Assumpta, September 1998

It was cold out, summer had definitely turned into autumn. Assumpta was grateful for Leo's jumper and pulled her hands up into it for warmth. She'd tidied up the bar after closing time and come up to find Leo gone again, leaving his writing and her, presumably for another nighttime walk. He was working freelance and struggling to file copy as he'd hoped, claiming writers' block, and she'd lost count of how many times she'd found him gone, either chasing a story elsewhere or just out for a walk. She sighed as she read what he had written, "the riddle of the idyll", and decided to go and find him.

Despite what he'd said the other day, they did need to talk. He was clearly not happy in Ballykissangel, as she'd predicted, but it wasn't just that; they weren't connecting as they used to, even as they had done in London, like they just didn't work together here in Bally K. It was possibly because he was out of his comfort zone in the countryside and so he made jokes which just got on her nerves, or that she felt like he didn't take her business here seriously, but also, honestly, she knew that Peter's proximity was also playing a part in their deteriorating relationship. Whilst Leo was increasingly absent, she knew that she was snappy with him and holding him at arms length. She knew none of it was really Leo's fault, and she did want her marriage to work. There were moments when she though maybe it could, moments when they laughed together or they held hands on a walk, but mostly, sadly, she was increasingly feeling like they'd made a terrible mistake.

She'd hardly seen Peter in the weeks they'd been back, she assumed that he'd been avoiding her and the pub. He continued to refuse her offer of a room at the pub and yet continued to look nackered and generally bent out of shape. It must've been hard for him, coming home to find he no longer had a home and sleeping in the church on the floor, but it made her cross that he wouldn't accept her help and sad that, even after all these weeks, they hadn't found a way to be friends again, or at least not like they had been.

She'd reached St Joseph's and looked up at the familiar building which dominated the small village. She felt cold again and wrapped her arms around herself for warmth, smelling Leo's aftershave. As she did she saw Peter come out of the church and look up to the heavens, his face tired and wan. She checked her watch, it was nearly midnight, what was he doing? He looked so lost, like a little boy who didn't know what he was doing, that she found herself walking up and into the church without even really thinking about it. She couldn't find Leo, maybe he didn't want her to find him, and Peter needed her.


Peter, September 1998

Peter stood at the altar, feeling exhausted as he had done permanently since he'd arrived back home. Alongside everything else he'd been dealing with, he'd had half of his parishioners complaining to him about Assumpta's woman's group which was just the last thing he wanted to think about. He tried to pray, but the words wouldn't form in his mind. He'd taken to going to bed in the sacristy as late as possible as he'd been finding it harder and harder to sleep on the floor, his mind unable to stop turning over. He'd tried to keep himself away from Assumpta and Leo, away from their marriage, even refusing to stay at Fitzgerald's, but it was hard to be so disciplined at night and when he did sleep, he often dreamt of her, waking up disoriented and lonely.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Assumpta's voice cut through the darkness making him jump. What was she doing here, at this time? His heart did a little flutter and he turned round, half expecting that this was some sort of sleep deprived hallucination.

"What?"

She didn't appear to be a figment of his imagination. She was wearing Leo's jumper, a fact which he cursed himself for noticing. That was what husbands and wives did, share clothes, share their lives…

"Whatever has you looking nackered"

She walked towards him and he sighed. She was so beautiful.

"You think talking solves everything, don't you?"

"Well, ah, trouble shared…?"

She semi-smiled at him, and he wondered whether he should just talk to her, unedited and unfiltered; maybe it would help. But he couldn't. He was a priest and she was married. It was totally hopeless. He was totally hopeless. He didn't know what to say and he suddenly felt awkward and sighed. This clearly got her back up.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot; priests only talk to God."

She spat the last words, laced with ire, and he turned from her, just exhausted in the face of her hostility. Why couldn't they find a way to be friends? He wanted to be her friend but it seemed, right now, like that was just impossible.

"I haven't got the strength, Assumpta."

He sighed again, rubbing his throbbing temples. He'd talk to her, he'd try, just not about the main issue.

"Most of it's your fault anyway"

He pointed at her, without looking, as he spoke. He figured that ought to get the conversation started. She did try and interject but he made sure he steered things in a safe direction.

"I mean, I'm living in the sacristy. I've got a lot on my mind. And I don't need half the parish upset coming up to me about your women's group."

Again, she tried to interject, and he knew exactly what she was going to say, agreed with her in fact, but now he was talking he wanted to keep on talking.

"No, I know it's stupid, but… you put ideas in their heads."

As he said those words, about the women's group, he realised that was true for the main issue too, the one he was trying not to talk about. He had thought that she felt about him as he did about her, thought that was an unspoken reality, but he'd come back to Ballykissangel to find that she was married to someone else, that she had been able to move on in ways that he simply couldn't.

"You put ideas into people's heads"

He'd said it probably more harshly than he'd meant, but he felt his anger boil over again. Anger that she could discard him so easily and so quickly, that he meant so much less to her than he had thought.

"You just don't think, do you Assumpta?"

He turned away from her again and buried his head in his hands on the altar again, fighting the angry tears which pricked at the back of his tired eyes. She was quiet and for a moment he wondered if she'd already left, but then she said, quietly,

"I'm sorry"

"Yeah", was all that he could manage to respond, knowing he was being unfair but not being able to do anything about it.

"Peter?"

Her voice came again from behind him, using his given name in the way so many never did. His heart ached for her.

"What?"

"You can tell anything to a friend"

He didn't look at her; he couldn't. What was she inviting him to say? He couldn't say it, it was over, he was a priest and he had to accept that. He had to accept that he had lost her.

"Priests don't have those kinds of friends."

He heard her footsteps echo off the church walls as she walked away, and home to her husband. Priests don't have those kinds of friends.


Leo, September 1998

Leo had been walking for the best part of an hour, trying to blow the cobwebs out of his mind and get it working properly again. He'd found it much more difficult than he'd thought working freelance from Ballykissangel, feeling isolated and away from the action of Dublin, and not managing to churn out the copy he'd been used to previously. It wasn't just that though, things were not good between him and Assumpta; he knew it, she knew it; probably the regulars at the bar knew it. It had been good in London, he wouldn't have married her if he didn't think that they could make it work. It had been good, like the old days. It just hadn't been as good, and getting worse, since they'd arrived back in the village. Assumpta had been distant, not seeming to want to let him into her life here or into decisions about the pub and he couldn't seem to do right for doing wrong. He knew she was distracted by the business, and what to do with it, but he was sure there was more going on that she wasn't telling him, like he'd felt when he'd come back to cover the election and he'd thought she'd had a thing for the priest. In London he'd laughed that off as typical journalist seeing things that weren't there, but as he reached St Joseph's, he spent a moment looking up at the building and wondering.

As he looked up, he heard movement and the door open and, in true reporter style, dropped into the shadows to see what was going on in the church after midnight. He watched his wife, wearing his jumper, come out of the church, wrap her arms around her for warmth, and walk quickly back in the direction of their home. He frowned, dark thoughts swirling as he watched her out of sight and then the priest himself step out of the church, look after her for a while, and then return back indoors.