'That's it?' said Israel. 'That's the end of the joke?'

'It's the way he tells them!' said Ted.

'Clearly,' said Israel.

'Come on, fellas,' said Michael, 'enough joking around. Come and have a seat here. Come on, come on. Look. I've reserved the best table in the house.'

Michael ushered them over to a table, a table that hadn't had a wipe in some time-years, possibly. The surface was tacky and crusty, as though covered in a thick film of mucus. Israel thought about putting his mobile down on the table, and then thought better of it. He checked again to see if he'd missed any messages. Nothing.

'You're getting drinks now, are ye?' said Michael.

'Aye,' said Ted. 'Guinness.'

The barman looked up and across at the word 'Guinness' and nodded.

'So, you all right?' said Ted.

'Not so bad,' said Michael. 'Few troubles with the old leg, but.' And he slapped his leg.

'Aye,' said Ted. 'What's that all about then?'

'Bone cancer,' said Michael. 'It was me or the leg, they said, so that was it, away.'

'What!' said Ted.

'The leg,' repeated Michael. 'Got the chop.'

'Almighty God!' said Ted. 'That's awful, sure. You mean you've only got the one…'

'Aye,' said Michael.

'Well. I'm…sorry for your loss,' said Ted.

'Ah!' said Michael. 'That's very good. "Sorry for your loss!" I like that. God, it's good to speak to someone from back home. The English, ye know…' He smiled a dirty-toothed smile at Israel. 'No sense of fucking humour. Present company excepted.'

'When did ye? Ye know? Lose the…' said Ted.

'That'd be, what? A year ago?' said Michael.

'And ye've the all-clear now, like, from the cancer?'

'Touch wood,' said Michael. 'Touch wood.' He slapped his leg. It gave a dull thud.

'It's a wooden leg?' said Ted.

'Ach, no!' said Michael. 'Wooden leg, Ted! Ye've got to get with it. This is the twenty-first century. I'm not a feckin' pirate, am I? Eh?'

'Ooh-aar, shipmates,' said Israel.

'Shut up, Israel,' said Ted.

'It's plastic,' said Michael. 'Ye can feel it if you want.'

'I'll not, thanks, Michael, no,' said Ted.

'Ye want to feel it?' said Michael, laughing, addressing Israel.

'No, thanks…'

'Me leg, I mean. She'll not bite,' said Michael.

'No, I'll skip on the…Thanks, anyway.'

At which point, thankfully, the barman came and set drinks down before them, three pints.

'Now that's a pint of Guinness,' said Ted, admiring the pint, as though it were Athena in the Parthenon.

'Aye,' said Michael. 'Ye could trot a mouse across her.' Michael demonstrated this possibility, by walking his fingers daintily across the top of his pint. 'It's the training. See yer man there now?' He gestured towards the barman while he licked the froth from his fingers. 'Months, it took me to get him to do what I wanted. Honest to God, Ted. Months.'

'Where's he from?' said Israel.

'Poland,' said Michael. 'Boleslaw.'

'Whatterslaw?'

'Like coleslaw,' said Michael.

'That his name, or where he's from?' said Ted.

'That's his name,' said Michael. 'Studying for a…what do you call it?'

'Don't know,' said Ted.

'One of those…'

'An exam?' said Israel. 'English as a foreign language? TEFL?'

'PhD,' said Michael. He shouted across to Boleslaw. 'Boles? Hey! What is it you're studying at?'

'Sublinear algorithms?' said Boleslaw, grinning behind the bar. 'King's College.'

'Right,' said Israel.

'Immigrants,' said Ted, stroking his pint glass as though it were a Jack Russell terrier. 'Pulls a good pint, mind. What, ye share the shifts, do ye?'

'What!' said Michael. 'Share shifts! Not at all. I'm not a barman anymore, Ted.'

'Are ye not?'

'Not at all. Jesus! Did ye not know? I though ye knew? I bought the place off the auld fella that owned it back in '73, when he was away over to America.'

'I didn't know that,' said Ted.

'Aye. I'm what they call an owner slash manager,' said Michael, prodding a finger at himself. 'Have been for years.'

'Well…' said Ted thoughtfully. 'Ye're the boss class now then?'

'Indeed!' said Michael, raising his glass. 'And who's not for us is a Guinness!' he said.

'Cheers,' said Ted.

'Sláinte,' said Michael.

'Sláinte!' said Ted, laughing. 'Sláinte! Ach, that's a good one, Michael.' He sipped his pint. 'Ye've done all right for yerself then?'

'Aye. True enough. Ye remember, I came over and I hadn't a fluke.'

'Aye.'

'But look at me now.' He gestured round the bar.

'Aye,' said Ted doubtfully.

Israel noted a group of small plastic model leprechauns posed with fiddles around a plastic crock of gold behind the bar, their green waistcoats rotting onto their chubby little plastic bodies.

'Retiring soon, though,' said Michael.

'Never?' said Ted.

'Absofuckinglutely. You know what it's like. You get to this age, ye want to get in some golf.'

'Golf?' said Ted.

'Aye. So, I'm selling up.'

'Ye'll get a few pounds for this place then?' said Ted.

'Ha!' Michael laughed and slurped at his pint like a hungry dog. 'The price of the places these days, Ted, if I told you, you wouldn't believe me. Honestly. Godsamount of money.'

'Really?'

'I've been beating them off with a big stick, sure. London property prices, you could name a figure almost.'

'No?'

'Of course.' Michael set down his pint glass and leaned in close over the table to speak more quietly. 'I bought this place in 1973, with the money I'd saved from working on the roads, ye know, and a loan from the bank.' He took another sip of his pint. 'Four thousand pounds I bought the place for. Four thousand pounds.' He shook his head in disbelief. 'Ye'll not believe me when I tell ye how much it's on the market for now.'

'How much?'

'Have a wee guess.'

'I don't know. I'm not good on the auld property prices.'

'Have a guess though,' said Michael. 'Bear in mind the London property prices.'

'London? Property prices? They've gone up rightly. I don't know. A hundred thousand?'

Michael smiled into his Guinness.

'Come on, Ted, ye couldn't even get yerself a wee one-bedroom flat in London now for a hundred thousand.'

'Would ye not?'

'Not at all,' said Michael.

'I don't know then,' said Ted. 'A couple of hundred thousand?'

'Ted! Come on!'

'No, you'll have to tell me.'

'Two and a half,' said Michael.

'Aye?' said Ted. 'Two and a half what?'

'What do ye think?' said Michael. 'Two and a half million!'

Both Ted and Israel spluttered-actually spluttered, spraying Guinness down and out and across the crusty tabletop.

'How much?' said Ted.

'Two and a half million of yer English pounds, Ted. That's how much she's worth.' Michael leaned far back in his seat. Israel gazed up at the yellowy ceiling with its architraves. The cracked, frosted, filthy windows. The peeling floor, the splitting vinyl banquettes.

'Holy God,' said Ted.

'Unbelievable, eh? Ye should have come over with me when you had the chance back then, Ted.'

There was a long silence, during which Michael licked his lips and Ted looked mournfully down at his pint.

'The road not travelled?' said Israel.

'Shut up,' said Ted.

'Two and a half million,' repeated Michael.

'Are you sure?' said Ted.

'Of course I'm feckin' sure,' said Michael.

'Two and half million,' said Israel. 'That's a lot of money. What are you going to do with two and a half million?'

'I'm buying a wee bit of land up in Antrim,' said Michael.

'A wee bit?' said Israel.

'Aye. Round Bushmills. Here.' Michael fished into his pocket and produced a wallet and a folded-up photograph showing what appeared to be a huge half-constructed hacienda in Spain, or Mexico, the sort of tasteless rural-bourgeois palace inhabited by some land-owning enemy of Zorro.