Keeper of Tides by Beatrice Macneil

Author:Beatrice Macneil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Breakwater Books Ltd.
Published: 2014-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-FIVE

THERE IS A secret written in the lines of Margaret LaMae’s brow. She closes its pages when she frowns. But it is beginning to leak out and run down the bridge of her nose when Iva gets her in a vulnerable spot. The mention of hell usually loosens Margaret’s brow. There is more fear than fire in this small word, as if heaven had dropped down a cinder to keep sins from flaring up.

She is talking wildly about Angelo Pinotti, in Iva’s kitchen, about the dear man who carried a dead weight on his slight shoulders when he arrived at the Tides Inn.

Iva listens, not for any new gossip about the man who turned out to be an ex-priest, but how Margaret floated him directly into paradise off of Iva’s white sheets, with a prayer and a screech from room number Three.

“Priests age faster than ordinary men,” Margaret exhales over a cup of tea. “They carry two souls, not only their own, but that of their God.”

“Shouldn’t that give them an advantage?” Iva frowns as she listens to the thrill in Margaret’s voice.

“Oh no, the poor man must have feared that his soul was crushed when he left the priesthood.”

“Which of the two souls would that be, Margaret?”

“That is not for me to judge, once a priest always a priest, I’d say.”

“Do you suppose then that the man’s soul went straight to heaven or did it land in a holding cell?”

Margaret’s voice trembles at Iva’s question.

“He was a good man, Ivadoile. Men have different reasons for leaving things in their lives. You should know this.”

Iva squirms in her chair. Margaret is fighting back with her men have different reasons for leaving theory. She is referring to Ambrose Kane and letting her know it. Iva moves to silence the singing kettle whose long spout is jarring at her nerves like Pinocchio belting out a dull hymn.

“A man is a man, Margaret, in or out of the cloth. There is nothing complicated about him, just more to unravel from the cloth,” Iva retorts, removing her hand from the handle of the kettle.

“But there was something special, Ivadoile, about this one. I know you liked him.”

“He was intelligent, I’ll give him that for starters. He left the priesthood and became a psychiatrist. Two professions man does not necessarily have to excel at. They merely place themselves in the arena of the mind and soul, and who has come face to face with these blind assumptions, other than the mad and the gullible, to challenge them? Happiness is not an exact science and it’s about time these people stopped taking credit for it.”

Margaret opens her mouth to say something but stops.

“You bet he was smart, Margaret. He left the priesthood to get paid for all the confessions he heard without pay.”

Iva smiles as she leaves the silence of the kitchen.

“We must not judge others, Ivadoile. Belief itself is blind.”

Iva snickers at the remark. “I’ve been colour blind for a long time then, because there

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