"Ballyutogue."
"Ballyutogue, are you saying Ballyutogue to me?"
"Yes, Freddie."
"Ballyutogue? A village doctor delivering my grandson?"
Sir Frederick's face froze as though he were in mid seizure. Roger fortified his wife, grasping her hard on the shoulder as her father anguished to his feet. Half of Sir Frederick's rages were play acting, this was real. He continued to look at them stricken. "Are you insisting on this insanity?"
"The baby is going to be born right here," she repeated.
Confusion set in. There was nothing, absolutely nothing he could do about the situation. No vast sums of money to purchase his wishes, no threats to enforce them. "I'm sending to Dublin . . . no, London, immediately to get some suitable men here to see that this . . . this . . . Cruikshank person does his job properly."
"Freddie, Freddie, he probably sees more difficult births in a single year than Chadwick sees in a lifetime."
"There! Exactly my point! You admit it's going to be a difficult birth."
"Nothing of the sort. I'm saying the man is capable in any situation."
"I demand," he said, with fist coming into play on the desk, "to know who's going to assist him."
Roger and Caroline looked at each other briefly. He patted his wife's shoulder, braced . . . "A midwife," he said.
"This Jesus-in-the-manger horse shit has gone far enough!"
"Freddie, please . . ."
"I shall not" — he thumped for emphasis — "return until you come to your senses. And as for you, Hubble, I am shocked and disappointed. Any disaster as a result of this folly will be clearly on your head."
Sir Frederick vanished, leaving loud evidences of his anger with an afterblow of hangings, clangings and thumpings. Roger started after him.
"Don't," Caroline commanded. "He's at his bully best now and there's no reasoning with him. Let him go beat his head against the wall. He'll be back."
Roger pushed his hair around, distressed. "It's his first grandchild, Caroline. Let me try to pacify him."
"No!" she said sharply.
"See here, you're going to end up as upset as he is over this."
She silently, adamantly put her thick glasses on and began to riffle through plans on the desk. Roger looked wistfully in the direction of Weed's departure. He was trapped between two of the most hardheaded bullies in Ulster acting out their lifelong diatribe. One step further and he realized he could be obliterated in their love-hate cross fire.
*
Caroline's final two months passed with neither she nor her father yielding. Roger felt himself squeezed to the outside, almost like a stranger. The Weed passions were immovable. He spoke to Sir Frederick on business and only through the medium of Brigadier Swan. A quiet settled over Hubble Manor as father and daughter continued to be consumed by their own stubbornness. For once, neither knew how to unknot the bindings and speak out first or even send a signal. Cycles of silence turned into cycles of tension as her time grew near. Once or twice Roger determined to break the ice, to go to Belfast himself, but Caroline's ultimatums contained finality.
The night which began with a slight but recognizable cramp grew painful, and as the time between pains narrowed, Roger sent for Dr. Cruikshank, then retreated to a special apartment prepared for the event. A number of hours passed with Roger beside her holding her hand and clocking the time between constrictions.
"Will you stay on, Roger?" she asked.
"As long as my stomach holds, and then I'll only be as far away as the next room." He continued to stifle his annoyance that Cruikshank had not arrived.
"Oh, Roger," she said, you're a wonderful man. I'm so glad about us. And I do adore the hell out of you."
"Come now, Countess, you say that to all the workmen."
"You're such a shy little boy when we play our games. In the last month or so I've thought up some wonderful things to do when all of this is over. For some mad reason, you excite me all the time. Something so . . . bloody wonderfully English . . ."
"Caroline, you're embarrassing me." He leaned down and whispered, "There are servants about, you know."
"I think they've already guessed about you and me," she said, taking his hand and putting it between her legs and saying that they should make love one more time here and now, and Roger turned crimson as she knew he would and coughed away his chagrin. She tightened her grip on him and writhed. It seemed far worse than the last pain. Roger stole a glance at his watch, then sighed with relief at sounds of commotion in the hall outside.
Dr. Cruikshank entered, followed by a short squat woman. By dress and manner she was identified by Roger as a Catholic, most likely a tenant's wife.
"Sorry, m'lord," the doctor said, "had an emergency at the quarry."
Roger arched with a reaction that sent off the unspoken message, "what at the stone quarry could possibly be more important than the Viscountess?"
Cruikshank got the vibrations as he bathed his hands in a basin and returned vibrations of his own. "Had to amputate. Rockslide. Poor chap lost both his legs." The doctor's message was that if ordinary safety measures had been taken in his lordship's quarry there would have been no slide. As they unlocked their glances from each other, the doctor made to bedside. "How are we doing, Lady Caroline?"
She nodded affirmatively.
"How long between pains?"
"Just a bit under seven minutes," Roger said.
He dug through his bag, found the stethoscope and placed it on her belly and her heart. "We've a bit of time. This is Mairead O'Neill," he said. "She's brought hundreds of young ones in all by herself. Mrs. O'Neill is the finest midwife I've ever worked with."
Caroline nodded that she understood why he had made the choice but otherwise gave no greeting nor asked anything. Mairead was put in her station, even in this situation, but it did not matter to her. What seemed strange to her was the absence of questions she always heard from a first-time mother.
Caroline felt a pain coming. As it swept through her she tightened up and broke into perspiration but uttered not a sound, looking at the midwife as if to say, "You'll not hear me scream because I'm from as strong a breed as any woman you’ve ever met and I'll show you courage."
Mairead wiped Caroline's face and felt her pulse. "You'll do better for all of us and yourself as well if you loosen up, m'lady. It makes everything go a lot easier." After another series of pains failed to induce an outcry, Mairead looked at her with compassion. She leaned close out of earshot of the others. "You've nothing to prove or gain by your behavior. We're all the same when it comes to this. Let yourself go, darling'."
"I can't," Caroline whispered . . . "I can't."
The doctor drew Roger aside. "Everything looks fine," he said. "Mrs. O'Neill will be preparing your wife now, Lord Roger. I think you should wait outside."
"We've decided to go it together as long as I am able."
lan Cruikshank grunted. Strange, he thought, but quite nice. Odd pair these, stubborn as hell but so in it together. He scratched his head, trying to think of cause, but acquiesced. "Well, stay out of our way."
The night blackened up outside and even as the pains intensified to excruciating thresholds, Caroline continued to refuse to cry out. In the seventh hour of her labor, Mairead tapped the dozing doctor. "It's coming," she said.
Roger was up and at bedside holding his wife's hand.
"Bear down, m'lady," Mairead said, "that's it, bear down now, love, bear down . . ."
"Freddie!" Caroline shrieked at the instant of Jeremy's birth. "Freddie! Freddie! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!"
CHAPTER THREE
Having come to the most awesome decision of her life, Finola was determined to steel herself to go through with it, take all the necessary humiliation, for in her own eyes her sins were enormous.
The priest's presbytery was the finest house in the Upper Village and that was as it should be in the tradition of the Church. It was not in the mold of the simple cottages but a
grand two-story home such as the more prominent Protestants owned in Ballyutogue. Widow O'Donnelly, the priest's housekeeper, admitted Finola and led her to a small but fine room of soft deep furnishings which members of the parish had purchased two years earlier.
"And how is wee Dary?" Father Lynch inquired of the new baby.
"You'll not see the likes of that one again in a hundred," she boasted of her favorite subject. "Dary will be a small child and more delicate than the others, but he'll be sound, I'll see to that. I never stop being grateful to the holy Mother for sparing his life."
Father Lynch accepted the gratitude on behalf of the Virgin. "And yourself, Finola? What urgent matter brings you here?"
She twisted her fine linen handkerchief nervously and struggled to keep her composure. "I've a lot on my conscience, Father. What I am about to tell you should have been confessed many times over the years."
Father Lynch grimmed up and braced.
"Father," she whispered, lowering her eyes and voice weakening with shame, "I have been the wife of Tomas Larkin almost twenty years and I have sinned all during the marriage." She squirmed, then blurted out, "I have always enjoyed pleasures of the flesh."
The priest shot to his feet, clasped his hands behind him and thrust his face heavenward. "I see," he sighed. "Would you kindly amplify that remark?"
"I've almost always enjoyed the sexual act," she whispered.
"That's quite unnatural, you know."
"I know."
"Exactly what is it you enjoy?"
"Everything," she whimpered.
Father Lynch pulled his chair up close and poked his face next to hers. "What you have told me is extremely serious. If I am to counsel you properly you must purge yourself here and now. Are you ready?"
"Aye . . . I am ready."
"Look at me, Finola." She did so out of the corners of her eyes and blushed with guilt "We must go over this, item by item," he commanded.
It was degrading but if the gates of heaven were ever to open for her it had to be done. She confessed to one hedonistic pleasure after another, building a mountain of debauchery and mortal sins the likes of which he had never heard in his thirty-five years as an agent of God. Why, the woman reveled in everything! Nudity, pinchings, slappings, biting, licking, kissing, rubbing, even down to the reprehensible organs themselves. It appeared there was nothing the two didn't do, even taste each other! When Finola had drained herself, she sobbed. Father Lynch was ashen.
"These are unnatural acts under the influence of Satan!"
She wailed, he paced.
"I knew something might be wrong, Father, but so long as our purpose was to try to make babies and I couldn't help myself for enjoying it, I thought it really wasn't actual pleasure I was feeling but some kind of holy experience about the possibility of becoming pregnant."
"It's a curse," he said. "I know of many other women who have had these same carnal sensations but nothing as profane as you have spoken about."
"Oh, Father, what causes it?"
"It is God constantly reminding us of the original sin in the form of a woman," he answered. "What is so very serious is that you haven't confessed this before. Have you at least prayed that these sensations would go away?"
"Not with any great sincerity. I pretended I didn't know what they were."
He shook his head numerously. "At least you have enough faith left to seek atonement."
"Atonement is only part of the problem," she said. "It all came to roost with wee Dary's birth. As you know, it was a very difficult time. Dr. Cruikshank warned Tomas and later myself that it would be fatal for me to have any more babies."
Damn that Cruikshank! the priest thought. Always interfering with God's work, telling such rubbish to the women. Yet with all his power he was too wise to challenge the doctor. If he gave advice to ignore the doctor and the woman died, the repercussions would be terrible.
"I know it means violation of a holy duty," Finola said, "and I am perfectly willing to risk the consequences but Tomas takes the doctor seriously. Oh, Father, I know in my heart that God is punishing us for what Tomas did at the time of Kilty's passing . . ."
"What is the problem then?" he asked.
"Now that my health has returned and even though we fear having babies, both of us are very much desiring to be husband and wife in bed again."
The priest felt violated. After all she had told him, she still wanted to continue amassing sin upon sin. As his anger rose so did his determination to exorcise her of the demon which had seized her soul. "You have committed evil enough, attempting to cheat God by having experienced pleasures of the flesh and to further that evil by continuing to have carnal sensations year in and year out without confessing them. It is evil enough to abandon your duty to God and stop bearing children on the advice of a Protestant . . . but there can be no graver mortal sin than lusting after sex for the sake of sex!"
"What am I to do, Father! Tomas and I act like strangers to one another."
"Tell me the truth. Do you still share the same bed?"
"That's the misery of it, we do," she wept. “Lying there side by side without touching, knowing we are never to have sex. He stays at the shebeen every night and when he does finally come home he just falls into bed, drunk. In the mornings there is hardly a word between us any more." Finola gritted her teeth, trying to force the next words out, but they stuck. She knew there were safe times during the month for a woman to have sex with her husband and she, wanted to appeal to the priest for dispensation to do it then, but it was clear by now he would never condone such a thing, for he was disgusted with her.
"Oh, Father, help me," she cried, falling to her knees.
He hovered above his victim, then pointed a bony finger . . . "The reason you have these unnatural and evil desires is because of your neglect of mother church. Instead of yielding to temptation, you should have been confessing for years. You should have fortified your soul and you should have filled yourself with the pain, the goodness and the mercy of Jesus and Mary. You have offended God, grievously!"
Finola Larkin howled,
"You are fortunate, woman, in that your Church is all-forgiving. Are you ready to submit to the supernatural redemptive powers of God?"
"I'll do anything!"
She remained on her knees as he considered the alternatives. "Your case is extreme. I must meditate for guidance. In due course I will work out a course of penance through prayer and offerings to the Church. When I do, do you swear to adhere to it faithfully?"
"Yes, Father, yes."
"Through this devotion, you will eventually find the strength to continue to live with Tomas in the only way possible . . . as brother and sister. You are never again to submit to him for sexual ravagement, for that sin would be final. Well, I'm waiting for your answer . . . it's that or hell!"
"I . . . I promise . . ."
"Very well," he said. "Finally, because your sin is so grave I don't want to take chances that your penance wasn't sufficient. You must agree to give one of your sons to the Church. I am positive that by this action God will look favorably on your case, grant you quicker absolution on earth and shorten your time in purgatory."
"Tomas will fight having his son become a priest," she cried.
"That is your greatest chore, Finola Larkin. You must bring that man back to Jesus Christ on his knees."
"Father, he may choose to die first."
"Not if you do your duty. You are never to let him forget that it was his sins, his lechery, that brought you to this. In the end, when he returns to mother church, it will also give him the strength to forgo his lustful ways and live in peace with you as brother and sister."
Without offering her a hand to help her to her feet, he turned and walked to the door. "I must go meditate now. When I am done, I'll send for you and tell you what your penance is to be."
CHAPTER FOUR
In the autumn of eighteen and eighty-six a great event occurred in my life with the coming of a na
tional school for the children of the outlying villages. Father Lynch didn't take kindly to the intrusion on what he considered to be a personal domain, but was forced to hold his tongue because Bishop Nugent wasn't about to offend the British. He didn't have to worry because almost no one in the Upper Village contemplated going. Not only were the economics against it but much of the traditional Irish craving for knowledge died during the famine.
Our daddies had gotten their schooling from the hedge teachers like Daddo Friel's old man and Daddo himself, who traveled from village to village and held classes on the sunny side of the hedges. They were one part poet, one part Celtic scholar and one part regular teacher with the mission of keeping alive the ancient language and folklore. When they vanished from the scene, the Irish tongue vanished with them in our part of the country.
The only schooling Conor and I received was a weekly class from Father Cluny, the curate, and no great scholars were apt to evolve, from him.
I was the scrapings of the pot, the last of the litter. It had its advantages. Aside from shepherding in the summer, I was generally useless around the farm and spoiled by my ma. There was no real reason for me not to attend the national school except for my parents' fear of me being thrown into a lough full of Protestant sharks, but I pouted and tempered until they gave in.
Conor had remained quiet about the school but there, was no mistaking what was in his mind. When I told him the joyous news about myself, he was determined to make his own stand. We went up past the crossroad to the edge of the first fields and waited all afternoon. Conor sat with his back against the stone wall, more nervous and uncertain than he had ever acted before, as he looked up the path for his daddy.
Conor used to come here almost every day to meet Tomas until the last few months. Something queer was happening to the Larkins. Tomas was snapping at his kids and everyone knew he was taking more and more to drink. A lot of people thought he was still grieving over the loss of Kilty although that had happened over a year ago.
When he did come down from the hills that day his face broke into a smile on seeing Conor waiting for him again.