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Republican Army, and the British forces. What Sinn Fein calls ‘the forces of occupation.’ Nora is worried sick. The reports of killings, of arson, of intimidation and repression: they terrify her.”
“They’re always talking of war in Dublin,” Michael said.
“It’ll come soon enough, I’m sure,” Caitlin murmured half to herself, “and we’ll all be involved in it.”
“And yet it’s so peaceful here,” Michael said, listening to the silence that enclosed them and watching the lazy drift of turf smoke from the farmhouse chimneys. He let his hands slide down over the sides of Caitlin’s breasts and lowered his lips to the cool flesh of her cheek.
Caitlin shivered with the thrill of his touch.
“Are you cold?” Michael asked. He raised her to her feet, placed both arms around her waist and pulled her to him.
Caitlin circled her arms around his neck and gazed with longing into his eager, blue eyes. “No, I’m not cold,” she whispered. She was frightened. Things Padraig had said were beginning to struggle to the surface of her consciousness.
Michael kissed her lips lightly, then with more and more pressure. She felt his tongue and opened her mouth. She quivered all over.
“Thou shallt not commit adultery.” Padraig’s words sounded distantly in her ears like the echo of waves in a seashell. “One of the ten commandments from God Himself to his servant Moses. You cannot disobey God’s explicit precepts with impunity, Caitlin.”
Michael’s feet shifted as he pressed his body even more tightly against Caitlin’s. His breathing was uneven. His heart pounded.
“A sin is a word, deed or desire contrary to the law of God.” Padraig’s fierce, dark eyes and passionate, white face appeared in Caitlin’s thoughts like a nightmare figure in a child’s uneasy sleep.
Desire. Desire. Desire.
Michael was seized by a passion that tightened every fibre in his body and found release only in the kisses that he pressed on Caitlin’s mouth and face. Caitlin responded with a passion as consuming as his. She pushed her body against his muscular frame with an eagerness that almost fused them into one.
“The flesh lusteth against the spirit.” The priest’s black eyes, bright as coal, burned into her own eyes with the fierce heat of fanaticism. “Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness. These are the works of the flesh. These are the Devil’s works. Not God’s.”
Manolis Aligizakis 