Clay

Maria is a quiet woman in her late thirties who works as a laundress at a Dublin charity, the Mission of Mercy. On the day the story follows, she takes tea with her colleagues and then crosses the busy streets and rides the tram toward Joe's house, where she is to spend Halloween.

She has long hoped that marriage might still come her way. A running joke about wedding cakes at the bakery keeps the hope alive, and so does the flirtatious remark of an elderly man on the tram.

At Joe's, she realises with dismay that the plumcake she bought for him and his wife is gone, left on the seat behind her on the tram. The small loss hangs over her arrival.

The evening ends with a traditional Halloween game. Blindfolded players pick objects to foretell their futures: a ring for marriage, a prayer book for a life in religion. When Maria reaches out, her hand closes on a lump of clay, and the room goes quiet. It is a short, restrained story of one ordinary day, and its weight rests on that silence.