His sister's name was Mary and his wife's name was Mary and his mother's name had also been Mary, and in the long slow days of his decline he often blamed on this trifecta of Marys the feelings of manifest humiliation that had dogged him from the first moment he'd looked across the table at the woman he'd made his bride and saw not love, nor even contempt, but only a shade of Maryness paler and more washed out than the face of the dark Mary that had given birth to him or the Mary mouldering in the grave, Morphine Mary, who from her hospital bed had told him to fuck off and from whom until that moment with his wife he thought he had forever turned his face.

"The odd thing is that you're Jewish, and Mary's not a Jewish name," he said to her.

"Not lately, anyway," Mary answered.