Some of the faculty, those more practiced at divining spirituality, had their doubts about him, but no one was prepared to put him to the test; they were mindful of his success in tweaking the nose of authority. Once, for instance, at one of the marathon viva voce examinations, which they took so solemnly, when the professor announced the theme on which he was expecting to discourse, Conroy calmly corrected the quotation, in Latin of an almost insolent perfection. The professor started, glanced at his colleagues, and when they, unable to help, looked away in embarrassment, he began to check hurriedly through the pile of books before him.

“Allow me, sir,” said Conroy. And frowning, with tongue slightly protruding, he soon ran the quotation to earth.

“As you say, Mr. Conroy,” said the professor, drawing the book from him, “and now, perhaps you would let us have the benefit of your observations without further delay?”

He retaliated later, in class, when Conroy gave a somewhat free interpretation of a scriptural reading. “Mr. Conroy, of course,” he told the other students, “will always insist on improving upon the commentary.” And he passed on to the next question, as Conroy smiled, accepting the rebuke as a compliment.

What bastards they were! Yet, he had not thought them bastards at the time, as poor Mahon (now one of them) did not seem to him a bastard now. He had accepted them, as the young fellows in Declan’s still accepted Mahon, as part of the system. And he had accepted the system; yes, he had made it his own, mastered every detail of it. In the process, he never considered that it might have mastered him, made him its own.

Or almost its own. As a student, he had had to wear Frank’s overcoat. It was not a good fit, and the top button could not be fastened across his chest. He never bothered to get the coat altered; during all his years in the college, he wore it swinging open, however cold the wind. Like the coat, the system had never fully enclosed him.

*

He remembered the coat on the day of Jimmy’s wedding, when Frank walked back into his life as casually as if he had walked out of it only the week before. He was well into his sixties, yet he seemed as young as Father Conroy remembered him. Perhaps this was because, in his weathering, he had become more of a type than a person; he had the well-stored look of a certain type of unmarried Irish farmer; his whole manner betokened a dedication to the here and now, an unshriveled confidence that the fullness of life still lay ahead. The black, tight-breasted student’s overcoat could no longer have contained that pagan plumpness.