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was a toast to his own despair. Of these he was always ashamed.
    Tacitly both understood that there was in him a kind of malignancy, a small hard growth of bitterness which lay dormant most of the time but would spasmodically be activated by an accumulation of imperceptible irritations. When that irreducible nub of frustration discharged its pus, it created in him an allergy to his own life. The result was anger against whatever was nearest to him at the moment. It wouldn’t last for very long but, while it did, it was like being locked in with a thunderstorm. His rage might flash out on anything, one of the children, herself, an inanimate object. They still had in the house a clock which his fist had petrified at ten past nine. It lay in a drawer as a bit of family history, an antique of anger. It had become a secret joke between them. Sometimes when his anger was swelling, she would say quietly, ‘Aye, it’ll soon be ten past nine, Tam.’ And he would give himself up to self-conscious laughter.
    Another salve she used was to say, canting her head to have him in profile, ‘My! Ye’re gettin’ to look awfu’ like Gibby Molloy.’ Old Mrs Molloy’s only son, who lived alone with her, two entries along from them, was the local exemplar of pointless fury. Every once in a while on a Saturday night he drank himself into a state of revolutionary ardour. Coming home, he would methodically set to work – to a stream of background noises which included an obscene roster of his personal enemies, repetitive denunciations of ‘them’ and ‘youse’, and spontaneous slogans of vaguely proletarian bias – battering down the door of the outside toilet. Every Sunday morning after such a night, he was out early, quietly and efficiently replacing the curtain on that small tabernacle of public decency.
    Anyone seeing him on these occasions found him at his most benign and pleasant. He never alluded to the previous night but went about his work with pleasant forbearance, as if he was repairing damage from a very localised storm. Nobody tried to analyse what dark neurosis related Gibby periodically to his toilet in alternate conflict and reconciliation. It was a release which bothered nobody, since the toilet was out of commission for a few hours of darkness once in the space of several months. It became an accepted social phenomenon, an occasional talking-point. Someone might say, ‘He’s surely gettin’ mair regular, is he no’? Wis it no’ jist at the end o’ last year the last time?’ One of the communal jokes was that Gibby was working at the fulfilment of a secret ambition to be a maintainer of toilet doors.
    By categorising Tam’s anger with Gibby’s, Jenny could sometimes negate it. But the effectiveness of her kidding was dependent on her knowing the times when it was an impertinence. She was afraid that this might be one. As she watched him sit at the table, his hair still damp from the washing, his hands tearing pieces of bread and dunking them in his soup, she tried to console herself with the thought that if he was entering one of his black phases, he would make up for it later. For afterwards his mood tended to be as expansive as a meadow, and it was like when she had first known him. Placatively, she turned to Old Conn.
    ‘Wid ye like a plate yerself?’
    ‘Nah. Thank ye, Jenny. But Ah’m no’ long bye wi’ mine.’
    She went back to folding her clothes, abstracting herself from their presence. Old Conn communed with his pipe. Tam ate. The only sign that everything was not normal was that the paper, which Tam usually mouthed over painfully during his meal, lay unread on the table.
    ‘Weel, feyther,’ Tam said. ‘Whit is it?’
    ‘Oh, Ah wis jist walkin’, an’ Ah thocht Ah’d look in.’
    ‘Aye. Jist the same wey as ye hivny done fur a year or twa.’
    ‘Ah’m no’ as young as Ah used tae be, Tam. Ah don’t get aboot as much.’
    ‘Naebudy’s complainin’.’
    The terms of their exchange