Sacrament

And then, out of the shadowed face, a soft, raw voice.

‘I came out here without even knowing why. Now I see.’

Will dared a syllable. ‘Me?’

Jacob nodded. ‘I was looking for you,’ he said, and opened his arms.

Will would have gone into them happily, but his body was too weak to get him there. As he climbed the final step he stumbled, his outstretched hands moving too slowly to protect his head from striking the cold stone. He heard Jacob let out a little shout as he fell, then the sound of the man’s boots crunching on the frost as he came to help.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

Will thought he answered, but he wasn’t certain. He felt Steep’s arms beneath him, however, lifting him up, and the warmth of the man’s breath on his frozen face. I’m home, he thought; and passed out.

VI

i

Thursday’s evening meal in the Cunningham house was in winter a hearty lamb stew, mashed potatoes and buttered carrots, preceded always by the prayer that the family recited before every meal: ‘For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful.’ There was very little talk around the table tonight, but that was not unusual: George Cunningham was a great believer in things having their proper time and place. The dinner table was for dining, not for talking. There was only one exchange of any length, which took place when George, observing Frannie toying with her food, told her sharply to eat up.

‘I’m not really hungry,’ Frannie replied.

‘Are you sickening for something?’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised after yesterday.’

‘George,’ his wife said, casting a fretful glance at Sherwood, who was also not showing much of an appetite.

‘Well look at the pair of you,’ George said, his tone warming. ‘You look like a pair of drowned pups, you do.’ He patted his daughter’s hand. ‘A mistake’s a mistake, and you made one, but that’s the end of it as far as your Mum and I are concerned. As long as you learned your lesson. Now you eat up. And give your Dad a smile.’ Frannie tried. ‘Is that the best you can do?’ her father chuckled. ‘Well, you’ll brighten up after a good night’s sleep. Have you got a lot of homework?’

‘A bit.’

‘You go up and do it, then. Your Mum and Sherwood’ll take care of the dishes.’

Grateful to be away from the table, Frannie took herself upstairs, fully intending to prepare for the history test that was looming, but the book before her was as incomprehensible as Jacob’s journal, and a good deal less intriguing. At last she gave up on the life of Anne Boleyn, and guiltily pulled the journal out of its hiding place to puzzle over it afresh. She had scarcely opened it, however, when she heard the telephone ring and her mother, having talked for a few moments, called her to the landing. She slid the journal out of sight beneath her study books and went to the top of the stairs.

‘It’s Will’s father on the phone,’ her mother said.

‘What does he want?’ Frannie said, knowing full well.

‘Will’s disappeared,’ her mother said. ‘Do you know where he might have gone?’

Frannie gave herself a few moments to think it over. While she did so she heard the gale bringing snow against the landing window, and thought of Will out there somewhere, in the freezing cold. She knew exactly where he’d go, of course, but she’d made a promise to him, and intended to keep it.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘He didn’t say where he was when he telephoned?’ her mother asked.

‘No,’ she said, without hesitation.

This news was duly communicated to Will’s father, and Frannie took herself back to her bedroom. But she could no longer concentrate on study, legitimate or no. Her thoughts returned over and over again to Will, who had made her a co-conspirator in his escape plans. If any harm came to him she would be in some measure responsible; or at least she’d feel that way, which would amount to the same thing. The temptation to confess what little she knew, and be relieved of its weight, was almost overwhelming. But a promise was a promise. Will had made his decision: he wanted to be out in the world somewhere, far from here, and wasn’t there a part of her that envied him the ease of his going? She would never have that ease, she knew, as long as Sherwood was alive. When her parents were old or dead, he would need someone to watch over him, and – just as she had promised him – that someone would have to be her.

She went to the window and cleared a place on the fogged glass with the heel of her hand. Snow blazed through the light from the streetlamp, like flakes of white fire, driven by the wind that whined in the telephone wires and rattled around the eaves. She’d heard her father say fully a month before that the farmers at The Plough were warning that the winter would be cruel. Tonight was the first proof of their prophecies. Not the cleverest time to run away, she thought, but the deed was done. Will was out there in the blizzard somewhere. He’d made his choice. She only hoped the consequences weren’t fatal.

ii

In his narrow bed in the narrow room beside Frannie’s, Sherwood lay wide awake. It wasn’t the storm that kept sleep from coming. It was pictures of Rosa McGee: bright flickering pictures that made everything he’d ever seen in his head before look like black and white. Several times tonight it felt as if she was right there in the room with him, the memory of her was so overpowering. He could see her clearly, her titties shiny-wet with his spit. And though she’d scared him at the end, raising her skirts that way, it was that moment he replayed more often than any other, hoping each time to extend her motion by a few seconds, so that this time the dress would rise up to her belly-button and he would get to see what she’d been wanting to show him. He had several impressions of what it was: a kind of lop-sided mouth; a patch of hair (perhaps greenish, like a little bush), a simple round hole. Whatever form it took, however, it was wet; of that he was certain, and sometimes he thought he saw drops of that wetness running down the insides of her thighs.

He could never tell anybody about these memories, of course. He wouldn’t be able to boast about what had happened with Rosa once he was back amongst his schoolmates; and he certainly wouldn’t talk about it in adult company. People already treated him as strange. When he went out shopping with his Mum, they’d peer at him, pretending they weren’t, and talk about him in lowered voices. But he heard. They said he was odd, they said he was a little wrong in the head; they said he was a cross to bear and it was good his Mum was a Christian woman. He heard it all. So these rememberings had to stay hidden away, where people couldn’t see them, or else there’d be more whispers, more shaken heads.

He didn’t mind. In fact he liked the idea of keeping Rosa locked up in his brain, where only he could go and look at her. Perhaps he would find a way to talk to her, as time went by, persuade her to lift her skirts a little higher, a little higher, until he could see her secret place.

In the meantime he worked his belly and hips against the weight of the sheet and blankets, pressing his hand hard against his mouth as though his palms were her breasts and he was back licking them; and though he had cried himself dry in the last little while, all his tears were forgotten in the thrill of the memory, and the strange hotness in his groin.

Rosa, he murmured against his hand; Rosa, Rosa, Rosa…

VII

By the time Will opened his eyes the fire, which had been in its heyday when he arrived, was now in its embery dotage. But Jacob had laid his guest close to it, and there was still sufficient heat in its dwindling flame to drive the last of the chill from Will’s bones. He sat up, and realized he was wrapped in Jacob’s military coat, and naked beneath.

‘That was brave,’ somebody on the other side of the fire said.

Will squinted to see the speaker better. It was Jacob, of course. He was lounging against the wall, staring through the flames at Will. He looked a little sick himself, Will thought, as though in sympathy with his own condition; but whereas Will’s illness had left him worn and weak, Steep glittered in his hurt: pale, gleaming skin, shiny curls pasted to the thick muscle of his neck. His coarse grey shirt was unbuttoned to his navel, his chest arrayed with a fan of dark hair which ran over the ridges of his belly to his belt. When he smiled, as he did now, his eyes and teeth glistened, as though made of the same implacable stuff.

‘You’re sick, and yet you found your way through this blizzard. That shows courage.’

‘I’m not sick,’ Will insisted. ‘I mean…I was a little, but I feel fine now…’

‘You look fine.’

‘I am. I’m ready to go any time you want to.’

‘Go where?’

‘Wherever you want,’ Will said. ‘I don’t care. I’m not afraid of the cold.’

‘Oh this isn’t cold,’ Jacob said. ‘Not like some winters we’ve endured, the bitch and me.’ He glanced back towards the Courtroom, and through the smoke Will thought he saw a contemptuous look cross Jacob’s face. A heartbeat later, his gaze came Will’s way once more, and there was a new intensity in it. ‘I think maybe you were sent to me, Will, by some kind god or other, to be my companion. You see, I won’t be travelling with Mrs McGee after tonight. We’ve decided to part company.’

‘Have you…travelled with her for long?’

Jacob leaned forward from his squatting position and, picking up a stick, poked at the fire. There was still fuel concealed in the embers, and it caught as he raked them over. ‘More than I care to remember,’ he said.

‘So why are you stopping now?’

By the light of the spluttering flames (whatever had been cremated here, it had been fatty) Will saw Jacob grimace. ‘Because I hate her,’ he replied. ‘And she hates me. I would have killed her tonight, if I’d been quicker. And then we’d have had us a fire, wouldn’t we? We could have warmed half of Yorkshire.’

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