Chapter Five: Dublin August 1909

The train came into Tara street station, South side, at 9.45 in the morning. Mickey stumbled out of the third class compartment, stretching his aching legs for the first time since Belfast. He dragged his baggage over against a pillar and massaged his calf. It had been dead of feeling for an hour, and now the pain was excruciating. For the first time in his life he wished that he had followed his mother's people, and been short. The twenty-four hours to Dublin had been the most uncomfortable he had ever known.

From Coolaney's small station he had bid his family farewell. Da and Sean and Jimmy, Annie and Kate all stood in greater or lesser degrees of distress at his leaving, mostly less. Kate was more interested in scuffing her toe in the mud and Annie looked sullen, as well she might, being stuck with that Kilgallen.
‘So, you're going is it,’ Da said when he appeared again after putting his cases on board.
‘I guess,’ he replied reluctantly. He got such a lump in his throat that he thought he would suffocate from it. Why did he ever have to be saying yes for? He was happy enough on the docks, though it was a hard life. Now he was stuck in Dublin for four years or better. Bridie's disgrace of him or no, the leaving was hard. He'd as soon as gone to America as Dublin.

Da jumped up on the step and gave him a fierce embrace, startling him, for it was most unlike Da. ‘God be with you, Mickeen mo 'gra,’ Da murmured in a low voice for his ears alone, and thumped him on the back.
‘Da!’ Mickey couldn't stand it. The show of affection was worse than nothing. Tears burned his eyes, blurred his sight. Old Sean pulled away, now fatherly and stern, admonishing him,
‘Now write, won't you buachaill, and not to forget the rosary and confession. They're wicked itself, in Dublin. Good-bye, lad.’ The whistle blew, and Mickey whirled, jumping onto the steps of the train. The stationmaster came closing doors and he stepped back again. Their cries of goodbye were drowned in the whistle and the call of the conductor. But he stayed at the door and watched until the train had pulled out and was on its way to Annaghmore and Toberscanavan.

In looking for his tickets, he found a tenner in his coat pocket. He knew it was not lost money for this was a new coat. Da must have put it there. It was a great sacrifice, for most people still paid Da in goods. It brought him to tears again, and he was angry for blubbing like a babby. Christ, he'd lived from home for the best part of three years now. He had never thought of Da furnishing him with pocket money. They'd never even been given money for the collection at Mass on Sundays. The first experience he had of his own money was when he took on at the docks in Sligo. Marvelling, he had folded his long legs into the small space between his seat and the back of the next, and watched the countryside go by all the way to Belfast, too anxious to read or draw.

They stopped briefly in Coleraine, but he did not get out, and when they drew into Belfast in the late afternoon he was sorry he had not, for he was aching. He made his way to the church recommended by Father Doyle in a jervey, for which he suspected he had paid too much, but it was better than dragging the duffel and his art cases the long way.

The next morning early he was up for matins, and after a cold wash and a cold breakfast - for the housekeeper was not yet arrived - he was at the station at six for the morning train. Blear-eyed, aching in every muscle from sleeping on the floor, badly shaven, he dozed fitfully on the way down the coast from the steep, deep green, wooded Antrim hills to the rolling gentle grass hills of Dublin. They passed the grey pile of Howth Castle on the coast north of the city, but he was sitting on the wrong side of the train to see it properly. A day trip, he promised himself. A day trip on the train, when he was settled in town.

Now, he looked up at the surrounding platform, shoving the cap away from his eyes as he straightened to his full height. Tara Street was a small municipal station, not much bigger than that in Coolaney and certainly smaller than the great barn of a place at Queen's Quay in Belfast. He had been told that the room to let was in Townsend Street, There wasn't a phone box in sight. Leaving his things against the pillar, with a cautious eye for them all the while, he went to the stationmaster's window and rapped on it with his knuckles. A woman's face appeared.
‘Yes?’ She peered at him over the rim of her eyeglasses.
He scratched his face a bit, ashamed of his bad shave, and stole a glance for his things again. ‘Em,’ he began, ‘I'd like. Could you tell me the way to number twenty-four Townsend Street, please. I heard it was nearby, like.’ He leaned toward the window on his elbows. It was very difficult to hear. He wished he had a map. He hated having to ask directions.
‘Isn't it just a stone's throw,’ the woman said. She pointed to the right. ‘Just go down the corner here, away from the river. The first street you come to is Townsend. Number twenty-four should be to the right.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, conscious for the first time of having an accent. The woman's Dublin speech was difficult for him to follow. He hadn't anticipated that. She nodded, and he went back to his belongings. The clock on the wall showed the time as ten minutes past ten. No time like the present. He checked again for the stipend Father Doyle had given him from the O'Hara. It was for ‘lodgings and expenses’ he'd been cautioned. Well how the bloody hell was he ever going to spend fifty pound, plus the tenner from his Da? He'd never had that much money at one time in his life. He sighed and settled his cap back down on his brow, then, heaving up the cases over his shoulder as he was used to doing tender on the docks, he walked out of the station and into Dublin town and the great world, all open.

The house was not actually very far away. He'd had a harder time locating Mrs. Feeney's after too much porter in the pub. He turned at the corner to the right on Townsend Street and there it was at the next corner near by the hospital- a red brick house with two floors and a garret to the front. On the street was a large, wavy-glass window, opaque, and a projection from what must be the parlour with a high arched window facing the opposing row of houses. He squinted up at the facade in the morning sun. It was not Annaghmore by any means, but compared to the Feeneys' or the house at home it was enormous. The largest house he will have lived in yet. He walked up the steps and banged the knocker. A fat, frowsy brown-haired woman in a dull green shapeless dress answered the door.
‘Yeah?’ she barked, not very enthusiastically.
He was nonplussed, and blinked at her before answering. ‘Oh, em... I'm Mick Rafferty, and I'm here to see Peter -’ he struggled for the name, but could not remember it, so dug the slip of paper from his coat pocket. ‘- Peter Krisham. Is he in, if you please? I'm to be living here.’ As if that weren't evident by the kit he was lugging.

‘There's none of them lot here now,’ the woman said. She peered at him. ‘You must be the Sligo fellow. I was told you'd come.’ She spoke of it as if it were the end of the world. She opened the door wider for him, a welcome of sorts. ‘Up the stair and to the right, and the door's facing you. Don't take the other one, it's the toilet.’ She had a monotone rattle.

He brushed past her with the bags and glanced up the stairs. They wound up two flights to the garret door, and there must have another on the inside. He left the bags at the foot of the stairs, conscious of the charwoman's watching him closely, and went up the mahogany-railed stairs to the garret that would be his room for the next four years.

Opening the door he was greeted by the cold musty smell of the unused room. But he found it large and well-lighted thanks to a window at the east end opposite. It would be a good place to put up his easel, as it would have the morning light. The room had no heat registers but the residual from the chimneys, so that would mean a brazier for coal or turf which would be expensive. It was clean at any rate, cleared of whatever debris had lodged there previously, the charwoman had been to that.

The matter of his living here had been incidental. Krisham's father knew the O'Hara from the Derby. It was just a spot of luck that Peter and his flatmate Tim Keegan had an unused garret they were happy to let out. Being useless to them, it came at a very cheap rent -twelve pounds the year. It was pocket money to them, a piece of luck for him. Perhaps this Dublin sojourn wouldn't be so bad after all. He did not consider that his new flatmates might be unendurable. He had lived companionably amid strangers for three years, keeping himself to himself, engaging in such ordinary courtesies as decency warranted, but for the most part minding his own business.

The charwoman was shouting at him from downstairs,
‘Haya, you, young man! I'm going off now. You tell Mr. Krisham I want the money ready next time I come and none of this shifty business! I got meself to feed too!’
He smiled, shaking his head. Krisham and Keegan had evidently given her the slip.
‘I will, so!’ he shouted back, and stuck his hands in his trousers pockets as he heard the front door slam, wandering the room in dawning delight. Begod, maybe this wouldn't be so bad at all.

They came home in the afternoon as he was sitting reading in the parlour; or as Peter said, ‘the sherry hour.’ Krisham and Keegan were about as different as could be. Krisham was tall, brown-haired, raw-boned, a medical student with a deadly dry wit and a toff accent; Keegan was short, blond, athletic, and - of all things - a philosophy student who spoke the broad nasal dialect of the Dublin middle-class. They met on the rowing team, of which they were both members, three years ago, and been mates ever since. Mickey found it funny that he could understand Pete perfectly, while much of what Tim said was lost on him. The confusion was mutual. Tim pointed out that he and Pete should get on like a house afire. Pete was not gentry of course, his father was a physician, but they had imbibed their manner of speaking along with medical studies, and - as Pete freely admitted - the Protestant religion that went with the soup in the mercy kitchens during the Famine in Mayo, where his people were from.

‘So you see, old man,’ he said, winking at Tim, ‘we are upstarts. Like Mahaffy and Tyrrell and the lot of them.’
‘I think,’ said Tim, with a speculative glance, ‘that we should wet the babby's head. What do you think, Krisham? Shall we christen our new underclassman here?’
‘Better here than lecture hall,’ Pete agreed.
‘What were you studying again, anyway?’ Tim asked, squinting.
‘English Literature.’ Mickey supplied. ‘My prefect is somebody named Leary. I have a meeting with him after Orientation on Tuesday.’
‘Good Lord!’ Tim blurted. ‘We definitely need to get you drunk then!’
‘Why?’

‘He eats underclassmen for breakfast,’ Tim exclaimed. ‘He is the most cantankerous, arrogant, pedantic bastard ever to crawl out of a Kerry bog, but the thing that makes it so fucking impossible is that he's brilliant. If what comes out of his mouth is any measure of what goes on in his head, he's the sharpest thing this boring old place has seen since Mahaffy hallowed its halls as a first-year.’
‘Leary was his protégé,’ Pete explained, folding his arms.
‘Still is.’ Tim barked, scowling.
Pete's eyebrows went up into the overhang of his brown curls. ‘Do you really think he wants to be Provost?’ He asked, in the tone one would ask if he wanted to fly to the moon.
‘I think he's the most ambitious gobshite since Parnell,’ Tim huffed. ‘You just mind yourself, Micko, mark me,’ he shook his finger. ‘Just one faltering answer, just one inane remark against the Blessed Grail of Holy Literature, and he'll make you wish you'd stayed at home.’ He shook his head. ‘He's the darling of every department chair outside the hard sciences; they all think he's the boy wonder. Good marks from him mean something, and he gives very few of them. I worked my arse off for him and I think I came away with somewhere near sixty. Luckily, in the ranking it came out better; I was at least in the upper third.’ His bitter tone was explained by Pete,
‘Timmy's on academic scholarship, and in the top two in every ranking.’
‘Ah.’

‘But you're scaring the infant, Timmy.’ Pete said, taking in his pale face. He clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Come along, Micko, and we'll introduce you to the wonders of Dublin. Dinner first, and then a tour of some of the best boozers in this godforsaken town. And if you're still standing after that, we'll show you the kips. They were de rigeuer for us medicos,’ he winked, ‘in an official capacity of course. They've afforded Keegan here plenty of philosophy, anyway.’

They began in The Irish House at the bottom of O’Connell Street; with its impressive facade of iron and stone work, depicting assorted Irish heroes throughout history, beginning with the Milesians in the Iron Age. Here Peter plonked down an impressive sum for steak and kidneys, potatoes and greens, under the theory that they would need fortification. They took his drawling word as a ‘medical man’. They followed this repast with pints and whiskey, nothing less than Uncle Arthur’s would do, though it was rather heavy to start, and Lane’s whiskey which was distilled on the premises in Dublin.

Down the quay the went, to Daly’s, to Jury’s, to Kelly’s, and after that Mickey lost count or care of where they went or with whom they spoke. Later, his sole clear memory of the evening was an encounter with a divinity student from Maynooth - Jim Flannaghan - whom they met early on in Daly’s. Tim and Pete were debating what Tim called Pete’s obscure and muddy sophist nonsense about the use of religion in modern times. It was Pete’s idea that religion was a mere palliative for unformed minds and should be discarded in favour of a more practical working philosophy for the masses as they could never hope to understand subtler truths. Tim argued that this was circular logic in that if they were never presented with ‘subtler truths’ how could they hope to raise themselves from mental obscurity? Mickey expected Pete to at least black Tim’s eye for the ‘muddy sophist nonsense’ remark, but his flatmates were evidently quite used to such heated debates, for Pete merely smirked. Until Jim Flannaghan added his ha’pence-worth.

‘You’re both cracked,’ Jim said, leaning across Mickey’s left arm. It was a phrase not calculated to gain him much support in their little company. To a man, they scowled at him.
Pete folded his arms. ‘Meaning?’
‘Has it never occurred to you hoity-toity nobs that the common man is capable of considering the nature of existence all on his own? Or do you think the poor man so bent on mere survival that he cannot wonder at the nature of the being that created him?’
Mickey looked into Jim’s blue eyes not inches from his own.
‘Being a common man, as you say’ he said, slowly and thoughtfully, ‘I appreciate your championing. On the other hand, I resent your assumption based on bugger all that I or we are either nobs or hoity-toity because we care to discuss something other than the racing sheets. It’s people like you who are worse than the toffs.’ He looked over the fellow’s neat plain suit with disdain.

‘Mick -’ Tim touched his arm. He threw it off.
‘No, damn it,’ he insisted. ‘What gives you the right to make assumptions about anybody? Who the hell are you?’
Tim and Pete exchanged a glance. ‘Come on, Micko, leave off,’ Tim said.
Jim Flannaghan made a nod without leaving the barstool. ‘Mr. James Bartholomew Flannghan, OP, Maynooth College.’ He grinned.
‘O Christ,’ Pete muttered, ‘a divinity student.’
‘Novice, to be exact,’ Jim corrected.
‘No bloody wonder,’ Tim said. ‘Baby priests, sticking their nose into everybody’s business... Who let you out of your college, boyo? You look as wet as our Micko here. What age are you?’
‘Twenty-two,’ Jim snapped. He had a baby face, surrounded by an angelic halo of blond curls.
‘Well next time, jackeen,’ Tim menaced, ‘keep out of the business of your elders, or the Trinity boys will have to take you to task.’
‘I should have figured yez for Trinity swank,’ Jim retorted. ‘With your noses in the air.’
‘Your arse will be in the air if you don’t shut your gob,’ Tim said. The air was thick with a coming fight.

‘Do you care to make good on that?’
Mickey stepped in, in no way wanting to end his first night in Dublin hauled up before the DMP for a bar fight. ‘Now, lads,’ he said, making a quietening sign with his hands before him. ‘Easy now, easy. Leave the novice to his opinions, for God’s rightly his business,’ he looked Jim Flannaghan in the eye, ‘but you should learn some manners and not be butting in on other people’s conversations unasked. It’ll never make you a welcome, as man or priest.’
‘You go on, Micko,’ Tim rooted, grinning.
‘I say,’ Mickey said, a smile creeping up, ‘you buy us a round and we’ll call it forgot. All together of course. What do you say?’
As if on cue, Pete stood up from the barstool. He was six-feet two, and could evidently hold his own. Yer man Flannaghan would not be such a fool as to take on the three of them, two rowers and a stevedore. He was not.

‘Ah!’ he grumbled, and dug in his pocket, slapping down a pound note. ‘Johnny,’ he called to the barman who was standing nearby with arms folded, watching the exchange, ‘a round!’
‘Sure thing, Jimmy.’
They had their drink together, the four of them, and parted extremely cordially. He met Jimmy frequently after that in Daly’s and other places. He was to become a fast friend.

The next afternoon, when he surfaced, Mickey had a terrific hangover, but so did the others. Pete grimaced at him as he came downstairs into the kitchen in search of tucker.
‘Welcome to TCD, old man,’ he said. He closed the icebox with his foot and took the bottle of milk to the table. ‘I was just preparing an antidote to our evening’s sojourn. Care to join me?’
‘What is it?’ Mickey asked dubiously. Before Peter on the table were a bottle of brandy, the milk, a canister of sugar and a bunch of lemon zest.
‘Sovereign cure, sovereign,’ Pete insisted. ‘Learned it from the old man. Put you right as rain in no time.’
It looked more likely to make him sick as the dog, but he supposed it was all part of the initiation. What else might they do if he refused?
‘Thanks,’ he said dubiously, and watched Pete mix all the ingredients except the brandy in a pan on the stove. When it was boiled, he poured in brandy and sloshed the lot into drink tumblers.
‘Health!’ Pete said, and tossed back the concoction. Seeing as he did not immediately vomit or fall into paroxysms on the floor, Mickey took a cautious sip. The texture was a bit odd, somewhere between soup and custard, but it did not taste bad. Its efficacy remained to be seen, however. He took the warm drink into the parlour and sat curled on the sofa with it, shuddering, looking out the windows at Dublin at its midday business. By the time dry toast was served up, also by the budding surgeon, he really was feeling better. By now, he decided that he liked Pete and Tim, but his trial by fire had been a bit stiff, at least as far as his innards were concerned. They had travelled the road with him, drink for drink, he had to give then that. But if such was his friendly welcome into TCD society, what in God's name would the unfriendly one be? The question was worrisome as he passed the remainder of the day curled up on the parlour sofa, looking at the papers.

Tuesday’s orientation, with about a hundred other men and a few girls, was a confusing mass of rules and regulations and great deal of moving about from one building of the ancient pile to another. They were told where to order gowns, and expected to wear them in a particular manner at all times when on the premises attending lecture; times of sport - that is College Week in April - and evening functions excepted. First-years were to wear the gowns strictly on the shoulder and no lower on pain of official reprimand by the College and unofficial beating to a pulp by the upperclassmen, whose sole privilege it was to wear the gown in various degrees of dishabille, according to ranking.

First-years were also not under any circumstances allowed to cross, sit upon, or otherwise come in volitional physical contact with the green in the quadrangle, which was likewise the sole privilege of upperclassmen. They were given the undergraduates' hours for the libraries, the faculty lounge - where they were expected to attend their various masters in a social context - and the times of worship in the chapel, a relic of the days when the university was a branch of the Church of England. At then end of it, all Mickey wanted to do was drink. He saw now the wisdom of Peter and Tim's introduction, ‘get used to it , you'll need stiff drinks to get through this.’ And the meeting with the holy terror, P.J. Leary, was yet before him.

He bought a box lunch at Bewley's and took it up to Stephen's Green and sat on the lawn contemplating the ducks in the artificial pond while he ate. There was a band in bandstand in the centre island, playing a bowdlerised brass-band version of a music hall ditty. The sun was pleasantly warm - warm enough to remove his coat - and he wished he had brought his sketchbook, or the Brownie he had purchased yesterday. But he wasn't thinking of free time when he came out.

By the time he walked back through the pale imposing facade of Trinity, going in the front gates because he did not yet trust himself not to get lost if he entered by one of the others, he was feeling lazy from the sun and untroubled about meeting the holy terror. He was only his prefect, after all. What harm, in God's name, could he do?

He crossed the quadrangle, carefully avoiding the lawn, and entered the buildings on the north side. Up six flights of stairs, down the long hallway to the terror's office, which faced the street. A small placard placed in the brass holder on the door proclaimed it to be the office of Msrs. Leary and Oliver. He knocked.
‘Enter,’ came the short response from within. Friendly man, evidently. He opened the door and poked his head round to find a tall, bespectacled, redheaded man sitting at the desk opposite. He was very young. It had to be Oliver. Above the man's head on the wall was a handbill for one of Mahaffy's lectures.
‘Em,’ Mickey said, ‘I'm looking for Mr. Leary.’
The man put down his pen. ‘Well, you found him,’ he said pleasantly. ‘What can I do for you?’
This was the holy terror who ate undergraduates for breakfast? Mickey began to suspect that Tim and Peter were having a lark at his expense. ‘I'm Michael Rafferty,’ he faltered. ‘I have an appointment.’

‘Oh yes.’ Leary uncrossed his legs and sat up in the chair. ‘Of course. I had forgotten. Please,’ he gestured broadly, ‘sit down.’
Where, that would be the question. The only other chair in the room was piled high with books and papers. Every available horizontal space was hidden beneath mountains of books and papers in assorted jumbles. Books lined the walls to the ceiling on all sides but the one above Leary's desk, because it had a small window. There was a stool, he noted, but he could hardly be expected to sit on that. Leary noticed his futile search for a seat and exclaimed,
‘Oh good God!’ He got up and threw the books and papers off the opposite chair unceremoniously. ‘Mr. Oliver is in Galway for the summer,’ he said, as if that were an explanation. Mickey took the seat thus vacated, saying nothing.
Leary consulted a brown appointment book, dug out from the mass on the desk before him. He'd have to be brilliant if he could keep an orderly mind in this midst of this heap.

‘You are for English Literature?’ he ascertained.
‘Yes, sir.’
Leary waved his hand. ‘Please, not here, I don't stand on ceremony here,’ he looked over his glasses. He would elsewhere, the look said. He put down the book. ‘So, Mr. Rafferty, you shall be under my direction then. How nice,’ he folded his hands. ‘You are a country man,’ he observed. ‘Where are you from?’ The man fired questions like rifle fire. Tact was evidently not his strong suit.
‘Sligo.’
‘Ah, as Mr. Yeats. You have been to the Abbey?’
‘No, sir, I only just arrived on the Friday. But the Pollexfens were neighbours of ours...’ he paused, venturing, ‘but they were hardly likely to invite us to tea.’ This produced a laugh.
‘Well put,’ Leary admitted. ‘Well, we shall have to remedy your deficiency as regards the Abbey. I prefer my Literature students to have at least some passing knowledge of native works, along with the classics.’ His tone was heavy with irony. ‘I presume you wish to be retained in all the usual first-year Literature tutorials?’
‘I suppose,’ Mickey shrugged. ‘What would those be?’

‘One Mediaeval, One Renaissance, One Baroque, and Two Classics, the second elective.’ Leary said crisply, pulling a sheet out from another pile on his desk. ‘This is the autumn schedule as of this moment. It may change. Unless you wish to be bored to death, I recommend you take Dickens from Hawkins rather than Oliver,’ he glanced up briefly. ‘If you are extraordinarily ambitious you might wish to take Anglo-Saxon Literature from Mahaffy; it’s a good basis for Chaucer and the Mediaevals, and he’s dead brilliant besides. And, given your record -’ this was the first time Leary had intimated that Mickey had not come upon him totally unawares- ‘I’d say you’re up to it.’ He smiled a little and handed over the paper. ‘Although, some would say I’m biased. The Vice-Provost was my prefect, you see.’
‘Yes,’ Mickey said, although he did not. He was still digesting the fact that the redheaded Master of English had read his file in enough detail to recommend Anglo-Saxon, yet had treated him as if he had bumbled into the office by chance.

On the schedule, if he accepted it, and what other choice did he have, he found himself in Leary’s company for two of five tutorials, three if he chose Blake over the American Transcendentalists for the elective course. The prospect made him feel a little claustrophobic. He began to see what Tim meant: Leary was ambitious, but not in the usual way; his ambition was of the mind. He was in a word, voracious.

Mickey liked to keep to himself. Not that he was shy, how could he be with a gaggle of brothers and sisters, neighbours and schoolmates? But because of the crowding of his outward existence he had early gone inward for peace and solitude. And the hearty, if not to say pushy, self-assertion of his new master - assuming as a matter of course he would go to the Abbey Theatre whether he liked it or not - met with habitual entrenched resistance against such personal intrusions. Was he never to be master of his own fate, even here?

He looked down at the schedule. I’m buggered, he thought. He had no interest whatever in the Americans and the other two courses were required. Besides, the man was his master; what would happen if he refused his suggestions? The Dean of Men had not covered that in his orientation. Perhaps obedience was considered unquestionable. He felt Leary’s eyes on him, and looked up.
‘I have no interest in American spiritualists,’ he said flatly. ‘So Blake it is.’ This produced a smirk from Leary. He was to discover why at the beginning of term - Blake was more a spiritualist than Thoreau or Emerson would ever be. ‘And I suppose it would be good form to take a course from the Vice-Provost. Yes,’ he sighed, handing the paper back, ‘as you will.’

Leary waved a hand. ‘Keep it. You’ll need to have notes for the Registrar, and by the time opening day comes around, you’ll have forgotten what the courses are, anyway.’ He took a slip of paper out of the desk drawer and scrawled on it, leaning over, his hair falling in his eyes. He was left-handed, Mickey noticed. His wrists were very white on the undersides. A scholar. An indoor man. But the raw-boned build said otherwise. He was not a spindly willow.
‘You are an artist, Mr. Rafferty,’ Leary said, pushing up his glasses as he finished writing.
‘Yes, sir.’
Leary looked up now, handing over the slip, ‘That’s as good an excuse as any for staring at people.’ The hazel eyes behind the glasses regarded him shrewdly. ‘You’d do yourself a favour and learn to observe less obviously. There’s trouble to be had that way.’
What was that supposed to mean?

‘Yes, sir. Thank you,’ he said, for the slip of paper, not the advice. Leary could stuff his bloody advice. The paper turned out to be an authorisation for registration. The handwriting was delicate and spidery, copperplate, the script of a clerk; the signature was even and beautiful -- ‘Patrick J. Leary’. The master leaned back in his chair. ‘Have you plans this evening, Mr. Rafferty?’
‘No,’ Mickey said cautiously. ‘Why?’
Leary smiled, a beautiful young man from a Pre-Raphaelite painting. He could not be thirty years old. It would be surprising if he were older than twenty-five, although he surely must be, with the Bachelor’s Degree and teaching for several years into the bargain.
‘I was wondering if you’d like to join several of us, myself and students, I mean, at the Abbey. Half-past seven.’ He was taken aback by the offer, and started, staring at the holy terror in confusion.
‘I’ll consider it,’ he managed at last.
‘Very good,’ Leary said, leaning forward in his chair again.’ Well, a good day to you then, Mr. Rafferty.’
With that, he was dismissed.

‘I see what you mean about Leary,’ he said to Tim when he got home at teatime. Tim pulled a face of martyrdom straight off a holy card and went back to his book.