Forbidden Fruit (18 page)

Not that I showed my fondness for him at that moment.

“Oh, you chivalrous gentleman,” I cried. “Oh, my knight in shining armor!”

“I don’t have to show chivalry, dammit, I’m a bishop.”

“If I get rabies, Bishop, I’ll need ten shots around my navel. If that happens, I swear to God I’ll tell everything.”

“Tell who what?”

“I’ll tell whoever wants to hear the things you’ve done to me, every single sexual act. I’ll go to Rome and tell the Pope.”

Even that threat failed to make him part with the shawl. “Pet,” he whined, “that bat could scratch my head.”

“Don’t ‘pet’ me.”

“And I have a huge clergy dinner tomorrow evening.”

“So?”

“If I appeared with a scratch on my head, which of them would believe a bat did it?”

“You always think of yourself first.” I fought him for that shawl as if my life depended on it. “You just don’t want to go
to hospital and miss your damn dinner.”

“Don’t I suffer enough already from my colitis?” he asked, in a Chaucerian lament. “For hours I sit on the toilet until I
am almost down the sewer and you want me to risk getting ten needles in my poor belly. I’d explode.”

“You shouldn’t drink so much.”

“It’s not the drink, it’s the gas. When I get like that, I could drive my car across the mountains to Killarney without switching
on the engine. Could propel you across this room like on a magic carpet from twenty feet away.”

I giggled, mollified by his way with words.

“Searching for a dead lamb in the dark, Annie, and being threatened with burglars and now this bat coming does not help my
colitis.”

“Something’s got to be done about this affliction.”

“Now you know why I smoke a pipe with hickory in it.”

“Not nearly drastic enough.”

“When I’m really bad I smoke a cigar.”

“The rabies needles will do the trick. They’ll let the gas out of you.”

“The bat,” he suddenly screeched, “is the devil himself.”

That cry got to me. Believing nothing, I feared everything. I felt Satan would give me rabies personally and carry me off
to hell.

“How,” I said, sobbing, “will
I
get to the bedroom?”

“Go down on your hands and knees and crawl.”

“Wait a
minute
. Crawl yourself.”

“I have a very bad knee, you know that.”

“The first I’ve heard of it.”

Well turbaned, he scampered without warning out into the corridor. I went on all fours after him, with the bat twice overflying
me, terrified it would bite my backside. How unnerving the beating of wings within walls.

It hurt, too, crawling on those hard tiles, and, the ultimate insult, his door was shut in my face.

I flung it open and made a jump for him.

“I’m going to claw your eyes out,” I said.

“Shut that fecking door, Annie.”

I slammed it so the whole house shook.

“I’m going to bang your head till it bleeds.”

“Now, Annie, don’t do
that
,” while I’m kicking him in the legs and stamping on his bare toes and shouting, “You rotten stinking bastard.”

“ ’Tis late, Annie, please get into bed.”

“I prefer to sleep on the floor.”

“No, please, the danger’s over. It got in through my french window. ‘Tis closed now.”

I crawled between the cool linen sheets, saying grittily, “You are a selfish skunk.”

“Enough, Annie,” he said, getting undressed. “I never knew so many disasters in one night.”

“Are you saying
I
attract them or
we
do?”

“
You
do,” he snapped. “Because you have turned your back on God.”

“Don’t you preach at me, you hypocrite.”

When he tried to get into bed, I kicked him out so he hit his head on the corner of the bedside table.

“You believe in Providence,” I said, leaning over to kiss the wounded part, “well, God has sent you a scratch for luck, after
all.”

He got up to examine himself tenderly in the mirror.

“If I have a bruise on my head, I will kill you.”

“Two lambs in one night?”

“You are dangerous. I intend to sleep on the floor.”

“Suits me.”

With that, I turned over to go to sleep.

Minutes later, I felt him crawl in next to me, his back next to mine. Feeling the other shake with mirth, each of us burst
out laughing at the same moment and, speaking for myself, I was still laughing when I dropped off to sleep.

Nothing is as wonderful as waking up in the morning next to the person you love. This was the first time one of us did not
have to leave furtively before the house awoke.

Some people look ready to die in the morning, but Eamonn had an almost newborn face on him. He woke up rubbing both sides
of his face madly and making a noise like ruff-ruff-ruff.

“God,” I said, “there’s a dog in my bed.”

To prove me right, he bit my breasts and my belly, woofing constantly. The noise was multiphonic. It seemed to come out of
his ears, his nose, his throat. To escape being eaten alive, I jumped out of bed and made to draw the drapes to let in the
light.

“Stop,” he commanded.

“I need some air.”

“Get away from those curtains.” Very slowly and dramatically: “Someone is probably out there.” He put his fingers to his lips.
“Get on all fours.”

“I refuse to walk like that again for anyone.”

“Disobey me and I will send you
home
.”

Heavens
, I thought,
what sort of standards does be have? We can go on having sex, no bother, but if I once open up his drapes he’ll send me back
to America
.

I said a frigid good-bye and made my way to my own room like a hunchback. Hardly the most romantic end to a romantic night.
Especially as he soon came to me on all fours, crying in a trembly voice:

“Never do that again, you hear me?”

What terrible new sin had I committed now?

“Do
what
again, Eamonn?”

“Scratch me like that.”

“Like
what
?”

He held up two fingers from which dangled an earring.

“You left it in my bed. What would Mary think if she found it there?”

A
FTER WE HAD SHOWERED, dressed and had a bite to eat, Eamonn said, “I’d be grateful if you’d come with me to Killarney and
help Mary polish the silver.”

“Nothing I hate more,” I confessed.

“I do like to have a nice table for my priest friends.”

Apart from diocesan priests, he had also invited a couple of bishops to his dinner that night.

That morning, his driving aroused me to a fever pitch of sexual excitement. He handled the car as though he were fondling
my naked body. Careering faster and faster around every bend, he kept taking his eye off the road to give me a sly lovemaking
look, followed by a torrid laugh.

A heady mix of love and death resulted in a blizzard of butterflies in my stomach so that, without his even touching me, I
threw my head back and gushed with a noisy orgasm.

“That was
wild
,” he said, stepping harder on the gas. “It proves you can do
anything
you like.”

“That was dangerous,” I said.

“Dangerous?” He raised both hands off the wheel. “Fun. I just showed you how the mind can dominate the body.”

At the Palace, Mary led me instantly to the large antiquated kitchen. She was in total command. She seated me at a long deal
table in front of a pile of silver. It took me over two hours to polish it. If I left one smudge, she yelled at me to do the
whole piece again.

We set the three-leaved table in the dining room for nearly twenty guests. Overhead was an antique brass chandelier. The chairs
were tall and hand-carved with blue velvet seats. The cutlery was of silver, as were the teapots and coffeepots on the dark
mirrored sideboard; the glassware was Waterford crystal. The flowers must have cost a fortune. Every color of rose, fan-like
ferns, lilies of the valley rayed outward from vases of fluted silver. Each guest had a printed menu and his name printed
in Gothic script on his placecard.

Exhausted by hours of work, I decided to take a nap. At the head of the stairs was a quiet shrouded room with nothing in it
but a big mahogany table with a felt top. I lay down on it and curled up on my side with a damask pillow under my head.

I don’t know how long I had been sleeping when Eamonn prodded me awake. I knew he would. He needed to know where I was so
he could touch me or kiss me or make sure I was not disgracing him by having a panic attack. Preparing that table for the
clergy made me aware of the competition, and I was determined to give them a run for their money.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” he spluttered.

Winking: “I was waiting for
you
.”

“Here? Now? Get off there.”

“Give me your hand, then.”

As he helped me down I pulled him to me.

“Annie, this is nasty.”

“It’ll get even nastier if you don’t —”

He gave me a long but uninspired kiss. He jerked away from me as the front doorbell rang.

“Cripes. Have to go.”

I released him with “Until tonight?”

“You are
dangerous
,” he hissed.

“All a question of mind over matter.”

Seconds after he left the room, I heard him call with exaggerated calmness over the balustrade:

“Liam, Barney, how good to see you.”

His guests had begun to arrive.

I was apprehensive as I saw the dining room filling with boisterous clerics already flavored with drink and nicotine. Eamonn
was in his smartest, with his bishop’s chain on. He tinkled his glass and everyone stood in silence as he blessed the food
with his gold-ringed hand and said a brief grace in Latin as though he were presiding over an exclusive gentlemen’s club.
After signing themselves, the clergy sat down in an explosion of camaraderie.

Mary and I, in flowery pinafores, served grapefruit, prawn cocktails, and oysters. There were medallions of lamb and salmon
and gamebird with special fruit stuffing. The French wines were never-ending.

Over and over in the next couple of hours I heard Eamonn complimented for the splendid turnout. Sometimes, he placed his hands,
the fingers joined, under his chin as he listened intently. Occasionally, to express disagreement, he put his knife and fork
down, spread his hands on either side of his plate and banged the sides of them down together while he surveyed everyone with
whippy eyes.

“I
don’t
believe that’ll work.”

Then he picked up his right hand, held it aloft with the index finger raised, then higher and higher, while, with great variations
of voice, he made point after point. His guests seemed impressed by his certainties.

After the meal, they withdrew to Eamonn’s study. The downstairs part of the evening began for me and Mary in earnest. Without
a dishwasher, the cleaning of the dishes took forever.

“Mary,” I said, “I don’t know how you put up with this.”

“Why do you think I’m so uptight?”

The only reason Eamonn kept her on was because she excelled at functions like this and, thank God, not one hitch. Not yet.
The night, she said, was young.

She piled the trunk of Eamonn’s car with shrimps and hors d’oeuvres before driving me back to Inch in a Volkswagen crammed
with drinks and sandwiches to prepare for an invasion.

Ten of his special friends arrived soon after we did. These were the non-ring-kissers; they could pull Eamonn’s leg and tell
him that rarest of things: the truth.

They settled in the living room before a lighted fire. Lights were dimmed, drapes half drawn, and the furniture, piano included,
was pushed back to the walls. This was Ireland writ large. It was entirely a man’s world.

Women, in the persons of Mary and me, attended to their needs as they smoked, told jokes, some of them smutty in an adolescent
way, swore alarmingly at each other, and played loud poker for money. God’s name came up only in expletives.

The visiting Bishop was as mad as a hatter; he kept getting up and doing a song-and-dance without a talent for either, and
they adored him for it. Eamonn was adding to the fog by smoking a huge Havana cigar.

He was permanently disruptive. He interrupted a hand of cards to yelp like a dog or tell a story or discourse upon the way
the rest were playing their hands. Once he banged his head in disbelief at something said, jumped out of his chair, and had
to be coaxed back before the game could continue.

Meanwhile, he had peeked at the others’ hands so everybody yelled, “Dammit, Casey, will you stop?” “The gobshite’s up checking
your cards, Pat.” Father O’Keeffe angrily said, “Sit down, you blackguard.”

Every time Eamonn cheated they became rowdier. They tore off their jackets, pretending to want a scrap. When they broke up
for a breather, two strikingly handsome priest brothers, Liam and Barney, came to the kitchen for a chat. I sensed they both
knew that Eamonn was involved with me. Maybe they had picked up vibrations from Father O’Keeffe with whom it was always “Annie,
darling, if you could spare me another cup of coffee.”

Meeting him at Inch for the first time, I realized that if Eamonn was living a double life, so was his confessor. Under the
kindness and banter lurked a bitter knowledge that threatened the peace of mind of two longtime allies, John and Eamonn. I
felt responsible for that.

Barney, about thirty-five, made a beeline for me. I was a foreigner and an American at that. He could relax with me. Barney
was an athlete, a hurler, and a smooth talker with a poacher’s eyes. Eamonn must have known something about him, for he followed
him suspiciously and gave me a look that said, “Careful, don’t give him an inch.”

My response, of course, was to edge still closer to Barney so I could listen enthralled. Out of the edge of my eye, I saw
Eamonn getting more and more neutered looking and—oh, marvelous —green-eyed with jealousy.

Barney had a special way of flirting with me. He told me stories about Eamonn. He and his brother always went with him on
vacation, invariably to exotic places. When they had been in India, they came across a snake that reared up in their faces.
He and Liam had been terrified while Eamonn talked to it and laughed at it, allowing the others to creep to safety.