'Helen,' she asked, 'is this man Larry, is he going to stay here as well?'

'I don't know, Granny.'

'Helen, are we going to put them into the same room?'

'I don't know.'

'I suppose we're all modern now,' her grandmother said, going again to the window, 'and I'm as modern as anyone, but I would just like to know. That's all.'

'Granny, do you mean – are they partners?'

'Yes, that's what I mean.'

'No, they're not.'

'So where is Declan's partner?' her grandmother asked.

'He doesn't have a partner,' Helen said.

'Do you mean he has nobody?'

'He has us,' Helen said. 'And he has his friends. That's not nobody.'

'He has nobody of his own,' her grandmother said sadly. 'Nobody of his own, and that's why he came down here. I didn't understand that before. Helen, we'll have to do everything we can for him.'

Her grandmother kept her eyes fixed on a point in the distance and said nothing more. When Larry came in and saw them, he pretended he had been looking for something and he left the room as soon as he could.

Helen went to her room and lay down and tried to sleep. She stared at the ceiling, aware of her mother sitting with Declan in the next room, and surprised that the window was just a small slit in the wall, making the room a shadowy, cavernous space, full of damp smells. She had not remembered it like this.

She thought about the previous year when she had come down here with Hugh and Cathal and Manus. The boys had been excited and interested. Manus had a video about hens, and he had spent the journey from Dublin talking about the hens he was going to see in Cush. Cathal, in recent weeks, had become interested in the idea of young and old. His grandmother in Donegal was old; was his grandmother in Cush old? he asked. Helen explained that his grandmother was in Wexford, his great-grandmother was in Cush and, yes, she was old.

The boys had packed their bathing togs and buckets and spades, even though they were only staying one day. Helen explained about the cliff.

'But is there sand?' Cathal asked.

'Yes, plenty of sand,' she said.

'Do they talk English in Cush?' he asked.

'Plenty of English,' Hugh said.

As soon as they got out of the car and stood in front of their great-grandmother's house, the boys looked around them suspiciously. The house seemed decrepit; one of the windows upstairs was broken. When her grandmother came to the door, Helen watched her as though through the eyes of the two boys. There was something frightening about her presence. The boys did not move as Helen and Hugh went towards the old woman. Helen was afraid that Manus might run back to the car, or worse call her grandmother a witch or some other word from his increasingly large vocabulary.

The boys did not want to come into the house. When Helen asked if Hugh could take Manus to see Furlong's hens, Hugh seemed almost too grateful for the excuse to leave.

Helen beckoned Cathal to come inside. He stood in the kitchen, inspecting everything, his gaze critical and utterly unselfconscious.

'Oh, he's the image of your father, Helen,' her grandmother said. 'Isn't he the image of your father!' Cathal looked at her coldly.

When Hugh and Manus returned, it was clear that the trip to see the hens had not been a success.

'They were all dirty,' Manus said.

'Oh now,' Mrs Devereux said, 'Mrs Furlong washes them with soap and water on Mondays, so you came the wrong day.'

'Do you live here?' Manus asked her.

Hugh sat beside the Aga, Helen and Manus and Mrs Devereux at the kitchen table. Cathal would not sit down.

'Your mother now will be here any minute,' her grandmother said to Helen.

'Is she your mother too?' Manus asked.

'No, Manus,' Helen said, 'she's my mother, but she's Granny's daughter. Isn't that a good one?'

Manus wrinkled his face in mock disgust. He hated it when he did not understand things.

'Did you live here?' he asked Helen.

'No, it's my granny's house,' she told him.

'There's an awful stink,' he said.

He began to examine the fly-paper, which hung from the ceiling near the light-fitting. He called Cathal over.

'The flies are dead,' Cathal said, 'and they're stuck to the paper.'

'Lift me up,' Manus said to Hugh.

'You're to be good, Manus,' Helen said. 'It's Granny's house.'

'I want to see the dead flies,' he said.

'The paper is all sticky,' Cathal said.

'It's all manky,' Manus added.

The cats appeared at the window and her grandmother went out and carried them in, one under each arm. As soon as they saw the visitors, they jumped up to their perch on the dresser. Manus wanted someone to help him fetch them down so he could play with them, but Mrs Devereux explained that they didn't like little boys.

'What did you bring them in for?' he asked her sharply.

The day was mild and sunny and Helen thought it might be best for everyone if Hugh took the boys down to the strand. She would go as far as the cliff with them.

She and Hugh were careful to say nothing as they walked down the lane, pretending that this was a normal outing with buckets and spades. Hugh lifted Manus in his arms as they approached the cliff, Helen held Cathal's hand. Just as they came to the edge, the sky darkened and the boys looked down with amazement and alarm.

'Is that the strand?' Manus asked.

'Yes, and you use steps to go down,' Helen said.

'What steps?'

She pointed them out to him.

'And you run down the last bit;' she said.

'I hate it,' Manus said.

'It's lovely when you're down there. And the sea is much warmer than Donegal.'

'It's all dirty,' he said.

'Do we have to go down?' Cathal asked.

'No,' Helen said, 'you can do what you like.'

She realised that they were used to the long sandy beaches in Donegal, and that the marl of the cliff and the short strand seemed strange to them.

'But I think you'd like it down there,' Helen said.

'How long are we staying here?' Cathal asked.

'Just today.'

'We're not sleeping here, sure we're not?'

'No, we're driving back later.'

The boys stood there, downcast and subdued.

'Manus, I'll give you a piggy-back if you come down now,' Hugh said.

'No, I want to sit on your shoulders.'

'All right.'

'And I'm not swimming if it's cold,' Manus said.

Cathal shook his head at Helen, signalling that he did not want to go down the cliff.

'You can come up with me,' she said, 'and sit in the car and read your comic'

'Can I sit at the steering wheel?' Manus asked.

'When you come back,' she said.

Helen and her grandmother waited for her mother to arrive while Cathal sat in the car reading his comic. When Hugh and Manus came back and her mother still had not arrived, she took the cold lunch she had brought from the car into the kitchen and they all sat around the table. Her grandmother had made soup and wanted to cook pork chops, but Helen insisted that they eat only the food she had brought. As she moved from the table to the dresser, she had a sudden memory of Declan being handed one of those willow-patterned plates with onions and carrots on it which he "would not eat. She almost wished now that her grandmother would produce some items that the boys did not eat \a151 cheese, for example, or cabbage \a151 to see their reaction. They would have responded with contempt, they would have refused even to look at the food.

They ate lunch and drank tea afterwards, all the time listening out for Lily's car. They talked about neighbours in Cush, Hugh cut a piece of cardboard for the broken window upstairs, Cathal read his comic and Manus tried to entice the cats from their lair. Helen made sure that there was never silence.