‘Hey! you there!’ A remembered brogue turned me in my tracks.

A car had pulled up beside me. Mr Briody was leaning across the passenger seat. The door clicked open and he beckoned to me. ‘Get in!’

I had a conviction this was the pay off. Like most Irish, he would have been in America. He had been a slater in Chicago and learned from some Sicilian how to avenge the family honour by taking you for a ride.

Since my foot hurt, I got in.

‘Where to?’ he asked.

‘I’m going back to my digs, but anywhere—’

‘Would they be near the University?’

‘Two or three streets away.’

‘Right then. I can find my way to the University. I’ve given Margaret a run there. You can guide me from that. Right?’

‘Great. Thanks a lot.’

He put the car in gear and pulled away.

‘It occurred to me you might really have a bad foot and since I’m on holiday with nothing to hurry for I came after you.’

‘That was decent of you.’

After a time, I recognised a corner, then some shops. My neck was stiff with not looking in Briody’s direction.

‘Nearly there,’ he said, and added casually, ‘I wouldn’t have been surprised to see you running up the road like a two-year-old.’

‘Mr Briody,’ I said with a world of sincerity, ‘believe me – I mean Margaret and I haven’t – I’m trying to say that I’ve nothing but respect for your daughter.’

‘Margaret? Daughter?’ He twisted round to look at me while the car took care of itself. ‘You must think I’m a boy from the bogs or the greatest Christian since Matt Talbot gave up the drink. If it had been my daughter, I’d have degutted you.’

‘You’re not Margaret’s father.’

No slouch, I had worked it out.

‘Not an unwashed glass or a crumpled crisp bag the length and breadth of the house. But there, I suppose as well as making her bed she tidied up this morning before she went to work. It must have been a hell of a party.’ He made a creaking noise and I realised he was laughing. ‘Hand it to you for a quick tongue and the devil’s cheek. It beats Flaherty running bare-arsed up the lane from the widow’s.’

The moment for explaining how shamefully innocent I was seemed to have gone.

‘I’m Danny Briody’s cousin. Liam. He and Mary are over staying at the farm and we’ll be at their house a day or two. Then on to London and home again.’ He grinned. ‘And it’s nice to meet you too since you’re a friend of the family, as you might say . . . Don’t misunderstand me, mind. Danny’s a good skin. It’s not the first time Danny’s helped with the farm rent in a bad year. And there’s never a Christmas but I send over the plump birds that make a holiday a feast . . . It’s just that Mary and him go on about that girl of theirs until you’d have thought she was another Alfred Einstein.’

I didn’t correct him, reckoning that I’d drawn heavily enough for one day on my good luck account. Anyway for all I knew he might be thinking of another Einstein: Alfred the shyster lawyer or one-armed sheep-gelding champion of County Clare. Something like that.

‘Mind you,’ he went on, ‘I’m fond of Margaret. It’s just that I’ve wondered if she was as quick on the uptake as they say . . . You’ll be at the University yourself?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ll be in the same class as Margaret?’

‘In the same year. We share a couple of subjects.’

‘Do you tell me that?’ He paused, cleared his throat and then asked in a rush, ‘Now, would you say she was doing well? I mean that she was doing well? young pretty girl Was she able for it, would you say?’

‘We’re only in first year,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure how she got on in the degree exams.’

He nodded satisfied as if, without quite realising how, I had answered his questions. Then we were at the University and for the next five minutes we were busy as I called the turns.

‘Left at the next corner. This is me. You could let me out here.’

The car stopped as if he had hit a brick wall. Thrown forward, I caught the padded edge of the dashboard before my head battered the windscreen. Sputtering to the surface again, I saw him gaping through the windscreen at Kennedy. My landlord had one hand on his gate and in his turn was staring at us. The car must have squealed to a stop.

Kennedy looked at me through the glass. I saw his gaze shift to my companion. He took his hand from the gate and walked towards the car.

‘Mother of God,’ the man beside me whispered. ‘What’s he wanting with us?’

‘It’s Mr Kennedy – he owns the house I stay in.’

Kennedy was almost on us.

‘Don’t tell him who I am or where—’

The door opened and Kennedy bent in to me.

‘It’s yourself. We wondered where you got to last night.’

He was studying Briody across me as he spoke, but unexpectedly a hard fist in my side shoved me out, forcing Kennedy back as I sprawled from the car. The slam of the door made one noise with the roar of the engine as the car leaped from us.

‘Your friend’s in a hurry,’ Kennedy said. He watched the car squeal round the corner as if chased.

‘I don’t know him.’ Without knowing why, I had decided to do as Liam Briody had asked. ‘He gave me a lift.’

‘Where’d you come by him then?’

We were moving towards the house.

‘I thumbed a lift.’

‘Oh, yes.’

We turned in at the gate and he took out his key to open the door.

‘I finished up at a party last night. Got a bit too merry and stayed the night.’

‘At your age you want to watch the drink,’ he said, but not as if his mind was really on it.

‘I started walking home this morning and discovered I’d no money. Lucky I got a lift.’

‘Lucky,’ he said. He still hadn’t turned the key. His hand rested on it. ‘Especially with him being in such a hurry.’

In the hall, he asked, ‘Where was the party then?’

I started up the stairs.

‘It was a fellow I met,’ I said without looking back. ‘I got a lift to it.’

‘You’ve done well with the lifts,’ he said, but I kept going.

I lay on my bed like a fox gone to earth. There were no bones around to chew but I had found a tin of biscuits in my shirt drawer and lay nibbling custard creams. My best strategy might be to lie there into the foreseeable future.

Jackie came in without knocking.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise you were here.’

She did not look surprised.

‘Do you wander about my room when I’m out?’

‘There’s linen to change.’

‘Is that linen you’re carrying?’

She was not holding anything.

‘You’re in a funny mood,’ she said.

‘Not me.’ I took the corner off a biscuit. ‘I had this crazy notion you might be a foot fetishist. Sneaking in for a quick sniff at my socks.’

She shut the door behind her.

‘You want to watch what you say. You don’t want to let him hear you talking like that.’

‘He’s the one that’s in a funny mood. He was desperate to know where I was last night.’

I had never talked to her like that before. After the last couple of days I felt older – not any wiser, just older.

‘Why should he care?’ she asked.

For no good reason, I took that as an insult.

‘You’re supposed to be shocked at being called a fetishist,’ I said sourly. ‘Assuming you had the foggiest notion what I was talking about.’

‘Aren’t you the arrogant little bugger?’ she said. ‘Six months ago you walk in here not sure which spoon to eat your soup with and now you’re a walking dictionary and man about bloody town.’

I was getting used to people surprising me. It didn’t mean I had to like it.

‘Do you want a biscuit?’

To my surprise, she came over and sat beside me. I passed her the tin. There were only two biscuits left.

She ate neatly, picking at the edges with her small white teeth.

‘You have some dirty habits. The bed’ll be full of crumbs.’

‘If you’re changing the linen . . .’

‘Where were you last night anyway?’