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By Root 5786 0

rocking back and forth on the mail-boat with that dreadful lurching one feels as one first leaves the protection of the Howth peninsula and forges out into the open sea; the next she was shipwrecked and bobbing about helplessly in the water. It was icy cold and she had lost all her clothes—a huge wave had just come and turned her completely over, dragging away the last stitch she had on—and then somehow she was lying on her back on a rock and some appalling Creature (that resembled a black sea-lion with a white shirt and black bow-tie, rather like an illustration from Alice in Wonderland), an appalling Creature was trying to dislodge her from the rock and send her sliding back into the black water...and now a moist pink tongue was licking her kneecaps and a scratchy moustache was tickling her thighs ...At this moment, as luck would have it, her roaming hand closed over a very cold, elongated stone and she swung it up and hit the Creature with it. With a soft moan the Creature vanished back into the water...but Charity continued to feel sick until at last she vomited enormously, volcanically, over the side of the bed. Then the waves calmed down and she felt very much better.

The bottle of champagne had not broken, however, when she hit Matthews (who was now lying on the floor with a fractured skull); her fingers had released it and it lay like a block of ice between her thighs. The cork, meanwhile, had begun to travel imperceptibly away from the bottle as Charity floated peacefully onwards (and Faith in the next room groped around in the darkness trying to collect up as many of her garments as possible). Presently it gathered momentum and exploded. A long cry of pain broke from Charity’s lips as the freezing liquid bubbled over the warm skin of her stomach.

Downstairs the Major paused and thought anxiously: “One of the twins?”—but he had Padraig to think of and hurried on.

In the next room Faith paused in alarm at her sister’s bloodcurdling cry and thought that perhaps, after all, it mightn’t be such a bad thing that her own escapade had proved a failure—while beside her in the oily darkness Mortimer thought bitterly: “What a cad the fellow is! Taking advantage of her like that...”

Another person heard the scream. This was Murphy, who had been lurking in the shadowy corridor and seen the twins come up with their young men. When he heard it he chuckled; then his gaunt figure melted back into the darkness. As he went, the moonlight from an uncurtained window glinted momentarily on a long, curving blade, for he had brought a scythe up from the barn, to hone and grease it in the attic where he kept his belongings.

It seemed to the Major that the night had already lasted an eternity, but the clock on the mantelpiece of the residents’ lounge (specially repaired and wound to mark off the bliss-ful moments of Edward’s ball) had scarcely conceded three o’clock. A few moments ago he had caught sight of himself in a mirror unexpectedly: two eyes round with worry in a pale face had stared at him unblinking as an owl, making him think of shell-shock cases in hospital, men who used to sit up in bed all night, wide-eyed, smoking one cigarette after another as they tried to probe the darkness around them.

“I hope this will be a lesson to you!”

All the lessons that were being learned that evening! But what good did they do? By the time one had learned them it was too late. He would move on, but life would not go with him. Life would stay where Sarah was; all the great explosions of joy would take place in her vicinity.

“Drink it all up. Every drop. If it tastes bad you should have thought of that beforehand!”

The house was empty now and silent, except for an occasional faint scratching sound; the Major postulated a rat under the floor-boards. Edward had disappeared once more, leaving him to cope with everything as usual, but he was too tired to feel any resentment. Besides, in a moment he would go to bed.

The Major was standing beside the dying fire, resting one elbow on the mantelpiece, his hand sifting slowly through his untidy