They lurch and rumble through squealing branches till the back of a truck appears in their lights. Mercedes feels her eyes and stomach go watery. She reads the name stencilled there, “Leo Taylor Transport”.
“He’s not a bad man, Mercedes.”
Their lights fade from the rear of the truck. They get out of the car. Mercedes has brought Daddy’s old pit lantern. She lights it.
It’s a sin for Lily to let Mercedes think it was Daddy who beat up Frances. But he has done it in the past. Surely truth can be borrowed across time without perishing. Shelf life, so to speak. Though Lily knows the man in the mine with Frances did not hit her, she is nevertheless worried. In the movies, when a girl is interested in a man she gets dressed up, powders her nose and puts on a little lipstick. But what kind of man is it for whom a girl would see fit to render herself more attractive by bashing in her own face?
Lily and Mercedes walk slowly, scraping their way through the woods, pinning back boughs for each other. Lily strains to spot the trail that Frances blazed in the trees that November day almost three years ago. She hasn’t mentioned the trail to Mercedes. After all this time, you’d never notice the marks unless you knew they were there. Frances carved each one with the kitchen scissors. Scissors have not changed since ancient history. The Egyptians had scissors and eyeshadow and jewellery and pet cats just as we do, it’s in a beautiful golden book that Lily got for Christmas from Daddy, Secrets of King Tut. But they didn’t have the wheel.
“Do you think the Egyptians had the wheel, Mercedes?”
“I’m sure I neither know nor greatly care.”
“I think they did but it was too holy to them to draw it. Or else they wanted to keep it a secret.”
Mercedes stops. “How much farther?”
“We’re halfway there.” They’ve just past the tree marked with an “R” — the fourth of seven letters, each spaced seven trees apart.
“After all,” Lily continues, “they worshipped the sun and the sun is round.” Lily counts seven trees and stops again.
Mercedes holds the lantern up to a gouge in the bark where Lily is peering.
“What are you looking at?”
“‘O’” Lily reads. Then turns to Mercedes. “We’re almost there.”
Mercedes knows only that her sister is being guided. She looks down into Lily’s eyes, and Lily feels her back open up like a book on either side of her spine, onto a dark and endless corridor full of something Mercedes craves. This is the look of Reverence. Like the look of Pity, it is frightening. But Lily has learned how to remain Lily while receiving such a look. She holds her eyes the way you might hold your arms when looking up at someone who is in danger of falling from a high place: still, steady, outstretched. This discourages the person from jumping and killing you both, for perhaps they just wanted to know there was someone waiting below to catch them. The way Lily looks when she calmly holds out her eyes in this manner is what the lookers of Pity and Reverence call “beatific”.
“Are you tired, Lily?” Mercedes asks gently, allowing Lily’s back to close up again.
“No. We’re almost there.”
And they walk on. “S.” And finally, “E.”
“Up there.” Lily points.
Mercedes raises the lantern to the sudden incline of the hill. “You’d better wait here, Lily.”
“No. I better come.”
They hold hands and traverse the hill. Unlike Frances, Mercedes paid attention at Guides and learned how to climb a steep hill without falling, how to swim safely across a current.
Mercedes knows that Frances is no stranger to men, she only wonders how Frances has avoided pregnancy for so long. But tonight is different. For Daddy to be upset, it has to be. “Different how?” Mercedes wondered, as soon as James was prone at the foot of the stairs. She has been going over that question and she has come up with an answer. It was Lily saying that Frances was not with “a bad man” that tipped Mercedes off. It must be that Frances is in love. Planning to elope with this man, whoever he is. But why elope? There must be some obstacle. The man must be married.
What would become of Frances, on the run with a man not bound by law to look after her? How long could anyone, man or woman, put up with Frances? Who else but Mercedes knows how to love Frances? And where would Frances and her lover be by the time he’d had enough? Hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles away, maybe in another country. Frances stranded, without money or love, would die far from home. Mercedes can’t bear the thought. It burns her throat and salts her eyes. Dear Frances. My little Frances, alone, dying and no one there to love her because no one there remembers.
Mercedes bends to the hill, they’re almost there, “Hurry, Lily.” Thank you God, thank you Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all the saints, for Lily, who is divinely inspired. If Lily’s premonition proves correct and prevents Frances from running away, then that will be a miracle indeed. Time enough to contact the archdiocese once Frances is safely home.
The old pit lantern lights up the rim of the arch — torn earth, a fringe of tangled grass, a limestone gash and, within, the gleaming textures of the walls. Cave paintings would never last in here, too damp.
Mercedes calls softly, “Frances.”
Lily whispers, “The tunnel goes around a bend, then there’s a pool of deep water.”
Please God, let it be a good man.
They walk in.
“Frances.”
Frances will hide, Mercedes thinks, so she proceeds slowly, casting the lantern from side to side, examining every nook and cranny. Lily keeps her eyes on her feet, waiting for the yelp of fear when Mercedes sees the dead miner, the dead soldier. But it doesn’t come. As with so much else of what she remembers, Lily wonders, was it just a dream? Did that happen? Was that really me?
The corridor begins to curve to the left.
Frances has heard her name and shoves Ginger off her. He wakes, cold with misery, full of apology.
“Shutup,” she says. “Someone’s coming.”
She feels around for the rock under which she hid her uniform.
“Stay here, Frances, I’ll go and see who it is.”
“It’s my sister and Christ only knows who else,” scuffling into her clothes.
He’s bewildered. The water of the pool was not as cold as this.
“Frances, I didn’t mean to take advantage of you.”
She laughs, hauling on her shoes.
This time they both hear her name.
“Sweet Jesus.” He feels for his fly and buttons up. Her footsteps start away. Ginger flails out and catches her biceps, so fragile.
“Ow.” She writhes but he won’t let her go.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“What’s the matter with you, girl?”
“Get your hands off me.”
“I’m sorry I touched you, if I got you in trouble, if I hurt you —”
She laughs. He lets her go.
“Look” — she’s all business — “just forget about it. We both got what we wanted.”
“You wanted me to help you.”
“You did, thank you. If this doesn’t work then I’m probably infertile, since you obviously aren’t.”
At this he seizes her again, pinning her elbows against her ribs. “What do you mean?” He’s shocked by his own anger.
“Relax, buddy, I don’t want anything else from you. And I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”
But he doesn’t let her go. His hot breath is on her face. He feels he could break her in two right this instant, just like that, and it scares him. Frances knows better. If a man is going to hurt you badly, the first blow will come within three seconds. It’s been over ten now, and he’s still just hanging on and heaving air.