by John Watt
Another period of silence follows. He continues: ‘Does anyone know what …’ The question dies in his throat. What if one of the girls answers? What would she say? And how would he handle the situation then? He racks his brains. A fragment comes to mind from one of the books in the seminary library: This Commandment forbids fornication and all wilful pleasure in the irregular motions of the flesh. Would this be helpful? It would surely make the situation a great deal worse. He remains paralysed.
Eventually a small hand is raised: perhaps a saving distraction. He points to the hand-raiser. ‘Yes?’ She struggles to her feet. There is a remarkable amount of clattering of furniture for one small person.
‘Please, Father.’
‘Mister. My name is Mister Riordan.’
‘Please Mister Riordan, what is adultery?’
Thomas’s mouth opens but no sound emerges. Even if he could find a way to broach the subject, his knowledge of what is involved is rudimentary. His mouth opens and shuts a couple of times. His fingers are inside his collar again.
At the back of the room Sister Agatha is standing. She has stood without a sound. She speaks.
‘Thank you, Mr Riordan. That will do for now.’
She is moving forward down the centre aisle. She moves silently. Around her mouth is the tightest of tight smiles.
‘I can take over for the rest of the lesson.’
Thomas understands. He has been tried in the balance and found wanting. His mouth opens and shuts once more. He nods, backs towards the door, collides with the front desk in the first row, turns, opens the door, and at last makes his escape.
Safely outside, he pauses in the wide corridor. Sister Agatha’s voice is audible through the closed door. She is explaining adultery to the class. It is, she explains, a particularly grave sin. It is a sin that destroys bodies as well as souls. That is all the girls need to know about adultery at this stage. It is a sin that only adults can commit. As they might have guessed from its name.
She moves on briskly to the results of the spelling test she has just marked, and the consequences of those results for the girls who have failed to meet expectations. Thomas thinks he hears Brigid Ryan’s name mentioned as he retreats down the corridor towards the safety of the outside world.
11
The Feast of Saint Peter Chrysologus
Thomas sits back in his chair. He feels relaxed without needing to work on relaxation. This routine is coming more easily to him. With a nod from Macpherson he finds his page: December 4, the Feast of Saint Peter Chrysologus, Archbishop of Ravenna, A.D. 450. He launches into the story.
Saint Peter was a native of Imola, anciently called Forum Cornelii, a town in the ecclesiastical state, near Ravenna. He was taught the sacred sciences, and ordained deacon, by Cornelius, bishop of that city, of whom he always speaks with veneration, and the utmost gratitude. He calls him his father, and tells us, that in his whole conduct all virtues shone forth, and that by the bright lustre of his actions he was known to the whole world.
Under his prudent direction our saint was formed to perfect virtue from his youth by the exercises of an interior life, and understood that to command his passions and govern himself was true greatness, and the only means to learning to put on the spirit of Christ. The more easily to accomplish this great and arduous work of subduing and regulating his passions, and forming the spirit of Christ in his soul, he embraced a monastic state, and had served God in it with great fervour and simplicity for some time, when he was placed in the archiepiscopal see of Ravenna.
The archbishop John dying about the year 430, the clergy of that church, with the people, chose a successor, and entreated the bishop of Imola to go at the head of their deputies to Rome, to obtain the confirmation of Pope Sixtus III. Cornelius took with him his deacon Peter, and the pope (who, according to the historian of Ravenna, had been commanded to do so by a vision the fore going night) refused to ratify the election already made, and proposed Peter as the person designed by heaven for that post; in which, after some opposition, the deputies acquiesced.
Our saint, after receiving the episcopal consecration, was conducted to Ravenna, and there received, with extraordinary joy, the emperor Valentinian III and his mother, Galla Placidia, then residing in that city. The holy bishop extenuated his body by fasting, and offered his tears to God for the sins of his people, whom he never ceased to teach no less by example than by words. When he entered on his charge, he found large remains of pagan superstition in his diocese, and several abuses had crept in among the faithful in several parts; but the total extirpation of the former, and the reformation of the latter, were the fruit of the holy pastor’s zealous labours.
Among the remains of heathenish superstition, which he laboured to extirpate, he reckons the riotous manner of celebrating the New Year’s day; of which he says, ‘He who will divert himself with the devil, can never reign with Christ.’ It appears that he often preached in the presence of the emperor, and of the catholic empress Placidia, mother of three children, Valentinian III, Placidia, and Eudocia.
In 448, our saint received Saint Germanus of Auxerre with great honour at Ravenna, and, after his death, esteemed it no small happiness to inherit his cowl and hair shirt. He did not long survive: for, in 452, when Attila approached Ravenna, John, Saint Peter’s successor, held his see, and went out to meet him. The saint being forewarned of his approaching death, returned to Imola, his own country, and there gave to the church of Saint Cassian, a golden crown set with jewels, a gold cup, and a silver paten, preserved to this day with great reverence. Peter died at Imola, probably on the 2nd of December, 450, and was buried there in Saint Cassian’s church. The greatest part of his relics are preserved there; but one arm is kept in a rich case at Ravenna.
Macpherson’s gaze shifts down from the ceiling to Thomas’s face.
‘Well, now. A story with its own interest. Less striking, perhaps, than the previous two. There are some details that we might pursue later. But for now, first things first. You closed the book on that story a few weeks ago. Go back to that time. See it as happening now. Where are you? What are you doing?’
Thomas closes the book, puts it down on the wide, leather-covered arm of his chair. He shuts his eyes. Behind his shut eyelids he sees himself closing the book, putting it down on sand. On the sand of a beach. It’s a long beach, backed, like all the beaches, by sand-hills, throwing back at him a harsh white midday glare.
A hot wind is blowing off the land, carrying with it the scent of many miles of bush baking in the sun, and for Thomas a strange sense of foreboding. Huge waves are breaking on the beach in a flurry of foam. As each of them peaks and begins to turn over, the wind whips spray off its crest and blows it seaward.
The shore is steep, sloping down into deep water a short distance out. The waves are rolling in at an angle, and each one crashes down and sweeps diagonally up the slope. Then a powerful back-surge washes down and under the foot of the next. Thomas watches the backwash from a massive breaker being sucked out and down into deeper water as its successor curls over it.
He turns towards his rucksack to stow Lives of the Saints inside. Beyond it, a few yards away, Jane is resting, lying back on the sand, turned towards him. Her face is red and rough from sunburn. Skin is peeling from her nose and her forehead and her cheeks, and from her arms below her short-sleeved shirt. She is not dressed for this much exposure. There are beads of sweat on her face and her clothes are stained. It has been a difficult morning, trudging along this endless beach with a searing north-easterly breeze promising no relief.
They move on, making slower progress on blistered feet. She is walking quite close beside him, but this no longer sets off the tension in his shoulders and his neck that he felt on earlier days.
After half an hour of silence she speaks. This beach and the dunes behind it seem to go on forever. Not a leaf of shade anywhere. Could they stop for a while and swim, to cool off and to get a bit cleaner?
They stop and s
tand, looking at the steep slope and the towering swells crashing down on it. He points to the under-tow sucking back under every breaking wave into deep water only a few yards out. He doesn’t think that it looks safe. How good a swimmer is she?
She takes a few steps down the slope and stands, letting the next breaker sweep up over her feet and ankles, and up to her knees. The backwash drags hard at her legs down towards the base of the next wave. She retreats up the slope to dry sand above the wave line, hurrying, looking anxiously over her shoulder at the much bigger swell crashing down close behind her. She turns to him. He’s right; the sea is not safe here. They go back to trudging through the loose dry sand, sweating in the wind that feels as if it is blowing out of an oven.
Time passes. The two are still making their slow and painful way along the same beach, the sun still high in the sky beating relentlessly down on them. They are approaching the end of the sandy shore line. Two or three hundred yards ahead it is replaced by a ledge of black rock a foot or so above the level of the sea. A parallel shelf of the same rock forms a reef forty or fifty yards out from the shore, with huge swells breaking, throwing up spouts of spray, spilling white wash into the strip of sheltered water between the two lines of rock. A broad streak of white foam runs along the centre of the channel, but closer to shore the surface is smoother and the water transparent.
They stand at the edge of the rock shelf, looking down several feet to a sandy bottom with dark patches here and there. Tufts of green seaweed bright as lettuce grow out of the rock, and small striped yellow and black fish dart around.
She looks up at him, pausing for a moment, as if she has to build up her confidence for what she has to say. This is the place. She must get into the water here to clean up. She feels dirty—filthy. Running with perspiration. And these clothes—she’s had them on for far too long. It must be three days since they left the other pack behind with the spare clothes. She has to wash them here as well as she can. Would he mind? Going back into the sand-hills, while she tries to get clean?
Thomas remembers staring at her for a few seconds, before understanding dawns. Of course, yes, and perhaps later, he can do the same.
He places the rucksack onto the rocks and turns his back on the ocean, heading inland, up a gully between two steep dunes. When he looks back two or three times she is still standing, facing in his direction.
Turning out of the gully, he loses sight of her but after a few moments’ hesitation he begins scrambling up the steep slope of the first dune, using his hands in the dry sand as well as his blistered feet. He’s panting, and only in part from the exertion. A mounting excitement is taking him over as he works his way up to the crest, which is crowned in one place by a clump of coarse grey coastal vegetation. He finds a vantage point where, lying flat on the sand, he can raise his head and peer through the sparse stems and leaves.
The huge expanse of ocean, darker in the distance, with lines and flecks of white crawling across the surface, is punctuated closer to the shore by those massive swells. He identifies the dark rock of the shoreline and finds Jane. She has her back to him, but twists round at that moment, scanning the dunes. She turns away again and sits on the rock ledge, her feet in the water at the edge of the channel.
Her hands are busy at the front of her shirt. Glancing quickly around, she slips it off, revealing her upper arms and back, and brassiere. He realises that he’s not sure how the word is pronounced. He has seen one only a few times on dummy figures in shop window displays. The sight was disturbing. But here is one on a living, moving woman. Even from the back at some distance, it is exciting. He is panting even faster than he was while scrambling up the steep face of the dune, and his pulse is thumping against the sand. He can feel the hair standing up on the back of his neck.
She leans forward, rinsing her shirt in the sea, rubbing it between her hands, swirling it from side to side, lifting it up for inspection several times before she is satisfied. She half turns to lay it on the rock behind her, quickly scanning the dunes at the same time, no doubt to reassure herself of her privacy in the huge, exposed landscape.
Her hands are busy behind her back at the fastenings, and she slips the brassiere off her shoulders. Thomas thinks he catches a momentary glimpse of the beginning of the curve of one breast. She leans forward and goes through the washing movements with this garment: the rubbing, swirling, rinsing.
Then she half turns again to lay it out on the rock behind her. Thomas gets a clearer view of her left breast as she turns her head, looking up into the dunes, where he is sure he is out of sight behind his screen.
Jane pauses for a few moments, as if hesitating, unsure what to do next. Then she slips forward into the edge of the channel, standing with her back to the rocky shelf and hidden by it up to above her waist. He watches intently, with a tight feeling in his belly, as she leans forward, swaying from one foot to the other. She is stepping out of her skirt, once a crisp blue and white, now stained with mud and sweat. It appears on the surface as she swirls it around, scrubs and swirls again and again. Then the skirt too is flung behind her onto the rock of the shore.
Thomas is suddenly aware that he is holding his breath as he watches her next movements. Again she is bending forward and swaying from one foot to the other. She is stepping out of her pants. Although she is largely out of sight behind the ledge of rock, he is intensely aware that she must be standing in the clear water, totally naked. The thought of her nakedness is overwhelming. His excitement reaches a level that can’t be resisted. He turns on his side, unfastens belt and buttons, and begins, slowly, not wanting to hurry the peaking of the wave of his pleasure, to enjoy her from his place of hiding.
He watches as she scrubs and swirls and rinses this last garment. She works on it for some time. Then she turns fully around to toss it, thoroughly scrubbed and rinsed, onto the shore, and Thomas finally sees both her breasts. Even at this distance the darker pink nipples stand out against the fairness of the surrounding skin. Then she turns away and they are gone.
She stands there, apparently undecided, for perhaps half a minute. Then she plunges forward, swimming towards the deeper water of the middle of the channel. Buttocks and thighs flash into view, breaking the surface of the water, and the wave of pleasure breaks and washes irresistibly over him.
The surge recedes and the backwash sucks him down, as always, into black guilt. He looks away from her, slides back from the crest of the dune, lies on his back on the slope. Asking himself, as always, why he did it. Why did he put himself in the way of temptation? Why did he start? Why did he let himself go on?
He can’t say how long he lies there, feeling a dark emptiness in his belly. It might be as long as ten minutes before he realises that perhaps he should head back to the shore, or at least find out whether the time is right.
12
The Last Wave
Sliding up to the peak of the dune again Thomas locates her clothes near his pack on the rock ledge. It’s only when he scans the shoreline some distance to the right of where she entered the water that he picks Jane out in the middle of the channel.
She is swimming, what looks like a strong, competent breast-stroke, apparently heading towards where her clothes lie on the rock. But she appears to be moving backwards, not fast, but steadily, in the opposite direction, towards the far end of the channel. He watches her for a minute or two but fails to make any sense of what he is seeing.
Standing on the ridge looking right and left along the shoreline, suddenly he sees. The breakers and the backwash are sweeping into the left-hand end of the channel. The wash is spilling over the outer reef. The band of foam moving on the surface betrays the build-up of a current, a rip, steadily deepening and strengthening, sweeping along the channel from left to right. And where then? At the far end he can make out a gap in the outer reef, with some rocks jutting through the surface, and the rip surging against them, through the gap and out through the breakers to the open sea, the ocean.
Tho
mas starts down the seaward slope of the dune, plunging, taking great strides, sliding awkwardly in the soft sand. At much the same time Jane seems to realise her danger. He sees her turn and try to swim across the current towards the outer reef. He sees her lunge for a handhold on the edge of the rock shelf, then losing her grip and being swept further along, grasping for other handholds, losing them, calling for help.
Thomas reaches the shoreline. Opposite him on the other side of the channel Jane has managed to get a grip on a projecting rib of rock. But the current, stronger here, is surging and swirling around her, dragging at her. She is struggling to keep her handhold against the force of it. She turns her head, sees him, calls with shrill terror in her voice. Please, Thomas. I can’t hold on for long.
He stands on the rock ledge, hesitating. For a few moments he feels paralysed, body and mind, a circuit of conflicting thoughts and emotions churning through him. He will swim out to her. Together they might be able to … But what if they are both swept out?
He plunges into the waist-deep water at the edge of the channel. Instantly the force of the current is dragging at him, even here, standing well clear of its full power. Could he get to her safely across the middle of the rip? And if he did, what would they do then? The outer reef gives no safety, with the heavy surf breaking over it. He tries swimming a few strokes towards her but with every stroke he loses more control to the surges pulling him away, and he is still well short of the centre of the channel where the current is strongest. Thomas looks towards the gap in the reef and the jagged rocks with foam driven over and around them by the force of the water sweeping out towards the breaking waves, and is gripped by the terrifying image of himself being swept out over those jagged rocks. He turns while he can, and swims quickly back to the safety of the edge.
Another frightening thought swoops into his consciousness like a bird of prey. He has just, up in the dunes, been guilty of a grave sin. A man who dies with a grave sin on his soul has no hope of escape from hell. Images of eternal flames and souls writhing in everlasting torment come to him from count-less books and sermons. What can he do? He backs against the rock wall of the channel for support, overcome again by agonising indecision, looking desperately around for some other way of helping her, but knowing under his desperation that there is no other way.
