Kilmartin snorted.

"Ailing, is it? I never felt better. Too fresh to sleep, I am. Rarin' to go."

Minogue handed Kilmartin a bag of muffins.

"Kathleen says to ask the nurse if you're allowed to eat these yokes. I had them in the car with me."

"Gob and I'll try me best," Kilmartin affirmed. "And you'd no trouble getting in here?"

"No. The night duty boss is a girl from Feakle. I heard them playing twenty-five and knew the accent. 'Damn your sowl, why di'nt you lay the deuce and you with the knave in your fisht as well?'"

Kilmartin laughed lightly.

"Jases. The Clare mafia at it again."

Minogue wondered where Kilmartin's family was that they weren't visiting him. Sundays in Ireland involved visiting someone in hospital or else paying one's respects in a graveyard. Kilmartin scrutinised one of the muffins at close quarters, turning it around in his fingers and pressing into its side with his thumb.

"Full of nourishment, I'll wager. There'd be a ton of bran in them. Roughage, right?" Kilmartin looked up.

"That's it."

"Oh, suffering Jesus that died on the cross. 'Roughage.'"

Kilmartin's eyes followed his supplications heavenward.

"Me heart is broken with that word. I have books about fibre and roughage and the like that would give your arse heartburn reading them, so they would."

Kilmartin's brow lowered to gloom, then lightened. He pointed toward the chair.

"The main thing is that I'm on the mend and that's what counts, isn't it?" Kilmartin continued.

"Precisely."

Kilmartin settled himself against the pillow. He's actually happy to see me, Minogue realised.

"How's the family, Jim?"

"Topping. This is Maura's bridge night," Kilmartin said a little too earnestly.

"The young lad has a job selling ice cream in New Jersey, he wrote and said. He'll come back speaking like a Yank… Isn't life wonderful?" Kilmartin added.