Redemption - Leon Uris [311]
“Good,” Rory said.
“I won’t agree,” Atty said.
“It’s my responsibility. You’ll have to come around.”
80
“Rachael, when you touch me like that I think I’m going to melt and die,” Dary whispered.
“Then melt and die,” she answered. “I’ll touch you again and again, here and here and here.”
He held her hands, then drew them to his lips. Her arms went about his head, with strength, and drew his head to her breasts. Dary felt bosom against his cheek.
“Nothing is this good,” he said.
“It gets better,” she whispered, “much, much better.”
Dary separated from her abruptly. “How would you be knowing that?”
Well, he had to know and now was the time. “I’m not chaste,” she said, in the direct manner of a Fitzpatrick.
Why should that annoy him, indeed! After all, he’d been hearing confessions for over a decade from women he’d never believe would have indulged. Why had he always thought of Rachael and virginity in the same breath? He was going to ask something stupid like “Did you confess?” or “You were forced upon?” Oh, the damnableness of wanting all women pure!
“I want no secrets between us,” Rachael said. “I think you ought to know about it.”
And then what, he thought. Would he ask her to do penance or chastise her? Wouldn’t that be rather hypocritical under the circumstances? He and Rachael were not exactly priest to penitent.
“I don’t need to know,” he pouted with plain old male pride. “On the other hand, in that we are in a close family friendship and so forth, my understanding of the situation…yes, I want to know.”
“I was in my sixth form at school, just ready to graduate. My history teacher, Ned Finch, was a very decent lad from an Anglo family. Despite the disparity in our ages and the fact I was his pupil, we had a strong attraction to each other.”
Dary found himself all quivery with a dry lump spreading through his throat to his chest; his hands were a bit shaky. An emotion he had never felt or known of welled up inside him. Jealousy? Is this jealousy? It’s a bloody monster, if that’s what it is. He got together an outward show to cover himself and demonstrated that it was all in a day’s work for a priest.
“Dary, maybe that’s enough.”
“Indeed, no. Do go on.”
“We were like great chums more than anything. Ned was into reading poetry and going to theatre and we liked to ride in Phoenix Park. Being as there were no other lads who caught my fancy, I really looked forward to Sundays with him. We were entirely discreet.”
“Entirely?”
“Sort of. If you want to keep seeing a fellow and enjoy his companionship, you fool around a little, you know, a little.”
“I don’t know.” But he did. From confessions. Kisses, kisses with the use of tongues, breasts…breasts were the first very major target. Then rolling about so that parts accidentally rub against each other, entirely innocent…bah!
“I didn’t feel sensual toward him, but we were pals and the boys my age were real dullards.”
Well, that eased Dary up a bit. The Virgin had been his woman for over thirty years and Mary’s virginity was Her gift to all women. He knew that virginity was not a reality, but now that he felt “that way” about a girl, virginity seemed its old awesome self. He wanted Rachael’s story to end that way for her sake. What the hell was he thinking about? It didn’t make tuppence difference if she was or she wasn’t so long as Mary was. And Rachael wasn’t Mary. Besides, they’d have to cut out what they were doing, anyhow. It could only be a short-lived dalliance.
“Ned enlisted in the Royal Irish artillery a month after the war started,” Rachael went on. “He was going to fight in France and he pleaded with me to do it.”
The old demon leapt into Dary’s throat again!
“I went to Mom and we talked it over.”
“You and your mother?”
“Of course, my mom, who else? I already know what a priest would tell me. I wanted to hear the truth and not a lecture. Dary, I’m sorry.”
“What did Atty tell you?”
“She asked if I loved him and I told her I didn’t love him in a sexual way but he was my dearest friend and I was terribly