In the meantime we set up house in a small corrugated place out in Strandhill. It was a shack really, but it was close to the dancehall and kept me out of Sligo. At the same time it was an easy jaunt for him back into the town. Our bedroom looked out on Knocknarea, we could actually see the tip of Maeve's Cairn at the top, it was funny lying there, a young married couple in the thirties, in modern times, and her up there lying in her own bed, her own leaba as they say, and tucked in there all of four thousand years ago. We had a nice view of Coney island from the rickety porch at the front, and although the heap of the island hid him, I knew the Metal Man was there, solid and eternal, I could imagine him in my mind's eye, faithfully and stoically pointing down into the deep water.

Flying Down to Rio. Top Hat. The man that ruled the country of the heart was not de Valera with his skinny, haunted face, but Fred Astaire, with his skinny, haunted face.

Even the grandees came to the pictures. If it had been a church there might have been pews for them. As it was most of the fur coats were to be found in the balcony. The rest of Sligo teemed in the stalls below. There would have been mayhem other than that Mr Clancy and his brothers had all been in the army, and marshalled the patrons like unruly recruits. Any trouble and a lad would be turfed out on his ear into the rainy dark night of Sligo, which was not desirable. Oh he didn't mind kissing, he was no parish priest, and what could he have done anyhow, when the lights were low. It wasn't the church, but it was like the church, better, far better. It was at the pictures that you could look around and see that rapt gaze on people's faces that maybe the priest or the minister dreamed of one day seeing on the faces of their parishioners. The whole of Sligo in a damp crowd, all those different people and different degrees, paupers and princes, united by their enchantment. You could have said Ireland was united and free, at the pictures anyhow. Although Tom kept me in quarantine in Strandhill, till he could get his mother to relent in her hostility to me, he wasn't so cruel as to extend my exile to Saturday nights. We roared into town in his nice little car and took our places as always, as if we feared for our souls if we did not.

There was always great joshing at the cinema, fellas freely called out insults to each other. Sometimes political affiliations were alluded to, sometimes it was all taken in good part, but just now and then things weren't so lightly taken, and bit by bit in the thirties this got worse. You could tell a lot about the state of the country from the quality of the insults at the Saturday night pictures. Of course Mr Clancy was not for any party in particular, and against politics maybe in general. You could be expelled for a nasty remark, which was more than you could say for the Dail itself, according to Tom.

'There's things you can say with impunity in Dail Eireann that'd get you thrun out of the Gaiety,' Tom might say.

There were always newsreels before the features and if there was stuff about the Spanish Civil War for instance, there'd be roars going up about Blueshirts and the like. Mr Clancy and his brothers would be kept real busy trying to root out the satirists.

'Crowd of bowsies,' Tom would say.

'Casual pack of buggers,' Jack would say, if he wasn't in Africa. Not that Jack followed the Blueshirts.

'I'm afraid your friend O'Duffy is a casual pack of buggers,' he might say to Tom.

But Tom always roared with laughter, he liked his brother Jack, he didn't care what he said. That was part of Tom's great charm as a friend and brother. He was easy-going in his very marrow. He thought Jack was a genius too, because he had done the two degrees at Galway, Engineering and Geology, whereas he had lasted only the few months at Law School. He had a way of feasting on Jack's words that was just their ancient practice from the time they were boys together. I don't know how their other brother Eneas fitted into that. Of course I never heard much said about poor Eneas.

One night at the showing of Top Hat as I was going down to the ladies' toilet a familiar dark figure briefly blocked my way. It wasn't usual for a single man to engage a married woman in casual conversation, but on the other hand there was never too much casual about John Lavelle. Now that his crowd were securely in power, he seemed to be flourishing, even though he was only slashing at brambles on the roadside for the council. That was better than being on the run or eating prisoner's hash in the Curragh. He must have liked black clothes because he wore only black, and it gave him a very cowboylike look, with the white pallor of his skin and the sweep of black hair above. For a roadsweeper he certainly understood about waistcoats. Myself I was dressed in my best purple summer dress, which I must suppose was a sort of wordless remark in itself. Anyway John Lavelle didn't care too much for what a person should be doing or not be doing.

'Hello, Roseanne. You know, girl, you look really lovely.'

Now this was an enormous statement for him. For anyone. He had never offered the slightest sort of love-talk to me. After all, we only knew each other because of the direst of tragedies. Maybe he even believed still that I had brought the Free State soldiers down on his head years ago. Maybe talking like that to me was a sort of subtle revenge. Whatever it was, I didn't take it seriously, I brushed past him, and went on my way. Anyway my bladder was bursting.

'I'm out on Knocknarea most Sundays,' he said. 'Most Sundays about three you'll find me at the cairn.'

I flushed with embarrassment. There was a little mill of women and girls trying to do the same as me, but they were very quiet, because the picture was still going on behind our heads. In fact it was quite hard to make out what John Lavelle said, but nevertheless I caught it. I hoped no one else had caught it. Maybe he only meant to be friendly. Maybe he only meant, I know you're living out there, and I'm often out there myself.

I had never seen him at a dance. Mind you, I was not at the Plaza as often as in the old days when I was a single girl and could play the piano without comment. But married women never worked in those days. We were like the Muslims in those times, the men wanted to hide us away, except on occasions like that, when there was a good film to be seen.

John Lavelle wasn't just another fella. He wasn't just a bowsie in the street making a remark behind my back, he was an important person because he had known my father and things about my father. Two deaths and more linked us, you might say, the death of his brother and the death of my father. We should have been enemies but somehow we were not. I wasn't against him, even if I wasn't for him either. To this day I don't really understand it. I rarely saw him and yet he loomed in my dreams. In my dreams he was always being shot and dying, like his brother had in real waking life. I often saw him dying in dreams. Held his hand and the like. Sisterly.

I never did speak about that to Tom though. I didn't like to. How would I begin? Tom loved me, or he loved what he knew of me, what he saw of me. Now I don't want to say something untoward, but he always complimented me on my rear end. That's the truth.

'When I feel blue,' he said once, 'I think of your backside.'

Not very romantic, but in another way, very romantic. Men are not really humans at all, no, I mean, they have different priorities. Mind you, I don't know what women's priorities are either, at least, I know what they are and never did feel them. I did have a shocking desire for Tom myself. The whole lot of him. I don't know. He made me dizzy on a constant basis. There's some things you really can't get enough of. Chocolate you can get enough of. But some things. I liked his company, in all guises of company. I liked drinking cups of tea with him. I liked kissing his ears. Maybe I was never a proper woman. God forgive me. Maybe the biggest error I made was I always felt the equal of him. I felt, it was me and him, like Bonnie and Clyde, who just that time in America were going round killing people and generally what, expressing their love in curious ways.