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at the same time. They told him he had gone too far in his revelations. That she expected a solicitor to be even more discreet than a postmistress.
    ‘Other people go to you with their business, Fergus, you’re as much in demand now as your father, and that’s your job after all. If there’s a need for the right words you’ll find them.’
    ‘You’d have been great as a prisoner of war, Mrs Whelan,’ said Fergus. ‘The secrets would have been safe with you all right.’
    Fergus and Nora went for a drive after the concert. The last thank yous and congratulations had been said; people walked home in the sunny early summer evening. The older children had gone to sit on the bridge. The cinema had a special late start, so many of them headed to the pictures. Fergus had the car out ready and waiting. Nora Lynch came running over to join him.
    Small and slightly plump, she had the perfect skin and apple cheeks of a picture poster. Her fair hair was curled carefully, and she wore a little lipstick but not enough to do any damage.
    ‘I thought we might go up on the hill,’ he said as Nora put on her white jacket with the little yellow trim which matched her dress so well.
    ‘The hill?’ She was surprised.
    ‘It’s a nice quiet place to talk, and I have something I want to say to you.’
    Nora’s eyes lit up with pleasure and her face was pink.‘I’d love that,’ she said in a sort of husky way, not in her usual voice at all.
    With a sickening lurch of his stomach Fergus realised that this pleasant, empty-headed, chirruping little teacher whom he had kissed a dozen times thought that he was about to propose marriage to her.
    Slowly he started the car and headed for the hills.

2
    Ryan’s Licensed Premises, like any other pub in Ireland in 1962, had a steady clientele that would never desert it. There never seemed to be any need to do renovations to attract new trade. The trade was there, like it had been in John’s father’s time; the people who lived on that side of Mountfern found it handy to call in rather than walk all the way down to the centre. Ryan’s had the great advantage, some thought, of being on the outskirts. The whole place didn’t see you going in and coming out as they would if you visited Foley’s, Conway’s or Dunne’s.
    When John’s father was alive the place still sold groceries but though the big old chest of tea drawers still stood there they held no stock now. There was a little huckster’s shop run by Loretto Quinn, whose husband had been killed in a terrible accident. It wouldn’t have been right for the Ryans to take the bread from her mouth even if they wanted to get back into the grocery business. And anyway most people liked going into Mountfern proper and walking along Bridge Street to see what was going on. Ryan’s was a bit out of the way in terms of doing your weekly shopping.
    John Ryan was glad that Kate agreed with him on this.For a Dublin woman she had adapted extraordinarily well to Mountfern; she knew better than he did all that went on, who was speaking and who not. It was Kate who helped the children with their homework, found and trained the girls from the country who would leave for brighter lights and noisier towns once they knew the way to run a house. Kate served behind the bar as if she had been born to do it. She knew when to join in the conversation and when to stay far from it.
    She polished glasses and cleaned the big ashtrays with Gold Flake printed around the rim. She loved the words Whiskey Bonder on the sign over the door, even though it wasn’t true any more. John’s father, like many a publican, used to buy whiskey in a cask from the distiller, lodge it in a bonded warehouse and pay the excise duty when he took it from the warehouse for bottling and sale. In those days the name James Ryan was on the bottle, but nowadays distillers discouraged such fancy and old-fashioned notions. They preferred to sell whiskey already bottled. But Kate would still