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behind the counter in a pose that suggested deep disapproval of the customer’s presence in her shop and an impatience for that customer to go. For others she smiled drily and studied them with grim forbearance, taking the money as though offering an immense favour. And then there were customers whom she greeted warmly and by name; many of these had accounts with her and thus no cash changed hands, but amounts were noted in a ledger, with inquiries about health and comments on the weather and remarks on the quality of the ham or the rashers or the variety of the bread on display from the batch loaves to the duck loaves to the currant bread.

“And I’m trying to teach this young lady,” she said to a customer whom she seemed to value above all the rest, a woman with a fresh perm in her hair whom Eilis had never seen before. “I’m trying to teach her and I hope that she’s more than willing, because Mary, God bless her, is willing, but sure that’s no use, it’s less than no use. I’m hoping that she’s quick and sharp and dependable, but nowadays you can’t get that for love or money.”

Eilis looked at Mary, who was standing uneasily near the cash register listening carefully.

“But the Lord makes all types,” Miss Kelly said.

“Oh, you’re right there, Miss Kelly,” the woman with the perm said as she filled her string bag with groceries. “And there’s no use in complaining, is there? Sure, don’t we need people to sweep the streets?”

On Saturday, with money borrowed from her mother, Eilis bought a dark green shop coat in Dan Bolger’s. That night she asked her mother for the alarm clock. She would have to be up by six o’clock in the morning.

Since Jack, the nearest to her in age, had followed his two older brothers Pat and Martin to Birmingham to find work, Eilis had moved into the boys’ room, leaving Rose her own bedroom, which their mother carefully tidied and cleaned each morning. As their mother’s pension was small, they depended on Rose, who worked in the office of Davis’s Mills; her wages paid for most of their needs. Anything extra came sporadically from the boys in England. Twice a year Rose went to Dublin for the sales, coming back each January with a new coat and costume and each August with a new dress and new cardigans and skirts and blouses, which were often chosen because Rose did not think they would go out of fashion, and then put away until the following year. Most of Rose’s friends now were married women, often older women whose children had grown up, or wives of men who worked in the banks, who had time to play golf on summer evenings or in mixed foursomes at the weekends.

Rose, at thirty, Eilis thought, was more glamorous every year, and, while she had had several boyfriends, she remained single; she often remarked that she had a much better life than many of her former schoolmates who were to be seen pushing prams through the streets. Eilis was proud of her sister, of how much care she took with her appearance and how much care she put into whom she mixed with in the town and the golf club. She knew that Rose had tried to find her work in an office, and Rose was paying for her books now that she was studying bookkeeping and rudimentary accountancy, but she knew also that there was, at least for the moment, no work for anyone in Enniscorthy, no matter what their qualifications.

Eilis did not tell Rose about her offer of work from Miss Kelly; instead, as she went through her training, she saved up every detail to recount to her mother, who laughed and made her tell some parts of the story again.

“That Miss Kelly,” her mother said, “is as bad as her mother and I heard from someone who worked there that that woman was evil incarnate. And she was just a maid in Roche’s before she married. And Kelly’s used to be a boarding house as well as a shop, and if you worked for her, or even if you stayed there, or dealt in the shop, she was evil incarnate. Unless, of course, you had plenty of money or were one of the clergy.”

“I’m just there until something turns up,” Eilis said.

“That’s what I said to Rose when I was telling her,” her mother replied. “And