LITMIR.BIZ

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Belfast.

      ‘I don’t remember being this sick last time I came,’ Bridie said, wiping her mouth.

      ‘Aye, but early December is not the ideal time to cross the Irish Sea,’ Tom said, and Bridie looked out at the churning grey water, at the huge rolling breakers crashing against the sides of the side in a froth of white suds.

      But, Bridie thought, the extreme sickness might have been due partly to her pregnancy, for she’d been nauseous enough at times without the help of the turbulent sea, but that was a secret she could share with no one and so she kept quiet and tried to control her lurching stomach.

      It was too cold and altogether too wet to stay on deck any longer than necessary, but inside the smell was appalling, although the ferry wasn’t so crowded. The place smelt of people and damp clothes and vomit from those who’d not made it outside in time. But prevailing it all was the stink of cigarette smoke that lay like a blue fog in the air and the smell of Guinness.

      It gagged in Bridie’s throat as Tom upended his case for her to sit on. ‘Sit there,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you something.’

      ‘Brandy!’ she said a few moments later. ‘I’ve never tasted brandy.’

      Tom sat on his other case beside Bridie and said, ‘Then you’ve not lived. Get it down you. It will settle your stomach.’

      ‘First laced milk, now brandy,’ Bridie said with a smile. ‘And at this hour of the morning. Dear God, this is terrible.’

      ‘Aye,’ said Tom, catching her mood. ‘Here’s the two of us turning into lushes. Now drink it down and you’ll feel better.’

      ‘Oh God!’ Bridie cried with a shiver and a grimace at the first taste of it. ‘It burns. It’s horrible!’

      ‘Think of it as medicine,’ Tom said, and Bridie held her nose, for even the smell made her feel ill, and swallowed the brandy in one gulp, which left her coughing till her eyes streamed. ‘Maybe the cure is worse than the disease,’ she said eventually, when she had breath to do so.

      Tom watched Bridie with a smile on his face, but his thoughts were churning. He’d never much bothered with girls before. In truth, maybe never allowed himself to be attracted to any. He knew all about girls though, hadn’t he got three sisters? But this girl he’d just met was affecting him strangely. It wasn’t her beauty alone, though that was startling enough, especially her enormous brown eyes with just a hint of sadness or worry behind them and her creamy skin. It was much more. She was small and fragile-looking for a start and had such an air of vulnerability.

      Tom couldn’t understand how she’d affected him so. Just looking at her, he’d felt a stirring in his loins that was so pleasurable, it was bound to be sinful and his heart thudded against his chest. He wanted to hold her close and protect her against anything that might possibly hurt her or upset her.

      Bridie, with no inkling of Tom’s thoughts about her, suddenly yawned in utter weariness. She’d had little sleep except for the bit she’d snatched in Strabane. Her smarting eyes felt very heavy and she closed them for a while to rest them.

      But she swayed on the case as sleep almost overcame her and she jerked herself awake again. ‘Are you tired?’ Tom asked, and at Bridie’s brief nod, he went on, ‘Lean against me if you want, I won’t let you fall.’

      Bridie knew there was no way she should lean against some strange man, and though she liked Tom Cassidy, she had only known him a matter of hours. But she couldn’t keep her eyes from closing; they seemed to have a mind of their own and for all she tried to force them open, it was no good.

      Her drooping head fell on to Tom’s chest and to prevent her falling off the case, he tentatively put his arms about her.

      By the time the boat was ready to dock, Tom had an ache in his back from supporting his own weight and Bridie’s. Yet it hardly mattered compared to the pleasure he had from holding Bridie in his arms that he’d wrapped so lovingly around her.

      But, when Bridie awoke, she was overcome with humiliation for allowing herself to fall asleep leaning against a man in that compromising way. She remembered the last time she’d been held by a man – it had been her uncle Francis’s arms around her and she stiffened at the memory of it.

      Tom sensed her withdrawal, but he put it down to embarrassment and decided to make no comment about it.

      Bridie realised when they docked in Liverpool and Tom helped her find a post office to send the telegram from before the train left that she’d never have managed without him beside her. ‘I was lucky to have met you at Strabane,’ Bridie said to him as they settled in the carriage. ‘I’d have missed this train and would have had to have waited for the next one.’

      ‘You’d probably have had a long wait,’ Tom said. ‘The trains are here to meet the ferries and there won’t be one now for hours.’

      ‘And you, the seasoned traveller, would know all about it,’ Bridie said with a smile. ‘Why did you go home so often? Were you very homesick?’

      ‘In a way,’ Tom said. While Bridie had slept on the boat he’d decided to himself that he would tell her what he’d been doing in Liverpool. It was not a fact he readily advertised, because he found people often treated him differently, but if he wished to see Bridie again, he felt she ought to know. ‘I was a child just when I left the first time,’ he said. ‘I was in a seminary in Liverpool, training to be a priest.’

      ‘A priest!’ Bridie jumped away from Tom as if she’d been shot. The thought paramount in her head was to thank God she’d not poured out her sordid story to him as she’d longed to on the train. She’d have hated to see his lips curl in disgust and the scorn in his eyes had she given in to such a weakness. But if he was a priest, why had he held her that way in the boat? ‘So you’re a priest then?’ she said.

      ‘No, no, I’ve never been ordained,’ Tom said. ‘I was to be, but I began to have doubts. The Bishop sent me to Birmingham to work in the Mission with a Father Flynn, a good friend of his. He expects me to work off any reservations I have and go back for ordination.’

      ‘And will you?’

      Tom shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not cut out to be a priest, I know that now. My vocation was one planted and fuelled by the visiting missionaries. Once I’d actually given voice to this possible vocation, which was probably little more than a childish fancy, things were taken out of my hands. My mother had me up before the priest faster than the speed of light. He was delighted, feather in his cap, and he informed the Bishop.

      ‘Events went so fast after that that I had no time to think. The priest told my mother she’d given up her only son to God, the ultimate sacrifice and one she’d be rewarded for in Heaven, and I was whisked away to a seminary in Liverpool.’

      Bridie nodded, for she knew how it was. Catholic mothers were often told by the priests that their first son should belong to God. Mothers would often offer prayers and novenas that their eldest son, or failing that one of his male siblings, might have the vocation to become a priest.

      Fathers usually didn’t have the same yearning at all. They looked to their sons to take over the farm or family business, to give them a hand and ease their load. But even they found that if a child admitted to having a vocation to enter the priesthood, their standing in the community was raised. They would be set apart, a holy and devout family, and people would be behave differently, more respectfully before them.

      She knew too that to decide to leave the seminary, to decide the priesthood was not the line a boy wanted to follow, was worse than not going in the first place. It would be disgrace on the family and so she enquired gently, ‘Do your parents know about your doubts?’

      ‘Yes … Well, I didn’t tell them straightaway that I’d decided to leave, but I dropped broad hints. In the end I had to come out with it though; I thought it wasn’t fair for them to harbour false hopes.’

      ‘And?’ goaded Bridie.

      ‘They

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