第34章 TWO 1921-1928 Ralph(14)

They were soaked within seconds, and so was the hard-baked ground. The fine,- nonporous soil became a sea of mud, miring the horses to their hocks and setting them floundering. While the grass persisted they managed to press on, but near the creek where the earth had been trodden to bareness they had to dismount. Once relieved of their burdens, the horses had no trouble, but Frank found it impossible to keep his balance. It was worse than a skating rink. On hands and knees they crawled to the top of the creek bank, and slid down it like projectiles. The stone roadway, which was normally covered by a foot of lazy water, was under four feet of racing foam; Frank heard the priest laugh. Urged on by shouts and slaps from sodden hats, the horses managed to scramble up the far bank without mishap, but Frank and Father Ralph could not. Every time they tried, they slid back again. The priest had just suggested they climb a willow when Paddy, alerted by the appearance of riderless horses, came with a rope and hauled them out. Smiling and shaking his head, Father Ralph refused Paddy's offer of hospitality.

"I'm expected at the big house," he said.

Mary Carson heard him calling before any of her staff did, for he had chosen to walk around to the front of the house, thinking it would be easier to reach his room.

"You're not coming inside like that," she said, standing on the veranda. "Then be a dear, get me several towels and my case."

Unembarrassed, she watched him peel off his shirt, boots and breeches, leaning against the half-open window into her drawing room as he toweled the worst of the mud off.

"You're the most beautiful man I've ever seen, Ralph de Bricassart," she said. "Why is it so many priests are beautiful? The Irishness? They're rather a handsome people, the Irish. Or is it that beautiful men find the priesthood a refuge from the consequences of their looks? I'll bet the girls in Gilly just eat their hearts out over you."

"I learned long ago not to take any notice of lovesick girls." He laughed. "Any priest under fifty is a target for some of them, and a priest under thirty-five is usually a target for all of them. But it's only the Protestant girls who openly try to seduce me."

"You never answer my questions outright, do you?" Straightening, she laid her palm on his chest and held it there. "You're a sybarite, Ralph, you lie in the sun. Are you as brown all over?"

Smiling, he leaned his head forward, then laughed into her hair, his hands unbuttoning the cotton drawers;as they fell to the ground he kicked them away, standing like a Praxiteles statue while she toured all the way around him, taking her time and looking. The last two days had exhilarated him, so did the sudden awareness that she was perhaps more vulnerable than he had imagined; but he knew her, and he felt quite safe in asking, "Do you want me to make love to you, Mary?" She eyed his flaccid penis, snorting with laughter. "I wouldn't dream of putting you to so much trouble! Do you need women, Ralph?" His head reared back scornfully. "No!"

"Men?"

"They're worse than women. No, I don't need them."

"How about yourself?"

"Least of all."

"Interesting." Pushing the window all the way up, she stepped through into the drawing room. "Ralph, Cardinal de Bricassart!" she mocked. But away from those discerning eyes of his she sagged back into her wing chair and clenched her fists, the gesture which rails against the inconsistencies of fate. Naked, Father Ralph stepped off the veranda to stand on the barbered lawn with his arms raised above his head, eyes closed; he let the rain pour over him in warm, probing, spearing runnels, an exquisite sensation on bare skin. It was very dark. But he was still flaccid.

The creek broke its banks and the water crept higher up the piles of Paddy's house, farther out across the Home Paddock toward the homestead itself.

"It will go down tomorrow," said Mary Carson when Paddy went to report, worried.

As usual, she was right; over the next week the water ebbed and finally returned to its normal channels. The sun came out, the temperature zoomed to a hundred and fifteen in the shade, and the grass seemed to take wing for the sky, thigh-high and clean, bleached brilliant as gilt, hurting the eyes. Washed and dusted, the trees glittered, and the hordes of parrots came back from wherever they had gone while the rain fell to flash their rainbow bodies amid the timber, more loquacious than ever. Father Ralph had returned to succor his neglected parishioners, serene in the knowledge his knuckles would not be rapped; under the pristine white shirt next to his heart resided a check for one thousand pounds. The bishop would be ecstatic.