Stand by Me (55 page)
She knew that it was Gabriel’s job to be supportive and caring, but it was balm to her ears to hear him sound so concerned on her behalf. Of course, Greg was concerned about Maura too, and always supportive, but at that time much of his concern seemed to focus on the fact that she was pregnant. She shouldn’t worry too much in case it affected the baby. Getting stressed wasn’t good for their unborn child. He never seemed to think that getting upset or stressed wasn’t good for her!
She’d phoned Gabriel two weeks later. They’d met at the Clarence Hotel, after Emma had spent the afternoon with Maura. She had reserved a room there because she hadn’t wanted to spend the night in her parents’ house. Later, she’d wondered if she’d always planned to take Gabriel to it.
She’d used it to get ready to meet him, changing from her comfortable Levis and ballerina pumps into a slim-fitting dress in her favourite shade of lilac and delicate high heels on her feet. Even with the dress’s tailored fit she had no trouble getting into it, because she’d barely put on any weight at all so far in her pregnancy. Her stomach was rounder, she knew, but a casual glance wouldn’t have given her away. Of course in the end Gabriel had got a good deal more than a casual glance at her, but as he hadn’t a clue about naked women, he’d no idea that she was pregnant either.
He’d walked into the hotel, where she’d been sitting at a table sipping plain water, because she’d suddenly gone off both tea and coffee. She’d put her hair up, securing it with an amber clip, knowing that an up-do made her appear even more slender and elegant. Gabriel Brady was a sucker for the slender, elegant look. Maybe, thought Emma, it was because it was more in line with the original Madonna rather than the singing superstar version.
Gabriel had gone for a different look too. He wasn’t wearing his priest’s collar but was dressed instead in jeans and a checked cotton shirt over which he wore a brown leather jacket. Emma was surprised by his casual appearance.
‘People treat you differently when you’re in uniform,’ Gabriel explained. ‘It’s nice to be an ordinary person from time to time.
‘You look like a total rock star,’ she said.
He laughed. ‘When you said the Clarence, I thought we might bump into some of the U2 gang.’
She grinned at him. ‘You’d fit in perfectly. Well, maybe you’re a little too clean cut for Bono and the Edge, but you look great to me.’
‘And so do you,’ said Gabriel. ‘You’re absolutely glowing, Emma. I’m glad that you’re not getting too stressed about your mum.’
She told him about Maura’s recently confirmed diagnosis and his eyes softened.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You must actually be very stressed indeed. You’ve got to remember to take care of yourself, Emma.’
‘You never know how things will turn out,’ Emma said. ‘I’m staying positive for Mum’s sake and for mine.’
‘Good for you.’
It was then that he put his arm around her. Then that she felt the touch of his fingers on her bare arm. And then that she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that she wanted to bring him back to the bedroom overlooking the Liffey. She felt sick with the desire of wanting him, of always having wanted him. She knew that what she felt was wrong on more levels than she could count, but she couldn’t help herself. From the moment she’d first set eyes on Gabriel Brady, he’d been the one she wanted, and the one she couldn’t have. Today, for the first time, she thought that maybe she could. And it wasn’t just about the sex, she told herself. It was about how he made her feel. Gabriel saw her as a person to be cherished; not a person to be cherished just because she was carrying his baby. Ever since she’d got pregnant, she’d felt like an incubator as far as her life with Greg was concerned. He treated her as though she was a precious cargo-carrier, but he’d forgotten that she was a person too. She wanted to feel like a woman again, someone desirable and beautiful and someone who - as had been the case in her teenage years - could have any man she chose.
Gabriel didn’t take his arm away from her shoulder. Even when he loosened his grip on her his fingers were still brushing lightly against her bare skin. And as she turned the conversation around to him and his parish in Rossanagh, he continued to hold her.
‘It’s not the back of beyond,’ he said. ‘But it can be lonely at times.’
‘Lonely?’ She looked up at him with a half-smile. ‘I didn’t think you were the lonely type, Gabriel. I thought you had God.’
‘Sometimes God isn’t quite enough.’ He shook his head. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t say that. I don’t mean it.’
‘Hey.’ She put one of her fingers to his lips and quickly took it away again. ‘You don’t have to justify yourself to me. I’m sure you can’t be a saint all the time.’
‘I do my best,’ he said.
‘Oh, Gabriel. You’re making life very difficult for yourself. Nobody’s perfect.’
‘I have to try.’
‘No you don’t. You’re a person, Gabriel, not a machine.’
‘I have an inner strength,’ he told her.
She laughed. ‘You’re fooling yourself, Brady.’
‘I have,’ he assured her. ‘I just have to tap into it.’
A large group of shoppers, carrying bags and chattering loudly, clattered into the bar and began ordering drinks.
‘Maybe I should go.’ Gabriel looked at his watch.
‘Please don’t,’ she said. ‘Not yet.’
‘This place is filling up and—’
‘Talk to me a bit more,’ said Emma. ‘I need to talk. I really do. Everything’s so difficult these days. Come up to my room and we won’t be disturbed.’
‘I don’t think ...’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ she said impatiently. ‘You’re a priest. It’ll be fine. Like confession.’
She knew it wouldn’t be fine. She knew it as she stood in front of the mirror and took the amber clip from her hair and saw the look in his eyes as her chestnut curls tumbled past her shoulders. And then she turned to him and put her head on his chest and then raised her face and kissed him, losing herself in the gentleness of his lips and the faint scratch of his stubble on her cheek and the touch of his fingers again but this time as they eased the zip of her dress downwards and slid it softly from her shoulders.
It takes two, she’d said to herself afterwards, as they’d lain together in the tangled sheets. I know I wanted to do this, but so did he. If he hadn’t, it wouldn’t have happened. And, she thought, it was a relief that it finally had. Wanting to make love to Gabriel had been a part of her life ever since the first time she’d seen him. Although, she reflected as she lay beside him, he’d been wildly inexperienced and desperately clumsy and none of it had been as erotic and sensuous as she’d expected. It was difficult to believe that with someone as damn sexy and masculine as him, it wouldn’t be the best sex she’d ever had.
‘That was amazing.’ Gabriel finally spoke. ‘I never realised ...’
‘That the sins of the flesh could be so great,’ Emma finished for him.
‘Something like that.’
She sat up in the bed and looked down at him.
She’d never known a man as handsome as Gabriel Brady. He looked like a poster boy for an aftershave ad as he stared up at her. The words of the Chinese proverb her mother used to quote drifted into her mind.
Be careful what you wish for . . .
She felt a sudden pain in her chest, and for a moment thought that she was having a heart attack. And then she told herself that it was probably just heartburn. She’d been suffering terribly with it ever since she’d got pregnant.
Be careful what you wish for . . .
She felt a sudden pain in her chest, and for a moment thought that she was having a heart attack. And then she told herself that it was probably just heartburn. She’d been suffering terribly with it ever since she’d got pregnant.
Gabriel closed his eyes. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘This . . . this was wrong. I shouldn’t have given in to it.’
‘Give yourself a break,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t help it.’
‘Of course I could,’ he said. ‘I did before.’
Who she wondered, who had he managed to resist before?
‘All the times you came to our house.’ He opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘Dressed in the way you did, looking so very, very sexy and gorgeous. I was able to resist you. Easily.’
So he had noticed the effort she’d made for him back then. The thought cheered her.
‘I was able to put you out of my mind because I had more important things to think about,’ he said.
‘And now?’ she asked.
‘I’ve been going through a hard time. I suppose my defences are low.’
‘What sort of hard time?’
‘It’s nothing I shouldn’t be able to deal with,’ he said. ‘It’s lonely sometimes in Rossanagh, that’s all. Isolating. And I’ve been feeling that lately. So I let myself be tempted by someone who cared about me. But by giving in to personal gratification and forgetting that there’s something more—’
‘Don’t start larding on the Catholic guilt and worrying about it being a sin,’ Emma told him. ‘It was something we had to do. Something good for both of us.’
‘It
was
good.’ Gabriel sighed. ‘But not in a good way.’
was
good.’ Gabriel sighed. ‘But not in a good way.’
‘I’ve always wanted to make love to you,’ she told him. ‘So that’s why it was good for me. But also because I’ve always liked you, Gabriel. You know that.’
‘You’ve been a temptation to me too,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d always be able to resist you. I thought I was strong enough.’
She sighed. ‘I’m a person, not a temptation. I did this with you because you usually make me feel like a person. Now, though, I’m beginning to feel like the devil’s mistress.’
He sat up. ‘I have a vocation,’ he told her. ‘And you have a husband.’
She didn’t say anything about the fact that she was going to have a baby. She hadn’t thought about the baby while they’d been making love, but she thought about it now. Nonetheless, she wasn’t going to tell him. That knowledge would send his moral compass spinning out of control.
‘Are there consequences?’ he asked. ‘For us?’
She’d been tempted to say that there were always consequences.
‘Not this time,’ she told him, and then got out of bed. ‘Go in peace, Gabriel, to love and serve the Lord. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.’
He’d phoned her and texted her and sent emails to the house, all of which told her that she was a special person and that God would look after her. Greg had seen the texts and emails; there was nothing in them that would have let him know that she’d slept with the person sending them. She knew that Greg was pissed off that Gabriel was sending so much stuff, and he complained to her that he was trying to convert her into some kind of Holy Joe.
Emma, struggling with her feelings of guilt about her afternoon in bed with Gabriel, and suddenly worried that the priest might feel the need to confess his sin to her husband, started snapping at Greg, telling him that he was deliberately trying to be unsupportive, comparing him unfavourably with Gabriel, who, she said, was simply trying to comfort her.
‘Easy to do that at the other end of the country when he doesn’t have to live with you,’ said Greg.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Well I doubt that even the saintliest man in the world could put up with someone who’s become as self-obsessed as you.’
‘I’m not self-obsessed.’
‘You bloody are,’ said Greg. ‘Going off into your own little world, telling me that you’re meditating, not letting me near you ...’
‘I don’t feel like it right now,’ she said.
It had been over a month since they’d made love. The last time had been the day after she came home from Dublin, the day after she’d slept with Gabriel. Making love to Greg was a totally different experience. He took time exploring her body, kissing her gently and caressing her and then moving rhythmically with her so that they cried out at the same time. He was good in bed, Emma thought. Gabriel had been like a teenager by comparison.
She hadn’t expected to feel guilty. When she’d planned to sleep with Gabriel, she’d been completely able to justify it to herself, telling herself that they would have done it before she’d married Greg if only Gabriel hadn’t been so hung up on the whole becoming-a-priest thing. And that was a relic of old times now, surely. Admittedly, the Catholic Church still demanded celibacy of its priests, but Emma was utterly convinced that it was a vow many of them broke. Hadn’t there been scandal after scandal in the nineties when it had been discovered that priests (even a bishop, for heaven’s sake) had fathered children? No, she thought Gabriel had always been living an impossible life.
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