The Truth About Love by Josephine Hart Page B

tonight’s the night.”
    “Good evening, Eamonn.”
    “Now Eamonn, you go home to Margaret and the children and shall we say eleven-ish? Is that all right, Eamonn?”
    “Of course, Bishop.”
    As Eamonn executes one of his top-speed mechanical pirouettes and races down the drive Bishop Fullerton smiles indulgently and progresses down the hallway, the skirts of his robes almost touching the wainscoting. In the study he settles into his usual chair.
    “Ah this room! How I admire this room. I admire this house. I always did. You did well to buy it. Poor Edmond Pennington. I know he’s taken up his estates in England—all very grand, I’m told—but I feel certain that even after all these years he longs for Lake House. Still, primogeniture, that somewhat brutal system of inheritance the British practise, might make one a little ambivalent about the untimely death of a childless elder brother. Or is that uncharitable of me? Ah, what a great fire Bridget makes. The Irish love a fire. Have you noticed, Thomas?”
    “Indeed.”
    “I hear Tom O’Hara came to see you.”
    I sigh. What more can I do? The information system in an Irish town would put the British Secret Service to shame, and frequently did.
    “Yes.”
    “Surprising. Coming to see you. I mean, he hardly knows you. We’re all trying to help him. He’s busy saving Sissy, I suppose.”
    The bishop, who is possessive by nature, does not, I think, like to contemplate the dilution of his exclusive relationship, as he sees it, with “The German” by even the possibility of a friendship that I might develop with one of his parishioners. Particularly one who is grieving and should rightly find all the comfort he needs in his belief in God and in the support of God’s emissaries of whom, in this town, the bishop is the most exalted.
    “And his children.”
    “Yes. But Sissy, she’s the one.”
    There is always a certain relief in the discussion of another’s tragedy. Sympathy flows like a balm between those who speak of tales of agony to which they have been but distant witnesses.
    “Are you saying a man can only save one person at a time, Bishop? Even a father?”
    “I’m not wise enough for these things. I try, of course. Marriage is a mysterious country to me. I always felt the climate would be too intense and the language rather difficult to learn. My guidance is in theological matters, sometimes in matters of philosophy but not in matters psychological.”
    “Whiskey?”
    “Thank you! Uisce beatha! The water of life. To you, Thomas, and to chess and to conversation. I often think, Thomas, that it’s the conversation that I most appreciate about these monthly jousts.”
    He beams at me.
    “I’m not the Pope, but sometimes my flock listens to me as though every word is spoken ex cathedra . It’s a heavy responsibility. This is only a chair from which I pronounce when I’m here with you.”
    He is pleased with his little joke and continues, “My flock rarely challenges me.”
    “The sheep rarely challenge the shepherd.”
    “Sheep, is it? How little you know us Thomas. They do not challenge me in religious debate, but they can slip under the net.”
    “Or pen.”
    “Oh very good, Thomas, very good. Yes, they can slip away from me. This green velvet winged beauty,” and he pats the chair, “I wish I could have one like this in the Palace. But as I told you, my predecessor Bishop Heggarty was rather austere. Got rid of quite a lot. So it’s difficult for me to go out now and acquire such a piece. It would look too opulent. Send out the wrong message. We’re an army. And in public, indeed even in private, we’re mostly on parade. Forgive the military analogy. When I was training for the priesthood the lecture that made the most impression on me emphasised that ‘sinners have in a sense lost their way, like soldiers marching in the army of God—who perhaps went AWOL and then couldn’t find their way back.’ It was given by the then Bishop