He remembered his joke about the last bishop, poor old John Francis, who in his dotage had taken Father O’Hara for a large materfamilias. The joke was on himself now, on him with a vengeance.

“Two,” he said, “two boys.”

“God bless them, ’tis a pity you wouldn’t bring them.” And she murmured, as if explaining why to herself. “It’s desperate quiet here now.”

“Next time,” he said. God forgive me, I’m a blackguard to the bitter end.

“Ay, do, when they’ll be off from school. I’m going to sow a bed of scallions as soon as the weather takes up. You used to like them in the evenings, with lettuce and soda bread, yourself and... and...” Her voice trailed away.

We used, indeed we used. On summer evenings, when we’d come back late after footing turf, we’d go out to the kitchen garden she had made and we’d pick a handful of scallions, wet with dew, and a head of lettuce from the dark under the tree. Then we’d dip a jug in the churn beside the fuchsia hedge, and we’d bring it in, still warm and dripping. And she’d be cutting and buttering the soda bread for us.

Keep up the blackguarding, boy, keep it up quick! “And how’s Tom?” he asked.

She stared at him as if she hadn’t heard. He had to say the name again: it sounded strange, his own name. “Tom?”

She shook her head. Her face puckered, as if she were going to cry. Oh, Christ, no, he thought, don’t let her cry. I couldn’t bear that.

But she did not cry. She looked straight before her, her face still puckered; she seemed to be summoning up some memory buried way down.

He got to his feet. Should he go? Get the hell out before his blundering caused any more trouble? He stood up, trying to make up his mind.

Through the window the sun shone on the bawn field, where a few hens scratched at the beaten clay around an abandoned harrow. His father had taught him hurling there; on summer evenings after supper they had moved about the field, pucking the ball back and forth to each other across the white clover. And she? She had watched them from this window, leaning against the sash, as she rocked baby Owen to sleep and the shadow of the wood stretched across the field.

What had she thought as she watched him chase after the ball and lift it with his hurley? Yes, what had she thought of him? He had to know.

“Tom!” he said fiercely. “What about Tom?”