August (10 page)

‘I am not permitted to open the gate.'

The mother did not cry. She did not beg. She knew there was nothing left to be gained. She had one choice remaining; she must have known that all along. The woman blanched with the shock of what would come next, even as she succumbed to its necessity.

‘I cannot,' she whispered at Grace. ‘I cannot take my child away to die.'

The women knelt and deposited her baby on the step and then, surely terrified her resolve would crumble if she lingered, turned and stumbled into the darkness.

Grace clambered down from her post, her body moving to commands her mind couldn't hear. She had the gate's heavy bolt halfway across when her hand was slapped down.

Grace turned to see Sister Angela, the nun's bottom lip trembling, whether in sadness or fury it was impossible to say. The sister moved to the gate and her face, silhouetted now by the orange glow of the security light, turned to blackness. Grace shielded her eyes with her hand, attempting to block out the dirty halo and read the old woman's expression. But there was only age to see, and a mouth tightening around its words.

‘What are you doing?' Sister Angela hissed.

‘You don't understand,' Grace said, relieved that of all the nuns God had sent her Sister Angela. ‘There is a baby. He is dying.'

Sister Angela swayed for a moment, as if uncertain, and the light behind her flashed a warning. Her ancient hands drew the bolt fully back and she opened the gate just a crack, bending down to look closely at the package.

‘He is a child of the night,' she pronounced. ‘He cannot be saved.'

Grace's head turned clumsy with shock. She shook it, vaguely aware that soon her mouth would open and the trouble would grow deeper. But not as deep as the baby's trouble. This was her one clear thought:
Do not be cowed; he
needs you
.

‘Are you going to help him, Sister?'

The old woman placed a bony hand on Grace's shoulder and her voice became gentle.

‘Your shift is finished. Hurry back to bed.'

‘But you won't let him die?' Grace pressed.

Sister Angela turned from her and the light caught the old woman's glistening eyes.

‘Go to bed,' she repeated. ‘We cannot always guess at His mysteries. I am sorry.'

Grace wanted to scream, to struggle, and to rage. She wanted to force them to drag her spitting from the scene, shouting their murder to the sky. The church was wrong and no amount of praying and scrubbing the steps of the sacred places could cleanse it. But instinct kept her quiet. There was another way. She lowered her head in what she hoped would appear to be submission and walked back to her lonely bed. She counted time: she waited.

Although few knew it, all of the holy buildings were riddled with hidden passages, a legacy of the time of war. Grace had discovered a tunnel when she was first recovering from the exorcism. During those days she had drifted uneasily between wakefulness and sleep, prone to the smallest suggestion. Twice she was sure Josephine visited her, and another time she was certain she saw an angel.

It was a dark figure, possessing a male's posture and dressed in the robes of an Augustinian priest. But Grace understood no priest would ever visit the convent at night and in her feverish, childish mind decided she was seeing a vision. The vision flitted past the open door at the end of the dormitory.

She understood immediately that she was meant to follow it. Angels were not seen unless they intended it. She tracked him to the chapel and from there along a hidden passage that ended beyond the convent's wall. The angel did not wait for her, or even acknowledge that he had seen her, but for two years she had remained certain the purpose of his visit would one day be revealed.

And now it was. He meant for her to be able to reach the baby. God wished her to save him.

Grace lay on her bed and listened to the night, as all the girls had learnt to do. In the patterns of breathing and the breeze-scattered tinklings she found her opportunity. She slipped from her bed and made for the passage, so confident in her calling that she felt no fear. Once outside the convent's walls Grace lowered her head and hurried to the front gate, her young breast swelling with pride that an angel should have considered her worthy of this task.

But, as Grace would later find, there are no angels. There is only birth and death and the screaming in between. The small body, lying where it had been left, was already cold.

Grace took the lifeless bundle in her arms. The baby's eyes were closed, as if in sleep. She was struck by detail: the long curling lashes, the small rounded nostrils, the resigned pout of the lips. Like a doll that a master craftsman had laboured over all his life, but more delicate, more perfect than anything man could conjure. And yet discarded. Empty, pointless, dead. Grace felt her breathing falter as the shock came on. She stumbled into the street, tears flowing down her face, no longer caring who saw her or what they made of it. She walked the streets like a lunatic, circling back on herself, the small tragic bundle held close.

Time went by unnoticed until she became aware of an old crone beside her. The woman did not speak. She took hold of Grace's elbow and guided her gently forward. Grace was too weak with confusion to resist and continued as if in a dream until her head filled with the most beautiful music. It was the sweet voices of a children's choir. Grace moved towards it. Then, in what she was sure was some sort of vision, she realised she was not alone. Three others, all some years older, stood beside her, with grief on their faces and death in their arms.

‘That was my first passing,' Grace said, her voice now little more than a breath across his face. Her story had brought her to exhaustion. ‘I thought it was a dream. I…They must have thought I was the mother; they must have. I returned. One night and then another, to give them the same help I was given. It became my calling. I thought the angel had led me there. It's stupid, I was stupid, but I was young, and the convent, it shrinks your thinking.'

She paused, breathing in slow and long. A small cry of pain escaped. Tristan said nothing; they had an understanding now. He remembered again the broken mothers and Grace's delicate frame gliding forward to hold them. His eyes filled with the tears of her rage.

‘If you could have held those women,' Grace said, ‘you would have understood.'

‘I do understand,' he said, more in hope than certainty.

‘Shall I ask the question now?'

‘If you must,' Tristan said, preparing himself.

‘I've learnt not to ruin the mood.'

He laught nervously, which she took for permission.

‘You said you loved me. When you first saw me—that's how you say you felt. So why did I never see you again?'

The question he must answer, and hope that in doing so his own heart wouldn't break.

‘I wanted to see you,' he told her. ‘There wasn't a day I didn't think about you.'

And, saying it, something detonated inside him, a feeling broad enough to cover the pain. A feeling of lightness, of falling.

Falling in love. Again.

PART 2

The Temptation

It was a scream not of pain but of fear. The hysterical caving-in of the walls every mind recognises as its fate: bewilderment at the accumulation of the past, the impermanence of the body, the bloody-minded insistence of death. Tristan waited. Wherever it was Grace had travelled to, she had gone there alone. Eventually the screaming choked itself to submission. There was a gulping for breath, accelerating to a kind of whimper.

Tristan's hand found her shoulder.

‘What is it?' he whispered, worried his voice might be enough to set off the next avalanche.

‘I'm frightened.'

Nothing more than that. Simple and unanswerable.

‘It's a good sign. It's the place beyond fear we need to worry about,' Tristan bluffed.

‘I didn't think there was anything beyond fear,' Grace bluffed back. He heard it in the steadying inhalation, then the rush of her voice, forcing the sentence out in a single breath.

‘Exactly. After the fear, there is nothing.'

‘Thank you.'

Her body turned rigid as another wave of pain flowed over her. He said nothing, waited for it to pass, thought how quickly the grotesque becomes unremarkable.

‘For what?' he asked.

‘Talking.'

Tristan could hear the fight in her voice. They were stubborn, the two of them, stubbornly alive. There was a new pain, something like a stitch only it would not remain confined to his stomach. It stabbed upward, into places he'd never been sure about. His heart was there, in behind his lungs; what else, he couldn't say. Whatever it was, the nerves joined the chorus with sadistic fervour.

‘What is it?' Grace asked.

‘Nothing,' he lied, feeling light-headed as hopeful chemicals flooded his veins, seeking to defend the breach.

‘Give me your hand.'

‘Leave it,' Tristan told her. ‘When light comes there will be doctors. Until then it is best we try not to move too much.'

‘No, look, I think I can get free from this. I think I can cut the belt.'

He marvelled at how hope rallied. Grace took hold at the place where his thumb met his hand and guided it gently through the darkness, over the smooth surface of the dress that on the street had shone so brightly. He felt his broken fingers trailing over her warm body, the involuntary twitching of a muscle ticklish to his touch, or something darker; he did not want to think of it. The geography was unfamiliar to him. He thought he detected the cavity of her navel and the gentle rise beyond. He felt something sharp and metallic. She guided his crushed fingers to the ragged edge where the structure beneath them had ruptured.

‘Hold this,' she whispered. ‘Keep it from slipping back. If you stop it moving, I can use it as a blade—'

An elbow caught Tristan in the eye. If she noticed she felt no need to apologise. He felt the metal edge moving beneath the force of the rasping belt and he tightened his grip. His body tensed to accommodate hers. She worked quickly as he struggled to hold the makeshift blade in place.

Victory was marked with a small grunt.

‘Free!' she whispered. Tristan painted a picture of her gleaming eyes.

‘Okay, see if you can move…Ow.'

‘Sorry.'

The wriggling intensified and Tristan closed his eyes as each movement found another wound.

‘What's…'

‘If I can just…'

‘Can I help?'

‘It's just the…No. No no no!'

Banging, loud and insistent. Bone against metal. In her rage Grace was butting against the metal that had them pinned. Tristan found her head and held it with his broken hand but she bucked away, rocking in frustration.

‘Shhh,' he said. ‘It's okay. It's okay.'

‘It isn't.'

She pulled away from his arm and when he tried to calm her she brought her free leg violently forward, catching his hip with her knee. Instinctively Tristan moved to her, attempting to smother her anger. Beneath them the cab began to rock.

‘Don't. You're going to—'

The car lurched. There was a terrifying moment of suspension before it rocked back. Tristan felt the roof changing shape beneath his head. And then the slipping, as loose rocks shifted and the earth let go. They were moving, sliding headfirst into the dark future. Tristan braced for the final impact. They bounced down the slope in hard jagged collisions. It lasted no more than a few seconds, although, in the stretched-out world of panic, he experienced it in hundreds of slices. They rocked, once, twice, then settled. The wind howled and the car shuddered its reply. Tristan imagined them balanced over a precipice. He had seen the sharp walls of the rock-toothed valley. They were a single slip away from death. He didn't dare move.

‘Are you all right?' she asked.

‘What were you doing?'