Strumpet City by James Plunkett Page A

quite a while into the fire, his eyes bulging and bloodshot. He had the habit, when thinking, of grunting and breathing laboriously.
    ‘The thing that puzzles me is how you came here.’
    ‘It was my own wish, Father.’
    ‘So I have been told—but why?’
    ‘I felt the life in a rich parish too easy. It was not what God called me to the priesthood for.’
    ‘Do you find the work here more . . . elevating?’
    ‘It is more arduous, Father. It requires more humility.’
    Father Giffley stared at him over his whiskey and left it down without tasting it.
    ‘Ah—I see. Humility. So that’s the coveted virtue.’
    ‘I beg your pardon, Father?’
    Father Giffley made a sound of impatience. This time he compensated for his previous abstinence and almost emptied the glass.
    ‘You are full of polite catch-phrases. You beg my pardon; you ask may you come in; I offer you whiskey and you act as though I had told you a bawdy story. I asked you to see me this morning because, frankly, I found it quite impossible to understand what brought you here.’
    ‘I don’t follow you, Father.’
    Father O’Connor was trembling, not with rage, but confusion. His superior terrified him.
    ‘I am bound to tell you that if you think you’ve come to a good place for the exercise of your priestly office you’ve made a stupid mistake. It is my duty as your parish priest to put you on the right track.’
    ‘I was not aware that I was displeasing you,’ Father O’Connor said.
    ‘Displeasing me? Not a bit. Thank God I have not lived in the stink of one slum parish after another without finding ways and means of insulating myself. I am merely warning you of the situation. You have met Father O’Sullivan?’
    Father O’Connor had. It was Father O’Sullivan, not Father Giffley, who had instructed him in the parish routine, shown him where vestments and vessels were kept, wished him a happy stay in the parish and hoped he would like the parish priest. He had said that with a sad, shy smile which betrayed that he found Father Giffley just a little bit odd. He was a stout, grey-haired man himself, much given to vigils at the Altar of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. After that first, routine exposition of the workings of St. Brigid’s his conversations with Father O’Connor, though pleasant and friendly, were few.
    ‘You must study Father O’Sullivan,’ Father Giffley said. ‘While you are here you must follow his example, not that of your parish priest.’
    Father O’Connor failed to hide his embarrassment.
    ‘Really . . . Father,’ he managed.
    ‘I am trying to help you.’
    Screwing up his courage, Father O’Connor faced his superior and said: ‘There is one way in which you could help me very much.’
    ‘I could?’
    ‘If you could try to like me a little,’ Father O’Connor said. ‘You make me feel useless and unwanted.’
    How true it was came freshly to his mind as he said it. Father Giffley had treated him with contempt from the very first day. He had treated him unfairly too, giving him the seven o’clock mass to say each morning without a single respite and taking the ten o’clock mass himself. Father O’Connor had accepted it in a spirit of self-abasement and obedience. The conscious act of submission bore him up as he rose morning after morning in the raw, high-ceilinged bedroom.
    ‘Is it merely politeness you want? The work here demands slightly different accomplishments.’
    ‘I had hoped for your guidance in that.’
    ‘Guidance,’ Father Giffley repeated. He had sat down again and this time he addressed the word to the fire.
    ‘I had hoped so.’
    ‘You are a hypocrite, Father.’
    Wondering, not for the first time, if his superior was mad, Father O’Connor said:
    ‘I don’t know why you should say so.’
    ‘Because you consider me a drunkard.’
    ‘Oh no, Father.’
    ‘Yes, indeed, Father.’
    Father Giffley took his glass to the whiskey bottle and this time he poured for