One candle was drowning now. Tim snuffed it between finger and thumb, blew, snuffed it again to be sure.

I was suddenly so overcome with tiredness, my head swam.

Good night, Tim.

I left my brother in the kitchen with the other candle, stroking his bird. I didn’t know when he slept these days. He was always up later than me, and earlier. Did he still have nightmares? If he got no sleep at all, surely he’d have collapsed by now. So if he kept getting up every morning, I supposed that was a good sign and should be enough for me.

I went up in the dark, bewildered with drowsiness.

Morbidly I dwelled on what might have happened if Bridie Sweeney hadn’t been sent to my aid today, arriving out of nowhere, like a visitation. At some point, would I have thrown down my apron and howled that this job was beyond my powers? More likely, would I have failed to save Delia Garrett from the red tide?

I stumbled on the loose runner and almost fell, had to brace myself against the seam of the wallpaper.

Enough, Julia, I told myself. Time for bed.

III

Blue

I SLEPT AND DREAMT that life was beauty. Stuck in my head, a tag from an old song. I slept and dreamt that life was beauty. And then I woke—

Then I woke—

The jangling alarm clock had roused me from sleep. I slapped down its knob and chivvied myself: Up you get.

My legs paid no attention. Those strings that connected handler to puppet seemed cut, or at least tangled.

I tried persuasion, telling myself that Tim would have the tea wetted for us already.

I tried castigation. Mary O’Rahilly, Honor White, Delia Garrett—they all needed me. As Sister Finnigan had drilled into us: Patient first, hospital next, self last.

The song was still bothering me. I slept and dreamt that life was beauty. Then I woke up and—

I was thinking about Bridie with the fuzzy bronze halo. I’d never thought to ask last night whether she meant to come back again. It could be that her first day had scared her off hospitals for life.

Snagged in my head: And then I woke—

Then I woke up—

I woke, and found that life was duty. That was it.

I winched my limbs out of bed in the dark. Sponged myself all over with cold water and brushed my teeth.

Tim’s botch-legged magpie was hopping around on the kitchen table, its ratcheting screech like a policeman’s rattle. Its eye had an awful intelligence. Two for joy, I thought. Was this one lonely despite my brother’s silent company?

Morning, Tim.

He gave me both pieces of toast.

What’s that on your cheek?

Tim shrugged as if it were a smear of jam or smut.

Come here so I can see.

My brother’s hand shot out to keep me at bay.

I told him, Let me do my job.

I held his head steady, turned it to see better. It was a graze with a small blue bruise purpling behind it. Did you knock your face on something, Tim?

He nodded slightly.

Or was it another one of those yobbos who attacked you in the lane?

He shrank back into himself.

Strange times to be an invalided veteran in Dublin. An old fella might shake Tim’s hand to thank him for his service, and the same day a widow might sneer at him for a shirker because he still had all his limbs. A passer-by might shout that it was filthy Tommies who’d brought the plague home to these shores in the first place. But my guess was that yesterday, some young green-wearing, would-be rebel had called him a pawn of the empire and pelted him with rubbish, because that’s what had happened before.

Tell me, Tim. Otherwise I’ll just have to imagine. Write it down if you’d rather.

I shoved the notebook towards him, and the pencil rolled in a circle.

He ignored it.

Being a mother must be like this, a constant struggle to interpret a baby’s distress. But at least a child would be learning a little every day, whereas my brother…

I risked putting my hand over his.

Tim let it rest there briefly. Then with his other hand he pulled open the drawer of the kitchen table, and retrieved two packages tied with coils of old ribbon.

I said, My birthday. It went right out of my mind.

My brother loved me. A tear dropped onto my skirt now.

Tim reached past me for the pencil and notebook. He wrote, Only thirty!

I whooped with laughter and wiped my eyes. It’s not that, truly.

Instead of trying to explain, I unwrapped the first box. Four Belgian truffles.

Tim! Have you been hoarding these since the war broke out?

He smirked.

The second package was quite round; under its skins of tissue paper I found a fat shiny orange. All the way from Spain?

Tim shook his head.

I played the guessing game. Italy?

A satisfied nod.

I put the fruit to my nose and drew in the citrus tang. I thought of its arduous journey through the Mediterranean, past Gibraltar, and up the North Atlantic. Or overland through France—was that even possible anymore? I just hoped nobody had been killed shipping this precious freight.

I tucked the orange and chocolates into my bag for a birthday lunch while Tim packed up his tools for the allotment. I stood in the lane; the slice of dark sky was streaked with pink. He got his motorcycle started on the third try. I’d bought it for him at a widow’s auction of an officer’s goods, though I’d never told him so in case the thought of riding a dead man’s machine bothered him.

I waved as he rumbled slowly away, then went to fetch my coat and cape. I lined up my hooks and eyes. Standing beside my cycle, I drew up my skirts on their strings. It was mild, for the first morning of November.

Bridie had probably never ridden a bike. Her having been in a home made sense of so many things: ringworm marks; melted arm from a kitchen accident; outsize gratitude for canteen grub, skin lotion, and hot water. No wonder she’d had no understanding of how a foetus lived and moved inside its mother—she’d grown up in a house of orphans and ended up boarding with nuns she couldn’t stand for want of anywhere else to go.

I pedaled past the shackled gates of a school where a fresh-painted notice said CLOSED FOR FORESEEABLE FUTURE BY ORDER OF BOARD OF HEALTH. I thought of the young Noonans; if slum children weren’t going to school these days, they couldn’t be getting their free dinners there.

Clouds hissed and billowed from the high windows of the shell factory, which meant the fumigators were steaming the workrooms; maybe they’d been toiling in their sulphurous fog all night. Outside, in a line that snaked from the door, munitions girls shifted from foot to foot as they chatted, stained hands pocketed against the dawn chill, impatient to get in and get at it.

In my head, I told Ita Noonan: Your work’s done.

I pedaled faster. Thirty years old. Where would I be at thirty-five? If the war was over by then, what would have taken its place?

Back to this moment—what would be asked of me this morning? Delia Garrett, weeping into her sheets. The gasping, husbandless one, Honor White: Let her lungs be winning the fight. Mary O’Rahilly: Please, her travails over and a baby in her arms.

I locked my cycle in the alley.

Passing the shrine to the fallen soldiers, I noticed that a rebel had daubed NOT OUR WAR across the paving stone at its base. I wondered if he could possibly be the same lout who’d attacked Tim.