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green.
    It was enclosed by a high fence: the gate was chained and padlocked, but through the bars she spied a sign of the kind that marks Anglican churches all over the world. Catedral Episcopal de la Santísima Trinidad: BIENVENIDOS .
    She’d known it was the cathedral, that it was the only Anglican church in Havana, for Murray had filled her in on various political details: that the Cuban church had once been connected to the Episcopal Church in America, that this tie had been broken, and its renewal refused; and that now it was governed by a council that included the Primate of Canada, and was part of an archbishopric whose seat was in Santo Domingo. But the charm of the place brushed all these dreary details away, and she walked around the corner—she was now on Calle K again—and passed through an open gate into the grounds. A few people were talking in front of a notice board, others were on their way into several low buildings, presumably the bishop’s offices; so things were happening. But Lorraine continued along a narrow walk that led around the side of the church, to the entrance she’d first seen. The main door was open. Inside, a green chalkboard was set up in the aisle, with a dozen people sitting in nearby pews, while a tall black man spoke to them—in Spanish, of course; but going by the notations on the chalkboard, Lorraine guessed it was Bible study. And it was over almost at once: presumably Father Rodriguez had said ten o’clock because he knew that’swhen it finished. A few people came out her way, but most went farther into the church and left by a side entrance, two taking the chalkboard with them; then she had the church to herself.
    She stepped inside. Lorraine loved churches, but not all churches. Canterbury was special, and so was Westminster, but “great” churches filled her with awe, and she was never sure about awe. Her favourite churches were small, like All Souls in Charlottetown or King’s College Chapel in Cambridge. She was certainly in favour of exaltation and uplifting the spirit, but in the churches she liked she was hushed, her spirit set free in the quiet. And she began to feel this now in a church that had been so special to Murray. It was a lovely church, all white inside, full of light and softly moving air, fragrant with the garden outside. She thought of St. Anne’s in Kennebunkport, which was like a whaling dory turned upside down on the shore: this was a white shell lying beside it, stony smooth and bleached clean by the sun. A plain mahogany cross hung on the wall of the apse. She went up the aisle a few steps toward it, then made the sign of the cross (backwards, the Eastern way, as they all three did or had done) and slipped into a pew. She knelt. She closed her eyes. And at once Murray rushed into her mind, and then Don; and she smiled, remembering how she’d damned them both in Coppelia. Yes, she did owe them a prayer. And all at once, bringing them all together again, she was remembering—had they been watching Brideshead Revisited on television?—an argument about Waugh on the one hand, Graham Greene on the other, both converts even beyond Eliot’s conversion. Should they be tempted? That had been the question, the sort of question they’d loved to play with after dinner, or during summer afternoons with drinks on the dock. They’d decided, she remembered, that Waugh’s zeal was suspicious, in fact pretentious. It had certainly made his book ridiculous— Charles Ryder would never have been so rude . But then Greene mightgo too far in another direction: he believed in God almost by default, even in desperation; whether He existed or not, you had to believe in Him if you wanted any chance to be a good man . . . “though grace bails him out,” Don insisted. In the end, they’d agreed that they were better off as they were. “After all,” Murray had said, “resisting