Free Triple Pursuit by Ralph McInerny Page B

the sentiment, Roger, but now he can distract himself checking out Gallagher’s complaint.”
    â€œDo you think charges could actually be brought against Austin Rooney? I don’t approve of people hitting one another, particularly men of an age when a little can do a lot of damage, but there was certainly provocation. The lady in question was Austin’s date of the evening and Gallagher tried to commandeer her. But it doesn’t seem to have the makings of a criminal case, Phil.”
    â€œYou have to know Skinner.”
    2
    The night of the dance, George Hessian and Rawley were at McGinty’s Irish Pub drinking Guinness and trying to convince one another that the activities they were engaged in after retirement were more satisfying than they were.
    â€œI am reading systematically through the novels of Trollope,” Rawley said, his lips creamy with stout.

    â€œI’ve never read him.”
    Rawley looked at him in disbelief and for forty-five minutes extolled the merits of the English novelist. George had often been impressed by the former financial officer’s knowledge of literature.
    â€œYou must have thought of writing yourself.”
    â€œIt is not my gift.”
    â€œYou should try.”
    Rawley looked at him. “I did try. That is how I know it is not my gift.”
    It was more difficult to convey to Rawley the satisfactions George derived from writing the history of the parish of St. Hilary. His youthful dreams of authorship might seem mocked by the project that now engaged him, but in the privacy of his own heart he could admit to himself that however modest a parish history might be it did not detract his efforts from anything more impressive. Immersing himself in the school records brought him back to his beginnings. Long thoughts were induced by comparing the grade-school records of those whose subsequent careers he knew. Dallying over the details of such records did not advance his task, but then he was still in the preparatory phase of his great effort. He wanted to recover the spirit of lost times and these old records were a catalyst to remembering his own years in the parish school. Recently he had been tracking Austin Rooney and Jack Gallagher through their eight years at St. Hilary’s school. Each report card had a mark for deportment which was glossed by a line or two from the teacher. Austin from his earliest years had been recognized as docile, inquisitive, bright. His IQ score as well as his grades were higher than Jack’s, about whom teachers tended to write with more unction and enthusiasm. It was difficult to know the basis for this higher estimate of Jack Gallagher. It helped to think back from the man Jack had become and imagine that those long-ago nuns had foreseen something of the shallow fame that would be his.

    In sixth grade Austin and Jack were thought to have possible vocations to the priesthood. They were both altar boys, Austin the president of the John Berchmans Society, of which all altar boys automatically became members. The rivalry between Austin and Jack seemed present from the beginning, though they excelled at different things. Jack had been the athlete of the two, something that seemed ironic when George learned that Austin had knocked Jack to the ground twice in the course of the much-heralded dance.
    â€œDid you see it?” George had asked Edna Hospers.
    â€œI saw Jack Gallagher on the floor.”
    She seemed to be suppressing her partisan feelings for Austin in the dispute.
    â€œWhat was it all about?”
    â€œMaud Gorman.”
    George learned that as schoolboys Austin and Jack had once fought on the playground during recess, but then it was Austin who had been vanquished. Nonetheless both boys had been summoned to the principal’s office, equal in the offenses they had committed.
    â€œDidn’t you fight him when you were students here?” George asked Austin.
    Austin took a step backward.