Grave Doubts (28 page)

Feeling quite pleased with her train of thought, she wheeled around into Morgan’s arms.

“Admiring the scenery?” he asked, steadying her, then standing back. “It’s a great building, isn’t it? Powerful, psychologically accessible. Just what a cop shop should be.”

“I left a message on your machine.”

“Okay, so tell me.”

“I’m in a rush. You’ll hear it when you get home.”

“I can listen from here. I’m clever that way.”

“Well, I said, ‘Hey, Morgan, see you on Tuesday. Alexander’s invited Rachel and me up for the weekend. He’s nearly finished, he wants to show off. So we’re taking the Jag, top down, and going camping. She’s got three days, we’re going to set up a tent, there’s a campground outside Penetang. He invited us to pitch it in his parking lot, but, like, it’s not all about him. I haven’t camped since I was a student. We’re going to have fun. You too. Have a good weekend. Bye-bye.’”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Press erase and you’re gone.”

“I’m gone. Outta here. You take care.”

“You taking your cellphone?”

“We’re going camping, Morgan. Living in a tent for the weekend.”

They chatted for a couple more minutes, then she wheeled away, blew him an ironic kiss, and went striding along the sidewalk toward the subway. He watched her go and for an instant he felt lonely. After she descended underground, he turned and entered the ambiguous embrace of steel and granite.

When she got home, Miranda had a quick shower and called Rachel to see if she was ready. They had both packed up the previous night, conferring by phone about just what to
bring in the event of hot weather and cold, rain or shine, mosquitoes and sunbathing. She drove to Rachel’s with the ragtop up and together they tucked it away. Miranda tied a kerchief around her head and Rachel pulled a Metro Police ball cap out of her kit that she put on backward at a rakish angle, so the band cut across high on her forehead with a feathering of hair poking beneath it.

They told Alexander they wouldn’t be there until Saturday, so they drove straight to the campground and set up their tent on a rocky knoll overlooking Severn Sound. It was a tent Miranda had purchased specially for the occasion — a good quality all-season tent, in case she ever wanted to try winter camping. It was cozy without being cramped, and as long as there was a breeze, it wouldn’t be too hot with the zippered doors open and the flaps of the vestibule set to catch the currents of air.

After a picnic supper, they chatted in the waning light of the evening. The mosquitoes came out in force but were easily discouraged by the flapping of hands. Miranda talked about her mother and about her sister in Vancouver who had kids and a career and patronized Miranda for being in police work. At least when she was with the Mounties, she had a certain panache, but with the Toronto Police, according to her sister, well, she could have been a lawyer if she’d set her mind to it. Rachel described her own family life, growing up with three brothers and two sisters. “My parents were influenced by our Catholic neighbours. Everyone around there had big families. It was a form of self-defence. If you can’t out-buy the buggers, outnumber them. That’s what my father used to say. Never was clear who ‘the buggers’ were.”

Rachel’s father was still alive, in his fifties, but her mother was dead. “Just wore out, my dad says. But does he ever miss her. We all do.”

“I miss my dad, too. I was just hitting puberty when he died. It was like everything changed, you know, everything. Sometimes I wonder if I really remember him, or if it’s a fantasy I’ve constructed to take his place.”

“That’s what all memories are,” said Rachel. “They’re stories we tell ourselves to keep the past alive. I remember my mamma differently every day.”

“Wanna go for a swim?” said Miranda.

“Skinny dip?”

“Sure. It’s dark enough; and it’s cool enough that the mosquitoes are pretty well gone, and the water’s gonna feel warmer. Georgian Bay is notoriously cold, you know.”

They edged their way down the smooth stone to the rocks by the shore, stood up in the light of the moon, stripped off their shorts and tops, giggled like girls, and slipped out of their underwear. Each lowered herself carefully into the frigid water, quietly so as not to attract attention. They could hear voices and see several campfires glowing against the dark landscape, and the water rippled with dazzling striations of moonlight. They swam away from shore in companionable silence until they couldn’t make out what people were saying, then floated on their backs, sculling with fingers at their sides, so that only their faces and breasts and their toes broke the shimmering surface, and the rest of their bodies were swallowed in the impenetrable black of the water beneath them. Sometimes as they arched, their pubic hair caught tangles of moonlight, and in the cold their nipples stood proud. Each looked at the other sideways from time to time, lifting her head so that her body sank into the darkness, admiring the gleam of wet skin. After fifteen minutes or so, without exchanging a word, they began manoeuvring back to the rocky shore.

The air was cold when they stood up, but the smooth stone by the tent still glowed with the residual warmth of the
sun. They lay down side by side on towels, shivering from the air, their backs warmed by the stone. Rachel reached over and clasped Miranda’s hand and together they stared into the depths of the night. The moon washed the sky clean of all but the most brilliant stars as it shone through a thin veneer of cloud covering. Tomorrow would be rain.

Shortly after midnight, the rain began, waking them both from sound sleep, beating on the tent fly in a sustained fusillade as wind whipped against the flimsy dome structure that had seemed snug and secure when they dowsed their flashlights and settled into their sleeping bags only hours before. They sat up together, surrounded by shuddering darkness and the crackling shriek of the thin yellow membrane that shielded them from the fury of the elements.

“Oh, my God!” Rachel shouted over the din. “We’re gonna be blown away.”

“Or the tent’s gonna tear into ribbons.”

“Or we’re going to float into the lake. My God, can you feel the water flowing beneath us? No wonder no one else pitched a tent here. Pine needles in a depression on the rock. Great place for a tent, you said. It’s a pool — we’re practically floating.”

“Look on the good side,” Miranda shouted. “It’s not leaking.”

“Not yet. Is it guaranteed?”

“It’s a North Face, guaranteed for a lifetime.”

“Against acts of God?”

“It’s in the fine print.”

“That’s a relief.”

“I’ve gotta pee, all this water swirling around —”

“Pee in a cup.”

“We don’t have a cup. Kitchen gear’s outside, probably washed away. I’m gonna batten down the tent lines, anyway. Rather drown than be airborne.”

The words were swept from her mouth as she crawled across Rachel and unzipped the inner door, then extended her upper body out into the tiny vestibule and slid the zipper on the outer door open. The material flapped violently against her face as she crawled out into the wild night. She stood up, the wind and the rain beating against her, plastering her pyjamas instantly to her skin in a clammy embrace. Diffused moonlight filled the sheeting air with a sublime evanescence and the whitecaps on the sound rolled gloriously against the shore, smashing in waves of thunder. She stood tall, and felt her skin burn in the furious onslaught, and grinned, catching rain-laden wind in her teeth.

She leaned down and shouted into the tent, which Rachel had zipped tight behind her. “You gotta come out here! It’s beautiful.” The outer zipper lowered a palm’s width and fingers appeared in the slit, wiggling it wide enough for a voice to pass through.

“You’re nuts. No way.”

“Rachel, it’s magnificent. Come out here.”

Slowly, the zipper edged downwards, then with a sudden movement Rachel leaped from the tent, grabbed Miranda, and hugged her, shivering against the storm, shocked by her own audacity. Then she released her hold and they stood side by side, pyjamas drenched, facing the luminescent lake, addressing the storm with silent grace as it swarmed roaring around them. They looked at each other and grinned, water streaming over their features, disguising them as sea nymphs. Miranda reached for Rachel’s hand and clasped it in hers. It was a magical human moment in the midst of natural chaos.

When they began shivering too vigorously to endure, they gathered small boulders and placed them against the sides of the tent and on top of the pegs anchoring the guy lines. Miranda walked shyly to the side and as the wind whipped
strings of rain against her she squatted and peed. Then they crawled back into the tent, pushed their sleeping bags into a corner while they stripped off their sopping pyjamas and dried off with beach towels. The floor of the tent was spongy from the water pooled underneath, but only damp; there was no seepage. Next, time, Miranda thought, I’ll bring a sleeping mat like the guy was trying to sell me.

Miranda tossed their wet pyjamas out into the vestibule and when she zipped up the door, there was a momentary hush in the storm, then it picked up with renewed fury. They wriggled into their clammy sleeping bags. Before either zipped up, Miranda leaned over and kissed Rachel on the lips. They held the embrace for a long time, then Miranda slipped back into her own space. Both of them knew this was a turning point — that somehow they were destined never to be more intimate than at this moment, and that morning would bring with it an enduring friendship. Miranda smiled to herself, feeling strangely relieved. She turned her head to look at her friend. The wind howled wildly outside and the rain rattled against the shuddering walls, and in the diffused light of the hidden moon she was surprised to see that Rachel had fallen asleep.

When they pulled up in front of the Beausoleil church, they were taken aback to find that Alexander’s van was not there. The front doors were locked but they walked around the side to go in through the sacristy. There was an imposing padlock on the sacristy door, but Miranda knew that a bit of a shake would open it. She had watched the pilgrims come in and out the back way, and clearly Alexander was content to provide them access, although he had explained on the phone that none had returned since not long after the discovery of Shelagh Hubbard in Sister Marie’s crypt. He was mildly complaining, since now he had to clean up after himself.

“They will be back,” he had assured her. “They’re waiting for the publicity to die down. The curiosity seekers and the desperate, false pilgrims, they’re gone for good. But the true believers, when they see my pictures again, they’ll realize their beloved saint is still here. Her burial niche was desecrated, but the entire building stands as a testament to her enduring presence as a mediator between them and their God. One or two will come, then more and more. The true pilgrims will come back, I’m sure of it.”

Miranda had listened, pleased by his confidence although perturbed by his proprietorial description of the frescoes as
his
. She agreed with the implication, in any case, that the pilgrims were the lifeblood of the place — the living manifestation of the story’s vitality, if not its veracity.

“Where do you think he is?” Rachel asked, gazing around from their vantage beside the open grave in the floor. “This place is eerie. It gives me the creeps.”

Miranda grimaced. This was where the altar would have been, she thought. Instead, there’s a hole. She followed Rachel’s gaze and saw a vast empty vault of grey stone and white plaster, with light washing through narrow windows, catching myriad dust motes hovering in the air. There was a strong smell of solvents, and a hint of violets emanating from the cavity in the floor at their feet. They could not see Alexander’s pictures without stepping off the chancel, although Miranda noted that his scaffolding on the far side of the nave was still in front of the last panel, where the font for holy water might have been. Or did Catholics place the font somewhere else?

“Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you the frescoes. Let’s start at the other end — you’ll get them in sequence.” She walked over to a switch by the sacristy door and flipped it on. The entire building suddenly flooded with illumination, staunching the flow of natural light seeping through the windows and
bringing the colours of the pictures into striking incandescence. As they moved from panel to panel, Miranda made a few comments, but Rachel was already familiar with the story.

“My God, they’re wonderful,” said Rachel. “I had no idea. I love the changes in her face. It’s the same face and yet it gets more and more radiant. She’s almost homely in the first panel, pretty maybe, and by the last she’s Botticelli at his most inspired, but it’s the same face, the same painter, same technique. Wow. The settings aren’t Botticelli — they’re pure Ontario Gothic — but the faces are Italian Renaissance, especially in the last two panels, and somehow they fit with the scenes.”

“How do you know so much?” exclaimed Miranda.

“I’ve got eyes. Look at her.”

“I see, I agree. But —”

“When I studied art history at Western, I spent two months in Florence for a double course credit, mostly walking around the Uffizi or drinking Chianti.”

“Something obviously sunk in. Botticelli? That’s neat, because she looks late-Victorian to me, sort of Pre-Raphaelite, but yeah, I can see the face in Botticelli’s… what’s it called?”

“The
Primavera
.”

“No, the one with Venus poised on the half shell.”

“What about you? How do you know such erudite things?”

“I’m old… I paid attention… I don’t know. I’ve never been to Italy.”

“Well, girl, you must go. There’s no place in the world like Florence —
Firenze
! Unless it’s Sienna — we spent almost a week in Sienna. Not so touristy, great buildings, lovely textures, like you’re walking through architectural history. Italians, they live inside history. Why don’t we go sometime? I’ll show the old girl around.”

“One thing I like about me is my age. And when I turn forty, I’ll like that too.”