The sun was shining. Birds flew out from the bushes. He stopped halfway down the path and looked back. He should have stayed. He should have listened to whatever she might have had to say, her explanation for all the past that had come between them. But hadn’t he left it too late? He looked back at the house. The windows were dark, their small panes reflecting the overgrowth of twenty years. He imagined he could hear her voice still faintly calling, “Who is it?” How could she have recognized him, when she had never known him? It was too late.

As he hurried to the gate, he saw a big clump of brambles in the middle of what had once been the garden. Pulling aside some of the briers, he could see that the pedestal was still there, and the brass dial, now black, which had once measured out the hours of sunlight. If nobody knew it was there, it would just crumble away under the weight of the brambles. And who would know, after she was gone, and Frank, and the place altogether sunk in greenery?

A half-hour’s work would clear the brambles away, just one half-hour with a billhook and a strong arm to wield it. But whose? It would have to be the arm of someone who cared, of a Conroy. Yes, there was no other way out of it; he would have to go to England and bring back Owen’s son. There was still something to be saved out of the past.

Chapter 15

The journey passed quickly. Large stretches of it he was anesthetized against – Dublin, for instance, a gray, unfriendly place (like most country people, he felt more at home in London), then the deck of the mail boat and the long night journey across England. He reached London early in the morning.

He sat a long time in the station cafeteria over a cup of tea and a cellophaned packet of sandwiches. A bent, old attendant, muttering to himself, loaded a trolley with soiled cups and plates and mopped the table around Father Conroy’s saucer, as if it was a thing that had grown there overnight.

While he waited for the Eastbourne train to leave, he decided to ring up Marie. He felt a need to make his purpose more real. Besides, he was accustomed to drop in on people without notice, and it occurred to him that she might not, after all, be there.

The phone was answered by a man’s voice – to his surprise, for he had not considered her husband till now. He explained who he was, but the slow, north-of-England voice kept repeating patiently, “Who? I’m sorry, but I can’t quite catch... Who is it, please?” And then with relief he heard it say, “Just a moment,” and Marie’s voice took over, “Who’s that speaking?”

It took him aback, the very precise Englishness of it; a hard-won precision, he realized.