But Farrell flung him away, so suddenly that he was thrown back against the bookcase. Fighting for his balance, he saw Farrell go flailing away to the window and stand there, halted suddenly against the folds of the curtains. Weakly he groped his way back to his chair and slumped down into it.

“I know what you want,” Farrell shouted. “You want me to lose my temper. That’s what you’ve been after ever since I came here. Why? Will you tell me that? What have I done?”

Father Conroy sat, head on his chest, gaping at the floor.

What have I done, he asked himself, Christ, what have I done? He could hear Farrell’s voice rising, as if cheated by his silence. “...a holy show, a laughingstock... even Drewitt and the pony...” To shut out the sound of it, he put his hands over his ears. Tears were running down his face. He couldn’t stop them. Somehow it seemed impossible to take his hands away, to protect his face. He had to let the tears run, as they had never run before.

The shouting stopped. Farrell was offering him whiskey. He refused. “I’ve managed without it till now.” And so, Farrell bawled his housekeeper up out of her bed to go and make tea; she brought it in her overcoat and curlers, looking in fright at Father Conroy as she put down the tray. Not knowing how to go, she waited and timidly asked, “Is the tea all right, Father?” “Grand,” Father Conroy said, before he even tasted it. And, after she left, he added, as he wiped his face with his handkerchief, “I wouldn’t like to be keeping that one in tea. She has a fine, liberal hand, God bless it. She’d pickle you in tea.”

Farrell drove him home and at the door of his house began to help him out of the car, but he insisted on pulling himself out. Farrell shut the car door for him and said, out of the darkness, “Remember that man, Tom, that you sent us to see, up in the Bohernascorna Gap? We went up, all right, to see him, Dickie and I. ‘Watch and Pray,’ I believe you call him. A most entertaining character. He had us in stitches with his stories. We spent the whole evening there.”

Father Conroy waited, peering into the darkness where his curate stood. “Well, what are you trying to tell me?”

“He seemed very much in awe of you, Tom.”

“He’s an old humbug.”

“No. He told us about the way you go up to the Gap to see him, and the way you give him talks – as good as sermons, he says – to keep him on the straight and narrow. Oh, he thinks you’re the greatest, Tom.”

“Good night,” Father Conroy said roughly and turned away.