‘Oh, so you did stay in your own bed. You’re not… interfering with my niece.’ He relaxed. ‘I’m glad to see that.’ But he sounded more disappointed than relieved, and was clearly untroubled by his intrusion.
Angus stood up, ready to defend himself against Simon’s possible treachery. But Simon, unperturbed by the old man’s arrival, was preoccupied with a matter of greater weight.
‘Don, he said, ‘did you take a can of beans from our supplies? I gave your wife one can, but two are missing. Do you know anything about that?’
A flash of inspiration gave Angus his chance. ‘Simon wants to help with breakfast. Do you need any tea or coffee? Marmalade?’ He pointed to the floor. ‘Or English muffins? We can call them Irish, if you prefer…’ The others surveyed the packages and jars on the carpet as if studying indecipherable stone tablets discovered inside a burial tomb.
‘Heh-heh.’
‘No, I think… we’re fine. We have all we need. It’s too early for breakfast, isn’t it?’ The tone was conciliatory. The danger was past.
‘Simon told me he likes to be prepared. It’s his Scout training,’ he added helpfully.
‘Oh. Sure. Well. Come over about seven, won’t you? Sorry to barge in. Thought I heard burglars…’ And he backed out of the door. In like a rhino, thought Angus, and out like a jackal. Or jackass, more like.
The Monaghans’ Buick, full of dutiful churchgoers, rumbled over the gravel on its way to Wakefield, a cloud of dust marking its passage: a wake of dust, an Irish wake, a rude awakening, Wakefield, thought Angus irrelevantly as he watched it go from a window.
Old Man Monaghan might no longer believe he was a fornicator, but he was now convinced that Angus, odd man out, was either a heretic or an atheist. He had heard him claim with pompous but spurious authority, that Protestants were not Christians, but ‘polygons’ like Mormons. Simon had argued with him for hours. Angus turned with renewed vigour to the essay before him. Of late, he had become tired of academic posturing, of finding a new target to which to deliver withering scorn. Once fascinated by the opportunity to examine literary text closely, he had by now lost interest in the squabbling that accompanied it, and in such topics as the alleged ‘racism’ in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, even though his refutation of the legitimacy of one such complaint had been applauded by his supervisor. This now seemed not only trivial, but pointlessly puerile. He had even become ‘odd man out’ in the academic community that he had once aspired to become part of. Perhaps he always would be a contrarian. He finished the essay with relief.
