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wind, carrying the gun, popping it off at nothing.
    Those times were the best times I ever had as a lad. Just alone with Frank down on the river. But that was before he’d begun to hate my guts.
    Not that I’d exactly been full of brotherly love for him before I’d left the town.
    He’d been so fucking po-faced about everything. Siding with our dad all the time, although never hardly saying anything. He’d just let me know by the way he’d looked at me. Maybe that’s why I’d hated him sometimes; I could tell how right about me he’d thought he was. Well, he was right. So bloody what? There’d been no need for him to be that way. I’d been the same person after he’d started hating me as before. It was just that he’d got to know a few things. And just because he didn’t see them my way that was it as far as I was concerned. The less said about me and to me the better. He couldn’t see that the dust-up I’d had with our dad was mainly because of the way Frank was towards me.
    But all that was past history. As dead as Frank. Nothing could be done about it now. But there were some things that I’d be able to put straight. Just for the sake of the past history.

Friday
    I COULD TELL IT was windy out before I could hear the wind. It was the daylight, what bit that was getting through the cracks of the curtains. I knew it was windy because of the kind of daylight it was.
    I rolled onto my back and looked at my watch. It was quarter to eight. I reached out and grabbed a fag and smoked it looking up at the reflected light on the ceiling getting depressed with the greeny brown gloom, getting impatient with myself for not getting up but laying there anyway, just smoking, balancing the packet on my chest for an ashtray.
    Finally I swung out of bed and went into the cold bathroom and got ready for the day. The wind swished about outside beyond the bright frosted glass.
    I went downstairs and switched on the wireless. While Family Choice warmed up I went into the kitchen and found the tea caddy and put the kettle on the gas. I made the tea and began to put my cufflinks in.
    The back door opened and Doreen came in. She was wearing a black coat, a nice looking one, short, and she had something on the Garbo lines on her head. Her pale gold hair was long and some of it was placed so that it felldown in front of her shoulders, between her shoulders and neck, almost on her breasts.
    She looked at me for a minute before shutting the door. After she’d shut it she didn’t move except to take her hat off and put it on the drainer and then just stood there with her hands in her high pockets and feet together looking at the floor. She looked more bad tempered than unhappy.
    I finished doing my cufflinks.
    “Hello, Doreen,” I said.
    “ ’Lo,” she said.
    “How are you feeling?” I said.
    “How do you think?”
    I began to pour out the tea.
    “I’m very sorry about your dad,” I said. She didn’t say anything. I offered her a cup of tea but she turned away.
    “Enjoying the music, are you?” she said.
    “The house seemed cold,” I said. “Besides …”
    She shrugged and went into the scullery and sat down on Frank’s chair, her hands still in her pockets, her feet still together. I followed her in and sat on the arm of the divan, sipping my tea.
    “I really am sorry, Doreen,” I said. “He was my brother, you know.”
    She didn’t say anything.
    “I don’t know what to say,” I said.
    Silence.
    I didn’t want to ask her anything outright before the funeral so I said:
    “I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t believe it. He was always so careful.”
    Silence.
    “I mean, he only drank halves.”
    Silence.
    “And not turning up for work.”
    Two tears began rolling down Doreen’s face.
    “He wasn’t worried about anything, was he? I mean, something on his mind, like, that’d make him careless, through worry, like.”
    Silence. The tears rolled further.
    “Doreen?”
    She whirled up out of the