I’ll drive over to Bat, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll put all my cards on the table and leave it to Bat to tell me or not to tell. Bat’s a decent sort. Bat will tell.

Just as he got ready to go, he had a call from Joe Halpin. He groaned as he saw the confident figure come up the drive – next after Watch and Pray, Joe was the biggest cross he had to bear.

He was a strong, rubicund fellow of about forty years. He lived alone in a county-council cottage and sometimes did odd jobs for farmers, when they could get no one else. The trouble about Joe, Father Conroy had once remarked, is that he thinks manual labor is a Spaniard.

He wore a sheepskin jacket, bought secondhand at the horse fair in Donore. It was too small to zip up, so that a large expanse of hairy chest was left bare. More hair sprang out from under his cap. His eyes were gray and serious, set very wide apart; his manner, as always, was placid. He carried a duffle bag, out of which stuck a large packet of cornflakes.

“I brought you a piece of the Sunday paper, Father. There’s a bit in it about dreams. Remember what you were saying?”

“No, Joe, I do not.” God Almighty, what had he said to cause another visit, a further infliction? Was it safe to talk about anything with Joe?

“It do say here that Shakespeare and other great writers got most of their stories out of dreams. There was a man called...” He searched the paper for the name. “Coleridge, now, and I was wondering if you ever heard tell of him, because I had a dream once that was very like the one they do say he had.”

Father Conroy took the paper firmly. “I’ll have to read this at my leisure, Joe. Was there anything else you wanted?”

“Sure, no, Father, except that I have another post in view, and I’d be obliged to you if you’d do the needful.”

Damn it, another reference! Father Conroy summoned up a smile. “What is it this time, Joe?”

He took the newspaper clipping that Joe gave him and searched it for the most likely post. “Curator of Manuscripts in Nottingham University”? Surely that couldn’t be it? But yes, Joe’s black fingernail was underlining the ad. “That’s a post, now, that might suit me right well. A man could do some literary work in a post the like of that. I was reading in the Sunday Express about a grocer in Wales who kept a notebook under the counter and, begod, didn’t he write three great novels, with no bother on him at all. Just filling in, like, between customers.”

“You want the reference now?” asked Father Conroy gloomily.