‘Christ came to call, not the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’

The doctor returned. ‘There’s no change,’ he said.

‘Now doctor,’ said the priest, ‘how would I be a shock to anyone?’ He turned his bland, innocent, matter-of-fact face first on the doctor, then upon the rest of us. ‘Do you know what I want to do? It is something so small, no show about it. I don’t wear special clothes, you know. I go just as I am. He knows the look of me now. There’s nothing alarming. I just want to ask him if he is sorry for his sins. I want him to make some little sign of assent; I want him, anyway, not to refuse me; then I want to give him God’s pardon. Then, though that’s not essential, I want to anoint him. It is nothing, a touch of the fingers, just some oil from this little box, look it is nothing to hurt him.’

‘Oh, Julia,’ said Cara, ‘what are we to say? Let me speak to him.’

She went to the Chinese drawing-room; we waited in silence; there was a wall of fire between Julia and me. Presently Cara returned.

‘I don’t think he heard,’ she said. ‘I thought I knew how to put it to him. I said: “Alex, you remember the priest from Melstead. You were very naughty when he came to see you. You hurt his feelings very much. Now he’s here again. I want you to see him just for my sake, to make friends.” But he didn’t answer. If he’s unconscious, it couldn’t make him unhappy to see the priest, could it, doctor?’

Julia, who had been standing still and silent, suddenly moved.

‘Thank you for your advice, doctor,’ she said. ‘I take full responsibility for whatever happens. Father Mackay, will you please come and see my father now,’ and without looking at me, led him to the door.

We all followed. Lord Marchmain was lying as I had seen him that morning, but his eyes were now shut; his hands lay, palm upwards, above the bed-clothes; the nurse had her fingers on the pulse of one of them. ‘Come in,’ she said brightly, ‘you won’t disturb him now.’

‘D’you mean…?’

‘No, no, but he’s past noticing anything.’

She held the oxygen apparatus to his face and the hiss of escaping gas was the only sound at the bedside.

The priest bent over Lord Marchmain and blessed him. Julia and Cara knelt at the foot of the bed. The doctor, the nurse, and I stood behind them.

‘Now,’ said the priest, ‘I know you are sorry for all the sins of your life, aren’t you? Make a sign, if you can. You’re sorry, aren’t you?’ But there was no sign. ‘Try and remember your sins; tell God you are sorry. I am going to give you absolution. While I am giving it, tell God you are sorry you have offended him.’ He began to speak in Latin. I recognized the words ‘ego te absolvo in nomine Patris…’ and saw the priest make the sign of the cross. Then I knelt, too, and prayed: ‘O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin,’ and the man on the bed opened his eyes and gave a sigh, the sort of sigh I had imagined people made at the moment of death, but his eyes moved so that we knew there was still life in him.