A few shout-outs to start this chapter off. First, singtomemymeadow, I totally agree about Brendan and Siobhan. If they'd had only one night together, then it took an awfully long time for her to realise she was pregnant, something like a year! And that only makes sense if she's some sort of space alien. (If this inspires any science-fiction Ballykea stories among the readership, I salute you. As for me, I think the affair ran deeper.)
Next, Alexiah Rose: in your wonderful "Trinity," you made reference to Assumpta's mother being from Belfast. I don't recall if this was canon or if it was a development of your own; if it's the latter, I commend you, because when I read that bit, I thought, "This could make lots of sense." Whatever the case, I've taken the notion and run with it in this chapter. If it did originate with you, I hope you don't mind!
Siobhan had taken a certain twisted glee in this morning's shopping order, a certain thrill in watching horror cross Kathleen's face like a storm cloud. Cat litter, she now knew, was frightening enough for the poor shopkeeper, but nothing would compare with her priceless expression as she priced the small white rectangular box.
Focussing on this helped Siobhan make the drive home without going mad.
Given her cycles' irregularity in recent years, she had thought that her last period - now six or seven weeks gone - had been exactly that. She had thought her extra sleepiness had been another sign of menopause. She had chalked up her appetite changes to same.
The vomiting yesterday morning, she dismissed as some karmic fallout of the previous night's irresponsible meal.
When it returned this morning, though...
She was grateful that Joe the cat was her only witness as she retched in the bathroom, grateful that his presence had precluded certain others from staying over and waking to the sound of it.
Returning to that bathroom now, she again appreciated the animal's quiet company. Seeing her lift the lid, he positioned himself in his own toilet.
"Solidarity, then? Thanks for that. Funny, only days ago it was your fertility I was worried about," she mused.
The minutes crept by. "What do you think, Joey? Where's the smart money?" The cat blinked at her, as if even he knew her one-sided conversation meant nervousness.
She looked at the clock, then at the tester. With three minutes to go, the results were already unmistakable.
"Well," her voice shook and her eyes stung. "Guess we'd better find someone new to scoop your litter."
The cat jumped up onto the vanity and kicked the tester onto the floor. Siobhan nodded her agreement.
Peter had watched the Altar Guild as they stripped their jurisdiction bare of any adornment. He had gone through the motions of the Three Hours' Agony, had meditated on the Seven Sayings. He had fasted and prayed and emptied the fonts.
He could think of nothing he was supposed to be thinking of. He could only think of her.
Soon he would process in silence, would prostrate himself on the floor of St. Joseph's. He would pray with his congregation for every kind of people in the world. He would stare blankly as Mrs. McMullen deliberately queued up last to venerate the cross in a melodramatic display of kisses and sobs.
None of it would stay with him. Not like it should. He would want it to, would pray for the numbness to leave him and hand him over to the grief and contrition the day demanded.
In the end, though, he would be able to concentrate on nothing but his own thirst, the infinitesimal passion of a man, which was nothing in the shadow of a perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world.
In a rare moment truly alone, he took to his knees.
"I'm so sorry," he whispered. "I failed You again. I still always fail You."
His throat was dry, his mouth mossy, his stomach growling and his head light.
"Please forgive me. This is why I have to go."
If there was a response to comfort or reassure him, he couldn't hear it.
Perhaps that is my answer.
The predictable fast-day supper rush was underway at Fitzgerald's. The pub television, tuned to RTÉ News, was no doubt a draw in its own right. Mouths not silenced by bites of beer-battered fish were no doubt subdued by the voice from the set:
"The end, when it came, came quickly as the final pieces were put into place."
Ambrose's fingers seemed to twitch at this wording. How like his boyhood self he still was.
Thinking of their youth reminded Assumpta of her parents. Assumpta found herself wondering what they might have thought of it all, this hopeful breakthrough, this optimistic promise of a gradual slide towards unity.
She thought of their marriage, of her mother's lifelong struggle to reconcile her own heritage with life in the Republic and the Catholic Church. The conversion and migration had never quite suited Maureen - and yet, Ballykea and St. Joseph's had ultimately held her closer than they ever held the man for whom she had given up everything.
How close the Fitzgeralds held one another was debatable even now.
Assumpta had grown up hearing only the whirlwind-courtship, star-crossed-lovers version of the story, but seeing only the grudge-bearing and resentment of two people who both thought they'd compromised too much for too little. Her parents' two sets of accounts and their two sets of actions took the shape of four conflicting gospels, all claiming to bear the true last word.
She had never liked that about Good Friday, the paradox of it. Even its very name seemed hypocritical. She remembered asking Brendan to explain it - no, demanding that he explain it - when she was his student. She looked at him now, sipping his Guinness, thoughtful and hopeful and sceptical all at once as he took in the words of another Brendan, reporting the news. She wanted him to explain it again, why faith and politics and love were always mired in contradictions.
Siobhan entered quietly now and took a seat beside Brendan. She looked exhausted, rattled.
"Harp for you?" the publican guessed.
Siobhan shook her head. "Tipperary Water, please."
Assumpta shrugged and served the drink.
Perhaps it was best that Peter was probably leaving town; perhaps this ache was better than what might await her if she tried, like her father, to contain a heart that she would never really have claim on, to subdue someone whose beliefs were miles away and left no rightful place for her.
No indeed. No British-Irish Agreement for us.
She craned her neck again to the television news. She wondered about these awkward bumbling men in painfully-patterned neckties, making their tentative declarations of major triumph or their immediate proclamations of disappointment. She thought of her mother, a lifetime of trying to answer for the man she married. I can't very well expect Peter to spend his life answering for me, thought Assumpta.
"'Unity if they ever vote for it'," said Padraig, parroting the other O'Kelly on the TV screen but adding a layer of doubt.
Michael shrugged. "Never presume to know where someone else's heart lies," he said.