Parnokianlipstick - It's been such fun writing Cass into a proper character. Back when I was doing the letters there was a lot of debate about how much the men knew (probably more than they let on) and how much they would have written down where anyone could read it. Getting to go past that barrier and into these women's lives has been a real treat.

They didn't drive. In the first place, Cass really did hate it, a fact Persis was all too aware of. In the second place, the difficulty of acquiring a car at no notice was overwhelming. Once, Persis supposed, they might have asked…But then, if asking family was a viable option they would not now be en route to Jims.

So they did not drive. Instead, they made the underground trip to Union Station, and then the longer over-ground trip by train. There was the usual rattling and jolting, and then the grimed, downtown heart of Toronto began to ease away from view. It left in its wake the imperfect pastoral of the surrounding area, gone golden now in the autumn weather, and red with decay.

Now they sat ensconced at a dining car table, two women travelling on family matters. It raised no comment. At a nearby table a gaggle of girls could be heard chatting with more candour than Persis recalled possessing at that age.

'And I said,' said a particularly brash member of the nearby party, 'that unless he was prepared to stick around if it got me in trouble…'

Persis thought suddenly, horrifyingly, We are invisible. They simply do not see us. It wasn't just the usual obliviousness of so many passers-by of two friends travelling together. It was, Persis felt certain that they were two women over a certain age, no longer worth the casual observation of the masses in the first place. Which, all things considered was probably for the best. That didn't make the realisation any less galling.

'Anyway,' said a different voice, 'I made it very clear. Said I wasn't fast.'

'Well quite,' and this a new speaker. 'Just because that Rowena went and got herself…'

They were invisible, Persis thought. Invisible to this gaggle of giggling, chattering girls who were no doubt returning to college. Perhaps it would have been different if there had been other diners proximate. But there was not, and as had become wildly apparent, two anonymous women drinking tea at a window table simply didn't count.

She looked at Cass, opposite her and saw that she had noticed too. For a moment they stunned and unblinking at one another, fellow eavesdroppers on this surreal conversation, their menus unnoticed. One of the neighbouring party was holding forth on the deeply improbably logistics of a situation Persis couldn't fathom. Hearing it, because of course Cass must be hearing it too, Cass twitched and Persis recalled with sudden clarity Cass's necessary fluency in how young girls without family struggled to weather the world alone. Still the girls talked on. She tilted her head, All right? Because it was impossible to have any meaningful conversation in so public a place as a dining car, whatever the opinion of their travelling companions. Cass understood; she nodded.

Perhaps, Persis speculated, it was simply what came of learning early on to be bloody wary of what you said and who to, her astonishment at the girls' midday chat.

Partly because she was curious, partly for the sake of something diversionary to say, Persis asked, 'We never talked like that, did we?

'We wouldn't have dared talk about it in the first place,' said Cass. 'Not where anyone was liable to overhear, anyway.'

'Touché.'

The train jolted with sudden purpose, spilling their now-cooling tea in the process. Probably the train was approaching this-or-that junction. Persis had long since lost track of where they were. This was fine, since their stop was the terminus stop and they would necessarily know when they had arrived. She scanned the window behind Cass for clues as to their surroundings but could see only a sloping embankment, and here and there a denuded maple tree.

No one called the stop, nor was there a platform visible. Further scrutiny revealed an erstwhile stile. It had seen better days but was not, from what Persis could see, obstructed by humans, livestock or other obstacles. The girls went on chatting, their conversation inexplicably the more obtrusive for the train's newly stationary status. More obtrusive and significantly harder to ignore.

Surely, thought Persis, they would run out of material soon. But they did not. They went on, and on, perhaps enjoying the novelty of the idling train. For something to do, Persis poured out more tea. They drank it in silence, the girls - young women, Persis supposed they were, really - harder than ever to ignore. No one made any effort to explain the interruption to their journey.

'Points failure,' said Cass at length. 'You watch. There's always points failure just here.'

Sure enough, her declaration was shortly followed by the crackling of electric static and a disembodied declaration that there was points failure on the line. Thereafter the crackling ceased, the voice vanishing abruptly into the ether.

Into this unexpected silence fell with exceptional clarity one girl's vehement declaration, 'Of course, it's all right for the boys. They do a thing like that and no one thinks anything of it. But if we do it's ruin and scandal.'

'Rather interesting sociological conundrum that,' said Cass, both eyebrows raising slightly. But she said it mildly and unobtrusively because, as Persis well knew, Cass had never courted scrutiny. It seemed unlikely she planned on starting now, disaster nipping at their heels.

'Because of course,' Cass went on, 'It's a peculiarly – well, I wouldn't say western idiom, particularly. But some of the places we've lived, you and I, it was quite normal. Hardly worth commenting on.'

'Matriarchy,' said Persis, 'and matrilineal kinship tables, the merits thereof. Remind me why we ever came back?'

As Persis suspected she wouldn't, Cass never even had to think about the answer. Reflexively she said, 'Because of the Cherubs.'

Another jolt and the train was off again, sluggish at first but gaining speed. The girls – young women, really – were off again on their pet subject. Their audacity was either admirable emancipation or liable to erupt in their faces.

'And you're quite sure,' said Persis, 'that we were never…'

'Mother would never have allowed it,' said Cass. 'Mine, anyway. Can't speak for yours.'

There was points failure. Jims knew this because not five minutes ago he had exchanged exasperated words with the conductor about the arrival of the nine o'clock train from Toronto. It was supposed to become the four o'clock evening train to some unspecified place that Jims had now forgot. At this rate it would be lucky to be the five o'clock delayed train. Assuming the aunts arrived sooner rather than later, and allowing for changeover crews and cleanup, the half five, or even six o'clock outbound to thus-and-such, delayed, seemed more likely.

But there was points failure, which meant the train had not yet come in, and Jims was stuck in the humid vestibule of the train station awaiting the aunts. And all the while Aunt Persis' late night telephone call circled his brain like an earworm or a stuck record.

I'm sorry. I know you wanted it to be kept secret.

He thought of that now, of the game of Criss-Cross abruptly terminated by the shrill of the telephone. Jims had been losing handily to Tom, who had scored a seven-letter word with Sapphic. Jims went to get the phone. He always went to get the phone. This was probably why Aunt Persis hadn't bothered about a proper greeting.

'I'm sorry,' without preamble, her voice all apology in Jims' ear, 'I know you wanted it to be kept secret.'

Straightaway Jims' ears pricked, as did the flesh on neck, spine and arms. He was not planning any surprises for anyone, a fact his aunt was all too aware of. On the other hand, it was an open line, and God knew who was listening. That, in turn, could only mean they were talking in code.

'Sorry,' said Jims, 'I lost you for a minute. Who knows?'

'Your mother,' said Persis. 'I realise you didn't want her to find out but it's a bit late for that.'

Oh God, thought Jims, who was not good at puzzles for nothing. He was obliquely aware, the phone heavy and leaden in his hand, of Tom coming and standing behind him, settling there. The smell of him, the warmth of his arms.

'All right?' Tom asked, but needlessly, Jims thought, because it was obvious to anyone onlooking that Jims was too stiff, too rigid to be posed naturally. This also accounted for why Tom whispered, near and warm, for Jims and not the telephone line:

i should rather than anything
have(almost when hugeness will shut
quietly)almost,
your kiss

Spoken still with his arms round Jims, his head perched on Jims' shoulder, the words close as the air at his ear. The one not pressed against the earpiece of the phone. And for a moment Jims stood there drinking in the poetry, drinking Tom in. But the call was a long-distance one and expensive, so he pressed conversationally onwards.

'Anyone else?' asked Jims, rallying.

'Well,' said Persis, 'my brother didn't think it was a particularly clever idea in the first place. That reporter of Jem's agreed with him.'

'You did warn me,' said Jims. 'When did this come up? I mean, who – actually don't. Probably better I don't know.'

'Colleague of Ken's,' said Persis. 'You must have told him about the surprise when he was visiting. The man's an idiot.'

'Agreed.' Succinct and to the point. 'Kitty isn't, though. I take it she put two and two together and arrived at four?'

'That was the general impression, yes. I'm awaiting actual confirmation.'

'Meaning?'

'Look,' said Aunt Persis, 'it's late and there's no sense going into it now, not like this. We'll drive down tomorrow and plot it all out. That all right?'

'Aunt Cass,' said Jims, unnecessarily, 'hates driving. And you cannot possibly drive the whole way.'

'We'll wrangle it,' said Aunt Persis.

'Thanks,' said Jims and hoped the full depth of his sincerity got into that one, exhausted word. 'See you soon. Love to you both.'

He almost said Kiss the cherubs for me, but then the full import of the catastrophe came home to roost. Standing in the telephone nook with Tom's arms around his waist, Jims was acutely aware that if the Aunts knew of this disaster, they had witnessed it. And if they had witnessed it, it was good odds that they, too, would be persona non grata where Cherubs were concerned. There was nothing for it. He cradled the telephone with considerable force and swore fluently.

He swore again now at the train station, the late afternoon sun streaming into his eyes. Thought of Aunt Persis on the phone. I know you wanted it kept secret…Tom did not say, as he had then, All right? Perhaps because everything was so patently far from right.

Instead he offered a neutral, 'They'll be here. There's always points failure at that junction.'

Jims hummed. 'They'll be fine,' said Jims. 'They always are, you know. I just keep thinking – me, Aunt Persis, we've never had to weather anything like this before. I mean it's awful and terrifying the way I imagine a howling void would be terrifying, but we've had…mainly mundane existences, I guess I mean. Secure, in a funny sort of way. Ordinary. People have argued and made up and life's moved on. We've been fine.'

Tom tilted his head at the notable omission, a mute inquiry in the ever-later afternoon sunlight. Overhead the great, monumental wrought-iron clock face chimed half-past-something.

'I don't know,' said Jims. 'St George St had so few rules when we were little – when I was little, that the few there were we never thought of breaking. One of them was that we never asked about Aunt Cass's family. We were hers, and she was ours, end of that particular discussion.'

They began, by mutual agreement to walk towards a nearby coffee shop, Jims grumbling all the while about what the signal master could and should be doing to prevent points failure. Tom, who had heard it all before, more than once, listened tolerantly, because it was safe conversation en route to a coffee counter in a crowed train station. The smell was not the rich, aromatic stuff of home, but it would fill the gap until the train came in. Until points failure lifted. Jims accepted his cup, sipped, and allowed Tom to shepherd him into a table, wrought-iron like the clock but inferior quality and differently coloured. Someone, Jims noticed, had tried clumsily to paint it and now the paint, a cheap, childish, eyewatering blue, peeled off it in flakes.

'I keep thinking,' said Jims, picking at the peeling paint, 'if it's this hellish to lose what you've always had it has to be twice as hellish to lose something, get it back and lose it again.' Then, as an afterthought, 'Sorry.'

'You, of all people,' said Tom, 'must realise I read theology not to escape the world but because I saw what it was like? How people were. The complexity and the contradictions, all fearfully, wonderfully jumbled together?'

His hand skirted Jims' in the late afternoon light, but they were sitting where anyone might come by, so instead of touching, he ghosted past it to the sugar dish and appropriated that. Jims did not point out that Tom had never, in the history of this relationship, taken sugar in anything.

In any case his attention was effectively and immediately diverted by a flash of red at his periphery, followed by the clack of approaching heels on flagstones. Jims looked up, spotted the aunts and supposed he must have missed the announcement heralding the train's arrival. It had probably happened somewhere between his diatribe against idiotic signal masters that should know better and sitting down with the coffee.

'Points failure,' said Aunt Persis, bending and snaring Jims in a hug.

'We heard,' said Tom. 'Repeatedly. You must have been sat at that infamous stile for – how long actually was it?'

'Don't,' said Aunt Cass with feeling. 'Anyway, we've been overhearing the most unlikely conversation. The young women behind us – '

They never did find out about the young people and their conversation, because Aunt Persis waved the rest of the sentence off with a gesture. The conversation moved on. Then they were in pairs, Aunt Persis' arm hooked through Jims, Cass's hand nestled at the crook of Tom's elbow. Two innocuous pairs of people exiting the hubbub of the local train station as the wrought iron clock overhead chimed the hour.

'Home?' asked Jims of Persis, 'Or…?'

'Definitely 'Or,' she said. 'We've been sitting entirely too long. That infamous stile, as you said.' This over her shoulder to Tom.

They walked on, down cobbled streets. They were narrow and uneven in the way older city pavements were these days, and the boys had to adjust their pace to accommodate the awkwardness this necessarily posed for the aunts' and their heeled shoes. One of those sartorial quirks, Jims thought now, idly, they would never have been given to abroad. But at home…Funny the little things one was prepared to concede if it got Society to leave you alone.

The cobles gave way to smoother pavements and colourful shopfronts. This one featured hats at jaunty angles and, in improbable combination, monogrammed luggage. Another featured the kind of feet-high Ferris wheel, purpose unfathomable, that would have delighted the Cherubs in bygone years. It stood there turning idly amid Meccano displays and puzzle boxes of the sort Jims might once have bought Sissy. Also present; Lincoln logs with their colourful roof pieces and model Mallards.

There were teashops too, in among the jumble, and bookshops heavy with the promise of discovery. But it was impossible to have an intelligent or thorough discussion in either, so they eschewed them and walked on.

The cityscape began to drop away and become riverbank, gravel and stone crunching underfoot. Willow trees trailed their skeletal fronds in the water, their leaves yellowing and browning underfoot. Some tumbled into the river and swirled there in idle elegance. They were mesmeric. .

'All right?' asked Persis.

Jims pulled himself away from the swirl of the leaves on the water and said, 'It's still a bit dreamlike. I suppose it won't really sink in until…'

He almost said until I go home, but of course there was no going home now.

'There's always St George St,' said Aunt Persis, artfully turning and spinning a new end for the sentence. 'You're always welcome there. God knows the spare room's sat empty often enough.' She smiled the smile of someone driven to abstruse humour by circumstance.

Jims smiled back in kind. Said wryly but affectionately, 'Thanks.'

'Always.'

Behind them Tom and Cass were chatting lightly over the nuances of the finer points of something. Probably a doctrine, because Cass was good with religious trivia when occasion warranted. All those indexes of the sacred rights of other people. Jims listened with half an ear and nodded to himself. Definitely The Doctrine of Something On Something Else by Someone.

'Can you follow any of that?' he asked Persis. She laughed the laugh of maternal inheritance, all silver and gold in the bright five o'clock sunlight.

'What do you think?' she said. The others laughed too, but good-naturedly. They did not, Jims noticed, offer elucidation.

The riverbank widened and somehow Jims found they'd swapped companions, so that now it was Jims and Cass, Persis and Tom. He tracked their progress up ahead with half an eye. With the other he watched a rabbit stand to attention, autumnal vegetation clasped between frozen paws as it gazed wide-eyed at them for signs of danger.

'I really don't think,' said Jims, 'I could stand this again. Once into outer darkness is more than enough.'

'The grand plan,' said Cass, 'which is even now tumbling to its ruin, was that you would never find out what it felt like. Anyway, it's not exactly a competitive sport.'

It was so quintessentially the sort of thing one expected Aunt Cass to say that Jims found he laughed in spite of himself. So did she. The rabbit, startled, ran off into the middle distance.

Cass stooped, and trailed one hand in the water absentmindedly. She said lightly, quoting, not to anyone particular that Jims could tell,
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires and farms are these?

She did not mean the landscape. Jims knew that, and not just because there were no spires in the distant horizon. Aunt Cass had not grown Jims and the Cherubs on Houseman for nothing.

He squatted next to her on the riverbank and dipped a hand in the leafy, silty water. It was cool and shifting as sunlight. When he cupped his hands it came up surprisingly clear.

It is the land of lost content,he said now, with a smile for an older, golden time.

I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot go again.

Apt, Jims thought, in a bone-deep sort of way that felt at odds with the afternoon. Even if time could go backwards, there was no recapturing the golden days of library visits, refuge, indices and camaraderie. He thought of the unlikely quartet they had made, his aunts and parents, of an evening out. Mum in her finery, feathers at her ear, the amethyst brooch in evidence, of Cap smartly dressed, 'Like a penguin,' he'd grumble, but amicably. And the aunts too, in their long gowns and simpler jewellery, but still elegant. Still worthy companions. Strange to try and imagine now. Stranger still to think the Cherubs would never have any of that again, the constancy of St George St, the familial laughter…

'I never asked,' he said. 'Is that why you learned Houseman?'

'I learned Houseman,' said Cass with a smile, 'because we understood each other. And because I had as much time for metaphysics as you did.'

Jims suspected this was a cheat of an answer, but didn't press. Some things weren't for public consumption, even for pet Cherubs.

Before them the riverbank opened up into a field and Tom gestured at it with his unencumbered arm in silent inquiry. The grass was green, the trees shaded the worst of the sun, and here and there a bold, undaunted dandelion still popped yellow and dazzling up through the grass. There was nodding and agreement all round. The boys spread their coats out in lieu of blankets and their quartet sat down. It was late in the year for midges, but the recent rain had brought them out, and now they were stationary the bugs came to the fore in droves, swirling and nipping at exposed skin. It stung, and Jims supposed that too was apt, in its way. So many little, unseen teeth pricking at the fibres of their beings.

For a long moment, nobody spoke. The water rippled, the midges swarmed, breezes tumbled and sunbeams skated off the browned surface of the river, but no one spoke. Only the birds, stubborn hangers on of a dying season, chattered excitably overhead.

Jims broke the silence. He took a deep breath, counted to ten, exhaled and said, 'Exactly how bad is it? I take it it's nothing a carefully chosen flower arrangement would fix?'

Apologetic grimaces from the aunts. 'Dr Blythe's reporter,' said Cass with atypical asperity, 'doesn't do a line in familial secrets.'

Jims grimaced. Aunt Persis pulled Cass close. Jims allowed Tom to do the same for him. They were, effectively, sat at the ends of the proverbial earth in any case.

'Sure Kitty does,' said Jims. 'Or I expect she does. You know, the kind of misadventures the young Blythes have, how often they assist at scene-of-crime stuff, who her sources are…I'm – we're – not family. That's all there is to that.'

Tom snorted. Jims said, 'No, really. You'd know if you saw them.'

But of course, Tom would never see them, not now. That was the whole point. So he would never quite grasp the weird, islanded knots of people who were family to each other but only related to the wider collection of Blythes and Merediths. It was bizarre to think about, perhaps because his particular island of Fords had never been like that. The aunts and the Cherubs all jumbled together. Before.

'And there's no way,' said Jims meditatively, 'of, I don't know, managing the fallout of whatever line Kitty ends up feeding them?'

'Not by us, anyway,' said Persis. 'That was made quite clear. Sorry.'

'Not your fault,' said Jims, because it wasn't and he knew it. Knew they knew he knew it, and so on.

Beside Jims, Tom lay back on the ground and squinted up at the sun. 'Right,' he said, 'that's Toronto out, and presumably Ingleside by extension. Anywhere else Jims can't go?'

'Kingsport,' said Cass promptly. 'And the surrounding area if you're sensible about it. I don't pretend to know how far Faith's hospital has coverage but I wouldn't want to land the wrong side of it.'

Jims grimaced. Risked pulling Tom's head onto his knees and idly stroking his hair. It was thick and soft under his fingers. The aunts shielded them from the riverbank, and anyway, it was as secluded as they were likely to get. Unless the birds told tales out of school.

'Likewise Jem's colleagues at the station house,' said Persis. 'Don't they go a bit beyond Kingsport?'

Jims didn't know. He wasn't sure if it hurt more to hear these places named as out of bounds – even for safety's sake – or Tom's tacit assumption he would not or could not go thence also. He couldn't of course, they had ever understood it, but still, to know it was one thing. To hear it aloud was something else. Tom reached backwards and squeezed Jims hand where it was still curled against his forehead. Never mind.

'Struan's probably all right, though,' Jims said, because he needed to say something hopeful. Thought perhaps they all needed that. 'Mandy wouldn't let anything hurt us.'

'I knew,' said Aunt Persis, 'there was a reason I liked Amanda Meredith.'

'Miss Witch,' said Tom, and grinned. Jims laughed. The aunts only looked as if this necessitated explanation, so they did. Jims led, because it was him who'd told Mandy everything, but Tom pitched in now and again because he'd exchanged the odd word with her since, when she'd placed a telephone call or written a letter.

'Well, thank God for Amanda Meredith, anyway,' said Aunt Cass when they had finished. More tentatively she said, 'Any idea what you'll do now?'

This was the tricky bit. The birds chattered and the breeze blew warm across their piece of verdant safety. The midges were still out with a vengeance. The water turned from brown to orange in the ebbing sunlight, like something out of a Turner. And still the leaves swirled across the surface. Mandy would have said it was because of surface tension or something, Jims was sure. All he knew was that it looked lovely. Tom extricated his hand from Jims', placed it on the ground and used it to propel himself upright again.

'There's a position,' he said, 'at a university. Teaching disinterested first years about God, that sort of thing. I hadn't meant to take it, but on the other hand…'

'Nice and far away?' asked Aunt Persis with sympathy. Jims nodded.

'America,' Tom said. 'Lots of exasperating paperwork if I go.' He couldn't quite catch the aunts' eye. He was acutely aware, Jims could tell, that he was talking about relocating the last traces of family the women opposite had.

'And there's work for me, if I want it,' said Jims, 'but you know that. I've flirted with crossing the border for ages.'

They did know. Jims could recall vividly the long nights on the St George St terrace debating academically the merits of different jobs in the aftermath of his doctorate. Then Sissy had got polio and being far away had seemed a terrible mistake, and anyway, Tom's work had been here. But now…The evensong chatter of the birds was vociferous.

'We'd miss you, of course,' said Aunt Cass, but not ungently. 'Mind you, I imagine you had your share of missing us, all those years. The casting asparagus, and all that.'

'And aunts don't argue,' said Jims. 'I remember.'

He knew now how childish it was, too. Had no doubt St George St had had its share of unquiet moments when Cherubs were safely not there to overhear them. People were people, after all. Now Cass laughed, and shook her head over the old absurdity.

'Something like that,' she said. 'But the point is, people in precariously constructed glass edifices shouldn't go weaponizing blunt objects of any kind. If it's easier to not be here, then go with God, hm? '

It was not lost on Jims that that was exactly what he'd said to her once, young and curious. Sissy was a baby, and he'd been on a late-night fishing expedition. It's easier not to be here, isn't it? He'd asked. And when Aunt Persis had confirmed it, I was sort of hoping you wouldn't say that.But he'd known even then that she would say exactly that, that it was true. He had just sort of hoped that maybe it wouldn't be true for him and Tom, just this once. Every rule having its exception, and all that.

To Cass he said now, 'We will. But we'll miss you, too.'

Persis shook her head. 'Much harder to get rid of than that,' she said. 'I expect there are quite a lot of resources that could help with indexing at this university of yours.'

'Very probably,' said Tom, agreeing easily.

'So, it follows quite logically,' said Aunt Persis, 'that we'll have to come visit you. Stay over, even.'

'Often,' said Cass, lest the point should be lost on them.

Jims smiled. Recalled that they had once promised that whatever happened, he would always have aunts. It hadn't felt like enough – he thought for any of them – at the time. Now it felt like the world.

So, home was out, and the Island with his unknown, unknowable mother's grave was out, and Kingsport was well out of bounds. But this was home, here in the orange blaze of the sunset ,with the chorusing birds, the swirling leaves and the idle willow fronds. Here was home, and St George St with its cats and indices was home. Home was Tom, and soon would also be the obscure newness of the university town they were heading for. It was a flexible thing, after all, paradoxically malleable and bone deep. Jims would know it anywhere.

The conversation wound and twisted, and Jims lay back on the ground, listening and tracking it. Watched the sun sink lower and lower, tumbling gracefully towards the brown water. Cass's Houseman from earlier came back to him now with a sudden vengeance.

He thought again of those glad, golden days, long gone, never to come again. But not forgot. And what was it someone else had said?

Love is a place.

He hadn't realised he'd said it aloud until Tom took it up.

'Yes,' that's right,' and smiling, continued,
Love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places
yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds

They smiled, the four of them in the last gasp of the sunlight. Love was a place; It was this sun-soaked patch of togetherness. Also the ivy-dappled walls of St George St, the sanctity of Knox library. It was in all these things, always, world without end. Another Aunt Cass-ism, but a good one. Love is a place. Their place, and their world. And that at least, had not ended. Never could.

In addition to A. E. Houseman, Tom here twice quotes e. e. cummings.