“Anyway, let’s say I had been there a month or so, when Maggie came in for confession. There we both were. And neither of us said so much as a word. We sat there, and we sat there, our bodies inches apart, just the wood between them. I can hear her breathing, and I can hear my heart thumping. It’s trying to jump clean out of my chest. Don’t ask me how long it was, I wouldn’t have the first clue, but eventually I say, ‘You’ve probably work to begetting on with, Sister Margaret,’ and she says, ‘Thank you, Father,’ and that was that. That was the whole thing clinched, and we both knew it. We both knew the confession was the sin, and it wouldn’t be the last.”
“Would you like a top-up?” asks Joyce, tipping her flask of tea. Mackie lifts his fingers to say no, thank you.
“We would meet in private, which goes without saying, I know. I would see her every morning, but obviously we couldn’t speak with others around. So I would take her confession, and we would talk. And on those two wooden seats we fell in love. Maggie and Matthew. Matthew and Maggie. Speaking through a grille. Can you imagine a love so doomed?”
“And, forgive me, but just for the record, Maggie is Sister Margaret Anne?” asks Chris.
“She is.”
“Nineteen forty-eight to nineteen seventy-one?”
Matthew nods. “I knew we had to get out. It would be easy enough. I’d find a job, I had all my exams, Maggie would nurse, we’d buy a place on the coast. We both grew up by the sea.”
“You were going to quit the priesthood?”
“Of course. Let me ask you, why did you join the police, DCI Hudson?”
Chris thinks for a moment. “Honestly? I’d finished my A levels, my mum told me I had to get a job, and that night we were watchingHill Street Blues.”
“Well, isn’t that just it?” says Matthew. “In a different town, in a different country, I’d have been a pilot or a greengrocer, but for no good reason other than circumstance, I was a priest. In truth, I’m not a great believer, and never have been. It was a job, and a roof, and a passage away from home.”
“And Maggie?” asks Donna. “She was going to quit too?”
“It was harder for Maggie. She had the religion; it was still in her. But she would have. I think she would, one day. I think she’d be in Bexhill with me now, green eyes blazing. But it was hard for her. Mine was the risk of a young man, and hers was the risk of a young woman, and that was a greater risk in those days, wasn’t it?”
Joyce reaches over and takes his hand. “What happened to your Maggie, Matthew?”
“She would visit me. At night, if you get the picture. In the gatehouse. It was easy enough to slip away after lights out. Maggie was no fool; she would have fitted in with you lot, no problem. Tuesdays and Fridays she could see me, those were the safest. I would light a candle for her in an upstairs room. If there was no candle, it meant I’d been called away, or had guests, and she knew not to come. But if I lit the candle, she would always come. Sometimes straightaway, and sometimes I’d be waiting and pacing, but she would always come.”
Matthew clears his throat and furrows his brow. Joyce squeezes his hand.
“I haven’t told this story in fifty years, and now twice in a day.” He gives a weak smile, then presses on. “It was a Tuesday, the seventeenth of March, and I had lit the candle, and I was waiting and pacing. There was one floorboard in the sitting room that when you trod on it would give three little squeaks. And I was back and forth and back and forth and it was squeak-squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak-squeak. And I would hear little sounds outside and think, ‘It’s her,’ and stop and listen some more, but each time, just silence. The wait went on too long, and I got worried. Had she been caught sneaking out? Sister Mary was fierce. I knew everything would be fine, really, because at that age, everything always was. So I went upstairs, blew out the candle, came down, laced up my boots, and headed up to the convent. To see what I could see.”
Matthew looks to the floor. An old man telling the story of young man. Elizabeth catches Ron’s eye and taps her breast pocket. Ron nods, then reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulls out a small hip flask.
“I’m just going to have a little nip of whisky. I hope you’ll keep me company, Matthew?”
Without waiting for an answer, Ron pours whisky into Matthew’s mug. Matthew nods his thanks, eyes still to the floor.
“And what did you see, Father Mackie?” asks Donna.
“Well, the convent was dark, which was good. If she’d been caught sneaking out there’d be a light somewhere. Sister Mary’s office, maybe. Or some midnight scrubbing in the chapel. But the only lights were in the infirmary. I just wanted to do a little tour, make sure Maggie was safe and sound. I could think of a hundred good reasons she hadn’t come to me that night, but I wanted to ease my mind. I thought I would pick up some papers from the little office I had, off the back of the chapel. You know, if anyone saw me, I was just catching up on some work. I couldn’t sleep. Maybe have a wander around. If I could have, I would have had a peek into the dorms, just to see her lying there.”
“This room we’re in,” says Joyce, “this was one of the dorms.”
Matthew looks around, nodding. His left hand gently pats the arm of his chair, and he continues.
“I had the chapel key. You know that door, it’s so heavy and the lock was so noisy, but I opened it up as quietly as I could, then shut it behind me. The place was pitch-black, but I knew my way around, of course. Near the altar I bumped into an old wooden chair that shouldn’t have been there, and that clattered across the floor, making a terrible racket. I thought I should light one of the lamps by the altar, just to make me feel a little calmer, a little less like a thief. I lit the lamp, and it was a very dim light. You wouldn’t have seen it from outside, I don’t think, not a bright light at all. Just a dim glow, really. And that’s what I would say about the lamp.”
He picks up his mug and takes a sip. He places the mug back down.
“So, that was the light, the one that I lit. And really all you could see was the altar, just shadows, but enough to see. Enough to see.”
He rubs his mouth with the back of his hand.
“And there was Maggie. There’s a beam above the altar. At least there was. You could hang incense or blessings. It was structural, I think, the beam, but we used it. Anyway, Maggie had looped a length of rope around the beam and hanged herself. And not long before I’d got there. Perhaps she did it when I was tying my laces. Or perhaps it was when I blew outthe candle. But she was dead, I could see that clearly. That’s why she hadn’t come.”
There is quiet in the Jigsaw Room. Matthew Mackie takes another sip from his mug.
