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By the time she discerned the outline of the Buick behind the headlights, Mercedes’ plans were firm enough to withstand the recognition. She observed the car creep along in second gear, genuflecting at every pot-hole in the street, and her first thought was “I’ll have to learn to drive.”

She folded her arms and watched as the car pulled into the driveway and jerked to a halt. As its lights died, she saw James’s head loll back and his mouth fall open. A moment later she heard him fumbling for many seconds with the door handle. It opened and he got out. In the falling dark, she saw him descend slowly to his knees. He walked like that up the stone path to the veranda.

The one thing Mercedes hadn’t counted on was that her father might return a penitent. Such a thing might interfere with her plans. She had no energy left to be the daughter of a good man. She had only energy enough to be the head of this family.

By the time he reached the steps and began to drag himself up them on all fours, she was near enough to hear the effort in his breath and realize that he was not penitential but merely sick. She had assumed he didn’t see her so she jolted in her skin when he spoke, “Hello my dear.”

He was by now in a heap against the front door. Her reflexive mortification was replaced by the cool sense that it was just as well to have everything in the open between them. Yes, I watched you fall and did not stir to help.

James raised his eyes and looked at her. His eyes had turned younger, bluer. Or maybe that was only an illusion created by his face having got older. Mercedes couldn’t see that yet, all she saw was that his eyes looked young and half his face was in shadow. It wasn’t until she saw him under electric light later that night that she realized it wasn’t a shadow at all, at least not in the usual sense.

She rose from her spare wooden chair and got her father into the dark house.

“Daddy!” Lily swung wildly down the stairs, barefoot in her nightgown, and wrapped herself around him, “Daddy, my daddy.”

Such a baby still — Mercedes tried to think it fondly.

James patted Lily’s head more awkwardly than usual.

“You hurt your hands,” Lily cried, holding them in hers and feeling: his left one curled defenceless with its serrated knuckles, his right one strong but scabbed over at the palm.

“I’ll make some tea,” said Mercedes, gaining an inch in height en route from the front hall to the kitchen stove, shivering slightly at the unaccustomed breeze passing through the new spaces in her spine.

James swayed a little with just Lily to hold him, it was time for him to fall again but she didn’t let him.

“Watch out now!” Afraid he’d injure her.

“It’s all right, Daddy, put your hand on my shoulder.”

He resisted, preferring to teeter towards the wall, but she caught him round the middle and held him fast, guiding him to the living-room, trusting her strong right leg.

He found himself laid out for the second time in two days. Lily lifted his legs onto the couch and turned on the reading lamp. She saw at once the blow to him and her tears welled. She sat by his side and placed her cool hand on his injured face. He closed his eyes, too exhausted not to allow himself the relief of tears. They formed between his long blond lashes and rolled through the new hollows of his face.

“I love you, Daddy.”

Mercedes arrived in the archway of the front room with the tea tray and stopped in the pool of light cast by the reading lamp. She fell through a crack in time without spilling a drop. When she returned, the tea was still piping hot and Lily was exhaling the same warm breath across James’s chest where her head lay sleeping. James was stretched out on his back, asleep or comatose, and Lily had laid herself like a cool leaf alongside him, her right hand closed beneath his chin like a night-time flower.

James slept for most of the following week. When awake, he would eat a little of whatever Lily brought him, then listen while she read aloud. Fairy-tales and Freud, until he was well enough to realize that he had lost interest in his old favourites and preferred to have her read the Halifax Chronicle cover to cover. Things were getting interesting in Europe again.

By the time Frances got home from hospital, James was sitting up and whittling himself a cane.

Lily and Mercedes had their hands full with two convalescents but they thrived on it. And the patients themselves were angels — uncomplaining, appreciative, recovering. Mercedes could not remember a happier time, for even when Mumma was alive there had been a cloud, a constant threat of turbulence. But now all is calm. All is bright.

The only distressing thing about these halcyon days was James’s tendency to talk about Materia. It’s normal to speak affectionately of the dead. But because it had been delayed for fourteen years, Mercedes experienced it as something of a painful intrusion. She was grateful that he hadn’t yet mentioned Kathleen.

James carved the top of his cane into a dog’s head and went for a slow walk with Lily. He started a new project out in his work-shed. He picked up his shoemaker’s tools again for the first time in many years. The work goes slowly, he’s having to retrain himself around his bad left hand. And he won’t say what he’s making. The shed is off limits to everyone but Trixie. It’s to be a surprise.

All this and heaven too — until the day that Frances rises in the tub and Mercedes can no longer deny that her sister is still pregnant.

Sisters of Mercy

“The sisters will be ready when the time comes, Mercedes.”

“Thank you, Sister Saint Monica.”

Mercedes has conferred with Sister Saint Monica in the geography classroom at Holy Angels, beneath the colour print that still has pride of place over the blackboard. Saint Monica: patron of mothers. Scourge of African concubines.

“Have you discussed it with Frances?”

“Not yet, sister. I’m concerned she may refuse to part with the child.”

“In that case, it’s probably best not to discuss it with her.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“There are other ways.”

“Kinder ways.”

“Quite right.”

Wheels have been set in motion. Five months from now, Frances will lie in at the convent infirmary at Mabou. Then the infant will be relayed to an appropriate orphanage.

“That’s a lovely print, sister.”

“Thank you, Mercedes.”

It’s time Mercedes had a talk with Lily. Lily is thirteen. Mercedes had been going to delay the talk until the onset of menstruation but it looks as though Lily is going to be late starting — perhaps it’s another sign. Perhaps she’ll never bleed at all. That certainly would be an indication of God’s favour. In any case, what with Frances’s condition soon to be all too apparent, it’s high time.

“Lily. Do you know where babies come from?”

“They come from God.”

They’re in the kitchen making tea biscuits, arms powdered white to the elbows like ladies’ opera gloves.

Mercedes reddens. “That’s right. But God works through our flesh to create new life.” That’s rather good. Mercedes relaxes. This may not be so bad after all.

“I know that, Mercedes,” says Lily, looking decently down at the dough beneath her fists.

“How do you know?” snaps Mercedes.

“Frances told me.”

This is going to be difficult after all.

“What did she tell you, Lily?”

Lily blushes a little, very prettily too, and continues to knead the dough.

“Well?” Mercedes is waiting.

“It’s a private thing, isn’t it?” says Lily, and she glances sideways, biting her lip.