1 John 1:16
Sunday 9 September: Father Seb enjoyed his reputation as a man of integrity, a man you could talk to. He had earned this reputation, not merely because of his status as a priest, nor really through any series of acts that might be regarded as indicators of high character, but rather through a sort of natural neutralism, born of and nurtured by an almost chronic inability to be judgmental of the other. He believed in the maxim, 'Condemn the sin and not the sinner'; and he lived it.
But he dreaded this. She had come up to him after Saturday mass.
Question: Why did so many of his parishioners take mass on Saturday these days?
Answer: To keep Sunday clear for golf.
Or so thought Father Sebastian. That was what he had been mulling on when she'd sought him out to shake his hand and congratulate him on the sermon.
Edging six foot, Father Sebastian was a good height but no giant. Not in modern American terms, where male offspring were bred competitively tall on milk, cookies, and hormone-laced steak. Trish Hartnett was short by comparison. Father Sebastian looked dispassionately at the woman in front of him. Five-foot-three maybe but, like in the song, "Oh what those five foot could do." She was dynamite. Pretty as a picture. A little voluptuous for his taste with all that bosom. But shapely.
All of which was unusual. Springfield was full of women with beautiful faces. But so many of his own congregation were either overweight, pretty faces on tree-trunk legs, or underweight, stick insect model types with cheekbones worthy of a fashion magazine but neo-anorexic bodies. It was just the way it was. You couldn't ask the rain to stop raining or the sun to stop shining - any more than you could ask a Springfield girl to take good care of herself. There were just so few genuine old-style American women the likes of Trish.
There was Angie. He pushed the thought aside.
He knew why Trish had buttonholed him and it wasn't in order to congratulate him on his sermon. And he had agreed to meet her. In keeping with his policy when it came to anything but the most spinsterly of matrons, he'd chosen Partner's, out cross-river in the town of Agawam. "At 11:45 am tomorrow after morning mass," he had told her. Her husband was one of the growing number who spent their Sundays on the golf course, which for once would be a blessing. Trish Hartnett could speak to Father Sebastian alone and unhindered, in his favorite side-table in one of the most crowded places in Massachusetts.
Mrs Hartnett was the kind of woman that men always wanted to dominate and possess - but fully realised they never could. Trish Hartnett with green-gray eyes to drown in, a sensual figure and auburn hair, alone across a red and white damask clothed table, over good coffee, hash browns and eggs over-easy. The prospect was pleasing but for the agonizing nature of her situation.
And now she was there before him. Her smile of welcome was made with her whole face, which of itself made taking a seat opposite her a heartening experience. Then, like a cloud passing over the face of the sun, her expression changed, crumpling almost. "It's Sean, Father Seb . . ." Though she drank her coffee sedately, her voice was small and mean - and desperately earnest.
He lent across his arm which rested on the table and nodded, encouraging her to continue. "Poor woman," thought Father Sebastian, for he knew what her problem was already. But he couldn't tell her he knew. He wondered what he would do in her circumstances, if his world had fallen apart and it seemed that the very heavens were merciless in their cruelty. There were many responses available to the person faced with this kind of betrayal. They included anger, stalwart defiance or love. He hoped that, in her shoes, he would have the strength to hold to love. But it wasn't counsel she needed. Not yet anyway. So he listened and he tried to be kind and understanding, and a bit stupid, as expected of him.
"I love him so much I would gladly die to give him perfect happiness even for a day," she said, perhaps a little melodramatically, not looking at him, but staring down into the coffee cup she cradled in her hands. And he watched her eyes brim with tears and her cheeks pink with a mix of shame and congealed jealousy as she told him what she suspected. "He's having an affair, Father Seb . . ."
There's a Russian proverb that goes, 'One word of truth outweighs the whole world'. It flashed through Seb's mind and he shook his head as if to shake the thought away. And he watched as the telling of this monstrous truth humiliated her, like she wished she'd never lived.
Her confession of what she regarded as her failure silenced them both momentarily, a process fraught with too much anguish. And then she asked the inevitable question.
"What should I do?"
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