“Is that in Dublin?”
“No, right there in Galway. But I was restless. My father was pushing me to join the Army, like him.”
“I didn’t know Ireland had an army.”
“Ha—that’s the one thing the Irish have been best at: fighting. My father was a teenager during the Troubles and ran messages for the IRA. Anyway, the main thing he does now is patrol the border between Northern Ireland and the South. But I had another idea in my head for my future. I wanted to be a priest, but not a priest who stayed at home in Ireland and listened to old ladies’ confessions and played golf in Blackrock every Monday. I wanted to go far away, to be a missionary. So I played with the idea all the years I was at the university.”
He stopped and glanced at Kate. Her tea was cold beside her. She knew his was, too, but to get up now would break the mood.
“The only thing that stopped me then, quite frankly, was that I wasn’t sure I could give up women. Hell, I’m still not sure I can,” he laughed.
“Women in general, or a particular woman?” Kate kept her tone light, teasing.
“There was one woman—a real woman, not a girl. A married woman at that.” He looked at her. “Now I’ve shocked you, I see.”
Kate shook her head. She hadn’t reacted so much to the admission he’d fallen for a married woman as to the pain she’d seen in his eyes. Why was he telling her this? She waited.
“Oh, there’s not much to tell. She was the wife of one of my professors, at least ten or twelve years older than I. She was elegant and sophisticated, and I think she enjoyed having poor sex-starved students lusting after her. I thought it was love for a long time, and would sit in my room reading Yeats’ poems to Maud Gonne and thinking about her.” He shook his head.
“I love Yeats,” Kate said softly.
Tom recited:
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
Tom broke off suddenly, and Kate looked away to hide the tears that had surprised her. Gazing across the room at her, he said with an edge of bitterness, “I seem always to be longing for something I can’t have.”
She sat unmoving for a minute. Then she rose and deliberately broke the mood by saying with false cheer, “I’ll get us some more tea. Keep going with your story. When did you finally go to the seminary?”
But Tom had risen, too, and was heading for the door. “Oh, I went to Maynooth right after I got my degree. After four years there I was ordained, and spent a couple of years in Kerry. For the past seven years, I’ve been on loan to Maryknoll. I’m hoping they’ve forgotten about me back home. This life suits me—at least for now.”
Kate walked with him to the door. As he put on his jacket and tied the muffler around his neck, his eyes shone down at her. “Here’s your cloak, Kate. Walk outside with me a bit in the snow.”
She turned around so he could place it on her shoulders. For a moment nothing happened. Just as she started to turn around to see what was wrong, she felt his face close to her own. He said nothing, but placed the cloak firmly on her shoulders. They stepped outside into the snow-covered courtyard.
No flakes fell now. A million stars hung uncommonly near in the black sky. Conscious of her joy as she walked beside him, she wanted the earth to halt its spin toward dawn. No words passed between them.
Suddenly lights from a jeep caught them in its glare, and they froze. It was Alejandro, and now Kate, squinting, could see Jeanne Marie sitting next to him.
“There’s been an accident. A man from the village has dropped his child in the ditch and the baby drowned. He was drunk, and now he’s crying, begging for the priest to come and baptize the child.” Jeanne’s voice was exasperated but urgent.
“Damn,” Tom muttered under his breath. “The baby’s dead. I can’t baptize it, Jeanne. It’s not magic you know.”
Alejandro said nothing. He waited while the priest and nun stared at each other. Finally, Tom spoke.
“Okay, I’ll come and see what I can do. It just makes me so mad to get these calls after something terrible has happened.”
“Can I come, too?” pleaded Kate.
“No, there’s nothing you can do.” Tom had already jumped in the jeep, squeezing in next to Jeanne Marie.
“Tell Josepha what’s happened. I left her in the parish hall.” Jeanne’s voice had faded as the jeep roared off, making ugly black tracks in the snow.
Kate walked back to the convent alone, and for the first time that night felt the cold air penetrate to her very bones.
C
hapter Seven
Two weeks after that night, Tom left for Lima. They saw each other briefly at odd moments, but he seemed distant and preoccupied. In his absence, Kate’s world had gone gray and cheerless. At last, she’d admitted the
