THE STORY: Artie is a lonely middle-aged sacristan in a local church who falls in love with a married woman who comes to change flowers on the altar. Also in his life are a bedridden mother, whom we never see, a simple-minded altar boy called Dominic and a troubled young priest. Artie’s life brightens up when he kisses Angela in the belfry after Dominic’s birthday party, and the affair begins. His whole world comes tumbling down around him though when her husband finds out about it and puts an end to the affair.
“The writing is both rugged and melancholy, severe but generous: a poetry of passing joys and lost paradises.” —The Times (London).
Included in
The Wexford Trilogy.
