Thinking was so hard. Everything was so hard. Nothing seemed to work, not even her legs. She couldn’t get up, she would never get up again. There was no room in her mind for anyone but Dane, and her thoughts went in ever-diminishing circles around Dane. Until she thought of her mother, the Drogheda people. Oh, God. The news would come there, come to her, come to them. Mum didn’t even have the lovely last sight of his face in Rome. They’ll send the cable to the Gilly police, I suppose, and old Sergeant Ern will climb into his car and drive out all the miles to Drogheda, to tell my mother that her only son is dead. Not the right man for the job, and an almost-stranger. Mrs. O’Neill, my deepest, most heartfelt regrets, your son is dead. Perfunctory, courteous, empty words… No! I can’t let them do that to her, not to her, she is my mother, too! Not that way, not the way I had to hear it.

She pulled the other part of the phone off the table onto her lap, put the receiver to her ear and dialed the operator.

“Switch? Trunks, please, international. Hello? I want to place an urgent call to Australia, Gillanbone one-two-one-two. And please, please hurry.”

* * *

Meggie answered the phone herself. It was late, Fee had gone to bed. These days she never felt like seeking her own bed early, she preferred to sit listening to the crickets and frogs, doze over a book, remember.

“Hello?”

“London calling, Mrs. O’Neill,” said Hazel in Gilly.

“Hello, Justine,” Meggie said, not perturbed. Jussy called, infrequently, to see how everything was.

“Mum? Is that you, Mum?”

“Yes, it’s Mum here,” said Meggie gently, sensing Justine’s distress.

“Oh, Mum! Oh, Mum!” There was what sounded like a gasp, or a sob. “Mum, Dane’s dead. Dane’s dead!”

A pit opened at her feet. Down and down and down it went, and had no bottom. Meggie slid into it, felt its lips close over her head, and understood that she would never come out again as long as she lived. What more could the gods do? She hadn’t known when she asked it. How could she have asked it, how could she not have known? Don’t tempt the gods, they love it. In not going to see him in this most beautiful moment of his life, share it with him, she had finally thought to make the payment. Dane would be free of it, and free of her. In not seeing the face which was dearer to her than all other faces, she would repay. The pit closed in, suffocating. Meggie stood there, and realized it was too late.

“Justine, my dearest, be calm,” said Meggie strongly, not a falter in her voice. “Calm yourself and tell me. Are you sure?”

“Australia House called me—they thought I was his next of kin. Some dreadful man who only wanted to know what I wanted done with the body. ‘The body,’ he kept calling Dane. As if he wasn’t entitled to it anymore, as if it was anyone’s.” Meggie heard her sob. “God! I suppose the poor man hated what he was doing. Oh, Mum, Dane’s dead!”

“How, Justine? Where? In Rome? Why hasn’t Ralph called me?”

“No, not in Rome. The Cardinal probably doesn’t know anything about it. In Crete. The man said he was drowned, a sea rescue. He was on holiday, Mum, he asked me to go with him and I didn’t, I wanted to play Desdemona, I wanted to be with Rain. If I’d only been with him! If I had, it mightn’t have happened. Oh, God, what can I do?”

“Stop it, Justine,” said Meggie sternly. “No thinking like that, do you hear me? Dane would hate it, you know he would. Things happen, why we don’t know. The important thing now is that you’re all right, I haven’t lost both of you. You’re all I’ve got left now. Oh, Jussy, Jussy, it’s so far away! The world’s big, too big. Come home to Drogheda! I hate to think of you all alone.”

“No, I’ve got to work. Work is the only answer for me. If I don’t work, I’ll go mad. I don’t want people, I don’t want comfort. Oh, Mum!” She began to sob bitterly. “How are we going to live without him?”

How indeed? Was that living? God’s thou wert, unto God return. Dust to dust. Living’s for those of us who failed. Greedy God, gathering in the good ones, leaving the world to the rest of us, to rot.

“It isn’t for any of us to say how long we’ll live,” said Meggie. “Jussy, thank you so much for telling me yourself, for phoning.”

“I couldn’t bear to think of a stranger breaking the news, Mum. Not like that, from a stranger. What will you do? What can you do?”

With all her will Meggie tried to pour warmth and comfort across the miles to her devastated girl in London. Her son was dead, her daughter still lived. She must be made whole. If it was possible. In all her life Justine seemed only to have loved Dane. No one else, even herself.

“Dear Justine, don’t cry. Try not to grieve. He wouldn’t have wanted that, now would he? Come home, and forget. We’ll bring Dane home to Drogheda, too. At law he’s mine again, he doesn’t belong to the Church and they can’t stop me. I’ll phone Australia House right away, and the embassy in Athens if I can get through. He must come home! I’d hate to think of him lying somewhere far from Drogheda. Here is where he belongs, he’ll have to come home. Come with him, Justine.”

But Justine sat in a heap, shaking her head as if her mother could see. Come home? She could never come home again. If she had gone with Dane he wouldn’t be dead. Come home, and have to look at her mother’s face every day for the rest of her life? No, it didn’t bear thinking of.

“No, Mum,” she said, the tears rolling down her skin, hot like molten metal. Who on earth ever said people most moved don’t weep? They don’t know anything about it. “I shall stay here and work. I’ll come home with Dane, but then I’m going back. I can’t live on Drogheda.”

For three days they waited in a purposeless vacuum, Justine in London, Meggie and the family on Drogheda, stretching the official silence into tenuous hope. Oh, surely after so long it would turn out to be a mistake, surely if it was true they would have heard by now! Dane would come in Justine’s front door smiling, and say it was all a silly mistake. Greece was in revolt, all sorts of silly mistakes must have been made. Dane would come in the door and laugh the idea of his death to scorn, he’d stand there tall and strong and alive, and he’d laugh. Hope began to grow, and grew with every minute they waited. Treacherous, horrible hope. He wasn’t dead, no! Not drowned, not Dane who was a good enough swimmer to brave any kind of sea and live. So they waited, not acknowledging what had happened in the hope it would prove to be a mistake. Time later to notify people, let Rome know.

On the fourth morning Justine got the message. Like an old woman she picked up the receiver once more, and asked for Australia.

“Mum?”

“Justine?”

“Oh, Mum, they’ve buried him already; we can’t bring him home! What are we going to do? All they can say is that Crete is a big place, the name of the village isn’t known, by the time the cable arrived he’d already been spirited away somewhere and disposed of. He’s lying in an unmarked grave somewhere! I can’t get a visa for Greece, no one wants to help, it’s chaos. What are we going to do, Mum?”

“Meet me in Rome, Justine,” said Meggie.

Everyone save Anne Mueller was there around the phone, still in shock. The men seemed to have aged twenty years in three days, and Fee, shrunken birdlike, white and crabbed, drifted about the house saying over and over, “Why couldn’t it have been me? Why did they have to take him? I’m so old, so old! I wouldn’t have minded going, why did it have to be him? Why couldn’t it have been me? I’m so old!” Anne had collapsed, and Mrs. Smith, Minnie and Cat walked, slept tears.

Meggie stared at them silently as she put the phone down. This was Drogheda, all that was left. A little cluster of old men and old women, sterile and broken.

“Dane’s lost,” she said. “No one can find him; he’s been buried somewhere on Crete. It’s so far away! How could he rest so far from Drogheda? I’m going to Rome, to Ralph de Bricassart. If anyone can help us, he can.”

* * *

Cardinal de Bricassart’s secretary entered his room.

“Your Eminence, I’m sorry to disturb you, but a lady wishes to see you. I explained that there is a congress, that you are very busy and cannot see anyone, but she says she will sit in the vestibule until you have time for her.”

“Is she in trouble, Father?”

“Great trouble, Your Eminence, that much is easy to see. She said I was to tell you her name is Meggie O’Neill.” He gave it a lilting foreign pronunciation, so that it came out sounding like Meghee Onill.

Cardinal Ralph came to his feet, the color draining from his face to leave it as white as his hair.

“Your Eminence! Are you ill?”

“No, Father, I’m perfectly all right, thank you. Cancel my appointments until I notify you otherwise, and bring Mrs. O’Neill to me at once. We are not to be disturbed unless it is the Holy Father.”

The priest bowed, departed. O’Neill. Of course! It was young Dane’s name, he should have remembered. Save that in the Cardinal’s palace everyone just said Dane. Ah, he had made a grave mistake, keeping her waiting. If Dane was His Eminence’s dearly loved nephew then Mrs. O’Neill was his dearly loved sister.

When Meggie came into the room Cardinal Ralph hardly knew her. It was thirteen years since he had last seen her; she was fifty-three and he was seventy-one. Both of them aged now, instead of only him. Her face hadn’t changed so much as settled, and into a mold unlike the one he had given her in his imagination. Substitute a trenchant incisiveness for sweetness, a touch of iron for softness; she resembled a vigorous, aging, willful martyr rather than the resigned, contemplative saint of his dreams. Her beauty was as striking as ever, her eyes still that clear silvery grey, but both had hardened, and the once vivid hair had faded to a drab beige, like Dane’s without the life. Most disconcerting of all, she wouldn’t look at him for long enough to satisfy his eager and loving curiosity.