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back to her billet. When it was time to part she darted forward and pecked him on the cheek.
    ‘You’re so sweet, Rupert,’ she said. ‘You’ll make some lucky girl a wonderful husband.’
    Then she ran into the house.
    Rupert walked down to the lake, and stood for a long time gazing unseeingly at its dark surface. He told himself he had not been in love with Joyce, and therefore he had lost nothing. His life was just as it had been before. But why then did he want to cry? Why did he feel this dread when he looked ahead to the rest of his life?
    He didn’t cry, that night by the lake in Kandy. Instead his rational mind took charge once more. What is it you fear? he asked himself. The answer came back: loneliness. You will be lonely, he told himself. That’s just how it is. So the choice you get is what you do with your loneliness. You can call it your sickness, and let it imprison you. Or you can call it your strength, and let it set you free.
    Bats passed flickering over the water. On the island in the middle of the lake the fireflies were out in clouds. From an open window nearby came the strains of a big band, probably Radio Jakarta, the Japanese-run propaganda station. Rupert shook out a cigarette and lit it, drawing the harsh smoke deep into his lungs, feeling the nicotine calm his trembling body.
    Oh, Joyce.
    Now that she was for ever out of his reach it turned out he had been in love with her after all.

4
    It was a warm late afternoon in early August, but for all it was high summer you didn’t get to see so much of the sun here in County Donegal. Clouds you had and more than you wanted, and rain of course. But sunshine that pricked right through your cotton pinafore dress and made your skin itch, that was special. Mary Brennan was making her way home from Clancy’s farm, carrying the can of milk for which her mother had sent her. She did not hurry on the road.
    Mary was just twelve years old and shy and quick-thinking and a little wild inside. She had an elder brother called Eamonn and an elder sister called Bridie and a mother called Mam, but no Da because he had been lost at sea just before she was born. So Mary was the baby, and everyone told Eileen Brennan she spoiled that child and Mam said the good Lord took my man but he gave me my baby, so I’ll be duly grateful thank you very much.
    You could see the sea from their cottage windows, and from the road, and from just about everywhere round Kilnacarry. Mary could see the sea now, walking back down the road from Clancy’s, the milk can bumping cold against the side of her hot leg. It was the sea where Da was lost, which made it frightening. What was it like to be lost at sea? She thought it must belike being in a mist, where you can’t tell anymore which way you’re going, except instead of ground beneath your feet there’s water.
    A low dry-stone wall ran alongside the road, and the stones of it were warm in the sun. On the other side of the wall, halfway up the slope of the hill, grew a single wych elm. It was very old and had some branches broken by the winter gales. Bridie said a man had hanged himself there and suicides went to hell, and the devil sat up in the old elm’s branches and whispered to you so you’d hang yourself too and become one of his minions for all eternity. Certainly there was something unnatural about the way it stood on the hillside like that all on its own, leaning sideways, or it was the hill that leant sideways. Maybe the devil was there now.
    On an impulse Mary climbed the stone wall and set off up the slope. Her skin was tickling in the sun and she felt bold as a banshee. At the foot of the tree she put the milk can down, snug in a crook of roots, and she looked up into the black branches and yellow-green leaves. Her heart thumped in her chest even though she didn’t believe the devil was crouched above her. But you could never be sure.
    ‘Hey, old devil man!’ she called aloud. ‘Come and get me!’
    She felt a