Death Row - Mark Pearson [58]
Sarah Jane grinned. ‘John won’t be back until tonight, you know?’
‘I know.’ Father Carson Brown smiled back at her. John Keeley was the reason he was feeling guilty. They had grown up together, best friends through primary school and then secondary school, the Salvatorian College Catholic school, not a hundred miles from the street in Harrow where John Keeley now lived and where he himself would visit whenever his old friend was away on business.
At eighteen John Keeley had gone to university to study law and Carson Brown had gone first to seminary college and then on to the priesthood. The truth of the matter was that the two boys had both been in love with Sarah Jane Keeley since they had met her in infant school. Not that they knew it at the time, of course. Sarah Jane had been a complete tomboy, but the three of them had been inseparable and as they grew into teenagers it was clear that the friendship between them had also grown into something else. But it was John that she clearly fancied, so Carson had kept his distance, never revealing his true feelings for her. In fact, he fell so hopelessly in love with her at age sixteen that he decided if he couldn’t have her then he wouldn’t have any other woman. He threw himself into his studies and volunteer work at his church, Our Lady and Saint Thomas of Canterbury, and delighted his surprised parents when he announced that he wished to train for the priesthood. It took him many years until he finally made his way back to a position in Harrow and six months after that before he made his way into a position with Sarah Jane. And it wasn’t the missionary one.
‘What are you smiling at?’ the object of his affectionate recollections asked.
‘Life,’ he said. ‘And all of its rich tapestry.’
‘Seems to me you look like the cat that got the cream.’
‘If I was a cat I would be purring.’
‘I certainly am. You sure you don’t want to come back to bed and stroke me again?’
The priest laughed. ‘Like I say, you’re a wicked, wicked woman, Sarah Jane.’
‘You’re quite right, and I should be spanked for it.’
He laughed again. ‘I’d give it a try but I imagine I’d end up with a couple of missing teeth.’
‘Yes. You probably would.’
Sarah Jane let the sheet drop, revealing her large breasts, the nipples clearly aroused and as pink as her lips against the creamy white magnificence of her skin. She put her hands behind her neck, arching her back slightly. ‘Are you really sure you wouldn’t like to linger?’ she asked again, breathlessly.
Carson swallowed and shook his head, a look of something like regret passing through his eyes. ‘I really can’t – sorry.’
Her smile faded. ‘You’ll have to go and tell a few Hail Marys, I suppose?’
The priest sighed. ‘Don’t, Sarah Jane.’
‘It’s not our fault I chose the wrong man.’
‘I know.’
‘It’s your precious God who made him gay. Made him that way but didn’t give him the balls to admit it until he had been married to me for fifteen years.’
‘Let’s not discuss this again.’
‘Seems to me your religion can be pretty flexible when it comes to your own moral code but not to others.’
‘It’s not my religion that dictates celibacy.’
Sarah Jane blinked. ‘Come again?’
Father Carson Brown sat beside her and took her hand. ‘It’s just Church law, not based on any scriptural doctrine.’
‘Really?’
The priest nodded his head sadly. ‘It was in 1139 when the Second Lateran Council forbade the marriage of priests and declared null and void those legitimate marriages that had taken place before.’
‘Nice of them.’
‘But it didn’t ban sex for them.’
Sarah Jane was sitting up now, the sheet wrapped demurely around her and her forehead creased with a frown. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The edict made the wives into concubines, is all.’
‘Why?’
‘So their progeny wouldn’t have the right to inherit property. Priests used to travel around before but now churches were being built by communities and parishes were created and the priest was staying.’
‘So?’
‘So it was all about money. The property was owned by the Catholic Church.’
‘So why haven’t they done anything about