Free August by Bernard Beckett Page B

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.

    â€˜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.
    â€˜If you could have held those women,’ Grace said, ‘you would have understood.’
    â€˜I do understand,’ he said, more in hope than certainty.
    â€˜Shall I ask the question now?’
    â€˜If you must,’ Tristan said, preparing himself.
    â€˜I’ve learnt not to ruin the mood.’
    He laught nervously, which she took for permission.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.

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