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Carter is an admirable man.”
    “So is Dr. Sullivan. Sullivan delivered the lad. Sullivan and matron. I remember the day well, my first son.”
    “A man does not forget that day.”
    “You have a son, Mr. Middlehoff?”
    I hesitate. On this subject I often do. It’s a matter of tense.
    “Yes.”
    “I can see from your face I should go no further.”
    “Thank you.”
    “I must talk to Dr. Carter properly and tell him of my appreciation. I suppose it makes it easier attending these things if you don’t know the person, the body that was before. You both know more than I do about that. I bow my head. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t look at it.”
    “Of course not. You’re his father.”
    “Dr. Sullivan would have found it very hard as well. Peace time injuries is all he’s had to train on I suppose, the odd tractor disaster. You and Dr. Carter know other things. You’ve seen other sights. In that way you’re linked.”
    “In a way.”
    “But from different sides.”
    “Yes. But it’s the same experience at the time.”
    “And afterwards?”
    “Different. Very different.”
    “Victor and vanquished?”
    “Yes. As you put it.”
    “When they came to try to find—well you know—the lad lost his arm—when they came to try to find what was missing—to bury it with him—I sat on the wooden bench in the other yard way up from the back garden. Ah well, never thought I’d live to say such a line. Nothing was found. And poor Father Dwyer. I’m sure he was praying he’d find nothing. They’re great on the search for truth when the answer is a prayer they know by heart. I sat on the bench on that unimaginable day, sky blue. A sky-blue day, eighty-eight degrees in a country unused to such temperatures, to such fierce light. The whole thing a dream. This can happen, I said to myself. This kind of death. And then I started thinking, what am I going to do with that back garden? Madness! The way the mind works in such circumstances. Foolish, unimportant details.”
    “It is not madness. It is what protects the mind from madness.”
    “You know that?”
    “Yes.”
    “We’ll talk about it someday?”
    “Perhaps.”
    “I thought I’d brick it all up for a while. So I’d never put a foot in it again. Then I thought, no, just put up a wooden gate … then get someone to go in sometimes. Then I thought, who could I ask to do that place, that garden, for me? I mean, what lad could I pay a few shillings a week to and say, go in and weed it? They wouldn’t want to. Then I set to wondering about Sissy’s dream of a rose garden. All those years she’d been at me to do something about it. Make it into a proper garden. She was particularly keen on a rose garden. Wanted me to try to level it, you know. A garden? What do I know about gardens? But her aunt grew roses. Won prizes. Anyway, that’s how my mind worked that day. That and other things, visions of the boy. I still don’t know what to do with that back garden. I’ve put a kind of milky glass in the pantry window so that Sissy can’t see the back garden even if she accidentally pulls the curtain. She didn’t even comment. Not a word from her. She never goes into the back at all any more. Won’t let anyone else go out either. Except me. The boys used to take it in turns to go out to the shed for the turf and coal—she was determined to burn no matter what the temperature. But she can’t bear to see just Daragh going out. Alone. But if I board the garden up, let it go to rack and ruin as they say, well, it’ll become a wilderness. Rats will come.”
    “Do not think like that Mr. O’Hara.”
    “Someone told me once flowers bloomed on graves. On even bits of… if you understand me.”
    “I understand you.”
    “And tell me, the shock of how shocking it is, does it wear off? Yes?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “Hasn’t for you yet?”
    “No. Did you know that we had a number of conversations? That your son would sometimes sit and talk to me as he