...

Michael left school and went to university but that didn’t work out; nothing much did. He delivered pizzas, bounced at a night club, drove a bus to the ski fields, filled cars with petrol on a service station forecourt. Eventually Michael had the money. Not enough for a return ticket but who cared.

Michael is the only person getting out at Dun Laoghaire station. The rain has eased to a persistent wetting breath. Aunt Betty has said something about going along round the harbour for a bit and then taking one of the streets up to the town. Michael walks along the front, passing a strange-looking monument, of a fat stone crown perched on an obelisk. He wonders what it means.

Outside a church he stops to look at his map. He is trying to locate Clarinda Park in the index when an elderly woman, heading towards the steps to the church, turns and comes over. She is wearing a belted rain coat and one of those concertina folding plastic rain hats that Michael and his father used to joke about.

‘Do you need some help?’ she says. ‘Are you lost?’

‘I’m trying to find Clarinda Park, it’s where my aunt lives,’ says Michael.

‘Ah, you’re out of the way here. You need to go back the way you came and turn up Glenageary Hill opposite the People’s Park. At the top of the hill go right into Tivoli Road and right again and you’ll be there,’ she says, pointing.

The first page of Coral's short story Dublin Bay, as it appeared
in The Dubliner (October 2001).