A bit of moral contagion

The shock was over: there was a period of recuperation and re-alignment. Carrie had left with her son to join Derek in his regiment in Northern England. The Turners had been at the Home to see her and the baby. The baby looked nothing like Angela: he was dark and sturdy. "Just like his Dad," Carrie said proudly. The Turner family returned home, a bit chastened from this baptism of fire. It was like a new start. They had a new history as a family. Angela, a playful 5-year-old, was the only family member happily unaware of the storm which had passed over her.

Timothy had been sometimes pensive and moody, sometimes inquisitive and direct. On one of his direct days, after expressing a series of thoughts of how things are, how they could have been and what they could become in the future, he shot a question to his Dad:

"Didn't you walk dangerously close to moral contagion when you courted Mum? When she was still Sister Bernadette?

"Tim! Hold your tongue."

"It's all right Patrick. I think we are to answer this. It is a wonder it hasn't turned up before. "Shelagh seemed at peace with herself. Something had been adjusted to its right place.

"But I didn't really court you. I didn't seduce you."

"Well, some of the letters were if not seductive….very appealing."

Patrick gave her a very self-conscious look.

"The letters to the sanatorium….."Tim brightened up. "I remember them. You sat at the desk writing them, going through several drafts."

"Oh, did he indeed?" Shelagh had a glee in her voice.

Patrick harrumphed rather red-faced. "Timothy, this is strictly between your Mum and me."

"Is it really so, Patrick? Does he not have a right to know? He is sixteen now, and at the time he was exposed to the….circumstances of our union. I was sixteen when I felt the calling to become a nun. A calling I later promised to follow, a promise I broke, so beneficially for you. Isn't that one level of moral contagion?"

Patrick pondered this for a while. "Well, not all of it is perhaps strictly between adults."

"Tim, both the levels of love….and levels of moral contagion are hard to see sometimes. There was a confusion in my mind and heart, and also—I know because she has told me—in the mind and heart of your Mum. I mean when she was Sister Bernadette."

"But Tim, you are old enough to understand that there are moral struggles in many decisions. What you don't' know is that your father made it very clear in those letters that I was not in any way bound to leave the Convent for him. He was willing to….sacrifice."

There was a silence. Patrick sat beside Shelagh, took her hand and looked at her with quiet adoration.

"There must be a freedom to choose and a respect for that choice."

Patrick cleared his throat again. "So you see, there must not be forced choices. That is there the decay begins. Be it moral, or something else, if you do not wish to call it moral decay. Those girls at the Mother and Baby Home…..There may have been no respect for human life in the circumstances of their lives and, may I say, in the lives of the men who are the fathers of the babies. So they may not recognize their errors. "

"I am not sure I agree with you Dad in all that you try to convey, but I understand what you are trying to say. A human being is always free only to the degree he or she allows other people to be free, and to have a free choice. Is that what you are saying?"

"Yes, son. I also think that it is due to your Mum, I mean Shelagh, and also your late Mum, that you are able to understand these things. So it has been beneficial for you to have two mothers. Not all the people, not those girls at the Home are so fortunate."

"Patrick, you should not exclude yourself so nimbly from the beneficial effects on Timothy."

"Yes, the beneficial effect of burned dinners before you moved in, Mum."

Patrick snorted with gusto. "Timothy, have some respect for you Old Man. I was honestly trying to improve my cooking skills."

Then he turned serious. "Remember the time I told you that love is beautiful and serious."

"Yes…"

"Well, this is one of those times. To remember that love is beautiful and serious. One more thing."

"Yes?"

"The next time Jack asks you to come with him to sneak and peep behind the gates of the Mother and Baby Home, please tell him in your own words what we told you today."

"How did you know we have been there? We weren't spying on Angela's birth mother, on my word of honour. She wasn't even there at the time… when we did that."

"It was not so difficult to guess. I am not totally incompetent as a parent, and I have been a lad myself. Medical training cured me of nosiness to other people's lives. If Jack does not believe you, or you don't know what to say and how to defend Angela's birth mother or the honour of the house of Turner, send Jack to my surgery and I will have a man-to-man talk with him."

"Oh, I think I should be capable of defending the house of Turner on my own," Timothy blurted out with a hint of maturity. The first time they had seen that in their son. Patrick and Shelagh stole a proud look between themselves.

"That's my boy. I am sure you are capable of that, Timothy."