We labored, talked.

A fog had oozed down from Cave Hill and Black Mountain, bringing cold and damp to the tangle of runaway alleys off Sandy Row. We were underdressed and a foreman gave us knit caps and hard hats and that helped a little.

All of us had met only a few hours ago outside the bookie’s when a man said he was looking for fit guys to move pallets of glass into and out of vans. The pay was fifty pounds the day and a bonus for a clean job.

And everyone, including those on disability, had of course said yes. Unemployment was at 35 percent and the man could have offered half the wages and still we all would have come. In any case the market rate was unimportant since the Europa’s insurers were footing the bill and the insurers were indemnified by the British government and ultimately, if you traced it back, the burden was falling on the taxpayers of Surrey and Suffolk and Kent, and really, if you lived in one of those places your worries were small and undisordered and you could well afford it.

The fog encouraged levity and more than once we put our hands to our throats and pretended we’d been dragged off by Jack the Ripper.

The real tragedy, of course, wasn’t the modern Europa Hotel but the Crown Bar opposite, whose stained glass windows and gaslight had been fixtures since the 1840s. The bar was a gem owned and operated by the National Trust-its crystal sea patterns and ship anchors and Celtic turns utterly destroyed and in pieces on the pavement.

The Europa, “the most bombed hotel in Europe,” had been redesigned with crumple zones to absorb the impact of explosions. And now it had done well on its first field test: the whole building intact, except for the windows on the lower floors where the hijacked car had erupted with most effect.

But the Belfast glaziers couldn’t complain about that, for with Christmas coming the payday from surrounding buildings would be enough to keep their own in Islay whisky and Belgian chocolate and Italian shoes. And we didn’t care. It was a job, there was money at the end, and it was heavy lifting, which is a tricky thing if you don’t look out.