Redemption - Leon Uris [40]
She found herself slumped in old Darby’s armchair feeling stripped. “Jack,” she whispered, “I’m always so damned alone.”
“I know that, darlin’.”
“Why can’t I create joy? Why can’t It feel it? Do you think I like it this way? Jack, good God, what’s the matter with me?”
He knelt and took her hands, “You’ve the curse of being a great person, Atty Moore. You’ve been walking dead on into a storm since I’ve known ye and you’ve got no choice. There are very few who can walk alongside you and keep up. You just keep pressing forward and the storm drenches you and your hair is strung down like a wild banshee and the cloth of your dress is bolted against your body, but you keep shouting in rage, violent with anger when you are forced to take a half step back. You can’t help yourself. You’re Atty. That’s what Atty is.”
She slipped from the chair and let him hold her and rock her back and forth, and Atty wept. Atty weeping? Oh, what a hurtful sight.
Jack found the guitar and strummed above her.
She was torn by the cruel stones of Connemara,
And she wept for the dear peasant’s plight,
So to hell with you Brits,
In your bright shiny castles,
I’ll end the hard sorrows,
Of Ireland’s long night.
He pulled her to her feet and saw tears, so strange on that magnificent face.
“I have a fear, Jack. I fear I might go to my grave without ever knowing the joy you speak of. And now having heard it so clearly from you, I fear it more because there is nothing I can do about myself.”
“No, you’ll find it,” he lied.
“Jack, did you know you get a little tic on your right cheek when you lie? I’ve known that since I was ten. I deplore my loneliness almost as much as I deplore the men I’ve invited in.”
“There’s one out there for everybody.”
“Not for me. I have no ability to give myself and I cannot be taken.”
She made herself erect and cut off further weeping and blather.
“Jack, I have another fear. I want you to show me what it is like outside this prison I live in. I want only one short moment of your time and you’re on your way. I do not want to go on for fifty more years and never know what it was like, even for a moment. Jack, I am terrified you’ll turn and walk out on me now.”
Jack Murphy’s lips kissed her face and Atty’s eyes lowered as they had never lowered and she let herself be drawn against him and felt something unearthly in the wrap of his arms.
“I really don’t know what to do,” she said softly. “I suppose I’m not good at this at all.”
“Jack and Atty,” he said, “are going to lie down beside each other. As the sun dies and the night grows we will stand up from the bed for a moment and I will undress you and you will undress me and we will look at each other. Then we will lie down again and spend the night only playing our fingers and our lips over one another, everywhere. There will be nothing more for now until we understand each soft warm path the other likes and each place that makes us thrill. In the morning I’ll pack two saddlebags and we’ll ride up to the fishing lodge and start again the same way. And then we’ll make love. All your fire will turn into intense control. We will make love softly, perhaps many times, until we have finally driven each other mad, and then we’ll let go, angry and abusive. And then we’ll sleep and start again until we are too exhausted to go on. And we’ll lie there with the tenderest and softest touching and we’ll stay that way until you say it’s all right for me to leave.”
“Oh Jaysus, I’ve been waiting for you, man. Does it really work that way?”
“We’ll find out. Aye, it works if we don’t lose control. Unvarnished lust and orgasms really destroy quality lovemaking.”
“You bastard! I’m shaking-from head to foot.”
How many days? Who cared? She knew she would not have to go to her grave without having known it. It was part of her now, the knowing that she was capable of it, the knowing that she could always think back to it…with joy.
Atty’s back was to him and once more he wandered and wondered over the magnificence