David Hewson - The Sacred Cut

After…

The lights went out. She was scarcely aware that it was Nic Costa’s arms that stopped her head from splitting open on the Campo’s freezing cobblestones.

IT WAS QUIET in the cabin high over the side street close to the Palazzo Borghese. Monica Sawyer twitched and writhed under the heavy sheets, shadows moving through her head, unseen figures dancing to events that had an interior logic they didn’t care to share with her. These were disturbing dreams, enticing dreams, ones she wasn’t used to, dreams that made her roll and turn and moan from time to time, out of fear, out of anticipation. Made her sweat too, struggling inside the scarlet silk slip Harvey had bought her once, on a brief holiday to Maui, thinking he could inject life back into the marriage.

Harvey .

His name just popped into her mind, like a sour discordant note that had sounded in a piece of glorious, fiery, scary music.

Scarlet was her colour, or so Harvey said. Scarlet made her look slutty too. He liked that.

“Harvey, Harvey,” she whispered, not knowing whether she wanted to summon him there or not, wishing she hadn’t drunk so much, hadn’t let all those strange old grapes from Virgil’s day get deep inside her brain.

“Look at me now. Look at…”

With a sudden physical shock, a jerk that made her body go rigid, she was awake, mind racing with sudden activity, one awkward fact ringing in her head. It wasn’t Harvey she was trying to summon into her dream, like an incubus invited in by some deep dark part of her imagination. It was Peter O’Malley.

Who was out looking for churches .

Except he wasn’t. Now, with a half-hungover clarity, she could see something that was hidden from her when he was around. Peter O’Malley was just plain wrong . Priests didn’t hang around bars like that, slyly working their way into the confidence of stray women. They didn’t know about wine and food. They couldn’t turn on the charm, creep into someone’s head with such a sly degree of determined stealth. And they didn’t stay out all night either. Monica knew she’d have woken up if he had returned. Even when she’d been drinking, she was a light, nervous sleeper.

Nothing in his story added up. He wasn’t the kind of man to tend a flock of nuns in Orvieto, or anywhere else. Peter O’Malley was a loner wandering the streets of Rome, homeless for some reason, with just a small black bag for company. If it hadn’t been for the dog collar she wouldn’t have countenanced inviting him into the apartment. That thought made her feel foolish. And resentful too.

“He’s a fraud,” she said quietly to herself and wondered why she didn’t feel more scared.

Because you’re kind of hoping he comes back and …

“No,” she said, and remembered. He’d taken the one set of keys. This was, the more she came to consider matters, deeply, deeply stupid. She was in a foreign city, unable to speak a word of the language, unable to pick up the phone and call for help if she needed it. She glanced at her watch, thought about what the time was in San Francisco, where Harvey might be during that part of the late afternoon.

And what would she say if she called ?

There was this priest, Harvey. He didn’t have anywhere to sleep. We downed some drinks and one thing almost led to another. Correction . I downed some drinks. And now I know he’s not a priest at all, though what he really is still beats me.

This wasn’t getting better. Maybe he was just a harmless bum looking for somewhere to sleep. Now she thought of it, he’d had an opportunity to take things further. If he’d pushed a little more after they’d talked on the roof…

Monica Sawyer considered that moment and knew the truth of it. If he’d pushed a little more, she’d have fallen into bed with him and thought: To hell with Harvey, let’s see what a little of God’s glory can do .

But he didn’t. He went out.

Looking for churches .

Quite.

She got up, pulling on a nightgown because it was damn cold in this tiny, artificial box. Monica knew what she had to do, which was to find something, anything, that would make her suspicions concrete, give her reason to call the cops and scream into the phone until someone somewhere listened.

“The bag,” Monica said to herself.

She opened the bedroom door. The living room was empty. The bag was by the French windows, which were ajar, bringing a cold draught into the room. Monica cursed herself. It was a night for getting careless. Outside, the two gas heaters still burned, hissing quietly, like vents in the side of a small volcano sitting on a rooftop in the middle of the city.

She checked the single front door. It had this incredible lock-multiple bolts, the kind you’d expect on a domestic Fort Knox. All of them still thrown from the outside as he left. She couldn’t open it however hard she tried. But there was an old-fashioned manual bolt on the inside too. She threw it and felt a little better. Maybe she couldn’t get out, but Peter was now unable to get back in unless she allowed him.

“Let’s get this over with,” Monica whispered to herself. She went back to the sofa and picked up the black bag, finding it unexpectedly heavy, placed it on the table and blinked, trying to see better. The interior lights were terrible. Insignificant, tiny yellow bulbs that barely penetrated the shadows of the cabin. She glanced at the terrace, with its hissing heaters. Two big fluorescent spots threw a bright semicircle under the awning there. It would be so much easier. She went outside and laid the bag on the plastic picnic table under the awning.

The night was extraordinary: starlit, perfectly still, beautiful, like a painting on one of those pretty picture Christmas cards old people sent each other.

You’ll be old one day , the little voice inside her said.

“Yeah,” Monica agreed. “But you won’t find me sending out crap like that.”

Even though the main door was bolted she closed the French windows behind her. It seemed like a good idea.

She started to open the zipper, then shut her eyes. Was this really such a good idea? Going through a stranger’s things, looking to find proof he wasn’t what he claimed? She could stay where she was, safe from anyone getting in, wait until morning, call the cops and tell them she’d lost her keys.

Unless she met him on the stairs on the way out. Unless…

Too many possibilities started to crowd into her head. Monica pulled the zipper all the way back and was dismayed to find staring out at her exactly what she would, in ordinary circumstances, have expected. Peter O’Malley’s modest, inexpensive bag revealed a black woollen sweater, just the kind a priest would wear. Neatly folded, the way an organized man, one who lived inside an institution, would have learned over the years.

She hesitated and looked behind her into the cabin. The living room was still empty. It wasn’t even dawn. Maybe he was gone for good, out doing whatever he really did for a living.

Which was probably nothing exciting at all.

She pulled out the sweater and placed it carefully on the terrace table, which, being well protected against the weather by the awning, was still relatively dry and clean. Monica was determined everything would go back in as it came out, in exactly the same condition, exactly the same order. As much as possible, anyway.

One more sweater. Some underwear. Socks. All very clean. And a pair of light shoes, not the kind you’d normally wear in winter.

It was all so ordinary.

Then two shirts, folded so they creased as little as possible. Peter O’Malley, or whoever he was, knew how to pack.

The last shirt was different. Kind of khaki, woollen. Almost military issue, although maybe the Church made priests wear this kind of thing too, just to remind them who they truly were.