Eventually he finishes his work and turns to stare, not at me, but out of the window behind me. He looks older, heavy-eyed. “What I do . . . ,” he says, “it can’t be prettified, or made-up. It must be faithful. Otherwise it’s no good. And you’re the only person who can judge that.” He unclips the paper from the board and lays it on the table. Then he stands up, stretches his arms and hands. “I’m going for a stroll in the garden.”

—

Philip’s house is quiet. Yvette is long gone from it. I wonder what it’s like, where she is now. I sense that they’re all busy. A lot of busy women. She was in a bit of a hurry, after all, when she came to visit me.

I get up onto my feet and go and look at the drawing.

—

I thought I had learned something about fighting, in my youth. But I know nothing compared to my daughter.

Now that Philip has brought her back into her flesh, I can see that she fought harder for life than I ever did. Her blemishes are her battle honors.

She is not alive. But she is nonetheless powerfully existent.

She is not to be pitied.

I gather her up in her clean white towel. Her head lies in the crook of my arm and her body rests against my chest. All the time I’ve been away, she has been held for me by another father who has carried her in his arms until I am ready. What is she if not the embodiment of His love? What is He, if not love?

“Catherine,” I say.

Knowing that I am speaking to God.

“Catherine.”

TWENTY-FOUR

…It was one thing to find a couple of stones in a bag of coal, but a great chunk of slate? That was going too far. So I took the slate outside and chucked it on the ground. And I was busy stamping all over it, cursing away at the top of my voice, when the bedroom window went up next door and Brigadier Stott put his head out and said, ‘Mr. Acton. I have not heard such language since the Battle of Bréville. Shame on you, sir, as a man of the cloth.’

“So now you know,” I conclude, with a glance at Tom.

“At last,” he says, deeply satisfied. “Shame on you, sir, as a man of the cloth. I like that bit too. Oh, take that left turn. The one to Yoxter.”

“Are you sure?”