Forbidden Fruit

by Annie Murphy

  I did not mind him sleeping in my bed, it was big enough. I wanted him as near as possible so I could give him solace, help him get well, but he had only one thing on his mind. What possessed me was my willingness to let him take from me whatever he needed.

  I witnessed a great hunger. This was an Irish Famine of the flesh. Here was a man releasing energies and feelings pent up for over twenty-five adult years.

  Panting heavily, his mouth and lips covered and then explored mine. He fondled and kissed my breasts, and ran hands, strong in spite of his fever, over every inch of me, hands that had spoken to me so eloquently of the wonders of Ireland, hands that could calm a runaway horse.

  I still hoped that nothing would happen. It would break my heart if he acted under the influence of drugs. I felt like a man who has taken advantage of a woman.

  Besides, he might regret it. He might even blame me as he blamed me when he nearly ran into the Ford van on the road. I did not want to be the cliff’s edge for his flying feet.

  I looked up and stroked him softly with both hands round his bristly cheeks. I murmured sweet words to him, enjoyed the sheer weight of him and his passionate caresses.

  It struck me that, aside from his delight in the smells and smoothness of feminine skin, this all-knowing cleric and completely inexperienced man did not really have a language of sex. He might have kissed a woman, maybe many. But I was surely the first woman whose flesh had met the fullness of his naked flesh.

  The more than twenty-year difference between us did not matter now. He was a novice lover. He did not begin to understand the geography of my body and in his hurry to discover it he came too early. I felt the sticky odorous wetness running down the inside of my thighs. So, while he was old enough to be my father, he seemed, in the end, young enough to be my son.

  For a woman, there are many ways to explore a man and express love. I did not need to have him climax inside me to know he was mine. I did not even want it.

  In the past, I had kidded men, my husband included, that I had not taken precautions against pregnancy when I had. It was a ruse to make them withdraw from me without leaving their seed behind to blend with the juices inside me and leave an odor and a texture that I could not bear.

  The reason for my dislike went back to when I was seventeen. I was in my last year at school. Don, my boyfriend, had a reputation for being sexy, but I thought it only meant he liked kissing girls. He was the first to arouse me; and when he kissed me I thought I was on fire.

  One spring—mimosa, oleander, lantana in blossom—we were at school when a tornado struck a half mile away. Susan, my closest buddy, and I went under the desk for shelter. The noise was terrifying, I was shaking violently, convinced my last hour had come. Susan took out a metal hip flask and introduced me to rum. Rum and I were instant best friends. The tornado passed and, happy to be alive, we went out to celebrate.

  One guy let me drink beer out of his ten-gallon hat and we danced on a picnic table. Don was jealous. He knocked my dance partner out with one punch to the jaw, grabbed me off the table, and, piling me into his black Pontiac sports car, drove me to the lake. There we scrambled, as usual, into the backseat. But he had a black glassy possessive look in his eye I had not seen before, and sweat pumped out of the pores of his nose.

  He ripped my dress open, tore off my bra, and started biting me. I yelled at him to stop, but he wouldn’t. I scratched his face so he recoiled, giving me just enough time to jump out of the car.

  I ran screaming but he caught up with me, threw me to the ground, and bent over me, beating me.

  “Please don’t,’ I said. “I’m a virgin.”

  He stuck his fingers inside me. “My God,” he said, “you are. Okay, get up.”

  I stood up and he carried me back to the car and threw me in the front seat. Sitting beside me, he grabbed my hair and pulled me toward him as if he were insane.

  “Do something for me or I’ll rape you, virgin or not.”

  I said, “Okay, name it.”

  He opened his pants and out popped this dun-colored snake, with rearing head and giant twitching mouth, swinging back and forth like a windshield wiper.

  Never having seen anything this gross, I put my head in my hands and laughed hysterically. “What d’ya want me to do with that?”

  “Jerk it, dope,” he said, “jerk me off.”

  I tried, but my hand got stuck on that thing.

  “Use some saliva,” he said, but my mouth was too dry.

  “Faster,” he ordered, brutally elbowing my left side, “faster.”

  After what seemed forever, there was a kind of spitting and the inverted milking turned into a snow shower that went everywhere. It landed on my hand, my lips, my hair, and it clung so I couldn’t get it off. The rancid smell of it in that confined space filled my lungs like a sewer. I begged him to take me home.

  Once there, breathless, enraged, with, in my chest, a sense of impending doom, I scissored all my clothes into little bits and crouched in the corner of the shower like a spider, for the first time showering in the dark. I thought:

  To some men, women are not people. They picnic on our bodies, on our feelings, and, sated, pass on. We women are but the litter of their so-called love.

  Water, cold water ran all over me as I tried in vain—I’m still trying—to wash off me the stains and the godawful smells.

  Next morning, Daddy loomed over my bed. “Get up, Annie.”

  He lifted my nightdress with the black cane he used after his leg was amputated.

  That cane reminded me of the snake in the car.

  I screamed, “What the hell, Daddy?”

  Two crystal tears ran a close race down his cheeks.

  “You’re bruised all over. Someone rape you? Did they?”

  “You crazy, we played touch football and I was tackled real heavy.”

  That was the first time I lied to save a man’s skin. I did it as easy as breathing. Daddy gave me a couple of tablets, which brought oblivion. No gift more gratefully received in my entire life.

  Next day, I told Susan. I was with our crowd including a newcomer named Jeff Fox, and when they saw my bruises, they went in search of Don and kicked his guts in and broke his arm. Jeff took me to hospital to have my ribs wrapped. He became my mentor and next boyfriend—that’s another story with the usual picnic ending.

  The shadow of that incident, the sour smell in my nostrils, followed me, maimed me, ruined many precious moments of my life.

  No, I did not mind at all that Eamonn had not entered me. In my marriage, I had experienced the lust of my husband but not a love like this. Sex can be the most humiliating of all hurts.

  Had Eamonn only realized the terrible things done to my body in the past, he would have known that what he did to me in his fumbling way was marvelous. He had loved me with his whole being, found me worthy, and I was content.

  Unbarnacling, he dropped off to sleep without a word.

  As he cat-purred, I had hours to think. For the first time I had the impression that a man loved me; and a man had loved me without reserve. If this was so, maybe one day I would be able to look closely at myself in the mirror again and shower in the light.

  Of course, I could hear a voice telling me this love was doomed. But doomed or not, damned or not, this love, I sensed, would have a beauty in it that would endure.

  My gentle, kindly, amusing Eamonn now lay quietly, trustingly, beside me, this man whose whole life was a restless sunlike dance.

  But—moments later—had I truly won him? Did he love me, really love me, I mean, to the exclusion of all others and all other concerns unto death? Was this possible for one who had so much more to lose than I who was a nothing person? Would he, when he awoke, also abuse me in his own spiritual way?

  The doubts persisted. I had so little regard for myself. Would he even remember the solace he had found in me? Would he ask me when he awoke how I had tricked him into my bed?

  Against the background roaring of wind
and sea, I watched the rippling movements of his face. Even in sleep his mood had changed. He seemed now to be thinking, scheming, making deals, preparing for action. I wanted to stroke him all over, to soothe his disquiets, but I feared to wake him.

  He awoke about three. He asked no questions. His smile seemed to say that he was in the right place with the right woman.

  I whispered, “We did things earlier, Eamonn, you and I.”

  “I remember some of it. I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh my God,” I said, “that makes me feel horrible.”

  Anticipating the question I most dearly wanted to ask, he said, “ ‘Twasn’t the drugs, Annie. ‘Twas bound to happen because I feel for you as I know you feel for me.”

  Once more a kind of adolescent passion took control of him. His blind, twitching hands raced again all over the Braille of my body. His hands gripped me low from behind and drew me to him, twisting, grinding, while he whispered, “You are like silk and, oh, the heat of you.”

  I said nothing, content to be the fountain that quenched his desert thirst. A wrong word from me and he might lose concentration, maybe think badly of himself.

  When he tried to consummate his love, again the fiery foreplay exhausted all the sexual capacities he then possessed.

  No matter. I reveled in the feel on my equally desiring flesh of his magnificent hands and his moist expressive lips.

  Afterward, he nestled up to me and tickled my face with his growth of beard; and I gazed into his hazel eyes that seemed to turn bright green. His were the only eyes I had ever been able to look right into. Yes, I was right from the start, I was in his eyes, I belonged there.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “This is between you and me. We’ll keep it like that.”

  He went back to sleep again.

  The storm had somewhat abated and, when the first hint of the sun pierced my burgundy velvet curtains, I reluctantly nudged him awake.

  “What time is it, Annie?”

  “Five o’clock.”

  “I suppose —”

  “Yes, you’d better go back to your room,” I said, smiling. “Don’t want Mary to find you here when she gets up.”

  He wearily left the bed and got dressed. He blew me a kiss before quietly letting himself out.

  I immediately got out of bed, threw back the bed covers, and raised both windows to lessen the musky smell.

  I went into the small dark bathroom and turned on the shower at low pressure so no one else could hear it. Afterward, I partly dried myself with a towel before standing at the window to let the Atlantic breeze, scented by honeysuckle, complete the job.

  In the tall wardrobe mirror that reflected the big white smile of the moon, I surveyed my body that Eamonn had delighted in. The tanned and radiant face and sparkling eyes, the young firm breasts, small waist, flared hips, long bronzed legs. I no longer wholly despised myself and the way I looked. Love was binding up my wounds.

  The muscled, salt sea wind had freshened the room but I dabbed myself with cologne to drive away the last vestiges of the odors that so disturbed me. Then, getting back into my flowery nightgown, happier than I had ever been, I climbed into bed.

  That was when the torment began.

  Was this a one-night stand brought about by his illness and the drugs or the beginning of a long romance? Was he mine or wasn’t he? Had I won his heart or lost him for good? What would the future bring to him, to me, to us? Did he already hate me for making him hate himself? Would he have such guilt that he would ask me to leave Ireland for the sake of his soul?

  Strange, how after passionate lovemaking, I could not answer any of the big questions. Later that morning, he would dress as a bishop. Where would I stand then?

  Apart from the fact that the inert sex-odor in the room still made me want to flee, there was only one thing that would put my mind at ease. I rose, slid out of my room, closing the door quietly behind me, and, after only a few paces, just as quietly opened Eamonn’s door.

  This was the first time I had seen his bedroom. It was far bigger than mine, with two heavily draped french windows leading onto the patio, a whole wall with windows onto the sea. The noise of the sea was louder, more evocative here.

  I took in the two double beds with Eamonn lying in the first of them under an exquisite laced eiderdown of apricot silk. I saw the raised yellow velvety wallpaper, the olive-gold drapes, a chaise longue, an old Turkish rug, black with reds and oranges and other warm colors threaded through it. And Eamonn’s black uniform so redolent of death: the gold ring and pectoral cross on the antique mahogany dresser; the black stock, the shirt, surprisingly multicolored in reds, grays, and greens, the starched collar, the pants, folded neatly on a high-backed chair with his polished shoes beneath and a red sock of ambition inside each of them.

  He heard me come in. Maybe he was expecting me. But the next few seconds were critical. This was his space. I had dared to cross his threshold. It must have been obvious to him that this was territorial. This was the bitch seeing if she had the same rights as the dog. What would he do?

  Leaning on one elbow, his eyes completely clear, he said, “What on earth are you doing there?”

  I felt I would die. I had made the most terrible mistake of my life by confusing love with the effect of drugs. Like Eamonn, I had climaxed too soon.

  I tried to think of some excuse. I had come to say sorry or to check that he was feeling better.

  Giving a typical scowly smile, he flipped the covers over. “Just come on in, Annie.”

  Lifting my nightdress over my head, I rushed across and jumped naked into bed with him and removed his pajamas. I had rights. I belonged here.

  As my head hit the down pillow, I knew he loved not just my body but me, Annie Murphy. He could, as some men do, have rejected me because he had no immediate urge on him and needed sleep. But he didn’t. He cared for me.

  This was our room. I no longer hated or felt threatened by those clerical clothes. So much harness. My body fitted him much better. Womanly pink was his proper color, not black.

  We lay together relaxed and possessive in one another’s arms. His temperature was back to normal.

  After a while, he began to stir and stormed my body again. His lips brushed my nipples, which surprised him by the change of texture; he felt with wonder the wiriness of my pubic hair, my flesh smoother than a petal pressed between thumb and forefinger.

  Once more, he disappointed himself for not being the perfect lover he had perhaps always been in his fantasies.

  “I have a problem here,” he sighed, expecting too much of himself. “I’ve mastered so many things but this has me beat.”

  “It’s all right, Eamonn,” I said. “It’s going to be all right.”

  He kept apologizing, as he stroked my body. “It’s not fair on you, Chicky Licky. You deserve better.”

  “It will come,” I assured him, “don’t try to force it,” and I stroked him back to sleep like a young boy in my arms. We were one spirit if not yet one flesh. My cheeks, my breasts, my thighs smelled of him.

  I, too, must have drifted off because I woke with a start. The storm was past. It was a morning of penetrating stillness; birds out-sang the sea. Through the thick closed drapes, the sun was flooding the room with blue-gold light.

  Oh my God, what time was it? The bedside clock showed seven o’clock. Mary would be up within the hour to get his breakfast. I had to go, but he had given me the guarantee that there would be other nights.

  Entwined in one another’s arms like eels, we kissed for a long moment. Finally, with reluctance on both our parts, I dressed and returned, without a glance at the Stations of the Cross, to my room, where I slept dreamlessly.

  Chapter Seven

  HE WAS IN MY ROOM AT ELEVEN, inviting me to spend the day with him in Killarney. Minutes after I said yes, Mary brought me tea and toast.

  “These new drugs are marvelous,” she said. “I never saw him looking so well after a bout of colitis.”

 
; I joined in praising the wonders of modern medicine.

  “He ate two lamb chops for breakfast. Imagine that.”

  We set off at about midday. I was not in the least bit tired, and Eamonn seemed to have an additional bounce in his walk and a wide-eyed expression on his face.

  His inability to bring me to orgasm had told in my favor. Sex, like mountain roads, challenged his abilities. He needed to find out how to drive my body so it thrilled to his touch.

  “I knew it would happen the first moment I saw you. You, too, Annie?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I had no idea,” he admitted, “that I would find someone as beautiful and fresh as you.”

  “Fresh?”

  “You started attacking me as soon as you saw me. My God, you were worse than Larry.”

  “Who’s Larry?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  I touched his arm. “If you keep driving like this, one day you’re going to run into someone and his face and yours are going to make one.”

  Maybe that image suggested the intermingling of bodies in the act of sex for, laughing, he proceeded to tell me how much our relationship fascinated him.

  “It seems to me, Annie, that sex is far more complex than I thought.”

  He meditated aloud on it being multilayered.

  “You teach me, Annie, and I have things to teach you.”

  I was more than willing.

  After lunch in the Palace, I helped Pat in the office. Deadpan in expression, she knew how to get things done. I think she sensed the energy between Eamonn and me and it excited her because she wanted love in her life.

  I took charge of her dog. Larry, a black French poodle, ruled the Palace with teeth of iron. Pat was crazy about him. He slept with her and loved her, hating the rest of the world.

  It was some measure of Pat’s usefulness that Eamonn put up with Larry. Between man and dog there was an undying enmity. They went for each other like an old-fashioned Catholic and Protestant. The first thing Eamonn did on entering the Palace was roll up a newspaper ready to swat the dog with it.

  I whispered to Eamonn, “I remind you of him?”