Gracie’s up at dawn and the sound of her nightgown brushing past the foot of the bed wakes me up. I watch her dress through my half-shut eyes. She pulls off her nightgown and stands there for a while. She’s still a sight to behold. After that, it’s knickers and bra. She lifts her suspender belt off the chair and hooks it around her waist, sits down and starts to pull on her right stocking.
‘Bother!’ she says.
‘What’s wrong, darl?’
She looks over. ‘Sorry, love,’ she replies, ‘I didn’t mean to wake you up.’ She lifts the stocking up to the beam of sunlight sneaking in between the curtains, and she sighs. ‘Well, that’s that. My last good pair have finally given up the ghost.’ She takes off her suspender belt again, pulls on her slip and then her dress. ‘Some of the women have gone back to wearing socks. I didn’t want to be one of them, but…’
‘Never mind, love. It’s just a bit of vanity. You’ll look sweet in socks.’
‘I know it’s just a bit of vanity. I know I shouldn’t pine over it.’ She makes balls out of her stockings and throws them in the drawer. ‘I’ll take my vanity to the confessional.’
I smile. That’s the worst sin my Gracie has to confess and I’m a lucky man. I sit up and toss my legs over the side of the bed and wince. I’m still on the right side of fifty, but my knees haven’t been the same since France. I can’t let the pain show.
Over breakfast, she tells me she’s been thinking about Mabelle’s mother. ‘I went to bed with her in my mind last night,’ she says, ‘and I thought of something in the wee hours. That’s when things come to me, you know. The wee hours are almost as good as taking a bath for remembering things you’ve forgotten.’
‘Oh yes,’ I reply, spreading a thin paste of dripping over my bread and sipping my tea.
‘Well, there is a girl…at church… Although she’s a bit young…’
‘Go on.’ I cool my scalded tongue on the dripping until it melts away.
‘Bernadette Douglas.’
‘Minnie and Bert Douglas’s daughter? But she’s barely fifteen, isn’t she? Whatever brought her to mind?’
‘Sixteen,’ she replies, ‘and God forgive me for what I’m about to say. You see, I noticed the poor dear was getting rather chubby earlier this year, and I happened to mention it to Minnie one day after Mass. Not in a spiteful way, mind: just out of concern. The thing was, Minnie took it particularly badly. She told me straight out that it was none of my business. After that, Bernadette never came to Mass again. Minnie, Bert and the younger ones did, but not Bernadette. Still hasn’t. Now I think of it, she was wearing an awful lot of clothes on a warm day.’ She looks worried. ‘That’s not idle gossip, is it?’
I reply, ‘I absolve you of your sin.’
She looks shocked. ‘That’s not your power to do,’ she says, and I feel sheepish.