Forbidden Fruit (14 page)

Was he going to walk in his flip-flops to Killarney?

I heard him fall heavily and get up, crying, “I might have gone over the cliff, Annie. Why are you doing this to me?”

Gradually, by meditating, by setting aside all distractions, I was getting my breath back.

“I’m dying, Annie, dying.”

I really didn’t care a damn at that moment. Rather, I knew he was the great survivor. My problem was staying alive myself.

He returned toward the house, moaning, “God help me, I am dying surely. I’m getting a heart attack. Or a brain hemorrhage.
Yes, something’s badly wrong in my poor head.”

I wanted to say,
Shut your mouth and let me concentrate
.

“You goddamn bitch, Annie. Why don’t you think of
me
?”

If I do
, I thought,
that’ll he two of us
.

I could see him with his hands held high in the air, one of them with a glass in it, praying dramatically to his God, who
must have listened unsympathetically.

His gesture of supplication made me want to laugh. That terrified me. Laughter would lose me the last of my breath.

Westward, the scudding clouds momentarily parted, silvering the earth and allowing Eamonn, his head lifted in characteristic
defiance, to bay at the big blind eyeball of the moon. Then he started to go back down the drive again. Now I really was scared
that in his half-drunk state he might go over the cliff.

I finally managed to cry in a squeaky voice, “I’m here. I’m fucking
here
.” Cursing gave me release. I shouted, “I’m fucking here, fucking here.”

He came and stood over me like a shadow, really convinced he was about to die. Now
he
couldn’t breathe or speak. He stood there in eloquent mime, pointing at me, pointing at his heart, pointing at the sky and
the earth, holding both hands in front of his face in a gesture of bewilderment at the vagaries of life. Until he collapsed
almost on top of me and we lay breathless side by side on our backs for the second time that night, only now in drenched grass.

Once more, we were locked in a strange and wonderful world of our own, gazing up at a gray rolling infinity.

Eventually: “Annie, I’m buck naked with sixteen thistles in my backside.”

“There’s plenty of room for them.”

“And I’m beginning to hate you.”

“Shut up,” I said. “Where are my tablets? I want three.”

“You’ll get two. Ask for more and I’ll shove them down your throat.”

“Right, then this is good-bye.” I rolled over on my side. “Send me roses.”

He sat up and leaned over me. “Open, you bitch.”

He shoved two Valium down me, nearly choking me, and offered me a glass that had in it only a few drops of water.

“I need three,” I gulped.

“Three’ll kill you. Maybe that’s a good idea.”

“Give me the bottle, then.”

“No, no, no. You’ve got to pray, Annie.”

Tonight, after he nearly met his Maker, it was prayers
after
sex.

“Who to, Eamonn? Pray to who?”

“Any God who’s prepared to listen.”

“What’ll I say?”

“Merry Christmas, God bless You, anything.”

“I’ll give Her your regards.”

He grabbed my hands and joined them for me.

“Your pulse is racing,” he said. “Pray hard in case you meet God sooner than you think. I nearly did myself just now.”

“By going over the cliff or through a heart attack?”

“My flip-flops —” He realized it was a rhetorical question. “I knew I could not expect sympathy from you.”

“Ditto.”

“Seriously. Suppose I’d gone over the cliff in my pajama pants and you had died half naked on the lawn. What would people
have thought?”

“The mind boggles.”

It never occurred to him that the worst anyone could imagine would not approximate the reality of what he did.

“Think, you bitch, of my obituary.”

Instead, deeply grateful, this bitch was wondering why he, my jazzman-lover, still kept me by him when I did such unpredictable
things. In all the night’s mess a miracle had occurred. I had tested him to the limits and he had not rejected me. He was
a brute and I was a bitch and 1 loved him more than ever.

“Pray, Annie, if only so you keep those tablets down.”

With his hands tight over mine, I felt as secure as when my giant of a father carried me shoulder-high in the sea.

Beside me, I heard this strange, familiar man begin first to hum then softly sing an old Irish tune, “Down by the Sally Garden.”
Another magic moment, for what could be more haunting than to hear a singer singing in the night, his bodily presence ghosted
into song; and the song the only sound, my only light?

After ten minutes, I felt more relaxed. The clouds burst asunder diluting the dark, the sun was pink-rimming the east, birds
were stirring and chorusing in the bushes and hopping around us on the soft stable-smelling lawn in search of worms.

We were both in at the birthing of day.

Even the past night’s terrible experiences had bonded us further. Was there no end to human perversity?

Very gently: “Annie, did you pray?”

“Better than in my entire life.”

“What did you say?”

“Over and over, ‘Hail Mary, full of grace.’ “

He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

“There’s hope for you yet, Annie.” He spoke the next words very softly. “One last thing I want you to know.”

I turned so I could smile directly at him. “Yes?”

“I am fecking freezing.”

“Is that all?”

“No, pet. I would like you to also know that this wind has no manners, ‘tis not bothering to go round me.”

I tried to stand up, but the Valium prevented me.

“God Al
mighty
, Annie, I am far too exhausted to carry you and —”

“I know, it’d give you your tenth heart attack of the night.”

“After this,” he said, hauling me to my feet, “I’ll lock every door at night to keep you in.”

As soon as we were inside his room, he tried to remove my wet nightdress.

“Don’t you jostle me,” I said, “or I’ll have another panic attack.”

He thrust me wet as I was in his bed, saying, “Mary will not wake up before midday,” and switched on the electric blankets.
He changed into a fresh pair of pajamas and went to get a brandy to still his chattering teeth.

“Lay one finger on my glass,” he warned, as he settled in beside me, “and I’ll cut your hands off. I’ll see to it you never
drink again.”

The last thing I remember is being wrapped in his arms and him muttering, “I’ll say this for you, Annie. Life with you around
is never dull.”

A
T NINE THE NEXT MORNING, I was dimly aware of Eamonn helping me to get out of his bed. Arm in arm we struggled to my bedroom
and I slept on.

At some time, Mary came and lay down next to me.

“I’m dead, fecking dead.”

I put my hands to my head.

“Shut up, Mary, and get me some Valium.”

“They’ve disappeared,” she groaned.

“The Bishop must’ve swallowed them.”

“Liar,” she said, “he never would. ‘Tis you, you addict.”

“What do you remember, Mary?”

“Spaghetti and a cocktail. God, was it himself put the liquor away?”

“No,” I lied, “it was me.”

Sighing gratefully, she left and came back with dry toast.

“And how about a glass of water, Annie?”

“That would act on me like champagne.”

“Guess so. By the way, what did you do to the piano?”

“Danced on it.”

“Don’t let the Bishop see you do it or he’ll kill you.”

“Thanks for telling me.”

“You’re like a creature of the field, Annie, and he likes you more than anyone who ever came here but —”

Break the commandments and he doesn’t give a damn, but scratch his piano and good-bye.

I picked up a piece of toast, but before I could get it into my mouth we both flaked out side by side. We woke up about three
when she went back to her own bed.

Eamonn came home about eight. First, he went to Mary’s room and I heard, “Good God, woman, get up.”

Then he came to see me. “What are
you
doing?”

“Nothing. I’m staying here.”

“You will
not
.” He added softly, “I have been working all day and now have I to feed the pair of you?”

When I made no move, he ripped the covers off me but, very forgiving, he made a turf fire and prepared a dinner of lamb chops
and boiled potatoes.

“Eat something, Annie,” he urged.

Pointing to the wine, I said, in my mother’s favorite phrase, “I prefer some of the hair of the dog that bit me.”

“Not at my table.”

He told us he would be away for the next two days and then we were having visitors. Jim Ross had been his solicitor and his
wife, Dinah, had been his secretary, when he had worked in London.

Eamonn was a remarkable host. Jim had a special liking, he said, for Beaujolais and sirloin steaks, while Dinah preferred
sweet sherry and gâteaux. Mary was also to stock up with French Camembert and water biscuits.

Summer came early, breathing on us its hot breath. The yellow was gone from the gorse but the grass was still green. On the
Ring of Kerry, red fuchsia bells tolled silently and the rhododendron bushes were fleshed with swaying amethysts. Shaggy sheep
grazed on hills above which broad-winged birds seemed pinned to the sky or floated in circles on hot air currents like leaves
on a lake.

For the next few perfect days, while Mary did the shopping, I vacuumed and tidied the house and, in quiet moments, sunbathed
in the garden.

The night Eamonn returned I greeted him at the door. He came late, after prayers, to my room with his glass more brown than
usual with brandy. He moved toward my bed, sloshing it, a sign that our last session had left him far more uninhibited.

The break in London had improved his performance. He sculpted my whole body. Without hesitation or guilt he went to his favorite
oases, especially to my nipples, which he sucked with the relish of a newborn, and ran his hands through my hair as a miser
would his gold. In seconds, he flew up from my toes to my neck, brushing with his lips every part in between, before plunging
into me as though I were the sea.

We wrote another page of the diaries of our nights.

When, for different crazy reasons, we put on our nightclothes, we wrapped ourselves in one another’s arms:

“I missed you, Annie.”

I smiled to show it was mutual. “But?”

“No buts. Only ands. I missed talking with you, laughing with you. Even your devilment.”

I whispered right into his ear, “You were only away a couple of days.”

“That’s the point. The days were easy enough but”—his fingers twinkled distantly—“long were the nights.”

This brave strong man was expressing fear of the sharpest-toothed devil of all: loneliness.

“I never knew homesickness, Annie. Never knew there had been no one at the door till I missed you being there to greet me
at the day’s end.”

His honesty touched my heart. He was as needy as I was. Healing me was no longer paramount. So I hoped.

“But, Annie, this physical thing is Samson strong.”

“Isn’t that why it’s so good?”

“Samson pulled down the pillars upon himself,” and, sitting up, he reached for his brandy glass.

“Time to talk, Eamonn?”

He took a big swig. “Jim Ross is a Scorpio, as sharp and deadly as anything you ever met in your life.”

“I’m sharp, too.”

“He’s twenty times sharper and his stinger is up at all times. He was an only child, he’s used to observing.”

“X-ray vision?”

“One glance, one word, one gesture will give us away. If he suspects anything, he will entrap us and bring me down.”

“Why?”

“Because he thinks my views on birth control are all wrong. That makes him suspicious toward me.”

“Why invite them, then?”

“They come every year.”

“Testing him, I said, “Then I’ll go away for a week.”

“Impossible. Only, Annie, don’t get all dressed up and look too pretty. And —” He touched my red chin.

“It looks,” I said, “like being razor’s edge all week.”

* * *

Jim and Dinah, a handsome couple, arrived the next day. It was Sunday. Eamonn introduced me.

“You heard me talk about Dr. Jack Murphy from Connecticut and how good he was to Helena.”

“I met him once,” Jim said. “Unforgettable.”

“This,” Eamonn said, “is Annie, his youngest. She’s staying for the summer.”

The Rosses were given Eamonn’s room.

Dinah was an Irish beauty with an hourglass figure, dark hair and dark eyes, and a freckled white skin.

Jim, about thirty, was blue-eyed with long lashes, a chiseled ski nose and fine chin. He was everything I had expected, all
bright, nervous energy.

I disobeyed Eamonn and dressed my best. How could I not, in view of the opposition?

The Rosses’ exquisite baby, Jim junior, never stopped screaming. The first night, no one slept. It can’t have been the devil
in him, for he saved a bishop from sinning.

At dinner the second night, the conversation turned to America, which Jim knew and liked, unlike Eamonn, who disapproved,
in particular, of U.S. policy in Central America.

It wasn’t long before we got onto birth control. Jim thought Eamonn had opted out on that one.

I agreed. I said, “Without contraception, the Third World will always be in a shambles and any aid will be only a Band-Aid.”

Eamonn, plying everyone with drinks, said that the poor didn’t like contraceptives and would never use them. He tried to close
the conversation down abruptly.

I was ashamed of him, he was so reactionary.

“I’d blow the condoms up like balloons,” I said, “and send them all over Africa.”

“Condoms!” Eamonn spoke of them as if they were unexploded bombs. “What talk is this for a bishop’s table?”

“Debate’s good,” said Jim, the lawyer.

I said, “Did you know, Jim, it’s a crime to sell condoms in this country?”

Eamonn had to admit there was a 1946 law banning papers that advocated condoms. A Censorship Board enforced the act.