All of a sudden her heart was beating very fast and certain other parts of her seemed to be throbbing as well. Was it the wine?
Her chest was starting to rise and fall too rapidly and she was too scared to open her eyes and look at the man sitting next to her.
‘So was it?’ he asked again, softly.
Molly raised her glass to her lips and tried to harness the electricity that was running rampant through her treacherous body.
‘Well, I’m not crying,’ she said, sure her voice was giving her away, ‘and I haven’t for at least seven hours, so that’s a start.’
‘That’s not a little wobble in your chin, now, is it?’ Pohraig teased.
‘Actually,’ said Molly, ‘I’m pretty tired. I think I will lie down now.’ She carefully put her glass down on the floor.
‘Would you like me to stay until you go to sleep?’ he asked.
Sleep? she thought. Bloody hell.
‘That would be lovely,’ she said, snuggling down and rearranging the tablecloths on top of her. ‘How come you are staying at Andrew’s folks’ place, anyway?’ she asked, rolling on her side, facing away from him.
‘Friends of the family,’ he said. ‘Would you like me to rub your back?’
She nodded, and felt him move over towards her and gently start rubbing her shoulders. At the touch of his hands she closed her eyes and concentrated on trying not to moan.
She felt him rearrange himself, kneeling now, beside her, as he softly pushed her onto her stomach so he could rub her back from bottom to top with both of his beautiful hands.
I’m melting, she thought. This saint of a man is melting me.
Without letting her mind weigh up the pros and cons of what she was about to do, she turned over onto her back.
‘Pohraig,’ she whispered as she reached up and drew him to her. ‘Pohraig.’
She brought his lips down to meet hers, trembling with anticipation.
His kiss was as tender as the brush of a butterfly’s wing and he let out a groan which she knew must mean he wanted her as much as she wanted him.
Her hands were around his neck, her broken arm resting on his shoulder, her good fingers running through his beautiful thick hair.
I never want this kiss to stop, thought Molly. I just want to stay in this place, wherever it is, with Pohraig’s mouth on my mouth for the rest of my life.
Her broken arm slipped down Pohraig’s shoulder, down his arm and onto his hand, which she slowly guided up her pulsating body towards her breast. A moment longer and she was sure her breast would have gone and found his hand on its own.
She pushed his fingers over her ribcage onto the hand-beaded bodice of her dress and guided his hand to the neckline, but where he should have been able to slip his hand under the dress and make his way to her nipple, he met some resistance.
Molly was wearing the closest-fitting bra she owned and Pohraig didn’t seem to be having much luck navigating it.
‘Molly!’ he whispered suddenly, pulling his kiss away, as she manipulated his kneading of her cleavage and pulled him close to her face with her good arm.
‘Molly!’ he said more urgently, wrenching his mouth away from her mouth as she started to writhe slightly and let out a barely audible moan.
‘Molly!’ he finally said loudly, pulling himself up to a kneeling position beside her and extricating his arm, with some difficulty, from her chest, gasping for breath.
‘Stop it!’ he said with a horrified look on his face. ‘I can’t. I don’t—’ he said, looking horrified and moving backwards, crab-like, on the bed until his feet hit the floor.
‘There’s something you should—’ He stood up and started to back away towards the door as Molly lay stunned and breathing heavily on her makeshift bed.
‘Jesus, I am just so sorry,’ he said. ‘Don’t hate me — please don’t hate me but I can’t. I just can’t,’ and before the buzz of his shaved cheek rubbing against her smooth one had the chance to disappear, Molly heard the sound of Pohraig’s feet running up the hallway, across the dance floor and out of her life.
For a while she just lay there, like a little girl’s discarded doll, half sitting, half lying on the nest with a dazed and unfocused look on her face.
Her head was spinning slightly, whether from the wine or the events of the last few minutes she didn’t know. Then suddenly a warm feeling started at the tips of her toes and worked its way up her legs, to her thighs, her already over-excited nether regions, across her belly, into her bodice, up her neck, over her face to her brain.
For a second she thought it was a sort of ‘Look, Ma, no hands!’ post-Pohraig orgasm but almost immediately she recognised it for what it really was.
Humiliation.
And it was unbearable. To be shackled by this level of embarrassment on top of everything else seemed simply too much to take.
The cheating husband-to-be she had handled. The hidden uncle, no problem. Flying across the world with her scary aunt, I’ll do it. Breaking her arm in a foreign nightclub, so what? Missing the bus in the middle of God knows where, hey, bring it on.
But forcing a complete stranger to have sex with her only to have him abort the mission and run away practically crying, now that involved a whole new level of wishing-she-were-dead.
Molly’s hands moved up to her face as misery moved into every corpuscle of her body, and wetly and noisily she cried herself to sleep.
Chapter 24
1989
Father Kelly drove the beetle at speed down the bumpy lane, closing his eyes as he passed the grotto and nearly taking out Gerry O’Reilly’s souvenir stand in the process.
It was after three and the usual suspects were gathering at the entrance to the Holy Valley, waiting for the tourists and other devotees of the Blessed Virgin to arrive so they could chaperone them up the valley to the Holy Hillside.
Full of hot tea and hot-dogs, no doubt, and laden with rosary beads and specially embroidered cushions and fancy prayer books at five quid a pop.
Jesus Christ, prayed Father Kelly, please don’t let the locals blame me.
The truth was that the church had always been doubtful about the Ballymahoe Virgin, which is why the sightings had never been officially recognised by the Vatican. Father Cahill had kept a huge dossier on the visitations and completed all the required interviews with those who had seen her, himself included, and had meticulously documented when Our Lady appeared and what happened when she did. But the old priest had never forwarded any official requests for authorisation to the cardinal, nor had he thoroughly investigated alternative explanations for the vision.
Well, you could understand him not investigating the fish on top of Paddy O’Riordan’s van, Father Kelly thought wryly, but could he not have thought of mirrors?
Still, you did not need to spend six years studying at Oxford and in Rome to realise that the Virgin of Ballymahoe did not need papal authorisation to have a deep and meaningful significance to the local people and those who travelled miles to see her.
God knows the Church was losing Catholics left, right and centre and anything that kept them in the fold was warmly welcomed as long as it wasn’t sinful.
Of less importance to the Church, but more to Ballymahoe, was the industry the village had developed around the religious apparition.
In the absence of Herself floating across the hill in irregular bursts, thought Father Kelly anxiously, what the hell (‘Bless me, Father’) was everybody going to do for a living?
He pulled the beetle into the driveway beside the little church and sat in the car unable to move. They would blame him, of that he was sure. Why couldn’t Paddy O’Riordan have died six months earlier, he guiltily wondered, and left Father Cahill to break the bad news?
A horrid realisation swept over him. Of course. Paddy O’Riordan’s confession. Father Cahill’s fatal heart attack. The inexplicable smile. Paddy had obviously coughed up his sins to the old priest and it had been the end of him. Of both of th
em.
The result would probably have been the same if Paddy had made his death-bed confession six months — six years — ago. The only difference an earlier death would have made is that Father Kelly would still have been in Rome or at Oxford or in the seminary and some other poor sod would be sitting here having a nervous breakdown in the driveway.
He banged the steering wheel with his hand, then tightened his hand into a fist and banged it against his own forehead.
What was he going to do? If he didn’t tell the villagers that the Virgin was a swizz, they would have to hang around and go out of business waiting for her to come back, then eventually come to the conclusion that it was the new priest’s fault, and kill him.
If he did tell the villagers the Virgin was a swizz, they would kill him straight away and go out of business anyway. He leaned over the steering wheel and prayed for divine inspiration but all he could hear was the sound of Mary Monaghan’s laugh.
What I need is a stiff drink, the young priest thought, sitting up suddenly. He jumped out of the car and headed purposefully down the hill towards Brendan’s bar.
Inside, it was quiet as a church. Brendan was seated behind the bar, laboriously tracing the contents of a large green and gold leather-bound book, line by line, with his finger.
‘What do you have there, Brendan?’ Father Kelly inquired, acting as though he was often found in the bar at this hour.
The bartender looked up, surprised to see anyone let alone the local clergyman.
‘You’re not up at the grotto, then, Father?’ he said. ‘Father Cahill, now, he was up there most afternoons. You know, just in case.’
‘I’ll have a large brandy, thanks, Brendan, and something for yourself too while you’re there.’
Brendan laid down the big book and poured the priest his drink then, as it was a man of the cloth offering and all, poured himself one too.
‘So what’s in the book?’ the priest asked again, sipping his drink and trying to ignore Brendan’s inquiring eyes and not to let him see that the strong liquor was making his eyes water.
‘Well, Father,’ he said, ‘it’s a little bit of community service I’m doing on the side. You could say it’s my way of thanking the Lord Almighty for sending the Holy Virgin, God bless her, to Ballymahoe to reverse my fortunes these past few years.’
The priest drained his glass and, grimacing at the taste, waved his hand around until Brendan understood that he wanted another.
‘Without Our Lady I’d probably be up in Dublin pulling pints in some den of iniquity or other,’ the barman said, shaking his head, ‘and my father and his father before him and his father before that would all be turning in their graves raging that I’d lost them the livelihood they worked so hard for over the generations.’
He looked at the priest to see if he had already heard that Brendan had actually won the pub in a poker game but Father Kelly was sipping his brandy and looking misty-eyed.
‘So,’ Brendan went on, patting the big book, ‘when people from around the world got a hold of our Virgin and started coming to visit, weren’t they driving me mad with asking did I know their relatives, the Lynches, you know, from Bantry Bay?’
He shook his head and chuckled at the ridiculousness of it all.
‘By way of helping them out, Father, and getting them off my back so I had time to pour them a pint or two, I started the Book of Relations.’
Father Kelly giggled. The Book of Relations? Ha ha. Otherwise known as the Kama Sutra. He giggled again.
‘Er, you might want to slow down a bit there, Father,’ Brendan suggested as the priest knocked back the last of his third brandy and licked his lips.
‘Not at all, Brendan. I’ll have another, thank you kindly,’ said the priest witheringly.
‘Right you are so,’ said Brendan, who was not in the habit of stopping people pushing money across the bar.
‘So what is the purpose of this Book of Relations, then?’ Father Kelly asked.
‘Well, the purpose is that instead of pestering me with silly questions about their great-great-great-uncles and aunts, they can write down their names and who they’re looking for in the Book of Relations, then write down their own names and addresses so that if anybody knows who they are talking about, they can get in touch. Are you sure you want a fourth there, Father?’
The priest nodded vigorously and wondered what he had been so wound up about before. So the Virgin was a hoax — what did it really matter as long as everybody was happy?
‘Brendan,’ he said, his eyes closing and opening a tad too slowly, ‘isn’t it only other people looking for their relations who write in the book?’
‘That’s right, Father. You’ve got that right, yes,’ said the barman, wondering where this was leading.
‘So if everybody who writes in the book is looking for their relations, who in fact is in charge of finding all of these great-great-great-uncles and aunties?’
Brendan stopped and looked at the priest who was tipsily pleased with himself.
‘I’m not following you, Father.’
‘Well, all you’ve got is a great big book full of people looking for other people.’
‘Yes, that’s right, Father. You’ve got that right,’ said Brendan.
‘Well, then, my point is …’ but Father Kelly had lost his point, and very nearly his place on the bar stool as well. He pulled himself back onto his chair as though he were on a ship sailing through a rolling swell and clutched the big Book of Relations for anchorage.
‘I’m not much of a drinker, Brendan,’ he said seriously. ‘A little bit of wine on the right occasion — usually on consecrated ground — and a shandy at my grandmother’s 70th birthday party. That’s about it, really.’
‘Would you like me to see you home, Father?’
‘No, I would like another brendy, Brandon. And quitesoonnow.’
Jaysus, thought Brendan, this new fellow was making that old warthog Cahill look like an altar boy. Another one of Brendan’s brandies — not from the watered-down bottle either, in case the priest’s religious powers could divine that sort of thing — and he would be on his ear. Please God, Maeve O’Riordan doesn’t get wind of this or she’ll put a hex on the pub once and for all. And haven’t things been grand these past years — was it 20 already? — since Our Blessed Lady arrived on the scene?
‘Now!’ the priest roared, then folded his arms on top of the Book of Relations and dropped his head into them.
‘Coming right up, Father,’ Brendan said meekly, starting to pouring him another one and sliding it along to where the priest was slouched.
‘Now, far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, Father Kelly, but do you not think you should be off home before the grotto lot come in? If they’ve seen the Virgin they might take it badly to see you so, er, under the weather. And if they haven’t seen her, they may well want to talk to you about it.’
Father Kelly lifted up his head and looked sadly at the barman. Then, still slouched, he lifted the brandy to his lips and emptied the glass in a single gulp.
‘They won’t have seen her, Brendan, that I can tell you,’ he said once his coughing subsided. ‘And neither will anybody ever again,’ and his head collapsed again into his arms and he started to sob.
Brendan felt the beginnings of panic rising in his gut. What was the man on about?
‘It’s a secret, a terrible secret,’ the priest was burbling. ‘I don’t want to know! A fish, for God’s sake. A fish!’ He looked up, tears streaming down his face. ‘Your father’s father’s fathers can’t blame me, though. Goodbye, Holy Virgin. Goodbye!’
Brendan knew a bad situation when he saw one and thought immediately of Gerry O’Reilly. Hadn’t he furnished himself with a mobile cellular telephone for emergencies exactly such as this? That and for Brendan to give him advance warning of large tourist parties heading to the grotto in order to put the stick-on Virgin Mary dashboard statues up a quid or two.
He dialled the
number slowly and was relieved when Gerry answered.
‘It’s Brendan here, Gerry,’ he whispered into the receiver. ‘I’ve got a situation at the bar.’
‘Right you are, Brendan. I’ll put another 50p on the cushion rentals as well, then, shall I?’
‘No, no, no, Gerry. A bad situation.’
‘What is it, Brendan? Not Anglicans?’
‘No, Gerry, it’s the new priest, Father Kelly. He’s only in here half out of his mind with drink ranting and raving about the Virgin never coming back. I don’t know what to do, Gerry, only he’ll scare the bejeezus out of anybody coming in here. Can you come back and give us a hand?’
‘I’ll be there as soon as I can, Brendan. Just pour him another drink and stick him in the back corner until I get there.’
Brendan put down the phone and put on his happy face.
‘So, about that drink, Father. Do you fancy a brandy?’
The priest rolled his face over and smiled.
‘God bless you, Brendan,’ he whispered, ‘and all who sail in you.’
‘Right so, Father,’ Brendan said, stepping around onto the priest’s side of the bar and dragging him gently off his stool. ‘Why don’t you come and sit down the back here and I’ll throw in a bag of crisps as well.’
He half carried, half pulled the plonked priest, still clutching the Book of Relations to his chest, to the back snug and set him gently on an old leather-cushioned chair.
‘Don’t kill me,’ the priest said, looking at him pleadingly, before starting to cry again. ‘It’s not my fault. If I could bring her back I would but I can’t,’ he wept. ‘I can’t. Only Paddy can. And his fish,’ and he collapsed on the table and sobbed.
Jesus bloody Christ, thought Brendan sweatily, taking in the wailing priest. And that’s what my mam wanted for me? I’ve got undergarments holier than this Father Kelly.
He dabbed with his cloth at the Book of Relations, wiping away the brandy spots the slobbering priest had spat on it.
He might be a two-pot screamer with scrambled brains, the barman thought, but the priest actually had a point about the book. Everyone in the book was looking for someone but no-one was doing any finding.