The man from Cork thumbed through my race-card. Borrowing my ballpoint, he put a cross beside Kinard Diamond in the 4.30 and gave me a meaning look. We were standing at a lonely stretch of railing: myself, a girlfriend, the man from Cork and an old boy who said he used to be a priest. 'I was in fifteen years,' said the priest. 'It was the women, I missed the women.'

LRB 19 September 1996 | PDF Download