while the other man moved, a brown blur, from corner to corner of the room. The lukewarm water ran between her shoulder blades and across her face, like tears.
“Pater noster … in Deo speramus, Te Deum laudamus.”
She recalled the mole on his left cheek, his eyelashes. She had words somewhere about his eyelashes and their cousins, his perfect brows. She had seen his lashes beat, back and forth, like the fronds of miniature angel’s wings, and then she had seen them hold still.
A terrible sadness poured over her. Where had she gone? Where had she gone? If she were to return, how terrible the loss of this singular enchantment? Her homeland was a city under-water that she’d never seen except when he’d shown her – the spires, the steeples spilling from his open hand.
“No,” she said quietly, and it was the first word she had spoken.
“No,” she said again into the distance of the room.
“Cast off this shadow, Mary,” the priest was saying “that stands between yourself and God.”
He advanced towards her with the large crucifix. Mary saw the young naked man that hung from the cross and reached tentatively to caress the sand waves of his ribs. But it was not Christ that she touched.
“Say a prayer to him, Mary.”
She floated away and turned her face towards the small window and the sea. A rectangle of sun lay on the floor beside the table. Something in Mary decided to step inside the golden light. The priest placed the crucifix carefully on the table and turned towards his friend whose gaze was fixed on the bronze radiance of sun-filled hair. Quinn reached for his breviary and nervously thumbed the pages, searching for further prayers.
Each day since his arrival on the island O’Malley had witnessed this ceremony; the priest stiff and wilful, the girl soft and absent … her eyes partially covered by lashes, her gaze averted, her face impassive. Once he had seen the priest, in desperation, extend his arm as if to strike or embrace her, and the schoolmaster, himself, had instinctively moved forward to prevent the anticipated invasion. Father Quinn’s arm had dropped helplessly back to his side. The men exchanged a quick look of anger, but they never spoke of the incident.
In fact, since their first conversation in O’Malley’s cottage, they rarely discussed the girl at all. Once or twice the priest had asked, “What am I to do?” or “How’s it all to end?” And his friend had replied, “When you convince yourself and her that it’s all nonsense … that and your congregation … that will end it.” But Father Quinn had exclaimed, “Nonsense! And she with that look on her!”
Mostly the two men spent the quiet evenings and their walks to and from Mary’s cabin comparing facts gleaned from their recent reading. Between them they shared the ownership of the
Supplement to Address the Defects of the 5th, 6th and 7th editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica
, purchased from the Sedgewicks at reasonable cost upon the arrival of the eighth edition in their library. There had almost been a quarrelbetween the friends when the Supplement became available, O’Malley claiming that he should have it for the little hedge school and Quinn insisting that he needed it to instruct his parishioners – though few of them could read and many of them spoke only Gaelic.
They had finally resolved the argument through joint ownership, and now they were systematically reading the four volumes from A to Z, or, in Quinn’s case, from Z to A, so that they were able to exchange volumes somewhere around the middle of the alphabet. Because they had only the Supplement, there were large gaps in their learning, but they comforted themselves with the idea that, the number of knowable things being infinite, there would always be gaps in their knowledge, and because the body of knowledge was steadily growing it was futile to lust after the eighth edition of the Encyclopaedia since there would soon be a
“Pater noster … in Deo speramus, Te Deum laudamus.”
She recalled the mole on his left cheek, his eyelashes. She had words somewhere about his eyelashes and their cousins, his perfect brows. She had seen his lashes beat, back and forth, like the fronds of miniature angel’s wings, and then she had seen them hold still.
A terrible sadness poured over her. Where had she gone? Where had she gone? If she were to return, how terrible the loss of this singular enchantment? Her homeland was a city under-water that she’d never seen except when he’d shown her – the spires, the steeples spilling from his open hand.
“No,” she said quietly, and it was the first word she had spoken.
“No,” she said again into the distance of the room.
“Cast off this shadow, Mary,” the priest was saying “that stands between yourself and God.”
He advanced towards her with the large crucifix. Mary saw the young naked man that hung from the cross and reached tentatively to caress the sand waves of his ribs. But it was not Christ that she touched.
“Say a prayer to him, Mary.”
She floated away and turned her face towards the small window and the sea. A rectangle of sun lay on the floor beside the table. Something in Mary decided to step inside the golden light. The priest placed the crucifix carefully on the table and turned towards his friend whose gaze was fixed on the bronze radiance of sun-filled hair. Quinn reached for his breviary and nervously thumbed the pages, searching for further prayers.
Each day since his arrival on the island O’Malley had witnessed this ceremony; the priest stiff and wilful, the girl soft and absent … her eyes partially covered by lashes, her gaze averted, her face impassive. Once he had seen the priest, in desperation, extend his arm as if to strike or embrace her, and the schoolmaster, himself, had instinctively moved forward to prevent the anticipated invasion. Father Quinn’s arm had dropped helplessly back to his side. The men exchanged a quick look of anger, but they never spoke of the incident.
In fact, since their first conversation in O’Malley’s cottage, they rarely discussed the girl at all. Once or twice the priest had asked, “What am I to do?” or “How’s it all to end?” And his friend had replied, “When you convince yourself and her that it’s all nonsense … that and your congregation … that will end it.” But Father Quinn had exclaimed, “Nonsense! And she with that look on her!”
Mostly the two men spent the quiet evenings and their walks to and from Mary’s cabin comparing facts gleaned from their recent reading. Between them they shared the ownership of the
Supplement to Address the Defects of the 5th, 6th and 7th editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica
, purchased from the Sedgewicks at reasonable cost upon the arrival of the eighth edition in their library. There had almost been a quarrelbetween the friends when the Supplement became available, O’Malley claiming that he should have it for the little hedge school and Quinn insisting that he needed it to instruct his parishioners – though few of them could read and many of them spoke only Gaelic.
They had finally resolved the argument through joint ownership, and now they were systematically reading the four volumes from A to Z, or, in Quinn’s case, from Z to A, so that they were able to exchange volumes somewhere around the middle of the alphabet. Because they had only the Supplement, there were large gaps in their learning, but they comforted themselves with the idea that, the number of knowable things being infinite, there would always be gaps in their knowledge, and because the body of knowledge was steadily growing it was futile to lust after the eighth edition of the Encyclopaedia since there would soon be a
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