He was ordained a year after that and a few months later was working in his London parish. It was after Christmas, nearly two years after Owen’s letter, that he got a few days’ leave from his parish priest to go to Birmingham. He traveled up by an evening train, on his own all the way across the English Midlands. There was no one to meet him at the station, though Owen had told him he would be there. The big, blue-black buses went past in the deserted street, and the roadway shone wet and black under the street lamps. He stood outside the station, waiting for the bus to Sparkbrook, and for the first time since he had come to England felt the loneliness of exile.

The bus left him in a street of small, back-to-back houses of blackened brick. He turned off into Byron Street and then into Shelley Street and Wordsworth Street; it was impossible to see how one street differed from the other, and he found himself anxiously looking for landmarks to ensure his return, a glimpse of a factory chimney or the gleam of a railway signal between the rooftops.

Even as he turned in the gateway, he was hoping the house was not the one he was looking for. And yet, it looked Irish – the curtains pinned up unevenly, the old car tire where the bit of grass should have been; yes, already he knew the look of impermanent exile. The fat young woman who answered the door seemed flustered at the sight of him. Two small, half-dressed children pulled at her skirt, and she quelled them with a slap as she directed him up the uncarpeted stairs.

“But they’re not in, Father; only the babbie, and he’s asleep.”

“Who’s minding him, the baby?”

“I’m minding him.” She took his remark amiss and added hotly, “Sure, what harm can come to him?”

“I wouldn’t know, ma’am,” he said civilly, “but I’d have thought one of them would be here to look after him.”

“How can they, when they’re both out working? Indeed, then, ’tis proud of them ye ought to be (for I can see by ye, you’re a brother of Owen’s). There’s not a pair like them in this town, and that’s a fact. They’re so steady, Father, no drinking, no loud talk or carry-on; God love them, sure they never stir out when they’re at home. Not like my own bucko, Father. The divil knows where he does be half the time, and to tell ye the truth, Father, I don’t like to ask; ’tis no place I should know about.”

“How long is Mr. Conroy here?”