by Annie Murphy
Fifteen minutes later, I met him at the door.
“I was right, Annie. ‘Twas dead.”
He was still puzzled. “What am I to make of you?” he said. “You have guilt about a dead lamb but no sense of sin. There’s a tough part of you and another that is fragile, which I’m determined to mend.”
Yes, we were both full of contradictions.
The frightening drive back and the search for the dead lamb in the dark had made him very amorous. He was no sooner inside the door than he was tugging off his clothes.
He led me into the living room, where, seeing I was shaky and cold, he put a match to the fire, which was already laid, and offered me a short brandy. “Thank you,” he murmured, “for defending me over that inheritance.”
“I knew you’re such a liar we’d never get to the bottom of it, anyway.”
We never made it to the bedroom. We ended up making love on our favorite rug by the hearth. He was not at his most proficient, but he was still amusing. Once or twice, he catnapped. That, too, was consoling; proof we were a couple.
There was nothing to stop us sleeping in his bed. The whole house was ours. Or so we thought.
We were about to retire when we heard noises. He put his fingers to his lips, switched off the living room lights, and we held hands like Adam and Eve after they ate the apple.
“Mary must’ve come back,” I said.
“No. Her car is not here. Besides, I called her from Castleisland. She is in Killarney making ready for the meal.”
Heavens, I thought, he takes no chances.
Who, then, had broken in? Had a dog, a sheep, or a fox come through an open door? A burglar? There was another blood-curdling bang from somewhere in the heart of the house.
“God Almighty,” he said, “my clothes are strewn everywhere, beginning at the front door.”
“What’ll we do?” I said, enjoying every minute of this.
“Get your things, Annie, and hide under the piano. No, behind the curtains. Flatten yourself against the wall.”
I had difficulty rounding up my clothes with the only light coming from the embers of the fire and him moaning his usual “I am going to have a heart attack, I am.”
Behind the drapes I managed to slip on my panties, my dress, which I did not button up, and my shoes.
The rattling noise went on. He came across to me, whispering, “What’ll I hit the bastard with, Annie? My silver candlestick or a decanter?”
I laughed aloud at the hard choice before him. He pressed the drape in the direction of my mouth to make me shut up. I made a quick curtain call to stop myself having a panic attack. There he was with his hair sticking out in all directions, with one hand stuffing his shirt into his pants while wielding a solid silver candlestick in the other.
“It’s the wind,” I said, zipping up his pants for him.
“You think so?” Pulling me away from the window, he pushed me ahead of him while he brandished his weapon in the rear. “Open the door and look see.”
The corridor was empty save for his jacket, stock, and clerical collar by the front door.
“All clear,” I whispered.
“Get me my clothes, then, quick.”
I went to grab them when a frightening shape materialized out of nowhere and came soaring within inches of my head. I hurtled backward into the living room.
He looked really scared.
“What was it?”
I didn’t answer. I grabbed a coverlet, a kind of shawl, from the top of the sofa and wound it round my head.
“Have you gone bonkers, Annie?”
“It’s a bat,” I squealed. “I hate them.”
He snatched the shawl from my head and wound it around his.
“So do I,” he said.
“You stinking coward,” I yelled. “Give it back.”
“I will not. You have lots of hair.”
“That’s why I need the shawl so it doesn’t nest in here.”
“I need protection so I don’t get rabies on my unprotected head.”
The strange thing was, because I suffered from panic attacks, I liked to see him panicking. Coward speaketh unto coward. His weakness was my strength; I depended on it. His lack of shame endeared him to me. We never in our heart of hearts condemned one another.
Not that I showed my fondness for him at that moment.
“Oh, you chivalrous gentleman,” I cried. “Oh, my knight in shining armor!”
“I don’t have to show chivalry, dammit, I’m a bishop.”
“If I get rabies, Bishop, I’ll need ten shots around my navel. If that happens, I swear to God I’ll tell everything.”
“Tell who what?”
“I’ll tell whoever wants to hear the things you’ve done to me, every single sexual act. I’ll go to Rome and tell the Pope.”
Even that threat failed to make him part with the shawl. “Pet,” he whined, “that bat could scratch my head.”
“Don’t ‘pet’ me.”
“And I have a huge clergy dinner tomorrow evening.”
“So?”
“If I appeared with a scratch on my head, which of them would believe a bat did it?”
“You always think of yourself first.” I fought him for that shawl as if my life depended on it. “You just don’t want to go to hospital and miss your damn dinner.”
“Don’t I suffer enough already from my colitis?” he asked, in a Chaucerian lament. “For hours I sit on the toilet until I am almost down the sewer and you want me to risk getting ten needles in my poor belly. I’d explode.”
“You shouldn’t drink so much.”
“It’s not the drink, it’s the gas. When I get like that, I could drive my car across the mountains to Killarney without switching on the engine. Could propel you across this room like on a magic carpet from twenty feet away.”
I giggled, mollified by his way with words.
“Searching for a dead lamb in the dark, Annie, and being threatened with burglars and now this bat coming does not help my colitis.”
“Something’s got to be done about this affliction.”
“Now you know why I smoke a pipe with hickory in it.”
“Not nearly drastic enough.”
“When I’m really bad I smoke a cigar.”
“The rabies needles will do the trick. They’ll let the gas out of you.”
“The bat,” he suddenly screeched, “is the devil himself.”
That cry got to me. Believing nothing, I feared everything. I felt Satan would give me rabies personally and carry me off to hell.
“How,” I said, sobbing, “will I get to the bedroom?”
“Go down on your hands and knees and crawl.”
“Wait a minute. Crawl yourself.”
“I have a very bad knee, you know that.”
“The first I’ve heard of it.”
Well turbaned, he scampered without warning out into the corridor. I went on all fours after him, with the bat twice overflying me, terrified it would bite my backside. How unnerving the beating of wings within walls.
It hurt, too, crawling on those hard tiles, and, the ultimate insult, his door was shut in my face.
I flung it open and made a jump for him.
“I’m going to claw your eyes out,” I said.
“Shut that fecking door, Annie.”
I slammed it so the whole house shook.
“I’m going to bang your head till it bleeds.”
“Now, Annie, don’t do that,” while I’m kicking him in the legs and stamping on his bare toes and shouting, “You rotten stinking bastard.”
“ ’Tis late, Annie, please get into bed.”
“I prefer to sleep on the floor.”
“No, please, the danger’s over. It got in through my french window. ‘Tis closed now.”
I crawled between the cool linen sheets, saying grittily, “You are a selfish skunk.”
“Enough, Annie,” he said, getting undressed. “I never knew so many disas
ters in one night.”
“Are you saying I attract them or we do?”
“You do,” he snapped. “Because you have turned your back on God.”
“Don’t you preach at me, you hypocrite.”
When he tried to get into bed, I kicked him out so he hit his head on the corner of the bedside table.
“You believe in Providence,” I said, leaning over to kiss the wounded part, “well, God has sent you a scratch for luck, after all.”
He got up to examine himself tenderly in the mirror.
“If I have a bruise on my head, I will kill you.”
“Two lambs in one night?”
“You are dangerous. I intend to sleep on the floor.”
“Suits me.”
With that, I turned over to go to sleep.
Minutes later, I felt him crawl in next to me, his back next to mine. Feeling the other shake with mirth, each of us burst out laughing at the same moment and, speaking for myself, I was still laughing when I dropped off to sleep.
Nothing is as wonderful as waking up in the morning next to the person you love. This was the first time one of us did not have to leave furtively before the house awoke.
Some people look ready to die in the morning, but Eamonn had an almost newborn face on him. He woke up rubbing both sides of his face madly and making a noise like ruff-ruff-ruff.
“God,” I said, “there’s a dog in my bed.”
To prove me right, he bit my breasts and my belly, woofing constantly. The noise was multiphonic. It seemed to come out of his ears, his nose, his throat. To escape being eaten alive, I jumped out of bed and made to draw the drapes to let in the light.
“Stop,” he commanded.
“I need some air.”
“Get away from those curtains.” Very slowly and dramatically: “Someone is probably out there.” He put his fingers to his lips. “Get on all fours.”
“I refuse to walk like that again for anyone.”
“Disobey me and I will send you home.”
Heavens, I thought, what sort of standards does be have? We can go on having sex, no bother, but if I once open up his drapes he’ll send me back to America.
I said a frigid good-bye and made my way to my own room like a hunchback. Hardly the most romantic end to a romantic night. Especially as he soon came to me on all fours, crying in a trembly voice:
“Never do that again, you hear me?”
What terrible new sin had I committed now?
“Do what again, Eamonn?”
“Scratch me like that.”
“Like what?”
He held up two fingers from which dangled an earring.
“You left it in my bed. What would Mary think if she found it there?”
Chapter Seventeen
AFTER WE HAD SHOWERED, dressed and had a bite to eat, Eamonn said, “I’d be grateful if you’d come with me to Killarney and help Mary polish the silver.”
“Nothing I hate more,” I confessed.
“I do like to have a nice table for my priest friends.”
Apart from diocesan priests, he had also invited a couple of bishops to his dinner that night.
That morning, his driving aroused me to a fever pitch of sexual excitement. He handled the car as though he were fondling my naked body. Careering faster and faster around every bend, he kept taking his eye off the road to give me a sly lovemaking look, followed by a torrid laugh.
A heady mix of love and death resulted in a blizzard of butterflies in my stomach so that, without his even touching me, I threw my head back and gushed with a noisy orgasm.
“That was wild,” he said, stepping harder on the gas. “It proves you can do anything you like.”
“That was dangerous,” I said.
“Dangerous?” He raised both hands off the wheel. “Fun. I just showed you how the mind can dominate the body.”
At the Palace, Mary led me instantly to the large antiquated kitchen. She was in total command. She seated me at a long deal table in front of a pile of silver. It took me over two hours to polish it. If I left one smudge, she yelled at me to do the whole piece again.
We set the three-leaved table in the dining room for nearly twenty guests. Overhead was an antique brass chandelier. The chairs were tall and hand-carved with blue velvet seats. The cutlery was of silver, as were the teapots and coffeepots on the dark mirrored sideboard; the glassware was Waterford crystal. The flowers must have cost a fortune. Every color of rose, fan-like ferns, lilies of the valley rayed outward from vases of fluted silver. Each guest had a printed menu and his name printed in Gothic script on his placecard.
Exhausted by hours of work, I decided to take a nap. At the head of the stairs was a quiet shrouded room with nothing in it but a big mahogany table with a felt top. I lay down on it and curled up on my side with a damask pillow under my head.
I don’t know how long I had been sleeping when Eamonn prodded me awake. I knew he would. He needed to know where I was so he could touch me or kiss me or make sure I was not disgracing him by having a panic attack. Preparing that table for the clergy made me aware of the competition, and I was determined to give them a run for their money.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” he spluttered.
Winking: “I was waiting for you.”
“Here? Now? Get off there.”
“Give me your hand, then.”
As he helped me down I pulled him to me.
“Annie, this is nasty.”
“It’ll get even nastier if you don’t —”
He gave me a long but uninspired kiss. He jerked away from me as the front doorbell rang.
“Cripes. Have to go.”
I released him with “Until tonight?”
“You are dangerous,” he hissed.
“All a question of mind over matter.”
Seconds after he left the room, I heard him call with exaggerated calmness over the balustrade:
“Liam, Barney, how good to see you.”
His guests had begun to arrive.
I was apprehensive as I saw the dining room filling with boisterous clerics already flavored with drink and nicotine. Eamonn was in his smartest, with his bishop’s chain on. He tinkled his glass and everyone stood in silence as he blessed the food with his gold-ringed hand and said a brief grace in Latin as though he were presiding over an exclusive gentlemen’s club. After signing themselves, the clergy sat down in an explosion of camaraderie.
Mary and I, in flowery pinafores, served grapefruit, prawn cocktails, and oysters. There were medallions of lamb and salmon and gamebird with special fruit stuffing. The French wines were never-ending.
Over and over in the next couple of hours I heard Eamonn complimented for the splendid turnout. Sometimes, he placed his hands, the fingers joined, under his chin as he listened intently. Occasionally, to express disagreement, he put his knife and fork down, spread his hands on either side of his plate and banged the sides of them down together while he surveyed everyone with whippy eyes.
“I don’t believe that’ll work.”
Then he picked up his right hand, held it aloft with the index finger raised, then higher and higher, while, with great variations of voice, he made point after point. His guests seemed impressed by his certainties.
After the meal, they withdrew to Eamonn’s study. The downstairs part of the evening began for me and Mary in earnest. Without a dishwasher, the cleaning of the dishes took forever.
“Mary,” I said, “I don’t know how you put up with this.”
“Why do you think I’m so uptight?”
The only reason Eamonn kept her on was because she excelled at functions like this and, thank God, not one hitch. Not yet. The night, she said, was young.
She piled the trunk of Eamonn’s car with shrimps and hors d’oeuvres before driving me back to Inch in a Volkswagen crammed with drinks and sandwiches to prepare for an invasion.
Ten of his special friends arrived soon after we did. These were
the non-ring-kissers; they could pull Eamonn’s leg and tell him that rarest of things: the truth.
They settled in the living room before a lighted fire. Lights were dimmed, drapes half drawn, and the furniture, piano included, was pushed back to the walls. This was Ireland writ large. It was entirely a man’s world.
Women, in the persons of Mary and me, attended to their needs as they smoked, told jokes, some of them smutty in an adolescent way, swore alarmingly at each other, and played loud poker for money. God’s name came up only in expletives.
The visiting Bishop was as mad as a hatter; he kept getting up and doing a song-and-dance without a talent for either, and they adored him for it. Eamonn was adding to the fog by smoking a huge Havana cigar.
He was permanently disruptive. He interrupted a hand of cards to yelp like a dog or tell a story or discourse upon the way the rest were playing their hands. Once he banged his head in disbelief at something said, jumped out of his chair, and had to be coaxed back before the game could continue.
Meanwhile, he had peeked at the others’ hands so everybody yelled, “Dammit, Casey, will you stop?” “The gobshite’s up checking your cards, Pat.” Father O’Keeffe angrily said, “Sit down, you blackguard.”
Every time Eamonn cheated they became rowdier. They tore off their jackets, pretending to want a scrap. When they broke up for a breather, two strikingly handsome priest brothers, Liam and Barney, came to the kitchen for a chat. I sensed they both knew that Eamonn was involved with me. Maybe they had picked up vibrations from Father O’Keeffe with whom it was always “Annie, darling, if you could spare me another cup of coffee.”
Meeting him at Inch for the first time, I realized that if Eamonn was living a double life, so was his confessor. Under the kindness and banter lurked a bitter knowledge that threatened the peace of mind of two longtime allies, John and Eamonn. I felt responsible for that.
Barney, about thirty-five, made a beeline for me. I was a foreigner and an American at that. He could relax with me. Barney was an athlete, a hurler, and a smooth talker with a poacher’s eyes. Eamonn must have known something about him, for he followed him suspiciously and gave me a look that said, “Careful, don’t give him an inch.”
