August (19 page)

‘There are rules for us, Grace, and rules for them. Most of them do not care what the people round here see. Why should they? This is another country to them.'

Mary was right. In the months that followed Grace had sex with traders and judges, with lawyers and bankers, bishops and architects, and not one of them was concerned by the gossip of the slums. Only one man came to her in secret, a priest who visited every second Friday. He called in the hours of daylight so that everyone could see he carried the paraphernalia of the confessional. In fact he insisted on hearing Grace's confession at the end of his exertions, and Mary's too, and even that stopped seeming strange eventually.

At first Grace was terrified. She knew so little and felt powerless because of it. In time though she discovered her ignorance only served to increase her worth and as the weeks collected into months habit dulled her fear. She came to see the men for what they were: tourists to a land whose language they barely spoke, each in his own way more frightened than she was.

‘It's hard to explain it, Tristan, and you won't want to hear it, but sometimes a closeness developed. Some days I felt the thing we shared was our terror.'

‘Don't say it,' Tristan demanded. ‘Do not make them worthy of your pity.'

‘I left my shame at the passings, Tristan. You should have done the same.'

‘They hated you.'

‘Some of them did,' she agreed. ‘For some of them hatred was all they had left. There was one who wept when he was finished, and had me hold him as a mother holds a child. One told me jokes and made me laugh, and there was one who paid just to look at me—'

‘I don't want to hear it!' Tristan heard himself shouting.

‘Then you're a hypocrite.'

‘You don't understand.'

‘Perhaps not, but at least I'm prepared to learn.'

‘I don't want to hear about them,' he said again. ‘I don't want to hear about the men.'

‘Can I tell you that they paid me well, and every last coin went to Mary?'

Tristan said nothing. He felt foolish to have spoken, but that didn't diminish his pain.

‘I'm sorry. Go on.'

‘Money changes everything, Tristan. At last I was contributing. For the first time since I lost Josephine, I felt it might be possible to be happy again. I was going to stay after the baby was born and help with the mothering. Mary was a good woman. I even imagined that one day the two of us might become friends.'

Later Grace would meet girls on the street who would tell her that their lives unravelled slowly and, by the time they realised, it was too late for repairs. Grace though could name the exact moment fate turned on her. It happened two weeks before Mary was due to give birth. Mary moved into the house of a friend. She had some money this time and was able to share the expenses of the larger warmer home, closer to the midwives. Grace stayed behind with Anthony. He was a quiet man and she saw him only at meal times. Grace knew he was more shy than aloof and appreciated the small efforts he made to make her smile as they sat and ate together.

Anthony was a good and loyal man. That was how Mary always described him and Grace had seen nothing to suggest otherwise. He had risked his livelihood to take her in, and had never once made her feel unwelcome.

But that night he knocked on her door and stood before her naked. Grace met his eye, hoping shame might overcome him, but he didn't blink. His face was set with an expression she recognised well. The look of entitlement.

‘I saw you standing out there that night, you know.'

‘You didn't say anything.'

‘I was waiting for you. I thought you had a message. And then, when he came in, I thought you were there to keep me safe, to give me strength.'

‘That's a childish way of thinking.'

‘I was a child. But I should have called out. It might have changed things.'

‘Things can't be changed.'

‘You're angry.'

It was true. How could he not be angry?

‘Not with you.'

‘Say you forgive me.'

‘Forgiving you is not the problem,' Tristan told her. He listened to her silence, guessing at the thoughts that gathered there.

‘I don't understand,' she said.

And he wasn't ready to explain. Not yet.

‘Tell me more,' Tristan asked. ‘Tell me how you escaped the City.'

Anthony stayed no longer than his need required. Grace walked to the window and peered out into the darkness. Her angel had gone. But she had seen him. That must have meant something. Perhaps he had come to warn her. Her mistake then was not reading him. She felt the window ledge hard against her ribs and pushed against it so that for a moment she might feel a new kind of pain. She would leave. That was it. The angel had wanted her to follow him and she had paid the price for hesitating.

Grace lay on her bed and felt the house close in around her. Once the creaking had comforted her; now it felt as if the walls meant to crush her as she slept. In the next room she heard Anthony moving through his bedtime rituals as if nothing had happened. She compiled a list of the things she would take with her. A short list: hers was not an accumulating life. She waited until she heard Anthony snoring, and then crept into the street.

She never knew how he explained her absence to his wife, or even if Mary survived the birth. They disappeared into the past, as Grace disappeared into the night. Only months before she would have walked to her death, but the City would have to work harder to take her now that she'd seen its leaders naked. And her angel was close. She wouldn't die on his watch.

St Mark's was a modest church, built in a hurry to serve the growing population of the workers' quarter. Grace sat patiently on its doorstep, Anthony's coat wrapped tight around her, and waited for the dawn. Father Peter arrived first. He stopped cold when he saw her, and Grace thought how the grey light made him look like a statue, though stone was rarely wasted on the craven.

‘What are you doing here?' he whispered.

‘You can speak normally, Father,' Grace replied. ‘There is no one but God to hear us, and He already knows.'

She watched with satisfaction as her most timid customer shrank before her.

‘But, you…mustn't.'

It was not difficult to imagine how Father Peter had washed up on the shores of such an unsplendid parish. He was an uninspiring figure, short and round with fearful eyes and a voice that struggled beneath its load.

‘But you visited me, Father, regularly,' Grace said.

‘No, go. Go back to your home.' He shooed at her with his hands as if she was a pigeon defecating on a holy bust, but Grace didn't flinch.

‘I can't go back, Father,' she explained. ‘I have been mistreated there. And now you must help me.'

‘Why should I help you?' he said, but she saw in his eyes that he understood.

‘Because you are a priest, Father, and it is what priests do.'

Grace offered a guileless smile. She stood and motioned to the church's locked door.

‘Will you let me in?'

Father Peter was a fearful man but not a stupid one, and once the door was closed behind them his confidence returned. He told her that her suggestion of staying on as his housekeeper was impossible. All such appointments needed approval from the Holy Council.

‘Well I can't live on the streets, Father,' Grace replied, clenching her toes to control the shaking in her legs. She knew her life depended on this, the hiding of her desperation. ‘I am staying here until you can think of a way to help.'

Time slowed and Grace's fear stretched with it. Father Peter looked at her, his own terror rippling the air between them. Grace waited. If he speaks first, she told herself, I have won. She had to believe in something. She watched the priest's pale skin turn blue as the rising sun pierced a stained-glass window.

‘Wait here,' he told her. ‘Don't move. I will be back within the hour.'

‘Why should I trust you?' Grace asked, not daring to smile.

‘Because you have no choice,' Father Peter answered.

Good to his word the priest returned before the sun had warmed the waking air. He handed Grace an envelope.

‘What is it?'

‘Your pass out of the City,' he told her. ‘Present these papers at the Great Gate tonight and you will be allowed to leave.'

‘And go where?'

‘There is a depot outside the walls where the trucks have their kilometres checked. Go there and ask for James.'

‘And what will James do for me?'

‘He will take you to the heathen settlements.'

She didn't like the easy way the details came to him, as if this was not the first time he had made such arrangements.

‘How am I to support myself when I get there?' Grace demanded, angry he could dispose of her with so little trouble.

‘By doing what you do best,' Father Peter smiled. His confidence was back now that he'd managed to wipe her from his shoe. ‘James will take you to the place.'

Grace slapped him hard, hearing the contact ring out through the church, but the satisfaction barely outlasted the impression of her fingers on his cowardly face.

James had black hair, greased close to his ratty skull, and eyes that wandered freely from the bumping road to Grace's shaking body. He was carrying a shipment of bibles for sale in the heathen settlements.

‘Holy books and whores,' he said, ‘our only exports.' The observation took him to the point of choking, and Grace felt the fine spray of his amusement settle on her leg. She looked back only once at the great walls of the City growing smaller in the distance; the past telescoped out of view and the future became a hazy smudge of light on the horizon.

After the cool regulated world of the City, the settlement seemed to Grace to be a land dissolved in chaos: a million jostling souls, strange unreadable patterns of need emerging from the clamour of light and colour and want. James stopped the truck outside a beautiful white-painted house that stood between two huge towers of glass and steel. He led her to the front door and knocked. She felt neither fear nor gratitude. For now, it was enough to be alive.