Sacrament

'I'll be fine just sitting here,' she said, like an old lady who wanted to be as little bother as possible to her companions. 'Why don't you two go off and have some breakfast?'

Will offered to bring her something, but she told him no, she was quite happy as she was. They left her to her solitude, and with a short detour to the stern to watch the harbour receding behind them, the town pictureperfect in the warming sun, they went below to the dining-room, and sat down to a breakfast of porridge, toast and tea.

'They won't recognize me if I ever get back to San Francisco,' Will said. 'Cream, butter, porridge ... I can feel my arteries clogging up just looking at it.'

'So what do people do for fun in San Francisco?'

'Don't ask.'

'No. I want to know, for when I come over and see you.'

'Oh, you're going to come see me?'

'If you'll have me. Maybe at Christmas,' she replied. 'Is it warm at Christmas?'

'Warmer than here. It rains, of course. And it's foggy.'

'But you like the city?'

'I used to think it was Paradise,' he said. 'Of course, it's a different place from when I first arrived.'

'Tell me,' she said.

The prospect defeated him. 'I wouldn't know where to begin.'

'Tell me about your friends. Your ... lovers?' She ventured this tentatively, as though she wasn't sure she had her vocabulary right. 'It's so different from anything I've ever experienced.'

So he gave a guided tour of life in Boys' Town, over the tea and toast. A quick verbal gazetteer to begin with; then a little about the house on Sanchez Street, and on to the people in his circle. Adrianna, of course (with a footnote on Cornelius), Patrick and Rafael, Drew, Jack Fisher, even a quick jaunt across the Bay for a snapshot of Bethlynn. 'You said at the beginning it had all changed,' Frannie reminded him.

'It has. A lot of people I knew when I first lived there are dead. Men my age; some of them younger. There are a lot of funerals. A lot of men in mourning. It changes the way you look at your life. You start to think: maybe none of it's worth a damn.'

'You don't believe that,' Frannie said.

'I don't know what I believe,' he told her. 'I don't have the same faith you have.'

'It must be hard when you're in the middle of so much death. It's like an extinction.'

'We're not going anywhere,' Will said with unshakeable conviction, 'because we don't come from anywhere. We're spontaneous events. We just appear in the middle of families. And we'll keep appearing. Even if the plague killed every homosexual on the planet, it wouldn't be extinction, because there's queer babies being born every minute. It's like magic.' He grinned at the notion. 'You know, that's exactly what it is. It's magic.'

'I'm afraid you've lost me.'

'I'm just playing,' he laughed.

'What's so funny?'

'This,' he said, slowly spreading his arms to take in the table, then Frannie, then the rest of the dining-room. 'Us sitting talking like this. Queer politics over the porridge. Rosa sitting up there, hiding her secret self. Me down here talking about mine.' He leaned forward. 'Doesn't it strike you as a little funny?' She stared at him blankly. 'No, I'm sorry. I'm getting out of hand.'

The conversation was here interrupted by the waiter, a ruddy-faced man with an accent Will found initially unintelligible, asking them if they had finished. They had. Leaving him to clear the table, they headed up on deck. The wind had strengthened considerably in the hour or so they'd been breakfasting, and the greyblue waters of the Sound, though far from choppy, were flecked with spume. To the left of them, the hills of the Island of Mull, purple with heather, to the right the slopes of the Scottish mainland, more heavily wooded, with here and there signs of human habitation - most humble, some grand - set on the higher elevations. An aerial wake of herring gulls followed the ship, diving to pluck pieces of food, courtesy of the galley, out of the water. When the birds were sated, they settled on the ship, their clamour silenced, and beadily watched their fellow passengers from the railings and the lifeboats.

'They've got an easy life,' Frannie observed as another well-fed gull came to perch amongst its brethren. 'Catch the morning ferry, have breakfast, then catch the next one home.'

'They're practical buggers, gulls,' Will said. 'They'll feed on anything. Look at that one! What's he eating?'

'Coagulated porridge.'

'Is it? Oh hell, it is! Straight down!'

Frannie wasn't watching the gull, she was watching Will. 'The look on your face-'she said.

'What?'

'I'd have thought you'd be tired of watching animals by now.'

'Not a chance.'

'Were you always like this? I don't think you were.'

'No. I owe it to Steep. Of course he had ulterior motives. First you see it, then you kill it.'

'Then you put it in your scrapbook,' Frannie added. 'All neat and tidy.'

'And quiet,' Will said.

'Was quiet important?'

'Oh yes. He thinks we'll hear God better that way.'

Frannie mused on this a moment. 'Do you think he was born crazy?' she finally said.

There was another silence. Then Will said: 'I don't think he was born.'

The ferry was coming into Tobermory, its first and last stop before they slipped from the Sound and out into the open sea. They watched the approach from the bow, where Rosa was still seated. Tobermory was a small town, barely extending beyond the quayside, and the ship was at the dock no more than twenty minutes (long enough to unload three cars and a dozen passengers) before it was on its way. The swell became noticeably heavier once they cleared the northern tip of Mull, the waves bristling with white surf.

'I hope it doesn't get any worse than this,' Frannie remarked, 'or I'm going to get sea-sick.'

'We're in treacherous waters,' Rosa remarked; these the first words she'd uttered since Frannie and Will had joined her. 'The straits between Coll and Tiree are notorious.'

'How do you know?'

'I had a chat with young Hamish over there,' she said, nodding a sailor who was lounging against the railing ten yards from where Rosa sat.

'He's barely old enough to shave,' Will replied.

'Are you jealous then?' Rosa chuckled. 'Don't worry, I'm not going to do the dirty with him. Not in my present state. Though Lord knows he's a pretty thing, don't you think?'

'He's a little young for me.'

'Oh there's no such thing as too young,' Rosa said. 'If he can get hard he's old enough. That's always been my theory.'

Frannie's face reddened with fury and embarrassment. 'You're disgusting, you know that?' she said, and stalked off down the deck.

Will went after her, to calm her down, but she could not be calmed.

'That's how she got her claws into Sherwood,' she said. 'I've always suspected it. And there she is, crowing about it.'

'She didn't mention Sherwood.'

'She didn't have to. God, she's sickening. Sitting there lusting after some fifteen-year-old. I won't have anything more to do with her, Will.'

'Just put up with it for a few more hours,' Will said. 'We're stuck with her till we find Rukenau.'

'She doesn't know where she's going any more than we do,' Frannie said.

Will didn't say so, but he was tempted to agree. He'd hoped that by now Rosa would be in a more focused frame of mind; that the voyage would have somehow aroused buried memories in her: something to prepare them for whatever lay ahead. But if she felt anything, she was concealing it very effectively. 'Maybe it's time I had a heart to heart with her,' Will said.

'She hasn't got a heart,' Frannie said. 'She's just a dirty-minded old ... whatever she is.' She glanced up at him. 'Go talk to her. You won't get any answers. Just keep her away from me.' With that she headed off towards the stern. Will almost went after her to try to placate her further, but what was the use? She had every right to her disgust. For himself, however, he found it impossible to feel any great horror at who or what Rosa was, despite the fact that she'd taken Hugo's life. He puzzled over this as he returned to the bow. Was there some flaw in his nature that kept him from feeling the revulsion Frannie felt?