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himself as the contractor. The job-seeker nodded his head to indicate he had 'goddit' though in fact he had not. McQueen looked at him speculatively.
    'You say you're a medical student, in your last year at the Royal Victoria?' Another nod. 'On the summer vacation?'
    Another nod. The applicant was evidently one of those students who needed money over and above his grant to put himself through medical school. McQueen, sitting in his dingy Bangor office running a hole-and-corner business as a demolition contractor with assets consisting of a battered truck and a ton of second-hand sledgehammers, considered himself a self-made man and heartily approved of the Ulster Protestant work ethic. He was not one to put down another such thinker, whatever he looked like.
    'All right,' he said, 'you'd better take lodgings here in Bangor. You'll never get from Belfast and back in time each day. We work from seven in the morning until sundown. It's work by the hour, hard but well paid. Mention one word to the authorities and you'll lose the job like shit off a shovel. OK?'
    'Yes, sir. Please, when do I start and where?'
    'The truck picks the gang up at the main station yard every morning at six-thirty. Be there Monday morning. The gang foreman is Big Billie Cameron. I'll tell him you'll be there.'
    'Yes, Mr McQueen.' The applicant turned to go.
    'One last thing,' said McQueen, pencil poised. 'What's your name?'
    'Harkishan Ram Lai,' said the student. McQueen looked at his pencil, the list of names in front of him and the student.
    'We'll call you Ram,' he said, and that was the name he wrote down on the list.
    The student walked out into the bright July sunshine of Bangor, on the north coast of County Down, Northern Ireland.
    By that Saturday evening he had found himself cheap lodgings in a dingy boarding house halfway up Railway View Street, the heart of Bangor's bed-and-breakfast land. At least it was convenient to the main station from which the works truck would depart every morning just after sun-up. From the grimy window of his room he could look straight at the side of the shored embankment that carried the trains from Belfast into the station.
    It had taken him several tries to get a room. Most of those houses with a B-and-B notice in the window seemed to be fully booked when he presented himself on the doorstep. But then it was true that a lot of casual labour drifted into the town in the height of summer. True also that Mrs McGurk was a Catholic and she still had rooms left.
    He spent Sunday morning bringing his belongings over from Belfast, most of them medical textbooks. In the afternoon he lay on his bed and thought of the bright hard light on the brown hills of his native Punjab. In one more year he would be a qualified physician, and after another year of intern work he would return home to cope with the sicknesses of his own people. Such was his dream. He calculated he could make enough money this summer to tide himself through to his finals and after that he would have a salary of his own.
    On the Monday morning he rose at a quarter to six at the bidding of his alarm clock, washed in cold water and was in the station yard just after six. There was time to spare. He found an early-opening cafe and took two cups of black tea. It was his only sustenance. The battered truck, driven by one of the demolition gang, was there at a quarter past six and a dozen men assembled near it. Harkishan Ram Lai did not know whether to approach them and introduce himself, or wait at a distance. He waited.
    At twenty-five past the hour the foreman arrived in his own car, parked it down a side road and strode up to the truck. He had McQueen's list in his hand. He glanced at the dozen men, recognized them all and nodded. The Indian approached. The foreman glared at him.
    'Is youse the darkie McQueen has put on the job?' he demanded.
    Ram Lai stopped in his tracks. 'Harkishan Ram Lai,' he said. 'Yes.'
    There was no need to ask how Big Billie Cameron