Small Things Like These

A good passage

‘[...] but did I hear you had a run-in with herself above at the convent?’

Furlong’s hand tightened round the change and his gaze dropped to the skirting board, following it along the base of the wall, as far as the corner.

‘I wouldn’t call it a run-in but I had a morning up there, aye.’

‘Tis no affair of mine, you understand, but you know you’d want to watch over what you’d say about what’s there? Keep the enemy close, the bad dog with you and the good dog will not bite. You know yourself.’

He looked down at the pattern of black, interlocking rings on the brown carpet.

‘Take no offence, Bill,’ she said, touching his sleeve. ‘Tis no business of mine, as I’ve said, but surely you must know these nuns have a finger in every pie.’

He stood back then and faced her. ‘Surely they’ve only as much power as we give them, Mrs Kehoe?’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure.’ She paused then and looked at him the way hugely practical women sometimes looked at men, as though they weren’t men at all but foolish boys. More than once, maybe more than several times, Eileen [Bill Furlong’s wife] had done the same.

‘Don’t mind me,’ she said, ‘but you’ve worked hard, the same as myself, to get to where you are now. You’ve reared a fine family of girls – and you know there’s nothing only a wall separating that place from St Margaret’s.’

‘Can’t I count on one hand the number of girls from around here that ever got on well who didn’t walk those halls,’ she said, splaying her palm.

‘I’m sure that’s fact.’