Forbidden Fruit (2 page)

“Next time, mind where you’re going, madam,” Eamonn bawled after her, his head backward out the window, “otherwise I’ll set
a papal bull on you.”

A mile farther on we passed the cow’s owner, an old man with a lame sheepdog that hurled itself suicidally at the back wheels
of our car just for the hell of it. Did everything around here like flirting with death?

Suddenly I yelled, “Look out for that bomb crater!”

“A modest pothole,” he said, swerving wildly.

“
That
is a pothole?”

“The roads of Ireland are built around them. That one we just passed dates from 1123.”

“I thought it might be earlier.”

Eamonn was a great leg-puller. I liked that in a man.

After another wrenching bump, I said, “Why don’t you fill these things in?”

“They have a preservation order on them. Local priests bless them twice a year with a bucket of holy whiskey.”

There was a big crunch and a bang as we went in and out of a pothole he had not seen.

“Just testing my springs, Annie.”

As he scooted along narrow, winding, potholed roads, I felt he was testing my willingness to put my life in his hands. He
got a high from driving fast; I appreciated that because, deep in my soul, among the many bad things, I, too, was in love
with danger. There was peril here and treachery for both of us amid the awesome beauty of the land.

His charm, his humor, his warmth made me feel happy. Fear and trust had merged in me; it felt so good to rely totally on another.
Also, I had a strange sense that his crazy way of driving, his laughter in the face of death, was his way of flirting with
me. He was, I admit this from the start, bishop or no bishop, a very sexy man.

I put this crazy thought out of my mind. Tried to.

Outside the bubble of magic I was moving in was a
Ryan’s Daughter
of a land. I had seen the movie only three months before. The photography, color, music, had made me, a Murphy from New England,
feel I had roots, and those roots were here, all around me. Something came up at me through the soles of my feet out of the
earth, out of long-traveled roads and the dry bones of the dead. Through the open window I, lately a city girl used to concrete
and gasoline fumes, saw fleshy green skin covering winter’s wounds, smelled spring and growing things, the grass, furze, and
cattle. And I, usually so irresolute, was ready for anything.

So this was County Kerry where my grandfather, old Pop Murphy, was born with a brogue not unlike Eamonn’s and a couple of
shillelaghs on the wall to prove it. Soon we reached the Dingle Peninsula and the coastal road that rose to Inch. Below and
far away, the rocky din-filled gullies were snow white with the droppings of seabirds, which soared above or refuged in the
heather-strewn cliffs. There were guillemots, kittiwakes, petrels, razorbills, even puffins, one of which flew by red-nosed
and with a laughing sprat-filled mouth. Out there, beyond a harbor called Castlemaine, for as far as the eye could see was
the sparkling ocean over which gulls and gannets flew, reflecting the sun’s fire. Was there a more romantic place in the world?
How could Pop, in spite of his rheumatism, have been crazy enough to leave it?

Eamonn said he was taking me to his country residence at Inch, which means “Island.” Now a peninsula, it was probably an island
once. He rarely stayed overnight at his Palace in Killarney. He preferred to finish each day in a seaside retreat, though
he had to drive twenty-five miles to get there.

As we motored up the tendril-like road toward his house, I saw the four-mile-long seemingly inaccessible Inch strand. Before
us to the west were tall mountains. Islands, dotted distantly here and there, were misted by the sea.

Eamonn was telling me I would be staying mostly at Inch but sometimes I would go with him to Killarney and even “abroad” to
Dublin and other exotic faraway Irish places.

As we climbed, Eamonn gestured at the splendid features of the landscape, relating their history in his throbbing voice.

Soon we roared into his short sloping driveway. The high hedges on each side almost touched overhead, giving the impression
that we were passing through a leafy tunnel into another world.

Once more I had moved from darkness to light, but this time he had carried me there. Here, in three acres of God’s own country,
was beauty within beauty, and mystery within a larger mystery.

Having braked sharply—how else?—he was on my side of the car and flinging my door open.

“Out with you, Annie. Out, out,” as he beckoned me with bird-swift hand movements to stand next to him.

Then the most amazing thing: I looked into his eyes and there I was. It was so fleeting, I could not be sure if it had really
happened or I had imagined it.

When I was on my feet, he gestured eloquently around us, breathing deeply and shaking his head; there, nestling on a rocky
knoll, surrounded by exquisite flower gardens, was a single-storied slate-roofed Georgian house built of red sandstone, a
beautiful aerie above the sea.

“My home, your home,” he said, with an infectious grin.

M
ARY O’RILEY, his thirty-year-old housekeeper, emerged from the front door and came down the steps to greet me. She had red
hair and mint-green eyes and the sad furtive gaze of a countrywoman.

She took charge of my bags while Eamonn led me into his home, my home. The pretty Georgian ceiling with fine old moldings
reflected the rich red from the carpet.

“It matches your socks,” I whispered, and he whispered back, “You are
wicked
,” so that I felt flattered.

A corridor went the length of the house with fourteen Stations of the Cross around the walls. I had not seen their like since
I gave up practicing the Catholic faith seven years before.

On the corridor there were small windows, like peepholes, onto the ocean. Almost opposite the front door was a small red-carpeted
alcove with an altar where presumably Eamonn said Mass, and there were four bedrooms, two at each end.

“Hurry for lunch.” Eamonn directed me to my room at the far end of the corridor. “You must be famished as a crow.”

My room was a small rectangle, with light blue walls and its own bathroom. Built into the hillside and with hedges of yellow-flowering
forsythia outside the windows, there was only the tiniest view of the sea, but I could hear it and smell it.

I barely had time to freshen up before Eamonn rapped on my door and led me to the dining room. From the french windows there
was a splendid sea vista. In the hearth was a fire that gave off a warm sweet earthy odor and a bluish flame.

He anticipated my question.

“Turf.” His hand was shaking not from nerves but from the sheer vitality he put into every word. “Cut from the bogs around
here.”

In the center of the room was a gleaming mahogany table with solid silver cutlery and candelabra as well as silver vases bright
with spring flowers.

Eamonn said grace, then Mary, who had learned to move at his pace, dashed a plate down in front of me. A furtive smile passed
between them.

With my fork I probed the white sticky matter covered in a white sauce.

“Come on,” he urged, his lips twitching. “Try it.”

I put a minute amount in my mouth. It had an unusual texture. Was it sweetbread? No, surely the organ of some animal; and
I hardly ever ate meat because most meats made me ill. I had a big problem chewing even this small bite. I began to apologize
for being a fussy eater.

“Know what it is, Annie? Lamb’s brains.” And he laughed heartily.

I dropped my fork with a clatter on my plate.

Seeing my blanched face, his laughter ended abruptly.

“You don’t like it?”

He was upset. He had wanted to introduce me to a local delicacy. But the result, though he could not possibly have known why,
brought back a past I had come to Ireland to forget.

There was plenty of other food, potatoes, vegetables, salads, but I could not eat a thing.

“I am so sorry, Annie,” he said, “I’ll take you for a walk soon and restore you.”

He busily finished his own lunch and, after I had brushed my hair and put on cherry-red lipstick and dangling Indian-style
earrings, we went up the steep mountain path behind the house. I was nervy because I suffered from agoraphobia and there were
no trees to hide behind.

He must have sensed my unease because as soon as we were out of sight of the house he took my hand in his—“Since there’s
no donkey’s tail to hold on to.” Moments later, he stopped as if he had received an electric shock.

“That’s odd, Annie.” He peered closely at my hand and echoed my thoughts: “I feel so comfortable with you. As if I’d known
you always.” He looked at me, appealingly. “Do you feel the same?”

I nodded. That touch had mysteriously bonded us.

We walked or, rather, ran up the mountain path hand-in-hand like happy children.

“I am so honored,” he said, “to have you as my guest.”

Before I could say thank you, he started to tell me in his excited way how much he loved this place though it had so many
inches of rain a year even angels couldn’t count them. Here he charged his batteries and sometimes it rained when there wasn’t
a cloud in the sky.

“Really?” I said.

“Indeed, the good Lord has to keep His hand in.” And when I reacted, he added, “You really have the loveliest smile.”

We stopped on the heights and, though there was rain in the strong tangy wind and I, lightly clad, was chilled, my breath
was taken away, not so much by the speed of the ascent as by the beauty of the land.

Having checked that I was not too cold, with a huge intake of salt- and heather-scented air, he said:

“Annie, when I… when I stand here, I feel I am holding hands with the Almighty.”

Feeling an inferior substitute for his normal climbing companion, I said a quiet yes.

He was the perfect showman. He loved surprising and overwhelming people. Releasing my hand to enable him to gesture to his
heart’s content, he exclaimed:

“I come here so I can be in a place that man can never spoil. There it is, Annie. There are the clear waters, Annie, and the
silent mountains, Annie, and the air clean and fresh as the Virgin’s tears, Annie.”

And each mention of my name seemed part of a litany that went straight from our hushed mountain up to the throne of God.

He was a jazzman like my father. There, on that mountaintop, he seemed to me to be playing Dixieland jazz on a saxophone,
fingers fast moving, body rhythmically swaying, so I had the weird impression that the music,
bis
music, was creating the world around us, bringing to life sea, sky, stone, misty islands, and even the song of the birds.

More mundanely: “See that hotel over there across the bay? That is Glenbeigh. I intend to take you to a meal there soon. And
I’m hoping to give you”—a wide cruciform sweep of his arms—“a tour of the entire Dingle Peninsula. Then you really will
feel reborn.”

I was beginning to feel it already.

He clasped my hand again. He, doubtless, was praying. So was I in my own way. This was a timeless moment in a place beyond
this world where I could become me. I glimpsed grazing sheep, their faces deep in spring. I heard, then saw, fluttering and
trilling, a solitary lark below me, looking like a moth, singing like an angel.

All the guilt in my soul drained out of me. I had been hurt too much. I had a right to be happy. Never had I had the guts
to do something for myself alone, but my hour had come. Proof of it was that I said:

“I have a headache, Eamonn. I’d like to go down and rest, if you don’t mind.”

This modest request was new to me. I had always let myself be led. I had such confidence in Eamonn I was prepared to ask for
something for me.

“Poor, poor Annie,” he said.

Hand in warm hand we slowly retraced our steps. I realized with a start that though my panic attacks from which I suffered
might recur, my agoraphobia was gone. And forever. The wild open spaces were given back to me. One heart’s disease had been
emptied out of me into the sea or the clear mountain air. More likely, into Eamonn’s magnanimous soul. How good he must be
to be able to lift such a burden by the touch of his hand. I only hoped that in healing me he would not wound himself.

I was reluctant to say good-bye if only for a few hours. On that walk, I had felt his power enter me, power such as I had
never felt in anyone else.

It was about three in the afternoon when I got to lie on my bed, fully clothed, not having the energy to unpack. I slept as
I had not slept in over three years.

I awoke at ten. It was dark and I was thirsty. I fumbled my way to the door. The lights in the hallway were dimmed, the way
I like them. Hearing me move around, Mary came to tell me she had prepared tea and biscuits for me and the Bishop. She was
off to bed.

Eamonn was already in the living room with the orange drapes pulled across all the windows except for one. He jumped up from
his armchair and greeted me as if I had been away for months.

Who could fail to warm to a man who every time he sees you gives you a hundred thousand Irish welcomes?

Through the one window he had purposely left undraped we could see by starlight, so clear was the night air, across the bay.

I admired the heavy oriental rug, Waterford crystal, and gleaming black baby grand piano. Here, too, there was a turf fire
in the hearth. In this romantic setting, I lay down in front of the fire for warmth. The room’s colors, though earthy, were
warm, including, I told him, his splendid socks of which I now had the best possible view.

At once, he began to question me about my life. My father must have written to him about my marriage. I sensed he knew I had
wed a Jew in front of a rabbi in my husband’s family home.

“Your marriage was far from happy, I can tell.”

“I am over the worst of it.”

He shook his head like a dog out of water. “It couldn’t possibly be so; otherwise why did you come to Ireland?”