from Walk the Blue Fields

There's pleasure to be had in history. What's recent is another matter and painful to recall.

[...]

The bride is a beauty whose freckled shoulders, in this dress, are bare. A long string of pearls lies heavy against her skin. The priest steps in close without touching her and stares at the line of her scalp where the shining red hair is parted. 

[...]

Inside the hotel there's the mordant heat of the crowd, the spill of guests. A waitress near the front desk is ladling punch. Another stands with a sharp knife, slicing a long, smoked salmon. The guests are queuing up, reaching for forks, capers, cuts of lemon. All about them, there are flowers. Never has the priest seen such flowers: wide-open tulips, blue hyacinths, trumpeting gladioli. He stands beside a crystal jug of roses and breathes in. Their scent is heavy. The need for a drink comes over him and he faces into the bar. 

[...]

Any time promises are made in public, people cry. 

[...]

The priest freezes as the pearls slip off the string. He watches how they hop off the polished floor. One pearl hits the skirting board, rolls back past Miss Dunne's outstretched hand. She lets out a sigh as it rolls back toward the priest's chair. He puts his hand down and lifts it. It is warm in his hand, warm from her. This, more than anything else in the day, startles him.
The priest walks across the dance floor. The bride is standing there with her hands out. When he places the pearl in her hand, she looks into his eyes. There are tears there but she is too proud to blink and let one fall. If she blinked, he would take her hand and take her away from this place. This, at least, is what he tells himself. It's what she once wanted but two people hardly ever want the same thing at any given point in life. It is sometimes the hardest part of being human. 

[...]

He remembers the snatch of bridal veil on the yews, puts his hand in his pocket and feels it there. He takes it out, lets it fall. Before it touches the water, he regrets it but he had his chance, and now his chance is gone. 

[...]

The next morning, their last, they had lain in bed with the window open and he'd dreamt the wind had blown the freckles off her body. 

[...]

He remembers lying naked with Lawlor's daughter in a bed outside of Newry town. He remembers all those dandelions gone to seed and how he said he would always love her. He remembers these things, in full, and feels no shame. How strange it is to be alive. Soon, it will be Easter. There is work to be done, a sermon to be written for Palm Sunday. He climbs the fields back towards the road, thinking about his life tomorrow, as a priest, deciphering, as best he can, the Roman language of the trees.