“I need to talk to Miss Berrigan.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible. Lilly Berrigan is cloistered.”
“Father?”
“In seclusion. She sees no one but the Sisters.” The priest smiled at them, which seemed an unkind thing and made Mercedes dislike him more intensely.
“He used to live,” Mercedes said, and she took a moment to call up the name, “with Tom Keating. Do you know where he lives?”
“Twenty-five years,” Father Power said, “I have been parish priest in Renews. I know everything there is to know about the people here. Including your,” he paused over the word, “—fiancé.”
“Would you be so kind,” Mercedes said deliberately, “as to tell me where Tom Keating lives?”
“I can show them the way,” Sister Marion offered. Everyone turned to where she stood against the wall by the door. They had all forgotten she was in the room.
“Oh all right,” Father Power said angrily. “Take them.” And he made the same strange scooping motion he’d ushered them in with, but in the opposite direction.
They went down a path pointed out to them by Sister Marion, toward the water, travelling along the harbour edge. Past each house they added a dog or curious youngster to the caravan following behind them. The Keatings’ saltbox house stood beside a salmon river that ran into the tidal flats at the foot of the harbour. Tom Keating’s wife, Patty, saw the troupe coming and met them at the door. Her hair grey and blonde hauled back into a bun, the skin of her forehead and face criss-crossed with lines deep enough to funnel rain. A black-and-white dog with orange markings over its eyes sniffed at their shoes.
She said, “You must be after Tom.”
“Is he about?” Mercedes asked.
“Depends why you’re after him.” She looked Johnny up and down. “You fellers carry guns?”
He lifted his hands away from his body. “No, ma’am.”
“How in hell’s flames you planning to beat the Jerries, you don’t carry guns?”
“I’m trying to find Wish Furey,” Mercedes said.
Patty Keating held her eye a moment. “You might as well come in. You crowd looks half-starved.”
She sent one of the youngsters who had followed them off to find Tom. Inside she set out a plateful of molasses buns. “Supper won’t be ready before five, you’ll have to tide yourself over with these. Where are you staying tonight?”
“We don’t know,” Amina said.
Johnny bit into a bun, looked at it curiously as he chewed. Pale chunks of something greasy and unidentifiable in the dough.
“Room here if you don’t mind a crowd,” Patty said. “Pork fat,” she said to Johnny. “Make a meal of those buns if you need to.”
He nodded, his mouth still full. And started surreptitiously feeding the bun to the dog under the table.
Tom Keating arrived with a young man about the age of Wish.
Patty put a hand on her husband’s arm, said, “She’s here looking for Wish.”
“I’d love a mug of tea,” he told her. “Now,” he said to the group at the table, “which one of you is—?”
“I’m not pregnant,” Mercedes announced.
Johnny Boustani’s head jerked in her direction as if he’d been slapped.
“We’re engaged,” Mercedes went on. “Me and Wish.”
“Signs and wonders,” the younger man said, “before the end of time.”
Eleven people sat at the table when supper was served, adult children and their husbands and wives and grandchildren of various ages, along with the three guests. A handful of children stood outside, trying to get a glimpse of the strangers through the windows. Various conversations went on across the table, and people moved from one to another without seeming to miss a word.
“I’ll say one thing for Wish Furey,” Tom said. He had just turned from a discussion of how long it would take to mend a cod trap torn by drift ice. He was cleaning his plate with a piece of bread, swivelling it with his hand to cover the entire surface. “He knew how to make a drop of shine. Best ever I tasted. I never bothered with more than a few potatoes or molasses myself, but Wish used to pick the juniper berries down by Aggie Dinn’s Cove. Went down honey-sweet, his brew.”
“He could turn his hand to anything,” the younger man said. His name was Billy-Peter. “Wish could put the arse in a cat.”
“Where do you think he might have gone?” Mercedes asked.
Tom Keating watched her. “Couldn’t say, my love. Haven’t laid eyes on him since he run off in St. John’s.”
“What do you mean, he ran off?” Johnny Boustani asked.
“We were sailing in this bronze statue we took off a Spanish wreck,” Tom said. “Christ on the cross, it was. This was just after the war started. The Archbishop got wind of it and asked the Monsignor if we would bring it to town. Not much money in it and two days lost to the trip, but it was the Church asking. Me and Billy-Peter and Wish took it in.”
“And he ran off?”
Billy-Peter said, “We went out on the town after we got the statue off the boat. Me and Wish. He never bothered to come back to the harbour.”
“It was his first time to town,” Tom said. “Should have known by the look on his face he was gone. He always had a restless streak to him, that one. Couldn’t settle.” He looked at Mercedes apologetically. “What with losing his folks. And things with his aunt being the way they were.”
“She got the second sight, Lilly have,” Patty said. “She’ve told women they’re pregnant before they knows it themselves.”
“I wanted to see her,” Mercedes said. “But the priest says she’s … she’s …”
“Cloistered,” Amina said.
“Locked up, is what she is,” Tom said. “Father Power got her tied to a stake up at the convent.”
Patty leaned toward Mercedes. “I might be able to help you,” she said.
The house was gone to bed when Patty roused Mercedes. They went out along the main road and turned onto a path that went steeply uphill, travelling above the houses on the water. Off to their left Mercedes could make out a field of pale shapes stretching back into blackness. The graveyard chill drifted through her, goosebumps rising on her skin, and she walked closer to Patty.
“Not a soul in there going to do you any harm.”
Mercedes said, “Why did Wish come to live with you and Tom?”
“He was more or less living with us months before Lilly was brought to the convent.”
“They didn’t get on?”
“You know she was going to be a nun?”
“No.”
“Entered the convent when she was sixteen, left again within the year. Moved into a little place here used to be a goat barn. Taught up at the school, worked as the priest’s housekeeper. A mystery why she give up the nuns. She was asked to leave, is what I heard. Not even the Sisters knew what to do with her.”
“It’s true what Tom said, is it? She’s locked away?”
Patty said, “Lilly belongs to another world than this one.”
They passed behind the church and Patty stopped in front of the low concrete wall at the grotto, crossing herself before the statue of Mary. There was a room beside her with a large window just above ground level where a row of votive candles were burning. In the light of them, Mercedes could make out the face of Mary in her portal.
“The Ocean Star,” Patty said. “She’ll watch out for us tonight.”
They went on past the rectory to the convent, which was completely dark. They walked around to a side door that led down to a room in the basement. Mercedes could tell from the heat and the smell of vegetable must and dishwater that they were in the kitchen. Patty said, “I cooks for the sisters when they have special events at the convent.”
They were standing close in the pitch. Mercedes could smell the older woman, an unpleasant, oddly metallic odour carried on the heat of her body. Patty felt her way to a table and scuffled around a moment until she found a
n oil lamp. “Leave your shoes by the door,” she said, “and stay close to me. Not a word from here on.”
They went down a long corridor, keeping one hand to the wall as a guide. At the end of the corridor they went up a staircase to the third floor, then back along the corridor with Patty counting doorways as they went. At the fourth door they stopped, and Mercedes could hear the muffled jangle of a key ring being taken from a coat pocket.
“Where did you get those?”
“Tom found them up at Lilly’s place after she was brought over here. She used to have the run of the convent when she cleaned for them.”
“He stole them?”
“Salvage, my love,” Patty said. “Salvage.”
She was trying one key after another in the door, without success. She stood straight and took a deep breath, then went back to it. The right key finally thunked in the lock and Patty pushed the door open. She struck a match inside and lit the lamp, turned the wick back and placed the globe over the flame. When they turned to the illuminated room Lilly Berrigan was sitting up on the side of her bed, watching them. The tiny space was bare but for a night-stand and a crucifix on the wall over the bed.
“Hello, my duck,” Patty said.
Lilly smiled at them. Mercedes had been expecting a raver of some description, something that only a barred door would hold. But the stillness of the woman was just as disconcerting. Blonde hair close cropped to her head, a face so pale she looked as if she’d just recovered from an illness. A light to her skin that might have been the aftermath of a fever.
“She don’t eat enough to keep a bird alive,” Patty said, talking to Mercedes as if Lilly was a child too young to understand. “Lilly,” she said, “I brought you a few lassie buns.”
“Who’s this one?” Lilly said, still smiling.
“This is Mercedes.”
“Hello, Miss Berrigan.”
“You’re here after Wish, is it?”
Mercedes glanced quickly at Patty.
Lilly patted the mattress beside her. “Sister Marion told me you were by the church and talked to Father Power.”
Mercedes sat next to her while Patty set the lamp and buns on the nightstand. Lilly put an arm around Mercedes’ waist.
“Now,” she said. “Who do you belong to?”
“I’m a Parsons, miss. From up Little Fogo way.”
Lilly leaned away to have a better view of her. “Parsons,” she said. “That’s a Protestant name.”
Mercedes nodded uncertainly. She said, “Do you know where Wish is to?”
“Sister Marion tells me you’re in love with Aloysious,” Lilly said quietly.
For no reason she could identify Mercedes said, “Is that a good thing, Miss Berrigan?”
“Where is your family, Mercedes?”
“They’re all home in Little Fogo.”
“They must be worried about you.”
She didn’t answer.
“What is it you want from me, Mercedes?”
It seemed a ridiculous question for someone with the gift of second sight to ask. A hint of dismissal in it no different than the priest earlier in the day. No different than her mother. “Wish haven’t told you where he’s gone?”
“I’m sure you know,” she said, “how close Wish keeps things.”
“You don’t know anything at all? Is he even alive?”
Lilly pushed the girl’s hair over her ear. “I’ll pray for you,” she said.
Patty said, “You couldn’t ask for anything more in the world than to have Lilly praying for you, Mercedes.”
A heavy sea was running on their trip home the following day, the coaster rolling to port and starboard in languorous arcs like a metronome keeping a slow, relentless beat. The colour drained from Johnny’s face as soon as they hit open water and he was forced to stretch out on his coat in steerage and lie on the floor. His face had a greenish hue that reminded Mercedes of the palest colours of the northern lights. He blinked up at her and said, “I wish I was dead.”
“You don’t know anything about it,” she said dismissively.
“It’s not my business to say, Mercedes. But I think a girl like you could do better.”
“You mean someone like you, Johnny Boustani?”
“Maybe,” he said. He smiled his stupid smile in spite of his misery.
“Yes, you’re some prize, you are. Is your poor little stomach all right, Johnny? Want something to eat?” She pushed one of Patty Keating’s molasses and pork fat buns under his nose. “Have a bite, my love.”
He heaved himself to his feet, one hand covering his mouth as he staggered outside to the rail.
“That was mean,” Amina said.
Even over the steady murmur of the engine they could hear him retching.
“He sure can play that trumpet, can’t he?”
She was surprised at how angry she was, how Johnny called it up in her so quickly. He had the hapless innocence of people who bore the brunt of others’ anger all their lives, and at the moment Mercedes felt capable of just about any cruelty. She thought of her mother suddenly, sitting at the head of her father’s coffin, calmly telling her the skiff left the harbour an hour before. The flash of recognition made Mercedes’ stomach turn. Love at the root of that ruthlessness. It made her wonder about God, to see it so plain.
When they got off the boat in St. John’s harbour, Johnny was too weak to walk on his own and the girls stood on either side to steady him as they made their way up Prescott Street. They had to stop halfway up the incline to let him catch his breath. Mercedes did her best to avoid feeling sorry for him and simply couldn’t help herself.
Rania was waiting for them when they came through the door of the shop. She took Mercedes to one side, told her Hiram Keeping was there to see her. “He’s been in the kitchen all afternoon,” she said.
Mercedes found him in the chair beside the stove. He had his handkerchief in his hand, blotting it across his forehead and neck. “Hello, Hiram,” she said.
“Jesus, Sadie. You didn’t tell me he was alive.”
She stepped back toward the doorway, putting a hand on the frame.
“Your brother,” he said. “You didn’t tell me he was still alive.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Jesus Christ,” he said, mopping at his forehead. “Wish said he’d killed him. He told me Hardy was dead.”
“You’ve seen him,” Mercedes said. “I knew it.”
Hiram’s entire body clenched, as if a cramp passed through him. “He come to the shop and dragged me out of bed when he got to town. Said Hardy was dead and he’d killed him.”
“Where is he, Hiram?”
“I don’t know. He came by yesterday. Said you’d run off after Wish and he was looking to bring you home.”
“Not Hardy,” Mercedes shouted. “Wish. Where’s Wish?”
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
“Hiram.”
“In Halifax,” he said without looking at her. “In Canada.”
Lieutenant Kurakake visited Nishino several times after the retreat from Guadalcanal, before the company shipped back to the front. The officer arrived each time with two bottles of sake, one of which he left unopened with the injured soldier. He placed a small table over Nishino’s midriff on the hospital berth and set out two porcelain cups, filling them with the rice wine. There was always a protracted period of silence between them as they drank to Nishino’s recovery, before Kurakake put his first question to the soldier.
His inquiries weren’t antagonistic and followed no set pattern, but there was a sense of interrogation about their time together. The man’s rank and the gifts of alcohol compelled Nishino to make limited confessions of one sort or another.
Kurakake set down his cup and folded his arms. “Tell me, Private Nishino. Why did you keep this to yourself? Your English?”
“I am Japanese.”
“Of course.” Kurakake rocked slightly in his chair, thinking. “It’s a valuable
thing to the Imperial Army to have soldiers with this skill.”
Nishino didn’t respond.
“You preferred to serve in other ways. You wished to fight.”
“Asia for the Asians,” Nishino said, sitting up slightly in his bed.
Kurakake smiled down at his feet. The inclination of his head suggesting this sentiment embarrassed him although Nishino had heard the phrase used by every officer he’d encountered.
“Still,” Kurakake said. “It seems unnecessary to have been entirely secretive in this matter.”
“I am Japanese,” he said again.
“We have established as much.”
“I would not allow others to doubt that.”
Kurakake tilted his head to one side. “Tell me, Nishino,” he said. “How old were you when you arrived in Canada?”
“I was five.”
“And you moved with your family.”
“My mother. My father was already there. He went to Hawaii long before he married. He spent a year there, then moved on to British Columbia.”
“The Golden Door.”
Nishino looked at him.
“It was how people referred to British Columbia years ago, when I was a boy. The Golden Door. He worked in the sawmills?”
“And the salmon rivers. Eventually he wrote his parents to ask them to arrange a wedding for him. He came home to Japan for six months and then went back to Canada.”
“Your mother was expecting you when your father left.”
Nishino said, “He wanted to own a piece of land before his family arrived.”
“It took him five years?”
“To buy it and clear it and build a house.”
A medic was working on the jungle sores of a soldier at the other end of the makeshift field hospital, scraping under the skin at the edges of the ulcer with a kitchen spoon, cleaning away pus and rot to try to stop the spread. The soldier grunting through the treatment, a harsh staccato rasp.
“The name again, please,” Kurakake said.
“Kitsilano.”
“Kitt-su-sa-ra-no,” Kurakake said. And he nodded to Nishino in the way he would to a musician waiting for permission to begin playing.
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