Father Pat has his buttocks in the ordained wing chair. My father is wearing his Sunday shoes over his thick wool socks and hasn’t managed to change his cowshit-spattered trousers. The brackish smell of them mixes with the dust heating on the plastic log fire. Matthew is also pinned on the sofa hoping to be rescued from providing conversation. How did Liam escape? She is making much of the fact that Mick is up at Queen’s University, studying to be a vet, no less. The subtext is that two out of seven isn’t bad although Mick and me have been warned silly books are a poor substitute for the Common Missal.

–  And this is my youngest, Father! Mary! Say hello, Mary! She’s with the nuns!

–  Hello, Father!

–  Hello, Mary, although I think we have already met!

–  Mary! What? What was that, Father?

–  Oh, I offered Mary a lift a minute ago but she very sensibly refused!

–  Oh, right. Well, sit down, Mary darlin’! You must be frozen! It’s a long day for them, Father, down at the grammar school but it’s worth it! Education is easily carried, that’s what I always say!

She backs out of the room so she can never be accused of showing her backside to a priest and we all wait for the sound of her tin biscuit box of doilies being taken out of the cupboard like the chalice from the tabernacle to know she’s at a safe distance. With that, Father Pat O’Connell turns his attention to me. His face has a fair few liver spots like all the Irish I have met coming back from America but the black eyes don’t give you much time to inspect the sun damage. He locks on and I have to answer up about my subjects, my hopes, my friends, their hopes, my response to the recent bit of bother in the town.

Some Loyalist men and some Nationalist men had resorted to the use of fists and feet when enough Guinness had been drunk on both sides and a Protestant had ended up with a bottle in his face. He was in a terrible state; he would be scarred and worse. There were fears for his eye. Father Pat O’Connell asks me to tell him what I think of these ongoing sectarian skirmishes. Don’t stutter, I thought, please don’t stutter, not now! Maybe both sides should try behaving themselves, I managed to stutter; we’d tried the auld bombs and intimidation and kneecapping and it wasn’t going that well. I said we were being taken to Gortnahook to discuss just such incidents. I wished Joe Loughrey could hear me now! I wished he could see a worldly-wise man nodding his agreement with me! ME!