'And did you say', Paul asked, 'that you came back here the following year?'

'I knew it "would be the last time, because the year after that I was sitting my finals in the autumn, but it didn't make it any easier or any better. That year, of course, she was talking to me, and if she annoyed me in any way I spoke to her in that same clear, reasonable way I use with teachers now, and she found that almost impossible to deal with.'

'Yes, it must have been very frightening,' Paul said. They both laughed.

'I missed my chance. I would love to have had those two summers in America and I learned nothing here except this awful bitterness against the two of them, my granny and my mother. And that meant that I was ready for them the next time.'

'What was the next time?' Paul asked.

'I did my Dip. hours in Synge Street, and the Brothers offered me a job and I accepted it. I had also done a course in English as a Foreign Language, and I found work for the summer teaching Spanish students. I told my mother and my grandmother this news way in advance \a151 not the full-time job story, but the summer teaching story. This meant I was in Dublin, I had money, I worked in the mornings, I had a dingy room that I loved at the top of a building in Baggot Street, with a view right down to the Pigeonhouse. I have good memories of that summer, the freedom of it. The area has changed a lot, but up to a certain time in the evening you could go into the Pembroke or Doheny & Nesbitt's or Toner's and nobody would bother you. But I knew my mother and my grandmother thought I was coming home to teach, and I wasn't, but I hadn't told them I wasn't.

'Earlier in the year, my mother had told me that she would ask about vacancies in the schools in Wexford or anywhere around, including Enniscorthy. I remember that I was really careful to say nothing. I didn't want to have the argument then. I never told them about the job in Synge Street. Then in July I had a letter from her to say that there was good news, it was all arranged and Mother Teresa would be delighted to have me from September. I would need to go for a formal interview, but it wouldn't be a problem.'

'Can you give jobs out like that?' Paul asked.

'You can do what you like when you run a religious school. So I wrote back and told her I had a job, thank you. And then the next day the two of them arrived up to Dublin; they were waiting in the car outside my door in Baggot Street, white-faced both of them, when I arrived home after work. There I was, sauntering along Baggot Street on a beautiful summer's day, only to find these two madwomen sitting in the car taking up valuable parking space. They wouldn't come in; they marched me to the Shelbourne Hotel, and I noticed on the way there that they had both dressed up for the occasion. They sat me down and, as they would put it, tried to talk some sense into me. Two summers of drudgery had me ready for them. It was all Mother Teresa this and Mother Teresa that. "I have a job," I said. "I don't need a job." "You've been in Dublin long enough now," my grandmother said. "You have your qualifications and you'll come home now like your father and your mother did. God knows your mother wants to put her feet up for a while." I realised that the plan was that I would skivvy for my mother the way I had done for my granny, perhaps even commute between them. They had brought notepaper and envelopes with them, and they wanted me to write a letter to Synge Street saying that I would not be accepting their job and to Mother Teresa saying that I would be available for interview at her convenience.

'I told them I was writing nothing. They were fussing with the tea things as though they were Lady Muck and ordering more sandwiches. "You'd be much better among your own people," my granny said. "Everyone is to stop bossing me around," I told them. "No one's bossing you ground," my mother said. "We're both very busy and we've both come up all the way to try and talk some sense to you." You should have heard them both, and all they wanted, of course, was to be driven here and driven there, and have messages collected and dinners cooked. And where was Declan during all of this? He was on his first summer holidays after his first year doing Pharmacy in college and what was he doing? Was he washing out the floor of his grandmother's so-called guest-house? No, he was working as a ticket seller in a cinema in Leicester Square in London, and he was, as he will tell you himself, having the time of his life.'

'I know all about it,' Paul said.

'The two of them said that they weren't going to let me throw away a good chance like this. I listened for a while more and then I took my handbag and my cardigan and I went to the ladies' and then I walked out of the hotel into the street. I bought an English newspaper and I went over to Sinnott's in South King Street and I sat in the snug drinking a Club orange and reading my paper. And I suppose at some stage they went home. And that was the end of that.'

'And when did you see them next?' Paul asked.

'I haven't really seen them since-,' Helen said.

'But you must have.'

'I saw them the following Christmas because Declan called to my flat and implored me to come down with him, which I did. The reception was very frosty. I nearly spat when they tried to stop him doing half the washing-up with me. And I came down again the Christmas after that. And I got used to not seeing them, and I found that not seeing them made me much happier, and I became interested in my own happiness.

'I didn't tell them I was getting married and I didn't tell them when the boys were born. Hugh's family love weddings, and they couldn't believe there wasn't going to be a big wedding, but we got married quietly in a registry office in Dublin and then there was a big party in Donegal.'

'Why didn't you want them at your wedding?' Paul asked.

'I "would have hated their two faces looking at me. That's all. I told Declan and he told them. And I told Declan when I was pregnant and I suppose he told them that too. But my mother has never met Hugh or the boys.'

'And how long have you been married?'

'Seven years.'

'I knew it was a long time. It's a long time not to see people you're close to. But did something not happen last summer?' Paul asked.

'Declan organised a big reconciliation last summer,' Helen said. 'I came down here for a night with Hugh and the boys, and my mother was to drive out from Wexford, but she never turned up. My granny was full of apologies for her. And then I think they all gave her such a hard time that she rang me and we met in town one Saturday in Brown Thomas, if you don't mind, and she bought me the most expensive coat in the shop. And she bought presents for the boys as well and they wrote her thank-you letters. And the plan was that we were all going to drive down here again later this summer for a repeat of last summer, except this time she would turn up.'

'Do you mean that this has been going on for ten years and all because of this row in the Shelbourne?' Paul asked.

'Yes, that's correct,' Helen said stiffly.

'Has it ever occurred to you that they wanted you home because they loved you?'

'No, it has not. That is not why they wanted me home.'

'Has it ever occurred to you that your mother would have been worried about you going to America with people she didn't know?'

'Whose side are you on?' Helen asked.

'I don't understand the reason you didn't want them at your wedding and the reason you didn't see them for so long. What you've told me isn't reason enough.'

'I was angry with them for the reasons I told you.'

They heard a car in the lane. When Helen looked at her watch she saw that it was almost five o'clock. Larry and her grandmother smiled and waved as they drove into the yard in front of the house, but Paul continued talking.