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I’ve nothing to hide,” he added, his voice was full of protest. “Can’t you be satisfied with that? You know what happened, I wrote and told you. After she left your father——”
    â€œShe told me that herself.”
    In a loud, protesting voice, one hand waving in the air, Kilkey cried, “Why do you ask me this?”
    â€œDelaney said you would tell me.”
    â€œHe told you that? ”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHe might have spared my feelings. I always admired your mother.”
    â€œChrist man, why can’t you say something, what are you hiding?” Peter could no longer control his rage. There was something antagonizing about this doddering old man, his deafness, his meandering, his waving arms, it seemed hard to believe that it was really Joseph Kilkey. How changed he was. He felt an irritation, a sense of frustration. “Delaney could have told me anyhow,” he thought, “why don’t I get out of here?”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with you? What’s taken possession of you, Peter? I never wanted to tell you, but you drag it out of me, and it won’t help anybody, least of all you. Sit down. Cool yourself,” and he went back to his chair and sat down. He felt a sudden extraordinary calm. He reached out for the pipe, lit it, and relaxed in the chair.
    â€œYou remember Father Moynihan?”
    â€œI do.”
    â€œAbout three years after your mother went to the nuns, something happened. She went there of her own free will. I tried to persuade her to live with me, but she wouldn’t, and I never pressed her. She wanted peace and quiet, and she got it. I used to visit her. She seemed contented. She enquired after you all, there was never a feeling of resentment, never. It was a beautiful place, and the food was good. The family was scattered for good, and she realized that. But often she cried about your father. Still she was calm, she was happy . It was a great relief to me to see her so contented, and after a while she ceased to mention her family, only your father. Yes, he was the only person she ever spoke about. She changed, she looked different. All her storming was over. Well, as I was saying, about three years after she went there I had a letter from Father Moynihan. A young woman brought me the letter, it was just before I left the old house. Father Moynihan asked me to go and see him. I went. A nice man, I always liked him, and he thought a lot of your father and mother. The news he had for me I did not at first believe, and looking back on it now, I suppose it’s the only time I ever saw a miracle fall out of a man’s mouth. ‘Denis Fury,’ he said, ‘is not dead. He’s alive, he’s here. A wreck, and his memory has gone’.”
    Kilkey paused to relight his pipe. “A battered old man, indeed, long thought to be drowned, who for over two years had been lying in a seaman’s hospital at a place called Bahia. An old man who had travelled all the way back by ship with two other survivors, I still could not believe it. But it was true enough. The next morning I saw your father. He didn’t know me, he recognised nobody. The news had to be broken to your mother. It was broken to her, in the simplest way. They let him walk into the room where your mother was standing, and they closed the door on them. She had to be warned what to expect, and she expected it. Actually she was re-united to a child. The first few days were terrible. The shock, the sight of him, and he was so helpless, so very useless. He could do little or nothing for himself. Your mother sent for me, and I went to see them. I was very moved when I saw him, but as I say he didn’t know me, he never knew me any more. A bundle of rags and bones. No more than that. He was full of a mystery that couldn’t be solved. He was a broken man. And yet he was alive, behind the rags, behind the mystery of him. He’d been picked up