The phone stood on a table near the wall and Justine leaned against the solid support the wall offered. Her knees buckled, she began to slide very slowly downward, wound up in a curled heap on the floor. Not laughing and not crying, she made noises somewhere in between, audible gasps. Dane drowned. Gasp. Dane dead. Gasp. Crete, Dane, drowned. Gasp. Dead, dead. "Miss O'neill? Are you there, Miss O'neill?" asked the voice insistently. Dead. Drowned. My brother!
"Miss O'neill, answer me!"
"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Oh, God, I'm here!" "I understand you are his next of kin, therefore we must have your instructions as to what to do with the body. Miss O'neill, are you there?" "Yes, yes!"
"What do you want done with the body, Miss O'neill?" Body! He was a body, and they couldn't even say his body, they had to say the body. Dane, my Dane. He is a body. "Next of kin?" she heard her voice asking, thin and faint, torn by those great gasps. "I'm not Dane's next of kin. My mother is, I suppose."
There was a pause. "This is very difficult, Miss O'neill. If you're not the next of kin, we've wasted valuable time." The polite sympathy gave way to impatience. "You don't seem to understand there's a revolution going on in Greece and the accident happened in Crete, even more remote and hard to contact. Really! Communication with Athens is virtually impossible and we have been instructed to forward the next of kin's personal wishes and instructions regarding the body immediately. Is your mother there? May I speak to her, please?"
"My mother's not here. She's in Australia."
"Australia? Lord, this gets worse and worse! Now we'll have to send a cable to Australia; more delays. If you are not the next of kin, Miss O'neill, why did your brother's passport say you were?"
"I don't know," she said, and found she had laughed. "Give me your mother's address in Australia; we'll cable her at once. We have to know what to do with the body! By the time cables get back and forth, this will mean a twelve-hour delay, I hope you realize that. It's going to be difficult enough without this mix-up."
"Phone her, then. Don't waste time with cables."
"Our budget does not extend to international phone calls, Miss O'neill," said that stiff voice. "Now, will you please give me your mother's name and address?"
"Mrs. Meggie O'neill," Justine recited, "Drogheda, Gillanbone, New South Wales, Australia." She spelled out the unfamiliar names for him. "Once again, Miss O'neill, my deepest regrets."
The receiver clicked, began the interminable burr of the dial tone. Justine sat on the floor and let it slip into her lap. There was a mistake, it would all sort itself out. Dane drowned, when he swam like a champion? No, it wasn't true. But it is, Justine, you know it is, you didn't go with him to protect him and he drowned. You were his protector from the time he was a baby and you should have been there. If you couldn't save him, you should have been there to drown with him. And the only reason you didn't go with him was because you wanted to be in London so you could get Rain to make love to you.
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?"