Forbidden Fruit

by Annie Murphy

  While taking my particulars, he scarcely lifted his gaze off the page. Except when I said I had no husband. “Oh?” and he waited.

  Seeing I had nothing to add, he went on in a monotone: “In cases of unwed mothers like your good self, you see, we send them to the Coombe. From where, you see, the child is, well, adopted.”

  I did not like the way he said, “We send them,” as though we were packages in the mail. Nor did I like his Irish assumption that all unwed mothers had their children adopted.

  After he had inquired about my previous problem pregnancy, without examining me, he declared himself satisfied.

  “Can you tell me, Doctor, when the baby’s due?”

  “When do you think it was conceived?”

  I told him, “The last day of October.”

  “Then,” he said, “the end of July.” He wrote in my notes, 31 July. “I won’t be taking your case. No need, you see.”

  I was really Coombe material.

  “May I settle the fee now?”

  He waved the suggestion aside. “Not one farthing.”

  I felt bad for having judged him harshly.

  As he was showing me to the door with his big fleshy hand on my shoulder: “You come to Ireland, you see, for a rest and you get pregnant. A tragedy, a very great tragedy.” He shook my hand. “Take my advice—go to the Coombe and have that baby adopted.”

  My shame instantly dissolved. He was parroting Eamonn, who must have got to him and probably paid his fee.

  Eamonn is powerful, I thought. I’ll have to keep my wits about me if I’m to keep this child. I called him at Killarney. “You really did a good job on that consultant,” I said.

  “Must you see everything in terms of a conspiracy?”

  “He wouldn’t take me on.”

  He snickered. “Didn’t think he would.”

  “Exactly,” I said, “he was a snob, too. I’d be bad for his practice.”

  I slammed the phone down—it was getting to be a bad habit—and started throwing glasses at the wall. “You dirty son-of-a-bitch, take that and that.”

  Bridget came running and slapped my face. “Murphy,” she yelled, “are you out of your mind?”

  She backed away and narrowly escaped a plate. She came at me again and grabbed me by the arms. When we had cleaned up the mess that seemed to symbolize the breakages in both our lives, we shared the womanly communion of a pot of tea.

  “Murphy, we mustn’t let these male bastards get to us.”

  “Eamonn’s talking as if this is all my fault.”

  “Annie, the guy’s a bishop. Grow up.”

  Bridget and Eamonn knew each other pretty well.

  “I’m tempted,” I said, “to tell the world about Eamonn.”

  Bridget laughed aloud. “Listen, kid, even Wentworth refuses to believe Eamonn is the father of your baby.”

  “I didn’t know Wentworth was a good Catholic.”

  “Bad Irishmen are the very best.”

  “What hope for me, then?”

  “None.” She peered at me. “Murphy, don’t you ever cry?”

  I shook my head. “And I’m not going to the Coombe.”

  She took my hand in a sisterly handshake. “That makes two of us. But never tell Eamonn what you’re up to. Not unless you want him to be two steps ahead of you.”

  On a crisp golden day in mid-January, we signed on to have our babies at the Rotunda, in Parnell Street, Dublin. It was a state hospital over which the Catholic Church had no control.

  We were, it’s true, assigned to a social worker who chanced to be a Catholic nun. Sister Eileen was in her midthirties with a spring to her step in spite of being a bit plump. She had a round freckled face and hazel eyes with extra-long black lashes and the friendliest smile. Bridget saw her first and came out with her thumbs up.

  Sister Eileen’s only personal question to me was, “Do you and the child’s father have any hope of a future together?”

  “None,” I said.

  “That takes care of that, Annie. Remember, I’m here to back whatever decision you make. Now, do you have a religion?”

  “A born Catholic but I fell away years ago.”

  “You’ll get no pressures of any sort from me.”

  “Pardon me, Sister,” I said, “but are you a Catholic nun?”

  She gave me a radiant smile.

  “I like to think so, but my only task is to help you walk a lonely road.” She suggested that for the last couple of months of my pregnancy I might like to live with a family in exchange for light domestic work.

  I liked and trusted Eileen. No crucifixes to be seen in her verdant office. Only a fine picture of Christ ascending into glory and another of her rural birthplace in County Sligo.

  Bridget and I went downstairs and waited three hours in a long line of pregnant women for a medical examination.

  Hearing one woman say, “This is my tenth,” I nudged Bridget. “Join the club.”

  That visit took a load off me. My baby was doing well and I was not going to a Catholic institution. The way to keeping my baby was now open to me.

  The following week, I had four days off. Eamonn picked me up in his Mercedes and drove me more slowly than usual to Inch. The same warm love nest, but on a broken bough.

  It was freezing at Inch but exquisite. In the clear air, sound carried for miles. After a proud red devil of a dawn, morning was crisp with winds so wild they needed Valium. There were white cowls on silent peaks but on lower slopes a mere early-day salting of frost.

  Mary had left for her farmhouse, so I felt relaxed, especially as I was over the worst of my sickness. As to Eamonn, he was now most liberated in his lovemaking. He could not wait to get me into bed, especially as, in his unromantic words, “the damage has been done.” He praised my skin, my rosy cheeks, the glow of my hair. “Lovelier you are than ever, Annie,” he sighed, exhilarated by my voluptuous breasts.

  He sensed, too, without seeing into it, that my soul was different. I was not so easily disturbed. My tantrums were a thing of the past. Motherhood had done this to me, but I don’t think he yet connected my changed manner with a baby.

  Even when he was within me, as close as he could be to our child, even when I told him, “You have to be gentler now,” he was still only dimly aware of the new, already quivering rival.

  I was first to grasp that the baby was taking up Eamonn’s space and I became protective. Every love suffers multiple deaths and resurrections. But now, in the warmth of our embraces, we were preparing to say good-bye. Each kiss was both a pleasure and an elegy; each act of intercourse a requiem.

  I tried to avoid orgasms in case I lost my baby, but without success, because Eamonn’s excitement over my body aroused me. Yet what thrilled me before now terrified me.

  He noticed. On the third night, we were in his bed when he complained, “You’re clamping me real hard, Annie. If you’re scared of losing the baby, I won’t enter you.”

  “I am scared,” I said.

  He immediately got out of bed, opened a drawer, and returned naked to bed with a thick black prayer book. “Read it. ‘Twill help you discover God’s will for you.”

  This, his first attempt to influence me in religion, came hard on the heels of my admission that full sex between us might have to stop. I disliked the way my naked evangelist assumed that less sex meant we would become more spiritual. I was wary, knowing how God’s will and Eamonn’s had an annoying habit of coinciding. And I had done a bad thing: I had got a bishop into trouble.

  He had marked certain prayers for me. They stuck like bones in my throat. They were about sorrow for sin and atonement. I had too much joy inside me to be in tune with them.

  He read a few prayers in his melodious voice, but as soon as he mentioned God, I blocked him out.

  His God and mine were not on speaking terms. His was of the male sort that sensible women hate. He loved whiners and breast-beaters and enjoyed nothing more than seeing terror in the eye. Strangest of all, Eam
onn’s God never laughed, whereas every day mine woke up and went to bed laughing and went on laughing in His sleep.

  For the rest of that visit, Eamonn, postcoitally pious, was relaxed because he assumed that I would go along with whatever plans he made for me. I would give birth in a Catholic hospital of his choice and the baby would be adopted by a Catholic couple.

  He relied on me to let him start his life all over.

  I knew we were on a collision course.

  For the first four months of 1974, through the harsh winter and into spring, Eamonn remained very kind. He came to town every weekend whenever Wentworth was on late shift. He took me to dinner, after which we returned to my room and slept together.

  His confidence in Bridget’s reliability was unshakable. And he was right, even though she said to me, “He’s a fox, a real cheeky bastard.” She was careful never to come anywhere near my room when she saw Eamonn’s trench coat in the hallway.

  I was worried about her. I wondered if she had a wasting disease, because she had no belly at all.

  Eamonn admired her for not having an abortion. He could not stand the thought of anyone destroying nascent life. He brought her flowers and fruit. He offered to get Wentworth help for his drinking problem to ease their path to marriage.

  One weekend about this time, Eamonn took his pleasure, as was now normal, by rubbing up against me. By then, if he had tried to enter me, the child, whom in my mind I had christened Thumper, would have kicked him out of me.

  * * *

  Thumper made it plain he liked the sun and long walks. I told him, “My first child died because I didn’t love it. But you won’t die for lack of love.”

  People used to eye me oddly when I was in Stephen’s Green or walking through the city toward the Rotunda. I kept rubbing my tummy telling Thumper what a beautiful day it was, which were the boy and girl ducks, where we were headed.

  Thumper was also possessive; he did not like Eamonn near me. Eamonn felt supplanted. From the womb, I felt the enmity between the two of them.

  It was time for a bit more honesty. I told Eamonn that I was being cared for at the Rotunda.

  “I thought,” he said, “you were going to the Coombe.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “No.”

  “Did you?”

  “No, but I took it for granted.”

  “Why?” I asked innocently.

  “Have it your way,” he said, in a tone that suggested it would not be for long.

  He asked if Bridget had decided to marry Wentworth.

  “She’s keeping an open mind on that,” I said.

  “Maybe she should give up her baby, too.”

  “She may.”

  I ignored his assumption about what I would do with Thumper. Thus the attempt to communicate ended with the areas of deceit widening like ripples on a lake. But he was now sure of two things. I had deceived him in the most maddening way, by my silence; and he had lost time and some of the high ground.

  The enmity between two people who loved each other was coming more and more into the open. The pain of knowing your dearest friend and fiercest foe are one is indescribable. We both realized that the sincerest, most passionate kiss could be followed by one of betrayal. It was like eating blindly a bowl of strawberries, one delicious, the next rotten to the core.

  The contest was even now. Now, he, too, knew we were on a collision course.

  One weekend in April, Eamonn came to the apartment. Seeing that sex was a problem for me, he said, heartbroken: “You don’t need me anymore, Annie; maybe I should go.”

  “No,” I assured him, “it’s got nothing to do with us.”

  He felt ousted all the same and very jealous.

  “Tell me honestly, do I disgust you?” Seeing he was ready for a final good-bye for all the wrong reasons, I grabbed him and shook my head miserably at his lack of understanding.

  He had no cause to be hurt. People need each other at different times in different ways. If only he had men friends at work or in the pub who could explain things to him and help him cope with this new but quite normal situation. He had learned the great pleasure of giving pleasure. It was hard for him to grasp that, at this stage of my pregnancy, I needed a comforting presence as much as I once needed sexual love to prove to me my worth. But he saw no role for himself except as my religious counselor.

  I said again I was scared an orgasm might dislodge my baby.

  “ ‘Tis the baby making the commandments now, is that so? No, ‘tis you who do not want me.”

  He came to bed with me and I allowed him to enter me, but I wanted no physical arousal. I was there only for him, and he seemed content with that.

  A crisis occurred one weekend. Before coming to my room, Eamonn visited Bridget, who was still unwell. He told her he was praying for her all the time. Maybe this genuine concern led Bridget to say that we were being counseled at the Rotunda by a Sister Eileen.

  “Good,” was his first reaction. A nun was surely a tool in his hands. “What is she telling you to do, then?”

  “She doesn’t tell anyone what to do,” Bridget said. “She just helps us make up our own minds about whether to keep our babies or not.”

  “Is that so?”

  He said no more, but I could see the wheels spinning in his head.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Nine

  I PHONED MARY, NEWLY DIVORCED, and told her the news. She called me a moron for being banged by a bishop.

  “Is the guy giving you money?… No? You under a specialist?… What, after you already had one disgusting miscarriage? Okay, where’re you booked in for the delivery?… You’re kidding. The stingy bastard. His baby’s going to be born in a public hospital.… I know, Annie, where Jesus was born, but He came to have bricks thrown at Him, didn’t He? But a bishop’s baby, Chu-rist.”

  She had too many troubles of her own to want me on her doorstep. That was why she, like Eamonn, pressed for adoption. “I’ll send you some of my maternity clothes, Annie.”

  “No need. I’m still wearing jeans and blouses.”

  “At over five months? You stopped eating or something?”

  A few weeks later, when Eamonn came to the apartment, I had suddenly blossomed into the tree of life. I was wearing a tied skirt and pretty maternity blouse.

  Seeing my roundness, his eyes lit up as of old. “Let me see,” and he lifted my skirt up. “Take it off, Annie, please, and your panties.”

  I did so, watching his face, as I showed him wonders in return for the wonders he had shown me. With eyes twitching, he preached eloquently, breathlessly on the size, beauty, glossiness of my gold-hued tight-as-a-plumskin belly. With trembly hands, he warmed this great globe of flesh as though it were a full brandy glass before tenderly kissing it.

  “Off with your blouse, Annie.”

  I unfastened my blouse and bra and let them fall to the ground, so I stood naked and statuesque before the Bishop like the original earth-mother in the first of all springtimes.

  “So rich you are,” he gasped. “So round.” He marveled at the nipples’ big chestnut-colored areoles, kissed each mellowing breast, then knelt adoringly before me shaping the roundness of my belly with a sculptor’s hands, feeling, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, the kicking from within.

  “A dancer like his father,” I said. I stood looking down on him, mesmerized by his reverence for me and for the awesome changes that had come over me.

  Now that he had felt with his own hands, seen with his own eyes what he had done, witnessed this close the golden harvest of our love, would it make a difference? Would he, in spite of that clerical garb, want to share for a lifetime the child our love had brought into being?

  The answer came sooner than I expected. His joy turned to puzzlement, to sadness.

  I shook involuntarily as, still kneeling, he leaned a hard head against me. His pectoral cross pressed into my bare flesh. Too near my child.

  “What are you thinking, Eamonn?”

 
He held me tighter, his alien cross digging deeper, as he answered in a voice muffled by my belly, “Since I loved you, I feel I love God more than I ever did.”

  “Oh, yes, yes. Why should that make you sad?”

  He lifted misty eyes to me. “Because I feel He loves me less.”

  “But He must love you more the more you love Him, surely?”

  He shook his head. “Sometimes, I feel He is ready to hurl me into hell.”

  The anguish with which he said it tore at me. “How could He, Eamonn, if you love Him more than ever?”

  It was a conundrum to which he had no answer.

  “Even if you did wrong, Eamonn, surely God will forgive you over and over?”

  He rubbed his hands fondly, almost nostalgically, over my breasts but made no answer.

  Catholics are always talking about God’s forgiveness but they really think they are far more forgiving than He is. They never trust Him because He is the God of Law not Love; He has to punish all lawbreakers. My own view is that God, like a loving parent, has to forgive everyone everything because He is so helplessly good.

  As Eamonn once more stroked my belly, I soothed his troubled head. Poor Eamonn, he had talked about sins of the flesh for year after year yet he did not know what the flesh was till I taught him. One hand fondled my breast and he, who had heard everything, knew he knew nothing. In my arms came the sudden terrible shock of recognition.

  Till then, the flesh had only been an idea, which is precisely what it is not. The flesh is the means of merging and becoming one with another, with the world, beyond all thought and imaginings, beyond all sense and consequence. Lovers, entwined, lost in one another’s arms, experience in flesh the dark night of thought. To love is to die in the sweetest way in order to live anew. But my tragedy was, in teaching him about the flesh, I had unwittingly, unwantingly, made him aware, too keenly, of sin. The more he loved me, the more he despised and feared for himself.

  With the same quiet inevitability with which other people accept death, Catholics deny it; they are from conception made for immortality. And I, through a love that should have banished fear, had made Eamonn fear perhaps for the first time in his life that he was headed toward immortal loss.