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In the brief Edwardian summer restless men scoured horizons shaped by sails. Reefs and riptides made Britain's western approaches a theatre of death. Christian men sailed from Swansea but prayed to pagan sea-gods as they went. Elizabeth Parnell's fear of water and loathing for deep-sea harvests sprang from storm wrecks and shores strewn with transmogrified dead. Exotic fish slabbed in Swansea's market were behemoths or grotesque mermen slimed with deep sea horror. But Will Parnell's fancy for cheap mackerel bade her spend her grudging pennies there. She fought a violent need to retch whenever in sight or smell of fish. And terror of dark sea forces warned that nothing in life was untainted. . . the devil was in everything. Her wedding day fell on St Swithin's day 'may her man be damned eternally for this'. Their nuptials had them grappling under sheets as thunder crashed and the roof drummed with hail. Flood waters upended a neighbour's hen-house trapping a fox busy butchering prize Buff Orpingtons. Satan had marked her first child.
"Ferther, Will Parnell took me virginity lathered in diabolic lust. He came like a demon to his succubus. Icy sex glued me to the mattress."
Dramatic invention had her up and twirling across the floor using both hands to knot the fiction of her wedding nightgown. The dumb-struck priest clamped bloodless knuckles to his knees.
"He ravished me wit dat unholy rain pourin! Does th'all-seeing Lord forgive such divilish acts?" The priest's cup was empty. "Rest awhile, ferther, I'll freshen th'tae."
He watched her hitch her coarse cotton skirt and strut a paso doble to the range. Several opening gambits culled from the Pope's encyclical on demonic possession came to mind but surely her account was too fanciful.
"That's a hard accusation to make against a wedded spouse, woman. Did ye really feel the Divil's ice on y'virgin flesh? Such talk would have sent ye man to the stake not a o'dozen popes ago."
Elizabeth bleated satisfaction.
"Ferther and haven't I attoned for Will, be'placing me belly at the service of the Almighty. If I could'a managed Our Lady's immaculate ways I would. I've a large brood but don't tink o' me goin' at it like th'rest of th'harlots around here."

Father Damian raised a restraining hand and took another cake.
"Ye griddle cakes are toothsome, Elizabeth. Rest easy in the Lord's divine judgement; all is forgiveness in His blessed heaven."
"Then tell me, Ferther, why isn't the business of babies a holy
contract between Christian women and the angels?"
She'd intended to raise the issue since the posturing needed to perform the act had filled her mind with riotous indecency.
"Did yer niver enjoy the business, Elizabeth?"
"Ferther, Will took me maidenhead like a goat - I niver recovered."
"Did ye not? Our blessed Virgin's loins grace our earthly state. A woman must play her holy role in the Lord's great cycle . . . be glad."
Elizabeth snorted. Father Damian stirred and settled deeper as she wedged back into him and squirmed. She'd done her best for

God in her bed and nothing in childbearing bothered her. Life's fertile furrow ran straight between her legs.
Elizabeth Parnell's mild mannered spouse undertook ritual copulation and on her icy insistence stopped the day monthly fluxes ceased: 'I don't want that filthy thing poked in my body to torture my unborn child.'
Will Parnell's virile years were frustrated cycles of get-on and get off. The confessional box was no place to discuss the denials of a fecund marriage. His wet dream years, though packed with bum and fanny talk, had never been instructive. His mate Jimmy O'Malley was forever off to 'sniff a bit of arse'. The chance to go along was always open but Will never would 'I'll wait a bit'.
There was youthful optimism in the Catholic promise that after wedlock unfettered copulation was the reward of an indulgent God. At St Joseph's Social club dirty talk kept single lads at oven heat. Brian O'Keefe was a close buddy in the same street. 'Will, dere's a cart-load of frippet out there all for free. Me an' me mates niver have a dry cock.'

This is a page from Milk and Honey by Gerald Moore, available for purchase from Lazarus Press.

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