"You didn't say you thought about me, did you? If there was no guilt in it, you would have mentioned my name alongside your father's. I think perhaps it's a good thing I'm going away, don't you? You're a little old to be having schoolgirl crushes, but you're not a very old almost-seventeen, are you? I like your lack of worldly wisdom, but I know how painful schoolgirl crushes can be; I've suffered enough of them."
She seemed about to speak, but in the end her lids fell over tear-bright eyes, she shook her head free.
"Look, Meggie, it's simply a phase, a marker on the road to being a woman. When you've become that woman, you'll meet the man destined to be your husband and you'll be far too busy getting on with your life to think of me, except as an old friend who helped you through some of the terrible spasms of growing up. What you mustn't do is get into the habit of dreaming about me in any sort of romantic fashion. I can never regard you the way a husband will. I don't think of you in that light at all, Meggie, -- do you understand me? When I say I love you, I don't mean I love you as a man. I am a priest, not a man. So don't fill your head with dreams of me. I'm going away, and I doubt very much that I'll have time to come back, even on a visit."
Her shoulders were bent as if the load was very heavy, but she lifted her head to look directly into his face.
"I won't fill my head with dreams of you, don't worry. I know you're a priest."
"I'm not convinced I chose my vocation wrongly. It fills a need in me no human being ever could, even you."
"I know. I can see it when you say Mass. You have a power. I suppose you must feel like Our Lord."
"I can feel every suspended breath in the church, Meggie! As each day goes on I die, and in each morning saying Mass I am reborn. But is it because I'm God's chosen priest, or because I hear those awed breaths, know the power I have over every soul present?"
"Does it matter? It just is."
"It would probably never matter to you, but it does to me. I doubt, I doubt."
She switched the subject to what mattered to her. "I don't know how I shall get on without you, Father. First Frank, now you. Somehow with Hal it's different; I know he's dead and can never come back. But you and Frank are alive! I'll always be wondering how you are, what you're doing, if you're all right, if there's anything I could do to help you. I'll even have to wonder if you're still alive, won't I?"
"I'll be feeling the same, Meggie, and I'm sure that Frank does, too." "No. Frank's forgotten us .... You will, too."
"I could never forget you, Meggie, not as long as I live. And for my punishment I'm going to live a long, long time." He got up and pulled her to her feet, put his arms about her loosely and affectionately. "I think this is goodbye, Meggie. We can't be alone again."
"If you hadn't been a priest, Father, would you have married me?" The title jarred. "Don't call me that all the time! My name is Ralph." Which didn't answer her question.
Though he held her, he did not have any intention of kissing her. The face raised to his was nearly invisible, for the moon had set and it was very dark. He could feel her small, pointed breasts low down on his chest; a curious sensation, disturbing. Even more so was the fact that as naturally as if she came into a man's arms every day of her life, her arms had gone up around his neck, and linked tightly.
He had never kissed anyone as a lover, did not want to now; nor, he thought, did Meggie. A warm salute on the cheek, a quick hug, as she would demand of her father were he to go away. She was sensitive and proud; he must have hurt her deeply when he held up her precious dreams to dispassionate inspection. Undoubtedly she was as eager to be done with the farewell as he was. Would it comfort her to know his pain was far worse than hers? As he bent his head to come at her cheek she raised herself on tiptoe, and more by luck than good management touched his lips with her own. He jerked back as if he tasted the spider's poison, then he tipped his head forward before he could lose her, tried to say something against the sweet shut mouth, and in trying to answer she parted it. Her body seemed to lose all its bones, become fluid, a warm melting darkness; one of his arms was clamped round her waist, the other across her back with its hand on her skull, in her hair, holding her face up to his as if frightened she would go from him in that very moment, before he could grasp and catalogue this unbelievable presence who was Meggie. Meggie, and not Meggie, too alien to be familiar, for his Meggie wasn't a woman, didn't feel like a woman, could never be a woman to him. Just as he couldn't be a man to her. The thought overcame his drowning senses; he wrenched her arms from about his neck, thrust her away and tried to see her face in the darkness. But her head was down, she wouldn't look at him.
"It's time we were going, Meggie," he said.
Without a word she turned to her horse, mounted and waited for him; usually it was he who waited for her.
Father Ralph had been right. At this time of year Drogheda was awash with roses, so the house was smothered in them. By eight that morning hardly one bloom was left in the garden. The first of the mourners began to arrive not long after the final rose was plundered from its bush; a light breakfast of coffee and freshly baked, buttered rolls was laid out in the small dining room. After Mary Carson was deposited in the vault a more substantial repast would be served in the big dining room, to fortify the departing mourners on their long ways home. The word had got around; no need to doubt the efficiency of the Gilly grapevine, which was the party line. While lips shaped conventional phrases, eyes and the minds behind them speculated, deduced, smiled slyly.
