Free The Truth About Love by Josephine Hart

bishop needs humility?”
    “Most particularly a bishop.”
    “Another whiskey?” I know he will say yes. He finishes the whiskey quickly.
    “I am armed now and I’m ready again for battle, Thomas.”
    “What an alarming prospect, Bishop.”
    The explosive laughter again. I smile and demolish him. An uncharacteristic revelation of my contempt for the inadequacy of his game. He is hurt. I have been foolish. We sit in silence for a moment. Distraction is required. He picks up a book from a small side table.
    “And is that Mr. Böll’s work I see here? Irisches Tagebuch— ‘Irish Journal.’ Thomas? Following in eminent footsteps. And what’s this I see? Speeches from the Dock , A. M. Sullivan and, I do believe, a first edition. That’s a treasure you’ve got; all the great speeches there: Theobald Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, the Sheares brothers, hanged together while holding hands, Charles Joseph Kick-ham … The list is endless.”
    He settles back in the armchair in which my father once sat. On which Harriet carelessly threw her wet cape, on which once I lay while she held me in her mouth for … How long was it? Sexual timelessness. Inaccurate memories of the dream. I get up abruptly.
    “Forgive me, Bishop. I need to check something.”
    “Of course, Thomas.” Then he settles down to my books.
    I close the door gently and lean against the table in the hall. I hold its edges too tightly. I must control this sudden desperation to see Harriet Calder. I have much practice. When I come back he looks pensively at me. Is there something in my face? Bishop Fullerton is a man who searches daily for traces of a man’s soul in his face. He is a spiritual cartographer of the physiognomy. I may be the master at chess, a fact he resents, but I feel that he could position a man on his moral ladder with far greater expertise than he places his queen or pawn.
    “A little supper, Bishop?”
    We move to the sideboard where, with a flourish, he unveils the sandwiches and the cake.
    “Did you mind me doing that? Ahhh! isn’t Bridget a saint … lower case, Thomas. A woman’s touch! Did I ever tell you that I once considered marriage?”
    He is determined on this intimacy. His conversational ship has left port. It will take time to anchor him again. I can wait. As we take our plates back and I attend to the fire he begins his story.
    “I was about twenty-four, in the year of my vocation. A late vocation, in a sense. I met her at university—we were friends. Aisling was her name and she was a vision. Clever too. But despite her infinitely careful encouragement over many months … well, shall we say I resisted. She married my cousin a few years later. They are not happy, my mother tells me, but they soldier on; they soldier on. We believe in endurance in these matters. You come from another world. Another set of rules apply here between men and women. Temptation, of course, comes to us all, but is easier to resist when the conscience is trained by a loving God. I do appreciate the discretion with which, I’m told, you entertain your female companions. You avoid scandal.”
    I am appalled at this astonishing invasion of my privacy. I experience a momentary desire to respond. It passes. I must not forget that I now live in a sexually repressed, deeply religious, very small town. I must and do respect its proprieties. I have every intention of continuing to be discreet. After a tense moment or two during which he gleans that I do not intend to comment he continues.
    “Ah well, tomorrow I visit Sissy O’Hara. It won’t be easy.”
    “No,” I say and sit down opposite him again.
    “You were at the funeral—you knew the boy?”
    “I met him. Not often. In fact the last time I saw him he talked of Pearse and indeed Sarsfield.”
    “Patrick Sarsfield! Earl of Lucan—one of my favourite heroes. When his own name was whispered to him as the password didn’t he throw it down like a gauntlet in front of his enemies when he