Never an Empire Page 6

  From then on her life became true to her name. She was a childless widow and soon just one of the many widows the war against Spain created. What sympathy and support had been initially forthcoming for these unfortunate women slowly dried up and then stopped. San Juan was not a rich place and there were just too may widows to look after: those with children had to take priority. Maria was left to fend for herself. It was the Church that finally came to Maria’s aide. She was told that she could live in the empty priest’s house on condition she kept it clean and looked after any priest who came to stay there. Also she must clean the church and see that it was unlocked and locked so that it could be used at appropriate times. There were no wages for these services but it was a roof over her head and, as an official of the Church, however humble, the town could not see her starve. A small but sufficient allowance of food was collected from the parish. Thus Maria survived for ten years.

  Then Father Enrique arrived.

  Young, enthusiastic, full of hope, he kept her on as housekeeper and gave her an allowance for all the domestic necessities which Maria considered almost sinfully extravagant but, with an effort, she managed to live with her new life of excess. Her social position also changed. With Father Enrique’s arrival and her elevation to official housekeeper of the town’s only priest she was a woman of importance. She no longer took charity but was even able to dispense it herself, on behalf of Father Enrique of course. After so many years of difficulty and sorrow Maria Dolores once more glimpsed happiness and she thanked God, but only after she had thanked in her heart and prayers Father Enrique.

  Now she sat in the kitchen with this young woman, a stranger come from nowhere who had crept into Father Enrique’s life and into his heart.

  They sat facing each other across the kitchen table.

  ‘I did as you said. I told him he must decide.’ Maria didn’t say anything. She was thinking. The young woman waited a few minutes before she spoke again. ‘Will he send me away?’

  Maria shook her head.

  ‘No. He is young and full of passion. Until now he has given all that passion to God and the Church but last night he found another way to give it. If he was going to send you away he would have done it when you got into his bed or this morning when he had thought over what he had done.’

  ‘So I can stay?’

  ‘We will see. These things must be properly managed.’

  ‘But you will help me?’

  ‘No. I will not help you.’ The young woman looked shocked and disappointed. She thought this woman was on her side. ‘But I will help Father Enrique and I will help the people of the town.’

  The young woman smiled. It was enough.

  ‘And I will stay?’

  ‘We will see. There is no shortage of pretty girls who need a home and someone to look after them. If Father Enrique is to have a woman it must be a woman I can trust, an obedient woman who will know how to do as she is told.’

  The young woman looked down at her hands folded in her lap, trying to look meek and obedient.

  ‘I am trustworthy, I know how to do as I am told.’ Then she looked up directly into Maria’s eyes, all meekness gone. ‘If the person who tells me is herself trustworthy, someone who will look after me.’

  Maria looked back at her for a moment then laughed.

  ‘Good. If you are to stay here you must also have some sense; now I see that you do. A pretty face and a desirable body are all very well, but in this world brains are also needed.’

  ‘But if I am to be obedient to you there is something you must do for me.’

  ‘Oh, and what might that be?’

  ‘There has not been a priest in our village for many, many years so there have been no weddings, no baptisms, and no one has been to Mass.’ She paused. ‘We need a priest.’

  Maria smiled. The woman really did have brains.

  ‘So, you got sent here as a present, a bribe. He gets you and in return your village gets him, is that it?’

  The young woman bowed her head.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I’ll see what I can do.’

  The door opened and Father Enrique came in.

  ‘I have decided.’

  The young woman stood up and resumed her meek attitude as if she were awaiting some sort of sentencing, which in a way, she was.

  Maria remained seated.

  ‘What is your decision, Father?’

  ‘It is too late for her to go back to her village. The position now is the same as last night so we will do the same as last night.’

  ‘She will stay?’

  ‘It will be the same tonight as it was last night. Do you both understand?’

  The young woman raised her eyes, smiled and gave him a tender look.

  ‘I understand, Father.’

  Maria also smiled, but the smile and the look were quite different.

  ‘Yes, Father, we both understand perfectly.’

  Father Enrique stood for a second looking uncertain and embarrassed. Then he fixed a stern look on his face and tried to get some authority into his voice.

  ‘Good. That is my decision. Tomorrow morning I will decide what we will do, what will happen, er …’

  Maria came to his aide as his voice faltered and the look of embarrassment returned.

  ‘Tomorrow morning you will make your final decision about what will be done in the future, Father.’

  Father Enrique managed to pull himself together.

  ‘Yes. The future. A final decision tomorrow.’ He looked at the young woman and his voice changed. It was as if he were asking for something and not sure that it would be granted. The voice of a shy young man speaking to a pretty young girl. ‘But for tonight things will be as they were last night.’

  The young woman spoke quietly.

  ‘It will as you wish, Father.’

  He coughed and his voice resumed a tone of authority.

  ‘Good. As I wish.’

  And he turned, left, and closed the door behind him.

  Chapter Nine

  The next day Father Enrique returned from his usual morning round both pleased and troubled. She had come to him in the early hours of the morning. He had tried to stay awake and wait for her but sleep had defeated him and it was her naked body slipping into the bed that had woken him. Once more they had made love and it had been wonderful, wonderful and terrible. Wonderful because he had never known such passion and joy could exist, and it was terrible because he was wallowing in a carnal sin that had destroyed him as a priest.

  But today was different because today he had brought all his years of seminary training to the situation. The first time she had come it had been a complete surprise: his actions therefore could be explained and understood. He was inexperienced in matters of the flesh and his reaction was made while the mists of sleep still held him. The woman had tempted him and had fallen before there was any chance of serious reflection. Had he been sure of what he was doing? Might he have thought, at first, it was no more than dream and discovered too late that it was all too real. To look at it that way removed much if not all of his blame from his shoulders. The woman had tempted and he fell, but he fell from inexperience and unreadiness, not from any clear will or intention. That there had been a sin was not in question, but it was the pleasure he had taken on remembering, not necessarily the act itself. The greater sin was the young woman’s, not his. To look at it in such a clear and rational way, the way of his training, made his sin venial, not mortal; nothing more than impure thoughts, a temporary fall from grace, easily corrected by Confession or, if no other priest was available, by saying a sincere Act Of Contrition.

  Unfortunately, he realised only too clearly that that interpretation would have solved his problem yesterday, had he thought of it, but couldn’t be applied today. Last night he had waited for her, wanted her. When he went to bed he had lain on his back, happy, thinking of her coming to him, and his penis had stood rigid and he was glad, until tiredness overtook him and he
fell asleep. But when she came he had woken and knew that she was real and no dream. An evil mind, he allowed, might put an uncharitable interpretation on his decision to let her stay. An evil mind might say that he had almost told her to come. But he rejected that. He had merely told her and Maria that she might stay the night because, as previously, it was too late to send her away. His problem today was that he had colluded wilfully, not simply given way to a sudden and unexpected temptation.

  These thoughts had run through his head during the morning Mass as he mumbled the Latin and mechanically went through the necessary liturgical gestures and motions. They had continued to run through his head at breakfast. They persisted as he had listened, unhearing, to the Confessions of his parishioners and continued as he made his visits. Through the morning he became increasingly annoyed and impatient and wanted to get back to the house and announce that the young woman could stay until she found somewhere suitable to move to. That she was welcome under his roof for as long as necessary. He was sure that that was his decision, but not at all sure that it was the right one. If only he could find some way, some theological avenue of escape, some formula that turned the sin from mortal to venial, but a morning’s effort had produced nothing and he could hardly resort to prayer for assistance. Then a thought struck him, an interesting one he wished to pursue. This morning the young woman had not come to Confession. Did that mean that she considered their love-making no longer a sin and, if so, what was her reason?

  Back in his house with his lunch on the table before him and Maria standing over him he announced his decision.

  ‘I have made up my mind about the young woman.’

  ‘Carmen.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She has a name: Carmen Jacinta.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, all the same, I have decided.’

  ‘There is no need. She has gone.’

  Father Enrique dropped the knife he was holding. It bounced off the table and fell to the floor.

  ‘What?’

  Maria bent down and picked up the knife.

  ‘I will get you a clean one.’

  ‘Wait, forget the knife.’

  ‘But it has been on the floor.’

  ‘Damn the floor and damn the knife, what do you mean she has gone?’

  If this sudden outburst of bad language shocked or surprised Maria she showed no sign of it.

  ‘What I said. She ate some breakfast and left.’

  ‘You sent her away? You sent her away before I had made any decision.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why did she go?’

  ‘Because she wanted to go back to her village so she needed to start early. It isn’t safe for a woman travelling alone at the best of times but if she left it too late she would have to be on the road as the evening came on and that would be much worse. In the morning the road will have travellers: she can join someone and not have to walk all the way alone.’

  The news sank in.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘She has family there. She has no one here and what work could she do? She has no skills and she didn’t look too strong to me.’ She paused for a moment absently wiping the blade of the knife with her apron. ‘Who would want such a woman?’

  The question and the manner of asking it caused Father Enrique, whose head had bowed as her listened to Maria’s awful news, to look up at her. At once he could see that she knew.

  ‘I would.’

  She stood for a moment. Then looked at the knife.

  ‘I will get you a clean one before your food gets too cold.’

  Father Enrique watched her back as she left him. He felt devastated. The young woman was gone just as he had learned her name: Carmen. Would he ever see her again? He felt hot tears forming in his eyes and he wiped them away with the back of the hand which still held his fork.

  Maria returned, placed a clean knife beside his plate and stood as he slowly picked up the knife and tried to begin eating. But his appetite was gone. He put the knife and fork on his plate, pushed it away and turned to Maria. There were tears on his cheeks.

  Maria looked down at him.

  ‘You think you love her?’

  ‘I do love her.’

  ‘Why? Because you got inside her? Because you lay on top of her and pumped her? Because you enjoyed having her?’

  He looked down at the plate, humiliated by the coarseness of the questions and the tone. Confronted by Maria’s brutal but nonetheless accurate description of how he felt any thought of seminary excuses fell away from him.

  ‘It was a sin, but I couldn’t help myself.’

  Maria reached down and picked up the plate.

  ‘And it’s a sin to waste good food with so many hungry mouths about, but you don’t seem too worried about that.’

  He tried to pull himself together. She was only the housekeeper. Whatever had happened he was still the priest.

  ‘And she is married so for her it is even a worse sin.’

  ‘How do you know she’s married?’

  ‘Because she …’ but he managed just in time to remember that the seal of the Confessional could not be broken. What was said in Confession was between the sinner, the priest, and God. ‘I know, that is enough.’

  ‘Well, so what? She came to you. You didn’t force her. If it doesn’t bother her it shouldn’t bother you. Being married is her affair.’

  ‘But it’s still a sin, a terrible sin, for me and her.’

  ‘So forget her and let the sin take care of itself.’

  He looked up at her with an almost childish appeal in his eyes.

  ‘I can’t, and I don’t want to, even though it’s wrong, even though it’s a mortal sin I …’

  Maria put the plate down with a clatter spilling the knife and fork onto the table.

  ‘Enough of that; that’s priest’s talk. Start thinking and talking like a man. You want her, very well, she’s already shown she’s willing, go after her and bring her back.’

  The idea, when said out loud like that, seemed almost possible.

  ‘But what would people say if I brought a woman into my house?’

  She gave a short, sharp laugh.

  ‘They all know there is a woman in your house.’

  ‘They know about her, about us? Already?

  ‘I am in your house and even if you haven’t noticed it I’m a woman.’

  ‘But you don’t count. You are my housekeeper.’

  Maria laughed.

  ‘And priests don’t ever share a bed with their housekeeper?’

  He was as shocked as he was surprised.

  ‘Is that what people think? But they can’t: you’re old enough to be my mother.’

  Maria laughed again, but this time it was the laughter of derision.

  ‘Yes, old enough, but that would make no difference if you needed a woman. When Carmen came to your bed you discovered a man’s cock can get bigger than his brain. That was something new and you liked it, but now you’ll also find it isn’t so easy for a man to do without it. It’s your choice: sex with me and no tongues will wag or bring her back, have sex with her, and let them say what they will.’

  Father Enrique was appalled. Take Maria into his bed and do with her what he had done with Carmen. It didn’t bear thinking about, not even for a second.

  ‘That is a dreadful thing to suggest, Maria, a dreadful and deeply sinful thing.’

  ‘Oh, so you’re a priest again, are you? Stopped being a weak man blubbering because he can’t have his way with a pretty woman? Well, I’ll tell you something, priest, it was the Church that ordained you and made you what you are and that same Church told you that a priest had to play the eunuch and couldn’t have a woman, not any woman. Well, if it’s a sin the Church can have its sin, but before the Church made you a priest God made you a man and God made women for men and men for women. That’s God’s way even if it isn’t the Church’s, so now you have to choose, sleep with Carmen and think of it like a priest as a sin, or sleep wi
th her and think of it like a man, something from God, his gift to all men and women.’

  And she took up the knife and fork, put them on the plate, and left him to his thoughts.

  Father Enrique had been a bright student, but he had never come up against such a proposition as Maria had put before him nor, he knew, could he ever have come up with it. He was impressed. She had put it so succinctly, so clearly, and so compellingly. He wiped the last tears from his eyes and thought about it. It was what he had been struggling to find for himself all morning. By day he could still be a priest, a good and holy priest, and by night he could be a man, a good and loving man. He stood up and went to the kitchen.

  ‘Maria?’

  ‘Yes, Father?’

  ‘If I were to consider what you suggest.’

  He paused.

  ‘Yes, Father?’

  ‘But to bring her back would cause scandal?’

  ‘Perhaps. But not necessarily.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Something might be arranged.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Yes, Father, I think so.’

  ‘Then I will leave the whole matter in your hands.’

  ‘Of course, Father.’

  He felt better, happy, Maria would deal with it. And he felt hungry. He had hardly touched his meal.

  ‘Oh, and don’t throw away that food. Re-heat it. I’m hungry and it is as you say, it would be a sin to waste it.’

  ‘Of course, Father.’

  Chapter Ten

  The message that he was coming to the village on a pastoral visit had been sent only three days in advance of his arrival. It was an incredibly short time, almost unheard of for a pastoral visit and impossibly short notice to arrange a proper welcome for such an important person as a priest. However, whatever could be done in such a short time had been done, but all the people of the village, from the highest to the lowest, knew it was but a poor showing. The head man and his family felt it most, of course, as they would be the village’s public face during the welcome and at subsequent events. Despite everything, however, the news that the saintly young priest from San Juan Bautista would come and stay with them created a festival atmosphere and everyone had done their best. Great bunches of wild flowers, perversely prolific in their poor soil, had been collected and somehow flags had been manufactured. In every other way they could think of the people who had decorated the open space in the centre of the village where all the ceremonies would take place. Father Enrique’s predecessor had been an elderly and somewhat infirm man, retired to San Juan by the bishop and told to do as little as he wished. He could not have made the journey even if he had wanted to, which he didn’t, so it had been many, many long years since a priest had visited and stayed at their village: more than most could remember. They blessed God that they had lived to see such an event.