"I can't place him, no."

"Not Jackie Walsh in Bray, his lad?"

"No, that's Brendan."

"God, isn't it terrible, a young lad to be murdered like that?" Kathleen said.

Minogue allowed that it was. As Kathleen read on, Minogue's thoughts ran adrift.

Minogue would have liked to buy one of the British newspapers, like the Observer or the Times. Minogue used to buy the Sunday Telegraph years ago, but since the North, the newspaper had come out in the open as a Tory rag. Minogue tried the Times and the Observer, but they shoved in enough slurs to turn him away from them. The Irish Sunday papers were rags too.

Approaching Monkstown, Minogue awoke to the understanding that he had not remembered driving away from the church. How had they made it to here and him daydreaming? He glanced over at Kathleen. High cheekbones on her, her eyes disappeared when she laughed. Was she fifty this year?

"Do you know something? I'd love to pick up on the French again. I'll get myself a Paris Match " Minogue said to his wife.

The car breasted the hill looking down into Dublin Bay. Howth rested across the postcard-blue water, beyond the East Pier.

Kathleen looked over at him. Senile dementia, it had been called in her mother's day. At fifty-two? Clare people are a bit off anyway.

"Would you now, lovey? Maybe you can teach me a bit and we can go on a holiday to France someday."

She's learning, thought Minogue. Far more effective than coming out with 'Matt Minogue, are you going a bit quare?'

Minogue smiled. He parked the car close to Dun Laoghaire train station. Kathleen and he began strolling toward the pier.

"We're practising for Paris now, Mrs Minogue. We're boulevardiers" said Minogue.

Kilmartin turned aside from the hurling match on the telly that Sunday afternoon. It was a slow game. The playing field was sodden. The players were all splatted in mud from the opening minutes and the greasy leather ball slipped from players' fingers and off the ends of their sticks. Maybe the Canadians had the right idea, Kilmartin mused, put it on ice and call it hockey.