Maeve saw her mother’s face blanch with fear, but her father’s was red in temper. ‘Is that so?’ he said. ‘Well, let me tell you, if welcoming my daughter, who was in dire need, is your idea of mortal sin, then I’d be glad to meet the others of like mind in hell and shake them by the hand. Not that I intend to see them for a wee while yet.’
‘Thomas, you are making a grave mistake,’ Father O’Brien said. ‘God will not be mocked.’
‘It’s not God I’m mocking, you sanctimonious bugger,’ Thomas said. ‘And if you have nothing further to say, I’d like you to leave.’
‘As I said, you’re making a grave mistake.’
‘No doubt. Good night, Father.’ Thomas turned from the priest and sat down facing the fire with his back to the outraged man, then threw on another two peat bricks and gave the fire a poke.
It was up to Annie, flustered and upset, to see the priest to the door. ‘I’m sorry, Father,’ she said in a whisper as she opened it for him. ‘He’s . . . Thomas is a wee bit upset.’
‘It’s not to be wondered at. Everyone is upset when they go against God and what He wants,’ the priest said, ducking his head to go out of the farmhouse. ‘Think carefully about what I said back there, Annie. Good night to you.’
‘Good night, Father.’ She closed the door behind the priest.
Thomas turned to his wife and growled, ‘Don’t you ever do that again and apologise in my own house on my behalf.’
‘I couldn’t leave it like that,’ Annie protested. ‘You swearing at the priest and ordering him from the place.’
‘You should think yourself lucky. If I’d had to look and listen to the hypocrite much longer, I would have punched him on the jaw,’ Thomas said.
‘That wouldn’t have helped anyone, Daddy,’ Rosemarie said, and she appealed to her mother. ‘Do you think he meant it, about postponing the wedding? Only Greg’s mother wouldn’t like it.’
Maeve knew Greg’s mother wouldn’t, but then she liked so little. In many ways she felt sorry for Rosemarie, for Sadie Fearney was a widow and reliant on her son, Greg. She had no desire for him to take a wife and lose her place in the household, and Maeve guessed would make Rosemarie’s life a misery unless she established herself at the very beginning. The last thing Rosemarie needed was for the priest to postpone that wedding indirectly because of something her elder sister did. Surely he couldn’t do that, even though priests seemed to be a law unto themselves. Surely that was going beyond the bounds of reasonableness?
‘I’m sure that was just an empty threat,’ Maeve said. ‘Just said to frighten and worry you.’
‘I hope so,’ Rosemarie said. Greg didn’t have a very strong personality and was not able to stand against his mother at the best of times, and Rosemarie was not one for asserting herself either. She was frightened of her future mother-in-law, but she also knew if she wasn’t to marry Greg, life would lose its meaning and if the priest were to succeed in blocking the wedding, Rosemarie knew Sadie would make hay out of it.
Maeve could see the worry of having a mortal sin on her soul was torturing her mother. Annie could never remember committing a mortal sin before. Mortal sin was for stealing, murder, adultery or missing Mass, but Annie had done none of those things and Maeve knew she would fret over the priest’s words. Her father might be able to fend them off but her mother couldn’t do that, she knew, and her heart felt like lead.
That night in bed, she lay long after Grace, Nuala and Rosemarie’s even breathing told her they were asleep, and she thought about the trouble she’d brought to her family. Even the children were no longer carefree. Now Grace often had mysterious stomach aches before school, and both she and Kevin returned solemn-eyed and never spoke of the happenings through the day as they once had done. Neither indeed did Nuala and Colin, and Maeve guessed they were going through it too – and Rosemarie, behind the counter in a shop in the town, unable to hide away from people. Maeve supposed she should be grateful Rosemarie hadn’t been sacked, but she knew she probably had to run the gauntlet daily.
Then, there was her mother, a prisoner on the farm for she couldn’t face the townspeople. Thomas had to fetch her groceries, and though she went to Mass, she didn’t go to confession, Benediction or Devotions and hadn’t been to the Mothers’ Union since Maeve had arrived at her door.
Maeve knew she had to return and, if necessary, live out the travesty of her marriage in her back-to-back hovel in Birmingham. Then maybe everyone else’s life could go on as before. But she’d not take the children back to suffer with her. She couldn’t do that to them for she knew full well what she’d be returning to.
She’d dreamt of starting afresh in Ireland, bringing her children up in peace and tranquillity and, in time, getting a job. Now the dream lay in tatters, and ahead of her, she had no doubt, lay a nightmare. She sobbed in the bed, muffling her tears in the pillow.
The next afternoon, she went to see Father O’Brien. She went alone, for she’d not told the family of her decision.
Cissie O’Brien, the priest’s sister, looked at Maeve coldly. ‘Yes?’
‘I’d like to see the priest, please.’
‘He’s resting after his dinner.’
‘It’s urgent.’ And it was urgent, Maeve thought, for if she didn’t carry out the resolution now, having wrestled with it all night, she’d lose the courage to do it at all.
‘Wait a minute,’ Cissie said through compressed lips. ‘I’ll see how he is.’
A little later she was back, disapproval written all over her face. ‘Come in,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Father will see you now.’
Father O’Brien was sitting before a fire, in a cosy-looking armchair in a comfortably furnished but very tidy sitting room.
‘Well, Maeve?’ Father O’Brien said heartily as if they’d never had a cross word in their lives. ‘This is a surprise.’ He got up from the chair and said, ‘Sit down, sit down. I’ll ask Cissie for tea.’
‘No!’ It came out louder and sharper than Maeve intended, and she went on, ‘No, I’m sorry, I want no tea and I’d prefer to stand. What I have to say shouldn’t take long.’
Father O’Brien’s eyes narrowed but, undaunted, Maeve persevered. ‘If I was to return to my husband,’ she said, ‘would you stop the harassment of my family?’
‘Maeve, I object to the word harassment.’
‘Call it what you like – your bounden Christian duty, if you like,’ Maeve said impatiently. ‘I’ve not come to bandy words with you but to ask for assurances. If I return, will you hear the confessions of my family and administer Communion to them at Mass? Will my mother be able to shop in Ballyglen again without folk whispering and sniggering behind her back? And will the children be free of taunts? And finally, will you allow Rosemarie’s wedding to go ahead as planned and allow Kevin to rejoin the Communion class?’
‘Maeve, that isn’t all my doing.’
‘A fair bit of it is,’ Maeve said. ‘And you could have stopped it all with one or two words to the parishioners from the pulpit. Isn’t there a piece in the Bible, where Jesus meets the prostitute at the well, and when people would have stoned her to death Jesus stopped them and said that those who were without sin should cast the first stone? As I remember it, the woman got away without a mark on her. That’s what my God’s like, Father. Yours seems full of anger: “Vengeance is mine; . . . saith the Lord.” Mine says, “Do your best, you’re only human.”’
‘Maeve, you are blasphemous!’
‘I’m