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T-shirt. There was a badge on the heart side with a symbol on it. He saw me looking and held it with his fingers.
    “CND,” he said.
    “I know,” I lied.
    “It's the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.”
    “I know,” I lied.
    “Do you keep up with things?” he said. “With current affairs, world events?”
    “Dunno,” I said.
    He looked at the sea. Dark clouds were heaping up on the horizon.
    “When does it get really cold?” he said.
    “Eh?”
    “It's the North. We thought it'd be winter already but it's not, is it?”
    “It'll come.”
    I thought of the winds that would lash at their big new windows, the waves that would crash within yards of it. I thought of whirling sleet and snow and hail and sand. I thought of the ice that once came to settle on everything, even the beach, even the fringes of the sea.
    “We came from Kent,” he said.
    “The Garden of England.”
    “That's right. I didn't want to come but we had to.”
    “We read about it in the juniors. Hops and orchards and a long growing season.”
    “It's beautiful. I don't suppose you've been there.”
    “No.”
    “Have you traveled?”
    “Me dad's been to Burma. And me mam's been to Lourdes.”
    “Ah.”
    “She saw a man cured there. He'd been on crutches for ten years. He threw them away.”
    “Did he really?”
    “Aye. It was a miracle.”
    We were silent again; then he shrugged and continuedon his way. I measured myself against him as he passed. I clenched my fists. I wondered how I'd do if I ever had to fight him.
    “See you,” I said.
    “Yes,” he answered. “I'll see you.”

O ne night that week I woke in the dead hours. Couldn't sleep. Prayers and hymns were running through my head. I switched the Lourdes light on. I put McNulty's silver coin there, and the tanners from Ailsa's dad. Mary looked down on Bernadette and on these offerings below her. I tore out a page from my notebook. I put Ailsa's broken heart on it and drew the other half of the heart so that it looked healed. I drew a CND symbol on another page. I wrote the words:
    Please. Do not let us be so stupid. Never again. Amen.
    I folded the page into quarters and tucked it under the lamp.
    I opened the window and breathed the sea and the night. Nothing moved against the stars.
    What was the sound that mingled with the turning waves? The voices of wailing sailors? The whistling of breath in Dad's throat? Jazz?
    “Please,” I whispered.
    In the room next door, Dad started coughing.
    I left the light on. I lay down again. Dad went on coughing; I gazed into Mary's face.
    “Please,” I whispered. “Never again.”
    Dad stopped. We slept in peace.

T hat Sunday Dad and I went to early Mass together; then we waited outside the Rat. We ate the bread and hard-boiled eggs we'd brought to break our fast. It was a cold, white morning. Dad had his heavy brown herringbone coat on. We heard a hooting and whistling and creaking of wings and then a flight of geese appeared below the clouds, flying southward in a great wide V.
    “They're leaving early,” said Dad. “Mebbe they smelt something coming on the wind.”
    Soon the bus came and we sat at the back and rattled toward Newcastle. I crossed my fingers, hoping that McNulty would be there again.
    “Will he recognize you?” I said.
    “Who knows? It was a long time back. And I don't think he recognized me even then.”
    He smiled.
    “More likely he'll know you, son—his bright assistant from just a week ago.”
    We came to the city's heart. We got out by the monument, below the angel. Dad nodded a greeting to the stone soldiers and the names as we walked by.
    “Angels!” he hissed.
    “Angels?”
    “I saw no angels, Bobby. I saw nothing leaning down to help. All I saw was struggle and pain and young lives blighted. Bloody war's got nowt to do with angels!”
    The stillness and silence of a Sunday hung over everything. Quiet streets. Nothing open. Newspaper sellers stood at the street corners. On the front page of the