Hanny looked at me and smiled.

There was a knock at the door. I quickly covered the rifle with a blanket and sat down on top of it.

It was Father Bernard.

'How are you boys?' he said, looking around the door. 'Have you settled in alright?'

'Yes, Father.'

'Do you mind if I come in?'

'No, Father.'

He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He wasn't wearing his dog collar and had his shirt sleeves rolled up over his ham-hock forearms that were surprisingly bare.

'Can I tempt you to half an hour of gin rummy?' he said.

I shifted uncomfortably, feeling the rifle digging into my backside. I realised that I had no idea if it was loaded or not, or if it was possible that by sitting on it I might inadvertently pull the trigger and blow Father Bernard's kneecaps off.

'I don't know about you boys,' he said fetching a stool from the side of the washbasin. 'But I'm not tired at all.'

He sat down and produced a pack of cards from his shirt pocket and handed them to me, moving the Lives of the Saints book off the bedside table to make room.

'You deal, Tonto,' he said.

'Yes, Father.'

He rubbed his hand over his mouth and we started playing, silently at first, though it didn't take long before he was onto the stories about the farm where he grew up, and then I could relax a little.

It was by all accounts a fairly miserable hovel on Rathlin Island, some barren speck of rock I'd never heard of between the Antrim coast and the Mull of Kintyre full of guillemots and storm petrels and razorbills. Mist and bog. Endless grey sea. It's easy to imagine the sort of place.

The only thing of note about it was that it was where the spider supposedly egged on Robert the Bruce to clobber the English, and there that the English replied by ma.s.sacring the McDonnells. Even the children. Apparently you could still find blood stains on the rocks that the sea refused to wash away.

So little happened on the island that memories were as long as the savage winters that were the starting point of most of Father Bernard's stories.

'Would you listen to that rain?' he said, looking towards the window. 'It reminds me of the winter our stores were flooded out.'

'When was that, Father?'

'Oh, I was only a wee boy. I can't have been any more than eight or nine.'

'What happened, Father?'

'My daddy, G.o.d love him, was a good farmer but he was a lousy roofer. He'd patched up the storehouse with old bits of wood, you see, and they just rotted away like everything else on the island. One night the whole thing went in and nigh on every sc.r.a.p of food we had was ruined. I remember my mammy chasing a whole load of carrots and turnips that were floating out of the yard.'

'I shouldn't laugh,' he said. 'It wasn't funny. We weren't that far from starving.'

'Didn't you have animals, Father?'

'Aye.'

'Couldn't you eat them?'

'If we'd done that we'd have been poor as well as hungry come the New Year market in Ballycastle. The animals were why we nearly starved. We had to feed them first, you know?'

'Couldn't you have got some food from somewhere else?'

'Oh aye,' he said. 'The O'Connells from the farm over the way came around with potatoes and meat, but my daddy was too proud to take anything off them. He'd rather we all wasted away than rely on charity.

'When my mammy found out, she was furious. It was the only time she ever raised her voice to him, and when the O'Connells came around again she took everything they'd brought.

'You know, Tonto, it sounds daft, but I don't think my daddy was quite the same from then on. I think it half killed him, sacrificing his pride like that.'

I stopped dealing and put the pack of cards in the middle of the table.

'Anyway,' he said. 'I'm going on. How's school at the moment? Almost done now, aren't you?'

'Yes, Father.'

'Exams soon, is it?'

'Yes.'

'Well make sure you work hard. Otherwise you might end up with a career in the priesthood.'

He smiled and pulled his cards together, tapping them on the table.

'Are you a good lad at school?'

'Yes, Father.'

'I was a wee terror,' he said. 'When they could get me to go, that is.'

He fanned the cards in his hand and laid one down.

'Mind you, if you'd seen the place, Tonto, you wouldn't have gone either.'

'Why's that, Father?'

'There were fifty of us in one room. Half of us hadn't any boots to wear. And it was so cold in the winter that the ink iced over in the wells. Can you imagine?'

'No, Father.'

He frowned at my expression and then laughed.

'Ah, I'm just pulling your leg,' he said. 'It wasn't that bad. Apart from O'Flannery.'

He threw a card down onto the pile, before picking up another.

'You'll not have anyone like O'Flannery where you are, I'm sure. He was a very old fashioned sort of teacher. You know what I mean? A real hardliner.'

'Yes, Father.'

'Some of the other lads said he wore a cilice. And I wouldn't have put it past him, the face he had on him sometimes. You know what a cilice is, right, Tonto?'

'Yes, Father.'

He tapped his fingers on his cards and took his turn and then smiled to himself.

'I laugh hearty at it now,' he said. 'But O'Flannery was an out and out bullyman. Even the mammies and daddies were frightened of him. He made sure he put the fear of G.o.d into you from day one.'

'How?'

'Well, whenever anyone new joined the cla.s.s, he'd always ask them the same question.'

'What was that?'

'It was to translate dura lex, sed lex.'

He looked at me.

'Aye, that was the face they pulled too. Right before he'd give them a whack on the a.r.s.e with his cane.'

He pursed his lips and shook his head.

'You know, I can still feel it now. He'd hit you so hard with the old birch that all he had to do after that to stop us silly wee cubs in our tracks was to go to the desk and touch it. We shut up pretty quickly then, I can tell you.'

'Didn't you have other teachers though, Father?' I said.

'Aye, we did in the end.'

'How do you mean?'

He laughed drily to himself.

'Mr O'Flannery's career was cut short let's say.'

'Why, what happened?'

'The silly sod fell off the cliffs at Rue Point, photographing the puffins. When they told us on the Monday morning, all the lads cheered, and to my eternal shame so did I.

'We were still cheering when the headmaster came in. I thought we were done for, you know. But he didn't scold us at all. He knew what O'Flannery was like. What people thought of him. He just sat on the edge of the desk asking us questions about geography and science and mathematics. And do you know what? Between us we answered every single one. He must have been there for an hour and then he said something that I've never forgotten to this day.'

'What was that, Father?'

'He said, "In time to come, each of you will thank the man who gave you your mind." Then he got up and left. And he was right. I mean he was hard as nails, O'Flannery, and I hated him at the time, but I feel kind of grateful to him now, you know? There aren't many lessons of his that I don't remember.'

'What did it mean, Father?'

'What did what mean?'

'The Latin.'

He laughed. 'The law is harsh, but it is the law. Then there was, let's see, Ex fructu arbor agnoscitur and Veritas vos liberabit.'

'What does that one mean, Father?'

'The truth will set you free,' he said and played his card.

'John,' I said, automatically.

Father Bernard raised his eyebrows and then looked at me thoughtfully.

'Father Wilfred taught you a lot, didn't he?'

I nodded and was about to show Hanny which card to lay down when I realised that he had won.

'Show,' I said and bent the cards towards Father Bernard.

Hanny pulled them back to his chest.

'It's alright, Hanny,' I said. 'You've won. You're the winner.'

'Aye, he is that,' said Father Bernard looking at Hanny's hand, and then throwing in his own cards.

He sat back and looked at me as I scooped the cards into a pile to deal them again.

'There was something I wanted to ask you actually, Tonto,' he said.

'Yes, Father?'

'On behalf of Mr Belderboss.'

'Yes, Father?'

'When Father Wilfred pa.s.sed away,' he said. 'There was something of his that went missing. A book. You've not seen it knocking about have you?'

'A book?'

'Aye, you know, a diary, a notebook, that kind of thing. It was quite important. To the family. Mr Belderboss is pretty keen on getting it back.'

'No, Father.'

'Not in the vestry? Or the presbytery?'

'No, Father.'

'Do you think any of the other lads might know?'