by Annie Murphy
Bridget kept trying to find out what I was doing in Dublin. We met up after work in Sonny’s, a bar in Ranelagh, not far from our hotel. In that relaxed atmosphere, she freely gave information about herself. “I really wanted to be a Shakespearean actress, Murphy,” she told me in the manner of Lady Macbeth. “And now look at me. Thirty-one years old. I rent a one-bed flat with running water, mostly down the walls. My job is supervising idiot telephonists in a Dublin hotel. How did I sink so low?”
Sipping my ginger ale, I said: “Shakespeare would have appreciated the tragedy.”
“Tra-ge-dy,” she said, theatrically. “More a Whitehall farce. And you?”
I spoke guardedly about my broken marriage and my desire to find peace in Ireland.
“That’ll do,” she said, coolly. “To start with.”
One night, she broke down in tears as she told me of an affair that resulted in an ectopic pregnancy. “I lost one tube, Murphy, so I guess I’m sterile, and my gall bladder was in such a state it rotted my teeth.”
“That’s why you’ve had them capped.”
“Murphy, you are an awful sod. You were not supposed to notice.”
“They’re really very beautiful,” I said.
“Sure, so beautiful everyone notices them as soon as I open my mouth.” They had not lessened her attractiveness. At least, Jim Wentworth, the hotel chief of security, found her irresistible.
I introduced Bridget to my parents and they instantly took to each other. They were all larger than life.
In the first week of September, Eamonn, back from Australia, telephoned. Daddy took the call. Eamonn invited all three of us to dinner the following Saturday night.
“You free, Annie?”
“Probably not, Daddy.”
I wanted to be as relaxed about Eamonn as I could.
“Talk to him yourself.”
“Hi, Eamonn,” I said. “Have a good trip Down Under?”
“Can we talk?”
“Sure. And your brother?”
“There’s no extension to that phone?”
“Not at all. I have a job at the Burlington which keeps me pretty busy.”
“Listen carefully. I will drop your parents back at the apartment about ten and meet you straight after.”
“Sounds good, but it must have been really hot there.”
“Leave the Burlington by the side exit, walk left along Burlington Road. After a hundred yards cross over to the junction with Wellington Road. See you at five past ten.”
“I’m sorry, too, Eamonn, perhaps another time.”
“And, Annie, I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“My parents are really keen to see you again.”
My father nodded agreement from the couch.
“Pet, I love you.”
“God bless, Eamonn.”
I put the phone down. “He sends his love.”
On Saturday night, I turned down Bridget’s offer of a drink in Sonny’s, saying I had a splitting headache. I was very excited at the prospect of seeing Eamonn again. What was the surprise in store? A present from Australia?
I left the hotel soon after ten. I was standing in the rain at the road junction when a medium-blue two-seater sports car drew up alongside me. All I saw was the capped head of the driver.
Just my luck, I thought, a curb crawler. I walked on a bit. But the driver was not giving up on me. I was young and shapely and this was Saturday night in Dublin.
I heard the window on the passenger side open electronically and a familiar voice said: “Why are you cold-shouldering me, Annie?”
“Jesus,” I squawked, “you really scared me.”
He had a glossy black cap on his head and he was wearing a long trench coat though the weather was mild. I glanced at the car. A brand-new expensive-looking Lancia. Was I the loose woman to go with the fast car?
“Where’d you get this?”
As I settled in to the lush bucket seat, he leaned over and gave me a kiss that smelled of the big cigar he was smoking. “Good to see you again. Oh, the car, I had it imported direct from Italy.”
Not keen to hang around in the vicinity of the hotel, he drove off in his usual tearing hurry.
“It’s got a gear stick,” I said.
“Sorry about that. Restricts my hand movements somewhat. But you should see the way it corners.”
“I believe you.” I was anxious for him not to prove it.
The smell of new leather was almost as strong as his cigar. I had never smelled that kind of cigar aroma before. We were heading north into the rain-arrowed lights of the city, past tall run-down Georgian houses in Leeson Street toward the green.
“I shall miss the Mercedes,” I said, remembering.
“No need.”
“You didn’t sell it or trade it in for this?”
He shook his head. “The Mercedes will be for official visits; this for, shall we say, pleasure?”
I was so pleased to see him again I did not bother to ask where he was taking me. He clearly had a precise location in mind. Any dry warm room out of the rain would do.
We headed for O’Connell Street, but just before the Liffey we turned west. The whole place was lit up and crowded at this hour. Green smoky double-decker buses kept obstructing us, so Eamonn had to shift gears like a racing driver. We continued past the huge Guinness complex toward Heuston Station with the Phoenix Park on our right. The giant Wellington obelisk in the park was my last landmark. He was telling me about his priest brother and the places he had visited, Sydney and Melbourne, and the people he had met, including many aboriginals in the outback.
I took in little, so enraptured was I by his presence. He filled areas of my being that were desolate without him.
By the time I was ready to peer through the windshield, we were in an ill-lit suburb blackened by rain. “Where’re we going?” I asked anxiously.
He threw his cigar stub out the window. “Trust me.”
I did, of course, but some things did not add up. We had already driven for about thirty minutes. This was not exactly motel country and, in any case, he was in his clericals. Without warning, he turned off the main road into a dark side street. As he slowed down, I sensed danger. Maybe he intended that. But this was a new kind of danger, one that did not emanate from my own inbuilt fears but from him. He was my security; I did not like to feel nervous in his company.
On the left, was a large paint-peeled unhinged metal gate that looked as if it had not been closed in years. I saw what looked like a huge cavern ahead and a small sign, “Sand and Gravel.”
Bridget had recently taken me to see Sean O’Casey’s play Shadow of a Gunman. Its eerie atmosphere had got to me.
For a few seconds, my racing brain told me: What if the surprise is not the car but a brutal death? A bishop who fornicates is not dependable; break one commandment, break them all. And where better to dispose of my body than in this out-of-the-way place? Eamonn has always covered his traces. He has never given me a present or written me one letter to which he signed his name.
What finally shook me was that he drove in to the gravel pit so fast and halted so sharply between piles of sand and crushed stones that it was plain he had been there before. How else would he have known that there was no night watchman, that he would not run into heavy machinery? The place was demonic. What made it worse was the excitement of a reunion with the man I loved and who obviously could not wait to have sex with me.
Eamonn whipped off his cap and tossed it behind him.
“Wait,” I said, “I want some answers. First, how’d you know where this place was?”
“Saw it on my way to and from Dublin.”
“But you pulled up in this exact spot, as if you’ve been here many times before.”
“Only this afternoon, in preparation.”
“For what?” Picking up on Mary’s phrase, I said, “You mean this is our new love nest?”
He was already tugging off his top clothes. I was reminded of my
Texas days. This was teenager stuff. Painful memories of nights behind steamed-up car windows crowded in on me.
“Isn’t this a perfect spot, Annie?”
Compared with the luxuries of Inch and its views of the sea, it was like a doss house. Worse, lust was taking over. It is hard to love tenderly while you are tumbling and groping in the bucket seats of a sports car.
What was the alternative? he argued. We could not go back to Inch on a permanent basis. He was too well known to book us into a hotel in Dublin. Once my parents returned to America, I would take over the apartment and we would be free.
I quieted down and we enjoyed a fun evening in the fogged-up dark. The front seats folded back but we soon emigrated to the back. I have never known a man so agile in such a restricted space.
We took off any clothes that got in our way and the rest were undone. He expended on me the pent-up feelings of three weeks of abstinence. His long drawn-out sigh was something to treasure.
For a couple of hours we stayed there, our chat broken up with a second session of lovemaking.
I told him about my new job. I gave him a graphic account of Mary’s visit to Dublin and he hooted with laughter. He told me my parents were very pleased with the way I looked and that the ten pounds I had put on suited me. “But be careful,” he warned, “your mother has noticed the spring in your step.”
“Does she suspect you are responsible?”
“All I can say, Annie, is she kept looking at me out of the corner of her eye and once she said, ‘Annie seems like a woman in love.’ “
We agreed to meet in two weeks, when Eamonn would be free. The night ended with his dropping me off near the apartment.
My parents were in bed but next morning, my mother said: “We had a wonderful evening with the Bishop in the Hibernian Hotel. Harry Burke joined us for dinner.”
“That’s nice,” I said.
“Yes,” Daddy said. “Harry disagreed with Eamonn about the changes he made to his Cathedral. I don’t think they get on.”
Mommy said, eyeing me, “He sends you his special love.”
“That’s nice of Harry,” I said.
“Eamonn did.”
“Oh,” I said, nonchalantly, “it’s nice of him, too.”
Chapter
Twenty-Five
BY DAY, I worked at the hotel with Bridget. I spent most evenings with her, too, but a few with my parents. Whenever Eamonn came to town, he had priority.
I was never really reconciled to love in a gravel pit. There was little talk and a lot of action. Nor did I like the furtive way, as soon as we drove homeward into the city lights, he asked me to hand him his collar, chain, and jacket from the backseat.
By early October, Bridget had guessed there was a man in my life. Once she got me tipsy and wheedled out of me where I had been staying before I came to Dublin.
“A very interesting man, the flying Bishop,” she mused. “I’ve read so much about him. Quite young, too.”
One Friday night, she invited Wentworth and me for drinks at her small ground-floor apartment. All she had on was a robe with blue ruffles; and she played tapes and we drank.
I walked past the apartment at eight the next morning and banged on her bedroom window.
“Get up, you sluts,” I said loudly, in my best Irish accent. “I want you both out of my bed-sit this very hour.”
Whispers inside before Bridget pulled back the drape. “Murphy,” she screamed, “you absolute bloody shit.”
I saw Wentworth’s pinkie with its emerald ring appear above the sheet.
“You realize, Randall,” I said, “you and that lump in bed with you will roast in hell.”
Wentworth slowly surfaced from beneath the covers with a venomous, “You fecking bitch, Murphy.”
Bridget came to work at midday. “Murphy, come and have a spot of tea with me in the cafeteria, if you’d be so kind.”
“C’mon,” I said, “don’t fire me. We had such fun.”
“You and I did.” She sipped her tea in a melancholy way. “But a tragedy happened last night.”
“What?” I asked naïvely.
“I was robbed of my innocence by the security officer of the Burlington Hotel.”
“But he was a gentleman last night, Randall.”
“I do feel a bit better today,” she admitted. “But, you bastard, you encouraged him. I’m going to get you.”
And she did. That very night.
I was about to climb into Eamonn’s Lancia when I saw someone very like Bridget hiding behind a tree.
I had been edgy all night. The rain was pelting down and the gravel pit looked like something out of hell. The first lovemaking session was more strenuous than usual because over his boxer shorts Eamonn wore designer long johns to ease his colitis. The long johns were from Germany; they were of nylon and a remarkable cherry red. I ragged him, saying his cardinalate tights, like his socks, betrayed his ambitions.
I could see him getting worried. Was my nervousness rubbing off on him? “I am wondering, pet, if the tires are stuck in the mud.”
He got into the driver’s seat and switched on. When he engaged the engine, the rear tires whizzed around. This went on for several minutes. The high-pitched revving sound in that cavernous place attracted attention. A car marked GARDA slowly cruised past the gate.
“Police,” I shrieked. We waited with bated breath until the car passed by a second time.
I said, “They’re assuming we’re lovers and they’re giving us a chance to get out.”
“The fecking car won’t budge.”
“Try again,” I said, with my usual squealy laugh.
Tugging his red tights half up, he looked in his mirror and saw me naked from the top up. “For cripesakes, Annie, get your clothes on and come sit in the front with me.”
I was so jittery I could not button up my blouse.
“Can’t you do anything right?” he said.
“Maybe you should sit in the back and let me drive.”
“You don’t have an Irish license, eejit.”
“Don’t you call me that.”
“Shut up, and get dressed, I’ve got to think.”
“I can show the police your license.”
Now he got really mad at me. “How would you get by with my license?”
“I could tell them I was a transvestite. That’s what you look like in those tights.”
“Oh, I could die right now.” He sighed. “God, take me, I do not want to live.”
“Okay, sit in the back,” I repeated, scared because his pulse rate was far too fast at times. “I’ll cover you with a blanket like they do in the movies.”
“Grand, except I don’t have a blanket and, besides, ‘tis not fitting for a bishop to do so.”
Eamonn had acted like a naughty boy and was getting a taste of his own medicine. This man who made Catholics tremble before him was himself trembling because of the cops. He was a member of the hierarchy who intruded mercilessly into the sex lives of others. Maybe a police inquiry into what a bishop did at night in a gravel pit might do them all good.
“Eamonn,” I said sharply, “they’re coming again.”
“Oh God, dear God, oh my God.”
I started to laugh because the situation was so earthy and so true. I contrasted Eamonn in his episcopal finery with the half-naked man next to me struggling to zip up his fly and button his shirt after making fumbling love in a gravel pit.
The puncturing of pretensions, not only his but of all humankind, made me laugh some more. And laughter healed me. And, in spite of his fears, he joined in and it healed us both because we were always able to laugh together. Nothing was too solemn or too sacred but that laughter would not make it holier and more dear. My God was a God who laughed everything into existence; and no single thing would cease existing while it still had in it the slightest capacity to make us laugh.
The Garda car passed us again. “Eamonn,” I said, shakily, “you don’t think they’re waiting
for a backup team and a paddy wagon?”
His hands went futilely up-up-up in the air. “The driving license,” he moaned, “the registration number of the car, everything is in my name. We might as well both sit here bald naked and let the Guards come take us to the Four Courts for trial.”
“Get out,” I said; and pointing, “Put those notebooks under the back wheel to give us leverage.”
“I cannot,” he said, climbing out of the car barefoot and immediately groaning because of the splashing from cold mud. “They are official papers from my last EEC meeting.”
I scrambled into the driving seat. “Then”—I grabbed his coat—“it’ll have to be this.”
“No, Annie, that’s from Harrods and it’s got my name stitched into it. You don’t need your clothes, do you?”
I hugged myself tight. “Never,” I said. “Either your trench coat or jail.”
He grudgingly stuffed his precious coat behind the back wheels and I started the engine. At the first attempt, I lurched forward out of the mud. After grabbing his coat, he ran after me, screaming, “For God’s sake, Annie, come back.”
I slowed down to let him catch up to me but stayed behind the wheel. “I’m thinking of leaving you here,” I said. “It’s about time you faced the world without your clerical camouflage.”
“But, Annie,” he whimpered, “you wouldn’t do that. You love me. Here I am in a gravel pit with the cops waiting to pounce and my poor long johns are soaked to the knees.”
I looked him up and down. Finally: “Okay, hop in.”
Fortunately, we did not meet the cops.
“That,” he sighed, “was the worst experience of my life.”
“Blame it on me, Eamonn.”
I could tell he already had.
Next morning, Bridget called me.
“Well, well, Murphy, fancy that. I was wondering how that Bishop treated you in Inch.”
“Quiet,” I hissed. “My father’s next door.”
“After all, the clergy are all sex-mad, as anyone in the hotel trade knows. How’d you make out with your chauffeur?”
“We had a quiet dinner to discuss my mother’s drinking problem.”
“Dinner, my eye. I was only poked by a poor old security guard, but you, Murphy, have been —”