Ann-Marie MacDonald - Fall on Your Knees

“I’m sure I neither know nor greatly care.”

“I think they did but it was too holy to them to draw it. Or else they wanted to keep it a secret.”

Mercedes stops. “How much farther?”

“We’re halfway there.” They’ve just past the tree marked with an “R” — the fourth of seven letters, each spaced seven trees apart.

“After all,” Lily continues, “they worshipped the sun and the sun is round.” Lily counts seven trees and stops again.

Mercedes holds the lantern up to a gouge in the bark where Lily is peering.

“What are you looking at?”

“‘O’” Lily reads. Then turns to Mercedes. “We’re almost there.”

Mercedes knows only that her sister is being guided. She looks down into Lily’s eyes, and Lily feels her back open up like a book on either side of her spine, onto a dark and endless corridor full of something Mercedes craves. This is the look of Reverence. Like the look of Pity, it is frightening. But Lily has learned how to remain Lily while receiving such a look. She holds her eyes the way you might hold your arms when looking up at someone who is in danger of falling from a high place: still, steady, outstretched. This discourages the person from jumping and killing you both, for perhaps they just wanted to know there was someone waiting below to catch them. The way Lily looks when she calmly holds out her eyes in this manner is what the lookers of Pity and Reverence call “beatific”.

“Are you tired, Lily?” Mercedes asks gently, allowing Lily’s back to close up again.

“No. We’re almost there.”

And they walk on. “S.” And finally, “E.”

“Up there.” Lily points.

Mercedes raises the lantern to the sudden incline of the hill. “You’d better wait here, Lily.”

“No. I better come.”

They hold hands and traverse the hill. Unlike Frances, Mercedes paid attention at Guides and learned how to climb a steep hill without falling, how to swim safely across a current.

Mercedes knows that Frances is no stranger to men, she only wonders how Frances has avoided pregnancy for so long. But tonight is different. For Daddy to be upset, it has to be. “Different how?” Mercedes wondered, as soon as James was prone at the foot of the stairs. She has been going over that question and she has come up with an answer. It was Lily saying that Frances was not with “a bad man” that tipped Mercedes off. It must be that Frances is in love. Planning to elope with this man, whoever he is. But why elope? There must be some obstacle. The man must be married.

What would become of Frances, on the run with a man not bound by law to look after her? How long could anyone, man or woman, put up with Frances? Who else but Mercedes knows how to love Frances? And where would Frances and her lover be by the time he’d had enough? Hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles away, maybe in another country. Frances stranded, without money or love, would die far from home. Mercedes can’t bear the thought. It burns her throat and salts her eyes. Dear Frances. My little Frances, alone, dying and no one there to love her because no one there remembers.

Mercedes bends to the hill, they’re almost there, “Hurry, Lily.” Thank you God, thank you Jesus, Mary and Joseph and all the saints, for Lily, who is divinely inspired. If Lily’s premonition proves correct and prevents Frances from running away, then that will be a miracle indeed. Time enough to contact the archdiocese once Frances is safely home.

The old pit lantern lights up the rim of the arch — torn earth, a fringe of tangled grass, a limestone gash and, within, the gleaming textures of the walls. Cave paintings would never last in here, too damp.

Mercedes calls softly, “Frances.”

Lily whispers, “The tunnel goes around a bend, then there’s a pool of deep water.”

Please God, let it be a good man.

They walk in.

“Frances.”

Frances will hide, Mercedes thinks, so she proceeds slowly, casting the lantern from side to side, examining every nook and cranny. Lily keeps her eyes on her feet, waiting for the yelp of fear when Mercedes sees the dead miner, the dead soldier. But it doesn’t come. As with so much else of what she remembers, Lily wonders, was it just a dream? Did that happen? Was that really me?

The corridor begins to curve to the left.

Frances has heard her name and shoves Ginger off her. He wakes, cold with misery, full of apology.

“Shutup,” she says. “Someone’s coming.”

She feels around for the rock under which she hid her uniform.

“Stay here, Frances, I’ll go and see who it is.”

“It’s my sister and Christ only knows who else,” scuffling into her clothes.

He’s bewildered. The water of the pool was not as cold as this.

“Frances, I didn’t mean to take advantage of you.”

She laughs, hauling on her shoes.

This time they both hear her name.

“Sweet Jesus.” He feels for his fly and buttons up. Her footsteps start away. Ginger flails out and catches her biceps, so fragile.

“Ow.” She writhes but he won’t let her go.

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“What’s the matter with you, girl?”

“Get your hands off me.”

“I’m sorry I touched you, if I got you in trouble, if I hurt you —”

She laughs. He lets her go.

“Look” — she’s all business — “just forget about it. We both got what we wanted.”

“You wanted me to help you.”

“You did, thank you. If this doesn’t work then I’m probably infertile, since you obviously aren’t.”

At this he seizes her again, pinning her elbows against her ribs. “What do you mean?” He’s shocked by his own anger.

“Relax, buddy, I don’t want anything else from you. And I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”

But he doesn’t let her go. His hot breath is on her face. He feels he could break her in two right this instant, just like that, and it scares him. Frances knows better. If a man is going to hurt you badly, the first blow will come within three seconds. It’s been over ten now, and he’s still just hanging on and heaving air.

“Come on, Leo. You liked it, I could tell.”

“I saved your life.”

“My fuzzy arse, you did.”

He falters, not wanting to take it in just yet.

“What about your daddy, you can’t go back, he’ll kill you.”

She goes all haughty and upper-crust. “My father has never laid a hand on me.” He lets her go. A light appears around the bend. Frances walks towards it.

He never does see who or how many have come for her. Of everything, perhaps he’s most ashamed of staying behind, cowering in reliance on her promise not to tell. But what would happen to his family if he were killed here tonight? Disgrace and destitution.

At the thought of his family, Ginger emerges from what seems to him now to have been a narcotic haze. There in the dripping mine, his head feels clear and whole for the first time in he doesn’t know how long. Since New York. His heart is heavy, leaking and frayed, but it is his own. He feels acutely present in every particle of his body and his body is more worn than it was last time he looked — like the body of a loved one, long thought dead, who returns looking older but so much more like himself than anything recorded in memory or photographs. He is filled with the joy and sorrow of the reunion with himself. Forgiveness.

The sun is about to show. The rifle jiggles on Adelaide’s knees and she can’t help a yawn. Teresa exchanges a look with Wilfrid Beel. Wilf says, “There’s a hunting cabin down this road I used to use, if it’s still there it’s a likely spot —”

“Never mind, Wilf,” says Adelaide. “Let’s go home, he’s probably there waiting on me by now.”