[Brian Allgar]

Father Drooby awoke every morning with the bitter taste of defeat and despair in his mouth, although it was often hard to distinguish it from the previous evening's chilli con carne. He quietly cursed the God in whom he no longer believed. How could He have permitted that dreadful accident in which Drooby's mistress, the wife of his best friend, had died, yet her repellent dog had survived? Malevolent, contemptuous of human aspirations and desires, indifferent to human suffering - and that was just the dog. God, if He had ever existed, must be far worse.

Drooby felt the weight of failure sitting on his shoulders like a crate of rotting sardines. His missionary work in Indochina, Sierra Leone and Haiti had been disastrous. Even his modest ambition to become a whisky priest in Mexico had had to be abandoned when he found that he couldn't stand the taste of whisky.