painted retina.
“Shine your torch, Father Angwin,” she said. She wanted to see the face; and as soon as she did so, she knew that this interval, this suspension, this burial had brought about a change. She did not mention this change to the others; she realized that it might be something only she could see. But the virgin’s expression had altered. Blankly sweet, she had become sly; unyielding virtue had yielded; she gazed up, with a conspiratorial smile, into Heaven’s icy vault.
Soon they ceased to speak; the cold crept into their bones. They heard one o’clock strike. Bulky outlines were seen, still shrouded by the soil. Then parts of saints emerged; an elbow, a foot, St. Apollonia’s pincers. In silence they recognized and greeted each one. When St. Jerome and the lion came out, Sister Philomena jumped into the trench, and Fludd paused, leaning on the spade, allowing her to clear the beast’s features with her hands. Her feet slipped, as she regained her place with the others; Father Angwin put out a hand to steady her, and she clung to him for a moment, leaning heavily on his arm, as if she were winded.
Then Fludd stopped digging, and said, “Listen. Somebody’s coming.”
“Who goes there?” called Miss Dempsey: introducing a military note. But without reply or preamble, the new arrival was upon them, transfixed for a moment like a rabbit in the beam of Father Angwin’s torch, yet wearing an expression too smug, too imperturbable, for a rabbit to wear. Then he shone his own flashlight, right into the priest’s eyes.
“It is I. Judd McEvoy.”
“Good morning, Judd,” Father Angwin said. “Why are you out at this hour? If I may inquire?”
“I have been down to Fetherhoughton,” Judd replied. “I wanted a basin of peas.”
“So that is what you have there.”
“Yes, and fish. In my newspaper.”
“I did not know the shop was still open at this hour.”
“They fry very late, these nights, to oblige anyone from up the hill who might feel peckish. We people up the hill are never early to bed. When the nights are long, we take advantage of them.”
“Not you surely, Judd.” Father Angwin faced him across the graves. “Surely you, a pillar of the Men’s Fellowship, you don’t go in for their rites?”
“Oh, I am aware that you have your opinion of me, Father.” Judd’s tone was airy. “You speak as if you mean to shame me into some admission. But when I say ‘we,’ I speak of my neighbours. I speak of the Netherhoughtonians. It was an expression, merely an expression. Would you like some of my fish?”
“Be careful there,” Father Angwin said. “You have almost got your foot on Ambrose.”
Judd looked down. “So I have.” With a delicacy and sureness that suggested to Father Angwin that he was indeed of nocturnal habit, the tobacconist picked his way through the trenches. “It is a pity I did not come on the scene earlier. By way of the footpaths it is no distance to my home. I could have brought my own spade. Father Fludd has had everything to do.”
“Why have you a spade, Judd? You have no garden.”
“You forget, Father, that I was one of the allotment holders. In the old days.”
“Were you so? Then why could you not influence your brutish compatriots? Could you not turn away the raiding parties from their careers of crime and violence?”
“Oh, I am not a man who would turn a person away from anything,” Judd said. “Or towards anything, either. I am by nature merely an onlooker. This enterprise of yours, for example, this secret and private enterprise—I regard it with complete equanimity. You have not asked my opinion, I have not given it. Nothing would induce me to give it. I am one of the world’s bystanders.”
I knew you were a devil, Father Angwin thought. Bystanders are an evil breed.
“They do say,” Agnes put in timidly, “that the onlooker sees most of the game.”
“Quite so,” Judd said. “Miss Dempsey, I am sure you will not refuse a piece of my fish?” He unwrapped his newspaper. A delicious aroma crept out.
“Well, I am tempted,” Miss Dempsey said.
“Sister Philomena,” Judd said, enticingly. “Now, there is so little here that I am sure you could not offend the canons of your Order.”
“I’m starving,” Philly said.
McEvoy proffered the parcel. Father Angwin broke off a piece of fish. Soon they all ate, Father Fludd picking at a flake or two. It was cold but good. “I wonder,” Father Angwin said, “whether it was fried in lard, or dripping?” He looked at Philomena inquiringly. But she would not meet his eye. His spirits rose; he felt quite jocular, feasting like this in the presence of his enemy, and on his enemy’s own supper. “I wish we might have a fish each,” he said; looking inquiringly again, but this time at Father Fludd. He wondered whether the curate might effect some sort of multiplication. After all, there was a precedent for it. But Fludd, though his portion had been smaller than any, continued to eat.
“It seems to me now,” Fludd said, “that we should wait for full daylight. We need ropes and brute strength.”
“The Children of Mary,” Miss Dempsey said at once. “It is our meeting tomorrow.”
“Tonight, you mean,” Philly said.
“We would undertake to wash them down. I believe the president would allow it. We could do our litany, and so on at the same time.”
“I cannot think why you ever agreed to bury them,” Fludd said.
“You don’t know the bishop.” Philomena brushed earth from her habit. “If we’d have left them exposed, he might have come up here with a mallet and smashed them all to bits.”
“I think your imagination is running away with you, Sister,” Agnes said. “And of course Father Fludd knows the bishop.”
