Forbidden Fruit (15 page)

“See,” I said, “Ireland’s proud that it takes fifty years longer than any other country to accept the obvious.”

Dinah sat all the while laughing and putting in the occasional word to stop the debate from turning into an argument.

Eamonn came in to me that night with the utmost caution, the doorknob turning with the speed of a clock’s minute hand. A few
fingers appeared down the side of the door followed by one bare foot resting on its toes, then his left hand with his watch
on.

I was ready to burst. He outclassed Charlie Chaplin.

Finally, his torso appeared, pajamas but no robe, and the whole entry went into reverse. A hare would not have heard him.
For the first time, he locked the door.

In his hand was a glass filled to the brim with brandy.

“Is this wise?” I whispered, to stoke up his fire.

“Did you not see how much wine and liqueurs I foisted on them? I’d have laced the baby’s milk if I could.”

He tiptoed to the bed.

“Will you do me a favor, Annie?”

“Why else are you here?”

“If you’re going to have an orgasm, be sure and give me advance warning.”

That night, sex was silent and secretive, and for that reason more intense. More barriers came down because I was able to
snake all over him without his being able to stop me.

The usual irrepressible mischief came over me. I opened my mouth as if to let out a scream of delight.

In a split second, his big hand was covering my lips.

“No, no, no, Annie, please no. Enjoy yourself quietly.”

As my body began to shake: “I don’t think I can.”

“Then I’m going to die.”

“Again?” I squeaked through his fingers, my body shuddering against him.

“Easy now, Annie,” he hissed. “Do not get carried away.”

He pressed his hand more firmly against my mouth so I had to bite his fingers to be able to tell him, “Stop that or I’ll have
a panic attack and have to run out through Jim’s french windows.”

“Oh,
no
,” he sighed, sucking his sore hand.

He got out of bed and knelt down.

After a minute or two, I said, “It’s okay. You can come back in. The panic’s past, I think. But don’t ever try suffocating
me again.”

Laughing with noiseless hysteria, he slowly and broadly signed himself and clambered back into bed.

“Women’s orgasms are not that easy to control,” I said, as our bodies pressed against each other.

We laughed and laughed, and the sheer silence and furtiveness of the laughter formed another bond between us.

At four, he whispered, “I have to go now.”

“Good luck,” I whispered back.

“Tomorrow I can’t leave at four.”

This puzzled me. “Explain, please.”

“We mustn’t adopt a pattern. In a couple of days, Jim’d be looking through his keyhole at around four.”

Now I knew why Foxy-Loxy was wearing his watch.

I said, “Will you give me a timetable tomorrow?”

He put on his pajama jacket and, as he kissed me good-bye: “That walk down the corridor is going to be frightening.”

1 volunteered to hold his hand for him.

“No, no, no. Jim would really delight to find me out.”

“If he finds you naked in my bed, I’m sure you have your explanation ready. He’d end up apologizing for thinking bad of you.”

“Jim would like nothing better than to betray me.”

“Why would he want to betray you?”

He suddenly looked at me. “Why do
you
want to?”

“Me?” He really shook me.

“You love me but you delight in treachery.”

“What’s the
matter
with you?” I said. “Are you sleeping with treachery and is treachery behind Jim’s door? What are
you
, then?”

“I am what I am because I am.”

I blinked because I recognized the words as being from the Bible, in which they are put in the mouth of God.

“You mean you are the only innocent?”

“Completely.”

He meant it. His self-deception was total. I was back to being his patient.

I said, “Innocent? You? After what you just did?”

“I really am. I am only here as a passage in your life.”

The magician had changed himself from sinner into savior.

When Helena and her family rejoined us from Donegal on the Friday night, I had to vacate my room and sleep on the floor in
Mary’s room.

Eamonn had arranged a special Saturday dinner at the Glenbeigh, the hotel he had pointed out to me from the hill on my first
afternoon in Inch.

“This,” he told me, “will be an unforgettable experience.”

But even he, with his powerful imagination, could not have foreseen what was going to happen.

I
WENT TO THE HOTEL with Jim, Dinah, Helena, and Mary, while Eamonn came on direct from Killarney.

In our party of about twenty were Eamonn’s cousins Joan Browne, a widow, and Paddy Joe Brosnan, both from Castleisland. The
rest were his friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, among them Pat Gilbride, her sister, and Father O’Keeffe.

Paddy Joe was a small man. He said little but heard everything and conveyed it by the blink of an eye.

Joan Browne, my mother’s favorite cousin, was the exact opposite. A blustery warm-eyed Kerrywoman in her sixties, she was
a rebel like me. You felt she was made of velvet. Her curses sounded better than many a benediction.

“I have heard so much about you, Annie.”

Her eyes took in my tan, my thick hair, the subtly applied makeup and shocking pink lipstick, the big hooped earrings.

“Aren’t you a gypsy of all gypsies?”

Now she was viewing my peasant blouse with its intricate patterns made up of unusual beads running through it.

“And those black velvet pants, Annie,” she said, with a smooth laugh, “why, they would tempt a bishop. Especially when you
are so very pretty.”

As a waiter passed with a tray of drinks, she grabbed a sherry before putting an arm around my shoulder. “And how is my cousin,
the big bad Bishop, behaving these days.”

“He’s very kind,” I said.

She pursed her lips and pushed them forward, hooded her eyes, and shook her head as if to say, “We all know what that means.”
Though, really, no one knew.

In the restaurant, I sat next to Joan at a magnificently prepared table in an alcove with a view of the bay.

The food was excellent, the wines were vintage French. A band played a medley devised by Eamonn himself.

I was relaxed until I saw Mary O’Riley, a few places higher up the table, getting steadily drunk.

Joan passed a message to her brother, Paddy Joe, and he kept pushing the wine away from Mary but she simply stretched across
the table for more.

After dinner, there were liqueurs. By which time, Mary’s head was on her shoulder.

Eamonn at the top of the table caught my eye and went “Oh, God, God,
God
.” But he had to be careful in case Jim Ross was watching out for any sign of complicity between us.

Now began Irish dancing in which I joined, though I knew nothing about it. There were hornpipes, jigs, four-handed reels,
and a country dance, a kind of old quadrille.

A Russian in folk costume took over the floor and gave a dazzling display of dancing.

Then Eamonn stood up and did, solo, a few fast rigid steps of Irish dance, hopping and twirling. The applause that greeted
him was deafening. Perspiring, smiling broadly, he took a bow. But he wasn’t finished yet.

He nodded to the leader and the band struck up “The Rose of Tralee,” which he rendered in a fine tenor voice.

He had no sooner finished than I noticed Mary lurching toward the ladies’ room.

Joan and I caught up with her just as she was doing the splits. We lifted her by her arms and carried her to her destination.
Where she threw up, partly over me.

A couple of women washing their hands were scandalized until I called over Mary’s shoulders, “Please,
please
, this lady is handicapped.”

Joan helped me clean Mary up and bathed her face with cold water while I dried my shoes and stockings.

Another lady came in and said, pointing to Mary, “Isn’t she with Bishop Casey’s party? You can’t take her out there, she’ll
disgrace him.”

“Who cares?” Joan said. “We have to get her out to the car and the only way is through the front entrance.”

Right outside the ladies’ room was the Bishop.

As we marched Mary past him, she lurched out of our grasp and sprawled at his feet.

He took his pipe out of his mouth to say, “God
Almighty
, she will not be coming again.”

We marched her through the dining room and out into the parking lot where we put her into the back of Eamonn’s Mercedes.

When Eamonn had settled the account, it was past midnight. He told Jim, who had Dinah and Helena with him, to lead the way
while we brought up the rear of the convoy.

I wanted to jump in the back to tend to Mary but he made me sit next to him in the passenger seat.

He had had too much to drink and Mary was groaning horribly. I did not relish the prospect of the trip home. To make matters
worse, he put his hand down my blouse.

“Mary,” I said.

“Completely gone, Annie. Open up your pants.”

Now I realized why he worked it so we were the last car. He did not want Jim Ross coming from behind and overtaking us.

Mary began to throw up again.

“Oh,
no
,” he said, “not
that
,” as he puffed more furiously than ever on his pipe.

I felt suddenly sick myself.

“Careful how you drive,” I warned.

“Are you telling me again I don’t know how to drive a car?”

“Think, Eamonn. If you have an accident, you’ll reek of liquor, there’s a drunk in the back of your car, and a young woman
next to you with her blouse undone and her panties half off. Think of your obituary.”

“Let
me
think of that,” he said, laughing a deep laugh.

All this time, he was driving with the right hand, which certainly knew what his left hand was doing.

He got a kick out of the fact that directly ahead of us were Pat and her sister. The more unthinkable the deed, the more he
had an urge to do it.

He nuzzled me. “C’mon, Annie, feel me, too.”

“Give me a break,” I pleaded. “I’m not feeling well.”

“There may be no chance when we get back, not with Jim peeping round the door. This is great
craic
[fun], now.”

To me it was lechery. But it was his night.

Ahead of us, Pat stopped for gas at a one-pump garage that was completely blacked out. Eamonn said he might as well fill up
himself.

“Make yourself decent,” and he zipped up his own fly.

He and Pat must have frequented this garage because they had no compunction about waking the owner up. Pat banged on the door,
yelling, “The Bishop needs petrol.”

A minute later, a tousle-haired youth switched on a small outside light as he stuffed his shirt in his pants. He stopped to
light his cigarette, probably his first reaction when he woke up in the morning.

The young hand filled up Pat’s car first, then carried the nozzle to the Mercedes without turning off the fuel ejection lever.
In his confusion, he dropped his cigarette, causing the gas to ignite and fuse instantly in two directions.

Pat had already driven out of the danger zone.

Eamonn, jumping out of the car, whipped open my door and grabbed me by the hand.

“Annie, out, quick.”

I needed no second invitation.

We went some distance to a hedge while the young hand went for a bucket of sand and a fire extinguisher.

Eamonn whispered, “I have been for a hundred thousand fill-ups and the first time you are with me, the petrol catches fire.”

“Wait,” I said. “Mary’s still in the car.”

Eamonn held me by the shoulder. “Leave her, Annie.”

“
No
, I’m getting her out before the car explodes.”

“She is a dead weight,” he said, “and with puke all over her. There’s no danger.”

“Then what are we doing
here
?”

“I have no idea how to put out fires.”

“That’s the first confession of ignorance I’ve ever heard from you and a most convenient one.”

As I made to return to the car he pulled me roughly to him. “
Stay where you are
.”

This was our first row.

With his pipe still alight in tight lips, he said, “She has caused enough damage for one night.”

“To your car?”

“Correct.”

“To your reputation?”

“Indeed.”

“Is that why you’re prepared to let her burn to death?”

“She will not and if she does won’t she go straight to heaven?”

I punched a tattoo on his arm. “Anything’s better than Inch, you mean, even heaven.”

“God, Chicky Licky, with you, the heavens are always falling in. Look, the fire is out already.”

We got back in the car and, to my horror, he no sooner started the engine than he behaved exactly as before.

That was the moment when I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had no hand in Eamonn’s fall; he was bad before we met.

It made no difference to us. I loved him not for his virtues, though they were many, nor in spite of his vices, which were
many, too. I loved him because I loved him.

But my man was no saint, and I felt an indescribable relief. Because neither was I.

However much he fooled himself that he was a holy man, he was worse than me; and unless it were so, there could have been
no fellowship between us. How else could he, pledged not to love women, be the best lover I ever had? Yet, bad as I am, I
could never have left Mary to fry in the car.

I realized anew that Eamonn was feeling me, fondling me, sleeping with me because he needed me. My need of a companion of
passage was as unreal as Mary’s supposed preference for heaven. Eamonn simply used religion to get his own way.

This meant, of course, that I could never wholly trust him. One day, should I, for instance, be a threat to his position,
he was bad enough to set fire to me and everything I held dear—and call it God’s will.