These were happy days for Mary Boyle. There appeared not a cloud on her horizon. She was in love with a commitment which was absolute. She made love high up on the beet sacks above the milking parlour, in the reek of straw, amongst the bales of hay. In the mornings, she sought out David where he was now engaged on a new project and would sometimes drag him into a dry drain. There was one never-tobe-forgotten, wonderful day with the rain pelting down when they rolled in sport and play in the wet green rushes of the lower pasture. She loved every moment of every balmy day and, above all, she adored the physical pleasure of lovemaking.
She guessed David must be at least ten years younger than she was, but it didn’t seem to matter. For one so slight of build, he had incredible strength. She had noticed it first when he was driving fence posts into the hard ground, but nowadays more especially when he was holding her and shaping her to his physical needs in moments of passion. Her own John, for all his height and strength, was as effete in the requirements of nature as a eunuch in a Sultan’s palace. This man of slight stature and lame leg was as bold as a stallion at stud. She asked him once what had caused his limp and he brushed it aside with, “Oh, a mishap in my youth.”
Though naive in the matter of men’s physical prowess, she perceived there was something special about David. As some men can run faster, others lift heavier weights, play better football, and others still are endowed with exceptional brains, then there are men like David who are surely more virile than their peers.
She knew that the evening she stood facing him, their arms about each other sheltered from view in the small birch grove at the bottom of the farm. He had lifted her skirts and whilst still standing had entered up into her with powerful thrusts, and enormous bursts of strength so that she had cried out with the ecstasy and the sweet pain.
At the weekend, John went with Donal Moran to the Doncaster sales. All that weekend, it seemed there was no night or day. They engaged one another from the bed to the kitchen floor, the hay reek to the fields, in daylight and in the darkness.
She now enjoyed more shopping for clothes – tight jeans, stylish jumpers, clothes which flattered her figure, and were soft and feminine. Her natural blonde hair had always been an attractive feature. She discovered a hairdresser who shaped it so it fell in thick clusters of gold and yellow and had streaks running through it.
Occasionally, she wore silk stockings and, on that weekend, rushed down one night to the bedroom before David, and presented herself to him in black lace. He knocked her playfully to the floor in a mock attack and tore at her undergarments as she held her head back and laughed coquettishly.
She had no feelings of remorse for much as she loved her husband, they had never been lovers. The only tinge of guilt which she experienced was in buying the clothes for herself because always before she would buy for John first, or share with him some domestic purchase. To make amends, she began to read up all the literature available on asthma and purchased every conceivable gadget which might bring relief to him.
She felt no adulterous regrets for her behaviour. John was a friend. She loved him as a brother, a father, but not as a lover. There would never be anyone in her life to compare with him but she had not betrayed him. A lover is betrayed only when his love leaves his arms for the arms of another. Mary had never lain in John’s arms.
Sunday posed a problem. On every Sunday of her married life, Mary had received the host in Holy Communion with John at her side. The Church had become ambivalent towards many of its sacraments and sacred traditions. It was now uncertain on whether Holy Communion could be received by one in sin. It used to be necessary to go to confession almost every week in order to receive Communion, but all that had changed. Nevertheless, Mary was brought up to believe that you cannot receive the host if the stain of sin is on one’s soul. Mary did not feel as if she was committing any sin, either mortal or venial. She did accept the teaching of the Church and acknowledged there was technically a mortal sin to contend with. As such, she believed she could not receive at the altar without having her confession heard first. To be absolved so she could receive the host, she would have to say in confession that she was truly sorry for her sins and, the hardest part, would be to give a firm resolve to abstain from committing the sin in future. This Mary knew she could not do. Therefore, she could not accompany John in future to Communion in public, which could be embarrassing. She prayed that John would not ask her why. It grieved and pained her greatly that in the eyes of the Church that she was living in a state of mortal sin though she felt no pain of sin. It grieved her she could would not be able to accompany John, her beloved John, to the altar and worse still, worse than all else, might cause him hurt or scandal.
Mary had been brought up with a dread fear as well as respect for the Church and in particular, for the Blessed Sacrament. When it came to that Sacrament, she was no different from any other Catholic motivated by fear in the obeisance to the Church. She had grown up hearing stories, such as the one about the young girl. It had to be a girl – it would never do for the Church to tell improper stories about a man, priest or bishop – who in a state of sin went to receive Holy Communion. No one ever doubted but it was the sin of sex, for in the Catholic Church sex was and is a sin and, once upon a time, was the only sin in that Church. There, before the entire congregation including her father and brothers, the host floated up above the girl’s head and remained in midair. It would not go onto her tongue. Since Mary was a little girl, bullyboy clerics had shouted out that story as they beat their fists off the pulpits. She reckoned that they were men who knew nothing of the compassion, love and humility of the One called Jesus, the Nazarene.
David helped to resolve the problem by suggesting she could go to early Mass, and he and John to the later one. The need for change could be attributed to some domestic necessity or matter of husbandry. It still made her unhappy, principally because acting out the full spirit of Catholicism was important to her.
Mary had been influenced by other childhood stories, such as the one of the careful squirrel and the impecunious grasshopper, of the colourful, carefree but careless butterfly plucked from the sky for flying too high by a greedy bird, or drowned in a summer rainstorm when most other creatures sought out the shelter of trees and bushes before the storm broke.
Now, Mary didn’t stop to ask herself if there would be a consequence, some event or happening which might alter utterly her idyll, turn her world upside down. Life had never been so euphoric. Until now, she had always walked the straight line and worked each day to the full. For her, to pause now and ask herself where she was going would be like stopping the merry-go-round at the fun fair and stepping off, swopping the excitement of the whirly-gig for the more mundane tedium of terra firma.
She was too full of joy and excitement to consider the possibility of taking care, or ensuring that nature would not hand her a poisoned chalice. She was a beautiful woman in love.
One day a fear did strike her. Maybe it had been worming away inside her head for a time. Mary stared at the calendar. She turned back the page to the previous month. She couldn’t quite remember when, and then for one awful moment, she folded the calendar back two pages. Divine God! What day last month? Oh my God! My God! Could it be the previous month still? Two months? On no, surely not!
Gone in that moment were the days of tumbling excitedly amongst the flowers and soft brown leaves strewn like petals on her bed of enchantments, to be replaced by the harsh days and nights of bitter reckoning and purgatorial worry.
Her thoughts immediately went out to John Boyle. He was her problem. It didn’t matter except for John. The shame she would bring on that good man. Would she ever be able to face him? Would she ever be able to lift her humiliation to meet his eyes? Would he be hurt? Disappointed? Would he suffer? Would that poor man cry softly in the sadness and loneliness of his heart? Would he ever forgive her? Would her future baby ever be a reminder to him of her infidelity and of his debility instead of being a thing of beauty bringing hope and joy into the world?
David was coming back through the fields when she ran breathlessly towards him. He stopped to rest the implements he was carrying.
“David! Oh, David! You’ll be vexed with me. Oh God, I’m sorry, David! But I think I’m pregnant.”
At first, he said nothing. Then, a little smile brightened his features.
“I suppose it’s the least we could expect from what we’ve been at these past weeks and months.” He smiled again, bigger this time, through his evenly shaped white teeth. “Have you been to the doctor?”
“No. I just know. I’ve had delays before, but then it didn’t matter. I never took much notice and it always sorted itself out. This time, it’s different. You see I never keep a check on the dates or time. There was no need to. Now, I don’t know when the last time was. Six weeks past, two months, more. I just can’t remember. What a stupid woman I’ve been!”
She walked over beside him and taking his hand squeezed it firmly.
“David, you know I love you, but I’m not a fool. I realise that you’re due to leave here shortly. It’s my problem and I don’t expect you to wait around to share it. I would prefer if you were not here when it breaks. I have to make my own mind up about this. John is my problem and I alone can decide when and how I will tell him.”
Again, David Stapleton was slow in responding. He looked towards the ground, stubbed at a weed with the toe of his boot before looking up.
“I wouldn’t like to add to your concerns, Mary. But don’t forget it’s my baby too.”
“It’s very nice of you to put it that way. Certain facts have to be faced. Certain things cannot be changed. What cannot be changed is my marriage to John Boyle, plus the fact that you’re a young man and you have your life before you yet to live.”
David bent down and picked up the tools which he had been carrying earlier and slung them across his shoulder. He took her arm and they walked back towards the house hand in hand.
The thought of breaking the story to John appalled her. She felt she owed it to him to tell him in good time before the birth, or before any busybody broke the news to him. She would have to tell him herself. The prospect concentrated her mind to a frightening degree both night and day, and throughout the day, and first thing on wakening in the morning; sometimes, too, it woke her with a start at any hour of the night. Always, the one thought was uppermost in her mind – the shame she would bring on her husband.
Another week came and went without bringing the relief she had hoped might yet come as a benediction. She found herself visiting the church and kneeling before the statue of the Virgin. She beseeched the Mother of God to take away her torment. She asked that the wish be granted for her husband’s sake, not for herself, but solely for him. She moved as near as she could to the altar and stared straight at the tabernacle where the host was kept – the host which she believed to be the body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ, Son of the living God.
She reached out with her mind and soul to the presence that she knew was in the tabernacle behind the curtain, protected by the door of gold. She asked, begged, for confirmation that it was not true, that she was not pregnant.
In these moments of utter concentration, she never questioned the responses her supplication might bring. She would accept it as being the will of God, in the divine design of things and in the best interests of herself, however painful or shameful her own personal position or loss might be at the end of the day.
She heard a voice. It couldn’t be the voice of her conscience or yet the promptings of her own will. She never doubted – how could there be doubt – when she was prostrate before Jesus. Jesus, the truth and the life, the way and the life. It could be none other than the voice of the humble one, of Jesus, of the truth speaking through her thoughts. She had listened to it even as a little child and prayed so Sarah would not be cross when she forgot to bring home her copy books from school. In that time long ago, the voice answered firmly, but truthfully, “But she will be cross.”
Now, as then, Mary heard the voice and accepted its truth implicitly. It sounded somewhere in the back of her mind and it was saying, “But you are pregnant, Mary. You should not regret the greatest gift that can be granted in My name.” She struggled with her thoughts and, concentrating with all her being on the divine Presence, she pleaded, “But it isn’t so, yet.” The response was immediate and convincing.”Mary, you know it is so.”
She looked back down the church because she thought she had heard footsteps, but the church was empty. Again, she turned her concentration back to the tabernacle and asked, “Is that the way it is?” The voice answered, “That’s the way it is, Mary.”
So be it.
She walked down the aisle with a heavy heart, wondering as she went about all the women like herself who, over all the centuries and in all the other parts of the world, had been thus struck down. She thought of all those who on the one hand had leapt for joy on learning that a child had been conceived in their womb. Again, she thought of all those who had beseeched heaven that they might conceive a child and on all those who, before contraception, had beseeched that they might not. “Glory be to God,” she whispered sorrowfully as she dipped her finger in the holy water font at the back of the church.
David knew as she came towards him that her worst fears had been confirmed. Before she spoke, he climbed out of the drain and going toward her, put his finger over her mouth and smiled to assure her of his support. Placing an arm around her back, he guided her towards the gate which led out onto the main road. They walked the small piece along the road to the entrance to the wood and followed the path until they came to a place where the River Barrow flows gently between banks of evergreens, and where the long grasses bend down into the passing waters to drink. They lay down on their bellies side by side staring into the river.
Neither spoke for a while. David pulled a daisy from the grass and began slowly plucking out its petals with thumb and index finger. Mary placed her hand over his.
“Don’t, David,” she said softly. “I feel a pain inside me every time you pull out one of its little petals.”
He rolled the flower into a ball and flicked it far out into the passing waters. There was silence again, barely broken by the sound of another daisy being plucked from its bed. Mary took the small flower from him and began twirling it around between her thumb and finger by its stem.
“Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Mary, I love you.” He hesitated for a moment. “I’ll always love you. My love for you doesn’t falter just because of what has happened. My love for you hasn’t grown cold just because you are now pregnant with my child.” He took her hand in his. “Mary, I’m crazy about you.”