about it afterwards. Hubert told his stories well.
‘He may not,’ I said, ‘have had a go at her.’
‘He couldn’t leave them alone, that man. I’m going for this Summer Rain thing.’
We stood in the crowd, examining the list of runners. Announcements were made over loudspeakers; all around us people were talking furiously. Men were in shirt-sleeves, women and girls in summer dresses. It was another sunny day.
‘Paddy’s Pride no good?’ I said.
‘Could be.’ But we both put our bets on Summer Rain and to my surprise the horse won at nine to one. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ Hubert said. Without asking me what I wanted he ordered stout at the bar.
We won again with Sarah’s Cottage, lost with Mohaghan Lad and King of Them All. We drank further bottles of stout. ‘Take Gay Girl for a place,’ a man who had dropped into conversation with us in the bar advised. We did so and were again successful. Between us we were now almost seventeen pounds richer than when we started. We watched the last race in high spirits, grasping glasses of stout and urging on a horse called Marino. We hadn’t backed it; we hadn’t backed anything because Hubert said he could tell our luck had come to an end. Marino didn’t win.
‘We’ll have something to eat and then go to the pictures,’ Hubert said.
The grass beneath our feet was littered with discarded race tickets and programmes. The bookmakers were dismantling their stands. Pale evening sunlight slanted over the drifting crowds; voices were more subdued than they had been. I kept thinking of Pamela in the house in Templemairt, of Mrs Plunkett saying grace again in the dining-room, the old man sensing that we weren’t present for yet another meal.
‘What about
We ordered two mixed grills at the cinema restaurant, and tea and cakes. We both bought packets of cigarettes. When
‘He disowned my father, you know. When my father got involved with my mother that was the end of that. My mother was a barmaid, you understand.’
I nodded, having been informed of that before. Hubert said:
‘I didn’t know that old man existed until I was told after the funeral. He didn’t even come to it.’
I didn’t say it must have been awful, having both your parents killed at once. We’d often thought so at school and had said it when Hubert wasn’t there. We’d often considered it must have affected him, perhaps made him the way he was – careless, it seemed, of what people thought of him.
‘You should have heard him when he could talk, laying into me because he thinks I’m like my father. A chip off the old block is what he thinks. My father lived on his wits. A con man, you understand.’
Hubert had often told us this also. His father had briefly been a racing correspondent, had managed a night- club, had apparently worked in a bank. But none of these forays into the realm of employment had lasted long; each had been swiftly terminated, either on the grounds of erratic service or for liberties taken with funds. Hubert, at school, had made no bones about his father’s reprehensible tendencies, nor about his mother’s background. On the contrary, he had taken a certain pride in the fact that his father, in later life, had lived up to the reputation he had established when a schoolboy himself. The apes that had escaped from the circus cage at the time of the tragedy had chattered with delight, scampering over the wreckage. His father would have appreciated that, he said.
A weak crescent moon lightened the darkness as we walked towards Templemairt. The stars were out in force. No car passed us, but even if we’d been aware of headlights behind us I doubt that we’d have bothered to try for a lift. We smoked one cigarette after another, still exhilarated by our triumphant afternoon, and in the circumstances it seemed natural that Hubert should talk about his parents, who had spent a lot of time on racecourses.
‘They were drunk, of course, when they crashed that car.’
It was not difficult to believe they were, but none the less I did not feel that hearty agreement was in order. I nodded briefly. I said:
‘Were you born in England?’
‘I believe in the back row of a cinema.’
I had never heard that before, but there was something about Hubert’s honesty in other matters that prevented me from suspecting invention. The photograph of his grandfather in the hall was precisely as Mr Plunkett had so often been described, down to his eyebrows being almost a single horizontal line, and the celluloid collar of his shirt.
‘When the lights went up she couldn’t move. They had to send for a doctor, but before the ambulance arrived she popped me.’
We entered the house quietly and went to our rooms without further conversation. I had hoped that Pamela might still be up since it wasn’t as late as last night. I had even prepared a scene that I felt could easily take place: Pamela in the hall as we closed the front door behind us, Pamela offering us tea in the kitchen and Hubert declining while I politely accepted.
*
‘Pam, do you want to play tennis?’
She was as astonished as I was to hear this. A startled look came into her face. She stammered slightly when she replied.
‘Three of us?’ she said.
‘We’ll show you how three can play.’
Sunday lunch had already taken place, a somewhat silent occasion because Hubert and I were more than ever out of favour. Mrs Plunkett said quietly, but in the firm tones of one conveying a message as a matter of trust, that
