Shoulder the Sky by Anne Perry

Author:Anne Perry [Perry, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Suspense
ISBN: 9780345456557
Publisher: Ballantine
Published: 2004-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Wonderful to see you,” Shanley Corcoran exclaimed with enthusiasm shining in his eyes. He wrung Matthew’s hands vigorously but with a familiar gentleness that awoke memories of childhood again, safety that seemed like another world, just accidentally placed in the same houses, with the same trees towering above, and the same broad summer skies.

“Sorry it’s been so long,” Matthew apologized, and he meant it. He had had to spend far too much time in London and old, safe friendships had suffered.

Corcoran led the way inside the high-ceilinged house with its spacious Georgian windows, wide wooden floors, and colored walls whose richness had mellowed into warmth.

“I understand,” he said, indicating a chair for Matthew to sit once they were in the drawing room with its French doors onto the terrace. They were open, letting in the evening air and the sound of birdsong and the faint rustle of wind in the trees. Corcoran’s face was grave. He was not handsome in a conventional way, but there was an intelligence and a vitality in him that made him more alive than other men, lit with more passion and more hunger for life. “We’re all too busy for the pleasures we used to have. But what kind of a man grudges any blessing at a time like this?” He looked at Matthew with sudden concentration. “You look tired—worried. Is it bad news?” There was a shadow across his eyes, an anticipation of pain.

Matthew smiled in spite of himself. “Only war news,” he answered. “Judith was home on leave briefly and I saw her the day before yesterday.”

“And Joseph?” Corcoran asked, still watching intently.

“It’s a hard job,” Matthew answered. “I don’t know how I would try to tell men out there that there really is a God who loves them, and in spite of everything to the contrary, He is in control.”

“Nor do I,” Corcoran said frankly. “But then I’ve never been sure what I really believe.” He smiled, a warm, intimate gesture of self-mocking humor. “I couldn’t bear the thought that it is all random and senseless, or that morality is only whatever our society makes it. And yet if I look at it closely, organized religion has so many contradictions in logic, absurdities that are met with ‘Oh, but that’s a holy mystery,’ as if that explained anything, except our own dishonesty to address what contradicts itself.”

His mouth pulled tight. “But far worse than that is the insistence on petty, enforceable rules to the exclusion of the kindness that is supposed to be the heart of all of them. If there is a God as the Christians conceive Him, there can be little room for blindness, hypocrisy, self-righteous judgment, cruelty, or anything that causes unnecessary pain, and there can be no place at all for hatred. And religion seems to nurture so much of it.”

“Joseph would tell you it’s human weakness,” Matthew replied. “People use religion as a justification for what they wanted to do anyway. It isn’t the cause, it’s only the excuse.

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