“Well, maybe,” he responded, remembering his own visitation.
“She’s been burdened by tremendous guilt, as if everything that happened and everyone who died was on her own head. It’s taken a lot of work on the part of psychiatrists here, all Jesuits, of course, to get her back this far. She’s always been a mystic of sorts, and while she’s quite normal in most ways, she’s the Angelique who’s been through all this. She puts on a brave front, but deep down she’s scared to death.”
“When do we go?”
“As soon as you get dressed.”
He put on an old pair of jeans and a tee shirt, rejecting the hospital garb for such an occasion, and followed Dobbs. They had kept her in the opposite end of the wing from him.
A middle aged man in the black suit and clerical collar of his profession met them and shook hands with MacDonald. “I’m Father LaMarche, from Montreal,” he said. “Glad to meet you. I’ve heard quite a lot about you.” He paused a moment. “She wants to see you alone. I concure, but I think we ought to have an understanding first.”
“Go ahead.”
“She considers herself married to you. Even though it was by an Anglican cleric and wasn’t consummated or legally registered, you’ll never convince her that anything Bishop Whitely did wasn’t with God’s will. He must have been quite a man.”
He nodded. “He was. Uh—you know it’ll never be consummated?”
“Yes, but break it to her gently. I don’t know what it will do to her, and she’s come so very far.” He hesitated a moment. “Her theology has also become, shall we say, radically unorthodox, despite her background and my best efforts. Be prepared there, too.”
He nodded. “My theology’s gone a little around the bend, too, Father. Don’t worry. Can I see her now?”
“Yes, go on in. Just—take it slow. Be gentle.”
He could never be otherwise with Angelique.
They had cleared out a small visitor’s room for them. It was glass enclosed and looked out on the beach and the sea. It had a number of plants and several padded chairs and one sofa. She stood there, wearing a silk robe of blue which had a hood to cover all of her head but her face. She was looking out at the sea, but she turned when he entered and he saw her face, the same beautiful face he’d seen on her when they had first met so long ago on Allenby Island. Her eyelashes, at least, had grown out, and she had put on lipstick and drawn fine brow lines with an eyebrow pencil that looked quite natural and attractive.
She smiled when she saw him. “Hello,” she said, her voice the same as it had been. “You look just as I expected you would. They told me you’d grown white hair. I think it looks very nice.”
He returned the smile but did not approach her. “Then I won’t dye it.”
“You like the robe? I seem to have gotten a taste for silk somehow, and I have the money to get what I want.”
“You sure do,” he responded, trying to be light. “All I got was an unlimited expense account.”
There was a certain tension on both their parts, each not sure how to really break their own secrets with the other.
“All that I have is yours,” she told him, “if you want it. This is a Commonwealth country. We could make it legal at a magistrate in no time. But you must—see me—first.” She pulled back the hood and undid the robe, letting it fall to the floor.
She had never stood more naked than she did there. The total absence of hair, particularly on her head, produced a startling effect, but she did not look like some horror. She had the head for it, and while she looked quite different, she was still somehow sensual and erotic. Her body was the same fine one she’d had before, although not the perfection it had been. Clearly she had been eating well. Still, her injuries were far more apparent that his. In spite of the unmarked face and good figure, she’d never be a photographer’s model.
“You’ve put on weight,” he noted softly.
She smiled, and the smile turned into a laugh, and she ran to him and hugged him and he hugged her back. She was overjoyed at his reaction, but she suddenly sensed a coolness in him, in his less than total embrace, and stepped back.
“Something is the matter. Something you are not telling me.”
“You lost your hair. I lost something—else.” Since it was public exposure time, he felt he might as well get it over with and undid his pants and let them fall to the floor.
She stood back and stared, and her jaw dropped a little. The physicians had done a perfect job. Aside from the growth of some pubic hair, which he hadn’t expected, his looked just like hers.
“Then—then it wasn’t a dream,” she whispered. “They really did it.”
He nodded and bent down and pulled his pants back up. “They really did.”
“Does it—work?”
“If you’re asking if I can get pregnant, the answer’s no. Otherwise, they tell me I’d feel just what you would.”
“You haven’t—tried it?”
“No. I’m Greg, and I’ll stay Greg.”
Suddenly she started to laugh. Concerned, he went over to her. “You all right? I know it’s a shock, but it was a shock to me, too.”
“No, no! I am just thinking that after all this, somehow we are both now virgins!”
He had to smile at that, no matter what the internal anguish.
She stopped, seeing that it hurt him, and hugged and kissed him, then picked up her robe once more and donned it, this time leaving the hood down. “I am sorry. Truly so,” she told him sincerely. “We two are not as far apart as all that. Much of me, inside, is now plastic. I, too, am barren.”
He looked at her, and found more pity for her than for him. He still was in pretty good shape and he’d had half a lifetime whole and free. She had never had that kind of chance. She had mobility and money now, but she would never know normalcy.
Up until now, she’d been open, confident, more extroverted than she’d ever been, but now she seemed small and weak once more. “I need you, Greg. I really do. My money will bring me fair weather friends and leeches, who will say that they adore me until I am out of the room and they can laugh behind my back, but nothing else. They say you can leave any time? Be an out-patient almost anywhere?”
He stared at her. “Yeah, sure. I just haven’t had any place to go, and I couldn’t leave without seeing you.”
“Very well, then. I have all this money, and money talks. I am selling Magellan to a group headed by Doctor Bonner for a pittance. A mere four hundred million dollars—American, not Canadian—in a massive trust fund with the other inheritance. Half of it I will donate to various religious charities and to medical research. I do not know yet what I will do with the rest. But, I think if I wish to go, they cannot stop me.”
“I’ll go along with that. Where are you going?”
“We are going. First we are going to a magistrate who will waive all the technicalities because of who I am, and with whom you will not discuss your—injury. Then we are going to the finest hotel in Port of Spain and taking the grandest suite they offer.”
“Huh? Why—what?”
“You idiot! Did you think that would matter”? Did I fall in love with your organ or with you”? Once I was confused and silly on this matter, but I have learned so much about myself and the world now. Did not the Bishop, like the God he served, love us all far more than we deserve to be loved? And is it not love that makes us more than the animals the Dark Man claimed we were? It is lust that is from the animal. It is love which is the part of us that is from God.”