ON SATURDAY I drove to Kinsale and had lunch with my grandfather. He was a bit miffed that my mother and father had not visited him on their trip but mollified that they planned to be in Ireland at Christmas, something I suspected my mother had planned as a surprise, for she had not mentioned it to me.
After lunch I drove to Summercove. I hadn’t seen Connie since London. The memory of my night with Jane Berkeley lingered on, her glamor and aggressive sexuality making my relationship with Connie seem rather pale. Connie’s car was at the cottage, as was a van. I was annoyed that she had visitors; I wanted her alone. I could hear a lot of girlish giggling through the door as I knocked, and Connie answered with a Guinness in her hand. For a moment I thought I had surprised her with another fellow, but as the door swung open I saw the nun I had met a while back, slouched in a chair, looking very un-nunlike, somehow.
“Ah, Willie, me boy!” Connie cried, planting a large, wet kiss on me. I found myself blushing. I had never kissed a girl in front of a nun before.
“Sister Mary Margaret, how are you?” I asked, disengaging myself from Connie.
“Ah, she’s Maeve, still, in my house,” Connie giggled, before the nun could answer.
“I’m very well, Willie,” she said, laughing at Connie.
I still didn’t know what to call her. I had almost never been around a nun at all and hardly thought of them as women. They were simply faces protruding from a lot of black clothing. This face, though, was quite a pretty one, not seeming to miss makeup. The eyebrows were a reddish color, and I assumed that whatever hair she had was, as well. How much hair did nuns really have, anyway? Was it shaved to the scalp, or long and wrapped, as under a Sikh’s turban?
“Not letting this one corrupt you, I hope?” I said, nodding at Connie, who was pouring me a glass of wine.
“Ah, she tempts me constantly, she does. One of these days, who knows?”
“Careful, Maeve,” Connie said, “He’ll have his hand under your skirt in a minute.”
“Jesus Christ, Connie!” I was appalled.
“And watch your language in front of a nun!” Connie came back. Both women collapsed in laughter.
I laughed in spite of my embarrassment. “What is going on, here? Are you both pissed?”
This caused further gales of laughter. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” the nun was finally able to say. “If Mother Superior were here now, I’d be shipped off to foreign missions tomorrow.
“Ah, you’ll have a lot to confess, you will,” Connie said, and they burst out laughing again. It was contagious, and I laughed mindlessly with them. Connie came and sat on my lap, wriggling about. “And what’s that I feel, sir?” More riotous laughter.
“You well know what it is,” I said, hoping to embarrass her into silence, but that only brought on more hysteria.
“So how’s Mister Society?” Connie asked archly.
“What?”
“Oh, the darling of the aristocracy,” Maeve/Sister Mary Margaret chimed in.
“Okay, you two, what’s going on here?” Then I saw the London tabloid on the coffee table. Lady Jane Berkeley looked disdainfully straight ahead, accustomed to this unwanted attention, while I, new to the game, gaped blankly at the camera. I looked quite foolish.
“Oh, that,” I said lamely. “A blind date. We had dinner with my parents, in fact.”
“Did you, now?” Connie came back.
“We did.”
“And who fixed you up so nicely, then? Must have been Mark’s friend, Mr. Thrasher, eh?”
I looked quickly at Maeve, who seemed to know everything and be vastly amused by it. “No, she picked me up in a pub,” I said, regaining my composure. I wondered how the hell Connie came up with that connection and quickly glanced through the article. The presence of neither Thrasher nor Genevieve Wheatley at the Connaught had escaped the newspaper, though they both had escaped the photographer. There was a picture of Mrs. Wheatley at the time of her husband’s death, and one of Derek Thrasher that must have been ten years old. His hair had been cut severely short at the time and he had worn glasses. I would never have recognized him had the photograph not been captioned.
“You’d be better off in a pub than in that company,” Maeve said, with a vehemence that surprised me.
“I wouldn’t have eaten nearly as well, though.” I was trying to think of a way to change the subject. “And I wouldn’t have seen my folks.”
“Are they well?” Connie asked.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, grateful for a way out of the Thrasher corner. “Just great. Mother had already heard about you from Grandfather; she was very curious.”
“Holy Mother of God!” the nun exclaimed, looking at the clock on the wall. “I’ve got to make a move, Mother Superior will have my … ” she stopped herself, and we filled the space with laughter. She gathered herself together, said her goodbyes, still giggling, and drove away in the van.
“Are you sure that’s a nun?” I asked Connie. “She doesn’t fit the image at all.”
“She’s just Maeve when she’s with me. By the time she gets back to the convent she’ll be Sister Mary Margaret again, don’t worry.”
“You shouldn’t have told her about Thrasher, Connie. Mark asked me to keep that quiet. I shouldn’t even have told you.”
“Well, even if I hadn’t told her, you’re all over the papers with him, now, so it hardly matters. Why is Mr. Thrasher’s sponsorship a secret, anyhow?”
“He seems to like to do things quietly at the best of times, and this isn’t the best of times. Did you hear about the bomb in Berkeley Square?”
“Oh, yes, that was intended for his company, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, and I don’t think it would improve our relationship with the locals if there were a connection with Thrasher. Have you told anybody else about him?”
She shook her head. “No, and your secrets are always safe with a nun. Mind you,” she said, pulling me toward the sofa, “I’m not sure you’d be safe with that particular nun if I weren’t about.” She pulled me down on top of her. We were soon groping at each other’s clothing and made love half dressed. I still had one leg in my trousers when we had finished and lay panting on the floor where we had fallen.
“I think you got all turned on having a nun about the place,” Connie teased.
“I’m a Baptist, remember. My fantasies were never about nuns the way yours probably were about priests.”
We got dressed, and Connie made coffee.
“What’s Maeve’s story, anyway? Why did she become a nun?”
“To tell you the truth, I’ve never really understood it. Had something to do with men, I think. When we were kids the boys were all after her; she’s really a great looking girl. Donal O’Donnell had the most awful thing about her when we were about sixteen, but I think she preferred Denny.”
“God, I can’t imagine anybody being sweet on Denny. What a complete jerk! Donal’s okay, but even he’s been acting funny lately, while Denny … ” I stopped short of telling her about the incident at the cottage.
“Denny just hates Brits, that’s all, and you’re buddies with a Brit.”
“But that’s all so stupid, so futile. Jesus, Mark’s project is paying Denny’s wages for several months.”
“All the more reason for Denny to hate him, because he’s taking his money. Denny’s and Donal’s grandfather was a great republican, you know, during the troubles.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“His problem was, when the troubles were over, he kept settling his differences the way he had during the troubles. They say he burned a couple of fellows out, and eventually he was hanged for killing a man.”
“By the government he had fought for?”
“Yes. And I think there’s a lot of his grandfather in Denny.”