His mother was singing in the kitchen, a song in Irish he didn’t understand. She sliced bread fresh from the oven, the kind of bread only she made. He rushed in from the garden, threw his arms around her waist, and buried his face in her apron.
—You’ve come back!
He wanted nothing but to touch her and to climb into her lap, as he was doing. Nothing mattered anymore, not where she had been or why she had gone away or why she had come back, or even whether she was still angry with him. She was back and he would surrender everything to keep her.
What a transubstantial miracle for her to walk, breathe, bake, and feel warm beneath his arms, to smell like herself, to sound like herself, to be alive. It had seemed that the rift could never be mended, but now after so much time, it was.
Mr. Grieves sat on the other side of the table in his cold-water flat.
—They’re coming, he said. You’ll have to hurry.
But he was wearing only pajamas. How could he escape in bare feet?
—You’ll have to go as you are, Mr. Grieves said.
And that boy, Ripping Yarns, met him outside. They were coming down the road even now, he said, and even if Morgan went back for his clothes, all the windows would be locked, every door stopped with wax. They were outlaws, Rip said, but once they got away, they’d have no end of a jolly time.
And he was running back to the garden, stubbing his toe, pounding the door:
—Let me in, let me in! It’s a matter of rife and death!
Rip was at his neck like snow and Morgan was screaming until his throat hurt:
—Let me in! I’ve been a waif for twenty years!
Up stone stairs to the Hermes Balcony. Spaulding was waiting. He wasn’t dead after all.
—I never was, Spaulding said with a smile.
And he was touching Spaulding, his chest, his hands. He was warm, firm, alive. How the mistake had happened Morgan couldn’t guess, but none of that mattered because Spaulding was here now, and they had all the time in the world. They could finish what they’d begun. Spaulding would play rugby, and when summer came, he’d play cricket, and when it was Patron’s Day, he’d win the match instead of Morgan, which might be disappointing, but nothing compared to having Spaulding back. It was like being allowed to take an exam over; they tore up your first paper so you could swot properly and get things right the second time.
Spaulding unbuttoned Morgan’s trousers:
—You know what sui generis means, don’t you?
Morgan did know, but he couldn’t think of it just then.
—It means pine box, Spaulding said.
* * *
Morgan lay rigid on a divan, heart racing, cold to the core. The blanket had fallen away. A light burned dimly.
Spaulding wasn’t alive. Not really. But he had seemed so vital. He had been warm.
What had he said about sui generis?
Morgan tried to reach for the blanket but froze. Sui generis didn’t mean pine box.
Something had been in his dream just now, in his very mind as he slept, and that something was not Spaulding.
Bugger off! Morgan thought in his loudest voice.
The cold sank deeper.
Bugger the hell off!
And the Bishop was at his side. He took the blanket from the floor and placed it over him. Lit the candle, sat down. Morgan shivered and kept shivering. The Bishop placed a hand on Morgan’s chest and began to recite the Our Father. With each word, heat flowed, through the blanket, rewarming his blood.
When he finished, Morgan was no longer shivering. He felt safe for the first time he could immediately recall. The Bishop tucked the blanket around him, and he felt a sudden and drowning desire to be the Bishop’s child, not a visitor, not a case, but his real child, like Dr. Sebastian and Elizabeth and Agnes and Lucy and even beautiful, bolshie Flora.
—Did your children sleep here when they had bad dreams?
The Bishop smiled faintly.
—Some of them did.
—Who else slept here?
—Oh, the Bishop said vaguely, I’ve slept there many a night when the bed wouldn’t do.
Morgan wasn’t sure what he meant, but he felt a curious lack of desire to ask questions. If he were indeed the Bishop’s child, adopted but real, then he wouldn’t need to question every single thing.
The Bishop gazed at him beside the flickering flame, as if he would watch until Morgan fell asleep again. But even if he did, Morgan realized sharply, nothing could defend him inside his dreams.
—Sir?
The word felt formal and twisted, not like the man beside him.
—What is it, Morgan?
—What does sui generis mean? I do know, but I can’t quite …
—Sui generis, of its own kind or species?
Morgan thought, but he couldn’t see what it had to do with Spaulding, or coffins.
—Where have you been hearing it? the Bishop asked with an infinite delicacy.
And so he tried to relate something of the dreams, but when he tried to describe the aftermath, the phenomenon of delayed terror and recognition, his explanation sounded like one of Veronica’s stories.
—It’s daft, he concluded. You get confused dreaming. I was probably afraid during the dream, not after.
—I don’t believe you’re confused at all. You’re seeing things more clearly than you have in some time. You didn’t believe that sui generis meant … what was it?
—Pine box.
Saying the words made him cold again.
—You’re supposed to be sorting me out, not letting me go off my dot.
—I can understand why you were shivering, the Bishop said, but there’s every sign of hope.
—Hope?
—You weren’t deceived. The attack failed.
A wave of relief, and an undertow—
—Attack?
The Bishop held his gaze.
—That’s an awfully dramatic metaphor for some bad dreams.
—It isn’t metaphor, the Bishop said.
Something poked his ribs. He sat up:
—And now you’re going to tell me a heap of theology, I suppose.
The Bishop said nothing.
—Well, Morgan said, whatever you say about all that teaching and healing and sacrificing, it didn’t help Spaulding. He’s still dead.
—He is.
—So what has he got to say to that, your spectacular Jesus?
The Bishop sighed, but not a sigh of impatience, more a sigh of pain:
—He suffered.
A ghost of a smile pregnant with compassion:
—And he is still suffering with us.
—Why do you have to make everything so abstract? Morgan snapped. And if you try to tell me she’s really alive, larking about like an angel somewhere, I’ll …
The Bishop caught his gaze, as if he’d left his trunk open and his tuck box unlocked.
—I mean …
—Your mother is dead, the Bishop said, as dead as the host in the valley of bones.
He wanted to argue until the Bishop forgot what he’d said. But the Bishop looked as if he’d finally seen the truth; he looked as if he thought Morgan knew what came next.