27 June 1959
"Do you often keep your mail under your dinner plate?" Matthew asked him pointedly as Lucien settled into his seat at the head of the table.
Lucien frowned, and lifted his plate gingerly, revealing the envelope that lay beneath it.
"This must be Mrs. Penny's doing," Lucien muttered, mostly to himself. He'd been avoiding that particular letter for days before his jaunt to Melbourne, and apparently having realized that he'd not yet opened it his intrepid housekeeper must have taken pains to ensure it was left somewhere he could not ignore it. It seemed like the sort of thing she'd do; she didn't tolerate mess, and she could not abide anything being left out of place.
"Must be some letter," Matthew said.
Lucien hummed, tucking the letter neatly into his jacket pocket. Some letter, indeed; another missive from the private investigator in Hong Kong. The one who was burning through Lucien's money almost as quickly as Jean, the one who had for over year since message after message saying only no news, will keep looking. This letter felt thicker than the others, though. It felt heavier, when Lucien balanced it on his palm, and when he held it he felt a sense of foreboding lance through him. He'd not opened it, had not read its contents, but somehow, somewhere deep inside his heart, he feared he knew what that letter said.
No one had seen them, his wife and their beautiful little girl, since he put them on the boat to Hong Kong. That had been November of 1941. By 7 December Japanese bombs were falling on Hong Kong, on Singapore, on Pearl Harbor and Guam; from that date until mid February when Singapore finally fell, Lucien had known only chaos and the taste of blood in his mouth, and had no word of his family, nor any time to search. Then he had languished for three long years at the hands of his Japanese captors, and by then it was too late. All traces of his family were gone, if indeed they'd ever made it Hong Kong; records from those days were sketchy at best, as after the bombing and brutality of the Japanese China had been gripped by its own civil war. He'd been rostered out of the army after his release; skinny and starving and half-mad from grief the Army had determined he could no longer be of use to them. But the government needed spies, and they'd taken one look at him, rangy and wild-eyed but classically educated and fluent in more than half a dozen languages, and signed him on at once. Spying for the government was an affront to his political sensibilities, but it gave him an excuse to travel throughout Asia, searching desperately for his family in between covert assignations. But then all attentions seemed to shift towards Korea and Indochina, and Lucien knew there was no chance of finding his family there. Petulant and weary of the machinations of the global powers he began to drink, and drink, and drink some more, volunteering for assignments even Derek thought were too risky, narrowly avoiding death more times than he could count. His recklessness earned him praise, in the beginning, but his obstinacy and lack of regard for consequences eventually made him a liability, and he found himself kicked out into the cold.
That was how he'd ended up here, after all. There was no more government work coming in, and his hands shook too badly for surgery in London or Edinburgh, and Berlin was no longer the beacon of arts it had been when he was young and foolish, and his father was dying. There had seemed no other choice, when he'd washed up in Ballarat a year before. A permanent address, a steady income, no medical emergencies more pressing than the occasional appendectomy passed off to the surgeons at the hospital; there were consolations, to life in Ballarat, and he told himself that if Mr. Kim found his girls, it would all be worth it, and he'd leave this place behind gladly.
Only he didn't think Mr. Kim would find them, after all, and he didn't think he'd be leaving. That letter was a portent of doom, he was sure of it. And when he read those words, when the pain seared through him sharp and finite, he would be left here in this place he no longer hated as he once had done. The house was comfortable, Matthew was a good friend to him, and he had arranged to meet with Jean on Monday night.
And you don't deserve one bit of it, he thought, thinking about that letter in his pocket. You should have died when they did.
"Blake?" Matthew said his name softly, seriously, and Lucien jerked out of his maudlin reverie with a start. It wasn't the first time such thoughts had come to him, and he was certain it wouldn't be the last. It wasn't fair, somehow, that he should still be living while his beautiful girls were lost, that he should be drinking and seducing the local brothel keeper, his life a pitiful thing. Oh, the work he did for the police was important, and he tried his best to look after his patients, to do some good in this world, but he wasn't sure he'd earned this gift he'd been given, these last eighteen years.
"Looks good," Lucien said, gesturing to their dinner. "Tuck in."
Matthew was watching him warily, but he did not press the issue, and for that Lucien was profoundly grateful.
28 June 1959
"Confession is one of the most sacred tenements of our faith," Father Morton said in quavering voice. "We are, all of us, sinners, and we must confess those sins before God, humble and repentant. The confessional booth is not a cafe counter, where prayers are traded for forgiveness as one might trade coins for a loaf of bread. A true confession is not rote, or routine. To truly repent, one must acknowledge the wrong that one has done, seek to make amends, and then strive not to repeat the transgression. To sin willfully, knowingly, again and again, without shame, to use the confessional to wipe the slate clean only to fill it up once more with the same mistakes, is to deny the true purpose of the confession."
Jean shifted uncomfortably in her seat, but as her gaze darted over the assembled congregation she noted that she was not the only one. Today's homily appeared to be hitting a little too close to home for many of her fellow parishioners. That was the purpose of the homily, of course, to provide guidance and lessons for those who most needed to hear it. The priest spoke with the voice of God, and Jean truly believed that sometimes God gave that priest words meant for someone in particular, that sometimes when Father Morton spoke to the church he was speaking straight to her. This was one of those times.
Jean had attended confession regularly from the time of her confirmation. She had not stopped, when she'd taken on a new and salacious profession; she had come to the confessional booth, and knelt, and admitted to her most grievous of sins. Father Morton, the priest who had overseen her confirmation, her marriage, the christening of her babies, had heard her words, and in addition to assigning her a rosary every night for a month urged her almost desperately to retreat from the path she had chosen. You must not return to that place, my child, he had told her, his voice filled with more fire back in those days when he had been younger, hale and healthy. It is better to be impoverished than to compromise one's soul. The Lord will provide for your material needs, if you trust in him.
She hadn't, though. She hadn't quit her job, and the next time Mrs. Harker offered her a customer she had agreed on the spot. The Lord provided forgiveness, and peace, and hope, but in her experience he did not pay the bills. So she sinned, and sinned, and sinned again, and confessed it all down through the years, the same things, again and again.
Forgive me father, for I have lain with a man who was not my husband, and taken payment for it.
She'd confessed to that again last Thursday, for the first time in nearly a decade, and she'd felt Father Morton's weary disapproval wafting through the screen though she could not see his face.
This is not the first time you have transgressed in this manner, he'd said, and Jean had blushed. Confession was supposed to be anonymous, but in a church as small as Sacred Heart she knew Father Morton would recognize most of the penitents by voice alone, and the outlandish nature of her sins surely made her stand out. But it has been quite some time. I had thought you were beyond this temptation.
Jean had thought so, too, and nearly told him so. There had been a few customers, a few well-paying regulars, Jean kept on after she'd taken over the Lock and Key, but as her sons grew older and she found more confidence in her new role as the madam she'd put an end to it, and gladly. But things were different now - he was different. Lucien wasn't just another rich man with money to burn, another way for Jean to make ends meet and save up for her future. She'd wanted to go to bed with him, and the wanting, without the edge of desperation, made the sin seem somehow more grievous.
And here she sat, listening to Father Morton speak of the folly of repetitive sins, knowing she would see Lucien the following evening.
She shouldn't go through with it, she knew. The power she held over the Lock and Key was tenuous at best; she needed the respect of the customers, and she stood to lose it if they learned she was for sale once more. And she'd violated at least two of her own most sacrosanct rules; she'd let Lucien leave his mark upon her neck, and treasured it, and she'd let him touch her without payment. Keep feelings out of it, that was rule number two, but it was Jean's heart, and not her head, that had let Lucien's hand settle on her hip, that had let her come perilously close to kissing him, that had allowed him to make a second appointment though she knew that what was brewing between them was most definitely not business. A man like Lucien Blake wouldn't be satisfied paying indefinitely; he'd want to claim her, want to take her, make her his, whatever he might try to tell her now, and he could not ever have her. She valued her freedom too greatly, and had learned long ago that there were no happy endings in this business. High society gentlemen didn't rescue their whores and take them home, didn't make wives of the girls they paid and flaunt them through town. To do so would be to ruin their reputations, their livelihoods, and she could see that, even if Lucien would not. She could not ever be his wife, and if she was to be his mistress she had seen too much of the world to let him have her for free. He would not keep her in his fine house, at his beck and call. There would be neither roses nor rings for Jean Beazley.
And yet, still, she had agreed to see him again, and was looking forward to it. Just the thought of his hands on her skin made her shiver, even here, in church. It was the height of folly, it was sure to end in disaster, but though she had the means to stop it she lacked the strength. She had been lonely too long, and the promise of another hour spent in Lucien's arms, even knowing what it might cost her, called to her weary heart with an enticement she could not ignore.
What's one more sin, she wondered, sitting there in the back of the church, out of everyone's line of sight, a ghost alone with her thoughts. When I have sinned so much already?
The shame would come, she knew, and perhaps one day she would turn aside from this life at last, and repent as she had always intended to do. For now, though, there was no way out, and she would have to wait for God's forgiveness. Don't give up on me, she prayed, quietly, while Father Morton's voice washed over her. Please, help me find my way through.
