"Father and Mother aren't able to have us. They'd like to, but they're not able to so we go and see them on weekends to say hallo. Muttie drives us in his van."
"And why can't your parents have you?"
"Mother has bad nerves and then Father goes travelling. It's better we stay with Muttie and his wife Lizzie."
"Nerves?"
"Yes, she gets worried about things and then she drinks lots of vodka and doesn't know where she is any more."
"And why does she do that? Drink the vodka?" Derry asked.
"It helps her nerves. It's like a magic potion. She forgets whatever was upsetting her. The trouble is that she makes no sense and falls down and everyone gets cross with her," Maud said.
"But if she stopped, then you could both go and live with her, couldn't you?" Derry was unforgiving about a woman who could leave such marvellous children with strangers.
They explained that they had a brother, but he had done some crime, he was never spoken of, and he didn't come home. One time he used to work in Neil's father's office with Uncle Jock, but he didn't any more and he had gone away. "Are we talking too much about ourselves?" Maud wondered. "We haven't asked you any questions so that you could have a bit of talking."
"Not much to know about me. My father had bad nerves too. He used whiskey as a magic potion to make them better. Lots of it."
"And did it work?" Maud asked.
"No, not at all. It made him worse."
"And did your mother go wandering off on travels like our father does?" Simon was so innocent it nearly broke Derry's heart to see children accepting this intolerable state of affairs.
"No, she couldn't. She had to raise her children, and raise us without any money or support." His face was hard now.
The children noticed. Maud spoke gently. "But if his nerves were bad, what could anyone do about it?"
"He could have tried to stop drinking. He could have kept a proper tongue in his head to my mother."
"But he didn't mean all those things," Simon explained as if to a simpleton. "When Mother has been drinking she tells Father terrible things like that he has other ladies, and that we are monsters and sneak money from her purse. None of us take any notice."
"What?" Derry was amazed.
"Well, you can't take any notice, they don't mean it. Wouldn't they much prefer to be living a nice, peaceful life like everyone else?"
"And you don't hate them both?"
Simon and Maud looked at him as if he were from another world. "Hate them? Your mother and father? Nobody could do that. It isn't possible." They spoke every second sentence.
He was silent for a while. The twins looked at each other. He looked as if he might be going to cry.
"Are you all right, Mr. Derry?" Maud said.
"Did we talk too much?" Simon wondered.
Derry King shook his head.
"Do you think we should do the entertainment now?" Simon asked Maud.
"Maybe it mightn't be right for entertainment, Simon, you know the way it sometimes just isn't and everyone expects us to know."
I could check with Cathy," Simon agreed.
"But we don't want to leave him all upset," Maud said.
Derry still had said nothing. His face was working as he tried to hide his emotions.
"Maybe, Mr. Derry, you could go behind the sofa and have a big cry if you want to about your father's nerves and then you'd feel better. Often when we go to see Mother, afterwards we have a big cry to think of all she missed. Would you like to do that?"
"No, but I might have one later," he stumbled out the words.
"Yes, I bet you will." She patted him consolingly on the hand in the shared friendship of those who were children of the nervy.
Brenda Brennan, who was lip-reading, reported the conversation to Ella. "Maud is urging him to go behind the sofa and have a big cry."
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Is he going to?"
"He says he'll have one later."
"And what's the boy saying?"
"He's wondering whether they should get on with the entertainment," Brenda reported.
"I think they should start it almost at once, don't you?" said Ella. Cathy announced that the puppet play, which was about seven minutes long, was called "The Salmon of Knowledge", but the salmon puppet itself had been damaged in transit and had lost some of his scales, so everyone was to imagine it more scaly. The audience cheered it to the echo, Maud and Simon took several bows. They asked if there were any requests for songs. They were allowed to sing two, they said, looking eagerly around the room, sure of the delighted enthusiasm they would receive.
Derry King couldn't bear them to wait one more second. He heard himself calling for a song. "Carrickfergus". He didn't know it at all, he just remembered the name the twins said people liked.
They had true little voices and stood very still, side by side, singing the song of lost love and dreams. The seas are deep, love, and I can't swim over And neither more have I wings to fly I wish I met with a handy boatman Who'd ferry over my love and I ... Derry felt a very unaccustomed prickling in his nose and eyes. He hated this kind of music, glorifying loss and building up a sentimental image of the Old Country. He was not going to let two simple children who had seen no violence in their home make him change his own attitudes. Jim Kennedy was a violent man who had made life hell for everyone around him. There was no way Derry was going to go all soft on him now. There was just some small seed there that made him think he understood why his mother forgave him so often. It must have been some kind of belief, like these children had said, that Jim Kennedy like any other drunk would have preferred a different life, but it had somehow escaped him. Was that in his mother's heart as she insisted on staying in the home that Derry had been urging her to leave?
They were at the last verse now, and generously allowing the audience to join in. Even encouraging them by raising their arms. I'm never drunk but I am seldom sober A handsome rover from town to town Ah, but I'm sick now and my days are over. Come all you young men and lay me down. They all clapped and praised Maud and Simon. The twins were busy trying to decide what their second and last song should be.
"Do you know, that was so terrific, I wonder if you'd consider quitting when you're winning?" Cathy suggested.
It was not a concept that the twins grasped easily. But Maud glanced over at Derry King. He was the guest of honour, the man they had been asked to entertain. She saw what the others had already noticed. That tears were falling unchecked down his face.
"You're right, Cathy. I think we should leave it. Not always, but just this once."
"Love you, Maud, and you, Simon," Cathy said.
"Everyone's getting very odd round here," Simon said, annoyed that they hadn't been able to sing "Low Lie the Fields of Athenry". "You don't have to be quiet just because I cried, and you don't have to drive at five miles an hour because I dared to criticise the mad speed you went at on the way here," Derry grumbled.
"Lord, but there's no pleasing you today," Ella said with a sigh.
He was contrite. "There is pleasing me as you put it. I did so enjoy that lunch. Everyone was so welcoming. Thanks, Ella."
She smiled at him. "Go on, they were delighted with you. All of them."
"Were they?" He was childishly pleased. "Oh yes, and Brenda says now that she's met you, she has less anxiety about the project. My parents don't think that you're a big bad dangerous Yank. My mathematics pupils love you to bits. You did yourself a lot of good!
"I had a happy day."
"So did I. Which is just as well, because I have a lot ahead of me," Ella said.
"You do?"
"I do, Derry. I want to sort this whole thing out about Don's computer. Finish it, once and for all. And I wonder if I can do it from your suite in the hotel."
"Sure."
"You're very restful, do you know that? You don't say big long sentences when one word will do."