Tristan wanted to show himself, to walk forward and offer her comfort. The possibility tugged at him, but he was afraid. The other mothers held their pain tightly to themselves. The leader of the choir raised a hand and the last of the voices stopped, turning the church cold with silence. The choirboys filed out, leaving only the mothers. Tristan was too frightened to move.
He realised he wasn’t the only onlooker. A young woman rose slowly from the shadows of a side pew. Tristan pulled back further, watching her move to the altar with quiet grace and purpose. She stopped at the weeping mother. She held out her arms and the woman fell into her.
Tristan strained to make out the young woman’s face; she had a shawl wrapped around her head and her features were cloaked in darkness. But he knew. He was sure of it. For three days she had barely left his mind. Brother Kevin had brought him here deliberately. Tristan felt his face grow warm and his stomach turn treacherous.
He was sick with yearning, as if in that first moment of wanting there was already the seed of loss. He watched her take the first of the women by the arm and usher her to a small door beside the altar. Tristan would follow her now or he would go mad. This, he realised, was how love was, everything made simple and at the same time impossible. He turned and ran out of the church, looping back to the side to intercept her.
The cold air was smudged with mist from the river. Tristan strained to see through the gloom. There was no sign of her. He banged on the church wall in frustration. He ran his fingers along its wooden surface, seeking out the join of a hidden doorway. There was nothing. His breathing turned shallow and desperate. He pulled at his hair and mumbled his request to the sky.
‘Bring her to me,’ he pleaded. ‘Please God, bring her to me.’
As if in answer Tristan heard footsteps further down the alley, quiet and careful, moving his way. Without thinking he moved to the fence and crouched in its shadows. He watched her approach.
She was alone. Her shawl was pushed back off her face and in the moonlight her pallor was ghostly. Tristan saw his mistake immediately and cursed his foolishness. It wasn’t her. The woman from the church, yes, but not the girl from the rector’s study. Tristan stood slowly, coughing so she would see him before she came too close.
The young woman froze. Her dark eyes widened; her mouth grew small. Tristan raised his hand in apology. They stared at one another, neither speaking, and the moment turned fragile. The face before Tristan and the face in his memory blurred to one. It was ridiculous, he knew. He had the thought, tracked the very words through his head: this is weak-minded foolishness. But still it happened. Still this stranger flowed with liquid inevitability into the gap in his heart. He breathed deeply and tried to smile.
Her raised foot, prepared for flight, lowered cautiously to the ground. He saw her shoulders relax. They were two strides from touching. She looked at him quizzically. He gulped at her improbable beauty and looked to the ground, embarrassed and inadequate.
‘What are you?’ she whispered. He struggled for an answer that might compel her to speak again, but found nothing.
The moment stretched between them and her eyes filled with fear, as if she read in his frozen face some immeasurable danger. She was ready to run. Tristan knew he had to speak or she would leave and take his future with her. His lips moved but no sound came. He saw her eyes narrow as she tried to make sense of him. He knew what would happen next. It played out in a slow-motion torture. She turned from him and fled.
‘And I didn’t follow,’ he said, his head swimming now, whether with injury or the memory of loss he could not say. The night moved closer. He imagined the earth beneath them—beetles scurrying, worms tunnelling through the lines of their lives—waiting.
‘My life is heavy with failures, but this is the greatest of them. I did not follow.’
Silence wrapped itself around the admission as if to cushion its collision with the world. Tristan was out of talking. Then the dryness in his mouth brought on a round of retching he could not control. There was no release and he gasped for air, grasping in vain for that space where the pain and fear could not enter. In the darkness he could sense her waiting, preparing to speak.
He had rehearsed the story so often there was no way of knowing which parts belonged to the moment and which had since grown around it like vines taking hold of a tree. But he had never spoken it out loud. Not a word. Nor had he intended to tell it tonight. He waited, his ailing heart knocking out uncertain time.
‘You should have followed me,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘I was frightened because you did not speak.’
‘I know. I should have spoken.’
‘My name is Grace.’
‘I know that too.’
And so it was finished with, their game of pretending. He waited for more but she held on tightly to her thoughts. Did you recognise me tonight? Tristan wished to ask her. And what did you think of me back then, in the shadows behind St Paul’s? Does it sicken you, to know how I thought of you? Can you guess I think it still? Would the knowledge have kept you from the car tonight? Does it make you want to laugh or cry that fate has so entwined us? These and a hundred other questions he burned to ask this woman who had taken hold of his dreams, who lay too close too late. But he did not ask them, and she did not speak. Silence was her counsel, and shame was his. Regret roared loud in his ears, great waves of it dismantling him.
Time passed and death did not visit. Tristan heard a gust working its way through the valley below, the pitch rising as it squeezed between mighty walls of rock. The wind ripped over them and a squall caught beneath the exposed chassis, making the whole car shudder. Wherever it was they had landed, it was not the bottom.
‘Do you believe in God?’ Grace asked him. The question was not strange. They were past strangeness.
‘Of course,’ he replied. It was easier than the truth, simpler.
She coughed and its sound was the colour of red—heavy drop-laden hacking, clearing the way for another question.
‘Why?’
‘Because without God,’ he started, his voice slipping easily into the lilting rhythm of recitation, ‘we have no reason to believe in reason. Without God, our reason is an accident of the cosmos, as ultimately inconsequential as the spinning of the planet or the pulling of the tides. Reason becomes unimportant, and hence untenable. Without God we have only belief, yet we are left with nothing to believe in.’
The line had once delighted him, the way the argument made a weapon of its opponent’s strength.
‘And do you believe that,’ she asked, ‘or is it just the shit they teach you?’
‘There is nothing wrong with being educated,’ he replied, springing to the defence of the institution that had brought him low. Habit, the ballast that chains a dog to his own vomit. He had read that somewhere.
‘Unless you’re taught to speak without thinking,’ Grace challenged.
‘We weren’t,’ he replied.
‘Then you must be a natural.’
‘You have a pretty way of talking.’
‘You should have stayed on the road,’ she replied. ‘My talk is nothing.’
‘You have a cruel way of talking too,’ Tristan said. So this would be the way. They would not mention it. They would pretend it had not been said.
‘Pretty cruel. Isn’t that what you pay for?’
‘I was just beginning to like you.’
‘And I hoped it might be love,’ Grace joked.
He marvelled at her toughness. ‘The two are not exclusive.’
‘I’m told liking lasts longer.’
‘I have heard that.’
‘Perhaps if God had liked us too, this would have worked out better.’
‘Where did you learn your blasphemy?’ Tristan asked.
‘I was born with it.’
‘Where was it sharpened?’
‘On the streets.’
‘Tell me your story.’
‘I don’t,
’ Grace replied. ‘It’s a rule we have.’
‘I think we’re the exception.’
‘All the boys say that.’
‘Don’t.’
‘All right then. You’re the first, and I am so nervous I dare not speak. Is that better?’
‘You’re cruel.’
‘You’re repeating yourself.’
Her breathing quickened, a series of shallow rapid gasps. Her hand clamped hard to his in terror, reminding him that their talking was a game, nothing more.
Tristan’s fear grew more solid, its edges sharper. He felt her moving against him and thought of all the times he had dreamt of such closeness.
‘You frightened me,’ she finally whispered, letting the words fall with finality, as if this simple admission was all her story needed.
‘When?’
‘When I first saw you. I thought you were an angel.’
‘You don’t strike me as the believing type.’
‘Things change.’
‘I used to believe that,’ Tristan said. ‘Explain how it happened. Tell me your story.’
‘I’m not good at it,’ she replied. ‘I’m more used to listening.’
‘You don’t have to do it well,’ he said.
‘It’s clear you don’t know me.’
‘Such is my failure,’ he replied, and imagined her smiling.
‘I grew up in a convent,’ Grace began. ‘Not at first. At first there were four of us: me, my grandmother and my parents. But my mother had lied to the authorities, pretending that she had been baptised. She had been a travelling musician and my father had convinced her to stay. They fled when they were discovered. They would have been executed. It was too dangerous to take me with them. My grandmother lied to the nuns. She convinced them to take me. She was old. She was dying…’
Grace’s Story
The strawberry plants were transferred to the gardens on St Augustine’s birthday. In the warm years the first crop was ready for the summer solstice. Nobody else had managed to grow strawberries in the City and the nuns made the most of it. The fruit was sent exclusively to the tables of the most powerful, and the secrets of the convent’s compost and its prayers were carefully guarded. It was a point of pride with the nuns that no strawberry was ever eaten within the convent walls. The girls spread rumours of the sisters indulging in secret feasts but Grace didn’t believe them. The nuns took more delight in depriving themselves than any simple berry could yield.
Good fortune saw Grace selected for gardening duty. She was shy and her reticence was easily mistaken for a desire to be good. Her grandmother had kept a small garden on the common and taught her how to tend it. It was enough. Although the work was callous-hard it was simple and left space in Grace’s head for daydreaming. In her third season she was given the honour of preparing the strawberry soil before the compost was added. The success of that year’s crop convinced the superstitious nuns that Grace was smiled upon, and the next year she was promoted to the prized role of garden enumerator. Grace was entrusted with completing a stock-take twice a day; the blooming of every flower was meticulously recorded along with the size and state of any fruit. The data she collected was handed to Sister Anne, who was responsible for the ledger in which the secrets of the strawberry were stored.
Grace enjoyed having the nuns’ trust and if it hadn’t been for Josephine she might never have been lured to the edge of sin. The nuns discouraged friendship: human closeness was the devil’s way of tempting them from their God. Social interactions in the convent were carefully prescribed and monitored. The girls could discuss matters of theology during meeting times and each was permitted to speak quietly to one other girl during evening meals, but only for the ten minutes between service and the sounding of the prayer bell, and always with a nun hovering close.
But the girls found cracks in the system as water finds cracks in a vase. The beds of the dormitory were tightly packed and Grace and Josephine soon discovered that if they reached out in the darkness their hands would meet. It started with them falling asleep with their fingers intertwined. From there a vocabulary developed: taps, squeezes and strokes painted the primary shades of affection and concern. Later Josephine had the idea of spelling out letters on the other’s palm, and what began as a game progressed quickly to a shorthand as efficient as any sign language. The two of them would lie awake for hours sharing gossip and dreams and theological speculations no nun would approve of.
Convent life was hard and every girl had her favourite complaint: the endless prayers, the unsmiling nuns, the quashing of talent in the name of modesty and the constant pain from kneeling. But Grace had her garden and her secret friend, and if it had been up to her that would have been enough. Josephine, though, possessed a restless soul.
‘It is your birthday soon,’ Grace signed on her friend’s palm. ‘What would you like?’
‘I would like to go to a palace to watch the dancing,’ Josephine signed back. Dancing was Josephine’s obsession. She had been punished more than once for moving with a lightness unbecoming of a devout young girl.
‘And if I can’t take you to the palace?’ Grace asked.
‘Then I shall cry all night long and it will be your fault,’ Josephine returned. ‘And I shall hate you forever, for ruining my birthday.’
They twisted their thumbs together, their signal for a shared smile. Josephine broke off first.
‘There is one way you could make it the best birthday ever,’ she started.
‘How?’ Grace asked, delighting at the possibility of pleasing her.
‘You could get me a strawberry, from the garden.’
‘It is forbidden,’ Grace’s fingers deftly swept.
‘I wasn’t thinking we should get caught.’
‘They count every bloom.’
‘No,’ Josephine corrected, ‘you count them.’
‘They check.’
‘Not properly. What would be the point of having you count them if they checked every one?’
‘I couldn’t,’ Grace signed, but already the thrill of transgression was scratching at her.
‘Please.’
‘I can’t promise you.’
‘But you’ll try?’ Josephine’s signing grew feverish and hard to decipher. Grace felt the blunt fingernails pressing into her flesh and knew she could not deny them.
A week later Grace spotted the perfect flower. It was the fourth of a cluster and curled back beneath a leaf, hidden to all but the most diligent observer. She would leave it off the register from the outset, figuring that if the nuns were to notice she could claim it was a simple mistake.
They didn’t notice. Twice each day she handed over her record sheet and prayed her sins stayed secret as Sister Anne checked each figure against the garden register.
The strawberry remained small, as Grace had hoped it would. It hung low beneath the leaves and was slow to ripen. She would need to pick it early, before it was fully sweet, if it was to remain undetected. She explained this to Josephine, but her friend’s excitement was undiminished. They agreed to wait two more days. Sleeping became impossible. They tried to describe what it would taste like but their fingers could not find the words.
When the day came Grace was careful to keep to her routine. She arrived at Sister Anne’s station a minute early, as she always did, and stood politely while the elderly nun collected the sheets and joined her in prayers for the garden. The prize grew in the second to last row and Grace knew she must resist the urge to hurry. Her every fibre was drawn tight so that her movements seemed jerky and obvious. She felt eyes on her that didn’t exist and the pencil grew thick and clumsy in her hand. She tried to keep track of every other worker in the garden.
It would be a simple manoeuvre; she had practised it often enough in her head. She would crouch before the plant, as she always did, lifting the bunch with her left hand while recording the state of the fruit with her right. While still writing she would hook the fruit with her little finger and pu
ll it free as she stood, pretending to scratch her head and so rolling the strawberry down her arm and inside her tunic. She would store it beneath her armpit. She had practised with a stone, carrying it there without arousing anybody’s suspicion.
But Grace had not anticipated how tightly the unripe strawberry would hold its vine. It refused the first tug, and the second. Swallowing the panic, she closed her eyes and pulled again, harder this time, shaking the leaves.
‘Grace!’
The voice screamed high across the garden, stopping Grace’s blood. Sister Monica bore down on her, her habit swirling behind her like a cape. Grace attempted to hide the fruit but time had fragmented and the world was robbed of smoothness. She held the evidence and the nun, screeching as if to drive out the devil, was only metres away. Grace turned and popped the fruit into her mouth. She chewed once, just enough to register disappointment at the sour unfinished taste, and swallowed.
Sister Monica towered above her, her fury enough to wilt the leaves.
‘Yes, Sister?’ Grace asked, her voice slipping off the words with trembling.
‘The fruit. Where is the fruit?’
‘On the plant, Sister.’
‘I saw it move. I saw you tugging at the plant.’
‘It caught. I dropped my pencil. It became tangled.’
‘You’re lying to me!’
Sister Monica was a fearsome creature, tall and long-jawed with the flaring nostrils of a horse. Her stare was hard and unwavering.
‘Please, Sister, count them,’ Grace replied, relieved she had planned this. ‘See, in the bunch, three strawberries. Check it with Sister Anne.’
But Grace had underestimated the nuns’ great passion for sin. Sister Monica grabbed her by the neck and dragged her not to Sister Anne but straight to Mother Francie’s office. Grace grew faint, desperately trying to prepare herself for the questions ahead. But there were no questions. The two nuns consulted briefly before their decision was announced.
‘You will be taken to the cell, Grace,’ Sister Monica said, her voice thick with satisfaction, ‘and you will stay there until all food has passed through you. We will examine your stool for seeds. Or you can confess now. Either way, God already knows.’
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