Forbidden Fruit

by Annie Murphy

My response, of course, was to edge still closer to Barney so I could listen enthralled. Out of the edge of my eye, I saw Eamonn getting more and more neutered looking and—oh, marvelous —green-eyed with jealousy.

  Barney had a special way of flirting with me. He told me stories about Eamonn. He and his brother always went with him on vacation, invariably to exotic places. When they had been in India, they came across a snake that reared up in their faces. He and Liam had been terrified while Eamonn talked to it and laughed at it, allowing the others to creep to safety.

  Their last trip had been to Africa. Eamonn was driving their jeep in the Serengeti when Barney said, “Do they have earthquakes in this area?” and Eamonn said, “Don’t even say such a thing.” But he increased speed, all the same.

  Liam said, “Eamonn, have you taken leave of your senses?”

  “Not to worry,” Eamonn said, running his hand through his hair, the infallible sign of his worrying.

  “Level with us, Eamonn,” Barney said.

  Then the earth shuddered, deafening sounds were all around them, and a dust cloud was coming in their wake with the speed of a whirlwind.

  “Fecking elephants,” Liam cried.

  Eamonn’s response was to yelp like a dog. “ ‘Tis nothing. Pray. Keep praying.”

  Liam collapsed in his seat. “We’re done for,” he said, while Barney cried, “Hail Mary… pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”

  “The amazing thing, Annie,” Barney told me, “was that Eamonn was enjoying himself. With a handkerchief over his face to keep the dust out, he hooted his horn and banged his head while he drove in and out of the herd as if he could see in the dark and laughed and laughed.”

  Barney paused to get his breath back and to recover from the insanity of the incident.

  “His maneuvering among those elephants was a miracle.”

  Kerry roads must have been tame in comparison.

  “Annie,” Barney said, looking me straight in the eyes. “That man attracts disaster. And do you know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because he likes to laugh.”

  Eamonn and I both belonged to a dangerous breed. Maybe we laughed so much together because we found one another so threatening.

  An unhappy Eamonn clapped his hands to summon his friends back to the safety of poker. Safety for him, that is, because a lot of money passed over the table that night, mostly in his direction.

  When I next offered them sandwiches at a break in the game, he said, “Go to bed, Annie. Clean up in the morning.”

  “I’m fine,” I said loudly and, as I offered him something, I whispered, “Barney has such fascinating tales.”

  “He doesn’t mean it, Annie, but he likes to flirt.”

  “Don’t we all?” I said.

  “But it’s not good for him.”

  “Nor for you.”

  “Exactly,” said Eamonn with a rare word of honesty.

  “A good job he wasn’t the one who met me at Shannon. He might have done something disgraceful.”

  “He might.”

  “Yes,” I said. “He doesn’t have your spirit of discipline and self-sacrifice.”

  He sighed deeply, miserably.

  “Has it occurred to you, Eamonn, that I might help him?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s so obviously in need of healing.”

  “How do you propose to —” He slapped his head, unwittingly attracting attention. “Don’t tell me.”

  “Well, I know you will never leave the priesthood.”

  I said this with complete sincerity. Hour after hour, I had witnessed the close cursing friendship of men who had studied and worked together for years. I saw how this tight-knit brotherhood honored Eamonn and looked up to him as a chief of their tribe. They would tolerate any of his sins except that of quitting.

  I felt sad for Eamonn and for me. How could he face the shame of betraying their expectations when they loved him so much they even let him cheat at poker?

  “Thank you,” he said, ungratefully.

  “But young Barney, now”—this was said only to provoke—“who knows?”

  The very word young pointed to a major advantage Barney had over his Bishop.

  “Temptress,” he spat out.

  “I’m sure the Pope would give us his blessing.”

  He turned from me in disgust, saying to his clerical friends, “Poker’s about to recommence.”

  That evening, he showed me the fullness of his life, the sheer strength of the ecclesiastical system he served. I went to sleep full of foreboding.

  Chapter Eighteen

  NEXT MORNING, Mary brought me a cup of tea in bed. The Bishop, she said, had gone to work. He was annoyed that the clergy had left tire marks all over the lawn in the early hours. He intended sending Justin to roll it out.

  “Why not a local man?” I wanted to know.

  Mary said local people might have guessed that the damage had been done by the clergy in a drunken orgy.

  “He is very suspicious, you know, Annie.”

  We spent the day cleaning up. Jokingly, I put the vacuum cleaner to her hair and made it stand out. Then I put it on her breasts.

  “Leave ‘em alone, Annie,” she screamed, “not even a man has touched those.”

  “More fool you.”

  “You are a good match for the Bishop,” she said; “you’re both crazy.”

  “Thanks.”

  “There’s something going on here,” she said. “One of the reasons I’m getting headaches. But”—a wild fling of the arms — “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  A couple of days later, Eamonn asked me to attend a ceremony in Killarney Cathedral. He was ordaining a priest.

  I could not make him out. I resented his being a priest and here he was wanting me to watch him make another.

  I had promised to help Pat Gilbride that day but if the spirit moved me, I said, I would attend part of the ceremony.

  The morning was rainy, so I wore a blue poncho-type raincoat. On the way, he told me it was a simple and beautiful ceremony. He had been through it twenty years before. “I really would appreciate it if you got to know this part of my life a bit better.”

  I could not deny I had some responsibility in this regard.

  “It’ll give you a glimpse, Annie, of the power and majesty of the Church and the sacrifices it demands of us priests.”

  During the ceremony, I did slip into the Cathedral. I walked up a side aisle and hid from the congregation behind a pillar. Eamonn, in full regalia, was seated on the sanctuary in front of a young man in a white alb who was stretched out on the ground like a fallen leaf.

  His eyes met mine as I peeked out of my blue hood. To me, the whole thing was pagan and immoral. He was encouraging a youngster who knew nothing of life to renounce all its joys when he himself had failed in so many ways. I wanted to pull the ordinand to his feet and yell, “Don’t be so stupid.”

  As Eamonn stood up, he tripped on his long robes and almost fell. I walked out before I disgraced myself by laughing aloud.

  After the ceremony, when the new priest and his family were having their pictures taken with the Bishop, I returned to the Cathedral. I slipped into Eamonn’s private vesting room and hid behind a curtain. When he came back to remove his vestments, I jumped out on him, saying, “I did not like that one little bit.”

  He whispered back, red-faced, “That was obvious.”

  The amazing thing was that my readiness to attack him only endeared me to him. He was fascinated by opposition.

  “If anyone comes in,” he said, “I’ll pretend I’m hearing your confession.”

  “Can’t you ever talk with a woman without wanting to improve her or forgive her her sins?”

  “During that ordination, Annie, the hate in you —”

  “I don’t hate you. It’s the system. Jesus would not have wanted that.”

  “How,” he asked, his eyes blazing, “do you know?”r />
  I pointed to all his finery. “Can you imagine Him wearing that?”

  “Stop it, Annie, please!”

  “And that nice young man gives his whole life to the Church when he knows nothing about anything.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t need to. He’s been chosen by —”

  “God? No, the likes of you whispered into the ear of some guilt-ridden Irish mother who whispered into her son’s ear from the time he was five that this is what God wanted him to do.”

  He stepped a few paces away to consider me. “What’s got into you?”

  I was not sure myself. I was taking a huge risk by attacking him in the place most sacred to him.

  “Can’t you see,” I pleaded, “that that young man will end up like you?”

  “Which is?”

  “Corrupt,” I snapped.

  He looked as if I had slapped him on the face.

  “I don’t think I’m corrupt.”

  After a long pause, I said, “I do.”

  He went on unvesting, saying calmly, “You’re having a tantrum.”

  “That ceremony, Eamonn, reminded me of what the Church made me suffer when I was a kid, all the guilt and the shame. Stupid rules made up by a bunch of old hoodlums in drag who want to take revenge on the human race for their own barren lives.”

  Eamonn ran his hands through his hair in exasperation. “Oh, no,” he moaned. “O-o-oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “You wanted to brainwash me. Instead, that ordination only brought home to me that it was the Church that almost killed my mother before her time.”

  “Drink did that.”

  I was remembering how I, an eight-year-old parent-minder, had to tug my drunken ton-weight mother through the house. “Why the hell do you think she drank?”

  “You tell me.”

  I said, “You shouldn’t ask women to give up their hearts, minds, bodies, souls, to serve the likes of you.”

  He sat down heavily, sighed, and shook his head.

  “Yes, Eamonn. You make them live in permanent fear of having children so you can control them and their husbands through them. Why do you think Irish men spend most of their lives in pubs? Because you have made a secret war between them and their women.”

  “Keep your voice down, Annie.”

  That ceremony had made me realize that the Catholic Church had stolen my childhood from me. It had set me on the path of accepting bad things from the men in my life. Why did I allow myself to be more or less raped, to be sodomized, to enter a marriage in which I was subject to degrading sex? Because the Church had groomed me to play the part of the victim of men and for men.

  Tears sprang to my eyes. I was speaking from bitter experience. Its roots went back to the virtually unendurable marriage of my parents. It flowered in my marrying a Jew whom I did not love because that was the best way I could express my rebellion against my Catholic upbringing.

  Heavens, I wondered, was my love for Eamonn just another form of my revenge against men and, in particular, against the Catholic Church?

  No, no, no, surely, no. I really loved him but how could I love someone who embodied everything that I hated in the system that had ruined my life? There was no better proof of the power and mystery of my love.

  Eamonn fondly took my arm, saying, “Tell me.”

  I told him how my father said the rosary over and over and often went to Mass. He believed God is within us, guiding us. He was never a blindly obedient Catholic. If your marriage is destructive, he used to say, get a divorce.

  His chief argument with the Church was over contraceptives. That was why he refused to contribute to Church funds. According to him, everyone had a right to use them to plan their lives. Some couples wanted one child, some ten. The decision should be theirs and theirs alone.

  He instructed his children in the methods of birth control. The pill, he told us girls, we were to take only under medical supervision.

  One day, he caught my brother Peter fornicating. He raised his eyes to heaven and said, “Please don’t bring me home babies.” From that day on, Johnny and Peter were given money for condoms.

  Once, when I was five, he tore into them because they got drunk and left condoms in the toilet bowl. I fished them out with a stick and wanted to know what they were.

  Mom said, “It’s your fault, Jack, you encouraged them.”

  When she was a girl, she was going to be a nun. Birth control terrified her. Daddy told her she had to use it after she nearly died from a miscarriage. She gave up her diaphragm so she could return to communion. The result was Mary and me. We were the price she paid for a quiet conscience.

  Imagine, a religion that demands women have babies to get peace of mind. In Mommy’s case, it didn’t last. After me, Daddy couldn’t afford any more kids. Now the only way Mom could cope with having to use a diaphragm was by drinking. Catholic guilt must make some of the worst alcoholics.

  When Mommy got Catholicly drunk, she yelled out that she was in hell already. She was red and insane looking, and I could feel the heat of her. I stood on a chair and threw water over her to cool her down, a jug at a time.

  After I gave Eamonn a brief but bitter r?m?f all this, he took my hand and kissed it. Then, in a very soft voice: “I do understand, pet. But you must understand me, too. You may think me all-powerful, but I am nothing.”

  “None of us is nothing.”

  “If I deviate once in the slightest from the Catholic position, I will have to leave the priesthood.”

  I gasped with incredulity. Surely a bishop, a leader, was at least entitled to a point of view?

  “The Church will forgive me, Annie, whatever sins I commit: murder, theft, adultery. But one careless phrase and all the good work I’m doing would come to an end.”

  He could sleep around and stay a priest, but if he gave one honest opinion he would have to leave?

  “Eamonn,” I said, “you couldn’t do a finer thing for the Church and for Ireland than to leave.” He looked puzzled. “Any institution that treats people like that is a form of Nazism.”

  He giggled. “The Pope is no Hitler.”

  “Speak for yourself. Your false loyalty corrupted you long before I came along. You’re mixed up not only in your sexuality but in your thoughts.”

  “Me mixed up?”

  “Far worse than I ever was. You’re kind, but you can’t confront the real issues. You hear the cries of the people but your so-called loyalty has stopped you from facing up to all the misery you cause.”

  He looked at me forgivingly for saying such a cruel thing.

  “I really do try and ease the pain of thousands, Annie.”

  “You ease the pain of thousands so you are guilt free to hammer millions.”

  “But I do really believe, Annie, that contraceptives make couples behave selfishly and put sex before love.”

  “Tell that to the woman with a string of kids and a cruel drunk for a husband.”

  “Won’t you consider the Church’s position?”

  “If I accepted it, I’d have to stop loving you.” That shook him. I don’t think it had entered his head that if he converted me it was farewell to our love. My lack of conversion was the only justification for our relationship.

  I went to the door. “I apologize,” I said. “I’m becoming a bully like you. It’s not for me to tell you what stand you should be making.”

  “Come back to me,” he said.

  “I can hear you from here.”

  “I just want you to appreciate the way I feel.”

  “I do,” I conceded. I went over to him, hugged and kissed him. “I’d love you whatever you thought or did.”

  “And I love you in spite of an awful lot that’s wrong with you, too.”

  I went to the door again. “I know,” I said. “It’s not every Catholic who would go on loving a woman who sleeps every night with a bishop.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I SPENT THE REST OF THAT DAY in Killarney. Wanting to get closer
to Pat, I took her snarly black poodle for a walk. It was funny seeing the apprehension on everybody’s face when this little dog appeared on the streets.

  That afternoon, Eamonn had a titled visitor from England. He invited me into his study to meet Sir Gerald. For fun, I let Larry in and he went straight as an arrow for the visitor’s leg.

  Forgetting himself, Eamonn cried out, “Let go, you bastard,” and tried to grab Larry’s hindquarters.

  Sir Gerald hardly opened his mouth except to say politely, “Be a good dog, old chap. You will get down? Please.”

  I almost expected him to say, “Sherry, Larry?”

  Eamonn was so angry I thought he might bite the dog.

  Hearing the commotion, Pat ran in only to see her pet release the Englishman and make a jump at his old enemy.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Eamonn cried, kicking out with all his might and scrambling up onto a chair next to the one on which now stood his somewhat less distinguished visitor.

  “What are you doing to my darling?” Pat said, and all Eamonn could do was point to the blood on the floor.

  “It’s perfectly all right,” the Englishman said, as if this happened to him at least once a week.

  Mary came to fetch me because Eamonn had a business meeting.

  He came home late after drinking heavily. He came into my room, twirling the brown liquor round and round in his brandy glass. “I don’t want to lose Pat,” he said, getting into bed, “but what am I going to do with that damned dog?”

  “Arrange a party,” I said. “Give Pat a glass of poteen and I’ll give Larry a special cocktail of milk with Valium in it.”

  “You’re mad, Annie.”

  “It’d be a crib death. He sleeps next to Pat. Even a man could die sleeping next to someone with a forty-D bust.”

  Eamonn gurgled on about Larry dying in comfort when I suddenly said, “Emergency.”

  I was laughing so much, I was in danger of disgracing myself, and being on the wall side I was trapped.

  “I’ve got to get to the bathroom or else Inch’ll become Tinkletown.” I tried to clamber over him but my feet snagged in the sheets. As he jerked to free me I fell over backward into the gap between bed and wall, and the flood came.