The City had little trouble providing death and there were never more than a few days between passings. Grace slipped out once a week, twice if there was a need. The job she had given herself was plain, but it wasn’t simple: she sought to offer comfort where no comfort was available. It was her instinctive response to the weight of death on the mourners’ shoulders, the salt of tears on their cheeks. And to the warmth that came from performing a humble task well. She found strength in routine and dedication and believed her work brought her closer to God, as she had been taught in the convent. She never lost her faith, even if it was necessary to reinvent Him each day.
It came as no surprise that one evening an angel should emerge from the shadows at the side of the chapel. ‘What are you?’ she asked, but he gave no answer. Still, it was enough that he had shown himself. She knew then that her work was finding favour.
The first times Grace escaped the convent were terrifying. Every sound or shift in the pressure of the air convinced her she was being watched. She developed an ache in her neck from being permanently tense, waiting for a bony hand to reach out of the darkness. But it never did. Not on the first night, or the second, or even the tenth. Grace began to relax. Seeing the angel convinced her she was being protected and she began to take more risks, leaving earlier in the night, taking the shorter route through wider, better lit streets.
And then it was over.
The entrance to the passage was well concealed and Grace always paused to test the silence before she stepped back inside the convent. But Sister Monica made no sound. She was kneeling before the altar, her eyes wide against the gloom. Grace heard a great roaring in her ears, the sound of her future being sucked out of existence. Instinctively she fell to her knees, ready to play the innocent fool, frightened and remorseful.
‘Sister,’ she whispered. ‘I have been weak and thoughtless, but I am sorry for my sin. It was just this once and I am glad that you have found me for it has saved me from further temptation…’
Sister Monica laughed in her face. ‘You are a wicked child, Grace. You always have been. I am surprised you lasted this long.’
There were no rituals for expulsion. The nuns didn’t want to make heroes of the departed. They didn’t even bother with a final whipping. Grace was stripped of her robes, dressed in a coarse hessian smock and escorted out the front gate. The bolt was slid shut behind her and she was left standing before the City, a stranger fallen to earth without connections or prospects, her future of no interest to those who passed. In the cold dawn light Grace knew that a wrong move could kill her, yet she had no idea what a right move might be. She had felt fear many times, but it had never before held her with such certainty.
The grey sky was lightening in the east and Grace felt the chill of the departing night shiver through her. She began to walk, hoping movement might be enough to keep hopelessness at bay. She chose her path at random, her mind paralysed by shock. It happens this quickly, she realised, the rubbing out of a life.
By nightfall Grace was hungry and aching and no closer to knowing how she might survive. She headed for St Paul’s Chapel because she couldn’t think where else to go. There were no passings scheduled that night and she found the doors locked. She made herself as comfortable as she could in the alley where she had seen the angel, dimly hoping that if he intended to save her this was where she could be easily found. The cold bit into her bones. Fifteen years old, and fading. If Mary had not found her, she would have died there.
Mary was a young mother Grace had comforted at a passing some months before. Grace didn’t recognise her— grief has a way of melting one face into another—but Mary remembered Grace. Later she would explain that bereaved mothers often walked past the chapel even though it was strictly forbidden. It was the only place they had to mourn, and to renegotiate their deals with God.
Mary insisted Grace come back to her home. Grace tried to resist; the City looked unkindly on those who harboured troublemakers and Grace had no desire to put Mary at risk. Mary would not be moved. When she had needed it most, Grace had been there to offer comfort, she explained, and now it filled her with gladness to be able to return the favour.
It was clear from her small dwelling that Mary could not afford to play the hostess. What’s more, Mary’s husband, Anthony, was a tiler and depended on the Holy Council for his contracts. If people chose to make trouble it could cost him his livelihood. He should have turned Grace away—all three of them knew it—but his heart was weak with kindness and he raised no objections. He smiled and he returned to his evening task of weaving straw insulation in preparation for the winter. Grace was given food and shelter without any talk of recompense. For two long months she didn’t leave the tiny building, for fear of bringing Mary and Anthony further trouble.
When Mary fell pregnant again Grace knew the time to leave had come. No matter what goodness Mary possessed, her child had first claim to it. And Mary had suffered two passings; she needed every scrap of food Anthony could provide for her. Each morning Grace woke determined this would be the day she would go. She would make it easy for them, slipping out into the darkness before they could object. But at nightfall all three of them were still together, each finding excuses to forgo their share of the inadequate meal. Fear had Grace pinned there. No matter how much it hurt her to impose on them, she knew the cold City would kill her within a week. The spirit was willing, but the flesh refused to die. It was almost a relief when Mary finally raised the issue.
The winter had grown vindictive and Grace sat in front of the fire with a blanket wrapped around her. Mary had been at the markets and said nothing as she settled next to her guest. She took Grace’s hands in her own and Grace, feeling the iciness, assumed she was trying to warm them. Then she saw Mary had been crying.
‘It’s all right,’ Grace said. ‘I know you can’t afford to keep me now. I wouldn’t want you to try. You must think of the baby. I am sorry I let it come to this. I will be gone before Anthony is home.’
Mary shook her head; the sadness in her eyes was magni-fied by tears.
‘No, Grace. You would die.’
‘Then that is what will happen,’ Grace replied.
‘You will stay here, Grace.’ Mary spoke quietly, with the same voice the nuns taught the girls to use when ministering to the sick and dying. ‘But we can no longer keep you. You need to bring money into the home.’
‘I would do anything, of course, but no one would employ me.’
Mary knew as well as Grace did how the City worked. Graduates of the convents took jobs as servants. Those from better homes trained as teachers and nurses, to pass the time before they met their husbands. That was all there was. No expelled girl could hope to find employment in the City. Grace looked to Mary, hoping desperately there was more to the world than she could imagine. It was not impossible. The convent had raised the concealment of truth to an art form.
Mary squeezed Grace’s hand and stared at the muted flames.
‘There are men, Grace, who would pay to lie with you.’
At first Grace didn’t understand. She looked for a clue, but Mary’s eyes were fixed on the ground. ‘I would not ask this of you if it…’
‘I will do it,’ Grace assured her, understanding little of what it was she promised. Whatever it was, it had to be better than dying. ‘I owe it to you. I do not mind.’
The next day, when Anthony was out at work, Mary explained the rudimentaries of sex and contraception. It was difficult for them both but Mary was thinking of her child and Grace of her life; they understood there are worse things to bear than embarrassment. But there was still one thing that Grace did not understand. How would they manage the risk of strangers entering the home? The front door was the house’s only entrance and in the workers’ quarter curtains twitched at the smallest sound. Mary’s answer surprised her.
‘There are rules for us, Grace, and rules for them. Most of them do not care what the people round here see. Why should they? This is another country to them.’
Mary was right. In the months that followed Grace had sex with traders and judges, with lawyers and bankers, bishops and architects, and not one of them was concerned by the gossip of the slums. Only one man came to her in secret, a priest who visited every second Friday. He called in the hours of daylight so that everyone could see he carried the paraphernalia of the confessional. In fact he insisted on hearing Grace’s confession at the end of his exertions, and Mary’s too, and even that stopped seeming strange eventually.
At first Grace was terrified. She knew so little and felt powerless because of it. In time though she discovered her ignorance only served to increase her worth and as the weeks collected into months habit dulled her fear. She came to see the men for what they were: tourists to a land whose language they barely spoke, each in his own way more frightened than she was.
‘It’s hard to explain it, Tristan, and you won’t want to hear it, but sometimes a closeness developed. Some days I felt the thing we shared was our terror.’
‘Don’t say it,’ Tristan demanded. ‘Do not make them worthy of your pity.’
‘I left my shame at the passings, Tristan. You should have done the same.’
‘They hated you.’
‘Some of them did,’ she agreed. ‘For some of them hatred was all they had left. There was one who wept when he was finished, and had me hold him as a mother holds a child. One told me jokes and made me laugh, and there was one who paid just to look at me—’
‘I don’t want to hear it!’ Tristan heard himself shouting.
‘Then you’re a hypocrite.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Perhaps not, but at least I’m prepared to learn.’
‘I don’t want to hear about them,’ he said again. ‘I don’t want to hear about the men.’
‘Can I tell you that they paid me well, and every last coin went to Mary?’
Tristan said nothing. He felt foolish to have spoken, but that didn’t diminish his pain.
‘I’m sorry. Go on.’
‘Money changes everything, Tristan. At last I was contributing. For the first time since I lost Josephine, I felt it might be possible to be happy again. I was going to stay after the baby was born and help with the mothering. Mary was a good woman. I even imagined that one day the two of us might become friends.’
Later Grace would meet girls on the street who would tell her that their lives unravelled slowly and, by the time they realised, it was too late for repairs. Grace though could name the exact moment fate turned on her. It happened two weeks before Mary was due to give birth. Mary moved into the house of a friend. She had some money this time and was able to share the expenses of the larger warmer home, closer to the midwives. Grace stayed behind with Anthony. He was a quiet man and she saw him only at meal times. Grace knew he was more shy than aloof and appreciated the small efforts he made to make her smile as they sat and ate together.
Anthony was a good and loyal man. That was how Mary always described him and Grace had seen nothing to suggest otherwise. He had risked his livelihood to take her in, and had never once made her feel unwelcome.
But that night he knocked on her door and stood before her naked. Grace met his eye, hoping shame might overcome him, but he didn’t blink. His face was set with an expression she recognised well. The look of entitlement.
‘I saw you standing out there that night, you know.’
‘You didn’t say anything.’
‘I was waiting for you. I thought you had a message. And then, when he came in, I thought you were there to keep me safe, to give me strength.’
‘That’s a childish way of thinking.’
‘I was a child. But I should have called out. It might have changed things.’
‘Things can’t be changed.’
‘You’re angry.’
It was true. How could he not be angry?
‘Not with you.’
‘Say you forgive me.’
‘Forgiving you is not the problem,’ Tristan told her. He listened to her silence, guessing at the thoughts that gathered there.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
And he wasn’t ready to explain. Not yet.
‘Tell me more,’ Tristan asked. ‘Tell me how you escaped the City.’
Anthony stayed no longer than his need required. Grace walked to the window and peered out into the darkness. Her angel had gone. But she had seen him. That must have meant something. Perhaps he had come to warn her. Her mistake then was not reading him. She felt the window ledge hard against her ribs and pushed against it so that for a moment she might feel a new kind of pain. She would leave. That was it. The angel had wanted her to follow him and she had paid the price for hesitating.
Grace lay on her bed and felt the house close in around her. Once the creaking had comforted her; now it felt as if the walls meant to crush her as she slept. In the next room she heard Anthony moving through his bedtime rituals as if nothing had happened. She compiled a list of the things she would take with her. A short list: hers was not an accumulating life. She waited until she heard Anthony snoring, and then crept into the street.
She never knew how he explained her absence to his wife, or even if Mary survived the birth. They disappeared into the past, as Grace disappeared into the night. Only months before she would have walked to her death, but the City would have to work harder to take her now that she’d seen its leaders naked. And her angel was close. She wouldn’t die on his watch.
St Mark’s was a modest church, built in a hurry to serve the growing population of the workers’ quarter. Grace sat patiently on its doorstep, Anthony’s coat wrapped tight around her, and waited for the dawn. Father Peter arrived first. He stopped cold when he saw her, and Grace thought how the grey light made him look like a statue, though stone was rarely wasted on the craven.
‘What are you doing here?’ he whispered.
‘You can speak normally, Father,’ Grace replied. ‘There is no one but God to hear us, and He already knows.’
She watched with satisfaction as her most timid customer shrank before her.
‘But, you…mustn’t.’
It was not difficult to imagine how Father Peter had washed up on the shores of such an unsplendid parish. He was an uninspiring figure, short and round with fearful eyes and a voice that struggled beneath its load.
‘But you visited me, Father, regularly,’ Grace said.
‘No, go. Go back to your home.’ He shooed at her with his hands as if she was a pigeon defecating on a holy bust, but Grace didn’t flinch.
‘I can’t go back, Father,’ she explained. ‘I have been mistreated there. And now you must help me.’
‘Why should I help you?’ he said, but she saw in his eyes that he understood.
‘Because you are a priest, Father, and it is what priests do.’
Grace offered a guileless smile. She stood and motioned to the church’s locked door.
‘Will you let me in?’
Father Peter was a fearful man but not a stupid one, and once the door was closed behind them his confidence returned. He told her that her suggestion of staying on as his housekeeper was impossible. All such appointments needed approval from the Holy Council.
‘Well I can’t live on the streets, Father,’ Grace replied, clenching her toes to control the shaking in her legs. She knew her life depended on this, the hiding of her desperation. ‘I am staying here until you can think of a way to help.’
Time slowed and Grace’s fear stretched with it. Father Peter looked at her, his own terror rippling the air between them. Grace waited. If he speaks first, she told herself, I have won. She had to believe in something. She watched the priest’s pale skin turn blue as the rising sun pierced a stained-glass window.
‘Wait here,’ he told her. ‘Don’t move. I will be back within the hour.’
‘Why should I trust you?’ Grace asked, not daring to smile.
‘Because you have no choice,’ Father Peter answered.
Good to his word the priest returned before the sun had warmed the waking air. He handed Grace an envelope.
‘What is it?’
‘Your pass out of the City,’ he told her. ‘Present these papers at the Great Gate tonight and you will be allowed to leave.’
‘And go where?’
‘There is a depot outside the walls where the trucks have their kilometres checked. Go there and ask for James.’
‘And what will James do for me?’
‘He will take you to the heathen settlements.’
She didn’t like the easy way the details came to him, as if this was not the first time he had made such arrangements.
‘How am I to support myself when I get there?’ Grace demanded, angry he could dispose of her with so little trouble.
‘By doing what you do best,’ Father Peter smiled. His confidence was back now that he’d managed to wipe her from his shoe. ‘James will take you to the place.’
Grace slapped him hard, hearing the contact ring out through the church, but the satisfaction barely outlasted the impression of her fingers on his cowardly face.
James had black hair, greased close to his ratty skull, and eyes that wandered freely from the bumping road to Grace’s shaking body. He was carrying a shipment of bibles for sale in the heathen settlements.
‘Holy books and whores,’ he said, ‘our only exports.’ The observation took him to the point of choking, and Grace felt the fine spray of his amusement settle on her leg. She looked back only once at the great walls of the City growing smaller in the distance; the past telescoped out of view and the future became a hazy smudge of light on the horizon.
After the cool regulated world of the City, the settlement seemed to Grace to be a land dissolved in chaos: a million jostling souls, strange unreadable patterns of need emerging from the clamour of light and colour and want. James stopped the truck outside a beautiful white-painted house that stood between two huge towers of glass and steel. He led her to the front door and knocked. She felt neither fear nor gratitude. For now, it was enough to be alive.
‘What’s in there?’ Grace asked.
‘Your future,’ James answered. ‘Good luck. Who knows, if they like you I might even see you again some day.’
He winked and let his gaze slide down to her breasts.
‘Hello Martha, a convent girl fresh from the City.’
‘Can you vouch for her?’
‘She comes highly recommended.’
Martha, the madam of the house, had applied her make-up in the way a plasterer applies render, but still the cracks were visible. Her hair, cut short and close to her head, was dyed an improbable red. Her dress, black and of the finest fabric Grace had ever seen, swayed loosely about her delicate frame and a huge ring of gold dangled from each ear, as if to keep her from floating free. Once she had been beautiful, and the memory of beauty lingered in her eyes. Her expression was warm but careful, appraising, and her voice was startling.
‘What is your name?’
‘Grace, Ma’am.’
‘A convent girl?’
Grace nodded.
‘Have you been whipped?’
The room was warm and the furniture more opulent than Grace had ever seen. She considered lying but there was no hiding the scars.
‘Yes, but many years ago.’
‘Let’s see, then. Lift that dress off and turn around.’
Grace did as she was told and felt the pressure of bony fingers running along the hard raised skin.
‘You’re lucky: they healed badly. It’s a nice rough contour. We’ll take you. Turn around. Look at me. We’ll test you and if you’re clean there’s a room for you with the other girls. Staying clean is your responsibility. We’ll pay you well if the clients like you. I’m sure they will. That’s a great blemish and you seem shy, which is what they look for. You’re lucky. I’ll keep you safe.’
The woman pulled her close. Grace was as numb as the scars on her back.
There were twelve girls altogether and they slept off the premises in a hostel that was clean and comfortable. The girls were friendly and at the same time wary, an attitude Grace remembered well from her convent days. She tried to be careful too, yet in those first few weeks she laughed more than she had in all the years before. And for the first time in her life she received a wage. The money felt strange in her hand, like the first tickling of a new disease. When she wasn’t working she was free to explore, but the rush of the streets overwhelmed her and she preferred to lie on her bed reading the tattered books and magazines she found on a shelf next to the linen.
Settlement men were different of course—their clothes and their way of talking—but none was unfamiliar. It was the same mix of the shy and the confident, the polite and the demanding, the frightened and the frightening. Until Grace met Pete, the men held no surprises.
Initially she mistook him for a first timer. He hung in the doorway as if waiting to be invited in and was careful to keep his eyes from her body. When he walked his movements were gentle. His narrow shoulders and small hands suggested a life free from labour, and when she led him to the edge of the bed he remained standing, like an unannounced visitor not wanting to impose.
‘What would you like?’ Grace asked. Although his light hair was thinning she saw he had the eyes of a child, ready to tip into tears or laughter.
‘It’s a little unusual.’ He dipped his eyes and a blush worried its way across his cheeks.
‘You will do well to surprise me,’ Grace said.
‘My name is Pete. I would like you to like me.’
‘I already like you,’ Grace replied. It was a game and she was good at it, finding the right words to relax them.
‘No, genuinely like me.’
‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
He sat down and let her take his hand.
‘I’ve never been here before. I suppose that’s obvious. Or maybe all your clients pretend that. I don’t know. I don’t want to tell you about myself, not too much. But I am sad. I haven’t always been sad, but life, it catches us unawares. It shouldn’t, but it does. And I need to be able to tell somebody I am sad. This, well, it’s honest, isn’t it? That’s what I decided. There’s no pretending. I’m paying you to do as I please. And as I please is for you to listen to me and talk to me, and if I am lucky you will like me. And if you don’t, I don’t want you to pretend. Is that all right?’
Grace nodded. He was right: it wasn’t unusual for men to start this way. But Pete spoke in a way that made her want to believe him.
‘And when I like you?’
‘Then I suppose I’d like to fuck you,’ he admitted with a smile. ‘But not today. Today I would like to talk to you.’
This too she had heard before. Perhaps he even believed it. But no man was to leave unrelieved. On this point the madam was most insistent.
‘The frightened ones need you to lead them,’ she explained. ‘They would never have come here if they didn’t want you, and they’ll never be back again if you don’t give them a reason to return.’
‘I chose this place because it has convent girls,’ Pete continued. ‘And I am interested in that. I am interested in talking about God.’
That part, she had to admit, was new. He used his hour and then paid for a second, and all the time they did nothing but talk about God. He questioned her about her education and her beliefs, and Grace did what she always did: wove truth and tale together, keeping close to herself those things that mattered most—Josephine and the angel.
Grace was worried when Pete left with no more than a handshake, and she expected to be punished for it. But he was back three nights later, and in the months that followed Grace saw him on average twice a week. He told her he taught psychology at one of the universities, and she believed him. He knew more than anybody she had ever met and was a kind and patient teacher. Soon her thoughts were patterned with his fingerprints and with every new thing he told her she yearned to learn more. He brought her books to read; histories were her favourite. One morning he took her out in his car to show her the places he had talked about: the street where he grew up, the school of his childhood, the restaurant where he worked washing dishes through his student years.
Grace had little trouble convincing Pete she liked him. The learning, the laughing, the sex—all of it made her feel important. She found herself wishing the girls from the convent could see what she had become. Some nights thoughts of Pete kept her from sleeping. For the first time since the death of Josephine, Grace had a friend. When she asked him if he was her angel he laughed and ran his finger down her scars. When he brought her gifts and told her she had saved him, she cried.
And then one week he didn’t visit. One week turned to two, then three. His absence clawed at her and the only thing she could think of doing was the thing she knew she mustn’t do.
‘Why were you surprised? You were just a whore to him.’ It was easy for Tristan to hate the man she described. The affection in her voice tore at him like broken steel.
‘And what am I to you?’ she demanded, her voice rising to his challenge.
‘You went to him, didn’t you?’
‘They told me if I ever initiated contact with a client I would be gone,’ Grace said. ‘But he didn’t feel like a client. I thought…’
She finished with a whimper, whether in pain or sadness Tristan couldn’t know. Either way it softened him.
‘I am sorry,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing surprising. He had shown me where his university was. I found his office. He was there with a student. I suppose she was my age, a year or two older perhaps. They were laughing together when I walked in. He let go of her and stood to face me. Neither of us spoke. There wasn’t any need. He must have phoned them. My bag had been packed by the time I got back.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I found the cheapest room I could. I lived off the food others discarded. When my money ran out I learned to work the streets.’
There was a toughness to her voice. It had been there all night but it was only now that it made sense to him. If this was a competition she would outlast him. But then, just as he thought he understood, her voice turned tender.
‘We had our stories, we street girls. We could all recite the circumstances of our imagined salvation. There wasn’t one of us who wasn’t infected with a fantasy. Mine was of an angel. He’d appear again, I told them on the evenings we could find cheap drink. And he’d take me away from it all.
‘You were my story, you see. I didn’t believe it, except when I was telling it. That was our rule, I suppose: you had to believe, just for as long as you were telling the story.’ Grace laughed, a warm sound speckled with irony. ‘One day you would appear again, and this time I wouldn’t let you leave. I would grab you by the arm and cling to you, and that would be the end of my suffering.
‘And you did appear. You drove up in this car…I cannot tell you how strange it was to see you. I didn’t believe it at first. I couldn’t believe it. You found me, Tristan. No matter what comes of us, I am glad of that. I am glad you found me.’
‘You mustn’t be,’ Tristan replied.
Never in his life had he been more certain.