He cleared a place on the table and began: “My lord, I most humbly request that in the event of my...” “departure,” he was going to say, and paused to consider how his absence would be officially noted. “Conroy, yes, he departed.” “Emigravit ad coelum,” they used to say in the old parish records. “Sealed with the seal of faith, sleeping the sleep of peace.”

And then, impatiently, he wrote, “...death, that Father Peter Mahon, my fellow student and...” What else? Friend? He had hardly spoken to the man in his life; still...”...friend,” he wrote, “be asked to administer my effects. I give him full power to dispose of all as he thinks fit. I have complete confidence in his discretion.” And you can say that again!

He snatched his head, thinking out some nice, flowery phrases that would irritate his lordship, then scrawled his signature at last. But, just as he addressed the envelope, he thought of the post, that it was already gone.

The post already gone! How was he to put in the time waiting? Blast it, he thought, sitting down at the kitchen table, suddenly disconsolate. He could belt into town and get the post there, but what then? He couldn’t return here to... to sit down and wait. What the hell was he to do?

He noticed the calendar on the wall, with the ring around the date. Of course, O’Hara’s dinner! Well, he could go along there, why not? See Mahon there too, maybe even speak to the fellow, see what fist he was likely to make of the job.

He stuck the envelope in his pocket and turned to go. In the hall he turned and looked around. The clock still looked at him, hangdog, and he pushed at it playfully. Damn little he’ll get for you, he told it.

What happened to a place, though, when you left it? Did everything stay suspended in space, waiting for you with the same expression till you returned? It was a question he had asked before; it had that dimly familiar feel to it. Of whom, though, had he asked it? His father? Perhaps. He could see his father smiling and saying, “Does it stay the same? Sure, how do we know, once our back is turned?”

*

And now he was driving fast along the road, whose every twist and turn he had known as a boy. Beyond the wood, over the bridge, O’Hara’s house came in sight. He could see a figure in black in the garden, moving between the trees, Mahon as sure as God. Well, maybe they would find a lot to say to each other. Maybe they were intended to be friends, after all.