Forbidden Fruit Read Online Free PDF Page A

isn’t suicide. Is there no penalty for being drunk in charge of a child?
    “Don’t tell ya father, it’d only upset him.” She made me promise, as she sank the pint of vodka she had just bought to replace
     the pint she drank the day before. She could find a needle in a haystack if it had a lick of vodka on it.
    So she wouldn’t get too drunk, I used to dilute the vodka with water before she did, but Daddy saw the motes in it, till I
     learned to put the water through fine muslin first.
    To save her, since I loved that nutty lady, I lied to her and I lied
for
her until lying was as easy as breathing. I enjoyed it. Like Mommy, I kept replacing the little sips taken from the bottle
     of truth with liquid from the faucet of my own imagining.
    I also made a frightening discovery that most people—not my father—like being lied to; it makes life more comfortable.
     Nobody wanted to know the truth about Mommy any more than she did. Lying became for me a form of Christian charity.
    What about you, Eamonn? Do you care for truth or do you, like the rest of us, demand that people tell you lies?
    We left St. Mary’s for his big stone Palace next door. The very word raised my hackles. Another barrier between him and me.
    Did he intend to show me once and for all that he was a princeling of the Church? Inside the Palace, backs straightened like
     candles and “Morning, my Lord,” “Yes, my Lord,” “No, my Lord,” all spoken by men and women, some of whom knelt to kiss his
     ring. Was this, I thought naughtily, the clerical version of kissing ass?
    He introduced me to his lay secretary, Pat Gilbride, with, “This is my cousin, Annie Murphy, from America.”
    Pat was a big happy blonde in her late twenties with a Cheshire Cat smile and hooded eyes that looked right at you.
    When Eamonn got me to shake hands with Justin, the odd-job man, he relaxed. He slipped easily into his one-syllabled man-of-the-people
     talk. Justin had patches on knees and elbows, and a brogue that completely foxed me. In his presence, Eamonn, almost dancing
     a jig, was funny and tender, paternal and exigent at the same time.
    Afterward, Eamonn whispered, with twinkling eyes, “A grand Catholic is Justin. If he hanged himself he’d use a rosary.”
    He held up his own beads, with the crucifix on top, noosed his wrist and tugged upward in a vivid demonstration.
    He liked Justin, I think, because Justin would never doubt that he was the greatest man alive after the Pope.
    One person I liked immediately was Eamonn’s priest-assistant. Tall, with a marvelously gentle sense of humor, Father John
     O’Keeffe was a blend of Jimmy Stewart and Sean Connery. He had heavy brows, soft eyes, and a fine ski nose. A laughing Kerryman,
     he was not in the least scared of Eamonn, who said to me, “Clever chap, he has three degrees.”
    In Eamonn’s study, dominated by a portrait of Pope Paul VI, the phones never stopped ringing. As he took the calls he thumbed
     through a pile of mail. He could do several things at once—talk down the phone to an Irish priest in South America promising
     funds for a village well, read a Latin document from a Vatican official, and, muffling the phone, explain to me what we might
     do for the rest of the day.
    Though this was routine for him, had he brought me there on my first morning to impress me with his power? Few women would
     object to that.
    At lunch, the only other guest was a Scot named Ian Simpson from the Scottish Finance Office. Eamonn sprinted through grace
     whether his guests approved or not.
    Mr. Simpson was a small, bald, soft-spoken man. “Come to Edinburgh, the Athens of the north, Miss Murphy.” He promised to
     show me Princes’ Street and the Castle.
    Even to be near Eamonn had its perks.
    The best food and French wines were served by soft-shoed nuns with humble demeanor and downturned gaze. Did these women have
     eyes at all? How could Eamonn tolerate such servility?
    The contrast between the two men