Love is my Destiny

by Paul Kelly

  Peter’s curiosity was aroused as Dan kicked the dust at his feet and answered his friend with devilish delight.

  “Well, she wanted me to share my beautiful body with her, that’s what,” he said as he stretched his nostrils wide and sniffed. Peter looked hurt, but Dan roared with raucous laughter.

  “Even a priest?” said Peter and stopped before being interrupted by Dan.

  “Well, she wouldn’t have realised we were priests. Would she?” he said as he looked up at the overcast sky where the moon was straining to break through the powdery clouds as he considered what had happened.

  “Peter?” he called out into the air.

  “Yes, Dan?”

  Their voices were eerily sonorous.

  “You don’t get your balls cut off at ordination, you know,” he said in a low, but determined tone and Peter stood still for a few seconds before he began to giggle.

  “No, I guess not,” he said in a high falsetto voice and the two priests laughed together as they ran down the shallow dip that took them under the bridge, like two schoolboys playing truant, before Dan sat down heavily with a dull thud..

  “It’s quite cosy here,” he remarked as he looked around.

  “Move over, it’s cold where I’m standing.”

  Dan shuffled and Peter sat down beside him…

  “The moon’s trying hard. It’ll get there eventually.”

  The shadows became darker and the water wilder as it babbled its way in mad profusion, as Dan’s eyes scanned the river.

  “Doesn’t it look aggressive from here and it was so peaceful this afternoon? It seems as though it wants to get home after a hard day’s work.”

  Peter looked vacantly across the scurrying waters and a chill ran down his spine.

  “I am cold,” he said and pulled his coat collar closer around his throat as he moved nearer to his friend.

  “Dan ... Do you think I could get a job here in Rome?”

  “What? As a supply-priest you mean…”

  Peter swallowed hard and looked down at his shrivelled hands; the anointed hands with which he vowed to serve God for the rest of his life.

  “No. I mean a job ... just a job ... any job.”

  Dan’s eyes narrowed as he blew his warm breath into the palms of his large hands and rubbed them together.

  “I’m not sure I understand. What do you mean?”

  Peter’s voice vibrated with emotion as he stared at the paludal area around his feet.

  “I am no longer able to be a priest. I no longer have the competence,” he answered but Dan looked stunned as he sat upright and moved away from him.

  “Peter, don’t let me hear you talk like that. You are a priest, and you will be a priest forever, through and into eternity until the end of time. You’re going through a bad patch at the moment, but it will pass. You mustn’t be so hard on yourself.”

  Dan’s chins were firm as he spoke and Peter smiled cynically.

  “Hark at the pot calling the kettle black.”

  “Peter, Peter, listen to me. You haven’t done any wrong.”

  “I have loved ... No. I love a person of my own sex. I love Fern,” said Peter sighing and Dan looked about for some way to explain himself.

  “You are not in sin, Peter…” he said and his face took on a determined look… “Fern is what he is and you are what you are. For you have never sinned in what you feel for Fern. Can God make a mistake in whom or what He creates? ... I tell you, you are not in sin,” he explained, but Peter looked sadly at his comforter.

  “I have in my heart, many, many times,” he murmured softly, ashamed of his own thoughts, as Dan shuffled uncomfortably and shuddered in the cold night air. He turned to Peter and put his hands on his shoulders and their eyes met in solemn confrontation. Dan experienced a charismatic compulsion as he spoke.

  “Did you sleep with this lad, Peter?” he asked and Peter looked at him in surprise.

  “No, no I didn’t sleep with Fern,” he announced forcibly and his eyes were wild.

  “Did you want to have sex with him, then?”

  “Dan I ... I think you have misunderstood what I have been telling you. I have been talking about love ... NOT SEX. I really loved Fern and I am totally confused about how I feel. I cannot explain what is in my heart ... in my soul. It is something different to what I have ever experienced before and I cannot explain what it is. I have had dealings with children all of my priestly life and even when I was a deacon serving in the parishes of Glasgow both boys and girls and I have had no physical attraction to any of them whatsoever ...but I could never have offended Fern by suggesting anything like that. No … never.”

  Dan smiled and raised his eyebrows as if he approved of everything he had said.

  “You’re still a virgin, lad. I am not ... and here I am ... all ligit, Father Daniel Farne, priest of God and of the Holy Church; ex married man, ex parent, ex drunkard ... ex fornicator if you like, and ex any other bloody thing you can think of, but I am a priest of God, through His Divine Will and because He wants it. It is not through any virtue of my own. I am accidental to His divine plan, and so be it ...” he said as he lowered his eyes and his throat hurt as he swallowed. He knew that his face and the look that he had there, would betray the troubled care that he had for Peter. “It’s cold here,” he said and he put his arms around Peter as he spoke. “You’re a lonely little priest ... Yes, you are that, but God loves you. You need a cuddle.”

  Peter smiled humbly but he did not attempt to move away as Dan took his head and placed it gently on his burly chest, covering the young cleric’s ears with his massive hand and stared ahead as he patted his new found charge.

  “You have known love, Peter, as I have. Many people have never ever known what love is, never in their entire lives. We have had a grace that is not given to all. Don’t regard it lightly. Thank God for it, for love only comes from God as you well know, and you also know that there is no love in Hades. Priests are taught about love, but few of us ever experience it.”

  Peter closed his eyes and snuggled closer to Dan. He could feel his friend’s giant heart beating as he rested near him. His own head warm against Dan’s chins... and he thought of Jim O’Donnell, “I was prepared for death for love of Him…I was ready for anything ... any eventuality, but love ...I was not prepared for love . . .” he remembered him saying before he came back to the scene of the moment …

  What will people think if they pass us by, Dan? Peter spoke, aware that they were sheltered by the bridge, but could be seen from the road and Dan peered up through a crack in the arched roofing. The sky was about to recruit the stars and the moon had come out in all her glory to spread silver over the earth. All the gulls had gone to sleep and the tugs had passed into the night as Dan stroked Peter’s head and made his answer.

  “Bugger the passers-by, Peter, bugger them, I say,” he said in a firm voice. “God’s steady eye is on us Peter and I think He’s smiling.”

  They huddled together and their warmth united.

  “Let the world think what it will. God is in His heavens and you need a cuddle and in His ineffable wisdom He has sent a fat priest for the job,” Father Daniel Farne proclaimed as Peter Spinelli closed his eyes to dream of Bolarne..

  Chapter Forty Eight

  PETER WAS CONSTANTLY WORRYING ABOUT HIS STUDIES and was unable to concentrate. He prayed and meditated daily that he would get things right and that his attendance in Rome would not be a waste of his Bishop’s time. His body was in Rome, but his heart and mind ... even his soul was living still in the tiny village of Bolarne and he reflected over his life. Had he been a man without a vocation to the priesthood, he could have done exactly as he would have wished ... go where he willed, be with whom he wanted and for as long as he liked and in that moment of serious reflection, he not only unders
tood, but realized then what his vow of obedience really meant. Before he had met Fern, his obedience had been simple and mechanical. It was affected without thought or reason. It was done because it had to be done and there was no question. This was something he had thought out well, long before his ordination ...or had he? It was in that moment of thought that he reflected again on what a certain student had said to him ... a century or so ago…

  “Have you ever been in love, Peter Spinelli, because if you have, take heed before you pronounce your holy vows ...”

  “Yes, Dominic Granger, it’s for life, or at least that’s what we all plan when we go forward for ordination...”

  Peter began to feel that he did not know who he was any longer... that somewhere along the way, he had lost his identity and he looked around for a mirror but there was none in his sparse room. Vanities of that nature were forbidden and he went to the bathroom and stared for a long time at the face that he saw in the glass before him. He thought of Fern. There was no key to his bedroom door. He had no privacy, even to cry ... not like Peter Spinelli in Rome... who was absolutely and totally ALONE and with all the privacy in the world in which to dwell, but when he looked again into the mirror, it was not his own face he saw ... but the face of Fern. It seemed as though he and Fern were of the same embryo.

  “Oh God, leave me alone. Please leave me alone,” he cried in desperation ... before he ran back to his small place of sanctuary and lay on his bed. “I can’t go on … I just can’t go on any longer,”

  Peter cried his way through the night until the dawn appeared on the horizon and the freshness of the pure morning air woke him to renewed agonies of his mind. Nothing would help him now. Nothing could give him peace. What had he done to deserve this kind of existence? If he were in prison, he could not feel more enslaved and yet, here he was in Rome, the Eternal City; the foundation of the Catholic Church. Here he was simply because one day, not so long ago, he had given his heart to God...He hoped Dan would come to see him and yet ... he hoped no-one would come to see him, so great was his confusion. He wished he could just fall asleep and wake up in Bolarne, thinking that all his Roman trip had been a bad dream, but as he dressed and shaved and saw the face of Father Spinelli in the mirror, he knew that he had put his hand to the plough’ and there was no turning back. You are a priest of God, Father Spinelli ... and a priest forever . . .

  He sat in the corner of his humble room and stared at the prie-dieu. He wanted to pray but the aridity of his soul would not allow.

  “Breathe,” he said to himself, “For God’s sake, breathe,” he muttered as he closed his eyes and Fern’s letters flashed before him. He took them out from a small drawer and read them again and again, knowing that he should write to him. He must write to him, but all his attempts in the past had been in vain. He had written his letters, but torn them up again. It was a therapy for his soul, but Fern would not understand that, he thought as he sat down at the window shelf that formed a desk and made the Sign of the Cross before he began his letter. He felt so vulnerable and yet, that vulnerability was the only weapon he knew as he began to write. .

  Fern, my dear friend,

  I miss you. I know those few words could hurt because it hurts me to write them, but the time for protocol has gone and I am standing naked as it were, before Almighty God, and like Adam in the Garden of Eden, I have nothing to hide the shame of my nudity. I think about you a lot and I ask God to let me understand my thoughts.

  I yearn for your company and the warmth of just being near you and the peace that I have always found in your presence Please forgive my audacity; I have no desire to offend, and I trust that you will read and understand my words as my heart sorrowfully, but persistently dictates.

  I do not know what is to become of me since this dart of affection has wounded my heart so beautifully, but I know I shall never be the same as I was before this infusion of love that has shaken me to my very depth. Please ‘breathe’ for me Fern, as I ‘breathe’ for you. We are an embryonic duo; twins to enjoy the same mind, heart and soul, yet to endure the agony of the separation in two bodies. I feel sure that somehow, very soon, we will be united in the one simple form ... in the dust from which we have all come and to which we must all return. I am sure that Almighty God understands my sentiments and that He will welcome us in a triumphant break-through into the paradise that He already has created for us ... with one single life for us both to share. Sufficient to say that He who is Almighty and infallible and cannot err, has created what the world cannot understand, nor what it would expect in the rational thought into which it is restricted. His ways are nearly always a contradiction in human comprehension. We are taught that in order to reach the top we must seek to go to the lowest place at the table; that in order to find life, we must die ... and that the mustard seed, the tiniest of all the seeds should be buried in the depth of the earth so that it should flourish, to become the mightiest of all the trees, where all the birds of the air can shelter under its branches ... He was God but He was also man and His Mother was a Virgin ... What delectable contradictions on which to base the cornerstone of our lives, throwing logic into utter confusion and setting pure faith as the standard under which we must fight. Am I confusing you my dear friend? I assure you I have no wish to do so. I hold you in the highest esteem, with the most perfect love and I know that by that very statement, I have condemned myself in the eyes of the world, but I don’t care. I have no shame in stating my love for you and I ask God to bless and purify my affections.

  Pray for me Fern, as I do daily for you.

  always … Peter.

  Peter knew that he would never send the letter, but his heart was happier that he had written it. He knew that it would join the fate of the others, but unlike the others, he put it into an envelope and addressed it to Fern at Tom Mahon’s address and as he sealed it, a knock came to his door and hastily he put the envelope into the pocket of his soutane.

  “Coming for a swim?” asked Dan in his usual breezy manner, carrying his towel over his arm.

  “No, I don’t think so, thank you, Dan,” he answered, but Dan swished the towel across Peter’s bed.

  “You can’t just sit about moping all day, you know. You’ll have to snap out of this, sometime. I know how you feel; believe me, I do but ...” Dan stopped short to look at the hurt in his friend’s eyes.

  “O.K, let’s talk, if it helps. I’m not much of a swimmer anyway, and besides, when I jump into the pool, the water all jumps out ...” he said as he curled his thick fingers crudely into his abdomen to emphasise his rotundity and as Peter glanced sadly at him, he had to force a smile.

  “It’s not worth talking about, Dan, but thanks just the same,” he said, but Dan was persistent.

  “I think it might do you some good Peter, but for the moment I’ll need to go for a pee, I’ll be back in a minute,” he said as he left Peter’s room only to return a little while later, hastily adjusting his trousers and there was a long period of enigmatic silence before either man spoke. Peter was full of yearning for what he had left behind and Dan was full of compassion for the plight of his friend.

  The silence would have continued, but for Dan, as he grunted and fumbled in his cassock pocket to produce a bar of chocolate that had already been opened.

  “I hope it hasn’t melted ...Want a bit?” he asked as he handed the chocolate to Peter imploringly, with a little-boy-lost look on his round red face.

  “Dan, you are very kind and I know what you are trying to do for me, but it’s no use. I don’t know what is wrong and for myself. I can’t put my feelings into words. I feel so inadequate; so unhappy.”

  Dan returned the chocolate to his pocket.

  “You are really unhappy, aren’t you?” he said and Peter stared at the wall.

  “I think I know what your father meant when he asked you if you were ‘lost’ in the potato field, Dan.”r />
  The Irish priest looked at his friend, but not with the observations of a country boy. He could look so mature and sacerdotal when the occasion demanded, and this occasion demanded.

  “I want to help, Peter. I really do want to help,” he said and Peter sighed.

  “You know how I am feeling, from my confession, Dan.”

  “We won’t talk about that, Peter. How can I help you now?”

  “I am so sad Dan. I can’t get Fern out of my mind, night or day. I wake up in a cold sweat worrying that he is suffering somewhere. I want to be with him and I feel I am wasting my time here,” he said and his eyes were sad, as Peter scanned his friend’s face for understanding.

  “Dan, please understand and believe me. I am not going crazy, but I love Fern as I would a woman in the ordinary way of things. If he were a woman, I would want to marry him ... Oh I know that sounds weird and you have every right to think I am perverted ... Just leave me alone, please ...” he pleaded, but Dan was more concerned for Peter than his friend would ever know. “If the situation was in reverse and I were you, what would you say to me?” he asked and the torment in Peter’s face told Dan all he wanted to know, as he reached out and touched Peter’s arm. Suddenly the whole scene changed for the young priest from Bolarne. He was more tolerant of himself than he had been hitherto and his whole complexity presented itself so simply as the two men gazed at each other with understanding. There was nothing unusual or weird about the situation at all and Peter thanked God for Dan’s friendship and for his priesthood at that moment. No-one in the world could have substituted for Daniel Farne at that precise moment in time.

  Peter went into class to try again ... but his love followed him wherever he went, and the Eye of God would not look away.

  Chapter Forty Nine

  SHONA GATHERED THE LETTERS from the little locker near Fern’s bed and took them home with her in her handbag. She wanted a larger envelope in which to send them to Peter.