Excerpt
“I bet none of your sons’ll be fishermen,” Sweeney argued. “You can’t make a decent living at it any more. The whole industry’s gone mad.” He reached out and poured the formerly rejected half bottle of porter into a glass. “What did it cost to run a boat before the war? A hundred pounds a week maybe. Now it costs around three, four hundred. Even more for the big boats. You’re paying out more than you’re taking in.”
“I’m not.”
“Then you’re an exception, Joe; and I wish I knew how you did it.” Sweeney was staring at the pale, frothy head in his glass of porter. Then he looked up at Joe. “It must be galling for you to get tuppence or thruppence a pound for your fish at the quayside and watch the fishmongers in their shops rake in anything from sixpence to half a crown.”
“And there’s damned little going for sixpence, I can tell you,” said Slattery. “In fact the housewives in the city are complaining because they can’t get enough fish, and the fishermen are complaining because they can’t get rid of it. I hear that whitings were so plentiful during Lent that fishermen couldn’t give them away. They had to send them to the manure yard. I think Michael was wise to sell out. Not that he’s a fisherman anyway.”
“Speak of the Devil and he appears,” said Sweeney. “How are you, Michael? Come and join us.”
Michael and Caitlin had just appeared at the dining-room door and looked in.
“We’re going pretty soon,” said Joe Carney. “Don’t give us that impatient look.”
“They’re not very hospitable, are they, Joe?” Sweeney teased with a leer. “Wouldn’t you much rather be surrounded with good friends, lots of food and plenty to drink on a miserable, wet night like this than stuck in here all alone with nothing to do and no one to talk to?”
“I would to be sure, Sweeney,” Joe agreed. “Come on, you two, sit down, have another drink, enjoy the craic.”
“I think we should take the hint and go,” said Seamus Slattery. “It’s getting to be very late. This isn’t one of Finn’s parties.”
“You don’t have to leave on our account,” said Caitlin.
“Oh, I think we do,” Slattery declared. “It’s been a long and memorable day for you two lovebirds.”
“Well, your wife’s still gossiping in the kitchen,” said Sweeney. “Go and grab hold of her and tell her it’s time to go home. Come on, we’ll all go together.”
Twenty minutes later the house was empty, and Michael and Caitlin sat…
