When the Mass started she was aware of Paul praying beside her, calling out the responses firmly and loudly. Her grandmother, her mother and Paul went to Communion, but she sat back and watched as each communicant walked down the church in bowed, concentrated prayer. Paul, she noticed, was dressed conservatively and could have fitted in as a local farmer's son, a staunch pillar of the community.

As soon as the Mass was over her grandmother nudged her. 'Come on now, quick, before the crush.'

People she half knew smiled at Helen in recognition as they joined the queue to leave the church. She wished she had worn a scarf or a mantilla like her mother and grandmother. She felt oddly conspicuous, as though by coming here bare-headed and not going to Communion she was trying to make a statement. As soon as they reached the porch of the church, her grandmother caught her by the wrist and began to talk to her animatedly so that no one else could get her attention. Lily had gone ahead; Paul was coming close behind.

'Oh there'll be people raging,' Mrs Devereux said when they got into the car, 'wondering how we slipped by them. People who wouldn't look high up or low down at me for the rest of the year would love to detain me now that I'm with Helen and Lily. And they'll think Paul is your husband, Helen. And they'll say what a clean-looking man she's married. I don't know what they'll say about you, Lily.'

'Well, that priest would put years on you. I don't know what his name is,' Lily said.

'Start up the car,' Mrs Devereux said to Paul, 'and just drive it out. Someone will just have to give way.'

'When you get your own car, Granny, you'll learn all about giving way,' Helen said.

'Oh, I'll need a lot of practice first,' Mrs Devereux said.

When they arrived home, Declan and Larry had everything packed for them to go to the strand. Mrs Devereux, however, refused, said she hadn't been down there for years and if she went down now, she would never get back up. 'And furthermore,' she said, 'you'd never know who you'd meet down there, and you could get a pain listening to people.'

Declan appeared frail and white in a pair of shorts, sandals and a T-shirt. Lily carried a basket with a flask of tea, sandwiches and biscuits. As they turned in the lane, they heard Mrs Devereux whispering the cats' names, trying to entice them back into the house, but they did not appear.

In the previous few days, a number of boulders of mud and marl, studded with stones, had fallen on to the strand from the cliff; soon, they would disintegrate as the tide came in and washed over them. After a few days there would just be stones, until they too, or some of them, in the winter and spring, would be swept out, or buried in the sand.

Lily stood behind one of the boulders and changed into an old-fashioned swimsuit she must have found somewhere in the house. There were a few families further down the strand, but no one near them. Helen spread out a rug and Declan lay down on it, but sat up again to watch as his mother marched down the short strand, blessed herself as soon as she touched the water and swam out without a moment's hesitation.

'She's a brave woman, your mother,' Larry said.

'She met her match with Paul,' Declan said. 'Paul would put the fear of God into anyone's mother.'

'Leave me alone, everybody. That Declan fucker, saving your presence, Helen, has me awake all night.' He smiled at Declan.

'We'd tickle Paul, only Helen's here,' Declan said. 'You see a whole new Paul when you tickle him.'

'I can't think of anything I'd like more than to see Paul being tickled,' Helen said. 'But maybe we should wait until my mother comes back.'

Paul, who had already changed into his bathing togs, stood up and charged down the strand and into the sea. But he stopped as soon as he was up to his thighs in the cold water and jumped to avoid each wave. Eventually, to cheers from Larry and Declan, he swam out. Helen joined him, and as soon as she was down in the water, and almost warm as long as she kept moving, she noticed Declan, still in his shorts, paddling on the shore with Larry beside him. She knew that Declan could not swim because of the line which the doctors had put in his chest.

Later, when the sun left the strand in shadow, Larry, Paul and Declan went back to the house, leaving Helen and her mother alone. It was still warm and the sky was clear, except for a few clouds in the distance over the horizon. They lay on the rug first without speaking once they had changed from their swimsuits into their day clothes. After a while, when Helen was almost dozing, Lily began to speak.

'I don't think Declan is going to last much longer. It's funny how we've all absorbed the shock, and we're used to it now. It's a part of life. Sometimes, he looks like your father; there's something he does with his face, some way he turns.'

'Was my father thin before he died?' Helen asked.

'Not noticeably, no. Not like Declan is. But he was like Declan in that he was sitting up in bed and laughing, well, not laughing so much, but talking. And, of course, he didn't know he was so sick.'

'But you knew?'

'No, the thing was I didn't know either. They all thought they had told me, but they hadn't, none of them, and when after the operation the surgeon asked to see me, I went to his office, but he was never in, I never could find him. So I left it. And your father was different in hospital. He was like all the men around here, he didn't talk much, he left all the talking to others, but he loved company and he listened and he was never without company. So he found the hospital lonely, but it was a new world for him, and he'd notice everything and remember everybody, and when I'd come in he'd talk about everything that had happened during the night. And, of course, I was staying with my cousin Pat Bolger, and there were all sorts of comings and goings in the house, so I'd have my own news, and we'd read the paper and we'd talk. There was a man opposite said he never saw two people talking as much. And we planned everything out, what we were going to do.

'We were going to have another child if we could,' her mother went on, 'maybe even two more, like a second family, to thank God for him getting better. We talked about having another boy and another girl, or maybe the opposite way around. We planned everything in detail, and I learned a lot about him even though I'd been married to him for years. We had our own little world there. He was in a corner bed by a window, and nurses came and went, and doctors came and 'went, and I never asked them a question. Maybe I knew he was sick, and avoided it, but really I didn't know, and one day I was walking up and down the corridor waiting for the nurses to finish with him when one of the nuns came up to me and asked me if I would come down to the chapel and pray with her. She lit candles and we knelt down.

'"We'll ask Our Lady", she said, "that he has a happy and a peaceful death." Well, I prayed with her, and she held my hand, but I thought she had mixed me up with somebody else. She was a slow, placid old woman, and I'd noticed her from as soon as we arrived, and she'd noticed me, and I knew she wasn't making a mistake, but still I asked her. She brought me down to meet the consultant, who was very arrogant and brusque and had no time for me. Then I had to go back to your father, and pretend nothing had happened. They had given him an injection, and he weakened after that and was dead within two days, and after he died, if that nun hadn't been there I don't know what I would have done.

'I couldn't part from him. You know, I wanted them to draw the curtains and leave me on my own with him, but they kept coming in to say I would have to go. I knew I'd never see him again. And the nun brought me back down to the chapel and I prayed for him, but the praying made no difference, I did not know that there could be blackness like I felt that day.'