Sacrament

He was stopped in his tracks by two gulls, who came swooping down in front of him to squabble over a crust of waterlogged bread one of them had dropped in flight. It was a vicious and raucous set-to, beaks stabbing, wings thrashing, and as he watched it played out he had his question answered. He watched Rosa the way he watched the gulls. The way, in fact, he'd watched thousands of animals over the years. He made no moral judgments about her because they weren't applicable. There was no use judging her by human standards. She was no more human than the gulls squabbling in front of him. Perhaps that was her tragedy: perhaps, like the gulls, it was her glory.

'It was just a little joke,' Rosa said when he came back to sit beside her. 'That woman's got no sense of humour.' The Claymore was swinging around, and a lowlying island was coming into view. 'Hamish tells me this is Coll,' Rosa said, getting up and leaning against the railing.

The island was in stark contrast to the lush wooded slopes of Mull; flat and undistinguished.

'I don't suppose you recognize any of this?' Will asked her.

'No,' she said. 'But this isn't where we're getting off. This is the sister island. Tiree's much more fertile. The Land of Corn, they used to call it.'

'Did you get all this from Hamish?' Rosa nodded. 'Useful lad,' Will said.

'Men have their uses,' she said. 'But you know that.' She gave Will a shy little glance. 'You live in San Francisco, yes?'

'Yes.'

'I love that city. There used to a drag bar on Castro Street I'd always frequent when we were in the city. I forget its name now, but it was owned by a lovely old queen called Lenny something or other. This amuses you?'

'Somewhat. The idea of you and Steep in a drag bar.'

'Oh, Steep was never with me. It would have sickened him. But I always enjoyed the company of men who like to play the woman. My sweet viados in Milan; oh my, some of them were so beautiful.'

If the conversation over breakfast had been strange, this was a damn sight stranger, Will thought. Just about the last thing he'd expected to do on this voyage was to listen to Rosa extol the virtues of cross-dressing.

'I've never understood what was so interesting about it,' Will said.

'I've always loved things that weren't what they seemed,' Rosa replied. 'And for a man to deny his own sex, and corset himself and paint himself, and be something that he isn't because it touches a place in his heart ... that has a kind of poetry about it, to my mind.' She smiled. 'And I learned a lot from some of those men, about how to pretend.'

'Pretend to be a woman, you mean?'

Rosa nodded. 'I'm a confection too, you see,' she said, with more than a trace of self-deprecation. 'My name isn't even Rosa McGee. I heard the name in a street in Newcastle; somebody calling for Rosa, Rosa McGee, and I thought: that's the name for me. Steep got his name from a sign he saw. A spice importer; that was the original Steep. Jacob liked the sound of it so he took it. I think he murdered the man later.'

'Murdered him for his name?'

'Perhaps more for the fun of it. He was vicious, when he was young. He thought it was his duty to his sex to be cruel. Pick up a newspaper, and it's plain what men are like.'

'Not every man kills things for the pleasure of it.'

'Oh, that's not what he learned,' Rosa said, with a look of weary frustration at Will's stupidity. 'I took as much pleasure in killing as he did. No ... what he learned was to pretend there was purpose in it.'

'How young were you when he was learning? Were you children?'

'Oh no. We were never children. At least not that I remember.'

'So before you chose to be Rosa, who were you?'

'I don't know. We were with Rukenau. I don't think we needed names. We were his instruments.'

'Building the Domus Mundi?' She shook her head. 'So do you not remember being with him?'

'Why should I? Do you remember what you were before you were Will Rabjohns?'

'I remember being a baby, very vaguely. At least I think I do.'

'It may be the same for me, once I get to Tiree.'

The Claymore was now perhaps fifteen yards from the jetty at Coll, and with the ease of one who'd performed the duty countless times, the skipper brought the vessel alongside. There was a flurry of activity below, as cars were driven off and passengers disembarked. Will paid little attention. He had more questions to ask of Rosa, and was determined to voice them all while she was in a voluble mood.

'You said something about Jacob learning to be a man

'Did I?' she said, feigning distraction.

-but he was already a man. You said so.'

'I said he wasn't a child. That's not the same thing. He had to learn the way men are in the world, as I had to learn the ways of women. None of it came naturally to us. Well ... perhaps some of it. I do remember thinking one day how I loved to hold babies in my arms, how I loved softness and lullabies. And Steep didn't.'

'What did Steep love?'

'Me,' she said, with a sly smile. 'At least.. .' the smile went '... I imagined he did, and that was enough. It is sometimes. Women understand that; men don't. Men need things certain. All certain and fixed. Lists and maps and history. All so that they know where they are, where they belong. Women are different. We need less. I could have been quite happy to have children with Steep. Watch them grow, and if they died, have more. But they always perished, almost as soon as they were born. He'd take them away, to save me the pain of seeing them, which showed he felt something for me, didn't it?'

'I suppose so.'

'I named them all, even though they only lived for a few minutes-'

'And you remember all the names?'

'Oh yes,' she said, turning her face from him to hide her feelings, 'every one.

By now The Claymore was ready for departure. The mooring ropes were cast off, the engines took on a livelier rhythm, and the last stage of the voyage was underway. Only when they were some distance from the island did Rosa finally look around at Will, who was sitting down, lighting up a cigarette, to say: 'I want you to understand something about Jacob. He wasn't barbaric all his life. At the beginning, yes, he was a fiend, he really was. But what did he have for inspiration? You ask most men what it is that makes them men and it won't be a very pretty list. But I mellowed him over the years-'

'He drove entire species out of existence, Rosa-'

'They were only animals. What did it matter? He had such fine thoughts in his head; such godly thoughts. Anyway, it's there in the Bible. We've got dominion over the birds of the air

-and the beasts of the field. Yeah, I know. So he had all these fine thoughts.'

'And he loved to give me pleasure. He had his troubled times, of course, but there was always room for music and dancing. And the circus. I loved the circus. But he lost his sense of humour, after a time. He lost his courtesies. And then he began to lose me. We were still travelling together, and there'd be times when things were almost like the old days, but the feelings between us were slipping away. In fact the night we met you we were planning to go our separate ways. That's why he went looking for company. And found you. If he hadn't done that we wouldn't be where we are now, any of us. It's all connected in the end, isn't it? You think it's not, but it is.'

She returned her gaze to the water.

'I'd better go and find Frannie,' Will said, 'we'll be arriving soon.'

Rosa didn't reply. Leaving her at the railing, Will wandered the length of the deck, and found Frannie sitting on the starboard side, sipping a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette.