She didn't dream up schemes to meet him for five minutes any more, and although she lay and took his loving she didn't implore him to love her as she once had, begging, encouraging and exciting him to performances that he had thought impossible.

He felt it was the place, it was getting too much for them. There had been endless complications about builders' suppliers, and the building of the extension, and the hostility of the Dunnes who said that they weren't anxious to build the place that was going to be direct competition with them. There had been delays over the insurance money for the jewellery. There was a problem about the newspaper delivery they planned, Nellie Dunne had created difficulties.

In his uncle's office Niall was restless and urging that he be involved in more cases, have consultations with clients and barristers, and in general learn his trade. Richard felt he was putting him off at every turn.

It was time to take Gloria away.

He began to explain it and for once he wouldn't listen when she tried to stop him. 'No, I've shushed enough. We have to think. It's been nearly two years. We must have our own home, our own life

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together. I don't wish Mike any harm but he has to know, he has to be told. He's a decent man, he'll agree to whatever we suggest. Whatever's for the best ... he can come to Dublin to see the boys, we'll never hide from them who their real father is ... he'd prefer to be taken into our confidence from the start... well, not exactly from the start but from now ...' His voice trailed away as he looked at her face.

They sat in the gate lodge. They hadn't undressed. Their cigarettes and the little tin they used as an ashtray and cleaned after each visit sat between them on the table. It was an odd place to be talking about their future. It was an odd expression on her face as she listened. It showed utter bewilderment and shock.

He thought first it was the enormity of what they were about to do ... coupled with the disruption for the children. He must reassure her. 'I've been looking at houses in Dublin, a little out of the city so that we could have privacy and so that Kevin and Sean would have a local-type school, not somewhere huge like the big Christian Brothers in the city ...' He stopped. He had not read her look right.

She didn't want reassurance, she wanted him to stop talking straight away. 'None of this is going to happen, you must know this. Richard, you must know.'

'But you love me ...'

'Not like this, not to run away with you ...'

'Why have we been doing all this ... ?' He waved his hand wildly around the room where they had made love so often.

'It had nothing whatsoever to do with my leaving here. That was never promised, never on the cards.'

He was the one bewildered now, and confused. 'What was it all about?' he asked, begging to be told.

She stood up and walked around the room as she spoke. She had never looked more beautiful. She spoke of a happy time with Richard, how he had made her feel wonderful and needed, how she had given him no undertaking, no looking ahead.

She said that her future was here in Shancarrig or very possibly another small town. They might sell up to the Dunnes and move. She and Mike liked starting a place from scratch. They had done that in other places. It was a challenge, it kept everything exciting, new.

Richard Hayes listened amazed as she spoke of Mike with this respect and love.

She was totally enmeshed with Mike in a way Richard had never understood. Her concern had nothing to do with a fear that Mike

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might be hurt or made to suffer. It was much more an involvement, a caring what he would do and decide and where he would want to

g°-

'But you don't love him!' he gasped.

'Of course I love him, I've never loved anyone else.'

'But why ... ?' He couldn't even finish the sentence.

'He couldn't give me everything I wanted. No one can do that for anybody. I love him because he lets me be free.'

Richard realised she spoke the truth. 'And does he know ... ?'

'Know what?'

'About me, about us. Do you tell him?' His voice grew angry and loud. 'Is this what gets him excited, your coming home and telling him what you and I did together?'

'Don't be disgusting,' she said.

"fou're the one who is disgusting, out like an alley cat and then pretending that you're the model wife and mother.'

She looked at him reproachfully. He knew it was over.

In the years when he had wriggled out of relationships and escaped from affairs he had not been as honest as she was being, he had been devious and avoided face-to-face contact except when it was utterly necessary. His heart was heavy when he thought of Olive Kennedy, and the way he had disowned her in front of her parents.

If only he could have his time all over again. He hung his head.

'Richard?' she said.

'I didn't mean it about the alley cat.'

'I know you didn't.'

'I don't know what to do, darling Gloria. I don't know what to do.'

'Go away and leave this place, have a good life in Dublin. One day I'll meet you there, we will talk in a civilised way like you and the girl in Baggot Street, the one who was having the baby.'

'No.'

'That's what you'll do.' She spoke soothingly.

'And if you go to another town will you find someone new?'

'I won't go out looking for anyone, that I assure you.'

'And will he ... will he put up with it, turn the other way ... ?' He couldn't even bear to speak Mike Darcy's name.

'He'll know I love him and will never leave him.'

There was nothing more to say.

There was a lot to be done.

He would go back to the office and telephone some solicitors'

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offices in Dublin. He would ask his mother if he could g° back to the basement flat in Waterloo Road. He would work day arid night to clear his files, and leave everything ship-shape for Niall. He could shake off his years here and start again.

They tidied up the little house that they were visiting for the last time. As usual they emptied the cigarette butts and ash in^toan envelope. They straightened the furniture to the way it had been when they first found the place. They left by the window as they had- always done. They rearranged the branches that hung to hide it.

She wouldn't bring anyone else here after he had go*¹⁶» he felt sure of that. With a litde lurch he wondered had she ever b<"^oug^ht anyone before.

But that was useless speculation.

'Now that we're legitimate we can walk home togetli^er>' ^ne said.

'Why not?' She was easy and affectionate, as she was ^wit^ everyone.

'The long way or the short way?' He offered her the choice.

'The scenic route,' she decided.

They went up past the open ground that led to the Old Rock, and back through the woods, past Maddy Ross's house wl^iere she sat at her litde desk, maybe writing letters to that priest wb° had gone to the missions, the one that she might have fancied. Ricb^ard fe^ ^a huge wave of sympathy for her. What a wasted love that rn^ust have been. Compared to his own great passion.

They came to the bridge, children still playing thei^eas they had been the day Richard Hayes had come to town five lofig years ago.

Different children, same game.

Imagine, only an hour ago he had been planning for Gl°^ri^a>s children to go to school in Dublin. He thought he had taken oV^era family.

And now everything was over.

Now they were free to talk to each other there was f>othing to say. His thoughts went up the road to the old schoolhoU^se, to the big beech tree which was covered with people's initials and their names.

In the first weeks of loving Gloria he had gone thef^e secretly and carved 'Gloria in Excelsi/.

It didn't seem blasphemous, it seemed a celebration. If anyone saw it in years to come they would think it was a hymn of p^raise to God. They might think a priest had put it there. He would no¹g° ^and score it out. That would be childish. He could finish the st^T- ^of course. He could say that the glory of the world passed by; Sf^c Transit Gloria

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Mundi. Only a few would understand it and when they did they would never connect it with Gloria Darcy, loving wife of Mike Darcy, shopkeeper.

But that would be childish too.

Maura O'Sullivan and her son Michael passed them by as they stood on the bridge, Gloria and Richard who would never speak again.

'Good day Mrs Darcy, Mr Hayes,' she said.

'My daddy?' Michael ran up to him and hugged his leg.

Richard knelt down to return the hug properly.

'Go home, Gloria,' he said.

She went without a word. He could hear the sound of her high red heels tapping down the road towards the centre of Shancarrig.

'How are you, Michael? You're getting to be a very big fellow altogether,' he said and buried his head in the boy's shoulder so that no one would see his tears.

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LEO

When Leonora Murphy was a toddler, her father used to sit her on his knee and tell her about the little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. He would poke Leo's forehead on the word right to show her where the curl was. Then he would go on, And when she was good she was very very good, but when she was bad she was HORRID. At the last word he would make a terrible face and roar at her, HORRID, HORRID. It was always frightening, even though Leo knew it would end well with a big hug, and sometimes his throwing her up in the air.

She wasn't frightened of Daddy, just the rhyme. It seemed menacing, as if someone else was saying it.

Anyway it wasn't even suitable for her because she was a girl with much more than one little curl. She had a head full of them, red-gold curls. They got tangled when anyone tried to brush her hair. Her mother gave up in despair several times. 'Like a furze bush, like something you'd see on a tinker child.' Leo knew this was an insult. People were half afraid of the tinkers, who camped behind Barna Woods sometimes when they were on the way to the Galway races.

If Leo ever was bad and wouldn't eat her rice or fasten her shoes properly, Biddy would say that she'd be given to the tinkers next time one of them passed the door. It seemed a terrible fate.

But later when she was older, when she could go exploring, Leo Murphy thought that it might be exciting to go and live with the tinkers. They had open fires. The children ran around half dressed. They went through the woods finding rabbits.

She used to creep around with her friends from school, Nessa Ryan and Niall Hayes and Eddie Barton. Not daring to move they'd peep through the trees and the bushes and watch the marvellous free lifestyle of people who had no rules or no laws to tie them down.

Leo couldn't remember why she had been so afraid.

But then, that was when she was a child. Once she was eleven and grown up things could be viewed differently. She realised that there were a lot of things she hadn't understood properly while she was young.

She hadn't realised that she lived in the biggest house in Shancarrig, for one thing. The Glen was a Georgian house, with a wide hall leading back to the kitchen and pantry. On either side of the hall door were big beautifully proportioned rooms - the dining room where the table

was covered with papers and books, since they rarely had anyone to dine - the drawing room where the old piano had not been tuned for many a year, and where the dogs slept on cushions behind the big baskets of logs for the fire.

There was a breakfast room behind where they ate their meals, and a sports room which had Wellingtons and guns, and fishing tackle. This is where Leo kept her bicycle when she remembered, but often she left it outside the kitchen door. Sometimes the wild cats that Biddy loved to feed at the kitchen window came and perched on the bicycle. There was a time when a cat brought all her little kittens one by one and left them in the bicycle basket, thinking it might be a safe haven for them.

That was the day that Leo had watched stony-faced as her father drowned them in the rain barrel.

'It's for the best,' her father said. 'Life is about doing things for the best, things you don't like.'

Leo's father was Major Murphy. He had been in the British army. In fact, he had been away at the War when Leo was born. She knew that because every birthday he told her how he had been at Dunkirk and hadn't known if the new baby was a boy or a girl. Since there had been two boys already the news, when it did arrive, was great news.

Leo's brothers were away at school. They didn't go to Shancarrig school like other boys did, they were sent to a boarding school from the time they were very young. The school was in England, where Grandfather lived. Grandfather wanted some of his family near him and he paid the school fees, which were enormous. It was a famous school, where prime ministers had gone.

Leo knew that it wasn't a Catholic school, but that Harry and James did go to mass on Sundays. She also knew that, for some reason, she wasn't to talk about this to her friend Nessa Ryan, or to Miss Ross, or Mrs Kelly, or especially not to Father Gunn. It was all perfectly right and good, but not something you went on about.

She knew there were other ways in which she was different. Major Murphy didn't go out to work like other people's fathers did. He didn't have a business or a farm, just The Glen. He didn't go down to Ryan's Hotel in the evening like other men, or pop into Johnny Finn Noted for Best Drinks. He sometimes went for a walk with Niall Hayes's father, and he went to Dublin on the train for the day. But he didn't have a job.

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Her mother didn't go shopping every morning. She didn't call to Dunne's or to the butcher's. She didn't get a blouse and skirt made with Eddie Barton's mother. She didn't get involved with arranging flowers on the altar for Father Gunn, or helping with the sale of work at the school. Leo's mother was very beautiful and gave the air of having a lot to do as she floated from room to room. She really was a very beautiful woman, everyone always said so. Mrs Murphy had red-gold hair like her daughter, but not those unruly curls. It was smooth and shiny and turned in naturally, as if it had always been like that. Once a month Mother went to Dublin and she had it trimmed then, in a place in St Stephen's Green.

Somehow Leo knew that Harry and James weren't going to come back to Shancarrig when they left school. They had been talking about Sandhurst for as long as she could remember. They were both accepted. Her father was delighted.

'We must tell everyone,' he said when the letter arrived.

'Who can we tell?' His wife looked at him almost dreamily across the breakfast table.

Father looked disappointed. 'Hayes will be pleased.'

'Your friend Bill Hayes is the only one who's heard of Sandhurst.' Miriam Murphy spoke sharply.

'Ah come on. They're not as bad as that.'

'They are, Frank. I've been the one who's always lived here, you're only the newcomer.'

'Eighteen years, and still a newcomer ...' He smiled at her affectionately.

Leo's mother had been born in The Glen, and had played as a child in Barna Woods herself. She had gone fishing down to the River Grane, and taken picnics up to the Old Rock, from which Shancarrig got its name. She had been here all through the troubles after the Easter Rising, and through the Civil War. In fact, because there were so many upheavals at that time, her parents had sent her off to a convent school in England.

Shortly after she had left it she had met Frank Murphy and, as two Irish amid the croquet and tennis parties of the south of England in the early 19305, they had been drawn together. Frank's knowledge of Ireland was sketchy, but romantic. He always hoped to settle there one day. Miriam Moore had been more practical. She had a falling

²47

down home, she said. It needed much more money than they would ever have to turn it into a dream.

Miriam's parents were old. They welcomed the bright son-in-law with open arms. They hoped he would be able to manage their beautiful but neglected house and estate. They hoped he would be able to keep their beautiful but restless daughter contented.

They died before they could judge whether he had been able to do either.

'Is Sandhurst on the sea?' Leo asked interestedly. If Harry and James were going to a beach next year, instead of back to school, she was very jealous indeed.

Her parents smiled indulgently at her. They told her it was in Surrey, nothing to do with sand as in Sandycove or Sandymount or any other seaside place she had been to. It was a great honour to get in there. They would be officers of the highest kind.

'Will they be a higher rank than Daddy if there's another war?' Leo asked.

'There won't be another war, not after the last one.'

He looked sad when he said that. Leo wished she hadn't brought the subject up. Her father walked with a stick and he had a lot of pain. She knew this because she could hear him groaning sometimes if he thought he was alone. Perhaps he didn't like being reminded of the War, which had damaged his spine.

"You should write to them, Leo,' her mother said. 'They'd like to get a letter from their little sister.'

It was like writing to strangers, but she wrote. She told them that she was sitting in the drawing room, and that Lance and Jessie were stretched in front of the fire. She told them about the school concert where they all wanted to sing 'I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts' and Mrs Kelly had said it was a filthy song. She told them how Eddie Barton had taught her how to draw different kinds of leaves, fishes and birds, and said she might do them a special drawing for Christmas if they ordered it.

She said she was glad they were going to be high-class officers in the army, even if there was never going to be another war. She said they would be glad to know that Daddy was walking a bit better and Mother looking a lot less sad.

To her surprise they both wrote almost by return and said that they

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loved her news. It was strange not being one thing ot the other, they

wrote.

Leo had a big bedroom that looked out over the garden. It was one of four large rooms around the big square landing. Nessa Ryan was always admiring the upstairs.

'It's like a room in itself, this landing,' she said in admiration. 'It's so poky in the hotel, all the rooms have numbers on them.'

Leo said that when her mother was young in The Glen there was breakfast on the landing. Imagine, people bringing all the food upstairs to save the family going down. Sometimes they used to eat in their dressing-gowns, Mother had told her.

Nessa was very interested that Major and Mrs Murphy had different bedrooms; her parents slept in the same bed.

'Do they really?' Leo was fascinated. She broached the subject with Biddy.

Somehow, it didn't seem right to ask directly.

'Don't go inquiring about where and how people sleep. Nothing but trouble comes out of that.'

'But why, Biddy?'

'Ah, people sleep where they want to sleep. Your parents sleep at each end of the house, that's what they want. Leave it at that.'

'But where did your parents sleep?'

'With all of us, in one room.' So it wasn't much help.

When Harry and James came home for a very quick visit she decided to ask them. They looked at each other.

'Well, you see. With Papa being wounded and everything ...'

'All that sort of thing changed,'James finished.

'What sort of thing?' Leo asked.

They looked at each other in despair.

'All sorts of things. No sorts of things,' Harry said. And she knew the subject was over.

Mother never told Leo anything about the facts of life. If it hadn't been for Biddy and Nessa she would have been astonished by her first period. Although she knew how kittens, puppies and rabbits, and therefore babies, were born, she had no idea how they were conceived. She very much hoped that it was nothing to do with the behaviour of the dogs and cats at certain times. She didn't see how such a thing

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would be possible for humans anyway, even if any of them would agree to do it. She hated Nessa Ryan being so knowing so she didn't ask her, and she knew that Biddy in the kitchen flushed a dark red when the matter was mentioned ...

When Leo Murphy was fourteen such matters had been sorted out, if not exactly satisfactorily, at least she felt that she had mastered whatever technical information there was about it from reading pamphlets and magazines.

She had agreed with Nessa and Maura Brennan that it was quite impossible to believe that your own parents could ever have done it, but then the living proof that they must have was all around.

Maura Brennan was able to add the information that a lot of it happened when the man was drunk, and Leo said it was very unfair that the woman shouldn't be allowed to get drunk as well, because it was bound to be so awful.

Maura was very nice. She never pushed herself on anyone. In ways Leo liked her better than she liked Nessa Ryan, who could be moody if she didn't get her own way. But Maura lived in the poorest of the cottages. Her father Paudie was often to be seen sitting on someone's steps with a bottle in his hand, having been out drinking all night.

Maura wouldn't go on to the convent with them next year when she and Nessa went into town on the bus to secondary school. And yet at fourteen Maura seemed to know a lot more about life than the rest of them did.

It seemed very unfair to Leo that families like Maura Brennan's and Foxy Dunne's had to live in the falling down cottages by the river and had such shabby clothes. Foxy Dunne was much brighter than Niall Hayes, much quicker when it came to giving answers in school, but Foxy had no bicycle, no proper clothes, and had never been known to wear shoes that fitted him. Maura Brennan was much kinder and more gentle than Nessa Ryan but she never got a dress like Nessa got for her birthday and she hadn't a winter coat.

Leo knew she wasn't meant to go into the cottages and so she didn't. No one ever said not to, but it was something that was unspoken.

Only Foxy ever challenged it.

'Aren't you coming in to see the Dunne family at leisure... ?' he asked.

They had learned the word leisure at school today. Mrs Kelly had

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written it on the board and talked about what it meant.

'No thanks. I've got to go home today,' Leo would say.

'But I'm allowed to come and see the Murphy family at leisure,' he would say.

Leo was well able for him. "Yes you are, and very welcome too, when you want to ...'

It was a stand-off.

They admired each other ... it had always been like that, since they were in Mixed Infants together ...

After the end of the summer term Leo and Nessa travelled on the bus to the convent school. They would meet the Reverend Mother, get a list of books and other items they would need, details of the school uniform and probably a string of rules as well. They thought that they would also be shown around the convent, but this did not materialise. They were tempted to spend the time idling round and sampling the pleasures of freedom of a place ten times the size of Shancarrig, but they felt that somehow they would be found out. It would be told back in Ryan's Hotel that they had been slutting and laughing on a corner with an idling lad, or licking ice creams in the street.

Better by far to get the early bus home and be shown to be reliable.

Nessa went into the hotel where she felt they weren't nearly grateful enough to see her.

'Are you back already?' Mrs Ryan said without enthusiasm.

'I hope you did everything you were meant to do,' her father said.

Leo grinned at her. 'It'll be the same in my place,' she said com-panionably. 'They'll have fed the dogs and won't have kept anything for me.'

She strolled up the hill, pausing to talk to Eddie Barton and tell him about the convent. He would be going to the Brothers. He said he wasn't looking forward to it. It was only games they cared about.

'In this place it's only prayers they care about,' Leo grumbled. 'There's statues leaping at you out of every wall.'

She trailed her shoulder bag behind her as she passed the old gate lodge that had been let once to people, who had left it like a pigsty. Now it was all boarded up in case any intruders got in.

It was a Thursday, and as soon as she was home Leo remembered that it was, of course, Biddy's half day. There would be food left under the meat safe. They usually had something cold for supper on a night when Biddy wasn't there. Leo knew that she should help herself

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because there was no one to greet her. Major Murphy had gone to Dublin that morning. He had caught the early train. Her mother must have gone walking in Barna Woods. Leo planned to take her food up to her bedroom and listen to her gramophone. She had written to James and Harry about the song 'I Love Paris in zee Springtime'. She could play it over and over. Some day she would go to Paris in 'zee Springtime or zee Fall' with someone who would sing that to her. She thought it would never go out of fashion. She closed herself into her room and before she even started on her milk and chicken sandwich she put on the record.

She threw herself on her window seat and was singing along with it when, to her surprise, she heard a door bang and footsteps running up or down the stairs, she couldn't tell which.

Thinking she might be playing it too loudly, she went to take off the handle of the machine and as she did so her eye caught sight of a young man fleeing across the grass and into the shrubbery. As he ran he was pulling on a shirt.

Leo was very frightened. It must have been a robber. Could there be more of them downstairs? She didn't know whether to shout for help or pretend that she wasn't there.

Her mind raced. They must know she was there if they had heard the music playing. Perhaps one was waiting for her outside her bedroom door. She could feel her heart thumping. In the silence of the house she heard a door creak open. She had been right. There was someone else lying in wait for her. She prayed as she had never prayed before.

As if in direct answer to her, God had managed to make her mother's voice call out, 'Leo? Leo? Is that you?'

Mother was standing outside her bedroom door, flushed-looking and confused.

Leo ran to her. 'Mother. There were robbers ... are you all right?'

'Shush, shush. Of course I am ... what are you talking about?'

'I heard them running down the stairs ... they went through the garden.'

'Nonsense, Leo. There were no robbers.'

There were, Mother. I heard them, I saw them ... I saw one of them.'

'What did you see?'

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'I saw him pulling off or putting on a shirt. Mother, he ran over there behind the lilacs, over the back fence.'

'What on earth are you doing home anyway ... weren't you meant to be on a tour of that school?'

'Yes, but they didn't show us. I saw him, Mother. There might be others in the house.'

Leo had never seen her mother so full of purpose. 'Come downstairs with me this moment and we'll put an end to this foolishness.' She flung open the doors of all the rooms. 'What burglar was here if he didn't take the silver, the glass? Or here, in the sports room, all your father's guns. Each one intact. Look, they didn't even take our supper, so let's have no chats about burglars and robbers.'

'But the feet on the stairs?' She was less sure of the figure now.

'I went downstairs myself and came back up to my room. I didn't know you were back ...'

'But I was playing the record player ...'

'Yes. That's what made me come out and look for you. To know what you were doing blasting it out and then turning it off.'

Mother looked excited. Different from the way she was normally.

Leo didn't know what made her think it was dangerous, but that is exactly what she felt it was. She had to walk just as delicately here as if there really were a robber hiding in the house.

She spoke nothing of the incident to her father, nor to Biddy. When Nessa Ryan asked whether Leo's welcome home had been any more cordial than the one that Nessa had got herself in the hotel, Leo said that she had made a sandwich and listened to 'I Love Paris'.

Nessa Ryan said that life was very unfair. She had been roped in to help polish silver, since she was back.

Imagine having all the freedom in the world in a big house like that.

Imagine. She didn't notice Leo shiver as she realised that she had denied the fright, and that somehow made the fright much bigger than it had been before.

Foxy Dunne came up the drive next day. His swagger showed a confidence that many of those twice his age might not have felt approaching The Glen.

But Foxy didn't push his luck; he went to the back door.

Biddy was most disapproving.

'Yes?' she said coldly.

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'Ah, thank you, Biddy. It's good to get a real traditional Irish welcome everywhere, that's what I always say.'

'You and your breed never say anything except to make a jeer of other people who put their minds to work,'

Foxy looked without flinching.

'I'm different from my breed, as you call it, Biddy. I have every intention of putting my mind to work.'

Tou'll be the first of the Dunnes who did, then.' She was still annoyed to see him sitting so confidently in her kitchen.

'There always has to be the first of some family who does. Where's Leo?'

'What's that to you?'

At that moment Leo came into the kitchen. She was pleased to see Foxy Dunne. She offered him one of Biddy's scones that were cooling on a wire tray.

'Will you like the place inside?' He was speaking about the secondary school.

'I think so. A bit Holy Mary, but you know.'

'A lot of people around here could do with being Holy Mary,' Biddy said.

Leo laughed. Everything seemed to be back to normal again.

'You'll work hard, won't you?' Foxy was concerned.

'Imagine one of Dinny Dunne's lads laying down the law on working hard,' Biddy snorted.

Foxy ignored her. 'It's important that you work as hard as I do,' he said to Leo. 'I have to, because I come from nothing. You have to because you come from everything.'

'I don't know what you mean,' Leo said.

'It would be dead easy for you to do nothing, for you to just drift about without doing anything, and end up just marrying someone.'

'Not for ages.' Leo was indignant.

'Not any time. You should get a job.'

'I might want to marry someone.'

"Yes, yes. But you'd be better off with a job, whether you married anyone or not.'

'I never heard such nonsensical talk.' Biddy was banging the saucepans around to show her disapproval.

'Come on, Foxy. We'll go out to the orchard,' Leo said.

They picked small gooseberries and put them in a basket that Leo's mother had left under a tree.

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'It won't always be like this here, you know,' Foxy said.

'No. It'll be term time, and a list of books as long as your arm.'

'I meant this house, this way of going on.'

She looked at him, alarmed. The anxiety of the other night came back; things changing, not being safe any more.

'What do you mean?'

She looked very startled suddenly, and he didn't like the way her face got so alarmed, so he reassured her. He told her that if he could pretend to be sixteen or over he could get taken on by a man who was raising a crew for a builder in England — all fellows from round here, fellow countrymen ... he'd start just doing odd jobs, but he'd work his way up.

'I wish you weren't going away,' Leo said. 'I know it's crazy, but I have this stupid feeling that something awful is going to happen.'

It was three weeks later that it happened. On a warm summer evening. The house was quiet. Biddy had gone on her annual summer holidays back to her family's farm. Leo had finished her letter to Harry and James, she had written how Daddy's back seemed much better and that Dr Jims had said that walking couldn't do him any harm — it couldn't hurt him any more than he had been hurt in the War — and that if he sat in a chair like an old man with a rug over his knees then he'd turn into one.

So he went off for long walks with Mr Hayes, even up as far as the Old Rock. That's where they had gone today. Leo decided to walk down to the town to post the letter. Once it was written she liked it to be on its way. It could sit on the hall table for days, with Biddy dusting around it. She found a stamp and headed off. Mrs Barton was ironing, Leo could see her through the window. She never went out to sit in her little garden. Surely she could have brought some of her sewing out of doors on a beautiful evening like this. Leo looked up to see if she could see Eddie's face at his window. He wrote almost as many letters as she did. She met him sometimes at the post office and Katty Morrissey said that between them they kept the whole of P&T going.

But there was no sign of Eddie. Maybe he was off finding odd shapes of wood and clumps of flowers to draw. She did meet Niall Hayes, however, walking disconsolately up and down The Terrace.

'God, that school I'm going to is like a prison,' Niall said. 'It's like The Count of Monte Cristo".

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'The convent's all right. It's choked with statues, though, all of them with cross faces.'

'Oh, I wouldn't mind if it was only the statues. You should see the faces on these fellows. All of them in long black dresses, and looking desperate.'

'Sure doesn't Father Gunn wear a long dtess, and Father Barry. You're used to them.' Leo thought Niall Hayes was making heavy weather out of it all.

'They don't have faces like lighting devils.'

'Did your father go to school there?'

'Of course he did, and all my uncles. And they've forgotten how awful it is. They keep telling me of all the fun they had there.'

"Your father's gone for a walk with my father.' Leo was tired of all the gloom.

'Well, it must have been a short one then. My father's back in the house there, making some farmer's will. Leo, I don't think I could bear to be a solicitor here in Shancarrig.'

*You could always go somewhere else,' Leo said. There seemed to be no cheering Niall today.

She was sorry her father's walk had been cancelled, but maybe he was sitting with Mother in the orchard. She had seen sometimes they had a big jug of homemade lemonade, and they looked as if they were a bit happy.

She met Father Gunn, who said wasn't it amazing the way the time raced by. There was another whole class ready to leave Shancarrig and go out into the wide world. It was extraordinary how grown-ups thought time raced by. Leo found it went very slowly indeed.

As she came in the gate of The Glen she heard cries coming from the gate lodge, and at the same moment she saw her father hastening as fast as he was able down the drive. Leo shrank away from the sound of crashing furniture and screams.

But she knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was her mother's voice she heard screaming, 'No, no! You can't! No,' and a great long wail.

'Oh, my God, my God. Miriam. Miriam.'

Her father was stumbling. He had dropped his stick, and had to bend down for it.

Leo watched as if it was slow motion.

Then they heard the shots. Three of them. And at that moment

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Leo's mother came staggering to the door. Her blouse was covered with blood. Her hair and eyes were wild.

'My God ... he tried to ... he was trying to ... he would have killed me,' she cried. She kept looking behind her where they could see a shape on the ground.

'Frank!' screamed Leo's mother. 'Oh, do something, Frank. For God's sake! He would have killed me.'

Leo shrank still further away from the scene which she could see unfolding, but yet could not take in.

Her father walked in exaggeratedly slow motion towards the door and took her mother in his arms.

He soothed her like a baby.

'It's over, Miriam, it's over,' he said.

'Is he dead?' Leo's mother didn't want to look.

Horrified, Leo saw her father bend to the shape on the floor and turn it over. Leo could see a man with dark hair, lying on the floor of the gate lodge. There was a big red stain all over the front of his shirt.

It was the man she had seen running towards the lilacs in the shrubbery three weeks ago, the day that she thought there had been robbers.

And now both her father and mother were crying.

'It's all right, Miriam darling. It's over. He's dead.' Her father was saying this over and over again.

Later they gave Leo a brandy too. With a little water in it. But that was well after they had come back to the house.

The door of the gate lodge had been closed. They all walked up the drive arm in arm and Mother had gone up to wash herself.

'You might need to, you know, not change anything,' Leo heard Daddy say, but Mother looked at him wildly.

"You mean ... wear this? Wear this on my body? All this blood? What for? Frank, use your head. What for?' She was near hysteria.

'I'll wash you,' he offered.

'No. Please let me be on my own for a few moments.'

Mother had a wash basin in her room, with a mirror and a light over it, and little pink floral curtains.

Leo didn't want to be alone, so she followed her mother into the room. Their eyes met in the mirror.

'Are you all right, Mummy?' She rarely used that word.

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Mother's face softened. 'It's all right, Leo. It's over.' She said Father's words like a parrot.

'What are we going to do? What's going to happen?'

'Shush. Let me get rid of all this. We'll put it out of our minds. It'll be like a bad dream.'

'But...'

'That's for the best, Leo, believe me.' Mother looked very young as she stood there just in her slip and skirt. She rubbed her neck and arms with a soapy flannel and warm water, even though there was no trace of blood. That was all streaked and hardening on the yellow blouse she had thrown into the wastepaper basket.

Mother was brushing her teeth, and she shook her tin of Tweed talcum powder into her hand and rubbed it into her skin.

'Go on, darling. Go down to your father. I want to finish dressing.'

Leo thought Mother only had to put on a blouse. And of course a brassiere. She had only just realised that for some reason Mother hadn't been wearing one as she stood beside the hand basin. Just the slip. Her silky peach-coloured one.

Everything was so strange and unreal. The fact that Mother had asked her to leave the room now was only one tiny fragment more in the whole thing.

Leo went into the drawing room. She felt something like this should not be discussed in the breakfast room where they lived on ordinary days. Her father must have felt the same thing. He had put a match to the fire and the two dogs, Lance and Jessie, seemed pleased. They stretched their big cream limbs in front of the grate.

Leo thought suddenly that Lance and Jessie didn't know what had happened. Then she remembered that nobody knew - not Niall Hayes, whom she had been talking to half an hour ago - nor Mrs Barton, who had waved from her ironing - nor Father Gunn, who had said that time passed so quickly.

Father Gunn? Why wasn't he here?

The moment someone died you sent for the priest. And Dr Jims, Eileen and Sheila's father, he should be here. That's what happened when people got sick or died, Father Gunn and Dr Jims arrived in their cars.

Mother was at the door. She shivered and hugged herself.

'That's lovely of you to light the fire,' she said.

They both looked up, Leo and her father. Mother sounded so

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ordinary - so normal. As if it all hadn't happened out there. Down in the gate lodge.

That was when Father poured the brandy for the two of them.

'Give Leo a little, too.' Mother sounded as if she was offering more soup at lunchtime.

'Come up here to the fire. Warm your hands. I'll phone Sergeant Keane. He'll be up in five minutes.'

'No.' It was like a whiplash.

'We have to call him, we should have phoned immediately.'

Leo was sipping the horrible and unfamiliar brandy. She didn't know how people like Maura Brennan's father wanted to drink alcohol all the time. It was disgusting.

'My nerves won't stand it, Frank. I've been through enough already.'

'Sergeant Keane's very gentle. He'll make it as quick as possible. It's just the formalities.'

'I won't have the formalities. There's no point in asking me to.'

'A man tried to kill you, he had one of my guns. He could have killed you.' Father's voice broke with emotion at the thought of it.

Mother became even more icily calm.

'But he didn't. What happened was that I killed him.'

'You defended yourself against him ... the gun went off. He killed himself

'No. I picked up the gun and shot him.'

'You don't know what happened. You're in shock.'

Major Murphy made a move as if to go out to the hall to the telephone.

Mother didn't even need to raise her voice to make her seriousness felt.

'If you ring him, Frank, I'm walking out of that door and you'll never see me again. Either of you.'

He put out his arms as if to hold her again, support her as he had up the drive, console her as he had done when he was holding her, telling her it was over.

Mother really seemed to believe that it was over.

Leo kept moving the glass around between her hands as she listened to her parents talking about the man who lay dead in their gate lodge.

Her mother's voice was strange and unnatural. It didn't sound like a voice, it sounded like a noise, a thin even noise, with no highs and lows.

She spoke as one who is being perfectly reasonable.

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Frank had told her it was over, finished. So let it be forgotten. Why drag heavy-footed policemen in, and go over it and over it, and ask questions and give answers? The man had threatened her. He had got killed himself. It was an eye for an eye. Justice had been done. Let it be left as it was.

At every interruption she gave her strange disembodied threat: 'Or else I will disappear from this house and you will never see me again.'

It was as if they had forgotten she was here. Leo watched mesmerised as her mother, by sheer force of repetition, began to beat down the rational arguments. She saw her father change from the strong man comforting his wife caught in a terrible accident and become someone hunted and unsure. She saw him bite his lip and watched his eyes widen with fear at every repeated threat that Miriam Murphy would walk out the door and never be seen again.

She wanted to interrupt, to ask Mother where she would go. Why she would leave them, her home and her family?

But she didn't dare to move.

It was when her father had said, 'I couldn't live without you, Miriam, you couldn't leave knowing that ...'

'Please ...' She looked across at her fourteen-year-old daughter, as if a lapse of taste had been committed. A man shouldn't speak of his need, of his weakness, not in front of a child.

Major Murphy came over to the window seat where Leo was sitting.

'Leo, dearest child.'

'What's going to happen, Daddy?'

'It's going to be all right. As your mother says, it's over, it's over. We mustn't...'

'Will we get Dr Jims? Father Gunn ... ?'

'Leo, come with me. I'll bring you up to bed.'

'I want to stay here, Daddy, please ...'

"You want to help us, you want to be big and brave and do the right thing ...'

'No. I want to stay here. I'm afraid.'

Outside in the big garden darkness had fallen. The bushes were big shapes, not colours as they had been when the three of them walked back up, huddled together from the horrors they had left in the gate lodge.

He propelled her out of the door and to the kitchen where he warmed some milk in a saucepan. He took the big silver pepperpot

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and sprinkled some over the top of the milk when it was poured into a mug.

He walked up the stairs with her and led her to the room.

'Put on your nightie, like a good girl,' he said.

He turned his back as Leo slipped out of her green cotton dress and her summer vest and knickers, and pulled on the pink winceyette nightdress from the nightdress case shaped like a rabbit. Leo remembered with a shock that when she stuffed her nightie in there this morning nothing had happened. None of this nightmare had begun.

She got into bed and sipped the milk.

Her father sat on the bed and stroked her forehead. 'It will be all right, Leo,' he said.

'How can it be all right, Daddy?'

'I don't know. I used to wonder that in the War, but it was.'

'It wasn't really. You got wounded and you can't walk properly.'

"Yes, I can.' He stood up.

His face was so sad Leo wanted to cry aloud. She wanted to open the window in her room, kneel up on the window seat and cry out for someone in Shancarrig to help them all.

But she bit her lip.

'I have to go down now, Leo,' he said.

It was as if they were allies. Allies to protect a strange silent mother downstairs who wasn't speaking in her ordinary voice.

She used to play that game of 'if.

If I get up the stairs before the grandfather clock in the hall stops striking then Mrs Kelly won't be in a bad mood tomorrow. If the crocuses come up in front of the house by Tuesday I'll get a letter from Harry and James.

Now she sat in the dark bedroom with her arms around her knees. If I don't get out of bed it will be all right. Dr Jims will come and say he wasn't dead at all. If he is really dead then Father Gunn will say it wasn't Mother's fault.

If I don't get out of bed at all and if I sit like this all night without moving then it'll turn out not to have happened at all.

She woke in the morning stiff and awkward. She hadn't managed to stay awake. Now the charm wouldn't work. It bad happened, all of it. There was no point in holding her knees any more. None of it was going to work.

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How could it be an ordinary day? A sunny day with Lance and Jessie rushing around outside, with Mattie the postman cycling up the drive, with smells of breakfast coming from downstairs.

Leo got out of bed and looked at her face in the wardrobe mirror. It was grey white and there were shadows under her frightened grey-green eyes. Her curly hair stood upright over her head.

She pulled on the clothes she had thrown on the floor last night, last night when Daddy had been standing with his frightened face.

At that moment the door opened and Mother came in. A different Mother from last night. Mother was dressed in a blue linen suit, her hair was combed, she wore her pink lipstick and she looked bright and enthusiastic.

'I have the most wonderful news,' she said.

Leo felt the colour rushing to her cheeks. The man wasn't dead. Dr Jims had cured him.

Before she could speak Mother had opened the wardrobe door and started to take out some of Leo's frocks.

'We're going on a holiday, all three of us,' she said. 'Your father and I suddenly decided that this was what we all needed. Now, isn't that a lovely surprise?'

'But...' Leo's voice dried in her throat.

'But we have to get going just after breakfast, it's a long drive.'

'Are we running away?' Leo's voice was a whisper.

'For a whole week we are ... now, where are your bathing togs? We're going to a lovely hotel on a cliff, and we'll be able to run down and have a swim before breakfast every day. Imagine.'

Her father didn't catch her eye at breakfast, and Leo knew that she must not mention the events of last night. Her father had somehow bought the right for both of them to run away with Mother. That's what was happening.

They heard a knock at the back door. All three of them looked at each other in alarm, but it was Ned, who did the garden. Leo heard her father explaining about the sudden holiday ... and giving instructions.

The glasshouses were in a terrible state — if Ned could concentrate entirely on clearing them, and sorting out what was to be done...

'And what about the rockery, Major, sir?'

'It's very important that you leave that. There's a man coming down from the Botanic Gardens in Dublin to have a look at it. He said nothing was to be touched until he came.'

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'I'm glad of that.' Ned sounded relieved. Will I fill in the hole we dug?'

'Oh, we've done that already ...'

If Ned was surprised that a man with war injuries, and his frail wife, had covered in a pit that it had taken him two days to dig, he showed no sign of it.

'I'll leave it as it is then, Major, sir?'

'Just as it is, Ned. No disturbing it at all.'

Leo felt a cold horror spread all over her.

The memory of last night, hugging her knees in the dark. The sound of footsteps, of low urgent voices, of dragging and pulling. But her mother was calm as she listened to the conversation at the back door, and even laughed when Daddy came back into the room.

'Well, I expect that was welcome news for our Ned. Anything that he hasn't to do must come as a pleasant surprise.'

Leo beat back the wild fears.

Often her dreams seemed real to her ... more real than ordinary life. This is what must be happening now. There was another knock at the door. Again the look of alarm was exchanged.

This time it was Foxy Dunne.

"ifes, Foxy?' Leo's father was unenthusiastic.

'How are you?' Foxy never addressed people by title. He wouldn't greet the priest as Father and he certainly wouldn't call Leo's father Major.

'I'm fine thank you, Foxy. How are you?'

'Great altogether. I came to say goodbye to Leo.'

Suddenly her father's voice sounded wary. 'And how, might I ask, did you know that she was going away?'

'I didn't.' Foxy was cheerful. 'I'm going away myself, that's why I came to say goodbye.'

'Well, I suppose you'd better come in.'

Foxy walked easily through the scullery and the kitchen and into the breakfast room.

'How're ya?' he said, nodding easily at Leo's mother.

She smiled at the small boy with the freckles and the red hair, the one Dunne boy that poverty and neglect had never managed to defeat.

'And where are you off to?' she asked politely.

Foxy ignored her and addressed Leo. 'I'm off to London, Leo. I didn't think I'd ever be able to do it. I thought I'd be hanging around here like an eejit, dragging a brush around someone's shop.'

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'You're too young to go to England.'

'They won't ask. All they want is someone to make tea on a site.'

'Will you be frightened?'

'After my old fellow and Maura Brennan's old fellow? Both of them coming home drunk and both of them trying to beat me up ... how could I be frightened?'

He talked as if Leo's parents weren't there. It wasn't deliberately rude, it was just that he didn't see them.

'Will you ever come back to Shancarrig again?'

'I'll come home every Christmas with fistfuls of pound notes, like everyone else on the buildings.'

Major Murphy asked whether Foxy would learn a trade.

'I'll learn everything,' Foxy told him.

'No, I mean a skilled trade, you know, an honourable trade, like a bricklayer ... It would be very good to serve your time, to do an apprenticeship.'

'It'll be that all right.' Foxy didn't even look at the man, let alone heed him.

'Will you write and tell what it's like?' Leo knew her voice sounded shaky and not full of interest as Foxy would have liked.

'I was never one for the writing, but as I say, I'll see you every Christmas. I'll tell you then.'

'Good luck to you over there.' Leo's mother was standing up from the breakfast table. She was bringing the conversation to a close.

Foxy gave her a long look.

'Yeah. I suppose I'll need a bit of luck all right. But it's more a matter of working and letting them know you can work.'

'You're only a child. Don't let them ruin your health, tell them you're not able for heavy work.' The Major was kind.

But Foxy was having none of it. 'I'll tell them I'm seventeen. That's how I'll get on. Seventeen, and a bit stunted.' He was going in his own time, not in Mrs Murphy's. 'I'll see you at Christmas, Leo,' he said, and went.

Leo saw him fondling the ears of Lance, and throwing a stick for Jessie.

Other people were in awe of the two loudly barking labradors. Not Foxy Dunne.

She thought of him a few times during their holiday, that strange time in a faraway hotel, where there was nothing whatsoever for her to do

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except read the books that were in the library. Sometimes she walked with her father and mother along the sandy beaches, collecting cowrie shells. But usually she left Mother and Father to walk alone, with the dogs. They seemed very close together, sometimes even holding hands as Father limped along, and Mother sometimes bent to pick up some driftwood and throw it out into the sea so that Lance and Jessie could struggle to bring it back.

She didn't sleep too well at night in the small room with the diamond-shaped panes of glass in the window. The roar of the Atlantic Ocean down below the cliffs was very insistent. The stars looked different here from the way they looked in Shancarrig when she'd sit on her window seat and watch at night - the familiar garden of The Glen, the lilacs, the shrubbery down to the big iron gates and the gate lodge.

She shivered when she thought of the gate lodge. She had not been able to look at it as they had driven past on the morning they had left home. She dreaded seeing it again when she went back, but she wanted to be away from this strange dreamlike place too, this holiday that never should have been.

Biddy would be at home now in The Glen. What might have happened? What might she have found? Yet neither Father nor Mother telephoned her or seemed remotely worried.

Leo felt a constriction in her throat. She couldn't eat the food that was put in front of her.

'My daughter hasn't been well. It has nothing to do with your lovely food.'

Leo looked at her mother in disbelief. How could she lie so easily and in such a matter-of-fact voice? If she could do that she could lie about anything. Nothing was as it used to be any more.

Leo was very afraid. She wanted a friend. Not Nessa whose eyes would widen in horror. Not Eddie Barton who would retreat into his woods, and his flowers, and his drawings. Not Niall Hayes who would say it was typical of grown-ups - they never did anything you could rely on.

She couldn't tell Father Gunn, not even in confession. Maura Brennan would be more frightened than she was herself.

For a moment she thought of Foxy Dunne, but even if he were at home he wasn't the kind of person you could tell. She wondered how he was standing up to life on a big building site in London. Did he seriously think that people would believe

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he was seventeen? But he was always so cocky, so confident, maybe they would.

She looked away to the other side of the car as they drove back in through the gates of The Glen. It was as if she was afraid that the door of the gate lodge would be swinging wide open and that Sergeant Keane and a lot of guards would be there waiting for them.

But everything was as it always had been. The dogs raced around, happy to be home and no longer cooped up in the station wagon. Biddy was bustling around full of interest in their sudden holiday. Old Ned, who was sitting smoking in the glasshouse, busied himself suddenly.

There had been no news, Biddy said. Everything had gone fine. There was a letter from Master Harry and Master James, and some other parcel that didn't have enough stamps on it and Mattie wanted money paid.

There had been cross words with the butcher because they had delivered the Sunday joint of beef as usual and been annoyed when told that the family were on holidays. Sergeant Keane had been up to know if there was any word of one of the tinkers who had gone missing.

Biddy had given them all short shrift.

She had told Mattie that enough money had been spent on stamps to and from this house for him to feel embarrassed even mentioning the question of underpayment. He had slunk away, as well he might. The butcher had felt the lash of Biddy's tongue as she told them that the new frontage on the shop had been paid for with money that Major Murphy and his family had spent on the best of meat, they should be ashamed to grumble.

She asked Sergeant Keane what he could have been thinking of to imagine that a tinker boy could even have crossed the lawns of The Glen.

At first Leo didn't want to meet anyone. She wanted to stay half sitting, half kneeling on her window seat, looking out to where the dogs played, and old Ned made feeble attempts at hoeing, to where her father walked with his halting movements out to meet Mr Hayes, and where Mother drifted, her straw hat in her hand, through the shrubbery and past the lilacs.

No man came from the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin to deal with

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the rockery that they had planned on top of the great pit that had been filled in.

When Mr O'Neill, the auctioneer from the big town, came to inquire whether they would be interested in letting the gate lodge, Leo's father and mother said not just now, some time certainly, but at the moment everything was quite undecided — perhaps one of the boys might come home and live in it.

There had never been any question of Harry or James coming back. Leo realised it was one more of these easy lies her mother told, like when she had told the people at the hotel that Leo had been unwell and that was why she hadn't been able to eat her meals.

One day Maura Brennan from school came and asked for a job as a maid in the house. She said she had to work somewhere and why not for someone like Leo, whom she liked. Leo had been awkward and frightened that day. It seemed another example of the world going mad: Maura, who had sat beside her at school, wanting to come and scrub floors in their house because that was the way things were.

But as the days turned into weeks Leo got the courage to leave The Glen. She called on Eddie Barton and his mother. They spoke to her as if things were normal. She began to believe they were. There was an ill-written postcard from London saying 'Wish you were here'. She knew it was from Foxy, though it didn't say. And one Saturday at Confession Father Gunn had asked her was there anything troubling her.

Leo's heart leapt into her throat.

'Why do you ask that, Father?' she said in a whisper.

"You seem nervous, my child. If there's anything you want to say to me, remember you're saying it to God through me.'

'I know, Father.'

'So, if there is any worry ...'

'I am worried about something, but it's not my worry, it's someone else's worry.'

'Is it your sin, my child?'

'No, Father. No. Not at all. It's just that I can't understand it. You see, it has to do with grown-ups.'

There was a silence.

Father Gunn was digesting this. He assumed that it was to do with a child's perception of adult sexuality and all the loathing and embarrassment that this could bring.

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'Perhaps all these things will become clear later,' he said soothingly

'So, I shouldn't worry, do you think, Father-*'

'Not if it's something you have no control over, my child, something where it would not be appropriate for you to be involved,' said the priest

Leo felt much better She said her three Hail Marys, penance for her other small sins, and put the biggest thing as far to the back of her mind as possible After all, the priest said that God would make it clear later, now was not the appropriate time to worry about it

As she prepared for her years in the convent school in the town she tried to make life in The Glen seem normal She had joined their game She was pretending that nothing had ever happened on that summer evening when the world stopped

Leo started to go down the hill to meet the people she had been at school with once more — her friend Nessa Ryan in the hotel, whose mother always found work for idle hands — Sheila and Eileen Blake, who were home from a posh boarding school and kept asking could they come and play tennis at The Glen Leo told them the court needed a lot of work She realised she was lying as smoothly as her mother these days She met Niall Hayes, who told her that he thought he was in love

'Everyone's doing everything too young,' Leo said reprovingly 'Foxy's too young to be going to England to work, you're too young to be in love Who is it anyway'''

He didn't say Leo thought it might be Nessa But no, surely not⁵ He lived across the road from Nessa, he had known her all his life That couldn't be what falling in love was like It was too confusing

She met Nancy Finn from the pub Nancy was what they called a bold strap in Shancarrig She was fifteen and had been accused of being forward and giving people the eye Sometimes she helped serve behind the counter It was a rough sort of place

Nancy said she'd really love to go to America and work as a cocktail waitress That was her goal but her father said it was lunacy Nancy said her father, Johnny Finn Noted for Best Drinks, was fed up The guards had been in every night for three weeks asking was there any brawl between tinkers and anyone, and her father said he wouldn't let a bloody tinker in the door Sergeant Keane said that was a very unchristian attitude, and Nancy's father had said the guards would

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have another tune to play if he did let the tinkers in and took their money, so there had been hard words and the upshot was that the guards were watching Johnny Finn's pub night after night, ready to pounce if anyone was left with a drink in front of them for thirty seconds beyond the licensing hours

The summer ended and a new life began, a life of getting the bus every day into school in the big town The bus bounced along the roads through villages and woods, and stopped at junctions and crossroads where people came down long narrow tracks to the mam road Leo and Nessa Ryan learned their homework to the rhythm of the bus crossing the country side They heard each other's poems, they puzzled out theorems and algebra Often they didn't even look out the window at the countryside passing by

Sometimes Leo seemed as if she was looking out at the scenery Anyone watching her would think that there was a dreamy schoolgirl looking out at the fields with the cattle grazing, the colours changing from season to season in the hedges and clusters of bushes that they passed

But Leo Murphy's e^es might not have been focusing on these things at all Her thoughts were often on her mother Her pale delicate mother, who wandered more often through the gardens of The Glen no matter what the weather, with empty eyes, talking softly to herself

Leo had seen her mother sit under the lilac tree picking the great purple flowers apart absently in her lap and crooning to herself, 'You had lilac eyes, Danny Your eyes were like deep Mac Your eyes are closed now'

She spoke of Danny too when she half sat and half lay over the rockery Every da\, rain or shine, she tended it, and a weed could hardly put its head out before Mrs Murphy had snapped it away

'At least I kept your grave for you, Danny boy,' she would cry 'You can never say I didn't put flowers on your grave No man in Ireland got more flowers '

The first time Leo heard her mother speak like this she was frozen with horror It was a known fact that the missing tinker was Danny His family had told people that he must have a girl in Shancarng He used to be gone from the camp for long periods, and when he'd come back he was always smiling and saying nothing There was the question he might have run off with someone from the locality Sergeant Keane had assured the travellers that there were no unexplained

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disappearances of any of the girls of the village; he had made inquiries and there was no one missing from the area.

'No one except Danny,' said Mrs McDonagh, the sad-looking woman with the dark, lined face who was Danny's mother.

Leo heard all this from other people. Nessa Ryan heard it discussed a lot in the hotel, and reported it word for word. It was the only exciting thing that had happened in their lives. She couldn't understand why her friend Leo wasn't interested in it, and wouldn't speculate like everyone else about what might have happened.

The months went by and Leo's mother became less in touch with reality.

Leo had stopped trying to talk to her about school, and everyday things. Instead she spoke as if her mother was an invalid.

'How do you feel today, Mother?'

'Well ... I don't know, I really don't know.' She spoke in a dull voice. The woman who used to be so elegant and graceful, the mother who would plan a picnic, correct bad grammar or a mispronounced word with cries of horror ... that had all gone.

She barely touched her food, just smiled vaguely at Father, and Leo, and at Biddy as if they were people she used to know. She spoke to the dogs, Lance and Jessie, no longer the big gambolling pups, but more stately with years. She reminded them of how they had known Danny, and they would stand guard over his grave.

Biddy must have heard it. She would have had to be deaf not to have known what she was talking about.

But the conspiracy continued.

Mrs Murphy had been feeling under the weather, surely now the longer days, or the bright weather, or the good crisp winter without any damp ... whichever season ... she would show an improvement.

Old Ned had been pensioned off. Eddie Barton came and cut the grass sometimes, but there was nobody coming to do the gardens as they should have been done. Sometimes Leo and her father would struggle, but it was beyond them. Only the rockery bloomed. Mrs Murphy wandered outside The Glen with her secateurs in her pocket and took cuttings for it, or even dug up little plants that she thought might flourish.

In the increasingly jungle-like gardens of The Glen the rockery bloomed as a monument, as a memorial.

In her efforts to keep her mother out of anyone else's sight and hearing, Leo pieced together the story of horror, of what had happened

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in those weeks when she was fourteen and had understood nothing of the world. Those weeks before her world changed.

Mother remembered not only Danny's lilac eyes but his strong arms, and his young body. She remembered his laughter and his impatience and greed to have her, over and over. With a sick stomach Leo listened to her mother remembering and crying for a lost love. She hated the childlike coquettish enthusiasm in her mother's face when she spoke of the man she had welcomed on the mossy earth, in her bedroom on the rug, under the lilac trees, and in the gate lodge.

But it was when she mentioned the gate lodge that her face would harden and her questioning take a different turn. Why did he have to be so greedy? What did he need with silver? Why had he demanded to take their treasures? What did he mean that he needed something to trade, some goods to deal in as they went towards Galway? Had he not taken her, was that not the greatest treasure of all? Miriam Murphy's eyes were like stone when she went through that part of the story of the last time they had met ... of the silver he had wrapped in a tablecloth as he had roamed through the house, touching things, taking this, leaving that. She had begged him and pleaded.

'Say there was a robbery ... say you came back and found it all gone.' His lilac eyes had laughed at her.

'I told him he must not go, he had been sent to me, and he could not leave.'

Leo knew the chant off by heart, she could say it with her mother as the woman stroked the earth of the rockery.

'You wouldn't listen, Danny. You called me old. You said you had given me my fun and my loving and that I should be grateful.

'You said you'd take some guns, that we had no need of them, but in your life you'd need to hunt in the forest... I asked you to take me with you ... and you laughed, and you called me old. I couldn't let you leave, I had to keep you here, and that was why ...' Her mother would smile then, and stroke the earth again. 'And you are here, Danny Boy. You'll never leave me now.'

Leo had known for years why her father had struggled that night, dragging and pulling with his wounds aching and his useless leg trailing behind. He knew why this woman had to be protected from telling this sing-song tale to the law. And Leo knew too.

At school they thought her a tense child. They spoke to her father about her since Mrs Murphy, the mother, never made any appearance.

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Mother Dorothy, who was wise in the ways of the world, decided that the mother might have a drink problem. It had to be. Otherwise she'd have come in some time. Very tough on the child, a nice girl, but with a shell on her as hard as rock.

Leo told Father Gunn that Mother wasn't all that well, and that if they didn't see her at mass he wasn't to take any wrong meaning out of it.

Father Gunn asked would she like the sacraments brought up to The Glen.

'I'm not too sure, Father.' Leo bit her lip.

Father Gunn also knew the ways of the world.

'Why don't we leave it for the moment?' he suggested. 'And if there's any change in that department then all you have to do is ask me.'

Leo thought to herself that in Shancarrig it was really quite easy to hide anything from anybody.

Or maybe it was only if you happened to live in The Glen, a big house surrounded by high walls, with its own gardens and shrubberies and gate lodge.

It might be different trying to keep your secrets if you lived in the cottages down by the river, or in The Terrace with everyone seeing your front entrance, or in the hotel with half of Shancarrig in and out of your doors every day.

She felt watchful about her mother, but not always on edge. No long-term anxiety like that can be felt at the pain level all the time. There were many hours when Leo didn't even think about her mother's telling and re-telling the story. There were the school outings, there were the parties, the times when Niall Hayes kissed her and their noses kept bumping, and later when quite suddenly Richard Hayes, who was Mall's older cousin, kissed her and there was no nose-bumping at all.

Richard Hayes was very handsome, he had stirred the place up since he arrived. Leo felt sorry for Niall because deep in her heart she thought Niall still had a very soft spot for Nessa, and Nessa was of course crazy about the new arrival in town.

And it had to be said that Richard was paying a lot of attention to Nessa. There were walks, drives and trips to the pictures in the town. Leo thought he was rather dangerous, but then she shrugged. Who was she to know? Her views on love and attraction were extremely suspect.

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Some of the girls at school were going to be nurses; they had applied to hospitals in Dublin and in Britain for places.

'Should I be a nurse, Daddy?' she asked.

They were walking, as they often did in the evening. Mother was safely talking to the rockery, and if you counted Biddy as the silent rock she had been for three long years, then there was no one around to hear the chant that had begun again.

'Would you like to be a nurse?'

'Only if it would help.'

Her father looked old and grey. Much of his time was spent persuading his sons not to come back to Shancarrig, and telling them that their mother was in poor mental health.

Naturally they had written and asked why was nothing being done about this. They had written to Dr Jims, which Major Murphy thought an outrageous interference. But fortunately Jims Blake had agreed with him that arrogant young men thought they knew everything. If Frank Murphy said there was nothing wrong with Miriam, then that was that. The doctor had seen the thin pale face and the over-brilliant eyes of Miriam Murphy, always a fairly obsessional person he would have thought, checking light switches, refusing to throw out old papers. This is what he had noticed on his visits to The Glen, and assumed that like many a nervy woman there was nothing asked and therefore nothing that could be answered. This was not a household where he would be asked to refer her to a psychiatrist in order to work out the cause of the unease. At least he wasn't being asked for ever-increasing prescriptions of tranquillisers or sleeping pills. This in itself was something to be thankful for.

Foxy Dunne came home every Christmas as he had promised. When he arrived on his first visit home, wearing a new zippered jacket with a tartan lining, at the back door of The Glen, he was surprised at the frostiness of his reception. Not that he had ever been warmly welcomed there, but this was out of that league ... 'Well, tell my friend Leo. She knows where I live,' he said haughtily to Biddy.

'And I'm sure, like everyone, she knows only too well where the Dunnes live and would want to avoid it,' Biddy said.

Leo had heard. She called to the Dunnes' cottage that afternoon.

'I came to ask if you'd like to go for a walk in Barna Woods,' she said.

Foxy looked very pleased. He was at a loss for words. The quick shrugging reaction or the smart joke deserted him.

"Well, I won't ask you into my house either,' he said. 'Let's go and be babes in the wood.'

He told her of living in a house with eleven men from their own country. He told her of the drinking and how so many of them spent everything they had nearly killed themselves earning.

'Why do you stay there?' she asked.

'To learn ... to save. But mainly to learn.'

'What can you learn from old men like that drinking their lives away?'

'I can learn what not to do, I suppose, or how it could have been done right.'

Foxy sat on a fallen tree and told her about the chances, the men who had made it, the small contractors who did things right and did them quickly. He told her how you had to watch out for the fellow who was a great electrician, a good plumber, a couple of bright brickies, a class carpenter. Then all you needed was someone to get them together and you had your own team — someone who had a head for figures, someone who could cost a job and make the contacts.

'And who would you get to do that?' She was genuinely interested.

'God, Leo, that's what I'm going to do. That's what it's all about,' he said.

She felt ashamed that she hadn't the confidence in him.

'Did you know my father was in gaol?' he asked defensively.

'I heard. I think Biddy told me.'

'She would have.'

She was torn between being sympathetic and telling him it didn't matter.

'Did he hate it?' she asked.

'I don't know, he doesn't talk to me. He should have been there longer. He hit a fellow with a plank that had nails in it. He's dangerous.'

"You're not like that,' she said suddenly.

'I know, but I didn't want you to forget where I come from.'

'You are what you are, so am I.'

'And do you have any tales to tell me?' he asked.

'No. Why?' Her voice was clipped.

He shrugged. It was as if he had been offering her the chance to trade confessions.

But he didn't know they were not equal confessions. What his father

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had done was known the length and breadth of the county. What her mother had done was known by only three people.

He looked at her for a while, as if waiting.

Then he said, 'No reason, no reason at all.'

She saw him looking at her, with her belted raincoat, hands stuck deep in her pockets. The wind made her cheeks red. Her red-gold curls stood out around her head like a furze. She felt he was looking straight through her, that he could see everything, knew everything.

'I hate my hair,' she said suddenly.

'It's like a halo,' he said.

And she grinned.

Every Christmas he came home. He called to The Glen and she would take him walking. For the week that he was home they would meet every day.

Nessa Ryan was very disapproving. "You do know his father was in gaol,' she told Leo.

'I do,' Leo sighed. She had heard it all from Biddy, over and over.

'I'd be surprised you'd go walking with him, then.'

'I know you would.' Leo had heard the same thing from her father. But that particular time she had answered back. 'Well, if everyone knew about us, Daddy, maybe people wouldn't want to go walking with us either.' Her father looked as if she had struck him. Immediately she had repented. 'I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it ... I just think that Foxy is lonely when he comes home. I don't ask him in here. I'm seventeen, nearly eighteen, Daddy. Why can't we let people alone? We, of all people?'

Her father had tears in his eyes. 'Go and walk with whoever you like in the woods,' he had said, his voice choked.

That was the Christmas when Foxy told her that he was on the way to the big time. He was working with two others. They were setting up their own contracts, they would hire men, get a team together. No more working for cheats and fellows who took all the profit.

'I'll soon have enough saved to come back a rich man,' he said. 'Then I'll drive up your avenue in a big car, hand my coat and gloves to Biddy, and ask your father for your hand in marriage. Your mother will take out the sherry and plan your wedding dress.'

'I'll never marry,' Leo told him.

'You sure as anything didn't take my advice about getting trained for a career or a job,' he said.

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'I can't leave The Glen.'

'Will you tell me why?' His eyes still had that power to look as if they could see right through her, and know everything. 'I will, one day,' she promised, and she knew she would.

This year at least she had an address for Foxy. She wrote to him, he sent a very short note back.

'Why don't you learn to type, Leo? Your writing is worse than my own. We can't have that when we're in the big time, neither of us able to write a letter.'

She laughed.

She didn't tell Nessa Ryan that she had just got a sort of proposal from Foxy Dunne.

She didn't tell her parents.

Her mother died on an autumn night. They said it was of exposure. Her lungs filled up with the damp night air and, added to a chest infection ... There was no hope for a woman whose health had always been so frail.

She had been found in her nightdress, lying over the rockery in the garden.

The church was crowded. Major Murphy asked people to come back to Ryan's Hotel for a drink and some sandwiches afterwards. This was very unusual and had never been known in Shancarrig. But he said that The Glen was too sad for him and for Leo just now. He was sure people would understand.

Then Leo went to the town every day on the bus and learned to type in the big secretarial college where Nessa had done a course.

'Why couldn't you have done it with me?' Nessa grumbled.

'It wasn't the right time.'

There had been no note from Foxy Dunne about her mother's death.

She didn't write to tell him. Surely some member of his awful family was in touch, surely there would have been a mention that Mrs Murphy of The Glen had been found dead in her nightdress, and that her wits must have been astray. Everyone else knew about it.

When he came back at Christmas it was clear that he hadn't known. He was sympathetic and sad.

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She asked him in, not to the breakfast room but the drawing room. Together they lit the fire.

The old dogs lay down, pleased that the room was being opened up.

Biddy was beyond complaining now. Too much had happened in this house. That Foxy Dunne be invited into the Major's drawing room seemed minor these days.

He told Leo of his plans. He had seen so much in England of how places could be developed. Take The Glen. They could sell off most of the land, build maybe eight houses, and still keep their own home.

'I expect your father would like that,' he said.

Outside they could see the sad lonely figure of Major Murphy walking up and down to the gate and back in the darkening evening.

'We can never sell the land,' Leo said.

'Is this part of what you told me you'd tell me one day?'

Tes.'

'Are you ready to tell me now?'

'No. Not yet, Foxy.'

'Does your mother's death not make it different?' Again that feeling that he knew everything.

'No. You see, Daddy still lives here. Nothing could be ... interfered with.'

She thought of the big diggers, the excavators, the rockery going, as it would one day, when The Glen would disappear like so much of Ireland, and make way for houses for the Irish who were coming back to live in their own land, having worked hard in other countries.

People like Foxy coming back to their inheritances.

The body of Danny McDonagh which had lain so long under its mausoleum of flowers would be disturbed. The questions would be asked.

'We're over twenty-one. We can do what we like,' he said.

'I could always do what I liked, for all the good it did me.'

'So could I,' he answered her with spirit. 'And it did me a lot of good. I never wanted anyone else but you, not since we were children. What did you want?'

'I wanted to be safe,' she said.

He promised her that was exactly what he would do for her. They talked a little that night, and more the next day in Barna Woods. He left her at the gate of The Glen, and saw her look away from the gate house.

'Something happened here,' he said.

'I always knew you had second sight.'

'Tell me, Leo. We're not people to have secrets from each other.'

Through the window of The Glen they could see her father sitting at the drawing-room fire. He must have got the idea of sitting in that room after seeing them there yesterday. She told Foxy the story.

'Let's get the key,' he said.

She went through the kitchen and took it from the rack in the hall. Together, with candles, they walked through the gate lodge, a blameless place that didn't know what had happened there.

He raised her face towards him and looked into her eyes.

"Your hair is like a halo again. You're doing it to drive me mad,' he said.

'Don't you see all the problems, all the terrible problems?'

'I see nothing that won't be solved by a load of concrete on where that rockery stands now,' Foxy Dunne said.

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A STONE

HOUSE AND

A BIG TREE

The decision to close the school was known in 1969; National Schools all over Ireland were giving way to Community Schools in the towns. But still it was a shock to see the building advertised for sale in the summer of 1970.

FOR SALE

Traditional stone schoolhouse. Built 1899. School accommodation comprises three large classrooms, toilet facilities and outer hall. Accompanying cottage: two bedrooms,

one livingroom/ kitchen with Stanley range.

For sale by Public Auction June 2flh if not disposed of by Private Treaty. Auctioneers: O'Neill and Blake.

Nessa and Niall Hayes read it over breakfast.

From their dining room they could look over at Ryan's Shancarrig Hotel and see the early tour buses leaving on their excursions. Nessa worked flexible hours across the road in her family business. Neither of her sisters had shown any interest in hotel work.

'They will when they see there's money in it,' her mother had said darkly.

'Imagine the school for sale. We'd never have thought that possible.' Niall was thirty now. Nobody ever referred to him as young Mr Hayes any more, in fact his father took the back seat in almost every aspect of the business nowadays.

'What's not possible?" Danny Hayes was four, and very inquisitive. He loved long words and would pronounce them carefully.

That you're not going to go to the same school we went to.' Nessa wiped his chin expertly of the runny bits of egg. "You'll go on a big yellow bus to school. You won't walk over the bridge like we did.'

'Can I go today?' Danny asked.

'After Christmas,' Nessa promised.

'Won't he be a bit young?' Niall looked worried.

'If your mother had had her way you wouldn't have been allowed up the road to Shancarrig school until you were twenty.' There was a laugh in Nessa's voice, but also a tinge of bitterness.

It had not been quite as simple moving into The Terrace as she had thought it would be. Although her father-in-law had handed over the reins quite willingly to his son, Ethel Hayes had been less anxious to let go the gloomy rein over the family.

There were dire warnings of pneumonia, rheumatic fever, spoiled children, temper tantrums, all directed at Nessa. Danny and Brenda

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would suffer for it all later, was Mrs Hayes's prediction - the children were allowed too much freedom, too little discipline, and a severe absence of cod liver oil.

'Would we buy it?' Nessa asked suddenly.

'What on earth for?' Niall was genuinely surprised.

'To live in. It would be a great place for the children to play ... the tree and everything. It would be lovely.'

'I don't know.' Niall bit his lip. It was his usual reaction to a new idea, to something totally unexpected.

Nessa knew him well enough.

'Well, let's not think about it now. It's a month to the auction,' she said.

Deftly she forced Danny to finish his egg and toast by cutting it into tiny cubes and eating one alternately with him. She settled Brenda into her carrycot. Niall was still sitting at his place pondering the bombshell.

'It's only an idea,' Nessa said airily. 'But if you're talking to Declan Blake at all, ask him how much he thinks they'll get for it.'

Niall looked out of the window, and saw Nessa moving into her parents' hotel. The carrycot was taken from her at the door by the porter. Danny had run to the hotel back yard where Nessa and her mother had built a sandpit, and swings and a see-saw to entertain the children who came to stay.

It had been yet one more excellent marketing notion for Ryan's Shancarrig Hotel.

Jim and Nora Kelly read it in Galway. They were staying with Maria and Hugh. They had wanted to be away when it was announced and by wonderful chance it coincided with the very time they were badly needed. Maria's first baby was due. She wanted her parents to be with her.

'It's the end of an era,' Maria said. 'There must be people all over Ireland saying that.'

'Not only Ireland - didn't our people go all over the world?' Jim Kelly said.

He was fifty years of age, and had been re-employed in the school in the town. It wasn't the same of course, nothing would ever be the same. But he knew a great number of the children, and he came trailing clouds of respect. A man who had run his own show, even in a small village, was a man to be reckoned with.

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Nora had taken early retirement. And taken many a train to visit Maria over on the Atlantic coast. They walked along the beach together, the pregnant girl and the woman who was as good as her mother, with so much to say. Jim was pleased that his wife had taken the closing of the school so well. It might have been too much of a change for her to have gone to teach in the town.

Maria patted her stomach. 'It'll be so strange that she won't know the place as a school,' she said wonderingly.

'Or he. Remember, you could have a boy.' Jim Kelly knew that none of them minded whether it was a boy or girl.

They were so happy that Maria had found the steady Hugh after a series of wilder boyfriends had broken their hearts. Hugh seemed to know how much Maria needed her background in Shancarrig; he was always finding excuses to bring her there.

'Still, when the baby's born I'll wheel her ... or him, up to the school and say that this is where Grandpa or Grandma used to live, where every child lived for a while.' Maria looked sad. 'Oh, come on. I'm being stupidly sentimental,' she said with a little shake. 'And anyway, aren't you better off by far living in that fine house near everything, instead of having to toil up and down the hill?'

The Kellys had settled in one of the cottages that had been vastly changed and upgraded. The row of houses by the Grane that had once held the most unruly Brennans and Dunnes were now what young Declan Blake called Highly Des Res material.

'I wish there were going to be children there,' Nora Kelly said. 'I suppose it's unlikely that anyone who has children could afford to buy it, but somehow the place cries out for them. Or am I the one being sentimental now?'

'There'd be nobody local who could think of it.'Jim was ticking off people in his mind.

'Maybe when Hugh makes a fortune we'll buy it ourselves ... and let little Nora play under the copper beech like I did.'

There was a lump in their throats. It hadn't been said that Maria was going to call her child after Nora Kelly.

'I thought maybe Helen after your mother.' Nora felt she should say it anyway.

The second one will be Helen!' said Maria.

And the matter was left there.

Chris Barton read the notice out to her mother-in-law. She always

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called Eddie's mother Una. It was yet another bond between them, the fact that she thought of the older woman as her sister.

'Well, Una. Is this our big chance?' Chris asked. 'Is this the famous opportunity that is meant to present itself to people? A ready-made craft centre ... get Foxy to build a few more outhouses that we could rent out as studios ... is this it or is it madness?'

'You're the one with the courage. I'd still be turning up hems for people and letting out their winter skirts if you hadn't come along.' Mrs Barton declared that she said an extra decade of the rosary every single night of her life to thank the Lord and His Mother for sending Chris to Shancarrig.

'I don't know, I really don't know. I'll ask Eddie. He has a great instinct for these things. We might be running before we can walk, or we might regret it all our lives. I trust his nose for this sort of thing.'

It was true. Mrs Barton realised that her daughter-in-law really did defer to Eddie's instincts and tastes. It wasn't a case of pretending to take his advice like Mrs Ryan in the hotel did, and indeed her daughter young Nessa who was busy pushing Niail Hayes into some kind of confidence. Chris genuinely thought Eddie the brains of the outfit. It made Una Barton's heart soar.

She thought less and less about the husband who had left her all those years ago — a quarter of a century — but sometimes she wished that Ted Barton could know how well his son had done and how splendidly they had managed without him.

Eddie came in holding the twins by the hand. He laughed as he saw his wife and mother automatically reach to protect everything on the table that was in danger of being pulled to the floor.

'Can we leave them with you, Una? I want to talk to Eddie in Barna Woods.'

'The last time you did that you proposed to me. I hope this doesn't mean you're going to leave.' He laughed confidently. He didn't think it was likely.

The children were strapped into their high chairs, and fussed over by their grandmother. Chris and Eddie walked as they so often walked together, shoulders touching, talking so that they finished each other's sentences, at ease with each other and the world. There was nobody in Shancarrig who noticed that Chris had a Scottish accent now, any more than they saw that she had a lame leg and a built-up shoe. She had been there since she was eighteen or nineteen. Part of the scenery.

They sat in the wood and she asked him about the centre. Was it

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exactly the right time? Or was this folly? Her eyes looked at him for an answer and she saw his face light up. He would never have thought of it, he said ... to him it would always have been the school, the place that he had gone, rain or shine, where he had played and studied. Of course it was the answer.

'Would we live there, or just work there?' Chris wondered.

'It would be great for the children.'

'We could sell the pink house.' Chris had always called it that, since the moment she had arrived.

'But my mother?'

'She said she'd leave it to us.'

'Where would she go? She's so used to being beside us ...' Mrs Barton lived in her own little wing of the pink house, beside them but not on top of them.

'She'd come with us, you big nellie. We'd be building a whole lot of places and she could choose the kind of place she'd like. It's no bigger a hill for her to climb than the one that she's been on all her life.'

Eddie's eyes were dancing. 'We could invite people in ... like the pottery couple, or the weavers ...'

"We could have a small shop there, selling everyone's work. Not only ours, but everyone's.'

'Nessa would get them up here from the hotel for a start, and Leo's got all sorts of contacts all over the place.'

'Will we do it?'

They embraced, as they had embraced in these woods years ago at the thought of being married and living happily ever after.

Richard saw the advertisement.

He wondered would whoever bought it cut down the tree in the yard. What would they make of the things that were written on it? He was prepared to bet that his wasn't the only carving that told a story.

He thought about the school all day in the office.

It was a tiring journey home, a lot of traffic. He was hot and tired. He hoped that Vera hadn't arranged anything for tonight. What he really would like to do was ... he paused. He didn't know what he would really like to do. It had been so long since he had allowed himself a thought like that.

He knew what he would really not like to do, and that would be to

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go to the club. Vera might have set up a little evening, a few drinks at the bar, dinner. He would know when he got in. If she had been to the hairdresser this is what she had planned.

He nosed the car into the garage beside Vera's.

Jimmy the gardener was edging the lawn. 'Good evening, Mr Hayes,' he said, touching his forehead.

That looks great, Jimmy. Great work.' Richard knew his voice was automatic; he didn't see what the man had done or what needed to be done. He thought that a full-time gardener was a bit excessive in a Dublin garden.

Still, it was Vera's decision. It was after all she who had bought the house, and filled it with valuable things. It was Vera who made the day-to-day decisions about how they spent the money which was mainly her money.

She was sitting in the conservatory. He noticed sadly that she had been to the hairdresser.

*You look lovely,' he said.

Thank you, darling. I thought we might meet some of the others at the club ... you know, rather than just sitting looking at each other all night?' She smiled.

She was very attractive in her lemon-coloured dress, her blonde upswept hair and her even suntan.

She did not look in her late thirties any more than he did. But unlike him she never seemed to find their life empty. She filled it with acquaintances, parties given, parties attended, a group of what she called like-minded people at the golf club.

Vera had taken their childlessness with what Richard considered a disturbing lack of concern. If the question was ever raised between themselves or when other people were present she always said the same thing. She said that if it happened it did, and if it didn't it didn't. No point in having all those exhaustive tests to discover whose fault it was, as if someone was to blame.

Since Richard knew from the past, only too well from his drama with Olive, that there could be nothing lacking on his side, he wished that Vera would go for an examination. But she refused.

She had the newspaper open in front of her.

'Look! There's a simply lovely place for sale, in that Shancarrig where you spent all those years.'

'I know. I saw it.'

'Should we buy it, do you think? It has tons of potential. It would

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make a nice weekend place, we could have people to stay. You know, it might be fun.'

'No.'

'What do you mean, no?'

'I mean NO, Vera,' he said.

Her face flushed. 'Well, I don't know what you're turning on me for, I only thought you'd like it. I do everything that I think you'd like. It's becoming impossible to please you.'

He moved over to reach for her but she stood up and pulled away.

'Seriously, Richard. Nobody could please you. There isn't a woman on earth that could hold you. Maybe you should never have married, just been a desirable bachelor all your life.' She was very hurt, he could see.

'Please. Please forgive me, I've had a horrible day. I'm tired, that's all. Please, I'm a pig.'

She was softening. 'Have a bath and a drink and we'll go out. You'll feel much better then.'

Tes. Yes, of course. I'm sorry for snapping.' His voice was dead, he could hear it in his own ears.

'And you really don't think we should pick up this little house as a weekend place?'

'No, Vera. No, I wasn't happy there. It wouldn't make me happy to go back.'

'Right. It will never be mentioned again,' she said.

And he knew that she would look for somewhere else, a place where they could invite people for the weekend - fill their life with even more half strangers. Maybe she might even pick on whatever town Gloria had settled in. He knew the Darcys had left Shancarrig not long after he had.

Leo sat in the kitchen of The Glen making a very unsuccessful effort to comb Moore's hair. He had inherited the frizz from his mother and the colour from his father. He was six years old and in the last pageant that Shancarrig school had put on he had been asked to play The Burning Bush. This was apparently his own choice.

Foxy was delighted. Leo was less sure.

Moore Dunne was turning out to be a bigger handful than anyone could have believed. Foxy had insisted on the name. While he worked in England he said that he had discovered it was very classy to use

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one family name added to another. Leo's mother had been Miriam Moore, this had been the Moore household.

Moore's younger sister, Frances, was altogether more tractable. 'We'll liven her up yet,' Foxy had said ominously.

Unlike many of the builders who had returned from England in the prosperous sixties with their savings and their ideas of a quick killing, Foxy Dunne had decided to go the route of befriending rather than alienating architects.

The eight small houses he had built within the grounds of The Glen had a style and a character that was noticeably missing in such similar small developments in other towns. A huge row of semi-mature trees had been planted to give the new houses privacy, but also to maintain the long sweep of The Glen's avenue.

Major Murphy had lived to see his grandchildren but was buried now in the graveyard beside his wife.

From the big drawing room of The Glen Leo ran the ever-increasing building empire that Foxy had set up. All his cousins in the town now worked for him, the cousins who had once barred his father from crossing the doors of their shops. His cousins Brian and Liam waited on his every word and his uncle treated him with huge respect.

Foxy's father was not around to see the fruits of having totally ignored his son. Old Dinny had died in the county home some years previously. Foxy's own brothers, never men to have held down jobs for any notable length of time, most of them with some kind of prison record, were now regarded as remittance men. Small allowances were paid as long as they stayed far away from Shancarrig.

The main alterations that had put Ryan's Shancarrig Hotel on the map for tourism had been done by Foxy Dunne. It was he who had transformed the cottages by the River Grane, his only concession to any sentimentality or revenge having been his own personal presence as they levelled to the ground the house he grew up in.

The church hall, which was the pride of Father Gunn's life, was built by Foxy at such a reduced rate that it might even have been called his gift to the parish.

Foxy kept proper accounts. The books that Leo kept were regularly audited. The leases to the property he bought and sold were handled by his friend Niall Hayes. Maura came up from the gate lodge every day to do some of the housework and to mind the children. As always, her son Michael came with her. Michael was growing up big and strong but with the mind and loving heart of a small child.

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Moore Dunne was particularly fond of him. 'He's much more interesting than other big people,' Moore pronounced.

Leo made sure she told that to Maura.

'I've always thought that myself,' Maura agreed.

Leo and Maura had a cup of tea together every morning before both went to their work — Leo to cope with Foxy's deals and Maura to polish and shine The Glen. Together they looked at the advertisement offering their old school for sale.

'Who would buy it, unless to set up another school?' Maura wondered.

'I'm very much afraid Foxy wants to,' said Leo. He hadn't said it yet, but she knew it was on his mind. It was as if he could never burn out the memory of the way things used to be. Not until he owned the whole town.

They heard the sound of his car outside the door. 'How's Squire Dunne?' he said to his son.

'I'm all right,' said Moore doubtfully.

'Only all right. You should be tip top,' Foxy said.

'Well yes, but I think there's another cat growing inside Flossie.' Moore was delighted.

That's great,' said Foxy. 'It'll be a kitten, or maybe five kittens even.'

'But how are they going to get out?' Moore was puzzled. Maura giggled.

'That's your mother's department,' said Foxy, heading for the office. 'I have to think of other things like planning permissions, son.'

'For the school?' Leo asked.

'Aha, you're there before me,' he said.

She looked at him, small and quick, eager as ever, nowadays dressed in clothes that were made to measure, but still the endearing Foxy of their childhood. She followed him into the room that was once their drawing room, where her father had paced, and her mother had sat distracted, and Lance and Jessie had slept uncaring by the fire.

'Do we need it, Foxy?' she asked.

'What's need?' He put his arms around her shoulders and looked into her eyes.

'Haven't we enough?' she said.

'Love, it's a gold mine. It's made for us. The right kind of cottages, classy stuff, the kind rich Dubliners might even have as a summer place, or for visiting at the weekends. Do them up really well, let Chris

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and Eddie loose on them. Slate floors ... you know the kind of thing.' He looked so eager. He would love the challenge.

Perhaps he was right, it was made for them. Why did she keep thinking he was doing everything just to show? To show some anonymous invisible people who didn't care.

Maddy Ross thought it was wonderful that God moved so mysteriously. Look at how he had closed the school just at exactly the right time for Maddy.

Now she could be quite free to spend all her time with the Family. The wonderful Family of Hope. Madeleine Ross had been a member of the Family of Hope for three years. And it had not been easy.

For one thing there had been all that adverse publicity in the papers about the castle they had been given, and the misunderstanding over the deeds.

There had been no intention at all to defraud or deceive, but the way the papers wrote it all up you'd think that the Family of Hope was some kind of international confidence tricksters' organisation.

And there had been the whole attitude of Father Gunn. Maddy had never really liked Father Gunn, not since that time long ago when he had been so patronising and so judgemental about her friendship with Father Barry. If Father Gunn had been more understanding or open and liberal about the place of Love in God's scheme of things then a lot of events would have worked out differently.

Still, that was water under the bridge. The big problem was Father Gunn's attitude today.

He had said that the Family of Hope was not a wonderful way of doing God's work on earth, that it was a dangerous cult, that it was brainwashing people like Maddy, that God wanted love and honour to be shown to him through the conventional channels of the church.

It was just exactly what you would have expected him to say. It was what people had said to Our Lord when he went to the temple to drive out the scribes and the Pharisees. They had said to him that this wasn't the way. They had been wrong, just as Father Gunn was wrong. But it didn't matter. Father Gunn couldn't rule her life for her. It was 1970 now, it wasn't the bad old days when poor Father Barry could be sent away before he knew his mind to a missionary place where they weren't ready for him.

And Father Gunn didn't know about the insurance policy that Mother had left her. The money she had been going to give to the

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people of Vieja Piedra before they had been abandoned and the work stopped in midstream.

Maddy Ross still walked by herself in Barna Woods and hugged herself thinking of the money she could give to the Family of Hope.

They wanted to buy a place to be their centre.

She had wondered for a long time if there might be anywhere near here. She wanted to live on in Mother's house and near the woods and river that were so dear to her, and held so many memories. And now at last she had found the very place.

The schoolhouse was for sale.

Maura showed the picture of the school to Michael that evening in their little home - the gate lodge of The Glen.

'Do you know where it is, Michael?' she asked.

He held it in both his hands. 'Is my school,' he said.

That's right, Michael. It's your school,' she said and she stroked his head.

Michael had never attended a lesson inside the school, but he had gone sometimes to play with the children in the yard. Maura had often stood, lump in throat, watching him pick up the beech leaves as she had done before him, and all his uncles and aunts — the Brennans who had gone away.

'We might walk up there tonight, Michael, and have a look at it again. Would you like that?'

'Will we have tea early so?' He looked at her anxiously.

'We'll have tea early so,' she agreed.

He "got his own plate and mug, made of Bakelite that wouldn't crack. Michael dropped things sometimes. His mother's china he never touched. Some of it was in a little cabinet that hung on the wall, other pieces were wrapped in tissue paper.

Maura O'Sullivan went to local auctions, always buying bargains in bone china. She never had a full set, or even a half set, but it didn't matter since she didn't ever invite anyone to dine. It was all for her.

They walked past the pink house and waved to the Bartons.

'Can I go in and play with the twins?' Michael said.

'Aren't we going to look at your old school?' They crossed the bridge where the children called out a greeting to Michael, as they had done for many years. And would always do. As long as Maura was there to look after him. Suppose Maura weren't there?

She gave a little shudder.

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At the school she saw Dr Jims and his son Declan. The For Sale sign was there in the sunset. It would look big in other places; under the copper beech it looked tiny.

'Good evening, Doctor.' She was formal.

'Hello, Declan ...' Michael embraced the doctor's son, whom he had known since he was a boy in his pram.

'Changing times,' Dr Jims said. 'Lord, I never thought I'd see this day.'

'Don't be denying me my bit of business, Dad ...' Declan laughed.

They got on so well these days, Maura realised. It must have been that nice girl Ruth that Declan had married. Some people had great luck altogether out of their marriages. But hadn't she got as much love and happiness as anyone had ever got in the whole world?

Michael was looking at the names on the tree. 'Is my name there, Mammy?' he asked.

'If it's not it should be,' Dr Jims said. 'Weren't you here as much as any child in Shancarrig?'

Til write it if you like,' Declan offered.

'What will you put?'

'Let's see. I'll put it near my initials. There, see DB 1961? That's me:'

'You've no heart drawn,' Michael complained.

'I didn't love anyone then,' Declan said. His voice seemed full of emotion. The two of them had made a great production of getting out Declan's penknife and choosing a spot.

Dr Jims said to Maura, 'Are you feeling all right? You're a bit pale.'

'You know me, I worry about things. Nothing maybe ...'

'It's a while since you've been to see me.'

'No, Doctor. Not my health, the future.'

'Ah. There's divil a thing you can do about the future.' Jims Blake smiled at her.

'It's like ... I wonder sometimes in case something happened to me, what would happen ... you know,' Maura looked over at Michael.

'Child, you're not thirty years of age!'

'I am that. Last week.'

'Maura, all I can say is that every mother in Ireland worries about her child. It's both a wonder and a waste. Life goes on.'

'For ordinary people, yes.'

Michael gave a cry of pleasure, and came to tug at her.

'Look at what he's written. Look, Mammy.'

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Declan Blake had drawn a heart, and on one side he had M O'S. On the other he said he was going to put A.U his friends in Shancarrig. 'See what I mean?' said Dr Jims.

Maddy Ross invited Sister Judith of the Family of Hope to come and see the schoolhouse. Sister Judith said it was perfect. She asked how much would it cost. Maddy said she had heard in the area of five thousand pounds. With her mother's insurance policy, Maddy explained, there would be that and plenty more. She would get the deeds drawn up with a solicitor. Not with Niall Hayes. After all, she had taught Niall Hayes at school; it wouldn't be appropriate.

Maria's child was born in Galway. It was a girl. She was to be called Nora. Nora Kelly telephoned Una Barton with the good news. The old habits die hard and they still addressed each other formally.

'Mrs Kelly, I'm so very pleased. I'll make the baby a little dress with smocking on it,' she said.

'Maria'll bring her back to Shancarrig on a triumphal tour, and you'll be the first port of call, Mrs Barton,' she cried. The Kellys inquired about the school and was there any word about buyers.

Mrs Barton paused. She didn't know whether the children wanted it known or not. Still, she couldn't lie to a woman like Mrs Kelly.

'Between ourselves, Eddie and Chris are trying to get the money together, with grants and everything. They hope to turn it into an arts centre.' There was a silence. 'Aren't you pleased to hear that?'

'Yes, yes. It's just I suppose we were hoping there would be children there.'

'But there will. They're going to live there with the twins, and me as well. That's the hope, Mrs Kelly, but it may come to nothing.'

'That would be great, Mrs Barton. I'll say a prayer to St Anne for you. I'd love to think of your grandchildren and mine playing under that tree.'

The Dixons were just driving through when they saw the schoolhouse. They were enchanted by it, and called in to Niall Hayes to inquire more about it.

They found him singularly unhelpful.

'There's an auctioneer's name and telephone number on the sign,' he said brusquely.

'But seeing that you are the local solicitor we thought you'd know,

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might shortcut it a bit.' The Dixons were wealthy Dublin people looking for a weekend home; they were used to shortcutting things a bit.

'There could be a conflict of interests,' Niall Hayes said.

'If you want to buy it then why is the board still up?' asked Mr Dixon

'Good afternoon,' Niall Hayes said.

'Terrifying, these country bumpkins,' said Mrs Dixon, well within his hearing

'We've never fought about anything, Foxy, have we²' Leo said to him in bed

'What do you mean? Our life is one long fight'' he said.

'1 don't want us to buy the school.'

'Give me one good reason.'

'We don't need it, Foxy. Truly we don't. It'd be a hassle.'

He stroked her face, but she got up and sat on the edge of the bed.

'Things are always a hassle, love. That's the fun. That's what it was always about You know that.'

'No This time it's different Lots of others want it too '

'So⁵ We £<?/«.'

'No, not )ust rivals, real people. Chris and Eddie, Nessa and Niall, Miss Ross, and I think Maura has hopes of it.'

'Miss Ross¹' He laughed and rolled around the bed. 'Miss Ross is away with the fames. It would be a kindness not to let her have it'

'But the others' I'm serious.'

'Look. Niall and Nessa are business people, they know about deals. That's what Niall does all day. Same with Chris and Eddie, they'd understand. Some things you go for, some you get.'

Leo began to pace around the room She reminded herself of her parents. They had paced in this house too

She shivered at the thought He was out of bed, concerned. He put a dressing-gown around her shoulders

'I told you Give me one good reason, one real reason, and I'll stop '

'Maura.'

'Aw, come on, Leo, give me a break' Maura hasn't a penny. We practically gave her the gate lodge. Where would she get the money' What would she want it for?'

'I don't know, but she has Michael up there every evening, the two of them staring at it. She wants it for something.'

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'Nessa, come in to me a moment, will you?'

'Why do I always feel like a child, instead of the best help you ever had in this hotel, when you use that tone of voice?' Nessa laughed at her mother.

Brenda Ryan poured them a glass of sherry each, always a sign of something significant.

'Has Daddy gone on the tear?'

'No, cynical child.' They sat compamonably. Nessa waited She knew her mother had something to say.

She was right. Her mother said she was going to give her one piece of advice and then withdraw and let Nessa think about it. She had heard that Nessa and Niall were thinking of buying the schoolhouse as a place to live. Now, there was no way she was going to say how she had heard, nor any need for Nessa to bridle and say it was her own business But all Breda Ryan wanted to put ot> the table, for what it was worth, was the following:

It would be an act of singular folly to leave The Terrace, to abandon that beautiful house )ust because old Ethel was a lighting devil and Nessa didn't feel mistress of her own home The solution was a simple matter of relocation, banishing both parents to the basement.

But not, of course, describing it as that. Describing it in fact as Foxy Dunne and his architect having come up with this amazing idea about making a self-contained flat for the older folk

Nessa fidgeted as she listened

'It's only a matter of time,' her mother told her 'Suppose you went up to the schoolhouse and his parents were dead next year, think how cross you'd be. Losing the high ground like that. Keep the place, don't let them divide it up with his sisters It's the best house in the town '

'I wonder are you right.' Nessa spoke thoughtfully, as to an equal.

Tm right,' said her mother

Eddie came back from his travels He had found enough people to make the whole centre work. Exactly the kind of people they had always wanted to work with, some of whom had known their work too. It was flattering how well Chris and Eddie Barton were becoming known in Ireland.

The next thing was to visit the bank manager.

And the pro|ections

Eddie had asked the potential tenants to write their stories so that he and Chris could work out the costings. He also asked them to tell

what had been successful or unsatisfactory in the previous places they had been.

He and Chris together read their reports.

They read of places where no visitors came because it wasn't near enough to the town, places that the tour buses passed by because there was no time on the itinerary. They learned that it was best to be part of a community, not outside it. They sat together and realised that in many ways the schoolhouse was not the dream location they had thought.

'That's if we take notice of them,' Chris said.

'We have to take notice of them. That's our research.' Eddie's face was sad.

'Aren't we better to know now than after?' Chris said. 'Though it's awful to see a dream go up like that.'

'What do you mean a dream go up like that? Haven't we our eye on Nellie Dunne's place after her time? That place is like a warren at the back.'

She saw Eddie smile again and that pleased her. 'Come on, let's tell Una.' She leapt up and went to Eddie's mother's quarters.

'I don't mind where \ am as long as I'm with the pair of you,' said Mrs Barton. She also told them that she heard that both Foxy Dunne and Niall Hayes were said to have their eye on the school.

'Then we're better off not alienating good friends who happen to be good customers as well,' said Chris. The two women laughed happily, like conspirators.

Father Gunn twisted and turned in his narrow bed. In his mind he was trying to write the letter to the Bishop, the letter that would get him a ruling about the Family of Hope. It now seemed definite that Madeleine Ross had given these sinister people the money to set up a centre in Shancarrig schoolhouse. They would be here in the midst of his parish, taking away his flock, preaching to them, in long robes, by the river.

Please let the Bishop know what to do.

Why had he made all those moves years ago to prevent a scandal? Wouldn't God and the parish have been far better served if that half-cracked Father Brian Barry and that entirely cracked Maddy Ross had been encouraged to run away with each other? None of this desperate mess about the Family of Bloody Hope would ever have happened.

Terry and Nancy Dixon called in on Vera and Richard Hayes's house on their way back home after their ramble.

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'We saw the most perfect schoolhouse. I think we should buy it together,' Terry said. 'It's in that place you worked for a while, Shancarrig.'

'We saw it advertised,' Vera said, glancing at Richard.

'And?' The Dixons looked from one to the other. Richard's eyes were far away.

'Richard said he wasn't happy in Shancarrig.' Vera spoke for him.

Tm not surprised,' said Nancy Dixon. 'But you wouldn't have to mix all that much. It would be just the perfect place to get away from it all. There's a really marvellous tree.'

'A copper beech,' Richard said.

"Yes, that's right. It should go for a song. We talked to the solicitor but he wasn't very forthcoming.'

'That's my uncle,' Richard said.

The Dixons looked embarrassed. They said it was a younger man, must have been his son. Not someone who was going to set the world on fire? they ventured.

Richard wasn't responding. 'They all wrote their names on that tree,' he said.

'Aha! Perhaps you wrote your name on the tree, that's why we can't go back there.' Vera was coquettish.

'No. I never wrote my name there,' Richard said. His eyes were still very far away.

'Is there much interest from Dublin?' Dr Jims asked his son.

'No, I thought there'd be more. Maybe if we advertised it again.'

The two men walked regularly together in Shancarrig. Declan and Ruth were having a house built there now. They didn't want the place in The Terrace. They wanted somewhere with more space, space for rabbits and a donkey, for the children they would have. Ruth was pregnant. They also felt that it was time to have a sub-office of O'Neill and Blake Estate Agents in Shancarrig. Many of the visitors who came to Ryan's Shancarrig Hotel now wanted to buy sites. Foxy Dunne was only too ready to build on them.

'What will it go for?' Dr Jims had the school on his mind a lot.

'We've had an offer of five. You know that.' Declan Blake jerked his head across at Maddy Ross's cottage.

'We don't want them, Declan.'

'I can't play God, Dad. I have to get the best price for my client.'

Tour client is only the old Department of Education, son. They're

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being done left, right and centre, or making killings all over the place. They don't count.'

"You're honourable in your trade. I have to be in mine.'

'I'm also human in mine.' There was a silence.

If either of them was remembering how Dr Jims had bent the rules to help his son all those years ago neither of them said it.

'Perhaps they'll get outbidden.' Declan didn't seem very hopeful.

'Has Niall Hayes dropped out?'

Yes. And Foxy Dunne - that's a relief in a way. And so has Eddie. I wouldn't want them raising the price on each other.'

'There. You do have a heart.' Dr Jims seemed pleased.

'And nobody else?'

'Nobody serious.'

'Who knows what's serious?'

'All right, Dad. Maura. Michael's mother. She says that she wants the place to be a home, a home for children like Michael, with someone to run it. And she'd help in it too. People like Michael who have no mothers ... that's what she wants.'

'Well, isn't that what we'd all want?' said Dr Jims. 'And if we want it, it can be done.'

Nobody ever knew what negotiation went on behind the scenes, how the Family of Hope were persuaded that it would be very damaging publicity to cross swords with a community which wanted to provide a home for Down's syndrome children — and had raised the money for it. Maddy Ross was heard to say that she was just as glad that Sister Judith hadn't been forced to meet the collective ignorance, superstition and bigot y of Shancarrig.

Foxy and Leo had provided a sister for Moore and Frances - Chris and Eddie a brother for the twins - Nessa and Niall a brother for Danny and Breda — Mr and Mrs Hayes had decided of their own volition to move downstairs to the basement of The Terrace and had their own front door by which they came and went — Declan and Ruth Blake had built their house and called their son James — the Kellys' granddaughter Nora was walking — when the Shancarrig Home was opened.

There were photographs of it in all the papers and nice little pieces describing it.

But it was hard to do it justice, because all anyone could see was a stone house and a big tree.

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