Forbidden Fruit (13 page)

* * *

As soon as we were home, while Helena attended to her kids, Eamonn came into my room. I wore only panties as I dried my hair
with a towel.

“Wasn’t that invigorating?” he said, breathing deeply. “Before, I was very, very tired. And look at you, Annie. Radiant.”

True. The anxiety that surrounded me seemed to have been rinsed out of me.

“I thought you’d be too scared to go in the sea, Annie.”

I said, “I saw you delighting in it and I have shared so many things with you I wanted to share that, too.”

He felt my breast. “
Touché
. I’m getting out of here now, so lock the door behind me.” He winked. “So I’m not tempted to come back in.”

All that day, he and Helena did the cooking. Dressed in black slacks and a bright, striped shirt, he was filling the kids’
glasses with lemonade and ours with wine and cocktails as we sunbathed in the garden. He gave everybody an equal amount of
time and attention.

Helena, now shiny with joy, confided in me that she had been hysterical when she knew she was carrying Jenny. She had wanted
a rest from childbearing. When Jenny was a year and a half, she started having seizures, with a temperature of 104. Patrick,
her husband, was away on business, the doctor couldn’t come. Certain that Jenny was going to die, she put it down to her own
reluctance to have her.

“It was only myself and God who saved her.”

This explained why she was always edgy when Jenny disappeared for a few moments.

After Jenny recovered, Helena was ready to accept as many children as God sent her. Anything was preferable to the guilt of
a dead child.

I understood only too well. Helena helped me realize that other women felt as I did.

She had obviously told this story to Eamonn and he had helped her see the spiritual dimension of it. As a result, he not only
judged Helena to be the ideal Irish woman, he probably saw a parallel between her experience and mine.

Maybe he thought he would be able to heal me as he had healed her.

W
HEN HELENA LEFT, Mary came back and life at Inch returned to normal.

Tanned and full of energy, Mary looked around the house and called me a saint. She had expected to have to clean up after
all the children but I had done it for her.

She made us lunch of spaghetti bolognese while I prepared a salad. We also drank sherry together. Only a sip, she insisted,
time after time, winking.

That lunch was fun. She criticized the Bishop for being such a miser. Long-hosted spite came out of her for hours till the
shadows lengthened and heavy rain started to fall.

“I see a tremendous closeness between you and the Bishop,” she said. “Watch him.”

Without a word, she staggered out of the kitchen into the living room. I found her on her knees at the liquor cupboard.

“When’s he coming back, Annie?”

“About ten.”

“Gives us plen’y of time.”

She tugged out one expensive bottle after another.

I uncorked a decanter of Madeira and took a swig.

“Good for you, Annie Murphy,” she said with a laugh. “I happen to know how he makes cocktails.”

She mixed large measures of vermouth, gin, vodka, brandy, fruit juices, and crushed ice in a shaker.

“That,” I said, “would kill a Shire horse.”

As she poured the cocktail out into two nine-inch silver goblets, wind and rain gusted against the french windows.

She set the glasses on a low coffee table in front of a roaring fire. Having finished one drink, she helped herself to another.
Soon she was wobbling.

We put on some Irish music. It was the signal for Mary to go back to the cupboard and draw out an unlabeled bottle.

“Gin?” I asked. “Vodka?”

She winked both eyes because she could not wink one on its own. “Ireland’s own. Poteen.” She uncorked the bottle and sniffed.
“Oh God, dear God, the
smell
of it.”

I grabbed the bottle and the licorice smell made my head rock back.

“ ’Tis the secret of everblasting life.”

I giggled at her slip of the tongue.

She took a vase filled with flowers, tipped the contents into the fire with a smoky sizzle, half filled the vase with poteen,
and drained it.

“Why’d you do that, Mary?”

“Never like mixing my drinks.”

I was sober enough to realize that Mary was not just gone, she was beyond-the-Himalayas gone.

She squirted, out of the side of her mouth, “Bed.”

She tried to get up and did a split.

I lugged her to her feet like a sack of coal.

“Thassright. Get poor Mary to beddy bed.”

With that she fell to the floor. I grabbed her feet and dragged her out the room, across the corridor, and into her bed. Kneeling
down briefly beside her, I begged her, “Don’t die, Mary.”

Recent events—Helena’s visit, the swim in the sea—made me want to indulge an entirely new mood.

Good-bye, godly cleric
, I thought.
Put all restraints behind you, Eamonn, and
live.

I put on an aggressive low-cut tie-blouse decorated with red roses and tight-fitting black velvet pants with a wide red belt.
I brushed my hair so it stood up high and put on big jangling Indian earrings. Having applied makeup, I peered into the mirror
and decided, pursing my lips to kiss my own image, good enough to wow the returning warrior.

I had enough of sleeping with him after he had insulted both me and his God by praying for nearly an hour. Tonight, no grace
before meals. This was my show.

Back in the living room, swaying this way and that, I played very loud music. First, “Suspicion” by Elvis Presley. Then some
Sinatra, beginning with “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.”

All the while I was jumping like a cat from the couch to the chair and growling.

Through the slanting rain beyond the windows, I saw the headlights of his car as it screamed up the drive and halted by the
front door.

I turned the music up to maximum. Blaring away at the time was “Fly Me to the Moon.” That was the sound that greeted Eamonn
when he came through the front door. Nothing, though, could have prepared him for the sight of me, with glistening eyes and
exploding hair as I lay barefoot and purring among the crystal on top of his glossy black piano.

He came into the living room dressed impeccably with his episcopal chain round his neck. After two steps, his chin fell as
he surveyed the chaos, including his precious bottles scattered around.

“God Al
mighty
,” he roared above the music, “you’re
drunk
. Where’s
Mary
?”

“Dead.”

“All that liquor. Did you drink it?”

“Mary poisoned herself.”

“She must have just passed out,” he said. “But she may have vomited in her sleep and choked.”

He ran out of the room and straight back in again.

“Annie”—he shook a wavy hand at me—“don’t move on my piano till I get back. You might scratch it or break my best Waterford
crystal.”

He ran across the corridor to Mary’s room and came back seconds later, saying, “She’s gone, she
is
dead.”

Though tipsy, I could see how excited he was. After a bare dark mountain road came this assault on all his senses: dimmed
lamps and firelight on gleaming wood and crystal, thick-pile rugs, skin-tingling music, a young woman looking good with animal
smells and movements, the sensuous, slightly orgiastic challenge to his own dull orthodox attire.

How would he react? A precious clue: his foot was tapping to the music. This was for him a much better prelude to lovemaking
than walking up and down for ages past the Stations of the Cross.

He had only been to Mary’s room to check that she would not wake in a hurry. The intoxicating music, the Puck-style paganism
was new to him and he, taster of all life’s wines, found it irresistible.

I congratulated myself on knowing my man so well.

“You have corrupted her, Annie.”

“She got drunk before I came.”

“Never before in this house.”

He poured himself a brandy. Twirling the big globe, he came up to me and said, “Mind that glass. You could get splinters in
your backside.”

“You’re worried about your mother’s piano.”

“That, too,” he admitted. “Get down, now.” He held out his hand. “Down.”

When I refused he went to switch off the music.

“Don’t do that,” I warned him, “or else.”

Seeing I wanted to control the scene, he came back to me and extended his hand. I took it and jumped into his arms. Taken
by surprise, he fell back on the floor, spilling brandy all down him.

“My poor back,” he yelled, “you snapped it in two.”

I kept running around the room and jumping clean over the big high-backed cushiony couch. He lay down on the couch, maybe
in the hope of getting me to lie next to him.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” he urged.

I took no notice. I jumped on top of him from unexpected angles and before he could grab me I was off on another cat-like
tour of the room, sniffing and miaowing.

Finally, I jumped on top of him and started to undo his clericals. I got his jacket off so I could work on the gold chain
with the cross on it that always frightened me.

“ ’Tis very heavy.” In holding up his hand to check me, he showed his ring with a big amethyst surrounded by diamonds. “You’ll
break my neck.”

“I will if I’m careful.”

I tried to pull his ring off but he clenched his fist as if to say, “Anything but that.”

He feared that in my present mood I might fling it in the fire or over the cliff. He saw I wanted that ring not because it
was worth a fortune but because it symbolized he was wedded to something other than me.

“I want to put it on, Eamonn. I do, I do.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, pet. You have tiny fingers and it would fall off you. Please, I love you, but stop.”

I refused so he took refuge in another glass of brandy.

“Would you mind if I turned down the music a little bit?”

“Just… a… little… bit.”

For the next few minutes I kept coming around the couch and growling at him.

Finally, in mock terror, he stood on a chair, which I tipped over, bringing him down on the floor.

“Don’t scratch me above the collar,” he pleaded. “Or I’ll get the scissors out and cut your nails.”

“I would stick you with them.”

His gaze met mine without a waver.

“I’d do the same to you, Annie. You have met your match.”

“Not when I’m drowning in a sea of alcohol, Eamonn. I have tre
men
-dous strength.”

When I finally cornered him, I started ripping more of his clothes off and scattering them. With each item of his removed,
I removed one of mine—my blouse for his shirt, my velvet slacks for his pants—as though we were playing strip-poker. He
himself chose to remove my bra.

“Does it unhook at the back or front? God, you need to be a magician to get rid of these things. Ah, it opens at the front
and out they pop.”

In the end, we danced naked before the flashing fire. It was rough but it was fun and very sexy.

Finally, we made love on the Afghan rug in front of the fire. Alcohol warmed us within and the peat fire without, and Frank
Sinatra was serenading us and a compliant wind howled its approval from the sea.

He was more masterful than I, who was by then high as a kite. He went touring all the isles and inlets of me, verbalizing
his pleasures in every place. That night, he was top dog and I felt he would not yield that right easily again.

After we were more than satisfied, we lay on our backs in silence, contemplating the still white sky of the ceiling.

“Now, Annie,” he said, rolling over at last, “you must get some sleep. Your pulse is racing.”

I
was
beginning to feel bad. He led me to my bed where I fell straight asleep with him next to me, so happy he broke his vow never
to sleep again without wearing his pajama pants.

About four in the morning I sat up with an electric start. Owing to the alcohol I was having a panic attack. I felt that he/she/it/they
were about to kill me.

I nudged him awake. It took a while.

“Eamonn,” I gasped, “go to Mary’s room.”

“What?
What
?” Seeing me shaking: “What’s the matter?”

“Panic attack. Valium. Mary keeps it in her bedroom.”

“I can’t go in
there
.”

“You must. I’m paralyzed with fear.”

“What shall I do?”

“Just told you.”

“But Valium after all that alcohol might kill you.”

He got up and fell over before he managed to struggle into his pajama pants.

“Put something on, Annie, and come with me. I don’t know where her tablets are.”

“Bring me at least two or I’ll kick your mother’s damn piano to pieces with my bare toes.
Run
.”

He vanished in a totter down the corridor. I heard him in Mary’s room rummaging around for minutes that took years off my
life. I couldn’t wait any longer.

Slinging on my knee-length nightdress, I ran into his bedroom for the nearest exit, flung open his french windows, almost
breaking them, and crashed out onto the lawn. There I lay with racing heart and pumping lungs in the friendly dark, burying
my head in my hands. I rolled around, feeling on my skin the cold wet grass and cold morning air.

Moments later, Eamonn was inside my room, calling out, “Annie? Where are you?” He must have heard his french window blowing
in the wind because he came staggering blindly out of the house and changed to a frantic yell:

“For God’s sake, don’t play games with me. I’ll die.”

I was only a few feet from him but he couldn’t see me—why didn’t he get himself glasses?—and I couldn’t speak to let him
know where I was. My tongue filled my mouth and my head was as noisy as a flour mill.

He called out pitiably, “Come back in, Annie. I’ve got the tablets. Take as many as you like.”

I wanted them desperately but had to watch in silence as his silhouette went shuffling past me down the drive.