Peter fidgeted nervously with the neck of the bottle as he began to recant his tale….
"So, it was a Sunday I think you'll recall which is typically a full on day in a Priest's diary. At St Joseph's there's a Children's Mass, an afternoon Mass and nightly Virgil – a lot of scripture to remember, and a lot of talking. Talking" he smiled, as if remembering something anecdotal to his story. "You can forget about being a Priest if you can't talk for England – that's what they used to teach us in the seminary. Well, growing up, I suffered pretty badly with talking – I used to have this stutter which found its way to almost everything I said. At one point I was almost mute."
"I had no idea." Assumpta interjected, the concern that she felt for the younger Peter threatening to overwhelm her.
"My school, a Catholic boys school in Old Trafford, weren't so enlightened about how best to treat me and so, day after day, I was made to recite scripture in the broom closet of my classroom. The elder Priests, when they heard this, mistook it for piety and set me on the path to the priesthood."
Assumpta couldn't believe what she was hearing. The cruel machinations of his teachers aside – that was how Peter ended up becoming a Priest? Through a simple miscalculation?
"To this day, I use reciting scripture as a mechanism of sorts, to help me stave off my impediment. During Mass, that Mass on that Sunday, I was doing the same. Until suddenly, I couldn't talk. My mind drew a blank. I could see the words before me, I could even form them in my head, but nothing would come out. Thankfully, the parishioners took it as an end to the sermon and filtered out accordingly, but even when I was left to myself, I was rendered completely speechless."
"What happened? What did you do next?"
Peter took a moment to answer, as if still battling his childhood demons. "An epiphany of sorts."
Assumpta sidled closer to the curate, equally concerned and enraptured by what he had to say. "Epiphany?" she goaded.
"You see, every day that I've been at St Josephs, since the first day that I clapped eyes on you in fact, I realise that I've never truly said the words in my sermons. I've recited them, sure – exactly how I did at school – but I've never really said them. You know? There's a difference."
"I wouldn't feel too bad about it Peter; I doubt there's a Priest in Ireland who does anything but recite – "
"You see, I realised in that moment," he interrupted gently, as if needing to get this out "that whether I took a wedding or a baptism – when I spoke the words – it was you that I was really thinking about. You who my mind would invariably turn to, in everything that I was doing. And in that moment I knew that I was incapable of saying another thing until I told you that I loved you."
The context this had provided to Peter's former declaration made the publican's heart swell a notch. She remembered all too well, him coming to her back door past closing. She remembered the look on his face, the mixture of thrill and trepidation, the softening of his eyes as he held her in his gaze. He'd delivered his next words assuredly, as if they'd been itching to come out. In one short sentence, her life was thrown in complete disarray as she realised that hearing "I love you… I'm in love with you" from her curate was all that she needed in life.
"I love you," Assumpta whispered meaningfully as he finished recanting this story. "I'm in love with you, Peter."
Peter's eyes began to well as she said this, her voice as steady as a heartbeat – albeit not his heartbeat, currently.
"It's all I'll ever need to hear."