Neil offered his arm as she lowered herself from the step to the ground. "What a polite young man." "That's my mother's fault." - Bernard MacLaverty

He put his feet up on the mantelpiece and leaned back in the chair. He thought about how things happened to him but he brought nothing about. What he needed was self-discipline. His mother had ruled her own life with a hand of iron. She did everything she should do, getting up at seven and walking a mile to mass every day no matter what the weather; if she wanted one thing badly she did without others; if what she wanted was spiritual she denied her body. In Lent she took black tea and weighed her morsels of food on scales and for six weeks wouldn't let a sweet cross her lips although she loved them. She sent money abroad to her working sisters while at night she sat with a wooden mushroom darning her stockings with a criss-cross brown thread. She worked so her family would not want and Cal had never wanted while she was alive. He got a sense of a new life, a new start now that he had officially moved into the cottage. He would discipline himself. He felt a surge of his own power to direct his life into whatever path he wanted. There were six cigarettes left in his packet and he lit one and smoked it with a decadent pleasure, knowing it to be his last. The rest he threw into the fire.

Look, see, behold. Above all, listen.

"Bitter?" said the barmaid and he nodded. What a strange thing to call a drink. Bitter. Aloes. Sorrow. For something that was supposed to make you feel happy.