Excerpt
Caitlin rolled restlessly on to her back and listened to the rain that was falling again on the black slate roof. She closed her eyes but still she couldn’t sleep. She thought of Padraig in his lonely room. Padraig loved her once. Even as a priest he loved her as a man loves a woman. But he loved her no longer. Not after that night in the rectory, that night for which he blamed her entirely. Since then he had grown cold. Even hostile.
Caitlin had to admit that Padraig’s behaviour after that night had disaffected her in turn. That sanctimonious self-righteousness her father had seen in Padraig’s nature had risen to the surface. She saw it plainly now herself. It swamped those more attractive traits that she had always admired in Padraig: his thoughtfulness, his unselfishness, his quick intelligence. She was still moved by the intensity of his wild eyes, his almost black, deep-set, restless eyes; by his pale, hollowed face; by his lean, ascetic body. Padraig was not physically strong, not in the ways that men displayed their muscular strength: in lifting and carrying, in pushing and pulling, in fighting. But he was tough; he had stamina; he had remarkable fortitude. Wind, weather and distance could not tire him; adversity could not weaken him; pain could not make him cry. Padraig thrived on pain and adversity as Flynn on outrage and injustice. Padraig shunned pleasure as if it were a poison and dined on duty and self-immolation as if they were his meat and drink. Strange, demented Padraig.
What would my life have been like with that man, Caitlin wondered, had he not refused me for the Church? Refused me but that once.
҂
A week after the wedding Mother Ross returned from her holiday in Ardross.
“I had a lovely time, Caitlin. Drinking tea with my cousin, Eithne Toner, and gossiping like any two old women would.”
“You didn’t get yourselves a couple of fancy-men?” Michael asked from his chair by the kitchen range—Finn MacLir’s old chair.
“But of course we did,” said Mother Ross with a chuckle. “Two millionaire Americans who wouldn’t leave us alone. Wanted to marry us and take us away to their mansions in Texas.”
Caitlin smiled. “And why didn’t you go then?”
“I couldn’t, Caitlin. I didn’t have a change of underwear.”
Caitlin and Michael both laughed, and Michael choked on half-inhaled pipe-smoke and started coughing.
