Forbidden Fruit (35 page)

From the moment he showed me round his Cathedral and entertained me in his Palace, I saw he had much to lose. Power, prestige,
trips abroad. He did not realize that he was asking me to give up my future so he could keep his.

Mary called me just as I was packing for St. Patrick’s. She pleaded with me to return to the States immediately. But Peter
still had jaundice and I was weary enough to die. Was my refusal to go home also an unwillingness to accept that my dream
was finally dead? Did I expect the wizard to do one more trick for me, maybe the biggest of all: change a bishop, himself,
into a human being?

* * *

The next morning, Barbara Devlin came to the Rotunda to drive Peter and me to St. Patrick’s, a home on the west side of the
city. I was not feeling well. I had a high temperature and a burning sensation in my left leg.

The first sight of St. Patrick’s seared my soul, and I saw Barbara recoil, too. It was in a pleasant setting on the edge of
the Dublin mountains and not far from the Phoenix Park, but the black steepled building stood behind high stone walls and
you went through a big wrought-iron gate to get to it. It was a prison. Except the tops of the walls were studded with broken
dreams.

With a sense of foreboding, hugging my Peter tight in his white crocheted blanket with tassels, I begged his forgiveness.
First, I had seen him baptized in a broom closet and now I had brought him to this prison as his first home. I had slept with
Eamonn month after month without any sense of guilt, but now I was, yes, ashamed.

I
NSIDE, ST. PATRICK’S WAS DAMP AND GLOOMY, with floors so highly polished they must have been responsible for many more fallen
women.

There were smirking pictures of Mary, who had got a child without you-know-what, and, in niche after niche, life-size bleeding
statues of the Sacred Heart. Cruelest of all were the crucifixes everywhere. Their purpose was to tell the girls who, after
all, had brought miracles into the world, that they had done this terrible thing: put nails through the hands and feet of
Jesus Christ.

One heavily pregnant girl was on her knees shining the already shiny corridor tiles. Did they want the poor kid to eject her
baby there and then into the bucket?

A Dublin girl called Shelagh, chief of the inmates, led me to the mother superior’s office. It was comfortable, with soft
green lights and only one religious icon. The superior was a small lady with rimless glasses sitting in a big chair at a big
desk. In no way judgmental, she told me my duties, the pass I would need if I wanted to go out for a few hours. “Back before
dark, of course.” In particular, she explained that the babies were kept in one place to facilitate care and feeding arrangements.

Shelagh showed me to my room at the top of four flights of stairs. My left hip hurt, making it hard for me to move. Even when
I was pregnant I walked more easily. I was sharing with three others. One of them was Morag, the girl whom I had seen polishing
the floor. She was from Monaghan, only nineteen years old, with black hair, white skin, green eyes, and freckles. We were
separated from each other by a curtain over the entry to our own dark wooden cubicles, each with a picture of the Sacred Heart
on one wall. The bed was hard and there was a tiny attic window.

The nursery was in an annex and could be reached only by going down, along a corridor, and up more steps. It was as bright
as a greenhouse. The room was decorated with plants and ferns, the walls were a pale yellow, and the cots, though of iron,
were painted white. There were about thirty-five babies there at that time, all in spotless white gowns. We were only allowed
to see our babies when the bell rang at mealtimes. I could not breast-feed Peter, and I pointed out that he was not taking
the bottle feeds. No one listened to me. Was I not in St. Pat’s because of my stupidity?

To reach the laundry, we had to go into the courtyard and up more steps. It was insufferably hot because of the huge steel
sinks and scrubbing boards. An elderly nun, she must have been over seventy, slight of build and with a beautiful face, took
my hand and stroked it. I wondered what the hell she wanted.

Her name was Sister Ignatius. Christ, I thought, the men have taken over the women even inside a convent. They give them men’s
names. Why? I guess to stress the fact that male clerics can do to them what they like. And these male-dominated women were
in charge of the fallen girls of St. Pat’s!

The next day, I was in the downstairs corridor, which Morag was again polishing. Sister Ignatius appeared and tapped her on
the shoulder with “Get up, my dear.” Having heaved her to her feet, she led Morag by the arm to a bench.

“You sit here, darlin’, and have a rest.”

“But, Sister,” Morag said, in her northern accent, “the bursar will give out to me if I don’t finish soon.”

Sister Ignatius merely winked at her, walked over to Morag’s bucket, knelt down next to it, and proceeded to polish the floor
herself.

Within minutes, a senior though younger nun named Sister Vincent appeared, looking very agitated. “Will you get up, Sister
Ignatius.”

She just went on polishing the floor.

Sister Vincent, the bursar, hissed, “You are setting a very bad example. Get
up
.”

The old nun did not so much as move a muscle on her face. In a fury, Sister Vincent said more loudly, “Did you hear me, Sister
Ignatius?”

She looked up very sweetly and whispered, “No.”

As the bursar stomped off to get help, Sister Ignatius went on calmly polishing the floor.

I was ashamed. I had done an unforgivable thing: I had lumped all the nuns together. A victim myself, I was prepared to victimize
everyone else. That nun must have been under a Gestapo-like discipline for fifty years and she had kept her freedom. Her inner
voice drowned out all the commands of petty tyrants around her. Under her kittenish exterior, she was an almighty rebel, a
rebel for her God. Through that little word
no
, I was able to see in miniature the whole history of her life, its struggles, its persecutions, its tiny but terrific triumphs.

Maybe this was why the Catholic Church produces so many saints: it makes life so damned hard for everybody. Maybe the place
was stacked with saints, I don’t know.

Sister Ignatius helped me when the girls stole four of my best blouses. In the laundry, she took me by the arm into a quiet
place and, stroking my hand, said: “They mean you no harm.”

“What would they do to me if they did?” I said angrily.

“Annie, Annie, they’re nice girls in trouble.”

“Those nice girls stole from me.”

“Stole?” Sister Ignatius looked really puzzled. “Borrowed. They have nothing, you see. They think this rich American girl
can get replacements any time she wants.”

“Is that borrowing, Sister?”

“Sure, I’ll get them back for you.”

She did get three blouses back. That wonderful lady could have persuaded Satan to part with damned souls.

I began to sweat badly at night; Peter had a rash, would not drink milk, and lost weight. It seemed as if we both were doomed.
I could not have walked without Morag and Shelagh, also heavily pregnant, supporting me. Sister Ignatius was right. These
were marvelous girls victimized by life.

On my fourth day, I received the summons. Bishop Casey had appeared.

When I made it downstairs, I found him in the corridor, the center of attention. The sisters were practically gobbling him
up as they knelt to kiss his ring and “My Lord” him. They kissed that ring as if they really loved it.

When I was at my sourest, I remembered Sister Ignatius and thumped my breast. She would make ten of me. I was in my dowdy
dress while Eamonn was in clerical harness, with a choirboy innocence of face, talking charmingly to the sisters as if they
were mental defectives. I could see them thinking, “Isn’t his Lordship a marvel taking the trouble to come all this way to
see a fallen woman?” How were they to know he had come from Kerry to force his mistress to give up his son? I could have told
them I had kissed more than his ring; I had kissed him and he had kissed me all over. I had breastfed their bishop.

These things needed to be said, but who would have believed me?

As he dismissed his admirers with a final glossy cock-a-doodle-doo of a benediction, I almost expected him to say to me, “Follow
me, my dear.” He led me into a dark room furnished with cheap crucifixes and holy pictures. No economy spared.

Had I not known what he did for a living I would have wondered how Eamonn was always available when he was not needed. I wanted
to go down on my knees and kiss his ring for fun, but the fun days were over. I didn’t feel well and he looked awful. Peering
into his hollowed eyes, I softened and asked myself,
Eamonn, what have we done to each other
?

How could he let me, who had shared his bed, stay with our son in a place like this? A home for Unmarried Mothers! Where were
the Unmarried Fathers? Surely not all the babies in this place were conceived by the Holy Ghost? Unmarried Fathers must exist,
but they didn’t have to have their noses rubbed in it. They were invisible, like Eamonn. Not a line on his belly, a bead of
milk on his breasts, not a mark of paternity on him. Was this why men were such hypocrites?

Sure, I was bitter but I didn’t want to be. I had no regrets. I had my jewel, my son. I only wanted to be left alone. Which
is one thing Eamonn could not allow. He had too much riding on this. Peter was his Sword of Damocles, and Eamonn was shrewd
enough to know that kids grow up asking dangerous questions like “Who is my father?”

Feeling as menaced as was Herod by a baby, Eamonn began again with his demands that I give Peter up. Oh, what had happened
to my jazzman who had created worlds for me on mountaintops that he was reduced to playing a single mournful note.

I was a chancer, he was saying, I was selfish, unstable, concerned only with myself. I almost laughed—it was so like a cracked
record, his demand and my refusal. This could go on till we were both senior citizens. Unless he forged my signature on the
adoption papers he waved in front of me—and, in my present mood, I would not have put forgery past him—Peter was mine
forever.

In my room I had Peter’s birth certificate. Its aim was to prove he was a person in his own right, with a country and parents
he could be proud of. But under the heading “Name and surname of Father,” there was a blank. This nameless unmarried Father,
without any acknowledged rank or profession, who even had the same big birthmark as his son, waived his paternal rights. All
but one. The right to take the boy away from plain Anne Murphy and give him to strangers who, he presumed—such insolence!
—would be more capable and more worthy than she. How he despised this woman who was once good enough to grace his bed.

The irony was: he could claim his right to dispose of Peter only if he put his name on that certificate. The last thing he
would do. I had read that St. Augustine had a son in sin, yet he called him
Adeodatus
, Gift of God, and was proud of him. Who did Eamonn think had given him Peter that he wanted him adopted? Oh, why couldn’t
he see that through his Gift of God he would live on after his death not in some distant heaven but here on earth, forever?
The more he talked, the more I thought,
When will you get it into your bead that I love you but I love Peter more
?

“You don’t look well, Annie.” Spoken with genuine sympathy. “Come back with me to Inch. I always gave you what you wanted
there.”

God, his kindness could be cruel. Inch. What a funny little name for such a stupendous place. I remembered how, on our first
time-stopped day, the car climbed the hill and we drove through the tunnel of hedges into a secret garden. Just to hear the
word
Inch
and I was, for a moment, back inside my magic bubble.

Inch! Inch! Where the winds were kind and the sun shone like a friend and, at nights, there was always, always, always, a
ring around the moon. If I were to return to you now, Inch, I would climb your cliffs with Eamonn and he would throw me or
I would throw myself over the edge onto pointed rocks swept by the black Atlantic. Good-bye, Inch, good-bye forever.

This final farewell to my love burst the very bubble of my being. All I wanted to do at that moment was put my arms around
Eamonn and simply sob. Which is what I did. “Eamonn, please
stop
.”

“Annie,” he said, stiff and agitated, “if one of the sisters came in and found us like this —”

I released him. “Sorry.” I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. “I just feel so bad.”

“Me, too, Annie. If only you knew.”

“We’re such enemies now. It’s as if you hate our baby.”

“Enemies? Hate? No, no, no.”

“Eamonn,” I said, “this is Calvary. One day, unless you change, somebody’s going to get crucified here. And it’s not going
to be my baby and me because”—my voice caved in—“we don’t deserve it.”

Dear Eamonn took out his handkerchief and rubbed his eyes.

“I’m not asking you for much,” I said. “Just enough money to get us home.”

He nearly shook his head off. In America, his problem would be beyond his control.

I stroked his troubled more than handsome face. “I adore you, Eamonn. I loved you from the moment I saw you at Shannon. I
will love you to the day I die, no matter what you do. But
stop. Just stop it!
”

But he wouldn’t.

Later that day, I started to see sparks as when a blunt blade is pressed to the grinder, and I kept falling over. I went to
the doctor’s office to ask for a cane. He told me I was a faker and a “whoor” and refused me. I called Barbara Devlin and
she came in the guise of a concerned relative to take me home to Clontarf for lunch. “Gracious, Annie,” she said, “you’ve
got a terrible infection in your groin.”

She took my temperature and it was 102. She drove me to the Rotunda and they admitted me immediately. They suspected I had
an infection due to some stitches being left in. I asked to see Sister Eileen. They said she had been sent to Wales. She was
not supposed to be leaving for another month. Had she, like me, been spirited away?