The Thorn Birds


  by
  COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH
  This is a work of fiction and any resemblance between
the characters in this book and real persons is
coincidental.
  A portion of this work originally appeared in
Family Circle.
  Verses from "Clancy of the Overflow" by A. B.
Paterson reprinted by permission of the copyright
proprietor and Angus and Robertson
Publishers.
  Photograph of the author by Jim Kalett.
  AVON BOOKS A division of The Hearst
Corporation 959 Eighth Avenue New York,
New York 10019
  Copyright (c 1977 by Colleen
McCullough Published by arrangement with Harper and
Row, Publishers, Inc. Library of Congress
Catalog Card Number: 76-26271 ISBN:

  All rights reserved, which includes the right
to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form
whatsoever. For information address Harper and Row,
Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53 Street,
New York, New York 10022
  First Avon Printing, June, 1978
  AVON TRADEMARK REG. U.s. PAT.
OFF. AND IN OTHER COUNTRIES, MARCA
BEGISTRADA, HECHO EN U.s.a.
  Printed in Canada for "big sister" Jean
Easthope CONTENTS
  ONE 1915-1917 Meggie 3 TWO
1921-1928 Ralph 65 THREE 1929-1932
Paddy 215 FOUR 1933-1938 Luke 283
FIVE 1938-1953 Fee 427 SIX
1954-1965 Dane 525 SEVEN 1965-1969
Justine 655 There is a legend about a bird which
sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any
other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment
it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and
does not rest until it has found one. Then,
singing among the savage branches, it impales itself
upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises
above its own agony to out- carol the lark and the
nightingale. One superlative song, existence the
price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God
in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at
the cost of great pain .... Or so says the legend.
ONE
  1915-1917 MEGGIE 1
  On December 8th, 1915, Meggie Cleary
had her fourth birthday. After the breakfast dishes were
put away her mother silently thrust a brown paper
parcel into her arms and ordered her outside. So
Meggie squatted down behind the gorse bush next
to the front gate and tugged impatiently. Her
fingers were clumsy, the wrapping heavy; it smelled
faintly of the Wahine general store, which told her that
whatever lay inside the parcel had miraculously
been bought, not homemade or donated. Something fine
and mistily gold began to poke through a corner; she
attacked the paper faster, peeling it away in long,
ragged strips. "Agnes! Oh, Agnes!" she said
lovingly, blinking at the doll lying there in a
tattered nest. A miracle indeed. Only once
in her life had Meggie been into Wahine;
all the way back in May, because she had been a very
good girl. So perched in the buggy beside her mother, on
her best behavior, she had been too excited
to see or remember much. Except for Agnes, the
beautiful doll sitting on the store counter,
dressed in a crinoline of pink satin with cream
lace frills all over it. Right then and there in her
mind she had christened it Agnes, the only name she
knew elegant enough for such a peerless creature.
Yet over the en- 3
  suing months her yearning after Agnes contained
nothing of hope; Meggie didn't own a doll and
had no idea little girls and dolls belonged together.
She played happily with the whistles and slingshots and
battered soldiers her brothers discarded, got her
hands dirty and her boots muddy. It never occurred
to her that Agnes was to play with. Stroking the bright pink
folds of the dress, grander than any she had ever
seen on a human woman, she picked Agnes up
tenderly. The doll had jointed arms and legs which could
be moved anywhere; even her neck and tiny, shapely
waist were jointed. Her golden hair was
exquisitely dressed in a high pompadour studded
with pearls, her pale bosom peeped out of a foaming
fichu of cream lace fastened with a pearl pin.
The finely painted bone china face was beautiful,
left unglazed to give the delicately tinted skin
a natural matte texture. Astonishingly
lifelike blue eyes shone between lashes of real
hair, their irises streaked and circled with a darker
blue; fascinated, Meggie discovered that when
Agnes lay back far enough, her eyes closed.
High on one faintly flushed cheek she had a
black beauty mark, and her dusky mouth was parted
slightly to show tiny white teeth. Meggie put the
doll gently on her lap, crossed her feet under
her comfortably, and sat just looking. She was still sitting
behind the gorse bush when Jack and Hughie came
rustling through the grass where it was too close to the fence
to feel a scythe. Her hair was the typical
Cleary beacon, all the Cleary children save
Frank being martyred by a thatch some shade of red;
Jack nudged his brother and pointed gleefully.
They separated, grinning at each other, and pretended
  they were troopers after a Maori renegade.
Meggie would not have heard them anyway, so engrossed
was she in Agnes, humming softly to herself. "What's
that you've got, Meggie?" Jack shouted, pouncing.
"Show us!" "Yes, show us!" Hughie giggled,
outflanking her. 4
  She clasped the doll against her chest and shook her
head. "No, she's mine! I got her for my
birthday!"
  "Show us, go on! We just want to have a look."
  Pride and joy won out. She held the doll so
her brothers could see. "Look, isn't she
beautiful? Her name is Agnes."
  "Agnes? Agnes?" Jack gagged
realistically. "What a soppy name! Why don't you
call her Margaret or Betty?"
  "Because she's Agnes!"
  Hughie noticed the joint in the doll's wrist,
and whistled. "Hey, Jack, look! It can move
its hand!"
  "Where? Let's see."
  "No!" Meggie hugged the doll close again,
tears forming. "No, you'll break her! Oh,
Jack, don't take her away-you'll break her!"
"Pooh!" His dirty brown hands locked about her
wrists, closing tightly. "Want a Chinese
burn? And don't be such a crybaby, or I'll
tell Bob." He squeezed her skin in
opposite directions until it stretched whitely,
as Hughie got hold of the doll's skirts and
pulled. "Gimme, or I'll do it really
hard!"
  "No! Don't, Jack, please don't!
You'll break her, I know you will! Oh, please
leave her alone! Don't take her, please!" In
spite of the cruel grip on her wrists she clung
to the doll, sobbing and kicking. "Got it" Hughie
whooped, as the doll slid under Meggie's crossed
forearms. Jack and Hughie found her just as
fascinating as Meggie had; off came the dress, the
petticoats and long, frilly drawers. Agnes
lay naked while the boys pushed and pulled at her,
forcing one foot round the back of her head, making her
look down her spine, every possible contortion they could
think of. They took no notice of Meggie as she
stood crying; it did not occur to her to seek help,
for in the Cleary family those who could not fight their
own battles got scant aid or sympathy, and that
went for girls, too.
  The doll's golden hair tumbled down, the
pearls flew winking into the long grass and disappeared.
A dusty boot came down thoughtlessly on the
abandoned dress, smearing grease from the smithy across
its satin. Meggie dropped to her knees,
scrabbling frantically to collect the miniature
clothes before more damage was done them, then she
began picking among the grass blades where she thought
the pearls might have fallen. Her tears were blinding
her, the grief in her heart new, for until now she
had never owned anything worth grieving for.
  Frank threw the shoe hissing into cold water and
straightened his back; it didn't ache these days, so
perhaps he was used to smithying. Not before time, his father would
have said, after six months at it. But Frank knew
very well how long it was since his introduction to the
forge and anvil; he had measured the time in hatred and
resentment. Throwing the hammer into its box, he pushed
the lank black hair off his brow with a trembling hand
and dragged the old leather apron from around his neck.
His shirt lay on a heap of straw in the corner;
he plodded across to it and stood for a moment staring at the
splintering barn wall as if it did not exist, his
black eyes wide and fixed. He was very small, not
above five feet three inches, and thin still as
striplings are, but the bare shoulders and arms had
muscles already knotted from working with the hammer, and the
pale, flawless skin gleamed with sweat. The darkness
of his hair and eyes had a foreign tang, his
full-lipped mouth and wide-bridged nose not the
usual family shape, but there was Maori blood
on his mother's side and in him it showed. He was
nearly sixteen years old, where Bob was barely
eleven, Jack ten, Hughie nine, Stuart five
and little Meggie three. Then he remembered that today
Meggie was four; it was December 8th. He put
on his shirt and left the barn.
  The house lay on top of a small hill about one
hundred feet higher than the barn and stables. Like
all New Zealand houses, it was wooden, rambling
over many squares and of one story only, on the theory
that if an earthquake struck, some of it might be
left standing. Around it gorse grew everywhere, at the
moment smothered in rich yellow flowers; the grass was
green and luxuriant, like all New Zealand
grass. Not even in the middle of winter, when the
frost sometimes lay unmelted all day in the shade,
did the grass turn brown, and the long, mild
summer only tinted it an even richer green. The
rains fell gently without bruising the tender
sweetness of all growing things, there was no snow, and the
sun had just enough strength to cherish, never enough to sap. New
Zealand's scourges thundered up out of the bowels of
  the earth rather than descended from the skies. There was
always a suffocated sense of waiting, an intangible
shuddering and thumping that actually transmitted itself through
the feet. For beneath the ground lay awesome
power, power of such magnitude that thirty years before
a whole towering mountain had disappeared; steam gushed
howling out of cracks in the sides of innocent
hills, volcanoes spurned smoke into the sky and the
alpine streams ran warm. Huge lakes of mud
boiled oilily, the seas lapped uncertainly at
cliffs which might not be there to greet the next incoming
tide, and in places the earth's crust was only nine
hundred feet thick. Yet it was a gentle,
gracious land. Beyond the house stretched an
undulating plain as green as the emerald in Fiona
Cleary's engagement ring, dotted with thousands of
creamy bundles close proximity revealed as
sheep. Where the curving hills scalloped the edge
of the lightblue sky Mount Egmont soared ten
thousand feet, sloping into the clouds, its sides still
white with snow, its symmetry so perfect that even
those like Frank who saw it every day of their lives never
ceased to marvel.
  It was quite a pull from the barn to the house, but
  Frank hurried because he knew he ought not to be
going; his father's orders were explicit. Then as he
rounded the corner of the house he saw the little group by the
gorse bush.
  Frank had driven his mother into Wahine
to buy Meggie's doll, and he was still wondering what
had prompted her to do it. She wasn't given
to impractical birthday presents, there wasn't the
money for them, and she had never given a toy to anyone
before. They all got clothes; birthdays and
Christmases replenished sparse wardrobes. But
apparently Meggie had seen the doll on her one and
only trip into town, and Fiona had not forgotten.
When Frank questioned her, she muttered something about a
girl needing a doll, and quickly changed the
subject.
  Jack and Hughie had the doll between them on the
front path, manipulating its joints callously.
All Frank could see of Meggie was her back, as
she stood watching her brothers desecrate
Agnes. Her neat white socks had slipped in
crinkled folds around her little black boots, and the
pink of her legs was visible for three or four inches
below the hem of her brown velvet Sunday dress.
Down her back cascaded a mane of carefully
curled hair, sparkling in the sun; not red and not
gold, but somewhere in between. The white taffeta bow which
held the front curls back from her face hung
draggled and limp; dust smeared her dress. She
held the doll's clothes tightly in one
hand, the other pushing vainly at Hughie.
  "You bloody little bastards!"
  Jack and Hughie scrambled to their feet and ran,
the doll forgotten; when Frank swore it was
politic to run.
  "If I catch you flaming little twerps touching that
doll again I'll brand your shitty little arses!"
Frank yelled after them. He bent down and took
Meggie's shoulders between his hands, shaking her gently.
  "Here, here there's no need to cryl Come on now,
  they've gone and they'll never touch your dolly again,
I promise. Give me a
  smile for your birthday, eh?"
  Her face was swollen, her eyes running; she
stared at Frank out of grey eyes so large and
full of tragedy that he felt his throat tighten.
Pulling a
  dirty rag from his breeches pocket, he rubbed
it clumsily over her face, then pinched her nose
between its folds.
  "Blow!"
  She did as she was told, hiccuping noisily as
her tears dried. "Oh, Fruh-Fruh-Frank,
they too-too-took Agnes away from me!" She
sniffled. "Her huh-huh-hair all
failed down and she loh-loh-lost all the pretty
widdle puh-puh-pearls in it! They all failed in
the gruh-gruhgrass and I can't end them!"
  The tears welled up again, splashing on
Frank's hand; he stared at his wet skin for a
moment, then licked the drops off.
  "Well, we'll have to find them, won't we? But
you can't find anything while you're crying, you know, and
what's all this baby talk? I haven't heard you
say "widdle" instead of "little' for six months!
Here, blow your nose again and then pick up poor .
. . Agnes? If you don't put her clothes on,
she'll get sunburned."
  He made her sit on the edge of the path and gave
her the doll gently, then he crawled about searching the
grass until he gave a triumphant whoop and
held up a pearl.
  "There! First one! We'll find them all, you
wait and see."
  Meggie watched her oldest brother adoringly
while he picked among the grass blades, holding
up each pearl as he found it; then she remembered
how delicate Agnes's skin must be, how
easily it must Burn, and bent her attention on
clothing the doll. There did not seem any
real injury. Her hair was tangled and loose, her
arms and legs dirty where the boys had pushed and
pulled at them, but everything still worked. A
tortoiseshell comb nestled above each of Meggie's
ears; she 9
  tugged at one until it came free, and began
to comb Agnes's hair, which was genuine human hair,
skillfully knotted onto a base of glue and
gauze, and bleached until it was the color of gilded
straw. She was yanking inexpertly at a large
knot when the dreadful thing happened. Off came the
hair, all of it, dangling in a tousled clump from
the teeth of the comb. Above Agnes's smooth broad
brow there was nothing; no head, no bald skull. Just
an awful, yawning hole. Shivering in terror,
Meggie leaned forward to peer inside the doll's
cranium. The inverted contours of cheeks and chin showed
dimly, light glittered between the parted lips with their
teeth a black, animal silhouette, and above
all this were Agnes's eyes, two horrible clicking
balls speared by a wire rod that cruelly pierced
her head.
  Meggie's scream was high and thin, unchildlike;
she flung Agnes away and went on screaming,
hands covering her face, shaking and shuddering.
Then she felt Frank pull at her fingers and
take her into his arms, pushing her face into the side
of his neck. Wrapping her arms about him, she took
comfort from him until his nearness calmed her enough to become
aware of how nice he smelled, all horses and
sweat and iron.
  When she quietened, Frank made her tell him
what was the matter; he picked up the doll and stared
into its empty head in wonder, trying to remember if
his infant universe had been so beset by strange
terrors. But his unpleasant phantoms were of people and
whispers and cold glances. Of his mother's face pinched
and shrinking, her hand trembling as it held his, the
set of her shoulders.
  What had Meggie seen, to make her take on
so? He fancied she would not have been nearly so
upset if poor Agnes had only bled when she
lost her hair. Bleeding was a fact; someone in the
Cleary family bled copiously at least once a
week.
  "Her eyes, her eyed" Meggie whispered,
refusing to look at the doll.
  "She's a bloody marvel, Meggie," he
murmured, his face nuzzling into her hair. How
fine it was, how rich and full of color!
It took him half an hour of cajoling to make her
look at Agnes, and half an
  hour more elapsed before he could persuade her to peer
into the scalped hole. He showed her how the eyes
worked, how very carefully they had been aligned to fit
snugly yet swing easily opened or closed.
"Come on now, it's time you went inside," he told
her, swinging her up into his arms and tucking the doll
between his chest and hers. "We'll get Mum to fix her
up, eh? We'll wash and iron her clothes, and
glue on her hair again. I'll make you some
proper hairpins out of those pearls, too, so they
can't fall out and you can do her hair in all sorts of
ways."
  Fiona Cleary was in the kitchen, peeling
potatoes. She was a very handsome, very fair woman a
little under medium height, but rather hard-faced and stern;
she had an excellent figure with a tiny waist which
had not thickened, in spite of the six babies she had
carried beneath it. Her dress was grey calico, its
skirts brushing the spotless floor, its front
protected by an enormous starched white apron that
looped around her neck and tied in the small of her
spine with a crisp, perfect bow. From waking
to sleeping she lived in the kitchen and back
garden, her stout black boots beating a circular
path from stove to laundry to vegetable patch
to clotheslines and thence to the stove again.
  She put her knife on the table and stared at
Frank and Meggie, the corners of her beautiful
mouth turning down.
  "Meggie, I let you put on your Sunday-best
dress this morning on one condition, that you didn't
get it dirty. And look at you! What a little
grub you are!"
  "Mum, it wasn't her fault," Frank
protested. "Jack and Hughie took her doll
away to try and find out how
  the arms and legs worked. I promised we'd fix
it up as good as new. We can, can't we?"
  "Let me see." Fee held out her hand for the
doll. She was a silent woman, not given
to spontaneous conversation. What she thought, no one
ever knew, even her husband; she left the disciplining
of the children to him, and did whatever he commanded without comment
or complaint unless the circumstances were most
unusual. Meggie had heard the boys whispering that
she stood in as much awe of Daddy as they did, but
if that was true she hid it under a veneer of
impenetrable, slightly dour calm. She
never laughed, nor did she ever lose her temper.
Finished her inspection, Fee laid Agnes on the
dresser near the stove and looked at Meggie.
  "I'll wash her clothes tomorrow morning, and do her
hair again. Frank can glue the hair on after tea
tonight, I suppose, and give her a bath." The words
were matter-of-fact rather than comforting. Meggie nodded,
smiling uncertainly; sometimes she wanted so badly
to hear her mother laugh, but her mother never did. She
sensed that they shared a special something not common
to Daddy and the boys, but there was no reaching beyond that
rigid back, those never still feet. Mum would nod
absently and flip her voluminous skirts
expertly from stove to table as she continued working, working,
working.
  What none of the children save Frank could realize was
that Fee was permanently, incurably tired. There was
so much to be done, hardly any money to do it with, not enough
time, and only one pair of hands. She longed for the day
when Meggie would be old enough to help; already the child did
simple tasks, but at barely four years of age
it couldn't possibly lighten the load. Six children,
and only one of them, the youngest at that, a girl.
All her acquaintances were simultaneously
sympathetic and envious, but that didn't get
the work done. Her sewing basket had a mountain of
socks in it still
  undarned, her knitting needles held yet
another sock, and there was Hughie growing out of his
sweaters and Jack not ready to hand his down.
  Padraic Cleary was to home the week of
Meggie's birthday, purely by chance. It was too
early for the shearing season, and he had work locally,
plowing and planting. By profession he was a sheerer of
sheep, a seasonal occupation which lasted from the middle
of summer to the end of winter, after which came lambing.
Usually he managed to find plenty of work to tide
him over spring and the first month of summer; helping with
lambing, plowing, or spelling a local dairy
farmer from his endless twice-a-day milking. Where there was
work he went, leaving his family in the big old
house to fend for themselves; not as harsh an action as it
seemed. Unless one was lucky enough to own land, that was
what one had to do.
  When he came in a little after sunset the lamps were
lit, and shadows played flickering games around the
high ceiling. The boys were clustered on the back
veranda playing with a frog, except for Frank;
Padraic knew where he
  was, because he could hear the steady clocking
of an axe from the direction of the woodheap. He
paused on the veranda only long enough to plant a kick
on
  Jack's backside and clip Bob's ear.
  "Go and help Frank with the wood, you lazy little
scamps. And it had better be done before Mum has
tea on the table, or there'll be skin and hair
flying."
  He nodded to Fiona, busy at the stove; he
did not kiss or embrace her, for he regarded
displays of affection between husband and wife as something
suitable only for the bedroom. As he used the jack
to haul off his mud-caked boots, Meggie came
skipping with his slippers, and he grinned down at the
little girl with the curious sense of wonder he always
knew at sight of her. She was so pretty, such
beautiful hair; he picked up a curl and pulled
it out straight, then let it go, just to
  see it jiggle and bounce as it settled back
into place. Picking the child up, he went to sit in the
only comfortable chair the kitchen possessed, a
Windsor chair with a cushion tied to its seat,
drawn close to the fire. Sigh- ing softly, he
sat down in it and pulled out his pipe, carelessly
tapping out the spent dottle of tobacco in
its bowl onto the floor. Meggie cuddled down on
his lap and wound her arms about his neck, her cool little
face turned up to his as she played her nightly
game of watching the light filter through his short stubble
of golden beard.
  "How are you, Fee?" Padraic Cleary asked
his wife. "All right, Paddy. Did you get the
lower paddock done today?" "Yes, all done. I can
start on the upper first thing in the morning. Lord, but
I'm tired!"
  "I'll bet. Did MacPherson give you the
crotchety old mare again?" "Too right. You don't
think he'd take the animal himself to let me have the
roan, do you? My arms feel as if they've been
pulled out of their sockets. I
  swear that mare has the hardest mouth in En Zed."
  "Never mind. Old Robertson's horses are
all good, and you'll be there soon enough."
  "Can't be soon enough." He packed his pipe with
coarse tobacco and pulled a taper from the big jar that
stood near the stove. A quick flick inside the
firebox door and it caught; he leaned back in his
chair and sucked so deeply the pipe made bubbling
noises. "How's it feel to be four, Meggie?"
he asked his daughter.
  "Pretty good, Daddy."
  "Did Mum give you your present?"
  "Oh, Daddy, how did you and Mum guess I
wanted Agnes?" "Agnes?" He looked
swiftly toward Fee, smiling and quizzing her with his
eyebrows. "Is that her name, Agnes?"
  "Yes. She's beautiful, Daddy. I want
to look at her all day." "She's lucky to have
anything to look at," Fee said grimly. "Jack
and Hughie got hold of the doll before poor Meggie
had a chance to see it properly."
  "Well, boys will be boys. Is the damage
bad?" "Nothing that can't be mended. Frank caught
them before it went too far." "Frank? What was he
doing down here? He was supposed to be at the forge
all day. Hunter wants his gates."
  "He was at the forge all day. He just came down
for a tool of some sort," Fee answered quickly;
Padraic was too hard on Frank. "Oh,
Daddy, Frank is the best brother! He saved
my Agnes from being killed, and he's going to glue
her hair on again for me after tea."
  "That's good," her father said drowsily, leaning his
head back in the chair and closing his eyes.
  It was hot in front of the stove, but he
didn't seem to notice; beads of sweat gathered
on his forehead, glistening. He put his arms behind his
head and fell into a doze.
  It was from Padraic Cleary that his children got their
various shades of thick, waving red hair, though
none had inherited quite such an aggressively red head
as his. He was a small man, all steel and
springs in build, legs bowed from a lifetime among
horses, arms elongated from years shearing sheep; his
chest and arms were covered in a matted golden fuzz which
would have been ugly had he been dark. His eyes were
bright blue, crinkled up into a permanent squint like
a sailor's from gazing into the far distance, and his face
was a pleasant one, with a whimsical smiling quality
about it that made other men like him at a glance. HiSo
nose was magnificent, a true Roman nose which
must have puzzled his Irish confreres, but Ireland has
ever been a shipwreck coast. He still spoke with the
soft quick slur of the Gal- 15
  way Irish, pronouncing his final t's as this's,
but almost twenty years in the Antipodes had forced a
quaint overlay upon it, so that his a's came out as
i's and the speed of his speech had run down a little,
like an old clock in need of a good winding. A
happy man, he had managed to weather his
hard and drudging existence better than most, and though
he was a rigid disciplinarian with a heavy swing to his
boot, all but one of his children adored him. If there was
not enough bread to go around, he went without; if it was a
choice between new clothes for him or new clothes for
one of his offspring, he went without. In its way, that
was more reliable evidence of love than a million
easy kisses. His temper was very fiery, and he had
killed a man once. Luck had been with him; the
man was.english, and there was a ship in Dun
Laoghaire harbor bound for New Zealand on the
tide.
  Fiona went to the back door and shouted,
"Tea!" The boys trailed in gradually, Frank
bringing up the rear with an armload of wood, which he
dumped in the big box beside the stove. Padraic
put Meggie down and walked to the head of the
non-company dining table at the far end of
  the kitchen, while the boys seated themselves around its
sides and Meggie scrambled up on top of the
wooden box her father put on the chair nearest to him.
  Fee served the food directly onto dinner
plates at her worktable, more quickly and efficiently
than a waiter; she carried them two at a time to her
family, Paddy first, then Frank, and so
on down to Meggie, with herself last. "Erckle!
Stew!" said Stuart, pulling faces as he picked
up his knife and fork. "Why did you have to name me after
stew?" "Eat it," his father growled.
  The plates were big ones, and they were literally
heaped with food: boiled potatoes, lamb stew and
beans cut that day from the garden, ladled in huge
portions. 16
  In spite of the muted groans and sounds of disgust,
everyone including Stu polished his plate clean with
bread, and ate several slices more spread thickly
with butter and native gooseberry jam. Fee sat
down and bolted her meal, then got up at once
to hurry to her worktable again, where into big soup plates
she doled out great quantities of biscuit made
with plenty of sugar and laced all through with jam. A
river of steaming hot custard sauce was poured over
each, and again she plodded to the dining table with the plates,
two at a time. Finally she sat down with a sigh; this
she could eat at her leisure.
  "Oh, goodie! Jam roly-poly!" Meggie
exclaimed, slopping her spoon up and down in the
custard until the jam seeped through to make pink
streaks in the yellow.
  "Well, Meggie girl, it's your
birthday, so Mum made your favorite pudding,"
her father said, smiling.
  There were no complaints this time; no matter what the
pudding was, it was consumed with gusto. The Clearys
all had a sweet tooth. No one carried a pound
of superfluous flesh, in spite of the vast
quantities of starchy food. They expended every
ounce they ate in work or play. Vegetables and
fruit were eaten because they were good for you, but it was the
bread, potatoes, meat and hot floury puddings which
staved off exhaustion.
  After Fee had poured everyone a cup of tea from
her giant pot, they stayed talking, drinking or
reading for an hour or more, Paddy puffing on his pipe
with his head in a library book, Fee continuously
refilling cups, Bob immersed in another library
book, while the younger children made plans for the morrow.
School had dispersed for the long summer vacation; the
boys were on the loose and eager to commence their
allotted chores around the house and garden. Bob had
to touch up the exterior paintwork where it was necessary,
Jack and Hughie dealt with the woodheap,
outbuildings and
  milking, Stuart tended the vegetables; play
compared to the horrors of school. From time to time
Paddy lifted his head from his book to add another
job to the list, but Fee said nothing, and Frank sat
slumped tiredly, sipping cup after cup of tea.
  Finally Fee beckoned Meggie to sit on a
high stool, and did up her hair in its nightly
rags before packing her off to bed with Stu and Hughie;
Jack and Bob begged to be excused and went
outside to feed the dogs; Frank took Meggie's
doll to the worktable and began to glue its hair on
again. Stretching, Padraic closed his book and put
his pipe into the huge iridescent paua shell which
served him as an ashtray.
  "Well, Mother, I'm off to bed."
  "Good night, Paddy."
  Fee cleared the dishes off the dining table and got
a big galvanized iron tub down from its hook
on the wall. She put it at the opposite end of the
worktable from Frank, and lifting the massive
cast-iron kettle off the stove, filled it with hot
water. Cold water from an old kerosene tin served
to cool the steaming bath; swishing soap confined in a
wire basket through it, she began to wash and rinse the
dishes, stacking them against a cup. Frank worked on
the doll without raising his head, but as the pile of
plates grew he got up silently
to fetch a towel and began to dry them. Moving between the
worktable and the dresser, he worked with the ease of long
familiarity. It was a furtive, fearful game he
and his mother played, for the most stringent rule in
Paddy's domain concerned the proper delegation of
duties. The house was woman's work, and that was that.
No male member of the family was to put his hand to a
female task. But each night after Paddy went
to bed Frank helped his mother, Fee aiding and
abetting him by delaying her dishwashing until they
heard the thump of Paddy's slippers hitting the
floor. Once Paddy's slippers were off he never
came back to the kitchen. Fee looked at Frank
gently. "I don't know what I'd 18
  do without you, Frank. But you shouldn't. You'll be so
tired in the morning."
  "It's all right, Mum. Drying a few dishes
won't kill me. Little enough to make life easier for
you."
  "It's my job, Frank. I don't mind."
  "I just wish we'd get rich one of these days, so
you could have a maid." "That is wishful thinking!" She
wiped her soapy red hands on the dishcloth and then
pressed them into her sides, sighing. Her eyes as
they rested on her son were vaguely
worried, sensing his bitter discontent, more than the
normal railing of a workingman against his lot.
"Frank, don't get grand ideas. They only
lead to trouble. We're working-class people, which means we
don't get rich or have maids. Be content with what
you are and what you have. When you say things like this you're
insulting Daddy, and he doesn't deserve it. You
know that. He doesn't drink, he doesn't gamble,
and he works awfully hard for us. Not a penny he
earns goes into his own pocket. It all comes
to us." The muscular shoulders hunched impatiently,
the dark face became harsh and grim. "But why should
wanting more out of life than drudgery be so bad? I
don't see what's wrong with wishing you had a
maid."
  "It's wrong because it can't be! You know there's no
money to keep you at school, and if you can't stay at
school how are you ever going to be anything better than
a manual worker? Your accent, your clothes and your
hands show that you labor for a living. But it's no
disgrace to have calluses on your hands. As Daddy
says, when a man's hands are callused you know
he's honest." Frank shrugged and said no more. The
dishes were all put away; Fee got out her sewing
basket and sat down in Paddy's chair by the
fire, while Frank went back to the doll.
  "Poor little Meggie!" he said suddenly.
  [*reggg'Why8[*macr]
  "Today, when those wretched chaps were pulling 19
  her dolly about, she just stood there crying as if her
whole world had fallen to bits." He looked down
at the doll, which was wearing its hair again. "Agnes!
Where on earth did she get a name like that?" "She must
have heard me talking about Agnes
Fortescue-Smythe, I suppose." "When I
gave her the doll back she looked into its head and
nearly died of fright. Something scared her about its
eyes; I don't know what." "Meggie's always
seeing things that aren't there."
  "It's a pity there isn't enough money to keep the little
children at school. They're so clever."
  "Oh, Frank! If wishes were horses beggars
might ride," his mother said wearily. She passed her
hand across her eyes, trembling a little, and stuck her
darning needle deep into a ball of grey wool.
"I can't do any more. I'm too tried to see
straight."
  "Go to bed, Mum. I'll blow out the lamps."
  "As soon as I've stoked the fire."
  "I'll do that." He got up from the table
and put the dainty china doll carefully down behind a
cake tin on the dresser, where it would be out of harm's
way. He was not worried that the boys might
attempt further rapine; they were more frightened of his
vengeance than of their father's, for Frank had a
vicious streak. When he was with his mother or his sister it
never ap- peared, but the boys had all suffered from it.
  Fee watched him, her heart aching; there was something
wild and desperate about Frank, an aura of
trouble. If only he and Paddy got on better
together! But they could never see eye to eye, and argued
constantly. Maybe he was too concerned for her,
maybe he was a bit of a mother's boy. Her fault,
if it was true. Yet it spoke of his loving heart,
his goodness. He only wanted to make her life a
little easier. And again she found herself yearning for the day
when Meggie became old enough to take the burden of it
from Frank's shoulders.
  She picked up a small lamp from the table, then
put it down again and walked across to where Frank was
squatted before the stove, packing wood into the big
firebox and fiddling with the damper. His white arm was
roped with prominent veins, his finely made hands
too stained ever to come clean. Her own hand went out
timidly, and very lightly smoothed the
straight black hair out of his eyes; it was as
close as she could bring herself to a caress. "Good
night, Frank, and thank you."
  The shadows wheeled and darted before the advancing
light as Fee moved silently through the door leading
into the front part of the house. Frank and Bob shared
the first bedroom; she pushed its door open
noiselessly and held the lamp high, its light
flooding the double bed in the corner. Bob was lying on
his back with his mouth sagging open, quivering and twitching
like a dog; she crossed to the bed and rolled him over
onto his right side before he could pass into a
full-fledged nightmare, then stayed looking down at
him for a moment. How like Paddy he was! Jack and
Hughie were almost braided together in the next room.
What dreadful scamps they were! Never out of
mischief, but no malice in them. She tried
vainly to separate them and restore some sort of
order to their bedclothes, but the two curly red heads
refused to be parted. Softly sighing, she gave up.
How they managed to be refreshed after the kind of
night they passed was beyond her, but they seemed to thrive
on it. The room where Meggie and Stuart slept was
a dingy and cheerless place for two small children;
painted a stuffy brown and floored in brown
linoleum, no-pictures on the walls. Just like the
other bedrooms. Stuart had turned himself upside
down and was quite invisible except for his little nightshirted
bottom sticking out of the covers where his head ought to have
been; Fee found his head touching his knees, and as
  usual marveled that he had not suffocated. She
slid her hand gingerly across the sheet and stiffened.
Wet again! Well, it would have to wait until the
morning, when no doubt the pillow would be wet, too.
He always did that, reversed himself and then wet once
more. Well, one bed-wetter among five boys
wasn't bad.
  Meggie was curled into a little heap, with her thumb in
her mouth and her rag-decorated hair all around
her. The only girl. Fee cast her no more than a
passing glance before leaving; there was no mystery
to Meggie, she was female. Fee knew what her
lot would be, and did not envy her or pity her. The
boys were different; they were miracles, males
alchemized out of her female body. It was hard not
having help around the house, but it was worth it.
Among his peers, Paddy's sons were the greatest character
reference he possessed. Let a man breed sons
and he was a real man. She closed the door to her
own bedroom softly, and put the lamp down
on a bureau. Her nimble fingers flew down the
dozens of tiny buttons between the high collar and the
hips of her dress, then peeled it away from her
arms. She slipped the camisole off her arms also,
and holding it very carefully against her chest, she
wriggled into a long flannel nightgown. Only
then, decently covered, did she divest herself of
camisole, drawers and loosely laced stays.
Down came the tightly knotted golden hair,
all its pins put into a paua shell on the bureau.
But even this, beautiful as it was, thick and shining and
very straight, was not permitted freedom; Fee got
her elbows up over her head and her hands behind her
neck, and began to braid it swiftly. She turned
then toward the bed, her breathing unconsciously
suspended; but Paddy was asleep, so she heaved a
gusty sigh of relief. Not that it wasn't nice when
Paddy was in the mood, for he was a shy, tender,
considerate lover. But until Meggie was two or
three years older it would be very hard to have more babies.
  When the Clearys went to church on Sundays,
Meggie had to stay home with one of the older boys,
longing for the day when she, too, would be old enough to go.
Padraic Cleary held that small children had no
place in any house save their own, and his
rule held even for a house of worship. When
Meggie commenced school and could be trusted to sit still,
she could come to church. Not before. So every Sunday morning
she stood by the gorse bush at the front gate,
desolate, while the family piled into the old
shandrydan and the brother delegated to mind her tried
to pretend it was a great treat escaping Mass. The
only Cleary who relished separation from the rest was
Frank. Paddy's religion was an intrinsic part
of his life. When he had married Fee it had been
with grudging Catholic approval, for Fee was a
member of the Church of England; though she abandoned her
faith for Paddy, she refused to adopt his in its
stead. Difficult to say why, except that the
Armstrongs were old pioneering stock of impeccable
Church of England extraction, where Paddy was a
penniless immigrant from the wrong side of the Pale.
There had been Armstrongs in New Zealand long before
the first "official" settlers arrived, and that was a
passport to colonial aristocracy. From the
  Armstrong point of view, Fee could only be said
to have contracted a shocking mesalliance.
  Roderick Armstrong had founded the New Zealand
clan, in a very curious way. It had begun with an
event which was to have many unforeseen repercussions
on eighteenth-century England: the American War
of Independence. Until 1776 over a thousand
British petty felons were shipped each year
to Virginia and the Carolinas, sold into an indentured
servitude no better than slavery. British
justice of the time was grim and unflinching; murder,
arson, the mysterious crime of "impersonating
Egyptians" and larceny to the tune of more than a
shilling were punished on the gallows. Petty crime
meant transportation to the Americas for the term of the
felon's natural life. But when in 1776 the
Americas were closed, England found herself with a
rapidly increasing convict population and nowhere to put
it. The prisons filled to overflowing, and the surplus
was jammed into rotting hulks moored in the river
estuaries. Something had to be done, so something was.
With a great deal of reluctance because it meant the
expenditure of a few thousand pounds, Captain
Arthur Phillip was ordered to set sail for the Great
South Land. The year was 1787. His fleet of
eleven ships held over one thousand convicts, plus
sailors, naval officers and a contingent of marines.
No glorious odyssey in search of freedom, this.
At the end of January 1788, eight months after
setting sail from England, the fleet arrived
in Botany Bay. His Mad Majesty George
the Third had found a new dumping ground for his
convicts, the colony of New South Wales.
  In 1801, when he was just twenty years of age,
Roderick Armstrong was sentenced to transportation
for the term of his natural life. Later generations of
Armstrongs insisted he came of Somerset
gentlefolk who had lost their fortune following the
American Revolution, and that his crime was
nonexistent, but none of them had ever tried very hard
to trace their illustrious
  ancestor's background. They just basked in his
reflected glory and improvised somewhat.
  Whatever his origins and status in English life,
the young Roderick Armstrong was a tartar. All through
the unspeakable eight months' voyage to New South
Wales he proved a stubborn, difficult
prisoner, further endearing himself to his ship's
officers by refusing to die. When he arrived in
Sydney in 1803 his behavior worsened, so he was
shipped to Norfolk Island and the prison for
intractables. Nothing improved his conduct. They
starved him; they immured him in a cell so small
he could neither sit, stand nor lie; they flogged him
to jellied pulp; they chained him to a rock in
the sea and let him half-drown. And he laughed at
them, a skinny collection of bones in filthy
canvas, not a tooth in his mouth or an inch of his
skin unscarred, lit from within by a fire of bitterness
and defiance nothing seemed to quench. At
  the beginning of each day he willed himself not to die,
and at the end of each day he laughed in triumph
to find himself still alive. In 1810 he was sent
to Van Diemen's Land, put in a chain gang and
set to hew a road through the ironhard sandstone country
behind Hobart. At first opportunity he had used his
pick to hack a hole in the chest of the trooper commanding
the expedition; he and ten other convicts massacred
five more troopers by shaving the flesh from their bones an
inch at a time until they died screaming in agony.
For they and their guards were beasts, elemental
creatures whose emotions had atrophied to the
subhuman. Roderick Armstrong could no more have gone
off into his escape leaving his tormentors intact or
quickly dead than he could have reconciled himself to being a
convict. With the rum and bread and jerky they took from the
troopers, the eleven men fought their way through miles
of freezing rain forest and came out at the whaling station
of Hobart, where they stole a longboat and set off
across the Tasman Sea without food, water
or 25
  sails. When the longboat washed ashore on the
wild west coast of New Zealand's South Island,
Roderick Armstrong and two other men were still alive.
He never spoke of that incredible journey, but it was
whispered that the three had survived by killing and eating
their weaker companions. That was just nine years after he
had been transported from England. He was yet a
young man, but he looked sixty. By the time the first
officially sanctioned settlers arrived in New
Zealand in 1840, he had hewn lands for himself in the
rich Canterbury district of the South Island,
"married" a Maori woman and sired a brood of
thirteen handsome half-Polynesian children. And
by 1860 the Armstrongs were colonial aristocrats,
sent their male offspring to exclusive schools
back in England, and amply proved by their cunning and
acquisitiveness that they were indeed true
descendants of a remarkable, formidable man.
Roderick's grandson James had fathered Fiona in
1880, the only daughter among a total of
fifteen children. If Fee missed the more austere
Protestant rites of her childhood, she never
said so. She tolerated Paddy's religious
convictions and attended Mass with him, saw
to it that her children worshipped an exclusively
Catholic God. But because she had never converted, the
little touches were missing, like grace before meals and
prayers before bed, an everyday holiness.
  Aside from that one trip into Wahine eighteen
months before, Meggie had never been farther from home
than the barn and smithy in the hollow. On the morning
of her first day at school she was so excited she
vomited her breakfast, and had to be bundled back
into her bedroom to be washed and changed. Off came the
lovely new costume of navy blue with a big
white sailor collar, on went her horrid brown
wincey which buttoned high around her little neck and always
felt as if it were choking her.
  "And for heaven's sake, Meggie, next time you
feel sick, tell me! Don't just sit there
until it's too late and I've got a mess
to clean up as well as
  everything elsel Now you're going to have to hurry, because
if you're late for the bell Sister Agatha is
sure to cane you. Behave yourself, and mind your
brothers."
  Bob, Jack, Hughie and Stu were hopping up and
down by the front gate when Fee finally pushed
Meggie out the door, her luncheon jam
sandwiches in an old satchel.
  "Come on, Meggie, we'll be late!" Bob
shouted, moving off down the road. Meggie followed
the dwindling forms of her brothers at a run. It was
a little after seven o'clock in the morning, and the gentle sun
had been up several hours; the dew had dried off the
grass except where there was deep shade. The
Wahine road was a wheel-rutted earthen track,
two ribbons of dark red separated by a wide band of
bright green grass. White calla lilies and
orange nasturtiums flowered profusely in the
high grass to either side, where the neat wooden fences
of bordering properties warned against trespassing.
  Bob always walked to school along the top of the
right-hand fences, balancing his leather satchel on his
head instead of wearing it haversack style. The
lefthand fence belonged to Jack, which permitted the
three younger Clearys domain of the road itself. At the
top of the long, steep hill they had to climb from the
smithy hollow to where the Robertson road joined the
Wahine road, they paused for a moment, panting, the
five bright heads haloed against a puffily clouded
sky. This was the best part, going down the hill; they
linked hands and galloped on the grassy verge
until it vanished in a tangle of flowers,
wishing they had the time to sneak under Mr. Chapman's
fence and roll all the way down like boulders.
  It was five miles from the Cleary house
to Wahine,
  and by the time Meggie saw telegraph poles in the
distance her legs were trembling and her socks were
falling down. Ears tuned for the assembly bell,
Bob glanced at her impatiently as she toiled
along, hitching at her drawers and giving an
occasional gasp of distress. Her face under the
mass of hair was pink and yet curiously pallid.
Sighing, Bob passed his satchel to Jack and ran
his hands down the sides of his knickers.
  "Come on, Meggie, I'll piggyback you the
rest of the way," he said gruffly, glaring at his
brothers in case they had the mistaken idea that he
was going soft.
  Meggie scrambled onto his back, heaved herself
up enough to lock her legs around his waist, and pillowed
her head on his skinny shoulder blissfully. Now
she could view Wahine in comfort.
  There was not much to see. Little more than a big
village, Wahine straggled down each side of a
tar-centered road. The biggest building was the local
hotel, of two stories, with an awning
shading the footpath from the sun and posts supporting the
awning all along the gutter. The general store was the
next-biggest building, also boasting a sheltering
awning, and two long wooden benches under its
cluttered windows for passersby to rest upon. There was
a flagpole in front of the Masonic hall; from
its top a tattered Union Jack fluttered
faded in the stiff breeze. As yet the town
possessed no garage, horseless carriages being
limited to a very few, but there was a blacksmith's
barn near the Masonic hall, with a stable behind it and a
gasoline pump standing stiffly next to the horse
trough. The only edifice in the entire settlement
which really caught the eye was a peculiar bright-blue
shop, very un-British; every other building was painted
a sober brown. The public school and the Church of
England stood side by side, just opposite the
Sacred Heart Church and parish school.
  As the Clearys hurried past the general store the
Catholic bell sounded, followed by the heavier
tolling of the big bell on a post in front of the
public school. Bob 28
  broke into a trot, and they entered the gravel yard
as some fifty children were lining up in front of a
diminutive nun wielding a willowy stick
taller than she was. Without having to be told,
Bob steered his kin to one side away from the lines of
children, and stood with his eyes fixed on the cane. The
Sacred Heart convent was two-storied, but because it
stood well back from the road behind a fence, the fact
was not easily apparent. The three nuns of the Order
of the Sisters of Mercy who staffed it lived upstairs
with a fourth nun, who acted as housekeeper and was never
seen; downstairs were the three big rooms in which
school was taught. A wide, shady veranda ran
all the way around the rectangular building, where on
rainy days the children were allowed to sit decorously
during their play and lunch breaks, and where on sunny
days no child was permitted to set foot. Several
large fig trees shaded a part of the spacious
grounds, and behind the school the land sloped away a little
to a grassy circle euphemistically christened "the
cricket pitch," from the chief activity that went on
in that area. Ignoring muffled sniggers from the lined-up
children, Bob and his brothers stood perfectly still while
the pupils marched inside to the sound of Sister
Catherine plunking "Faith of Our Fathers" on the
tinny school piano. Only when the last child had
disappeared did Sister Agatha break her rigid
pose; heavy serge skirts swishing the
gravel aside imperiously, she strode to where the
Clearys waited.
  Meggie gaped at her, never having seen a nun
before. The sight was truly extraordinary; three
dabs of person, which were Sister Agatha's face and
hands, the rest white starched wimple and bib glaring
against layers of blackest black, with a massive
rope of wooden rosary beads dangling from an iron
ring that joined the ends of a wide leather belt around
Sister Agatha's stout middle. Sister Agatha's
skin was permanently red, from too
  much cleanliness and the pressure of the knifelike
edges of the wimple framing the front center of her
head into something too disembodied to be called a
face; little hairs sprouted in tufts all over her
chin, which the wimple ruthlessly squashed double. Her
lips were quite invisible, compressed into a single line of
concentration on the hard business of being the Bride of
Christ in a colonial backwater with
topsy-turvy seasons when she had taken her vows
in the sweet softness of a Killarney abbey over
fifty years before. Two small crimson marks were
etched into the sides of her nose from the re- morseless
grip of her round, steel-framed spectacles, and
behind them her eyes peered out suspiciously,
paleblue and bitter. "Well, Robert Cleary,
why are you late?" Sister Agatha barked in her
dry, once Irish voice.
  "I'm sorry, Sister," Bob replied
woodenly, his bluegreen eyes still riveted on the
tip of the quivering cane as it waved back and forth.
"Why are you late?" she repeated.
  "I'm sorry, Sister."
  "This is the first morning of the new school year,
Robert Cleary, and I would have thought that on this
morning if not on others you might have made an effort
to be on time."
  Meggie shivered, but plucked up her courage.
"Oh, please, Sister, it was my
  fault!" she squeaked.
  The pale-blue eyes deviated from Bob and
seemed to go through and through Meggie's very soul as she
stood there gazing up in genuine innocence, not aware
she was breaking the first rule of conduct in a deadly
duel which went on between teachers and pupils ad
infinitum: never volunteer information. Bob kicked
her swiftly on the leg and Meggie looked at him
sideways, bewildered. "Why was it your fault?" the
nun demanded in the coldest tones Meggie had ever
heard.
  "Well, I was sick all over the table and it
went right
  through to my drawers, so Mum had to wash me and
change my dress, and I made us all late,"
Meggie explained artlessly.
  Sister Agatha's features remained
expressionless, but her mouth tightened like an overwound
spring, and the tip of the cane lowered itself an inch or
two. "Who is this?" she snapped to Bob, as if the
object of her inquiry were a new and particularly
obnoxious species of insect. "Please,
Sister, she's my sister Meghann."
  "Then in future you will make her understand that there are
certain subjects we do not ever mention, Robert,
if we are true ladies and gentlemen. On no
account do we ever, ever mention by name any item of our
underclothing, as children from a decent household would
automatically know. Hold out your hands, all of
you."
  "But, Sister, it was my fault!" Meggie
wailed as she extended her hands palms up, for she
had seen her brothers do it in pantomime at home
a thousand times.
  "Silence!" Sister Agatha hissed, turning on
her. "It is a matter of complete
indifference to me which one of you was responsible. You are
all late, therefore you must all be punished. Six
cuts." She pronounced the sentence with monotonous
relish.
  Terrified, Meggie watched Bob's steady
hands, saw the long cane whistle down almost faster
than her eyes could follow, and crack sharply against
the center of his palms, where the flesh was soft and
tender. A purple welt flared up immediately; the
next cut came at the junction of fingers and palm,
more sensitive still, and the final one across the tips of the
fingers, where the brain has loaded the skin down with more
sensation than anywhere else save the lips. Sister
Agatha's aim was perfect. Three more cuts
followed on Bob's other hand before she turned her
attention to Jack, next in line. Bob's face was
pale but he made no outcry or movement, nor
did his brothers as their turns came; even quiet
and tender Stu.
  As they followed the upward rise of the cane above
her own hands Meggie's eyes closed
involuntarily, so she did not see the descent. But
the pain was like a vast explosion, a scorching, searing
invasion of her flesh right down to the bone; even as the
ache spread tingling up her forearm the next
cut came, and by the time it had reached her shoulder the
final cut across her fingertips was screaming along the
same path, all the way through to her heart. She
fastened her teeth in her lower lip and bit down on
it, too ashamed and too proud to cry, too angry
and indignant at the injustice of it to dare open her
eyes and look at Sister Agatha; the lesson was
sinking in, even if the crux of it was not what Sister
Agatha intended to teach. It was lunchtime before the last
of the pain died out of her hands. Meggie had passed the
morning in a haze of fright and bewilderment, not understanding
anything that was said or done. Pushed into a double desk
in the back row of the youngest children's classroom, she
did not even notice who was sharing the desk until
after a miserable lunch hour spent huddled behind Bob
and Jack in a secluded corner of the playground.
Only Bob's stern command persuaded her to eat
Fee's gooseberry jam sandwiches. When the bell
rang for afternoon classes and Meggie found a place
on line, her eyes finally began to clear enough to take
in what was going on around her. The disgrace of the caning
rankled as sharply as ever, but she held her head
high and affected not to notice the nudges and whispers
of the little girls near her.
  Sister Agatha was standing in front with her
cane; Sister Declan prowled up
  and down behind the lines: Sister Catherine seated
herself at the piano just insid the youngest children's
classroom door and began rather' play "Onward,
Christian Soldiers" with a heavy emphr sis on
two-four time. It was, properly speaking, a
Prc" estant hymn, but the war had rendered it
interdenor
  national. The dear children marched to it just like wee
soldiers, Sister Catherine thought proudly.
  Of the three nuns, Sister Declan was a
replica of Sister Agatha minus fifteen years
of life, where Sister Catherine was still remotely
human. She was only in her thirties, Irish of
course, and the bloom of her ardor had not yet
entirely faded; she still found joy in teaching, still saw
Christ's imperishable Image in the little faces
turned up to hers so adoringly. But she taught the
oldest children, whom Sister Agatha deemed beaten enough
to behave in spite of a young and soft supervisor.
Sister Agatha herself took the youngest children to form minds
and hearts out of infantile clay, leaving those in the
middle grades to Sister Declan.
  Safely hidden in the last row of desks,
Meggie dared to glance sideways at the little
girl sitting next to her. A gap-toothed grin
met her frightened gaze, huge black eyes staring
roundly out of a dark, slightly shiny face. She
fascinated Meggie, used to fairness and freckles,
for even Frank with his dark eyes and hair had a
fair white skin; so Meggie ended in thinking her
deskmate the most beautiful creature she had ever
seen. "What's your name?" the dark beauty muttered
out of the side of her mouth, chewing on the end of her
pencil and spitting the frayed bits into her empty
inkwell hole.
  "Meggie Cleary," she whispered back.
  "You there!" came a dry, harsh voice from the
front of the classroom. Meggie jumped, looking
around in bewilderment. There was a hollow clatter as
twenty children all put their pencils down together, a
muted rustling as precious sheets of paper were
shuffled to one side so elbows could be
surreptitiously placed on desks. With a heart
that seemed to crumple down toward her boots,
Meggie realized everyone was staring at her. Sister
Agatha was coming down the aisle rapidly;
Meggie's terror was so acute that had there only
been somewhere to flee, she 33
  would have run for her life. But behind her was the
partition shutting off the middle grade's room, on
either side desks crowded her in, and in front was
Sister Agatha. Her eyes nearly filled her
pinched little face as she stared up at the nun in
suffocated fear, her hands clenching and unclenching on
the desktop.
  "You spoke, Meghann Cleary."
  "Yes, Sister."
  "And what did you say?"
  "My name, Sister."
  "Your name!" Sister Agatha sneered, looking
around at the other children as
  if they, too, surely must share her contempt.
"Well, children, are we not honored? Another
Cleary in our school, and she cannot wait
to broadcast her name!" She turned back
to Meggie. "Stand up when I address you, you
ignorant little savage! And hold out your hands,
please."
  Meggie scrambled out of her seat, her long
curls swinging across her face and bouncing away.
Gripping her hands together, she wrung them
desperately, but Sister Agatha did not move,
only waited, waited, waited . . . . Then
somehow Meggie managed to force her hands out,
but as the cane descended she snatched them away,
gasping in terror. Sister Agatha locked her
fingers in the bunched hair on top of Meggie's
head and hauled her closer, bringing her face up
to within inches of those dreadful spectacles. "Hold
out your hands, Meghann Cleary." It was said
courteously, coldly, implacably.
  Meggie opened her mouth and vomited all over the
front of Sister Agatha's habit. There was a
horrified intake of breath from every child in the room as
  Sister Agatha stood with the disgusting sick dripping
down her black pleats onto the floor, her face
purple with rage and astonishment. Then down came the
cane, anywhere it could land on Meggie's body as
she flung up her arms to
  shield her face and cringed, still retching, into the
corner. When Sister Agatha's arm was so tired it
did not want to lift the cane, she pointed toward the
door.
  "Go home, you revolting little Philistine," she
said, turned on her heel and went through into Sister
Declan's classroom. Meggie's frantic
gaze found Stu; he nodded his head as if to tell
her she must do as she was told, his soft blue-green
eyes full of pity and understanding. Wiping her
mouth with her handkerchief, she stumbled through the door and
out into the playground. There were still two hours to go before
school was dismissed; she plodded down the street without
interest, knowing there was no chance the boys would catch up
with her, and too frightened to find somewhere to wait for them.
She had to go home on her own, confess to Mum on
her own.
  Fee nearly fell over her as she staggered out of the
back door with a full basket of wet washing.
Meggie was sitting on the top step of the back
veranda, her head down, the ends of her bright curls
sticky and the front of her dress stained. Putting
down the crushing weight of the basket, Fee sighed,
pushed a strand of wayward hair out of her eyes.
"Well, what happened?" she demanded tiredly.
  "I was sick all over Sister Agatha."
  "Oh, Lord!" Fee said, her hands on her
hips.
  "I got caned, too," Meggie whispered, the
tears standing unshed in her eyes.
  "A nice kettle of fish, I must say."
Fee heaved her basket up, swaying until she
got it balanced. "Well, Meggie, I don't
know what to do with you. We'll have to wait and see what
Daddy says." And she walked off across the
backyard toward the flapping half-full
clotheslines. Rubbing her hands wearily around her
face, Meggie stared after her mother for a moment, then
got up and started down the path to the forge. Frank
had just finished shoeing Mr. Robertson's bay
mare, and was backing it into a stall when Meggie
appeared in the doorway. He turned and saw her,
and
  memories of his own terrible misery at school
came flooding back to him. She was so little, so
baby-plump and innocent and sweet, but the light in
the eyes had been brutally quenched and an expression
lurked there which made him want to murder Sister
Agatha. Murder her, really murder her, take the
double chins and squeeze .... Down went his tools,
off came his apron; he walked to her quickly.
  "What's the matter, dear?" he asked, bending
over until her face was level with his own. The
smell of vomit rose from her like a miasma, but he
crushed his impulse to turn away.
  "Oh, Fruh-Fruh-Frank!" she wailed,
her face twisting up and her tears undammed at
last. She threw her arms around his neck and clung
to him passionately, weeping in the curiously
silent, painful way all the Cleary children
did once they were out of infancy. It was horrible
to watch, and not something soft words or kisses could
heal.
  When she was calm again he picked her up and
carried her to a pile of sweet-smelling hay near
Mr. Robertson's mare; they sat there together and
let the horse lip at the edges of their straw bed,
lost to the world. Meggie's head was cradled on
Frank's smooth bare chest, tendrils of her
hair flying around as the horse blew gusty breaths
into the hay, snorting with pleasure. "Why did she
cane all of us, Frank?" Meggie asked. "I
told her it was my fault."
  Frank had got used to her smell and didn't
mind it any more; he reached out a hand and absently
stroked the mare's nose, pushing it away when it got
too inquisitive.
  "We're poor, Meggie, that's the main reason.
The nuns always hate poor pupils. After you've
been in Sister Ag's moldy old school a few
days you'll see it's not only the Clearys she
takes it out on, but the Mar shalls and the
MacDonalds as well. We're all poor.
  Now, if we were rich and rode to school in a big
carriage like the O'Briens, they'd be all
over us like a rash. But we can't donate organs
to the church, or gold vestments to the sacristy, or a
new horse and buggy to the nuns. So we don't
matter. They can do what they like to us. "I remember
one day Sister Ag was so mad at me that she kept
screaming at me, "Cry, for the love of heaven!
Make a noise, Francis Cleary! If you'd
give me the satisfaction of hearing you bellow, I
wouldn't hit you so hard or so often!"
  "That's another reason why she hates us; it's
where we're better than the Marshalls and the
MacDonalds. She can't make the Clearys
cry. We're supposed to lick her boots.
Well, I told the boys what I'd do to any
Cleary who even whimpered when he was caned, and that
goes for you, too, Meggie. No matter how hard
she beats you, not a whimper. Did you cry today?"
"No, Frank," she yawned, her eyelids
drooping and her thumb poking blindly across her face in
search of her mouth. Frank put her down in the hay
and went back to his work, humming and smiling.
  Meggie was still asleep when Paddy walked in.
His arms were filthy from mucking out Mr. Jarman's
dairy, his wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his
eyes. He took in Frank shaping an
axle on the anvil, sparks swirling round his.
head, then his eyes passed to where his daughter was
curled up in the hay, with Mr. Robertson's bay
mare hanging her head down over the sleeping face.
  "I thought this is where she'd be," Paddy said,
dropping his riding crop and leading his old roan into the
stable end of the barn. Frank nodded briefly,
looking up at his father with that darkling glance of
  doubt and uncertainty Paddy always found so
irritating, then he returned to the whitehot axle,
sweat making his bare sides glisten. Unsaddling his
roan, Paddy turned it into a stall,
  filled the water compartment and then mixed bran and
oats with a little water for its food. The animal
rumbled affectionately at him when he emptied the
fodder into its manger, and its eyes followed him as
he walked to the big trough outside the forge, took
off his shirt. He washed arms and face and torso,
drenching his riding breeches and his hair. Toweling
himself dry on an
  old sack, he looked at his son quizzically.
  "Mum told me Meggie was sent home in
disgrace. Do you know what exactly happened?"
  Frank abandoned his axle as the heat in it died.
"The poor little coot was sick all over
Sister Agatha."
  Wiping the grin off his face hastily, Paddy
stared at the far wall for a moment to compose himself, then
turned toward Meggie. "All excited about going
to school, eh?"
  "I don't know. She was sick before they left this
morning, and it held them up long enough t[*thorn]
be late for the bell. They all got sixers, but
Meggie was terribly upset because she thought she ought
to have been the only one punished. After lunch Sister
Ag pounced on her again, and our Meggie spewed
bread and jam all over Sister Ag's clean
black habit."
  "What happened then?"
  "Sister Ag caned her good and proper, and sent
her home in disgrace." "Well, I'd say she's
had punishment enough. I have a lot of respect for the
nuns and I" know it isn't our place to question what
they do, but I wish they were a bit less eager with the
cane. I know they have to beat the three R's into our
thick Irish heads, but after all, it was wee
Meggie's first day at school."
  Frank was staring at his father, amazed. Not until
this moment had Paddy ever communicated man-to man
with his oldest son. Shocked out of perpetual
re sentment, Frank realized that for all his proud
boasting,
  Paddy loved Meggie more than he did his sons.
He 38
  found himself almost liking his father, so he smiled without
the mistrust. "She's a bonzer little thing, isn't
she?" he asked. Paddy nodded absently,
engrossed in watching her. The horse blew its
lips in and out, flapping; Meggie stirred, rolled
over and opened her eyes. When she saw her father standing
beside Frank she sat bolt upright, fright paling her
skin.
  "Well, Meggie girl, you've had quite a day,
haven't you?" Paddy went over and lifted her out of the
hay, gasping as he caught a whiff of her. Then
he shrugged his shoulders and held her against him hard.
"I got caned, Daddy," she confessed.
  "Well, knowing Sister Agatha, it won't be the
last time," he laughed, perching her on his shoulder.
"We'd better see if Mum's got any hot
water in the copper to give you a bath. You smell
worse than Jarman's dairy." Frank went to the
doorway and watched the two fiery heads bobbing up
the path, then turned to find the bay mare's gentle
eyes fixed on him. "Come on, you big
old bitch. I'll ride you home," he told it,
scooping up a halter.
  Meggie's vomiting turned out to be a blessing is
disguise. Sister Agatha still caned her regularly,
but always from far enough away to escape the consequences, which
lessened the strength of her arm and quite spoiled her
aim.
  The dark child who sat next to her was the youngest
daughter of the Italian man who owned and operated
Wahine's bright blue cafe. Her name was Teresa
An- nunzio, and she was just dull enough to escape
Sister Agatha's attention without being so dull that it
turned her into Sister Agatha's butt. When her
teeth grew in she was quite strikingly beautiful, and
Meggie adored her. During lesson breaks in the
playground they walked with arms looped around each
other's waists, which was the sign that you were "best friends"
and not available
  for courting by anyone else. And they talked,
talked, talked. One lunchtime Teresa took her
into the cafe to meet her mother and father and grown-up
brothers and sisters. They were as charmed with her golden
fire as Meggie was with their darkness, likening her to an
angel when she turned her wide, beautifully
flecked grey eyes upon them. From her mother
she had inherited an indefinable air of breeding which
everyone felt immediately; so did the Annunzio
family. As eager as Teresa to woo her, they
gave her big fat potato chips fried in
sizzling cauldrons of lamb dripping, and a piece
of boned fish which tasted delicious, dipped as it was
in floury batter and fried in the smoking well of
liquid fat along with the chips, only in a
separate wire basket. Meggie had never eaten
food so delicious, and wished she could lunch at the
cafe more often. But this had been a treat, requiring
special permission from her mother and the nuns. Her
conversation at home was all "Teresa says" and "Do
you know what Teresa did?" until Paddy roared that
he had heard more than enough about Teresa. "I don't
know that it's such a good idea to be too thick with
Dagos," he muttered, sharing the British
community's instinctive mistrust of any dark or
  Mediterranean people. "Dagos are dirty,
Meggie girl, they don't wash too often," he
explained lamely, wilting under the look of hurt
reproach Meggie gave him.
  Fiercely jealous, Frank agreed with him. So
Meggie spoke less often of her friend when she was at
home. But home disapproval couldn't
interfere with the relationship, confined as it was by distance
to school days and hours; Bob and the boys were only
too pleased to see her utterly engrossed in
Teresa. It
  left them to career madly around the playground just as
if their sister did not exist.
  The unintelligible things Sister Agatha was always
writing on the blackboard gradually began to make
  sense, and Meggie learned that a "plus was meant
you counted all the numbers up to
  a total, where a "com" meant you took the numbers
on the bottom away from the numbers on the top and
wound up with less than you had in the first place. She
was a bright child, and would have been an excellent if not
brilliant student had she only been able
to overcome her fear of Sister Agatha. But the
minute those gimlet eyes turned her way and that
dry old voice rapped a curt question at her, she
stammered and stuttered and could not think. Arithmetic she
found easy, but when called upon to demonstrate toper
skill verbally she could not remember how many two and
two made. Reading was the entrance into a world so
fascinating she couldn't get enough of it; but when Sister
Agatha made her stand to read a passage out loud,
she could hardly pronounce "cat," let
alone "miaow." It seemed to her that she was forever
quivering under Sister Agatha's sarcastic comments or
flushing bright red because the rest of
  the class was laughing at her. For it was always her
slate Sister Agatha held up to sneer at, always
her laboriously written sheets of paper Sister
Agatha used to demonstrate the ugliness of untidy
work. Some of the richer children were lucky enough to possess
erasers, but Megg'ie's only eraser was the tip
of her finger, which she licked and rubbed over her nervous
mistakes until the writing smudged and the paper
came away in miniature sausages. It made
holes and was strictly forbidden, but she was desperate
enough to do anything to avoid Sister Agatha's
strictures.
  Until her advent Stuart had been the chief
target of Sister Agatha's cane and venom.
However, Meggie was a much better target, for
Stuart's wistful tranquillity and almost saintlike
aloofness were hard nuts to crack, even for Sister
Agatha. On the other hand, Meggie trembled and
went as red as a beet, for all she tried so
manfully to adhere to the Cleary line of behavior as
defined by Frank. Stuart pitied Meggie deeply
and tried to make 41
  it easier for her by deliberately sidetracking the
nun's anger onto his own head. She saw through his
ploys immediately, angered afresh to see the Cleary
clannishness as much in evidence with the girl as it had
always been among the boys. Had anyone questioned her as
to exactly why she had such a down on the Clearys,
she would not have been able to answer. But for an old nun
as embittered by the course her life had taken as
Sister Agatha, a proud and touchy family like the
Clearys was not easy to swallow. Meggie's worst
sin was being left-handed. When she gingerly picked up
her slate pencil to embark on her first writing
lesson, Sister Agatha descended on her like
Caesar on the Gauls.
  "Meghann Cleary, put that pencil down!" she
thundered. Thus began a battle royal. Meggie was
incurably and hopelessly left-handed. When Sister
Agatha forcibly bent the fingers of Meggie's right
hand correctly around the pencil and poised it above the
slate, Meggie sat there with her head reeling and no
idea in the world how to make the afflicted limb do
what Sister Agatha insisted it could. She became
mentally deaf, dumb and blind; that useless appendage
her right hand was no more linked to her thought processes
than her toes. She dribbled a line clean
off the edge of the slate because she could not make it bend;
she dropped her pencil as if paralyzed; nothing
Sister Agatha could do would make Meggie's right hand
foam an A. Then surreptitiously Meggie would
transfer her pencil to her left hand, and with her arm
curled awkwardly around three sides of the slate
she would make a row of beautiful copperplate
A's.
  Sister Agatha won the battle. On morning
line-up she tied Meggie's left arm against her
body with rope, and would not undo it until the
dismissal bell rang at three in the afternoon. Even
at lunchtime she had to eat, walk around and play
games with her left side firmly 42
  immobilized. It took three months, but
eventually she learned to write correctly according to the
tenets of Sister Agatha, though the formation of her
letters was never good. To make sure she would never
revert back to using it, her left arm was kept tied
to her body for a further two months; then Sister
Agatha made the whole school assemble to say a
rosary of thanks to Almighty God for His wisdom
in making Meggie see the error of her ways.
God's children were all right-handed; lefthanded children were the
spawn of the Devil, especially when
redheaded.
  In that first year of school Meggie lost her baby
plumpness and became very thin, though she grew little in
height. She began to bite her nails down to the
quick, and had to endure Sister Agatha's making her
walk around every desk in the school holding her hands out
so all the children could see how ugly bitten nails
were. And this when nearly half the children between five and
fifteen bit their nails as badly as Meggie
did. Fee got out the bottle of bitter aloes and
painted the tips of Meggie's fingers with the horrible
stuff. Everyone in the family was enlisted to make
sure she got no opportunity to wash the bitter
aloes off, and when the other little girls at school
noticed the telltale brown stains she was
mortified. If she put her fingers in her mouth the
taste was indescribable, foul and dark like sheep-dip;
in desperation she spat on her handkerchief and rubbed
herself raw until she got rid of the worst of it.
Paddy took out his switch, a much gentler instrument
than Sister Agatha's cane, and sent her skipping
round the kitchen. He did not believe in beating his
comchildren on the hands, face or buttocks, only on
the legs. Legs hurt as much as anywhere, he said,
and could not be damaged. However, in spite of
bitter aloes, ridicule, Sister Agatha and
Paddy's switch, Meggie went on biting her
nails.
  Her friendship with Teresa Annunzio was the joy of
her life, the only thing that made school endurable.
She 43
  sat through lessons aching for playtime to come so she
could sit with her arm around Teresa's waist and
Teresa's arm around hers under the big fig tree,
talking, talking. There were tales about Teresa's
extraordinary alien family, about her numerous
dolls, and about her genuine willow pattern tea
set.
  When Meggie saw the tea set, she was
overcome. It had 108 pieces, tiny miniature
cups and saucers and plates, a teapot and a sugar
bowl and a milk jug and a cream jug, with wee
knives and spoons and forks just the right size for
dolls to use. Teresa had innumerable toys; besides
being much younger than her nearest sister, she belonged
to an Italian family, which meant she was
passionately and openly loved, and indulged to the
full extent of her father's monetary resources.
Each child viewed the other with awe and envy, though
Teresa never coveted Meggie's
Calvinistic, stoic upbringing. Instead she pitied
her. Not to be allowed to run to her mother with hugs and
kisses? Poor Meggiel
  As for Meggie, she was incapable of equating Ter-
esa's beaming, portly little mother with her own slender
unsmiling mother, so she never thought: I
  wish Mum hugged and kissed me. What she did
think was: I wish Teresa's mum hugged and
kissed me. Though images of hugs and kisses were
far less in her mind than images of the willow
pattern tea set. So delicate, so thin and
wafery, so beautiful! Oh, if only she had a
willow pattern tea set, and could give Agnes
afternoon tea out of a deep blue-and-white cup in a
deep blue-and-white saucer!
  During Friday Benediction in the old church with
its lovely, grotesque Maori carvings and
Maori painted ceiling, Meggie knelt to pray
for a willow pattern tea set of her very own. When
Father Hayes held the monstrance aloft, the Host
peered dimly through the glass window in the middle of
its gem-encrusted rays and blessed the bowed heads of the
congregation. All save Meggie, that is, for she
didn't "even see the Host; she
  was too busy trying to remember how many
plates there were in Teresa's willow pattern tea
set. And when the Maoris in the organ gallery
broke into glorious song, Meggie's head was
spinning in a daze of ultramarine blue far
removed from Catholicism or Polynesia.
  The school year was drawing to a close,
December and her birthday just beginning to threaten full
summer, when Meggie learned how dearly one could
buy the desire of one's heart. She was sitting on
a high stool disnear the stove while Fee did her
hair as usual for school; it was an intricate
business. Meggie's hair had a natural
tendency to curl, which her mother considered to be a great
piece of good luck. Girls with straight hair had
a hard time of it when they grew up and tried
to produce glorious wavy masses out of limp,
thin strands. At night Meggie slept with her almost
kneelength locks twisted painfully around bits of
old white sheet torn into long strips, and each
morning she had to clamber up on the stool while
Fee undid the rags and brushed her curls in.
  Fee used an old Mason Pearson
hairbrush, taking one long, scraggly curl in her
left hand and expertly brushing the hair aroundther
index finger until the entire length of it was
rolled into a shining thick sausage; then she
carefully withdrew her finger from the center of the roll and
shook it out into a long, enviably thick curl. This
maneuver was repeated some twelve times, the front
curls were then drawn together on Meggie's crown with a
freshly ironed white taffeta bow, and she was ready
for the day. All the other little girls wore braids
to school, saving curls for special occasions, but
on this one point Fee was adamant; Meggie should have
curls all the time, no matter how hard it was
to spare the minutes each morning. Had Fee
realized it, her charity was misguided, for her
daughter's hair was far and away the most beautiful
in the entire school. To
  rub the fact in with daily curls earned Meggie
much envy and loathing. The process hurt, but
Meggie was too used to it to notice, never
remembering a time when it had not been done. Fee's
muscular arm yanked the brush ruthlessly through knots
and tangles until Meggie's eyes watered and she
had to hang on to the stool with both hands to keep from
falling off. It was the Monday of the last week at
school, and her birthday was only two days away;
she clung to the stool and dreamed about the willow
pattern tea set, knowing it for a dream. There
was one in the Wahine general store, and she knew enough
of prices to realize that its cost put it far beyond her
father's slender means.
  Suddenly Fee made a sound, so peculiar it
jerked Meggie out of her musing and made the menfolk
still seated at the breakfast table turn their heads
curiously.
  "Holy Jesus Christ!" said Fee.
  Paddy jumped to his feet, his face stupefied;
he had never heard Fee take the name of the Lord in
vain before. She was standing with one of Meggie's curls
in her hand, the brush poised, her features twisted
into an expression of horror and revulsion. Paddy
and the boys crowded round; Meggie tried to see what
was going on and earned a backhanded slap with the bristle
side of the brush which made her eyes water.
  "Look!" Fee whispered, holding the curl in a
ray of sunlight so Paddy could see.
  The hair was a mass of brilliant, glittering
gold in the sun, and Paddy saw nothing at first.
Then he became aware that a creature was marching down
the back of Fee's hand. He took a curl for
himself, and in among the leaping lights of it he discerned
more creatures, going about their business busily. Little
white things were stuck in clumps all along
the separate strands, and the creatures were energetically
producing more clumps of little white things. Meggie's
hair was a hive of industry.
  "She's got lice!" Paddy said.
  Bob, Jack, Hughie and Stu had a look, and
like their father removed themselves to a safe distance; only
Frank and Fee remained gazing at Meggie's
hair, mesmerized, while Meggie sat miserably
hunched over, wondering what she had done. Paddy
sat down in his Windsor chair heavily, staring into the
fire and blinking hard.
  "It's that bloody Dago girl!" he said at
last, and turned to glare at Fee. "Bloody
bastards, filthy lot of flaming pigs!"
  "Paddy!" Fee gasped, scandalized.
  "I'm sorry for swearing, Mum, but when I think
of that blasted Dago giving her lice to Meggie, I
could go into Wahine this minute and tear the whole filthy
greasy cafe down!" he exploded, pounding his fist
on his knee fiercely.
  "Mum, what is it?" Meggie finally managed
to say. "Look, you dirty little grub!" her mother
answered, thrusting her hand down in front of
Meggie's eyes. "You have these things everywhere in your
hair, from that Eyetie girl you're so thick
with! Now what am I going to do with you?"
  Meggie gaped at the tiny thing roaming blindly round
Fee's bare skin in search of more hirsute
territory, then she began to weep. Without needing
to be told, Frank got the copper going while
Paddy paced up
  and down the kitchen roaring, his rage increasing every time
he looked at Meggie. Finally he went to the row of
hooks on the wall inside the back door, jammed
his hat on his head and took the long horsewhip from
its nail. "I'm going into Wahine, Fee, and
I'm going to tell that blasted Dago what he can do
with his slimy fish and chips! Then I'm going to see
Sister Agatha and tell her what I think of her,
allowing lousy children in her school!" "Paddy, be
careful!" Fee pleaded. "What if it isn't
  the Eyetie girl? Even if she has lice,
it's possible she might have got them from someone else
along with Meggie."
  "Rot!" said Paddy scornfully. He pounded
down-the back steps, and a few minutes later they
heard his roan's hoofs beating down the road. Fee
sighed, looking at Frank hopelessly.
  "Well, I suppose we'll be lucky if he
doesn't land in jail. Frank, you'd
better bring the boys inside. No school today."
  One by one Fee went through her sons' hair
minutely, then checked Frank's head and made him
do the same for her. There was no evidence that anyone
else had acquired poor Meggie's malady, but
Fee did not intend to take chances. When the water in
the huge laundry copper was boiling, Frank got
the dish tub down from its hanging and filled it half
with hot water and half with cold. Then he went out
to the Bleed and fetched in an unopened five-gallon
can of kerosene, took a bar of lye soap from the
laundry and started work on Bob. Each head was
briefly damped in the tub, several cups of raw
kerosene poured over it, and the whole draggled, greasy
mess lathered with soap. The kerosene and lye
burned; the boys howled and rubbed their eyes raw,
scratching at their reddened, tingling scalps and
threatening ghastly vengeance on all Dagos.
  Fee went to her sewing basket and took out her
big shears. She came back to
  Meggie, who had not dared to move from the stool though
an hour and more had elapsed, and stood with the shears in
her hand, staring at the beautiful fall of hair. Then
she began to cut itsnip! snip!-until all the
long curls were huddled in glistening heaps on
the floor and Meggie's white skin was beginning to show
in irregular patches all over her head. Doubt
in her eyes, she turned then to Frank.
  "Ought I to shave it?" she asked, tight-upped.
Frank put out his hand, revolted. "Oh, Mum,
no!
  Surely not! If she gets a good douse of
kerosene it ought to be enough. Please don't shave
it!"
  So Meggie was marched to the worktable and held over the
tub while they poured cup after cup of kerosene over
her head and scrubbed the corrosive soap through what
was left of her hair. When they were finally
satisfied, she was almost blind from screwing up her
eyes against the bite of the caustic, and little rows of
blisters had risen all over her face and scalp.
Frank swept the fallen curls into a sheet of
paper and thrust it into the copper fire, then took the
broom and stood it in a panful of kerosene. He and
Fee both washed their hair, gasping as the lye
seared their skins, then Frank got out a bucket and
scrubbed the kitchen floor with sheep-dip. When the
kitchen was as sterile as a hospital they went through
to the bedrooms, stripped every sheet and blanket from every
bed, and spent the rest of the day boiling, wringing
and pegging out the family linen. The mattresses and
pillows were draped over the back fence and sprayed with
kerosene, the parlor rugs were beaten within an inch of
their lives. All the boys were put to helping, only
Meggie exempted because she was in absolute
disgrace. She crawled away behind the barn and cried.
Her head throbbed with pain from the scrubbing, the burns
and the blisters; and she was so bitterly ashamed that she
would not even look at Frank when he came to find
her, nor could he persuade her to come inside.
  In the end he had to drag her into the house by brute
force, kicking and fighting, and she had pushed herself into a
corner when Paddy came back from Wahine in the
late afternoon. He took one look at Meggie's
shorn head and burst into tears, sitting rocking himself
in the Windsor chair with his hands over his face,
while the family stood shuffling their feet and wishing
they were anywhere but where they were. Fee
  made a pot of tea and poured Paddy a cup as
he began to recover. "What happened in Wahine?"
she asked. "You were gone an awful long time." "I
took the horsewhip to that blasted Dago and threw him
into the horse trough, for one thing. Then I noticed
MacLeod standing outside his shop watching, so I
told him what had happened. MacLeod
mustered some of the chaps at the pub and we threw the
whole lot of those Dagos into the horse trough,
women too, and tipped a few gallons of
sheep-dip into it. Then I went down to
  the school and saw Sister Agatha, and I tell
you, she was fit to be tied that she hadn't noticed
anything. She hauled the Dago girl out of her
desk to look in her hair, and sure enough, lice
all over the place. So she sent the girl home and
told her not to come back until her head was clean.
I left her and Sister Declan and Sister
Catherine looking through every head in the school, and there
turned out to be a lot of lousy ones. Those three
nuns were scratching themselves like mad when they thought no
one was watching." He grinned at the memory, then
he saw Meggie's head again and sobered. He stared
at her grimly. "As for you, young lady, no more
Dagos or anyone except your brothers. If they
aren't good enough for you, too bad. Bob, I'm telling
you that Meggie's to have nothing to do with anyone except you
and the boys while she's at school, do you hear?"
  Bob nodded. "Yes, Daddy."
  The next morning Meggie was horrified to discover
that she was expected to go to school as usual.
  "No, no, I can't go!" she moaned,
her hands clutching at her head. "Mum, Mum, I
can't go to school like this, not with Sister Agatha!"
"Oh, yes, you can," her mother replied, ignoring
Frank's imploring looks. "It'll teach you a
lesson."
  So off to school went Meggie, her feet dragging
and her head done up in a brown bandanna. Sister
Agatha
  ignored her entirely, but at playtime the other
girls caught her and tore her scarf away to see
what she looked like. Her face was only mildly
disfigured, but her head when uncovered was a horrible
sight, oozing and angry. The moment he saw what was
going on Bob came over, and took his sister away
into a secluded corner of the cricket pitch.
"Don't you take any notice of them, Meggie,"
he said roughly, tying the scarf around her head
awkwardly and patting her stiff shoulders.
"Spiteful little cats! I wish I'd thought to catch
some of those things out of your head; I'm sure they'd
keep. The minute everyone forgot, I'd sprinkle
a few heads with a new lot."
  The other Cleary boys gathered around, and they sat
guarding Meggie until the bell rang.
  Teresa Annunzio came to school
briefly at lunchtime, her head shaven. She tried
to attack Meggie, but the boys held her off
easily. As she backed away she flung her right
arm up in the air, its fist clenched, and slapped her
left hand on its biceps in a fascinating,
mysterious gesture no one understood, but which the boys
avidly filed away for future use. "I hate
you!" Teresa screamed. "Me dad's got to move
out of the district because of what your dad did to him!"
She turned and ran from the playground, howling.
  Meggie held her head up and kept her eyes
dry. She was learning. It didn't matter what
anyone else thought, it didn't, it didn't! The
other girls avoided her, half because they were frightened
of Bob and Jack, half because the word had got around
their parents and they had been instructed to keep away;
being thick with the Clearys usually meant trouble of some
kind. So Meggie passed the last few days of
school "fin Coventry," as they called it, which
meant she was totally ostracized. Even Sister
Agatha respected the new policy, and took her
rages out on Stuart instead. As were all birthdays
among the little ones if they 51
  fell on a school day, Meggie's birthday
celebration was delayed until Saturday,
when she received the longedfor willow pattern tea set.
It was arranged on a beautifully crafted
ultramarine table and chairs made in Frank's
nonexistent spare time, and Agnes was seated on one
of the two tiny chairs wearing a new blue dress
made in Fee's nonexistent spare time. Meggie
stared dismally at the blue-and-white designs
gamboling all around each small piece; at the
fantastic trees with their funny puffy blossoms,
at the ornate little pagoda, at the strangely
stilled pair of birds and the minute figures
eternally fleeing across the kinky bridge. It had
lost every bit of its enchantment. But dimly she
understood why the family had beggared itself to get her the
thing they thought dearest to her heart. So she dutifully
made tea for Agnes in the tiny square teapot and
went through the ritual as if in ecstasy. And she
continued doggedly to use it for years, never breaking or
so
  much as chipping a single piece. No one ever
dreamed that she loathed the willow pattern tea set,
the blue table and chairs, and Agnes's blue
dress.
  Two days before that Christmas of 1917 Paddy
brought home his weekly newspaper and a new
stack of books from the library. However, the paper for
once took precedence over the books. Its
editors had conceived a novel idea based on the
fancy American magazines which very occasionally found
their way to New Zealand; the entire middle section
was a feature on the war. There were blurred
photographs of the Anzacs storming the pitiless
cliffs at Gallipoli, long articles extolling
the bravery of the Antipodean soldier, features
on all the Australian and New Zealand winners
of the Victoria Cross since its inception, and a
magnificent full-page etching of an
Australian light horse cavalryman mounted on
his charger, saber at the ready and long silky feathers
pluming from under the turned-up side of his slouch hat.
  At first opportunity Frank seized the paper
and read the feature hungrily, drinking in its
jingoistic prose, his eyes glowing eerily.
"Daddy, I want to go!" he said as he laid the
paper down reverently on the table.
  Fee's head jerked around as she slopped stew
all over the top of the stove, and Paddy stiffened in his
Windsor chair, his book forgotten. "You're too
young, Frank," he said.
  "No, I'm not! I'm seventeen,
Daddy, I'm a man! Why should the Huns and
Turks slaughter our men like pigs while I'm
sitting here safe and sound? It's more than time a
Cleary did his bit."
  "You're under age, Frank, they won't take
you."
  "They wilt if you don't object," Frank
countered quickly, his dark eyes fixed on Paddy's
face.
  "But I do object. You're the only one working
at the moment and we need the money you bring in, you know
that."
  "But I'll be paid in the army!"
  Paddy laughed. "The "soldier's shilling' eh?
Being a blacksmith in Wahine pays a lot
better than being a soldier in Europe."
  "But I'll be over there, maybe I'll get the
chance to be something better than a blacksmith! It's
my only way out, Daddy."
  "Nonsense! Good God, boy, you don't know
what you're saying. War is terrible. I come from a
country that's been at war for a thousand years, so I
know what I'm saying. Haven't you heard the Boer
War chaps talking? You go into Wahine often enough, so
next time listen. And anyway, it strikes
me that the blasted English use Anzacs as fodder
for the enemy guns, putting them into places where they
don't want to waste their own precious troops.
Look at
  the way that saber-rattling Churchill sent our men
into something as useless as Gallipoli! Ten thousand
killed out of fifty thousand! Twice as bad as
decimation.
  "Why should you go fighting old Mother England's wars
for her? What has she ever done for you, except
bleed her colonies white? If you went to England
they'd look down their noses at you for being a
colonial. En Zed isn't in any danger, nor
is Australia. It might do old Mother England the
world of good to
  be defeated; it's more than time someone paid her for
what she's done to Ireland. I certainly wouldn't
weep any tears if the Kaiser ended up marching
down the Strand."
  "But Daddy, I want to enlist!"
  "You can want all you like, Frank, but you aren't
going, so you may as well forget the whole idea.
You're not big enough to be a soldier." Frank's
face flushed, his lips came together; his lack of
stature was a very sore point with him. At
school he had always been the smallest boy in his
class, and fought twice as many battles as anyone
else because of it. Of late a terrible doubt had
begun to invade his being, for at seventeen he was
exactly the same five feet three he had been
at fourteen; perhaps he had stopped growing. Only
he knew the agonies to which he subjected his body
and his spirit, the stretching, the exercises, the fruitless
hoping. Smithying had given him a strength out of all
proportion to his height, however; had Paddy
consciously chosen a profession for someone of
Frank's temperament, he could not have chosen better.
A small structure of pure power, at seventeen
he had never been defeated in a fight and was already
famous throughout the Taranaki peninsula. All his
anger, frustration and inferiority came into a fight with
him, and they were more than the biggest, strongest local
could contend with, allied as they were to a body in superb
physical condition, an excellent brain,
viciousness and indomitable will. The bigger and tougher they
were, the more Frank wanted to see them humbled in the
dust. His peers trod a wide detour around him, for
his aggressiveness was
  well known. Of late he had branched out of the
ranks of youths in his search for challenges,
and the local men still talked about the day he had beaten
Jim Collins to a pulp, though Jim Collins was
twenty-two years old, stood six feet four in
his socks and could lift horses. With his left arm
broken and his ribs cracked, Frank had fought on
until Jim Collins was a slobbering mass of
bloodied flesh at his feet, and he had to be
forcibly restrained from kicking the senseless face in.
As soon as the arm healed and the ribs came out of
strapping, Frank went into town and lifted a
horse, just to show that Jim wasn't the only one who
could, and that it didn't depend on a man's size.
As the sire of this phenomenon, Paddy knew
Frank's reputation very well and understood
Frank's battle to gain respect, though it did
not prevent his becoming angry when fighting interfered
"with the work in the forge. Being a
  small man himself, Paddy had had his share of
fights to prove his courage, but in his part of Ireland
he was not diminutive and by the time he arrived in New
Zealand, where men were taller, he was a man grown.
Thus his size was never the obsession with him it was with
Frank. Now he watched the boy carefully, trying
to understand him and failing; this one had always been the farthest
from his heart, no matter how he struggled
against discriminating among his children. He knew it
grieved Fee, that she worried over the unspoken
antagonism between them, but even his love for Fee could
not overcome his exasperation with Frank. Frank's
short, finely made hands were spread-across the open
paper defensively, his eyes riveted on
Paddy's face in a curious mixture of pleading
and a pride that was too stiff-necked to plead. How
alien the face was! No Cleary or Armstrong in
it, except perhaps a little look of Fee around the
eyes, if Fee's eyes had been dark and could have
snapped and flashed the way 55
  Frank's did on slightest provocation. One
thing the lad did not lack, and that was courage.
  The subject ended abruptly with Paddy's
remark about Frank's size; the family ate
stewed rabbit in unusual silence, even Hughie and
Jack treading carefully through a sticky,
self-conscious conversation punctuated by much shrill
giggling. Meggie refused to eat, fixing her gaze
on Frank as if he were going to disappear from sight
any moment. Frank picked at his food for a
decent interval, and as soon as he could excused
himself from the table. A
  minute later they heard the axe clunking
dully from the woodheap; Frank was attacking the
hardwood logs Paddy had brought home to store for the
slow-burning fires of winter.
  When everyone thought she was in bed, Meggie
squeezed out of her bedroom window and sneaked down
to the woodheap. It was a tremendously important
area in the continuing life of the house; about a thousand
square feet of ground padded and deadened by a thick
layer of chips and bark, great high stacks of logs
on one side waiting to be reduced in size, and on
the other side mosaic-like walls of neatly prepared
wood just the right size for the stove firebox. In the
middle of the open space three tree stumps still
rooted in the ground were used as blocks to chop
different heights of wood. Frank was not on a
block; he was working on a massive eucalyptus
log and undercutting it to get it small enough to place on
the lowest, widest stump. Its twofoot-diameter
bulk lay on the earth, each end immobilized by an
iron spike, and Frank was standing on top of it,
cutting it in two between his spread feet. The axe was
moving so fast it whistled, and the handle made its own
separate swishing sound as it slid up and down within his
slippery palms. Up it flashed above his head,
down it came in a dull silver blur,
carving a wedgeshaped chunk out of the iron-hard wood
as easily as if it had been a pine or a
deciduous tree. Sundered pieces
  of wood were flying in all directions, the sweat was
running in streams down Frank's bare chest and
back, and he had wound his handkerchief about his brow
to keep the sweat from blinding him. It was dangerous
work, undercutting; one mistimed or badly directed
hack, and he would be minus a foot. He had his
leather wristbands on to soak up the sweat from his arms,
but the delicate hands were ungloved, gripping the axe
handle lightly and with exquisitely directed
skill.
  Meggie crouched down beside his discarded shirt and
undervest to watch, awed. Three spare axes were lying
nearby, for eucalyptus wood blunted the sharpest
axe in no time at all. She grasped one by its
handle and dragged it onto her knees, wishing she could
chop wood like Frank. The axe was so heavy she could
hardly lift it. Colonial axes had only one
blade, honed to hair- splitting sharpness, for
double-bladed axes were too light for eucalyptus.
The back of the axe head was an inch thick and
weighted, the handle passing through it, firmly anchored
with small bits of extra wood. A
loose axe head could come off in midswing, snap through
the air as hard and fast as a cannonball and kill
someone.
  Frank was cutting almost instinctively in the
fastfading light; Meggie dodged the chips with the
ease of long practice and waited patiently for
him to spy her. The log was half severed, and he
turned himself the opposite way, gasping; then he
swung the axe up again, and began to cut the second
side. It
  was a deep, narrow gap, to conserve wood and hasten
the process; as he worked toward the center of the log the
axe head disappeared entirely inside the cut, and the
big wedges of wood flew out closer and closer
to his body. He ignored them, chopping even
faster. The log parted with stunning suddenness, and at the
same moment he leaped lithely into the air, sensing that
it was going almost before the axe took its last bite.
As the wood collapsed inward, he landed off to one
side, smiling; but it was not a happy smile.
  He turned to pick up a new axe and saw his
sister sitting patiently in her prim nightgown,
all buttoned up and buttoned down. It was still
strange to see her hair clustering in a mass of
short ringlets instead of done up in its
customary rags, but he decided the boyish style
suited her, and wished it could remain so. Coming over
to her, he squatted down with his axe held across his
knees.
  "How did you get out, you little twerp?"
  "I climbed through the window after Stu was asleep."
  "If you don't watch out, you'll turn into a
tomboy."
  "I don't mind. Playing with the boys is better
than playing all by myself." "I suppose it is."
He sat down with his back against a log and wearily
turned his head toward her. "What's the matter,
Meggie?" "Frank, you're not really going away,
are you?" She put her hands with their mangled nails
down on his thigh and stared up at him anxiously, her
mouth open because her nose was stuffed full from fighting
tears and she couldn't breathe through it very well.
  "I might be, Meggie." He said it gently.
  "Oh, Frank, you can't! Mum and I need you!
Honestly, I don't know what we'd do without you!"
  He grinned in spite of his pain, at her
unconscious echoing of Fee's way of
  speaking.
  "Meggie, sometimes things just don't happen the way
you want them to. You ought to know that. We
Clearys have been taught to work together for the good of all,
never to think of ourselves first. But I don't agree with
that; I think we ought to be able to think of ourselves first.
I want to go away because I'm seventeen and it's time
I made a life for myself. But Daddy says no,
I'm needed at home for the good of the family as a
whole. And because I'm not twenty-one, I've got
to do as Daddy says."
  Meggie nodded earnestly, trying to untangle the
threads of Frank's explanation.
  "Well, Meggie, I've thought long and hard about
it. I'm going away, and that's that. I know you and
Mum will miss me, but Bob's growing up fast, and
Daddy and the boys won't miss me at all. It's
only the money I bring in interests Daddy."
  "Don't you like us anymore, Frank?"
  He turned to snatch her into his arms, hugging and
caressing her in tortured pleasure, most of it
grief and pain and hunger. "Oh, Meggie! I
love you and Mum more than all the others put together!
God, why weren't you older, so I could talk to you?
Or maybe it's better that you're so little, maybe
it's better . . . ."
  He let her go abruptly, struggling to master
himself, rolling his head back and forth against the
log, his throat and mouth working. Then he looked at
her. "Meggie, when you're older you'll understand
better."
  "Please don't go away, Frank," she
repeated.
  He laughed, almost a sob. "Oh, Meggie!
Didn't you hear any of it? Well, it doesn't
really matter. The main thing is you're not to tell
anyone you saw me
  tonight, hear? I don't want them thinking you're in
on it."
  "I did hear, Frank, I heard all of it,"
Meggie said. "I won't say a word to
  anybody, though, I promise. But oh, I do
wish you didn't have to go away!" She was too young
to be able to tell him what was no more than an
unreasoning something within her heart; who else was there,
if Frank went? He
  was the only one who gave her overt affection, the
only one who held her and hugged her. When she was
smaller Daddy used to pick her up a lot, but ever
since she started at school he had stopped letting
her sit on his knee, wouldn't let her throw her
arms around his neck, saying, "You're a big girl
now, Meggie." And Mum was always so busy,
so tired, so wrapped in the boys and the house. It was
Frank who lay closest to her heart, Frank who
loomed as
  the star in her limited heaven. He was the only one
who seemed to enjoy sitting talking to her, and he
explained things in a way she could understand.
  Ever since the day Agnes had lost her hair there
had been Frank, and in spite of her sore troubles
nothing since had speared her quite to the core. Not
canes or Sister Agatha or lice, because Frank
was there to comfort and console.
  But she got up and managed a smile. "If you
have to go, Frank, then it's all right."
  "Meggie, you ought to be in bed, af less-than do
you'd better be back there before Mum checks.
Scoot, quicklyl"
  The reminder drove all else from her head; she
thrust her face down and fished for the trailing back of
her gown, pulled it through between her legs and held it like
a tail in reverse in front of her as she ran,
bare feet spurning the splinters and sharp chips.
  In the morning Frank was gone. When Fee came
to pull Meggie from her bed she was grim and terse;
Meggie hopped out like a scalded cat and dressed
herself without even asking for help with all the
little buttons. In the kitchen the boys were sitting
glumly around the table, and Paddy's chair was
empty. So was Frank's. Meggie slid into her
place and sat there, teeth chattering in fear. After
breakfast Fee shooed them outside dourly, and behind
the barn Bob broke the news to Meggie.
  "Frank's run away," he breathed.
  "Maybe he's just gone into Wahine," Meggie
suggested. "No, silly! He's gone to join the
army. Oh, I wish I was big enough to go with him! The
lucky coot!"
  "Well, I wish he was still at home."
  Bob shrugged. "You're only a girl, and that's
what I'd expect a girl to say."
  The normally incendiary remark was permitted
to pass unchallenged; Meggie took herself inside
to her mother to see what she could do. "Where's Daddy?"
she asked Fee after her mother had set her to ironing
handkerchiefs.
  "Gone in to Wahine."
  "Will he bring Frank back with him?"
  Fee snorted. "Trying to keep a secret in this
family is impossible. No, he won't catch
Frank in Wahine, he knows that. He's gone
to send a telegram to the police and the army
in Wanganui. They'll bring him back."
  "Oh, Mum, I hope they find him] I
don't want Frank to go awayl" Fee slapped
the contents of the butter churn onto . the table and
attacked the watery yellow mound with two wooden
pats. "None of us want Frank to go away.
That's why Daddy's going to see he's brought
back." Her mouth quivered for a moment; she whacked
the butter harder. "Poor Frank! Poor, poor
Frank!" she sighed, not to Meggie but to herself. "I
don't know why the children must pay for our sins. My
poor Frank, so out of things . . ." Then she
noticed that Meggie had stopped ironing, and shut her
lips, and said no more. Three days later the police
brought Frank back. He had put up a
terrific struggle, the Wanganui sergeant on
escort duty told Paddy. "What a fighter
you've got! When he saw the army lads were a
wakeup he was off like a shot, down the steps and into the
street with two soldiers after him. If he hadn't
had the bad luck to run into a constable on patrol,
I reckon he'd a got away, too. He put
up a real wacko fight; took five of them to get
the manacles on."
  So saying, he removed Frank's
heavy chains and pushed him roughly through the front
gate; he stumbled against Paddy, and shrank away as
if the contact stung.
  The children were skulking by the side of the house twenty
feet beyond the adults, watching and waiting. Bob,
Jack and Hughie stood stiffly, hoping Frank
would put up another fight; Stuart just looked on
quietly, from out of his peaceful, sympathetic little
soul; Meggie held her hands to her cheeks, pushing
and kneading at them in an agony of fear that someone
meant to hurt Frank.
  He turned to look at his mother first, black eyes
into grey in a dark and bitter communion which had never
been spoken, nor ever was. Paddy's fierce
blue gaze
  beat him down, contemptuous and scathing, as if this
was what he had expected, and Frank's downcast
lids acknowledged his right to be angry. From that day
forward Paddy never spoke to his son beyond common
civility. But it was the children Frank found hardest
to face, ashamed and embarrassed, the bright bird
brought home with the sky unplumbed, wings clipped,
song drowned into silence.
  Meggie waited until after Fee had done her
nightly rounds, then she wriggled through the
open window and made off across the backyard. She
knew where Frank would be, up in the hay in the
barn, safe from prying eyes and his father.
  "Frank, Frank, where are you?" she said in a
stage whisper as she shuffled into the stilly blackness
of the barn, her toes exploring the unknown ground in
front of her as sensitively as an animal.
  "Over here, Meggie," came his tired voice,
hardly Frank's voice at all, no life or
passion to it.
  She followed the sound to where he was stretched out in the
hay, and snuggled down beside him with her arms as far
around his chest as they would reach. "Oh, Frank,
I'm so glad you're back," she said. He
groaned, slid down in the straw until he was lower
than she, and put his head on her body. Meggie
clutched at his thick straight hair, crooning. It
was too dark to see her, and the invisible substance of her
sympathy undid him. He began to weep, knotting
his body into slow twisting rails of pain, his tears
soaking her nightgown. Meggie did not weep.
Something in her little soul was old enough and woman enough
to feel the irresistible, stinging joy of being needed; she
sat rocking his head back and forth, back and forth,
until his grief expended itself in
emptiness.
  TWO
  1921-1928 Ralph
  The road to Drogheda brought back no memories
of his youth, thought Father Ralph de Bricassart,
eyes half shut against the glare as his new Daimler
bounced along in the rutted wheel tracks that marched
through the dislong silver grass. No lovely misty
green Ireland, this. And Drogheda? No
battlefield, no high seat of power. Or was that
strictly true? Better disciplined these days but
acute as ever, his sense of humor conjured in his mind
an image of a Cromwellian Mary Carson
dealing out her particular brand of imperial
malevolence. Not such a highflown comparison, either;
the lady surely wielded as much power and controlled
as many individuals as any puissant war lord of
elder days.
  The last gate loomed up through a stand of box and
stringybark; the car came to a throbbing halt.
Clapping a disreputable grey broad-brimmed hat
on his head to ward off the sun, Father Ralph got
out, plodded to the steel bolt on the wooden strut,
pulled it back and flung the gate open with weary
impatience. There were twenty-seven gates
between the presbytery in Gillan- bone and Drogheda
homestead, each one meaning he had to stop, get out
of the car, open the gate, get into the car and drive it
through, stop, get out, go back to
  close the gate, then get in the car again and
proceed to the next one. Many and many a time he longed
to dispense with at least half the ritual, scoot on
down the track leaving the gates open like a series of
astonished mouths behind him; but even the awesome aura of
his calling would not prevent the owners of the gates from
tarring and feathering him for it. He wished horses were as
fast and efficient as cars, because one could open and
close gates from the back of a horse without dismounting.
  "Nothing is given without a disadvantage in it,"
he said, patting the dashboard of the new Daimler and
starting off down the last mile of the grassy, treeless
Home Paddock, the gate firmly bolted behind
him. Even to an Irishman used to castles and
mansions, this Australian homestead was imposing.
Drogheda was the oldest and the biggest property in the
district, and had been endowed by its late doting owner
with a fitting residence. Built of butter-yellow
sandstone blocks handhewn in quarries five
hundred miles eastward, the house had two
stories and was constructed on austerely
Georgian lines, with large, many-paned windows and a
wide, iron-pillared veranda running all the way
around its bottom story. Gracing the sides of every
window were black wooden shutters, not merely
ornamental but useful; in the heat of summer they were
pulled closed to keep the interior cool.
  Though it was autumn now and the spindling vine was
green, in spring the wistaria which had been planted the
day the house was finished fifty years before was a
solid mass of lilac plumes, rioting all over
the outer walls and the veranda roof. Several acres of
meticulously scythed lawn surrounded the house,
strewn with formal gardens even now full of color from
roses, wall- flowers, dahlias and marigolds.
A stand of magnificent ghost gums with pallid
white trunks and drifting thin leaves hanging
seventy feet above the ground shaded the house from the
pitiless sun, their branches wreathed 66
  in brilliant magenta where bougainvillaea
vines grew intertwined with them. Even those
indispensable Outback monstrosities the water
tanks were thickly clothed in hardy native vines,
roses and wistaria, and thus managed to look more
decorative than functional. Thanks to the late
Michael Carson's passion for Drogheda
homestead, he had been lavish in the matter of
water tanks; rumor had it Drogheda could afford
to keep its lawns green and its flower beds blooming
though no rain fell in ten years. As one
approached down the Home Paddock the house and its
ghost gums took the eye first, but then one was aware of
many other yellow sandstone houses of one story behind it
and to each side, interlocking with the main structure
by means of roofed ramps smothered in creepers. A
wide gravel driveway suc- ceeded the wheel
ruts of the track, curving to a circular parking area
at one side of the big house, but also continuing beyond it
and out of sight down to where the real business of
Drogheda lay: the stockyards, the shearing shed, the
barns. Privately Father Ralph preferred the
giant pepper trees which shaded all these
outbuildings and their attendant activities to the
ghost gums of the main house. Pepper trees were
dense with palegreen fronds and alive with the sound of
bees, just the right lazy sort of foliage for an
Outback station.
  As Father Ralph parked his car and walked across the
lawn, the maid waited on the front veranda, her
freckled face wreathed in smiles. "Good morning,
Minnie," he said.
  "Oh, Father, happy it is to see you this fine dear
mornin"," she said in her strong brogue, one hand
holding the door wide and the other outstretched to receive his
battered, unclerical hat.
  Inside the dim hall, with its marble tiles and
greet brass-railed staircase, he paused
until Minnie gave him a nod before entering the
drawing room.
  Mary Carson was sitting in her wing chair by an

  open window which extended fifteen feet from floor
to ceiling, apparently indifferent to the cold air
flooding in. Her shock of red hair was almost as
bright as it had been in her youth; though the coarse
freckled skin had picked up additional splotches
from age, for a woman of sixty-five she had few
wrinkles, rather a fine network of tiny
diamond-shaped cushions like a quilted bedspread.
The only clues to her intractable nature lay in
the two deep fissures which ran one on either side
of her Roman nose, to end pulling down the corners
of her mouth, and in the stony look of the pale-blue
eyes. Father Ralph crossed the Aubusson
carpet silently and kissed her hands; the gesture
sat well on a man as tall and
graceful as he was, especially since he wore
a plain black soutane which gave him something of a
courtly air. Her expressionless eyes suddenly
coy and sparkling, Mary Carson almost simpered.
"Will you have tea, Father?" she asked.
  "It depends on whether you wish to hear Mass,"
he said, sitting down in the chair facing hers and
crossing his legs, the soutane riding up
sufficiently to show that under it he wore breeches and
knee-high boots, a concession to the locale of his
parish. "I've brought you Communion, but if you'd like
to hear Mass I can be ready to say it in a very few
minutes. I don't mind continuing my fast a little
longer."
  "You're too good to me, Father," she said smugly,
knowing perfectly well that he, along with everybody
else, did homage not to her but to her money.
"Please have tea," she went on. "I'm quite happy
with Communion." He kept his resentment from showing in
his face; this parish had been excellent for his
self-control. If once he was offered the chance
to rise out of the obscurity his temper had landed him
in, he would not again make the same mistake. And
if he played his cards well, this old woman
might be the answer to his prayers.
  "I must confess, Father, that this past year has been
very pleasant," she said. "You're a far more
satisfactory shepherd than old Father Kelly
was, God rot his soul." Her voice on the last
phrase was suddenly harsh, vindictive. His eyes
lifted to her face, twinkling. "My dear Mrs.
Carson! That's not a very Catholic sentiment."
  "But the truth. He was a drunken old sot, and
I'm quite sure God will rot his soul as much as the
drink rotted his body." She leaned forward. "I
know you fairly well by this time; I think I'm
entitled to ask you a few questions, don't you? After
all, you feel free to use Drogheda as your
private playground-off learning how to be a
stockman, polishing your riding, escaping from the
vicissitudes of life in Gilly. All at my
invitation, of course, but I do think I'm entitled
to some answers, don't you?" He didn't like to be
reminded that he ought to feel grateful, but he had
been waiting for the day when she would think she owned him enough
to begin demanding things of him. "Indeed you are, Mrs.
Carson. I can't thank you enough for permitting me the
run of Drogheda, and for all your gifts-my
horses, my car."
  "How old are you?" she asked without
further preamble. "Twenty-eight," he replied.
  "Younger than I thought. Even so, they don't send
priests like you to places like Gilly. What did you
do, to make them send someone like you out here into the back of
beyond?"
  "I insulted the bishop," he said calmly,
smiling. "You must have! But I can't think a priest of
your peculiar talents can be happy in a place like
Gillanbone."
  "It is God's will."
  "Stuff and nonsense! You're here because of human
failings-your own and the bishop's. Only the Pope
is infallible. You're utterly out of your natural
element in
  Gilly, we all know that, not that we're not
grateful to have someone like you for a change, instead of the
ordained remittance men they send us usually. But your
natural element lies in some corridor of
ecclesiastical power, not here among horses and
sheep. You'd look magnificent in cardinal's
red."
  "No chance of that, I'm afraid. I fancy
Gillanbone is not exactly the epicenter of the
Archbishop Papal Legate's map. And it could be
worse. I have you, and I have Drogheda."
  She accepted the deliberately blatant
flattery in the spirit in which it was intended, enjoying his
beauty, his attentiveness, his barbed and subtle
mind; truly he would make a magnificent
cardinal. In all her life she could not remember
seeing a better-looking man, nor one who used his
beauty in quite the same way. He had to be aware of
how he looked: the height and the perfect proportions
of his body, the fine aristocratic features, the
way every physical element had been put together with a
degree of care about the appearance of the finished
product God lavished on few of His creations.
From the loose black curls of his head and the startling
blue of his eyes to the small, slender hands and
feet, he was perfect. Yes, he had to be
conscious of what he was. And yet there was an
aloofness about him, a way he had of making her feel
he had never been enslaved by his beauty, nor ever
would be. He would use it to get what he wanted
without compunction if it would help, but not as though he was
enamored of it; rather as if he deemed people beneath contempt
for being influenced by it. And she would have given much to know
what in his past life had made him so.
  Curious, how many priests were handsome as
Adonis, had the sexual magnetism of
Don Juan. Did they espouse celibacy as a
refuge from the consequences? "Why do you put up with
Gillanbone?" she asked. "Why not leave the
priesthood rather than put up with it? You could be rich
and powerful in any one of a
  number of fields with your talents, and you can't
tell me the thought of power at least doesn't appeal
to you."
  His left eyebrow flew up. "My dear Mrs.
Carson, you're a Catholic. You know my vows are
sacred. Until my death I remain a priest.
I cannot deny it." She snorted with laughter. "Oh,
come now! Do you really believe that if you renounced
your vows they'd come after you with everything from bolts of
lightning to bloodhounds and shotguns?"
  "Of course not. Nor do I believe you're
stupid enough to think fear of retribution is what
keeps me within the priestly fold."
  "Oho! Waspish, Father de Bricassart! Then
what does keep you tied? What compels you to suffer
the dust, the heat and the Gilly flies? For all you
know, it might be a life sentence."
  A shadow momentarily dimmed the blue eyes, but
he smiled, pitying her. "You're a great comfort,
aren't you?" His lips parted, he looked
toward the ceiling and sighed. "I was brought up from my
cradle to be a priest, but it's far more than that.
How can I explain it to a woman? I am a
vessel, Mrs. Carson, and at times I'm
filled with God. If I were a better priest, there
would be no periods of emptiness at all. And that
filling, that oneness with God, isn't a function of
place. Whether I'm in Gillanbone or a
bishop's palace, it occurs. But to define it is
difficult, because even to priests it's a great
mystery. A divine possession, which other men can never
know. That's it, perhaps. Abandon it? I couldn't."
  "So it's a power, is it? Why should it be given
to priests, then? What makes you think the mere
smearing of chrism during an exhaustingly long
ceremony is able to endow any man with it?"
  He shook his head. "Look, it's years of
life, even before getting to the point of ordination. The
careful development of a state of mind which opens the
vessel to God. It's earned! Every day it's earned.
Which is the purpose of the vows, don't you see? That
no earthly 71
  things come between the priest and his state of mindnot
love of a woman, nor love of money, nor
unwillingness to obey the dictates of other
men. Poverty is nothing new to me; I don't come
from a rich family. Cha/y I accept without finding
it difficult to maintain. And obedience? For me,
it's the hardest of the three. But I obey, because if
I hold myself more important than my function as
a receptacle for God, I'm lost. I obey.
And if necessary, I'm willing to endure Gillanbone
as a life sentence."
  "Then you're a fool," she said. "I, too,
think that there are more important things than lovers, but
being a receptacle for God isn't one of them.
Odd. I never realized you believed in God so
ardently. I thought you were perhaps a man who doubted."
  "I do doubt. What thinking man doesn't?
That's why at times I'm empty." He looked beyond
her, at something she couldn't see. "Do you know, I
think I'd give up every ambition, every desire in
me, for the chance to be a perfect priest?"
  "Perfection in anything," she said, "is
unbearably dull. Myself, I prefer a touch of
imperfection."
  He laughed, looking at her in admiration tinged with
envy. She was a remarkable woman.
  Her widowhood was thirty-three years old and
her only child, a son, had died in
infancy. Because of her peculiar status in the
Gillanbone community she had not availed herself of
any of the overtures made to her by the more ambitious
males of her acquaintance; as Michael Carson's
widow she was indisputably a queen, but as someone's
wife she passed control "of all she had to that
someone. Not Mary Carson's idea of living,
to play second fiddle. So she had abjured the
flesh, preferring to wield power; it was inconceivable
that she should take a lover, for when it came to gossip
Gillanbone was as receptive as a wire to an
electrical current. To prove herself human and
weak was not a part of her obsession.
  But now she was old enough to be officially beyond the
drives of the body. If the new young priest was
assiduous in his duties to her and she rewarded him with
little gifts like a car, it was not at all incongruous.
A staunch pillar of the Church all her life, she
had supported her parish and its spiritual leader in
fitting fashion even when Father Kelly had hiccuped
his way through the Mass. She was not alone in feeling
charitably inclined toward Father Kelly's
successor; Father Ralph de Bricassart was
deservedly popular with every member of his flock, rich
or poor. If his more remote parishioners
could not get into Gilly to see him, he went to them, and
until Mary Carson had given him his car he had
gone on horseback. His patience and kindness had
brought him liking from all and sincere love from some;
Martin King of Bugela had expensively
refurnished the presbytery, Dominic O'Rourke
of DibbanDibban paid the salary of a good
housekeeper.
  So from the pedestal of her age and her position
Mary Carson felt quite safe in enjoying Father
Ralph; she liked matching her wits against a brain
as intelligent as her own, she liked outguessing him
because she was never sure she actually did outguess
him.
  "Getting back to what you were saying about Gilly not
being the epicenter of the Archbishop Papal
Legate's map," she said, settling deeply
into her chair, "what do you think would shake the reverend
gentleman sufficiently to make Gilly the pivot
of his world?"
  The priest smiled ruefully. "Impossible
to say. A coup of some sort? The sudden saving of a
thousand souls, a sudden capacity to heal the lame and the
blind .... But the age of miracles is past."
  "Oh, come now, I doubt that! It's just
that He's altered His technique. These days He
uses money."
  "What a cynic you are! Maybe that's why I like
you so much, Mrs. Carson." "My name is Mary.
Please call me Mary."
  Minnie came in wheeling the tea trolley as
Father de Bricassart said, "Thank you, Mary."
  Over fresh bannocks and anchovies on toast,
Mary Carson sighed. "Dear Father, I want you
to pray especially hard for me this morning." "Call
me Ralph," he said, then went on
mischievously, "I doubt it's possible for me
to pray any harder for you than I normally do, but
I'll try." "Oh, you're a charmer! Or was that
remark innuendo? I don't usually care for
obviousness, but with you I'm never sure if the
obviousness isn't actually a cloak for something
deeper. Like a carrot before a donkey. Just what do
you really think of me, Father de Bricassart?
I'll never know, because you'll never be tactless enough
to tell me, will you? Fascinating, fascinating . . .
But you must pray for me. I'm old, and I've
sinned much." "Age creeps on us all, and I,
too, have sinned."
  A dry chuckle escaped her. "I'd
give a lot to know how you've sinned! Indeed, indeed
I would." She was silent for a moment, then changed the
subject. "At this minute I'm minus a head
stockman."
  "Again?"
  "Five in the past year. It's getting hard
to find a decent man." "Well, rumor hath it
you're not exactly a generous or a considerate
employer."
  "Oh, impudent!" she gasped, laughing. "Who
bought you a brand-new Daimler so you wouldn't have
to ride?"
  "Ah, but look how hard I pray for you!"
  "If Michael had only had half your wit and
character, I might have loved him," she said abruptly.
Her face changed, became spiteful. "Do you think
I'm without a relative in the world and must leave my
money and my land to Mother Church, is that it?"
  "I have no idea," he said tranquilly, pouring
himself more tea.
  "As a matter of fact, I have a brother with a
large and thriving family of sons."
  "How nice for you," he said demurely.
  "When I married I was quite without worldly goods. I
knew I'd never marry well in Ireland,
where a woman has to have breeding and background to catch
a rich husband. So I worked my fingers to the bone
to save my passage money to a land where the rich men
aren't so fussy. All I had when I got here were
a face and a figure and a better brain than women
are supposed to have, and they were adequate to catch
Michael Carson, who was a rich fool. He
doted on me until the day he died."
  "And your brother?" he prompted, thinking she was
going off at a tangent. "My brother is eleven
years younger than I am, which would make him
fifty-four now. We're the only two still alive.
I hardly know him; he was a small child when I
left Galway. At present he lives in New
Zealand, though if he emigrated to make his fortune
he hasn't succeeded. "But last night when the station
hand brought me the news that Arthur Teviot had
packed his traps and gone, I suddenly thought of
Padraic. Here I am, not getting any younger, with
no family around me. And it occurred to me that
Paddy is an experienced man of the land, without the
means to own land. Why not, I thought, write to him and
ask him to bring himself and his sons here? When I die
he'll inherit Drogheda and Michar Limited, as
he's my only living relative closer
than some unknown cousins back in Ireland." She
smiled. "It seems silly to wait, doesn't it?
He might as well come now as later, get used
to running sheep on the black soil plains, which
I'm sure is quite different from sheep in New
Zealand. Then when I'm gone he can step into my
shoes without feeling the pinch." Head lowered, she
watched Father Ralph closely.
  "I wonder you didn't think of it earlier," he
said. "Oh, I did. But until recently I
thought the last thing I wanted was a lot of vultures
waiting anxiously for me to breathe my last. Only
lately the day of my demise seems a lot
closer than it used to, and I feel . . . oh,
I don't know. As if it might be nice to be
surrounded by people of my own flesh and blood."
  "What's the matter, do you think you're ill?" he
asked quickly, a real concern in his eyes.
  She shrugged. "I'm perfectly all right. Yet
there's something ominous about turning sixty-five.
Suddenly old age is not a phenomenon which will
occur; it has occurred."
  "I see what you mean, and you're right. It will be very
pleasant for you, hearing young voices in the house."
  "Oh, they won't live here," she said.
"They can live in the head stockman's house down
by the creek, well away from me. I'm not fond of
children or their voices."
  "Isn't that a rather shabby way to treat your only
brother, Mary? Even if your ages are so
disparate?"
  "He'll inherit-let him earn it," she said
crudely.
  Fiona Cleary was delivered of another boy
six days before Meggie's ninth birthday, counting herself
lucky nothing but a couple of miscarriages had
happened in the interim. At nine Meggie was old enough
to be a real help. Fee herself was forty years old,
too old to bear children without a great deal of
strength-sapping pain. The child, named Harold, was a
delicate baby; for the first time anyone could ever
remember, the doctor came regularly to the house.
  And as troubles do, the Cleary troubles
multiplied. The aftermath of the war was not a boom, but
a rural depression. Work became increasingly
harder to get.
  Old Angus MacWhirter delivered a
telegram to the house one day just as they were finishing
tea, and Paddy
  tore it open with trembling hands;
telegrams never held good news. The boys
gathered round, all save Frank, who took his
cup of tea and left the table. Fee's eyes
followed him, then turned back as Paddy groaned.
"What is it?" she asked.
  Paddy was staring at the piece of paper as if it
held news of a death. "Archibald doesn't want
us."
  Bob pounded his fist on the table savagely; he
had been so looking forward to going with his father as an
apprentice shearer, and Archibald's was to have been his
first pen. "Why should he do a dirty thing like this to us,
Daddy? We were due to start there tomorrow."
  "He doesn't say why, Bob. I suppose
some scab contractor undercut me." "Oh,
Paddy!" Fee sighed.
  Baby Hal began to cry from the big bassinet
by the stove, but before Fee could move Meggie was up;
Frank had come back inside the door and was standing,
tea in hand, watching his father narrowly. "Well, I
suppose I'll have to go and see Archibald,"
Paddy said at last. "It's too late now to look
for another shad to replace his, but I do think he
owes me a better explanation than this. We'll just
have to hope we can find work milking until
Willoughby's shed starts in July."
  Meggie pulled a square of white towel from the
huge pile sitting by the stove warming and spread it
carefully on the work table, then lifted the crying child out
of the wicker crib. The Cleary hair glittered
sparsely on his little skull as Meggie changed his
diaper swiftly, and as efficiently as her mother could
have done.
  "Little Mother Meggie," Frank said, to tease her.
"I'm not!" she answered indignantly. "I'm just
helping Mum." "I know," he said gently.
"You're a good girl, wee Meggie." He tugged
at the white taffeta bow on the back of her head
until it hung lopsided. Up came the big
grey eyes to his face adoringly; over 77 THE
THORN BIRDS
  the nodding head of the baby she might have been his own
age, or older. There was a pain in his chest, that this
should have fallen upon her at an age when the only
baby she ought to be caring for was Agnes, now
relegated forgotten to the bedroom. If it wasn't
for her and their mother, he would have been gone long since.
He looked at his father sourly, the cause of the new
life creating such chaos in the house. Served him
right, getting done out of his shed.
  Somehow the other boys and even Meggie had never
intruded on his thoughts the way Hal did; but when
Fee's waistline began to swell this time, he was
old enough himself to be married and a father. Everyone except
little Meggie had been uncomfortable about it, his mother
especially. The furtive glances of the boys made
her shrink like a rabbit; she could not meet Frank's
eyes or quench the shame in her own. Nor should any
woman go through that, Frank said to himself for the thousandth
time, remembering the horrifying moans and cries which
had come from her bedroom the night Hal was born; of
age now, he hadn't been packed off elsewhere like the
others. Served Daddy right, losing his shed. A
decent man would have left her alone. His mother's head
in the new electric light was spun gold, the
pure profile as she looked down the long table at
Paddy unspeakably beautiful. How had someone as
lovely and refined as she married an itinerant
shearer from the bogs of Galway? Wasting herself and her
Spode china, her damask table napery and her
Persian rugs in the parlor that no one ever saw,
because she didn't fit in with the wives of Paddy's
peers. She made them too conscious of their vulgar
loud voices, their bewilderment when faced with more than
one fork. Sometimes on a Sunday she would go
into the lonely parlor, sit down at the spinet under the
window and play, though her touch had long gone from
want of time to practice and she could no longer
manage any but 78
  the simplest pieces. He would sit beneath the window
among the lilacs and the lilies, and close his eyes
to listen. There was a sort of vision he had then, of his
mother clad in a long bustled gown of palest pink
shadow lace sitting at the spinet in a huge
ivory room, great branches of candles all around
her. It would make him long to weep, but he never
wept anymore; not since that night in the barn after the
police had brought him home. Meggie had put
Hal back in the bassinet, and gone to stand beside her
mother. There was another one wasted. The same proud,
sensitive profile; something of Fiona about her
hands, her child's body. She would be very like her mother when
she, too, was a woman. And who would marry her?
Another oafish Irish shearer, or a clodhopping
yokel from some Wahine dairy farm? She was worth
more, but she was not born to more. There was no way out, that was
what everyone said, and every year longer that he lived
seemed to bear it out.
  Suddenly conscious of his fixed regard, Fee and
Meggie turned together, smiling at him with the
peculiar tenderness women save for the most beloved men
in their lives. Frank put his cup on the table and
went out to feed the dogs, wishing he could weep, or
commit murder. Anything which might banish the pain.
  Three days after Paddy lost the Archibald shed,
Mary Carson's letter came. He had opened it in the
Wahine post office the moment he collected his
mail, and came back to the house skipping like a child.
"We're going to Australia!" he yelled, waving
the expensive vellum pages under his family's
stunned noses.
  There was silence, all eyes riveted on him.
Fee's were shocked, so were Meggie's, but every male
pair had lit with joy. Frank's blazed. "But,
Paddy, why should she think of you so suddenly after all
these years?" Fee asked after she had
  read the letter. "Her money's not new to her, nor
is her isolation. I never remember her offering
to help us before."
  "It seems she's frightened of dying alone," he
said, as much to reassure himself as Fee. "You saw
what she wrote: "I am not young, and you and your
boys are my heirs. I think we ought to see each
other before I die, and it's time you learned how to run
your inheritance. I have the intention of making you
my head stockman-it will be excellent training, and
those of your boys who are old enough to work may have
employment as stockmen also. Drogheda will become a
family concern, run by the family without help from
outsiders." his
  "Does she say anything about sending us the money
to get to Australia?" Fee asked.
  Paddy's back stiffened. "I wouldn't dream of
dunning her for that!" he snapped. "We can get
to Australia without begging from her; I have enough put
by."
  "I think she ought to pay our way," Fee
maintained stubbornly, and to everyone's shocked
surprise; she did not often voice an opinion.
"Why should you give up your life here and go off to work
for her on the strength of a promise given in a letter?
She's never lifted a finger to help us before, and I
don't trust her. All I ever remember your
saying about her was that she had the tightest clutch on a
pound you'd ever seen. After all, Paddy, it's not as
if you know her so very well; there was such a big gap
between you in age, and she went to Australia before you were
old enough to start school." "I don't see how that
alters things now, and if she is tight-fisted, all
the more for us to inherit. No, Fee, we're
going to Australia, and we'll pay our own way
there."
  Fee said no more. It was impossible to tell from her
face whether she resented being so summarily
dismissed.
  "Hooray, we're going to Australia!" Bob
shouted, grabbing at his father's shoulder. Jack,
Hughie and Stu 80
  jigged up and down, and Frank was smiling, his
eyes seeing nothing in the room but something far beyond it.
Only Fee and Meggie wondered and feared, hoping
painfully it would all come to nothing, for their lives could
be no easier in Australia, just the same things under
strange conditions. "Where's Gillanbone?" Stuart
asked.
  Out came the old atlas; poor though the
Clearys were, there were several shelves of books
behind the kitchen dining table. The boys pored over
yellowing pages until they found New South
Wales. Used to small New Zealand. distances, it
didn't occur to them to consult the scale of miles in
the bottom left-hand corner. They just naturally
assumed New South Wales was the same size as
the North Island of New Zealand. And there was
Gillanbone, up toward the top left-hand
corner; about the same distance from Sydney as
Wanganui was from Auckland, it seemed, though the
dots indicating towns were far fewer than on the
North Island map.
  "It's a very old atlas," Paddy said.
"Australia is like America, growing in leaps and
bounds. I'm sure there are a lot more towns these
days." They would have to go steerage on the ship, but it was
only three days after all, not too bad. Not like the
weeks and weeks between England and the Antipodes.
All they could afford to take with them were clothes, china,
cutlery, household linens, cooking utensils and
those shelves of precious books; the furniture
would have to be sold to cover the cost of shipping Fee's
few bits and pieces in the parlor, her spinet and
rugs and chairs. "I won't hear of your leaving them
behind," Paddy told Fee firmly. "Are you sure
we can afford it?"
  "Positive. As to the other furniture, Marv
says she's readying the head stockman's house and that
it's got everything we're likely to be needing.
I'm glad we don't have to live in the same house
as Mary."
  "So am I," said Fee.
  Paddy went into Wanganui to book them
an eightberth steerage cabin on the Wahine;
strange that the ship and their nearest town should have the
same name. They were due to sail at the end of
August, so by the beginning of that month everyone started
realizing the big adventure was actually going
to happen. The dogs had to be given away, the
horses and the buggy sold, the furniture loaded
onto old Angus MacWhirter's dray and taken
into Wanganui for auction, Fee's few pieces
crated along with the china and linen and books and kitchen
goods.
  Frank found his mother standing by the beautiful old
spinet, stroking its faintly pink, streaky paneling
and looking vaguely at the powdering of gold dust on
her fingertips.
  "Did you always have it, Mum?" he asked.
  "Yes. What was actually mine they couldn't take
from me when I married. The spinet, the Persian
carpets, the Louis Quinze sofa and chairs, the
Regency escritoire. Not much, but they were rightfully
mine." The grey, wistful eyes stared past his
shoulder at the oil painting on the wall behind him,
dimmed with age a little, but still showing clearly the
golden-haired woman in her pale-pink lace
gown, crinolined with a hundred and seven
flounces. "Who was she?" he asked curiously,
turning his head. "I've always wanted to know."
  "A great lady."
  "Well, she's got to be related to you; she
looks like you a bit." "Her? A relation of mine?"
The eyes left their contemplation of the picture and
rested on her son's face ironically. "Now, do
I look as if I could ever have had a relative like
her?"
  "Yes."
  "You've cobwebs in your brain; brush them out."
  "I wish you'd tell me, Mum."
  She sighed and shut the spinet, dusting the gold off
her fingers. "There's nothing to tell, nothing at all.
Come on, help me move these things into the middle of the
room, so Daddy can pack them."
  The voyage was a nightmare. Before the Wahine was
out of Wellington harbor they were all seasick, and
they continued to be seasick all the way across twelve
hundred miles of gale-stirred, wintry seas.
Paddy took the boys up on deck and kept them
there in spite of the bitter wind and constant spray,
only going below to see his women and baby when some kind
soul volunteered to keep an eye on his four
miserable, retching boys. Much though he
yearned for fresh air, Frank had elected
to remain below to guard the women. The cabin was tiny,
stifling and reeked of oil, for it was below the water line
and toward the bow, where the ship's motion was most
violent. Some hours out of Wellington Frank and
Meggie became convinced their mother was going to die; the
doctor, summoned from first class by a very worried
steward, shook his head over her pessimistically.
"Just as well it's only a short voyage," he
said, instructing his nurse to find milk for the baby.
  Between bouts of retching Frank and Meggie
managed to bottle-feed Hal, who didn't take
to it kindly. Fee had stopped trying to vomit and had
sunk into a kind of coma, from which they could not rouse her.
The steward helped Frank put her in the top
bunk, where the air was a little less stale, and holding
a towel to his mouth to stem the watery bile he still
brought up, Frank perched himself on the edge beside her,
stroking the matted yellow hair back from her brow.
Hour after hour he stuck to his post in spite of his
own sickness; every time Paddy came in he was with his
mother, stroking her hair, while Meggie huddled on
a lower berth with Hal, a towel to her mouth. Three
hours out of Sydney the seas dropped to a
  glassy calm and fog stole in
furtively from the far Antarctic, wrapping itself about
the old ship. Meggie, reviving a little, imagined it
bellowed regularly in pain now the terrible buffeting
was over. They inched through the gluey greyness as
stealthily as a hunted thing until that deep,
monotonous bawl sounded again from somewhere on the
superstructure, a lost and lonely,
indescribably sad noise. Then all around them the
air was filled with mournful bellows as they slipped
through ghostly smoking water into the harbor. Meggie
never forgot the sound of foghorns, her first
introduction to Australia.
  Paddy carried Fee off the Wahine in his arms,
Frank following with the baby, Meggie with a case,
each of the boys stumbling wearily under some kind of
burden. They had come into Pyrmont, a meaningless
name, on a foggy winter morning at the end of
August, 1921. An enormous line of taxis
waited outside the iron shed on the wharf; Meggie
gaped round-eyed, for she had never seen so many cars in
one place at one time. Somehow Paddy packed them
all into a single cab, its driver volunteering
to take them to the People's Palace. "That's the place
for youse, mate," he told Paddy. "It's a
hotel for the workingman run by the Sallies."
  The streets were thronged with cars seeming to rush in
all directions; there were very few horses. They stared
raptly out of the taxi windows at the tall brick
buildings, the narrow winding streets, the rapidity with
which crowds of people seemed to merge and dissolve in some
strange urban ritual. Wellington had awed
them, but Sydney made Wellington look like a
small country town.
  While Fee rested in one of the myriad rooms
of the warren the Salvation Army fondly called the
People's Palace, Paddy went off to Central
Railway Station to see when they could get a train for
Gillanbone. Quite recovered, the boys clamored
to go with him, for they had been told it was not very far, and
that the way was 84
  all shops, including one which sold squill candy.
Envying their youth, Paddy yielded, for he wasn't
sure how strong his own legs were after three days of
seasickness. Frank and Meggie stayed with Fee and the
baby, longing to go, too, but more concerned that their mother be
better. Indeed, she seemed to gain strength
rapidly once off the ship, and had drunk a bowl
of soup and nibbled a slice of toast brought to her
by one of the workingman's bonneted angels.
  "If we don't go tonight, Fee, it's a
week until the next through train," Paddy said when
he returned. "Do you think you could manage the
journey tonight?"
  Fee sat up, shivering. "I can manage."
  "I think we ought to wait," Frank said
hardily. "I don't think Mum's well enough
to travel."
  "What you don't seem to understand, Frank, is that
if we miss tonight's train we have to wait a whole
week, and I just don't have the price of a week's
stay in Sydney in my pocket. This is a big
country, and where we're going isn't served by a
daily train. We could get as far as Dubbo on
any one of three trains tomorrow, but then we'd have
to wait for a local connection, and they told me we'd
suffer a lot more traveling that way than if we
make the effort to catch tonight's express."
  "I'll manage, Paddy," Fee repeated.
"I've got Frank and Meggie; I'll be all
right." Her eyes were on Frank, pleading for his
silence. "Then I'll send Mary a telegram
now, telling her to expect us tomorrow night."
  Central Station was bigger than any building the
Clearys had ever been inside, a vast glass
cylinder which seemed simultaneously to echo
and absorb the din of thousands of people waiting beside
battered, strapped suitcases and fixedly watching
a giant indicator board which men with long poles
altered by hand. In the gathering evening darkness they found
themselves a part of the throng, their eyes on the steel
concertina gates of platform five; though shut, they
bore a large hand-
  painted sign saying GILLANBONE MAIL.
On platform one and platform two a terrific
activity heralded the imminent departure of the
Brisbane and Melbourne night expresses,
passengers crowding through the barriers. Soon it was their
turn, as the gates of platform five squashed
themselves open and the people began eagerly to move.
  Paddy found them an empty second-class
compartment, put the older boys by the windows and Fee,
Meggie and the baby by the sliding doors which led into the
long corridor connecting compartments. Faces would
peer in hopefully in sight of a spare seat,
to vanish horrified at the sight of so many young children.
Sometimes being a large family was an advantage.
The night was cold enough to warrant unstrapping of the big
tartan traveling rugs all the suitcases bore
on their outsides; though the carnage was not heated,
steel boxes full of hot ashes lay
along the floor radiating warmth, and no one had
expected heating anyway because nothing in Australia
or New Zealand was ever heated.
  "How far is it, Daddy?" Meggie asked as the
train drew out, clanking and rocking gently across an
eternity of points.
  "A long way further than it looked on our
atlas, Meggie. Six hundred and ten miles.
We'll be there late tomorrow afternoon."
  The boys gasped, but forgot it at the blossoming
of a fairyland of lights outside; everyone clustered
at the windows and watched while the first miles flew
by and still the houses did not diminish. The speed
increased, the lights grew scattered and finally went
out, replaced by a constant flurry of sparks streaming
past in a howl ing wind. When Paddy took the
boys outside so Fee
  could feed Hal, Meggie gazed after them longingly.
These days it seemed she was not to be included as one
of the boys, not since the baby had disrupted her life
and chained her to the house as firmly as her mother 86
  was. Not that she really minded, she told herself
loyally. He was such a dear little fellow, the chief
delight of her life, and it was nice to have Mum
treat her as another grown-up lady.
What caused Mum to grow babies she had no
idea, but the result was lovely. She gave Hal
to Fee; the train stopped not long after, creaking and
squealing, and seemed to stand hours panting for breath.
She was dying to open the window and look out, but the
compartment was growing very cold in spite of the hot ashes
on the floor. Paddy came in from the corridor with a
steaming cup of tea for Fee, who put Hal back
on the seat, glutted and sleepy.
  "What is it?" she asked.
  "A place called Valley Heights. We
take on another engine here for the climb to Lithgow,
the girl in the refreshment room said."
  "How long have I got to drink this?"
  "Fifteen minutes. Frank's getting you some
sandwiches and I'll see the boys are fed. Our
next refreshment stop is a placed called
Blayney, much later in the night."
  Meggie shared her mother's cup of hot, sugary
tea, suddenly unbearably excited, and gobbled her
sandwich when Frank brought it. He settled her on
the long seat below baby Hal, tucked a rug
firmly around her, and then did the same for Fee,
stretched out full length on the seat opposite.
Stuart and Hughie were bedded down on the
floor between the seats, but Paddy told Fee that he
was taking Bob, Frank and Jack several compartments
down to talk to some shearers, and would spend the night
there. It was much nicer than the ship, clicking along
to the rhythmic huff-a-huff of the two engines,
listening to the wind in the telegraph wires, the
occasional flurry of furious huffs as steel
wheels slipped on sloping steel rails,
frantically sought traction; Meggie went to sleep.
  In the morning they stared, awed and dismayed, at
  THE THORN BIRDS
  a landscape so alien they had not dreamed anything like
it existed on the same planet as New Zealand.
The rolling hills were there certainly, but
absolutely nothing else reminiscent of home.
It was all brown and grey, even the trees! The
winter wheat was already turned a fawnish silver by the
glaring sun, miles upon miles of it rippling and
bending in the wind, broken only by stands of thin,
spindling, blue-leafed trees and dusty clumps of
tired grey bushes. Fee's stoical eyes
surveyed the scene without changing expression, but
poor Meggie's were full of tears. It was
horrible, fenceless and vast, without a trace of green.
  From freezing night it turned to scorching
day as the sun climbed toward its zenith and the train
racketed on and on and on, stopping occasionally in some
tiny town full of bicycles and horse-drawn
vehicles; cars were scarce out here, it seemed.
Paddy opened both the windows all the way in spite
of the soot which swirled in and settled on everything; it
was so hot they were gasping, their heavy New Zealand
winter clothing sticking and itching. It did not seem
possible that anywhere outside of hell could be so hot
in winter. Gillanbone came with the dying sun, a
strange small collection of ramshackle wooden
and corrugated iron buildings along either side of
one dusty wide street, treeless and tired. The
melting sun had licked a golden paste over
everything, and gave the town a transient gilded
dignity which faded even as they stood on the platform
watching. It became once more a typical
settlement on the very edge of the Back of Beyond, a
last outpost in a steadily diminishing rainfall
belt; not far away westward began two thousand
miles of the Neverationever, the desert lands where it could not
rain. A resplendent black car was standing in the station
yard, and striding unconcernedly toward them through the
inches-deep dust came a priest. His long
soutane made him seem a figure out of the
past, as if he did not move on feet like ordinary
men, but drifted dreamlike; 88
  the dust rose and billowed around him, red in the last
of the sunset. "Hello, I'm Father de
Bricassart," he said, holding out his hand to Paddy.
"You have to be Mary's brother; you're the living
image of her." He turned to Fee and lifted her
limp hand to his lips, smiling in genuine
astonishment; no one could spot a gentlewoman quicker
than Father Ralph. "Why, you're beautiful!" he
said, as if it were the most natural remark in the world
for a priest to make, and then his eyes went onward to the
boys, standing together in a huddle. They rested for a
moment with puzzled bewilderment on Frank, who had
charge of the baby, and ticked off each boy as they
got smaller and smaller. Behind them, all by herself,
Meggie stood gaping up at him with her mouth open,
as if she were looking at God. Without seeming
to notice how his fine serge robe wallowed in the
dust, he stepped past the boys and squatted down
to hold Meggie between his hands, and they were firm,
gentle, kind. "Well! And who are you?" he asked
her, smiling. "Meggie," she said.
  "Her name's Meghann." Frank scowled, hating
this beautiful man, his stunning height.
  "My favorite name, Meghann." He
straightened, but held Meggie's hand in his. "It
will be better for you to stay at the presbytery tonight,"
he said, leading Meggie toward the car. "I'll
drive you out to Drogheda in the morning; it's too far
after the train ride from Sydney."
  Aside from the Hotel Imperial, the Catholic
church, school, convent and presbytery were the only
brick edifices in Gillanbone, even the big
public school having to content itself with timber
frame. Now that darkness had fallen, the air had
grown incredibly chill; but in the presbytery
lounge a huge log fire was blazing, and the smell
of food came tantalizingly from somewhere beyond. The
housekeeper, a wizened old Scotswoman with
amazing energy, bustled about showing them their 89
  rooms, chattering all the while in a broad
western Highlands accent. Used to the touch-me-not
reserve of the Wahine priests, the Clearys found it
hard to cope with Father Ralph's easy, cheerful
bonhomie. Only Paddy thawed, for he could
remember the friendliness of the priests in his native
Galway, their closeness to lesser beings. The rest
ate their supper in careful silence and escaped
upstairs as soon as they could, Paddy
reluctantly following. To him, his religion was a
warmth and a consolation; but to the rest of his family it was
something rooted in fear, a
do-it-or-thou-shah-be-damned compulsion.
  When they had gone, Father Ralph stretched out in his
favorite chair, staring at the fire, smoking a
cigarette and smiling. In his mind's eye he was
passing the Clearys in review, as he had first seen
them from the station yard. The man so like Mary, but bowed with
hard work and very obviously not of her malicious
disposition; his weary, beautiful wife, who looked
as if she ought to have descended from a landaulet drawn
by matched white horses; dark and surly Frank,
with black eyes, black eyes; the sons, most of
them like their father, but the youngest one, Stuart, very like his
mother, he'd be a handsome man when he grew up;
impossible to tell what the baby would become; and
Meggie. The sweetest, the most adorable little girl
he had ever seen; hair of a color which defied
description, not red and not gold, a perfect fusion
of both. And looking up at him with silver-grey
eyes of such a lambent purity, like melted
jewels. Shrugging, he threw the cigarette stub
into the fire and got to his feet. He was getting
fanciful in his old age; melted
jewels, indeed! More likely his own eyes were coming
down with the sandy blight.
  In the morning he drove his overnight guests
to Drogheda, so inured by now to the landscape that he
derived great amusement from their comments. The
  last hill lay two hundred miles to the east;
this was the land of the black soil plains, he
explained. Just sweeping, lightly timbered
grasslands as flat as a board. The day was as hot
as the previous one, but the Daimler was a great deal
more comfortable to travel in than the train had been. And
they had started out early, fasting, Father Ralph's
vestments and the Blessed Sacrament packed carefully in
a black case.
  "The sheep are dirty!" said Meggie
dolefully, gazing at the many hundreds of rusty-red
bundles with their questing noses down into the grass.
"Ah, I can see I ought to have chosen New
Zealand," the priest said. "It must be like Ireland,
then, and have nice cream sheep."
  "Yes, it is like Ireland in many ways; it has
the same beautiful green grass. But it's wilder,
a lot less tamed," Paddy answered. He liked
Father Ralph very much.
  Just then a group of emus lurched to their
feet and commenced to run, fleet as the wind, their
ungainly legs a blur, their long necks stretched
out. The children gasped and burst out laughing, enchanted at
seeing giant birds which ran instead of flying.
  "What a pleasure it is not to have to get out and open
these' wretched gates," Father Ralph said as the last
one was shut behind them and Bob, who had done gate
duty for him, scrambled back into the car. After the
shocks Australia had administered to them in
bewildering rapidity, Drogheda homestead seemed like
a touch of home, with its gracious Georgian
facade and its budding wistaria vines, its thousands of
rosebushes. "Are we going to live here?" Meggie
squeaked. "Not exactly," the priest said quickly.
"The house you're going to live in is about a mile
further on, down by the creek."
  Mary Carson was waiting to receive them in the vast
drawing room and did not rise to greet her brother,
but forced him to come to her as she sat in her wing chair.
  "Well, Paddy," she said pleasantly enough,
looking past him fixedly to where Father Ralph stood
with Meggie in his arms, and her little arms locked
tightly about his neck. Mary Carson got up
ponderously, without greeting Fee or the children.
  "Let us hear Mass immediately," she
said. "I'm sure Father de Bricassart is
anxious to be on his way."
  "Not at all, my dear Mary." He laughed,
blue eyes gleaming. "I shall say Mass, we'll
all have a good hot breakfast at your table, and then
I've promised Meggie I'll show her where she's
going to live."
  "Meggie," said Mary Carson.
  "Yes, this is Meggie. Which rather begins the
introductions at the tail, doesn't it? Let me
begin at the head, Mary, please. This is
Fiona." Mary Carson nodded curtly, and paid
scant attention as Father Ralph ran through the boys;
she was too busy watching the priest and Meggie.
  The head stockman's house stood on piles some
thirty feet above a narrow gulch fringed with tall,
straggling gum trees and many weeping willows. After
the splendor of Drogheda homestead it was rather bare and
utilitarian, but in its appurtenances it was not
unlike the house they had left behind in New
Zealand. Solid Victorian furniture filled
the rooms to overflowing, smothered in fine red dust.
  "You're lucky here, you have a bathroom," Father
Ralph said as he brought them up the plank steps
to the front veranda; it was quite a climb, for the
piles upon which the house was poised were fifteen feet
high. "In case the creek runs a banker,"
Father Ralph explained. "You're right on it here and
I've heard it can rise sixty feet in a
night."
  They did indeed have a bathroom; an old tin
bath and a chipped water heater stood in a walled-off
alcove at the end of the back veranda. But, as the
women found to their disgust, the lavatory was nothing more
than a hole in the ground some two hundred yards
away from the house, and it stank. After New Zealand,
primitive.
  "Whoever lived here wasn't very clean," Fee said
as she ran her finger through the dust on the sideboard.
  Father Ralph laughed. "You'll fight a losing
battle
  trying to get rid of that," he said. "This is the
Outback, and there are three things you'll never
defeat-the heat, the dust and the flies. No matter
what you do, they'll aways be with you."
  Fee looked at the priest. "You're very good to us,
Father."
  "And why not? You're the only relatives of my
very good friend, Mary Carson."
  She shrugged, unimpressed. "I'm not
used to being on friendly terms with a priest. In New
Zealand they kept themselves very much to themselves." "You're not
a Catholic, are you?"
  "No, Paddy's the Catholic. Naturally the
children have been reared as Catholics, every last one of
them, if that's what's worrying you." "It never
occurred to me. Do you resent it?"
  "I really don't care one way or the other."
  "You didn't convert?"
  "I'm not a hypocrite, Father de
Bricassart. I had lost faith in my own church,
and I had no wish to espouse a different, equally
meaningless creed." "I see." He watched Meggie
as she stood on the front veranda, peering up the
track toward Drogheda big house. "She's so
pretty, your daughter. I have a fondness for
titian hair, you know. Hers would have sent the artist
running for his brushes. I've never seen exactly
that color before. Is she your only daughter?"
  "Yes. Boys run in both Paddy's family
and my own; girls are unusual." "Poor little
thing," he said obscurely.
  After the crates arrived from Sydney and the house
took on a more familiar look with its books,
china, ornaments and the parlor filled with
Fee's furniture, things began to settle down.
Paddy and the boys older than Stu were away most of the
time with the two station hands Mary Carson had retained
to teach them the many differences between sheep in northwest
New South
  Wales and sheep in New Zealand. Fee,
Meggie and Stu discovered the differences between running a
house in New Zealand and living in the head
stockman's residence on Drogheda; there was a
tacit understanding they would never disturb Mary Carson
herself, but her housekeeper and her maids were just as
eager to help the women as her station hands were to help the
men. Drogheda was, everyone learned, a world in itself,
so cut off from civilization that after a while even
Gillanbone became no more than a name with remote
memories. Within the bounds of the great Home
Paddock lay stables, a smithy, garages,
innumerable sheds storing everything from feed to machinery,
dog kennels and runs, a labyrinthine maze of
stockyards, a mammoth shearing shed with the staggering
number of twenty-six stands in it, and yet another
jigsaw puzzle of yards behind it. There were fowl
runs, pigpens, cow bails and a dairy, quarters
for the twenty-six shearers, small shacks for the
rouseabouts, two other, smaller, houses
like their own for stockmen, a jackaroos' barracks, a
slaughter yard, and woodheaps. All this sat in just
about the middle of a treeless circle whose diameter
measured three miles: the Home Paddock.
Only at the point where the head stockman's house
lay did the conglomeration of buildings almost touch the
forests beyond. However, there were many trees around the sheds,
yards and animal runs, to provide welcome and
necessary shade; mostly pepper trees, huge, hardy,
dense and sleepily lovely. Beyond in the long
grass of the Home Paddock, horses and milch
cows grazed drowsily. The deep gully beside the
head stockman's house had a shallow, sluggish
stream of muddy water at its bottom. No one
credited Father Ralph's tale of its rising sixty
feet overnight; it didn't seem possible.
Water from this creek was pumped up by hand to service the
bathroom and kitchen, and it took the women a long
time to get used to washing themselves, the dishes and the
  clothes in greenish-brown water. Six massive
corrugatediron tanks perched on wooden
derricklike towers caught rain from the roof and
provided them with drinking water, but they learned they
must use it very sparingly, that it was never to be used for
washing. For there was no guarantee as to when the
next rains might come to fill the tanks up.
  The sheep and cattle drank artesian water, not
tapped from an easily accessible water table, but
true artesian water brought from over three thousand
feet below the surface. It gushed at boiling point
from a pipe at what was called the borehead, and ran
through tiny channels fringed with poisonously green
grass to every paddock on the property. These
channels were the bore drains, and the heavily
sulphurated, mineral-laden water they contained was not
fit for human consumption.
  At first the distances staggered them; Drogheda had
two hundred and fifty thousand acres. Its longest
boundary stretched for eighty miles. The homestead was
forty miles and twenty-seven gates away from
Gillanbone, the only settlement of any kind
closer than a hundred and six miles. The narrow
eastern boundary was formed by the Barwon River, which was
what the locals called this northern course of the
Darling River, a great muddy thousand-mile stream that
finally joined the Murray River and surged out into the
southern ocean fifteen hundred miles away in
South Australia. Gillan Creek, which ran in
the gully beside the head stockman's house, merged
into the Barwon two miles beyond the Home
Paddock.
  Paddy and the boys loved it. Sometimes they spent
days on end in the saddle, miles away from the
homestead, camping at night under a sky so vast and
filled with stars it seemed they were a part of God. The
grey-brown land swarmed with life. Kangaroos in
flocks of thousands streamed leaping through the trees,
taking fences in their stride, utterly lovely in their
grace and freedom and numbers; emus built their
nests 96
  in the middle of the grassy plain and stalked like
giants about their territorial boundaries, taking
fright at anything strange and running fleeter than
horses away from their dark-green, football-sized
eggs; termites built rusty towers like miniature
skyscrapers; huge ants with a savage bite
poured in rivers down mounded holes in the ground.
  The bird life was so rich and varied there seemed
no end to new kinds, and they lived not in ones and
twos but in thousands upon thousands: tiny
green-and-yellow parakeets Fee used to call
lovebirds, but which the locals called budgerigars;
scarlet-and-blue smallish parrots called
rosellas; big pale-grey parrots with
brilliant purplish-pink breasts,
underwings and heads, called galahs; and the great pure
white birds with cheeky yellow combs called
sulphur-crested cockatoos. Exquisite tiny
finches whirred and wheeled, so did sparrows and
starlings, and the strong brown kingfishers called
kookaburras laughed and chuckled gleefully or
dived for snakes, their favorite food. They were
wellnigh human, all these birds, and completely
without fear, sitting in hundreds in the trees peering
about with bright intelligent eyes, screaming, talking,
laughing, imitating anything that produced a sound.
Fearsome lizards five or six feet long pounded
over the ground and leaped lithely for high tree
branches, as at home off the earth as on it; they were
goannas. And there were many other lizards, smaller but
some no less frightening, adorned with horny
triceratopean ruffs about their necks, or with
swollen, bright-blue tongues. Of snakes the
variety was almost endless, and the Clearys learned that the
biggest and most dangerouslooking were often the most
benign, while a stumpy little creature a foot
long might be a death adder; carpet snakes,
copper snakes, tree snakes, red-bellied
black snakes, brown snakes, lethal tiger
snakes.
  And insects! Grasshoppers, locusts,
crickets, bees, flies of all sizes and
sorts, cicadas, gnats, dragonflies,
giant
  moths and so many butterflies! The spiders were
dreadful, huge hairy things with a leg span of
inches, or deceptively small and deadly
black-things lurking in the lavatory; some lived in
vast wheeling webs slung between trees, some rocked
inside dense gossamer cradles hooked among
grass blades, others dived into little holes in the
ground complete with lids which shut after them.
  Predators were there, too: wild pigs frightened of
nothing, savage and flesh-eating, black hairy
things the size of fully grown cows; dingoes, the
wild native dogs which slunk close to the ground and
blended into the grass; crows in hundreds carking
desolately from the blasted white skeletons of
dead trees; hawks and eagles, hovering motionless
on the air currents. From some of these the sheep and
cattle had to be protected, especially when they
dropped their young. The kangaroos and rabbits ate the
precious grass; the pigs and dingoes ate lambs,
calves and sick animals; the crows pecked out
eyes. The Clearys had to learn to shoot,
then carried rifles as they rode, sometimes to put a
suffering beast out of its misery, sometimes to fell a
boar or a dingo.
  This, thought the boys exultantly, was life. Not
one of them yearned for New Zealand; when the flies
clustered like syrup in the corners of their eyes, up
their noses, in their mouths and ears, they learned the
Australian trick and hung corks bobbing from the
ends of strings all around the brims of their hats.
To prevent crawlies from getting up inside the
legs of (heir baggy trousers they tied strips of
kangaroo hide called bowyangs below their knees,
giggling at the silly-sounding name, but awed by the
necessity. New Zealand was tame compared to this; this was
life. Tied to the house and its immediate environs, the
women found life much less to their liking, for they had
not the leisure or the excuse to ride, nor did
they have the stimulation of varying activities. It was just
harder to do what women always did: cook, clean,
wash, iron, . 98
  care for babies. They battled the heat, the dust,
the flies, the many steps, the muddy water, the nearly
perennial absence of men to carry and chop wood,
pump water, kill fowls. The heat especially was
hard to bear, and it was as yet only early
spring; even so, the thermometer out on the shady veranda
reached a hundred degrees every day. Inside the
kitchen with the range going, it was a hundred and twenty
degrees.
  Their many layers of clothing were close-fitting and
designed for New Zealand, where inside the house it
was almost always cool. Mary Carson, exercising
gently by walking down to see her sister-in-law,
looked at Fee's high-necked, floor-length
calico gown superciliously. She herself was clad
in the new fashion, a cream silk dress coming
only halfway down her calves, with loose elbow
sleeves, no waist and a low decolletage.
"Really, Fiona, you're hopelessly
old-fashioned," she said, glancing round the parlor
with its fresh coat of cream paint, the Persian
carpets and the spindly priceless furniture.
  "I have no time to be anything else," Fee said,
curtly for her when acting as hostess.
  "You'll have more time now, with the men away so much and
fewer meals to get. Raise your hems and stop
wearing petticoats and stays, or you'll die when
summer comes. It can get fifteen to twenty
degrees hotter than this, you know." Her eyes
dwelled on the portrait of the beautiful
blond woman in her Empress Eugenie
crinoline. "Who's that?" she asked, pointing. "My
grandmother."
  "Oh, really? And the furniture, the carpets?"
"Mine, from my grandmother."
  "Oh, really? My dear Fiona, you've come
down in the world, haven't you?" Fee never lost her
temper, so she didn't now, but her thin lips got
thinner. "I don't think so, Mary. I have a good
man; you ought to know that." "But penniless. What was your
maiden name?" 99
  "Armstrong."
  "Oh, really? Not the Roderick Armstrong
Armstrongs?" "He's my oldest brother. His
namesake was my greatgrandfather." Mary Carson rose,
flapping her picture hat at the flies, which were not
respecters of person. "Well, you're better
born than the Clearys are, even if I do say so
myself. Did you love Paddy enough to give all that
up?" "My reasons for what I do," said Fee
levelly, "are my business, Mary, not yours. I
do not discuss my husband, even with his sister."
  The lines on either side of Mary Carson's
nose got deeper, her eyes bulged slightly.
"Hoity-toity!"
  She did not come again, but Mrs. Smith, her
housekeeper, came often, and repeated Mary
Carson's advice about their clothes. "Look," she
said, "there's a sewing machine in my quarters which I
never use. I'll have a couple of the rouseabouts
carry it down. If I do need to use it, I'll
come down here." Her eyes strayed to baby Hal,
rolling on the floor gleefully. "I like to hear the
sound of children, Mrs. Cleary."
  Once every six weeks the mail came
by horse-drawn dray from Gillanbone; this was the
only contact with the outside world. Drogheda
possessed a Ford truck, another specially
constructed Ford truck with a water tank on its
tray, a model-T Ford car and a
Rolls-Royce limousine, but no one ever seemed
to use them to go into Gilly save Mary Carson
infrequently. Forty miles was as far as the moon.
  Bluey Williams had the mail contract for the
district and took six weeks to cover his
territory. His flattopped dray with its ten-foot
wheels was drawn by a magnificent team of twelve
draft horses, and was loaded with all the things the
outlying stations ordered. As well
  as the Royal Mail, he carried
groceries, gasoline in forty-four-gallon
drums, kerosene in square five-gallon cans,
hay, bags of corn, caiico bags of sugar and
flour, wooden chests of tea, bags of potatoes,
farm machinery, mail-order toys and clothes from
Anthony Hordern's in Sydney, plus anything
else that had to be brought in from Gilly or
Outside. Moving at the clipping rate of twenty
miles a day, he was welcomed wherever he stopped,
plied for news and weather far away, handed the
scribbled scraps of paper carefully wrapped around
money for goods he would purchase in Gilly, handed the
laboriously written letters which went into the canvas
sack marked "Royal GVR Mail."
  West of Gilly there were only two stations on the
route, Drogheda closer in, Bugela farther out;
beyond Bugela lay the territory that got mail
only once every six months. Bluey's dray
swung in a great zigzagging arc through all the stations
southwest, west and northwest, then returned
to Gilly before setting out eastward, a smaller
journey because Booroo town took over sixty
miles east. Sometimes he brought people sitting beside him
on his unsheltered leather seat, visitors or
hopefuls looking for work; sometimes he took
people away, visitors or discontented stockmen or
maids or rouseabouts, very occasionally a governess.
The squatters owned cars to transport themselves, but
those who worked for the squatters depended upon Bluey for
transport as well as goods and letters.
  After the bolts of cloth Fee had ordered came
on the mail, she sat down at the donated sewing
machine and began to make loose dresses in light
cotton for herself and Meggie, light trousers and
overalls for the men, smocks for Hal, curtains for the
windows. There was no doubt it was cooler minus
layers of underwear and tightly fitting outerwear.
  Life was lonely for Meggie, only Stuart at
the house among the boys. Jack and Hughie were off
with their father learning to be stockmen-jackaroos, the young

  apprentices were called. Stuart wasn't company
the way Jack and Hughie used to be. He lived in
a world all his own, a quiet little boy who preferred
to sit for hours watching the behavior of a throng of
ants than climb trees, whereas Meggie adored
to climb trees and thought Australian gums were
marvelous, of infinite variety and difficulty. Not
that there was much time for tree-climbing, or ant-watching
for that matter. Meggie and Stuart worked
hard. They chopped and carried the wood, dug holes
for refuse, tended the vegetable garden and looked after
the fowls and pigs. They also learned how to kill
snakes and spiders, though they never ceased to fear
them. The rainfall had been mediocrely good for
several years; the creek was low but the tanks were about
half full. The grass was still fairly good, but
apparently nothing to its lush times.
  "It will probably get worse," said Mary
Carson grimly. But they were to know flood before they
encountered a full-fledged drought. Halfway through
January the country caught the southern edge of the
northwest monsoons. Captious in the extreme,
the great winds blew to suit themselves. Sometimes only
the far northern tips of the continent felt their drenching
summer rains, sometimes they traveled far down the
Outback and gave the unhappy urbanites of
Sydney a wet summer. That January the clouds
stormed dark across the sky, torn into sodden shreds by the
wind, and it began to rain; not a gentle downpour but a
steady, roaring deluge which went on and on.
  They had been warned; Bluey Williams had
turned up with his dray loaded high and twelve
spare horses behind him, for he was moving fast to get
through his rounds before the rains made further
provisioning of the stations impossible.
  "Monsoons are comin'," he said, rolling a
cigarette and indicating piles of extra
groceries with his whip. 102
  "The Cooper an' the Barcoo an' the
Diamantina are runnin' real bankers an' the
Overflow is overflowin'. The whole Queenslan'
Outback's two foot under water an' them poor
buggers is tryin' to find a rise in the groun'
to put the sheep on."
  Suddenly there was a controlled panic; Paddy and the
boys worked like madmen, moving the sheep out of the
low-lying paddocks and as far away from the creek and the
Barwon as they could. Father Ralph turned up,
saddled his horse and set off with Frank and the best
team of dogs for two uncleared paddocks
alongside the Barwon, while Paddy and the two
stockmen each took a boy in other directions.
  Father Ralph was an excellent stockman himself.
He rode a thoroughbred chestnut mare Mary
Carson had given him, clad in faultlessly
tailored buff jodhpurs, shiny tan knee
boots, and a spotless white shirt with its sleeves
rolled up his sinewy arms and its neck open to show his
smooth brown chest. In baggy old grey
twill trousers tied with bowyangs and a grey
flannel under- shirt, Frank felt like a poor
relation. Which was what he was, he thought wryly,
following the straight figure on the dainty mare through
a stand of box and pine beyond the creek. He himself
rode a hard-mouthed piebald stock horse, a
mean-tempered beast with a will of its own and a ferocious
hatred of other horses. The dogs were yelping and
cavorting in excitement, fighting and snarling among
themselves until parted with a flick from Father Ralph's
viciously wielded stock whip. It seemed there was
nothing the man couldn't do; he was familiar with the coded
whistles setting the dogs to work, and plied his whip much
better than Frank, still learning this exotic
Australian art.
  The big Queensland blue brute that led the dog
pack took a slavish fancy to the priest and
followed him without question, meaning Frank was-very
definitely the second-string man. Half of
Frank didn't mind; he alone among Paddy's
sons had not taken to life on
  Drogheda. He had wanted nothing more than to quit
New Zealand, but not to come to this. He hated the
ceaseless patrolling of the paddocks, the hard ground
to sleep on most nights, the savage
dogs which could not be treated as pets and were shot if they
failed to do their work. But the ride into the gathering
clouds had an element of adventure to it; even the
bending, cracking trees seemed to dance with an
outlandish joy. Father Ralph worked like a man in the
grip of some obsession, sooling the dogs after
unsuspecting bands of sheep, sending the silly
woolly things leaping and bleating in fright until the low
shapes streaking through the grass got them packed tight
and running. Only having the dogs enabled a small
handful of men to operate a property the size of
Drogheda; bred to work sheep or cattle, they were
amazingly intelligent and needed very little direction.
By nightfall Father Ralph and the dogs, with Frank
trying to do his inadequate best behind them, had cleared
all the sheep out of one paddock, normally several
days' work. He unsaddled his mare near a clump of
trees by the gate to the second paddock, talking
optimistically of being able to get the stock out of it also
before the rain started. The dogs were sprawled flat out
in the grass, tongues lolling, the big Queensland
blue fawning and cringing at Father Ralph's feet.
Frank dug a repulsive collection of
kangaroo meat out of his saddlebag and flung it to the
dogs, which fell on it snapping and biting
at each other jealously.
  "Bloody awful brutes," he said. "They
don't behave like dogs; they're just jackals."
  "I think these are probably a lot closer
to what God intended dogs should be," said Father
Ralph mildly. "Alert, intelligent,
aggressive and almost untamed. For myself, I prefer
them to the house-pet species." He smiled. "The
cats, too. Haven't you noticed them around the
sheds? As wild and vicious as panthers; won't
let a
  human being near them. But they hunt
magnificently, and call no man master or
provider."
  He unearthed a cold piece of mutton and a
packet of bread and butter from his saddlebag, carved
a hunk from the mutton and handed the rest to Frank.
Putting the bread and butter on a log between them, he
sank his white teeth into the meat with evident
enjoyment. Thirst was slaked from a canvas water
bag, then cigarettes rolled.
  A lone wilga tree stood nearby; Father
Ralph indicated it with his cigarette.
  "That's the spot to sleep," he said, unstrapping
his blanket and picking up his saddle.
  Frank followed him to the tree, commonly held
the most beautiful in this part of Australia. Its
leaves were dense and a pale lime green, its shape
almost perfectly rounded. The foliage grew so
close to the ground that sheep could reach it easily, the
result being that every wilga bottom was mown as
straight as a topiary hedge. If the rain began
they would have more shelter under it than any other tree, for
Australian trees were generally thinner of foliage
than the trees of wetter lands.
  "You're not happy, Frank, are you?" Father
Ralph asked, lying down with a sigh and rolling
another smoke.
  From his position a couple of feet away Frank
turned to look at him suspiciously. "What's
happy?"
  "At the moment, your father and brothers. But not you, not
your mother, and not your sister. Don't you like
Australia?"
  "Not this bit of it. I want to go to Sydney. I
might have a chance there to make something of myself."
  "Sydney, eh? It's a den of iniquity." Father
Ralph was smiling. "I don't care! Out here
I'm stuck the same way I was in New Zealand;
I can't get away from him."
  "Him?"
  But Frank had not meant to say it, and would say
no more. He lay looking up at the leaves.
  "How old are you, Frank?" "Twenty-two."
"Oh, yes! Have yoli ever been away from your people?"
  [*reg] [*macr]
  No.
  "Have you even been to a dance, had a girlfriend?"
"No." Frank refused to give him his title.
  "Then he'll not hold you much longer."
  "He'll hold me until I die."
  Father Ralph yawned, and composed himself for sleep.
"Good night," he said. In the morning the clouds were
lower, but the rain held off all day and they got the
second paddock cleared. A slight ridge ran
clear across Drogheda from northeast to southwest; it was
in these paddocks the stock were concentrated, where they had
higher ground to seek if the water rose above the
escarpments of the creek and the Barwon.
  The rain began almost on nightfall, as Frank
and the priest hurried at a fast trot toward the
creek ford below the head stockman's house. "No
use worrying about blowing them now!" Father Ralph
shouted. "Dig your heels in, lad, or you'll
drown in the mud!"
  They were soaked within seconds, and so was the
hard-baked ground. The fine,- nonporous soil
became a sea of mud, miring the horses to their
hocks and setting them floundering. While the grass
persisted they managed to press on, but near the
creek where the earth had been trodden to bareness they had
to dismount. Once relieved of their burdens, the
horses had no trouble, but Frank found it
impossible to keep his balance. It was worse than a
skating rink. On hands and knees they crawled to the
top of the creek bank, and slid down it like
projectiles. The stone roadway, which was normally
covered by a foot of lazy water, was under four feet
of racing foam; Frank heard the priest laugh.
Urged on by shouts and slaps from sodden hats, the
  horses managed to scramble up the far bank without
mishap, but Frank and Father Ralph could not. Every
time they tried, they slid back again. The priest had
just suggested they climb a willow when Paddy,
alerted by the appearance of riderless horses, came
with a rope and hauled them out. Smiling and shaking his
head, Father Ralph refused Paddy's offer of
hospitality.
  "I'm expected at the big house," he said.
  Mary Carson heard him calling before
any of her staff did, for he had chosen to walk
around to the front of the house, thinking it would be easier
to reach his room.
  "You're not coming inside like that," she said, standing on
the veranda. "Then be a dear, get me several towels
and my case."
  Unembarrassed, she watched him peel off his
shirt, boots and breeches, leaning against the
half-open window into her drawing room as he toweled
the worst of the mud off.
  "You're the most beautiful man I've ever seen,
Ralph de Bricassart," she said. "Why is it
so many priests are beautiful? The Irishness?
They're rather a handsome people, the Irish. Or is it that
beautiful men find the priesthood a refuge from the
consequences of their looks? I'll bet the girls in
Gilly just eat their hearts out over you."
  "I learned long ago not to take any notice of
lovesick girls." He laughed. "Any priest
under fifty is a target for some of them, and a priest
under thirty-five is usually a target for all of
them. But it's only the Protestant girls who
openly try to seduce me."
  "You never answer my questions outright, do you?"
Straightening, she laid her palm on his
chest and held it there. "You're a sybarite,
Ralph, you lie in the sun. Are you as brown all
over?"
  Smiling, he leaned his head forward, then laughed
into her hair, his hands unbuttoning the cotton
drawers; 107
  as they fell to the ground he kicked them away,
standing like a Praxiteles statue while she toured
all the way around him, taking her time and looking. The
last two days had exhilarated him, so did the
sudden awareness that she was perhaps more vulnerable than he
had imagined; but he knew her, and he felt quite
safe in asking, "Do you want me to make love
to you, Mary?" She eyed his flaccid penis, snorting
with laughter. "I wouldn't dream of putting you to so much
trouble! Do you need women, Ralph?" His head
reared back scornfully. "No!"
  "Men?"
  "They're worse than women. No, I don't
need them."
  "How about yourself?"
  "Least of all."
  "Interesting." Pushing the window all the way up,
she stepped through into the drawing room. "Ralph,
Cardinal de Bricassartl" she mocked.
But away from those discerning eyes of his she sagged back
into her wing chair and clenched her fists, the gesture which
rails against the inconsistencies of fate. Naked,
Father Ralph stepped off the veranda to stand on the
barbered lawn with his arms raised above his head, eyes
closed; he let the rain pour over him in warm,
probing, spearing runnels, an exquisite sensation
on bare skin. It was very dark. But he was still
flaccid.
  The creek broke its banks and the water crept
higher up the piles of Paddy's house, farther out
across the Home Paddock toward the homestead itself.
  "It will go down tomorrow," said Mary Carson when
Paddy went to report, worried.
  As usual, she was right; over the next week the
water ebbed and finally returned to its normal
channels. The sun came out, the temperature
zoomed to a hundred and fifteen in the shade, and the
grass seemed to
  take wing for the sky, thigh-high and clean, bleached
brilliant as gilt, hurting the eyes. Washed and
dusted, the trees glittered, and the hordes of
parrots came back from wherever they had gone while the
rain fell to flash their rainbow bodies amid the
timber, more loquacious than ever. Father
Ralph had returned to succor his neglected
parishioners, serene in the knowledge his knuckles would not be
rapped; under the pristine white shirt next to his
heart resided a check for one thousand pounds. The
bishop would be ecstatic.
  The sheep were moved back to their normal pasture
and the Clearys were forced to learn the Outback habit of
siesta. They rose at five, got everything done
before midday, then collapsed in twitching, sweating
heaps until five in the afternoon. This applied both
to the women at the house and the men in the paddocks.
Chores which could not be done early were done after five,
and the evening meal eaten after the sun had gone down at
a table outside on the veranda. All the beds had
been moved outside as well for the heat persisted through
the night. It seemed as if the mercury had not gone
below a century in weeks, day or night. Beef was
a forgotten memory, only a sheep small enough
to last without tainting until it was all eaten. Their
palates longed for a change from the eternal round of
baked mutton chops, mutton stew, shepherd's
pie made of minced mutton, curried mutton,
roast leg of mutton, boiled pickled mutton,
mutton casserole. But at the beginning of
February life changed abruptly for
Meggie and Stuart. They were sent to the convent in
Gillanbone to board, for there was no school closer.
Hal, said Paddy, could learn by correspondence from
Blackfriars School in Sydney when he was old
enough, but in the meantime, since Meggie and Stuart were
used to teachers, Mary Carson had generously offered
to pay for their board and tuition at the Holy Cross
convent. Besides, Fee was too busy with Hal to
  supervise correspondence lessons as well.
It had been tacitly understood from the beginning that
Jack and Hughie would go no further with their
educations; Drogheda needed them on the land, and the land was
what they wanted.
  Meggie and Stuart found it a strange, peaceful
existence at Holy Cross after their life on
Drogheda, but especially after the Sacred Heart in
Wahine. Father Ralph had subtly indicated to the
nuns that this pair of children were his proteges, their aunt
the richest woman in New South Wales. So
Meggie's shyness was transformed from a vice into a
virtue, and Stuart's odd isolation, his habit of
staring for hours into illimitable distances, earned him the
epithet "saintly."
  It was very peaceful indeed, for there were very few
boarders; people of the district wealthy enough to send
their offspring to boarding school invariably perferred
Sydney. The convent smelled of polish and flowers,
its dark high corridors awash with quietness and a
tangible holiness. Voices were muted, life went
on behind a black thin veil. No one caned them,
no one shouted at them, and there was always Father Ralph.
He came to see them often, and had them to stay at the
presbytery so regularly he decided to paint the
bedroom Meggie used a delicate apple green,
buy new curtains for the windows and a new quilt for the
bed. Stuart continued to sleep in a room which had been
cream and brown through two redecorations; it simply
never occurred to Father Ralph to wonder if Stuart was
happy. He was the afterthought who to avoid offense must
also be invited. Just why he was so fond of Meggie
Father Ralph didn't know, nor for that matter did
he spend much time wondering about it. It had begun with
pity that day in the dusty station yard when he had
noticed her lagging behind; set apart from the rest of her
family by virtue of her sex, he had shrewdly
guessed. As to why Frank also moved on an outer
perimeter, this did not
  intrigue him at all, nor did he feel
moved to pity Frank. There was something in Frank which
killed tender emotions: a dark heart, a
spirit lacking inner light. But Meggie? She had
moved him unbearably, and he didn't really know
why. There was the color of her hair, which pleased him;
the color and form of her eyes, like her mother's and therefore
beautiful, but so much sweeter, more expressive; and
her character, which he saw as the perfect female character,
passive yet enormously strong. No rebel,
Meggie; on the contrary. All her life she would
obey, move within the boundaries of her female
fate.
  Yet none of it added up to the full total.
Perhaps, had he looked more deeply into himself, he
might have seen that what he felt for her was the curious
result of time, and place, and person. No one
thought of her as important, which meant there was a
space in her life into which he could fit himself and be
sure of her love; she was a child, and therefore no
danger to his way of life or his priestly
reputation; she was beautiful, and he enjoyed beauty;
and, least acknowledged of all, she filled an empty
space in his life which his God could not, for she had
warmth and a human solidity. Because he could not
embarrass her family by giving her gifts, he
gave her as much of his company as he could, and spent
time and thought on redecorating her room at
the presbytery; not so much to see her pleasure as
to create a fitting setting for his jewel. No
pinchbeck for Meggie. At the beginning of May the
shearers arrived on Drogheda. Mary Carson was
extraordinarily aware of how everything on Drogheda
was done, from deploying the sheep to cracking a stock
whip; she summoned Paddy to the big house some days
before the shearers came, and without moving from her wing chair
she told him precisely what to do down to the last
little detail. Used to New Zealand shearing, Paddy
had been staggered by the size of the shed, its twenty-six
stands; now, after the interview with his sister, facts and
figures
  warred inside his head. Not only would Drogheda
sheep be shorn on Drogheda, but Bugela and
Dibban-Dibban and Beel-Beel sheep as well.
It meant a grueling amount of work for every soul on the
place, male and female. Communal shearing was the
custom and the stations sharing Drogheda's shearing
facilities would naturally pitch in to help, but the
brunt of the incidental work inevitably fell on the
shoulders of those on Drogheda. The shearers would bring
their own cook with them and buy their food from the station
store, but those vast amounts of food had to be found;
the ramshackle barracks with kitchen and
primitive bathroom attached had to be scoured,
cleaned and equipped with mattresses and blankets.
Not all stations were as generous as Drogheda was to its
shearers, but Drogheda prided itself on its
hospitality, and its reputation as a "bloody good
shed." For this was the one activity in which Mary Carson
participated, so she didn't stint her purse. Not
only was it one of the biggest sheds in New South
Wales, but it required the very best men to be had,
men of the Jackie Howe caliber; over three
hundred thousand sheep would be shorn there before the shearers
loaded their swags into the contractor's old Ford
truck and disappeared down the track to their next shed.
  Frank had not been home for two weeks. With
old Beerbarrel Pete the stockman, a team of
dogs, two stock horses and a light sulky
attached to an unwilling nag to hold their modest
needs, they had set out for the far western paddocks
to bring the sheep in, working them closer and closer,
culling and sorting. It was slow, tedious work, not to be
compared with that wild muster before the floods. Each
paddock had its own stockyards, in which some of the
grading and marking would be done and the mobs held until
it was their turn to come in. The shearing shed yards
accommodated only ten thousand sheep at a
time, so life wouldn't be easy while the shearers were
there; it would be a constant flurry of exchanging
mobs, unshorn for shorn.
  When Frank stepped into his mother's kitchen she was
standing beside the sink at a never-ending job, peeling
potatoes.
  "Mum, I'm home!" he said, joy in his
voice.
  As she swung around her belly showed, and his two
weeks away lent his eyes added perception.
  "Oh, God!" he said.
  Her eyes lost their pleasure in seeing him, her
face flooded with scarlet shame; she spread her
hands over her ballooning apron as if they could
hide what her clothes could not.
  Frank was shaking. "The dirty old goat!"
  "Frank, I can't let you say things like that.
You're a man now, you ought to understand. This is no
different from the way you came into the world yourself, and it
deserves the same respect. It isn't dirty.
When you insult Daddy, you insult me."
  "He had no right! He should have left you alone!"
Frank hissed, wiping a fleck of foam from the
corner of his trembling mouth. "It isn't dirty,"
she repeated wearily, and looked at him from
her clear tired eyes as if she had suddenly
decided to put shame behind her forever. "It's not
dirty, Frank, and nor is the act which created
it."
  This time his face reddened. He could not continue
to meet her gaze, so he turned and went through into the
room he shared with Bob, Jack and Hughie. Its
bare walls and little single beds mocked him, mocked
him, the sterile and featureless look to it, the lack
of a presence to warm it, a purpose to hallow it. And
her face, her beautiful tired face with its prim
halo of golden hair, all alight because of what she
and that hairy old goat had done in the terrible heat
of summer.
  He could not get away from it, he could not get
away from her, from the thoughts at the back of his mind, from
the hungers natural to his age and manhood.
Mostly he managed to push it all below consciousness,
but when she flaunted tangible evidence of her
  lust before his eyes, threw her mysterious activity
with that lecherous old beast in his very teeth .... How
could he think of it, how could he consent to it, how could
he bear it? He wanted to be able to think of her as
totally holy, pure and untainted as the Blessed
Mother, a being who was above such things though all
her sisters throughout the world be guilty of it. To see
her proving his concept of her wrong was the road
to madness. It had become necessary to his sanity
to imagine that she lay with that ugly old man in
perfect cha/y, to have a place to sleep, but that in the
night they never turned toward each other, or touched.
Oh, God!
  A scraping clang made him look down, to find
he had twisted the brass rail of the bed's foot
into an S.
  "Why aren't you Daddy?" he asked it.
  "Frank," said his mother from the doorway.
  He looked up, disblack eyes glittering and
wet like rained-upon coal. "I'll end up killing
him," he said.
  "If you do that, you'll kill me," said Fee, coming
to sit upon the bed. "No, I'd free you!" he
countered wildly, hopefully. "Frank, I can
never be free, and I don't want to be free. I
wish I knew where your blindness comes from, but I
don't. It isn't mine, nor is it your father's.
I know you're not happy, but must you take it out on
me, and on Daddy? Why do you insist upon making
everything so hard? Why?" She looked down at her
hands, looked up at him. "I don't
want to say this, but I think I have to. It's time you
found yourself a girl, Frank, got married and had a
family of your own. There's room on Drogheda.
I've never been worried about the other boys in that
respect; they don't seem to have your nature at
all. But you need a wife, Frank. If you had
one, you wouldn't have time to think about me."
  He had turned his back upon her, and wouldn't
turn around. For perhaps five minutes she sat on the
bed hoping he would say something, then she sighed, got
up and left.
  After the shearers had gone and the district had settled
into the semi-inertia of winter came the annual
Gillanbone Show and Picnic Races. It was the
most important event in the social calendar, and
went on for two days. Fee didn't feel well
enough to go, so Paddy drove Mary Carson into town in
her Rolls-Royce without his wife to support him
or keep Mary's tongue in its silent position.
He had noticed that for some mysterious reason
Fee's very presence quelled his sister, put her at
a disadvantage. Everyone else was going. Under
threat of death to behave themselves, the boys rode in with
Beerbarrel Pete, Jim, Tom, Mrs. Smith
and the maids in the truck, but Frank left
early on his own in the model-T Ford. The
adults of the party were all staying over for the second
day's race meeting; for reasons known best to herself,
Mary Carson declined Father Ralph's offer of
accommodation at the presbytery, but urged Paddy
to accept it for himself and Frank. Where the two
stockmen and Tom, the garden rouseabout, stayed no
one knew, but Mrs. Smith, Minnie and Cat had
friends in Gilly who put them up. It was ten in the
morning when Paddy deposited his sister in the best
room the Hotel Imperial had to offer;
  he made his way down to the bar and found Frank
standing at it, a schooner of beer in his hand.
  "Let me buy the next one, old man,"
Paddy said genially to his son. "I've got
to take Auntie Mary to the Picnic Races
luncheon, and I need moral sustenance if I'm
going to get through the ordeal without Mum." Habit and
awe are harder to overcome than people realize until
they actually try to circumvent the conduct of years;
Frank found he could not do what he longed to do, he
could not throw the contents of his glass in his father's
face, not in front of a bar crowd. So he downed
what was left of his beer at a gulp, smiled a little
sickly and said, "Sorry, Daddy,
I've promised to meet some blokes down at the
showground."
  "Well, off you go, then. But here, take this and
spend it on yourself. Have a good time, and if you get
drunk don't let your mother find out." Frank stared
at the crisp blue five-pound note in his hand,
longing to tear it into shreds and fling them in Paddy's
face, but custom won again; he folded it, put it
in his fob pocket and thanked his father. He couldn't
get out of the bar quickly enough.
  In his best blue suit, waistcoat buttoned,
gold watch secured by a gold chain and a weight
made from a nugget off the Lawrence goldfields,
Paddy tugged at his celluloid collar and looked
down the bar for a face he might recognize. He
had not been into Gilly very often during the nine months
since he arrived on Drogheda, but his position as
Mary Carson's brother and heir apparent meant that
he had been treated very hospitably whenever he had
been in town, and that his face was well remembered.
Several men beamed at him, voices offered to shout
him a beer, and he was soon in the middle of a comfortable
little crowd; Frank was forgotten.
  Meggie's hair was braided these days, no nun
being willing (in spite of Mary
Carson's money) to attend to its curling, and it lay
in two thick cables over her
  shoulders, tied with navy-blue ribbons. Clad
in the sober navy-blue uniform of a Holy Cross
student, she was escorted across the lawn from the convent
to the presbytery by a nun and handed over to Father
Ralph's housekeeper, who adored her.
  "Och, it's the wee bairn's bonnie
Hielan' hair," she explained to the priest once
when he questioned her, amused; Annie wasn't given
to liking little girls, and had deplored the
presbytery's proximity to the school. "Come now,
Annie! Hair's inanimate; you can't like someone just
because of the color of her hair," he said, to tease her.
  "Ah, week she's a puir wee
lassie-skeggy, ye ken."
  He didn't ken at all, but he didn't ask
her what "skeggy" meant, either, or pass any
remarks about the fact that it rhymed with Meggie.
Sometimes it was better not to know what Annie meant,
or encourage her by paying much attention to what she
said; she was, in her own parlance, fey, and if she
pitied the child he didn't want to be told it was because
of her future rather than her past.
  Frank arrived, still trembling from his
encounter with his father in the bar, and at a loose end.
  "Come on, Meggie, I'll take you to the
fair," he said, holding out his hand.
  "Why don't I take you both?" Father Ralph
asked, holding out his. Sandwiched between the two men
she worshipped, and hanging on to their hands for dear
life, Meggie was in seventh heaven. The
Gillanbone showground lay on the banks of the
Barwon River, next door to the racecourse.
Though the floods were six months gone, the mud had
not com. pletely dried, and the eager feet of early
comers had already pulped it to a mire. Beyond the stalls
of sheep and cattle, pigs and goats, the prime and
perfect livestock competing for prizes, lay tents
full of handicrafts and cooking. They gazed at
stock, cakes, crocheted 117
  shawls, knitted baby clothes, embroidered
tablecloths, cats and dogs and canaries.
  On the far side of all this was the riding ring, where
young equestrians and equestriennes cantered their
bobtailed hacks before judges who looked, it
seemed to a giggling Meggie, rather like horses themselves.
Lady riders in magnificent serge habits
perched sidesaddle on tall horses, their top
hats swathed with tantalizing wisps of
veiling. How anyone so precariously mounted and
hatted could stay unruffled upon a horse at anything
faster than an amble was beyond Meggie's imagination,
until she saw one splendid creature take her
prancing animal over a series of difficult
jumps and finish as impeccable as before she started. Then
the lady pricked her mount with an impatient spur
and cantered across the soggy ground, reining to a halt in
front of Meggie, Frank and Father Ralph to bar
their progress. The leg in its polished black
boot hooked round the saddle was unhooked, and the
lady sat truly on the side of her saddle, her
gloved hands extended imperiously. "Father! Be so
kind as to help me dismount!"
  He reached up to put his hands around her waist, her
hands on his shoulders, and swung her lightly down;
the moment her heels touched the ground he released
her, took her mount's reins in his hand and walked
on, the lady beside him, matching his stride
effortlessly. "Will you win the Hunting, Miss
Carmichael?" he asked in tones of utter
indifference.
  She pouted; she was young and very beautiful, and that
curious impersonal quality of his piqued her.
"I hope to win, but I can't be sure.
Miss Hopeton and Mrs. Anthony King both
compete. However, I shall win the Dressage, so if
I don't win the Hunting I shan't repine."
  She spoke with beautifully rounded vowels, andwiththe
oddly stilted phraseology of a young lady so
carefully reared and educated there was not a trace of

  warmth or idiom left to color her voice. As
he spoke to her Father Ralph's own speech became
more pearshaped, and quite lost its beguiling hint of
Irishness; as if she brought back to him a time when
he, too, had been like this. Meggie frowned,
puzzled and affected by their light but guarded words, not
knowing what the change in Father Ralph was, only
knowing there was a change, and not one to her liking. She
let go Frank's hand, and indeed it had become
difficult for them to continue walking abreast. By the time
they came to a wide puddle Frank had fallen behind
them. Father Ralph's eyes danced as he surveyed
the water, almost a shallow pond; he turned to the child
whose hand he had kept in his firmly, and bent down
to her with a special tenderness the lady could not
mistake, for it had been entirely lacking in his
civil exchanges with her. "I wear no cloak,
darling Meggie, so I can't be your Sir
Walter Raleigh. I'm sure you'll excuse
me, my dear Miss Carmichael"-the reins were
passed to the lady8b I can't permit my favorite
girl to muddy her shoes, now can I?" He picked
Meggie up and tucked her easily against his hip,
leaving Miss Carmichael to collect her heavy
trailing skirts in one hand, the reins in her other,
and splash her way across unaided. The sound of
Frank's hoot of laugher just behind them didn't
improve her temper; on the far side of the puddle
she left them abruptly.
  "I do believe she'd kill you if she could,"
Frank said as Father Ralph put Meggie down.
He was fascinated by this encounter and by Father Ralph's
deliberate cruelty. She had seemed to Frank
so beautiful and so haughty that no man could gainsay
her, even a priest, yet Father Ralph had
wantonly set out to shatter her faith in herself, in that
heady femininity she wielded like a weapon. As if
the priest hated her and what she stood for, Frank
thought, the world of women, an ex-
  quisite mystery ,he had never had the
opportunity to plumb. Smarting from his mother's words,
he had wanted Miss Carmichael to notice him,
the oldest son of Mary Carson's heir,
but she had not so much as deigned to admit he existed.
All her attention had been focused on the priest,
a being sexless and emasculated. Even if he was
tall, dark and handsome. "Don't worry, she'll be
back for more of the same," said Father Ralph
cynically. "She's rich, so next Sunday she'll
very ostentatiously put a ten-pound note in the
plate." He laughed at Frank's expression.
"I'm not so much older than you, my son, but in
spite of my calling I'm a very worldly fellow.
Don't hold it against me; just put it down
to experience." They had left the riding ring behind and
entered the amusement part of the grounds. To Meggie and
Frank alike it was enchantment. Father Ralph had
given Meggie five whole shillings, and Frank
had his five pounds; to own the price of admission
to all those enticing booths was wonderful. Crowds
thronged the area, children running everywhere, gazing
wide-eyed at the luridly and somewhat inexpertly
painted legends fronting tattered tents: The
Fattest Lady in the World; Princess Houri the
Snake Dancer (see Her Fan the Flames of a
Cobra's Rage!); The India Rubber Man;
Goliath the World's Strongest Man; Thetis the
Mermaid. At each they paid their pennies
and watched raptly, not noticing Thetis's sadly
tarnished scales or the toothless smile on the
cobra. At the far end, so big it required a
whole side for itself, was a giant marquee with a high
boardwalk along its front, a curtainlike
frieze of painted figures stretching behind the entire
length of the board bridge, menacing the crowd. A
man with a megaphone in his hand was shouting to the gathering
people.
  "Here it is, gents, Jimmy Sharman's famous
boxing troupe! Eight of the world's greatest prize
fighters, and a purse to be won by any chap game
to have a go!"
  Women and girls were trickling out of the audience as
fast as men and boys came from every direction to swell
it, clustering thickly beneath the boardwalk. As
solemnly as gladiators parading at the Circus
Maximus, eight men filed onto the bridge and
stood, bandaged hands on hips, legs apart,
swaggering at the admiring oohs of the crowd. Meggie
thought they were wearing underclothes, for they were clad in long
black tights and vests with closely fitting grey
trunks from waists to midthighs. On their chests,
big white Roman capitals said JIMMY
SHARMAN'S TROUPE. NO two were the
same size, some big, some small, some in between, but
they were all of particularly fine physique.
Chatting and laughing to each other in an offhand manner
that sug- gested this was an everyday occurrence, they
flexed their muscles and tried to pretend they weren't
enjoying strutting.
  "Come on, chaps, who'll take a glove?" the
spruiker was braying. "Who wants to have a go?
Take a glove, win a fiver!" he kept yelling
between the booms of a bass drum.
  "I will!" Frank shouted. "I will, I will!"
  He shook off Father Ralph's restraining hand as
those around them in the throng who could see Frank's
diminutive size began to laugh and good-naturedly
push him to the front.
  But the spruiker was very serious as one of the troupe
extended a friendly hand and pulled Frank up the
ladder to stand at one side of the eight already on the
bridge. "Don't laugh, gents. He's not very
big but he is the first to volunteer! It isn't the
size of the dog in the fight, you know, it's the size
of the fight in the dog! Come on now, here's this little
bloke game to try- what about some of you big
blokes, eh? Put on a glove and win a fiver,
go the distance with one of Jimmy Sharman's
troupe!"
  Gradually the ranks of the volunteers increased,
the young men self-consciously clutching their hats and
eye-
  ing the professionals who stood, a band of elite
beings, alongside them. Dying to stay and see what
happened, Father Ralph reluctantly decided it
was more than time he removed Meggie from the vicinity,
so he picked her up and turned on his heel
to leave. Meggie began to scream, and the farther away
he got, the louder she screamed; people were beginning
to look at them, and he was so well known it was very
embarrassing, not to mention undignified. "Now
look, Meggie, I can't take you in there! Your father
would flay me alive, and rightly!"
  "I want to stay with Frank, I want to stay with
Frank!" she howled at the top of her voice,
kicking and trying to bite.
  "Oh, shit!" said Father Ralph.
  Yielding to the inevitable, he dug into his
pocket for the required coins and approached the open
flap of the marquee, one eye cocked for any of the
Cleary boys; but they were nowhere to be seen, so he
presumed they were safely trying their luck with the
horseshoes or gorging themselves on meat
pies and ice cream.
  "You can't take her in there, Father!" the foreman
said, shocked. Father Ralph lifted his eyes
heavenward. "If you'll only tell me how we can
get her away from here without the entire Gilly
police force arresting us for molesting a child, I'll
gladly go! But her brother volunteered and she's not
about to leave her brother without a fight that will make your
chaps look like amateurs!"
  The foreman shrugged. "Well, Father, I can't
argue with you, can I? In you go, but keep her out of the
way, for-ah-pity's sake. No, no, Father, put
your money back in your pocket; Jimmy wouldn't like
it."
  The tent seemed full of men and boys, milling
around a central ring; Father Ralph found a place
at the back of the crowd against the canvas wall,
hanging on to Meggie for dear life. The air was
foggy from tobacco smoke and redolent with sawdust they
had
  thrown down to absorb the mud. Frank, gloves
already on his hands, was the first challenger of the day.
  Though it was unusual, it was not unknown for a man out
of the crowd to last the distance against one of the professional
boxers. Admittedly they weren't the best
in the world, but they did include some of the best in
Australia. Put up against a flyweight because of his
size, Frank knocked him out with the third punch he
threw, and offered to fight someone else. By the time, he
was on his third professional the word had got around,
and the tent was so jammed they could not fit another eager
spectator inside. He had hardly been touched
by a glove, the fewblows he had taken only
provoking his ever-smoldering rage. He was
wild-eyed, almost spitting in passion, each of his
opponents wearing Paddy's face, the yells and
cheers of the crowd throbbing in his head like a vast single
voice chanting Go! Go! Go! Oh, how he had
ached for the chance to fight, denied him since coming
to Drogheda! For to fight was the only way he knew
of ridding himself of anger and pain, and as he landed the
felling punch he thought the great dull voice in his
ears changed its song, to Kill! Kill! Kill!
Then they put him with one of the real champions, a
lightweight under orders to keep Frank at a
distance and find out if he could box as well as he could
punch. Jimmy Sharman's eyes were shining. He was
always on the lookout for champions, and these little
country shows had yielded several. The lightweight
did as he was told, hard-pressed in
spite of his superior reach, while Frank, so
possessed by his hunger to kill that dancing,
elusive figure he saw nothing else, went after
him. He learned with every clinch and flurry of blows,
one of those strange people who even in the midst of
titanic rake still can think. And he lasted the distance,
in spite of the punishment those expert fists had meted
out; his eye was swelling, his brow and lip cut. But
he 123
  had won twenty pounds, and the respect of every man
present. Meggie wriggled from Father Ralph's
slackened clasp and bolted from the tent before he could
catch hold of her. When he found her outside she
had been sick, and was trying to clean her splattered
shoes with a tiny handkerchief. Silently he gave
her his own, stroking her bright, sobbing head. The
atmosphere inside had not agreed with his gorge either,
and he wished the dignity of his calling permitted him
the relief of releasing it in public.
  "Do you want to wait for Frank, or would you rather
we went now?" "I'll wait for Frank," she
whispered, leaning against his side, so grateful for his
calmness and sympathy.
  "I wonder why you tug so at my nonexistent
heart?" he mused, deeming her too sick
and miserable to listen but needing to voice his thoughts
aloud, as do so many people who lead a solitary life.
"You don't remind me of my mother and I never had a
sister, and I wish I knew what it was about you and your
wretched family . . . . Have you had a. hard
life, my little Meggie?" Frank came out of the
tent, a piece of sticking plaster over his eye,
dabbing at his torn lip. For the first time since Father
Ralph had met him, he looked happy; the way
most men did after what one knew was a good night in
bed with a woman, thought the priest.
  "What's Meggie doing here?" he snarled, not quite
down from the exaltation of the ring.
  "Short of binding her hand and foot, not to mention
gagging her, there was no way I could keep her out,"
said Father Ralph tartly, not pleased at having
to justify himself, but not sure Frank wouldn't have a go
at him, too. He wasn't in the least afraid of
Frank, but he was afraid of creating a scene in
public. "She was frightened for you, Frank; she
wanted to be near enough to you to see for herself that you were all
right. Don't be angry with her; she's upset enough
already."
  "Don't you dare let Daddy know you were within a
mile of this place," Frank said
to Meggie.
  "Do you mind if we cut the rest of our tour
short?" the priest asked. "I think we could all do
with a rest and a cup of tea at the presbytery." He
pinched the tip of Meggie's nose. "And you, young
lady, could do with a good wash."
  Paddy had had a tormenting day with his sister, at
her beck and call in a way Fee never demanded,
helping her pick her fastidious, cross-patch
way through the Gilly mud in imported guipure
lace shoes, smiling and chatting with the people she greeted
royally, standing by her side as she presented the
emerald bracelet to the winner of the principal
race, the Gillanbone Trophy. Why they had
to spend all the prize money on a woman's
trinket instead of handing over a gold-plated cup
and a nice bundle of cash was beyond him, for he did not
understand the keenly amateur nature of the race
meeting, the inference that the people who entered horses
didn't need vulgar money, instead could carelessly
toss the winnings to the little woman. Horry
Hopeton, whose bay gelding King Edward had won
the emerald bracelet, already possessed a ruby,
a diamond and a sapphire bracelet from other
years; he had a wife and five daughters
and said he couldn't stop until he had won six
bracelets.
  Paddy's starched shirt and celluloid collar
chafed, the blue suit was too hot, and the exotic
Sydney seafood they had served with champagne at
luncheon had not agreed with his mutton-inured
digestion. And he had felt a fool, thought he
looked a fool. Best though it was, his suit
smacked of cheap tailoring and bucolic
unfashionableness. They were not his kind of people, the bluff
tweedy graziers, the lofty matrons, the toothy,
horsy young women, the cream of what the Bulletin
called "the squattocracy." For they were doing their
best to forget the days in the last century when they
  had squatted on the land and taken vast tracts of
it for their own, had it tacitly acknowledged as their own
with federation and the arrival of home rule. They had
become the most envied group of people on the continent,
ran their own political party, sent their children
to exclusive Sydney schools, hobnobbed with the
visiting Prince of Wales. He, plain Paddy
Cleary, was a workingman. He had absolutely
nothing in common with these colonial aristocrats, who
reminded him of his wife's family too much for
comfort. So when he came into the presbytery
lounge to find Frank, Meggie and Father Ralph
relaxed around the fire and looking as if they had
spent a wonderful, carefree day, it irritated
him. He had missed Fee's genteel support
unbearably and he still disliked his sister as much as he
had back in his early childhood in Ireland. Then
he noticed the sticking plaster over Frank's
eye, the swollen face; it was a heaven-sent
excuse. "And how do you think you're going to face your
mother looking like that?" he yelled. "Not a day out of my
sight and you're back at it again, picking fights with
anyone who looks at you sideways!"
  Startled, Father Ralph jumped to his feet with a
soothing noise half-uttered; but Frank was quicker.
  "I earned myself money with this!" he said very softly,
pointing to the plaster. "Twenty pounds for a few
minutes' work, better wages than Auntie Mary
pays you and me combined in a month! I knocked out
three good boxers and lasted the distance with a lightweight
champion in Jimmy Sharman's tent this afternoon. And
I earned myself twenty pounds. It may not fit in with
your ideas of what I ought to do, but this afternoon I earned
the respect of every man present!"
  "A few tired, punch-drunk old has-beens
at a country show, and you're full of it?
Grow up, Frank! I know you can't grow any more in
body, but you might make an effort for your mother's
sake to grow in mind!" The whiteness of Frank's
face! Like bleached bones. 126
  It was the most terrible insult a man could offer
him, and this was his father; he couldn't strike back. His
breathing started coming from the bottom of his chest with the effort
of keeping his hands by his sides. "No has-beens,
Daddy. You know who Jimmy Sharman is as well
as I do. And Jimmy Sharman himself said I had a
terrific future as a boxer; he wants to take
me into his troupe and train me. And he wants
to pay me! I may not grow any bigger, but I'm
big enough to lick any man ever born-and that goes for
you, too, you stinking old he-goat!"
  The inference behind the epithet was not lost on Paddy;
he went as white as his son. "Don't you dare
call me that!"
  "What else are you? You're disgusting, you're
worse than a ram in rut! Couldn't you leave her
alone, couldn't you keep your hands off her?" "No,
no, no!" Meggie screamed. Father Ralph's hands
bit into her shoulders like claws and held her
painfully against him. The tears poured down her
face, she twisted to free herself
frantically and vainly. "No, Daddy, no! Oh,
Frank, please! Please, please!" she
shrilled.
  But the only one who heard her was Father Ralph.
Frank and Paddy faced each other, the dislike and the
fear, each for the other, admitted at last. The dam
of mutual love for Fee was breached and the bitter
rivalry for Fee acknowledged.
  "I am her husband. It is by God's grace
we are blessed with our children," said Paddy more calmly,
fighting for control.
  "You're no better than a shitty old dog after
any bitch you can stick your thing into!"
  "And you're no better than the shitty old dog
who fathered you, whoever he was! Thank God I never
had a hand in it!" shouted Paddy, and stopped. "Oh,
dear Jesus!" His rage quit him like a howling
wind, he sagged and shriveled and his hands plucked at
his
  mouth as if to tear out the tongue which had uttered the
unutterable. "I didn't mean it, I didn't
mean it! 1 dic'n't mean it!" The moment the words
were out Father Ralph let go of Meggie and grabbed
Frank. He had Frank's right arm twisted behind
him, his own left arm around Frank's
neck, throttling him. And he was strong, the grip
paralyzing; Frank fought to be free of him, then
suddenly his resistance flagged and he shook his head in
submission. Meggie had fallen to the floor and
knelt there, weeping, her eyes going from her brother
to her father in helpless, beseeching agony. She
didn't understand what had happened, but she knew it
meant she couldn't keep them both.
  "You meant it," Frank croaked. "I must always
have known it! I must always have known it." He tried
to turn his head to Father Ralph. "Let me go,
Father. I won't touch him; so help me God I
won't."
  "So help you God? God rot your souls, both
of you! If you've ruined the child I'll kill you!" the
priest roared, the only one angry now. "Do you
realize I had to keep her here to listen to this, for fear
if I took her away you'd kill each other while
I was gone? I ought to have let you do it, you miserable,
self-centered cretins!"
  "It's all right, I'm going," Frank said in a
strange, empty voice. "I'm going to join
Jimmy Sharman's troupe, and I won't be
back."
  "You've got to come back!" Paddy
whispered. "What can I tell your mother? You mean more
to her than the rest of us put together. She'll never
forgive me!"
  "Tell her I went to join Jimmy Sharman because
I want to be someone. It's the truth."
  "What I said-it wasn't true, Frank."
  Frank's alien black eyes flashed
scornfully, the eyes the priest had wondered at the
first time he saw them; what were grey-eyed Fee and
blue-eyed Paddy doing with a black-eyed son? Father
Ralph knew his 128
  Mendelian laws, and didn't think even
Fee's greyness made it possible. Frank
picked up his hat and coat. "Oh, it was true!
I must always have known it. The memories of Mum
playing her spinet in a room you could never have owned!
The feeling you hadn't always been there, that you came after
me. That she was mine first." He laughed soundlessly.
"And to think all these years I've blamed you for
dragging her down, when it was me. It was me!" "It was
no one, Frank, no one!" the priest cried,
trying to pull him back. "It's a part of God's
great unfathomable plan; think of it like that!" Frank
shook off the detaining hand and walked to the door with his
light, deadly, tiptoed gait. He was
born to be a boxer, thought Father Ralph in some
detached corner of his brain, that cardinal's brain.
"God's great unfathomable plan!" mocked the young
man's voice from the door. "You're no better
than a parrot when you act the priest, Father de
Bricassart! I say God help you, because you're
the only one of us here who has no idea what he
really is!"
  Paddy was sitting in a chair, ashen, his shocked
eyes on Meggie as she huddled on her knees by the
fire, weeping and rocking herself back and forth. He
got up to go to her, but Father Ralph pushed him
roughly away. "Leave her alone. You've done
enough! There's whiskey in the sideboard; take some.
I'm going to put the child to bed, but I'll be back
to talk to you, so don't go. Do you hear me, man?"
  "I'll be here, Father. Put her to bed."
  Upstairs in the charming apple-green bedroom the
priest unbuttoned the little girl's dress and
chemise, made her sit on the edge of the bed so he
could pull off her shoes and stockings. Her
nightdress lay on the pillow where Annie had
left it; he tugged it over her head and decently
down before he removed her
  drawers. And all the while he talked
to her about nothing, silly stories of buttons
refusing to come undone, and shoes stubbornly staying
tied, and ribbons that would not come off. It was
impossible to tell if she heard him; with their
unspoken tales of infant tragedies, of troubles
and pains beyond her years, the eyes stared drearily
past his shoulder. "Now lie down, my darling girl,
and try to go to sleep. I'll be back in a little
while to see you, so don't worry, do you hear?
We'll talk about it then."
  "Is she all right?" asked Paddy as he came
back into the lounge. Father Ralph reached for the
whiskey bottle standing on the sideboard, and poured
a tumbler half full.
  "I don't honestly know. God in heaven,
Paddy, I wish I knew which is an Irishman's
greater curse, the drink or the temper. What
possessed you to say that? No, don't even bother
answering! The temper. It's true, of course. I
knew he wasn't yours the moment I first saw him."
  "There's not much misses you, is there?"
  "I suppose not. However, it doesn't take
much more than very ordinary powers of observation to see when
the various members of my parish are troubled, or in
pain. And having seen, it is my duty to do
what I can to help."
  "You're very well liked in Gilly, Father."
  "For which no doubt I may thank my face and my
figure," said the priest bitterly, unable to make
it sound as light as he had intended. "Is that what you
think? I can't agree, Father. We like you because you're
a good pastor."
  "Well, I seem to be thoroughly embroiled in
your troubles, at any rate," said Father Ralph
uncomfortably. "You'd best get it off your chest,
man." Paddy stared into the fire, which he had built
up to the proportions of a furnace while the priest
was putting Meggie to bed, in an excess of
remorse and frantic 130
  1921-1928 RALPH
  to be doing something. The empty glass in his hand
shook in a series of rapid jerks; Father Ralph
got up for the whiskey bottle and replenished it.
After a long draft Paddy sighed, wiping the
forgotten tears from his face. "I don't know who
Frank's father is. It happened before I met
Fee. Her people are practically New Zealand's first
family socially, and her father had a big
wheat-and-sheep property outside Ashburton in the
South Island. Money was no object, and
Fee was his only daughter. As I understand it, he'd
planned her life for her-a trip to the old country,
a debut at court, the right husband. She had never
lifted a hand in the house, of course. They had
maids and butlers and horses and big carriages;
they lived like lords. "I was the dairy hand, and sometimes
I used to see Fee in the distance, walking with a little
boy about eighteen months old. The next thing, old
James Armstrong came to see me. His daughter,
he said, had disgraced the family; she wasn't
married and she had a child. It hale been hushed up,
of course, but when they tried to get her away her
grandmother made such a fuss they had no choice but
to keep her on the place, in spite of the
awkwardness. Now the grandmother was dying, there was nothing
to stop them getting rid of Fee and her child. I was a
single man, James said; if I'd marry her and
guarantee to take her out of the South Island, they'd
pay our traveling expenses and an additional five
hundred pounds. "Well, Father, it was a fortune
to me, and I was tired of the single life. But I was
always so shy I was never any good with the girls. It
seemed like a good idea to me, and I honestly
didn't mind the child. The grandmother got wind of it and
sent for me, even though she was very ill. She
was a tartar in her day, I'll bet, but a real
lady. She told me a bit about Fee, but she
didn't say who the father was, and I didn't like
to ask. Anyway, she made me promise to be good
to Fee 131
  comshe knew they'd have Fee off the place the
minute she was dead, so she had suggested to James that
they find Fee a husband. I felt sorry for the
poor old thing; she was terribly fond of Fee.
  "Would you believe, Father, that the first time I was ever
close enough to Fee to say hello to her was the day I
married her?" "Oh, I'd believe it," the priest
said under his breath. He looked at the liquid in his
glass, then drained it and reached for the bottle,
filling both glasses. "So you married a lady far
above you, Paddy."
  "Yes. I was frightened to death of her at first. She
was so beautiful in those days, Father, and so . . . out of
it, if you know what I mean. As if she wasn't
even there, as if it was all happening to someone else."
"She's still beautiful, Paddy," said Father Ralph
gently. "I can see in Meggie what she must have
been like before she began to age."
  "It hasn't been an easy life for her, Father,
but I don't know what else I could have
done. At least with me she was safe, and not abused.
It took me two years to get up the courage
to be-well, a real husband to her. I had to teach her
to cook, to sweep a floor, wash and iron clothes.
She didn't know how.
  "And never once in all the years we've been
married, Father, has she ever complained, or laughed,
or cried. It's only in the most private part of
our life together that she ever displays any feeling, and
even then she never speaks. I hope she will, yet
I don't want her to, because I always have the idea
if she did, it would be his name she'd say. Oh, I
don't mean she doesn't like me, or our children. But
I love her so much, and it just seems to me she
hasn't got that sort of feeling left in her.
Except for Frank. I've always known she loved
Frank more than the rest of us put together. She must have
loved his father. But I don't know a thing about the man,
who he was, why she couldn't marry him."
  Father Ralph looked down at his hands, blinking.
  "Oh, Paddy, what hell it is to be alive!
Thank God I haven't the courage to try more than
the fringe of it."
  Paddy got up, rather unsteadily. "Well,
I've done it now, Father, haven't I?
I've sent Frank away, and Fee will never
forgive me."
  "You can't tell her, Paddy. No, you mustn't
tell her, ever. Just tell her Frank ran away
with the boxers and leave it at that. She knows how restless
Frank's been; she'll believe you."
  "I couldn't do that, Father!" Paddy was aghast.
"You've got to, Paddy. Hasn't she known enough
pain and misery? Don't heap more on her head." And
to himself he thought: Who knows? Maybe she'll learn
to give the love she has for Frank to you at last,
to you and the little thing upstairs.
  "You really think that, Father?"
  "I do. What happened tonight must go no further."
  "But what about Meggie? She heard it all."
  "Don't worry about Meggie, I'll take
care of her. I don't think she understood more of what
went on than that you and Frank quarreled. I'll
make her see that with Frank gone, to tell her mother
of the quarrel would only be an additional grief.
Besides, I have a feeling Meggie doesn't tell
her mother much to begin with." He got up. "Go to bed,
Paddy. You've got to seem normal and dance
attendance on Mary tomorrow, remember?" Meggie was not
asleep; she was lying with eyes wide in the
dim light of the little lamp beside her bed. The priest
sat down beside her and noticed her hair still in its
braids. Carefully he untied the navy ribbons
and pulled gently until the hair lay in a
rippling, molten sheet across the pillow. "Frank
has gone away, Meggie," he said.
  "I know, Father."
  "Do you know why, darting?"
  "He had a fight with Daddy."
  "What are you going to do?"
  "I'm going to go with Frank. He needs me."
  "You can't, my Meggie."
  "Yes, I can. I was going to find him tonight, but my
legs wouldn't hold me up, and I don't like the
dark. But in the morning I'll look for him."
"No, Meggie, you mustn't. You see, Frank's
got his own life to lead, and it's time he went
away. I know you don't want him to go away, but
he's been wanting to go for a long time. You mustn't be
selfish; you've got to let him live his own
life." The monotony of repetition, he thought,
keep on drumming it in. "When we grow up it's
natural and right for us to want a life away from the
home we grew up in, and Frank is a grown
man. He ought to have his own home now, his own
wife and family. Do you see that, Meggie? The
fight between your daddy and Frank was only a sign of
Frank's wanting to go. It didn't happen because they
don't like each other. It happened because that's the way
a lot of young men leave home, it's a sort of
excuse. The fight was just an excuse for Frank
to do what he's been wanting to do for a long time, an
excuse for Frank to leave. Do you understand that, my
Meggie?" Her eyes shifted to his face and rested
there. They were so exhausted, so full of pain, so
old. "I know," she said. "I know. Frank
wanted to go away when I was a little girl, and he
didn't go. Daddy brought him back and made him
stay with us."
  "But this time Daddy isn't going to bring him back,
because Daddy can't make him stay now. Frank has
gone for good, Meggie. He isn't coming back."
"Won't I ever see him again?"
  "I don't know," he answered honestly. "I'd
like to say of course you will, but no one can predict the
future, Meggie, even priests." He drew a
breath. "You mustn't tell Mum there was a fight,
Meggie, do you hear me? It would upset her very much,
and she isn't well."
  "Because there's going to be another baby?"
  "What do you know about that?"
  "Mum likes growing babies; she's done it a
lot. And she grows such nice babies, Father, even
when she isn't well. I'm going to grow one like
Hal myself, then I won't miss Frank so much,
will I?" "Parthenogenesis," he said. "Good luck,
Meggie. Only what if you don't manage to grow
one?"
  "I've still got Hal," she said sleepily,
nestling down. Then she said, "Father, will you go away,
too? Will you?"
  "One day, Meggie. But not soon, I think, so
don't worry. I have a feeling I'm going to be
stuck in Gilly for a long, long time," answered the
priest, his eyes bitter.
  There was no help for it, Meggie had to come home.
Fee could not manage without her, and the moment he was
left alone at the convent in Gilly, Stuart went
on a hunger strike, so he too came back
to Drogheda. It was August, and bitterly cold.
Just a year since they had arrived in Australia; but
this was a colder winter than last. The rain was absent
and the air was so crisp it hurt the lungs. Up on
the tops of the Great Divide three hundred miles
to the east, snow lay thicker than in many
years, but no rain had fallen west of Burren
Junction since the monsoonal drenching of the
previous summer. People in Gilly were speaking of
another drought: it was overdue, it must come, perhaps this
would be it. When Meggie saw her mother, she felt as
if an awful weight settled upon her being; maybe
a leaving-behind of childhood, a presentiment of what
it was to be a woman. Outwardly there was no change,
aside from the big belly; but inwardly Fee had
slowed down like a tired old clock, running time
down and down until it was forever stilled. The
briskness Meggie had never known absent from her mother
had gone. She picked her feet up and put them
down again as if she was no longer sure of the right way
to do it, a sort of spiritual fum-
  bling got into her gait; and there was no joy in her
for the coming baby, not even the rigidly controlled content
she had shown over Hal. That little red-haired fellow
was toddling all over the house, constantly into everything,
but Fee made no attempt to discipline him, or
even supervise his activities. She plodded in
her self-perpetuating circle of stove, worktable and
sink as if nothing else existed. So Meggie had
no choice; she simply filled the vacuum in the
child's life and became his mother. It wasn't
any sacrifice, for she loved him dearly and found
him a helpless, willing target for all the love she
was beginning to want to lavish on some human
creature. He cried for her, he spoke her name
before all others, he lifted his arms to her to be
picked up; it was so satisfying it filled her with
joy. In spite of the drudgery, the knitting and
mending and sewing, the washing, the ironing, the hens, all
the other jobs she had to do, Meggie found her life
very pleasant.
  No one ever mentioned Frank, but every six weeks
Fee would lift her head when she heard the mail
call, and for a while be animated. Then Mrs.
Smith would bring in their share of whatever had come, and
when it contained no letter from Frank the small burst of
painful interest would die. There were two new lives
in the house. Fee was delivered of twins, two more
tiny red-haired Cleary boys, christened James
and Patrick. The dearest little fellows, with their
father's sunny disposition and his sweetness of nature,
they became common property immediately they were born, for
"beyond giving them milk Fee took no interest in
them. Soon their names were shortened to Jims and
Patsy; they were prime favorites with the women up
at the big house, the two spinster maids
and the widowed childless housekeeper, who were starved for the
deliciousness of babies. It was made magically
easy for Fee to forget them-they had three very eager
mothers-and as time went on it became the accepted
  thing that they should spend most of their waking hours up
at the big house. Meggie just didn't have time
to take them under her wing as well as managing Hal,
who was extremely possessive. Not for him the
awkward, unpracticed blandishments of Mrs.
Smith, Minnie and Cat. Meggie was the loving
nucleus of Hal's world; he wanted no one but
Meggie, he would have no one but Meggie.
  Bluey Williams traded in his lovely
draft horses and his massive dray for a truck
and the mail came every four weeks instead of every six, but
there was never a word from Frank. And gradually his
memory slipped a little, as memories do, even those
with so much love attached to them; as if there is an
unconscious healing process within the mind which mends
up in spite of our desperate determination never
to forget. To Meggie, an aching fading of the way
Frank had looked, a blurring of the beloved
lineaments to some fuzzy, saintlike image no more
related to the real Frank than a holypicture
Christ to what must have been the Man. And
to Fee, from out of those silent depths in which she had
stilled the evolution of her soul, a substitution.
It came about so unobtrusively that no one
noticed. For Fee kept herself folded up with
quietness, and a total undemonstrativeness; the
substitution was an inner thing no one had time to see,
except the new object of her love, who made
no outward sign. It was a hidden, unspoken thing
between them, something to buffer their loneliness.
  Perhaps it was inevitable, forof all her children Stuart was
the only one like her. At fourteen he was as big a
mystery to his father and brothers as Frank had been,
but unlike Frank he engendered no hostility, no
irritation. He did as he was told without complaint,
worked as hard as anyone and created absolutely no
ripples in the pool of Cleary life. Though his
hair was red he was the darkest of all the boys, more
mahog-
  any, and his eyes were as clear as pale water in the
shade, as if they reached all the way back in time
to the very beginning, and saw everything as it really was.
He was also the only one of Paddy's sons who
promised adult handsomeness, though privately
Meggie thought her Hal would outshine him when it came
his turn to grow up. No one ever knew
what Stuart was thinking; like Fee, he spoke little and
never aired an opinion. And he had a curious
knack of being utterly still, as still within himself as he was in
body, and to Meggie, closest to him in age, it
seemed he could go somewhere no one else could ever
follow. Father Ralph expressed it another way.
"That lad isn't human!" he had exclaimed the
day he dumped a hunger-striking Stuart back at
Drogheda after he was left at the convent minus
Meggie. "Did he say he wanted to go home?
Did he say he missed Meggie? No! He just
stopped eating and patiently waited for the reason why
to sink into our thick skulls. Not once did he
open his mouth to complain, and when I marched up to him and
yelled did he want to go home, he simply
smiled at me and nodded!"
  But as time went on it was tacitly assumed that
Stuart would not go out into the paddocks to work with Paddy
and the other boys, even though in age he might have.
Stu would remain on guard at the house, chop the
wood, take care of the vegetable garden, do the
milking-the huge number of duties the women had no
time forwith three babies in the house. It was prudent
to have a man about the place, albeit a half-grown
one; it gave proof of other men close
by. For there were visitors-the clump of strange
boots up the plank steps to the back veranda, a
strange voice saying: "Hullo, Missus, got
a bit of tucker for a man?" The Outback had
swarms of them, swagmen humping their blueys from station
to station, down from Queensland and up from Victoria,
men who had lost their luck or were chary of holding a
regular job, pre- -- 139
  ferring to tramp on foot thousands of miles in
search of only they knew what. Mostly they were
decent fellows, who appeared, ate a huge meal,
packed a bit of donated tea and sugar and flour in
the folds of their blueys, then disappeared down the
track headed for Barcoola or Narrengang,
battered old billycans bouncing, skinny dogs
belly down behind them. Australian itinerants
rarely rode; they walked.
  Occasionally a bad man would come, on the lookout
for women whose men were away; with a view to robbery, not
rape. Thus Fee kept a shotgun standing loaded
in a corner of the kitchen where the babies couldn't get
to it, and made sure she was closer to it than her
visitor until her expert eye assessed his character.
After Stuart was officially allotted the house as his
domain, Fee passed the shotgun to him
gladly.
  Not all the visitors were swaggies, though they were
in the majority; there was the Watkins man in his old
model-T, for instance. He carried everything from
horse liniment to fragrant soap unlike the
rock-hard stuff Fee made in the laundry
copper from fat and caustic; he had lavender water
and eau de cologne, powders and creams for
sun-dried faces. There were certain things one never
dreamed of buying from anyone but the Watkins man; like
his ointment, better by far than any drugstore or
prescription salve, capable of healing anything from a
rent in the side of a work dog to an ulcer on a
human shin. The women would crowd around in every kitchen
he visited, waiting eagerly for him to pop open his
big suitcase of wares. And there were other
salesmen, less regular patrollers of the
back-blocks than the Watkins man but equally
welcome, hawking everything from tailor-made
cigarettes and fancy pipes to whole bolts of
material, sometimes even luridly seductive
underwear and lavishly beribboned stays. They were so
starved, these women of the Outback, limited to maybe
one or two trips a
  year into the nearest town, far from the
brilliant shops of Sydney, far from fashions and
feminine furbelows.
  Life seemed mostly flies and dust. There had
not been any rain in a long time, even a sprinkle
to settle the dust and drown the flies; for the less
rain, the more flies, the more dust.
  Every ceiling was festooned with long, lazily spinning
helixes of sticky flypaper, black with bodies
within a day of being tacked up. Nothing could be left
uncovered for a moment without becoming either an orgy or
a graveyard for the flies, and tiny speckles of
fly dirt dewed the furniture, the walls, the
Gillanbone General Store calendar.
  And oh, the dust! There was no getting away from it,
that fine-grained brown powder which seeped into even
tightly lidded containers, dulled freshly washed
hair, made the skin gritty, lay in the folds of
clothes and curtains, smeared a film across polished
tables which resettled the moment it was whisked away.
The floors were thick with it, from carelessly wiped
boots and the hot dry wind drifting it through the open
doors and windows; Fee was forced to roll up her
Persian carpets in the parlor and have Stuart nail
down linoleum she bought sight unseen from the store in
Gilly. The kitchen, which took most of the
traffic from outside, was floored in teak planks
bleached to the color of old bones by endless scrubbing
with a wire brush and lye soap. Fee and Meggie
would strew it with sawdust Stuart carefully
collected from the woodheap, sprinkle the sawdust with
precious particles of water and sweep the damp,
pungent-fragrant mess away out of doors, down
off the veranda onto the vegetable garden, there
to decompose itself to humus.
  But nothing kept the dust at bay for long, and after
a while the creek dried up to a string of
waterholes, so that there was no water to be pumped up
from it to kitchen or bathroom. Stuart took the tank
truck out to the borehead and brought it back full,
emptied it into 141
  one of the spare rain tanks, and the women had to get
used to a different kind of horrible water on dishes
and clothes and bodies, worse than muddy creek
water. The rank, sulphur-smelling minerally stuff
had to be wiped off dishes scrupulously, and made
the hair dull and coarse, like straw. What little rain
water they had was used strictly for drinking and
cooking.
  Father Ralph watched Meggie tenderly. She was
brushing Patsy's curly red head,
Jims standing obediently but a little rockily waiting
for his turn, both pairs of bright blue eyes
turned up to her adoringly. Just like a tiny mother, she
was. It had to be a thing born in them, he mused,
that peculiar obsession women had for infants, else
at her age she would have regarded it as a duty rather
than pure pleasure, and been off to do something more
alluring as fast as she could. Instead she was
deliberately prolonging the process, crimping
Patsy's hair between her fingers to shape waves out of
its unruliness. For a while the priest was charmed with
her activity, then he whacked the side of his dusty
boot with his crop and stared moodily off the veranda
toward the big house, hidden by its ghost gums and
vines, the profusion of station buildings and pepper
trees which lay between its isolation and this hub of station
life, the head stockman's residence. What plot
was she weaving, that old spider up there at the center of
her vast web? "Father, you're not watching!" Meggie
accused him. "I'm sorry, Meggie. I was
thinking." He turned back to her as she finished with
Jims; the three of them stood watching him
expectantly until he bent and scooped the twins
up, one on either hip. "Let's go and see your
Auntie Mary, shall we?"
  Meggie followed him up the track carrying his
crop and leading the chestnut mare; he toted the
infants with easy familiarity and seemed not to mind,
though it was almost a mile from the creek to the big
house. At the 142
  cookhouse he relinquished the twins to an
ecstatic Mrs. Smith and passed on up the
walkway to the main house with Meggie by his side.
Mary Carson was sitting in her wing chair. She
hardly ever moved from it these days; there was not the
necessity any more with Paddy so capable of overseeing
things. As Father Ralph came in holding Meggie's
hand, her malevolent gaze beat the child's down; Father
Ralph felt the increase in Meggie's
pulse.rate and squeezed her wrist
sympathetically. The little girl dropped her aunt a
clumsy curtsy, murmuring an inaudible greeting.
"Go to the kitchen, girl, have your tea with Mrs.
Smith," said Mary Carson curtly.
  "Why don't you like her?" Father Ralph asked as
he sank into the chair he had come to think of as his own.
  "Because you do," she answered.
  "Oh, come now!" For once she made him feel
at a loss. "She's just a waif, Mary."
  "That's not what you see in her, and you know
it."
  The fine blue eyes rested on her sardonically;
he was more at ease. "Do you think I tamper with children?
I am, after all, a priest!" "You're a man
first, Ralph de Bricassart! Being a priest
makes you feel safe, that's all."
  Startled, he laughed. Somehow he couldn't fence with
her today; it was as if she had found the chink in his
armor, crept inside with her spider's poison.
And he was changing, growing older perhaps, becoming
reconciled to obscurity in Gillanbone. The
fires were dying; or was it that he burned now for other
things?
  "I am not a man," he said. "I am a
priest.... It's the heat, maybe, the dust and the
flies . . . . But I am not a man, Mary.
I'm a priest." "Oh, Ralph, how you've
changed!" she mocked. "Can this be Cardinal de
Bricassart I hear?"
  "It isn't possible," he said, a passing
unhappiness in his eyes. "I don't think I
want it anymore."
  She began to laugh, rocking back and forth in her

  chair, watching him. "Don't you,
Ralph? Don't you? Well, I'll let you stew
a little while longer, but your day of reckoning is coming,
never doubt it. Not yet, not for two or three
years, perhaps, but it will come. I'll be like the Devil,
and offer you- Enough said! But never doubt I'll make you
writhe. You're the most fascinating man I've ever
met. You throw your beauty in our teeth,
contemptuous of our foolishness. But I'll pin you
to the wall on your own weakness, I'll make you
sell yourself like any painted whore. Do you doubt it?"
  He leaned back, smiling. "I don't doubt
you'll try. But I don't think you know me as well
as you think you do."
  "Do I not? Time will tell, Ralph, and only
time. I'm old; I have nothing but time left to me."
  "And what do you think I have?" he asked. "Time,
Mary, nothing but time. Time, and dust, and flies."
  The clouds heaped themselves in the sky, and Paddy
began to hope for rain. "Dry storms," said Mary
Carson. "We won't get rain out of this. We
won't get any rain for a long time."
  If the Clearys thought they had seen the worst that
Australia could offer in the way of climatic
harshness, it was because they hadn't yet experienced the
dry storms of drought-dogged plains.
Bereft of soothing dampness, the dryness of the earth and the
air rubbed each other raw and crackling, an
irritating friction which built up and up and up
until it could end only in a gargantuan dissipation
of accumulated energy. The sky dropped and darkened
so much Fee had to light the lamps indoors; out in the
stockyards the horses shivered and jumped at the
slightest noise; the hens sought their perches and sank
their heads into apprehensive breasts; the dogs fought
and snarled; the tame pigs which rooted among the
rubbish of, the station dump burrowed their snouts into the
dust and peered out of it with bright, skittish eyes.
Brooding forces pent
  in the heavens struck fear into the bones of all
living things, as the vast deep clouds swallowed the
sun whole and prepared to spew solar fire over the
earth.
  Thunder came marching from far away with increasing
tread, tiny flickers on the horizon cast soaring
billows into sharp relief, crests of startling
whiteness foamed and curled over midnight-blue
depths. Then, with a roaring wind that sucked up the dust
and flung it stinging in eyes and ears and mouths, came
the cataclysm. No longer did they try to imagine
the biblical wrath of God; they lived
through it. No man could have kept himself from jumping when the
thunder cracked-it exploded with the noise and fury of a
disintegrating world-but after a while the assembled
household grew so inured to it they crept out onto
the veranda and stared across the creek at the far
paddocks. Great forks of lightning stood ribbed in
veins of fire all around the sky, dozens of bolts
each and every moment; naphtha flashes in chains streaked
across the clouds, in and out the billows in a fantastic
hide- and-seek. Blasted trees alone in the
grass reeked and smoked, and they understood at last
why these lonely paddock sentinels were dead. An
eerie, unearthly glow seeped into the air, air which was
no longer invisible but on fire from within, fluorescing
pink and lilac and sulphur yellow, and smelling of
some hauntingly sweet, elusive perfume quite beyond
recognition. The trees shimmered, the red Cleary
hair was haloed in tongues of fire, the hairs of
their arms stood out stiffly. And all afternoon it went
on, only slowly fading into the east to release them from
its awesome spell at sunset, and they were excited,
on edge, unappeased. Not a drop of rain had
fallen. But it was like dying and coming back to life again,
to have survived the atmospheric tantrum unscathed;
it was all they could talk about for a week.
  "We'll get a lot more," said Mary Carson,
bored. They did get a lot more. The second dry
winter came 145
  in colder than they had thought it could get without
snow; frost settled inches thick on the ground at
night, and the dogs huddled shivering in their kennels,
keeping warm by gorging on kangaroo meat and mounds of
fat from the homestead's slaughtered cattle. At
least the weather meant beef and pork to eat instead of the
eternal mutton. In the house they built great
roaring fires, and the men were forced to come home when they
could, for at night in the paddocks they froze. But the
shearers when they arrived were in a mood for rejoicing; they
could get through faster and sweat less. At each
man's stand in the great shed was a circle of flooring
much lighter in color than the rest, the spot where
fifty years of shearers had stood dripping their
bleaching sweat into the wood of the board.
  There was still grass from the flood long ago, but it was
thinning ominously. Day after day the skies were overcast
and the light dull, but it never rained. The wind howled
sadly across the paddocks, spinning drifting brown
sheets of dust before it like rain, tormenting the mind with
images of water. So much like rain it looked, that
raggedly blowing dust. The children developed
chilblains on their fingers, tried not to smile with
cracked lips, had to peel their socks away from
bleeding heels and shins. It was quite impossible to keep
warm in the face of that bitter high wind, especially
when the houses had been designed to catch every stray
puff of air, not keep it out. Going to bed in icy
bedrooms, getting up in icy bedrooms, waiting
patiently for Mum to spare a little hot water from the
great kettle on the hob so that washing was not a
teeth-chattering, painful ordeal.
  One day small Hal started to cough and wheeze, and
rapidly grew worse. Fee mixed up a gluey
hot poultice of charcoal and spread it on his
laboring little chest, but it seemed to give him no
relief. At first she was not unduly worried, but as
the day drew on he began to deteriorate so quickly
she no longer had any idea what
  to do, and Meggie sat by his side wringing her
hands, praying a wordless stream of Our Fathers and
Hail Marys. When Paddy came in at six the
child's breathing was audible from the veranda, and his lips were
blue. Paddy set off at once for the big house
and the telephone, but the doctor was forty miles away
and out on another case. They ignited a pan of
sulphur and held him over it in an
attempt to make him cough up the membrane in his
throat slowly choking him, but he could not manage
to contract his rib cage enough to dislodge it. His color
was growing a deeper blue, his respiration was
convulsive. Meggie sat holding him and. praying,
her heart squeezed to a wedge of pain because the poor
little fellow fought so for every breath. Of all the children,
Hal was the dearest to her; she was his mother. Never before
had she wished so desperately to be a grown-up
mother, thinking that were she a woman like Fee, she would
somehow have the power to heal him. Fee couldn't heal him
because Fee wasn't his mother. Confused and terrified,
she held the heaving little body close, trying to help
Hal breathe. It never occurred to her that he might
die, even when Fee and Paddy sank to their knees
by the bed and prayed, not knowing what else to do. At
midnight Paddy pried Meggie's arms from around the
still child, and laid him down tenderly against the stack of
pillows.
  Meggie's eyes flew open; she had half
fallen to sleep, lulled because Hal had stopped
struggling. "Oh, Daddy, he's better!" she said.
Paddy shook his head; he seemed shriveled and
old, the lamp picking up frosty bits in his
hair, frosty bits in his week-long
beard. "No, Meggie, Hal's not better in the
way you mean, but he's at peace. He's gone
to God, he's out of his pain."
  "Daddy means he's dead," said Fee
tonelessly. "Oh, Daddy, no! He can't be
dead."
  But the small creature in the pillowed nest was
dead. 147
  Meggie knew it the moment she looked, though she
had never seen death before. He looked like a doll, not
a child. She got up and went out to the boys, sitting
hunched in an uneasy vigil around the kitchen
fire, with Mrs. Smith on a hard chair nearby
keeping an eye on the tiny twins, whose cot had
been moved into the kitchen for warmth.
  "Hal just died," said Meggie.
  Stuart looked up from a distant reverie. "It's
better so," he said. "Think of the peace." He got
to his feet as Fee came out of the hallway, and
went to her without touching her. "Mum, you must be tired.
Come and lie down; I'll light a fire for you in
your room. Come on now, lie down."
  Fee turned and followed him without a word. Bob
got up and went out onto the veranda. The rest of the
boys sat shuffling for a while and then joined
him. Paddy hadn't appeared at all. Without a word
Mrs. Smith took the perambulator from its
corner of the veranda and carefully put the sleeping
Jims and Patsy into it. She looked across at
Meggie, tears running down her face.
  "Meggie, I'm going back to the big house, and
I'm taking Jims and Patsy with me. I'll be
back in the morning, but it's best if the babies
stay with Minnie and Cat and me for a while. Tell
your mother."
  Meggie sat down on a vacant chair and
folded her hands in her lap. Oh, he was hers and
he was dead! Little Hal, whom she had cared for and
loved and mothered. The space in her mind he had
occupied was not yet empty; she could still feel the warm
weight of him against her chest. It was terrible to know the
weight would never rest there again, where she had felt it
for four long years. No, not a thing to cry over;
tears were for Agnes, for wounds in the fragile sheath
of self-esteem, and the childhood she had left behind
forever. This was a burden she would have to carry until the
end of her days, and continue in spite of it.
  The will to survive is very strong in some, not so strong
in others. In Meggie it was as refined and tensile as
a steel hawser. Just so did Father Ralph
find her when he came in with the doctor. She pointed
silently to the hallway but made no effort to follow
them. And it was a long time before the priest could finally do
what he had wanted to do since Mary Carson
phoned the presbytery; go to Meggie, be with her,
give the poor little female outsider something from himself
for her very own. He doubted that anyone else fully
appreciated what Hal meant to her. But it was a
long time. There were the last rites to be administered,
in case the soul had not yet left the body; and
Fee to see, Paddy to see, practical advice
to give. The doctor had gone, dejected but long
used to the tragedies his far-flung practice made
inevitable. From what they said, little he could have done
anyway, so far from his hospital and his trained
nursing staff. These people took their chances, they faced
their demons and hung on. His death certificate
would say "Croup." It was a handy malady.
Eventually there was nothing left for Father Ralph
to see to. Paddy had gone to Fee, Bob and the
boys to the carpentry shed to make the little coffin.
Stuart was on the floor in Fee's bedroom, his
pure profile so like her own silhouetted against the
night sky outside the window; from where she lay on
her pillow with Paddy's hand in hers, Fee
never left her contemplation of the dark shape huddled
on the cold floor. It was five o'clock in the morning
and the roosters were stirring drowsily, but it would be dark
for a long time yet.
  Purple stole around his neck because he . had
forgotten he was wearing it, Father Ralph bent to the
kitchen fire and built it up from embers into a
blaze, turned down the lamp on the table behind, and
sat on a wooden bench opposite Meggie to watch
her. She had grown, put on seven-league boots
which threatened
  to leave him behind, outstripped; he felt his
inadequacy then more keenly, watching her, than ever
he had in a life filled with a gnawing, obsessive
doubt of his courage. Only what was he afraid
of? What did he think he couldn't face if it
came? He could be strong for other people, he didn't
fear other people; but within himself, expecting that nameless something
to come sliding into consciousness when he least expected
it, he knew fear. While Meggie, born
eighteen years after him, was growing beyond him. Not that she
was a saint, or indeed anything more than most. Only
that she never complained, that she had the gift-or was it the
curse?-of acceptance. No matter what had gone
or what might come, she confronted it and
accepted it, stored it away to fuel the furnace of
her being. What had taught her that? Could it be
taught? Or was his idea of her a figment of his own
fantasies? Did it really matter? Which was more
important: what she truly was, or what he
thought she was?
  "Oh, Meggie," he said helplessly.
  She turned her gaze to him and out of her pain
gave him a smile of absolute, overflowing
love, nothing in it held back, the taboos and
inhibitions of womanhood not yet a part of her world.
To be so loved shook him, consumed him, made him
wish to the God Whose existence he sometimes doubted that
he was anyone in the universe but Ralph de
Bricassart. Was this it, the unknown thing? Oh,
God, why did he love her so? But as usual no
one answered him; and Meggie sat still smiling at
him. At dawn Fee got up to make breakfast,
Stuart helping her, then Mrs. Smith came back
with Minnie and Cat, and the four women stood together by the
stove talking in hushed monotones, bound in some
league of grief neither Meggie nor the priest
understood. After the meal Meggie went to line the little
wooden box the boys had made, planed smooth and
varnished. Si- 150
  lently Fee had given her a white satin evening
gown long since gone to the hue of ivory with age, and
she fitted strips of it to the hard contours of the box
interior. While Father Ralph put a toweling
padding in it she ran the pieces of satin into shape
on the sewing machine, then together they fixed the lining in
place with thumbtacks. And after that Fee dressed
her baby in his best velvet suit, combed his hair
and laid him in the soft nest which smelled of her, but not
of Meggie, who had been his mother. Paddy closed
down the lid, weeping; this was the first child he had lost.
For years the reception room at Drogheda had been
in use as a chapel; an altar had been built at
one end, and was draped in golden raiment Mary
Carson had paid the nuns of St. Mary d'Urso a
thousand pounds to embroider. Mrs. Smith had
decked the room and the altar with winter flowers from
Drogheda's gardens, wallflowers and early stocks
and late roses, masses of them like pink and rusty
paintings magically finding the dimension of scent. In
a laceless white alb and a black chasuble free of
any ornamentation, Father Ralph said the Requiem
Mass.
  As with most of the great Outback stations, Drogheda
buried its dead on its own land. The
cemetery lay beyond the gardens by the willow-littered
banks of the creek, bounded by a white-painted
wrought-iron railing and green even in this dry time, for
it was watered from the homestead tanks. Michael
Carson*and his baby son were entombed there in an
imposing marble vault, a life-size angel on
top of its pediment with sword drawn to guard their
rest. But perhaps a dozen less pretentious plots
ringed the mausoleum, marked only by plain white
wooden crosses and white croquet hoops
to define their neat boundaries, some of them bare even
of a name: a shearer with no known relatives who had
died in a barracks brawl; two or three
swaggies whose last earthly calling place had been
Drogheda; some sexless and totally anonymous bones
found in one of the paddocks; 151
  Michael Carson's Chinese cook, over whose
remains stood a quaint scarlet umbrella, whose
sad small bells
  seemed perpetually to chime out the name Hee Sing,
Hee Sing, Hee Sing; a drover whose cross said
only
  TANKSTAND CHARLIE HE WAS A GOOD
BLOKE; and more besides, some of them women. But such
simplicity was not for Hal, the owner's
nephew; they stowed his homemade box on a shelf
inside the vault and closed elaborate bronze
doors upon it.
  After a while everyone ceased to speak of Hal
except in passing. Meggie's sorrow she kept
exclusively to herself; her pain had the unreasoning
desolation peculiar to children, magnified and mysterious,
yet her very youth buried it beneath everyday events, and
diminished its importance. The boys were little affected
save Bob, who had been old enough to be fond of his
tiny brother. Paddy grieved deeply, but no one
knew whether Fee grieved. It seemed she grew
further and further away from husband and children, from all
feeling. Because of this, Paddy was so grateful to Stu
for the way he minded his mother, the grave tenderness with which
he treated her. Only Paddy knew how Fee had
looked the day he came back from Gilly without
Frank. There had not been a flicker of emotion in
those soft grey eyes, not hardening nor accusation,
hate or sorrow. As if she had simply been
waiting for the blow to fall like a condemned dog for the
killing bullet, knowing her fate and powerless to avoid
it.
  "I knew he wouldn't come back," she said.
  "Maybe he will, Fee, if you write
to him quickly," Paddy said. She shook her head, but
being Fee went into no explanations. Better that
Frank made a new life for himself far from
Drogheda and her. She knew her son well enough to be
convinced that one word from her would bring him back, so she
must not utter that word, ever. If the days were long and
bitter with a sense of failure,
  she must bear it in silence. Paddy hadn't been the
man of her choice, but a better man than Paddy
never lived. She was one of those people whose feelings are so
intense they become unbearable, unlivable, and her
lesson had been a harsh one. For almost
twenty-five years she had been crushing emotion out
of existence, and she was convinced that in the end persistence
would succeed.
  Life went on in the rhythmic, endless cycle
of the land; the following summer the rains came, not
monsoonal but a by-product of them, filling the
creek and the tanks, succoring the thirsting grass
roots, sponging away the stealthy dust. Almost
weeping in joy, the men went about the business of the
patterned seasons, secure in the knowledge they would not have
to handfeed the sheep. The grass had lasted just long
enough, eked out by scrub-cutting from the more juicy
trees; but it was not so on all the Gilly
stations. How many stock a station carried depended
entirely on the grazier running it. For its great
size Drogheda was understocked, which meant the grass
lasted just that much longer.
  Lambing and the hectic weeks that followed it were
busiest of all in the sheep calendar. Every lamb
born had to be caught; its tail was ringed, its ear
marked, and if it was a male not required for breeding
it was also castrated. Filthy, abominable work which
soaked them to the skin with blood, for there was only one
way to wade through thousands upon thousands of male lambs
in the short time available. The testicles were popped
out between the fingers and bitten off, spat on the ground.
Circled by tin bands incapable of expanding, the tails
of male and female lambs alike gradually lost
their vital bloody supply, swelled, withered and
dropped off. These were the finest wool sheep in the
world, raised on a scale unheard of in any other
country, and with 153
  a paucity of manpower. Everything was geared to the
perfect production of perfect wool. There was
crutching; around the sheep's rear end the wool grew
foul with excrement, fly-blown, black and lumped
together in what were called dags. This area had to be
kept shaven close, or crutched. It was
a minor shearing job but one far less pleasing, stinking
and fly-ridden, and it paid better rates. Then there was
dipping: thousands upon thousands of bleating, leaping
creatures were hounded and yanked through a maze of
runs, in and out of the phenyl dips which rid them of
ticks, pests and vermin. And drenching: the
administration of medicine through huge syringes rammed
down the throat, to rid the sheep of intestinal
parasites.
  For work with the sheep never, never ended; as one job
finished it became time for another. They were mustered and
graded, moved from one paddock to another, bred and
unbred, shorn and crutched, dipped and drenched,
slaughtered and shipped off to be sold. Drogheda
carried about a thousand head of prime beef cattle
as well as its sheep, but sheep were far more profitable,
so in good times Drogheda carried about one sheep for every
two acres of its land, or about 125,000 altogether.
Being merinos, they were never sold for meat; at the end
of a merino's wool-producing years it was shipped off
to become skins, lanolin, tallow and glue, useful
only to the tanneries and the knackeries.
  Thus it was that gradually the classics of Bush
literature took on meaning. Reading had become more
important than ever to the Clearys,
isolated from the world on Drogheda; their only contact
with it was through the magic written word. But there was no
lending library close, as there had been in Wahine,
no weekly trip into town for mail and newspapers
and a fresh stack of library books, as there had been
in Wahine. Father Ralph filled the breach by plundering
the Gillanbone library, his own and the convent's
shelves, and found to his astonishment that before he 154
  was done he had organized a whole Bush
circulating library via Bluey Williams and the
mail truck. It was perpetually loaded with
books-worn, thumbed volumes which traveled down
the tracks between Drogheda and Bugela,
Dibban-Dibban and Braich y Pwll,
Cunnamutta and Each-Uisge, seized upon
gratefully by minds starved for sustenance and escape.
Treasured stories were always returned with great
reluctance, but Father Ralph and the nuns kept a
careful record of what books stayed longest where,
then Father Ralph would order copies through the Gilly
news agency and blandly charge them to Mary Carson
as donations to the Holy Cross Bush
Bibliophilic Society. Those were the days when a
book was lucky to contain a chaste kiss, when the
senses were never titillated by erotic
passages, so that the demarcation line between books
meant for adults and those meant for older children was less
strictly drawn, and there was no disgrace for a man of
Paddy's age to love best the books his children also
adored: Dot and the Kangaroo, the Billabong
series about Jim and Norah and Wally, Mrs.
Aeneas Gunn's immortal We of the
Never-Never. In the kitchen at night they would take
turns to read the poems of Banjo Paterson and
C. J. Dennis out loud, thrilling to the ride of
"The Man from Snowy River," or laughing with "The
Sentimental Bloke" and his Doreen, or wiping
away surreptitious tears shed for John
O'Hara's "Laughing Mary."
  I had written him a letter which I had, for want of
better Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the
Lachlan years ago; He was shearing when I knew
him, so I sent the letter to him, Just on spec,
addressed as follows, "Clancy, of the Overflow."
  And an answer came directed in a writing
unexpected (and I think the same was written with a
thumb-nail dipped in tar); 'Twas his shearing
mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
"Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we
don't know where he are."
  In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of
Clancy Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the
Western drovers go; As the stock are slowly stringing
Clancy rides behind them singing, For the drover's
life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.
And the bush has friends to meet him, and their kindly
voices greet him In the murmur of the breezes
and the river on its bars, And he sees the vision
splendid of the sunlit plains extended, And at
night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars.
  "Clancy of the Overflow" was everyone's
favorite, "the Banjo" their favorite poet.
Hoppity-go-kick doggerel, perhaps, but the poems had
never been intended for the eyes of sophisticated
savants; they were for the people, of the people, and more
Australians of that day could recite them off by heart
than knew the standard schoolroom pieces
by Tennyson and Wordsworth, for their brand of
hoppity-go-kick doggerel was written with England as
inspiration. Crowds of daffodils and fields of
asphodel meant nothing to the Clearys, living in a
climate where neither could exist. The Clearys
understood the bush poets better than
  most, for the Overflow was their backyard, the
traveling sheep a reality on the
TSR'S. There was an official Traveling Stock
Route or TSR winding its way near the Barwon
River, free crown land for the transference of living
merchandise from one end of the eastern half of the continent
to the other. In the old days drovers and their hungry,
grass-ruining mobs of stock had not been welcome,
and the bullockies a hated breed as they inched their
mammoth teams of from twenty to eighty oxen through the
middle of the squatters" best grazing. Now, with
official stock routes for the drovers and the
bullockies vanished into legend, things were more
amicable between vagabonds and stay-puts.
  The occasional drovers were welcomed as they rode
in for a beer and a talk, a home-cooked meal. Some
times they brought women with them, driving battered
  old sulkies with galled ex-stock horses between
the shafts, pots and billies and bottles banging
and clanking in a fringe all around. These were the most
cheerful or the most morose women in the Outback,
drifting from Kynuna to the Paroo, from Goondiwindi
to
  Gundagai;, from the Katherine to the Curry.
Strange women; they never knew a roof over their
heads or the feel of a kapok mattress beneath their
iron-hard spines. No man had bested
them; they were as tough and en during as the country which
flowed under their restless
  feet. Wild as the birds in the sun-drenched
trees, their children skulked shyly behind the sulky
wheels or scuttled for the protection of the woodheap
while their parents yarned over cups of tea,
swapped tall stories and books, promised
to pass on vague messages to Hoopiron
Collins or Brumby Waters, and told the fan
tastic tale of the Pommy jackaroo on
Gnarlunga. And
  somehow you could be sure these rootless wanderers had
dug a grave, buried a child or a wife, a
husband or a mate, under some never-to-be-forgotten
coolibah on a stretch of the TSR which only
looked the same to those who didn't know how hearts
could mark out 157
  as singular and special one tree in a wilderness
of trees.
  Meggie was ignorant even of the meaning of a
phrase as hackneyed as "the facts of life," for
circumstances had conspired to block every avenue whereby
she might have learned. Her father drew a rigid line
between the males of the family and the females;
subjects like breeding or mating were never
discussed in front of the women, nor did the men ever
appear in front of the women unless fully clothed.
The kind of books that might have given her a clue
never appeared on Drogheda, and she had no friends of
her own age to con- tribute to her education. Her
life was absolutely harnessed to the needs of the house,
and around the house there were no sexual activities
at all. The Home Paddock creatures were almost
literally sterile. Mary Carson didn't breed
horses, she bought them from Martin King of Bugela,
who did; unless one bred horses stallions were a
nuisance, so Drogheda didn't have any stallions.
It did have a bull, a wild and savage beast whose
pen was strictly out of bounds, and Meggie was so
frightened of it she never went anywhere near it. The
dogs were kept kenneled and chained, their mating a
scientific, supervised exercise conducted under
Paddy's or Bob's eagle eye, therefore also out of
bounds. Nor was there time to watch the pigs, which
Meggie hated and resented having to feed. In truth,
there wasn't time for Meggie to watch anyone beyond her
two tiny brothers. And ignorance breeds
ignorance; an unawakened body and mind sleep through
events which awareness catalogues automatically.
  Just before Meggie's fifteenth birthday,
as the summer heat was building up toward its
stupefying peak, she noticed brown, streaky stains
on her drawers. After a day or two they went
away, but six weeks later they came back, and
her shame turned to terror. The first time she had thought
them signs of a dirty bottom, thus 158
  1921-1928 RALPH
  her mortification, but in their second appearance
they became unmistakably blood. She had no
idea where the blood was coming from, but assumed it was her
bottom. The slow hemorrhage was gone three days
later, and did not recur for over two months; her
furtive washing of the drawers had gone unnoticed,
for she did most of the laundry anyway. The next
attack brought pain, the first non-bilious rigors
of her life. And the bleeding was worse, far worse.
She stole some of the twins' discarded diapers and tried
to bind herself under her drawers, terrified the blood
would come through. Death taking Hal had been like a
tempestuous visit from something ghostly; but this
strung-out cessation of her own being was terrifying. How
could she possibly go to Fee or Paddy to break the
news that she was dying from some disreputable, forbidden
disease of the bottom? Only to Frank might she have
poured out her torment, but Frank was so far
away she didn't know where to find him. She had
listened to the women talk over their cups of tea of
tumors and cancers, gruesome lingering deaths their friends
or mothers or sisters had endured, and it seemed
to Meggie sure to be some kind of growth eating her
insides away, chewing silently up toward her
frightened heart. Oh, she didn't want to die!
  Her ideas about the condition of death were vague; she
wasn't even clear on what her status would be in that
incomprehensible other world. Religion to Meggie was
a set of laws rather than a spiritual experience, it
couldn't help her at all. Words and phrases
jostled piecemeal in her panicked consciousness,
uttered by her parents, their friends, the nuns, priests
in sermons, bad men in books threatening vengeance.
There was no way she could come to terms with death; she
lay night after night in a confused terror, trying
to imagine if death was perpetual night, or an
abyss of flames she had to jump over to reach the
golden fields on the far 159
  side, or a sphere like the inside of a gigantic
balloon full of soaring choirs and light
attenuated through limitless stained-glass windows.
She grew very quiet, but in a manner quite different from
Stuart's peaceful, dreamy isolation; hers
was the petrified freezing of an animal caught in
the serpent's basilisk stare. If she was spoken
to suddenly she jumped, if the little ones cried for her
she fussed over them in an agony of expiation for her
neglect. And whenever she had a rare moment to herself
she ran away, down to the cemetery and Hal, who was
the only dead person she knew.
  Everyone noticed the change in her, but accepted it
as Meggie growing up without once asking themselves what
growing up for Meggie entailed; she hid her
distress too well. The old lessons had been
well learned; her self-control was phenomenal and
her pride formidable. No one must ever know what went
on inside her, the fagade must continue flawless to the
end; from Fee to Frank to Stuart the examples were
there, and she was of the same blood, it was a part of her
nature and her heritage. But as Father Ralph paid
his frequent visits to Drogheda and the change in
Meggie deepened from a pretty feminine
metamorphosis to a quenching of all her vitality,
his concern for her mushroomed into worry, and then
into fear. A physical and spiritual wasting away was
taking place beneath his very eyes; she was slipping away
from them, and he couldn't bear to see her become another
Fee. The small pointed face was all
eyes staring at some dreadful prospect, the milky
opaque skin which never tanned or freckled was grow
ing more translucent. If the process went on,
he thought,
  she would one day disappear into her own eyes like a
snake swallowing its tail, until she drifted
through the universe as an almost invisible shaft of
glassy grey light, seen only from the corner of the
vision where shadows lurk and black things crawl down
a white wall. 160
  Well, he would find out if he had to wring it from
her forcibly. Mary Carson was at her most demanding
these days, jealous of every moment he spent down at the
head stockman's house; only the infinite patience
of a subtle, devious man kept his rebellion
against her possessiveness hidden from her. Even his
alien preoccupation with Meggie couldn't always
overcome his politic wisdom, the purring content
he derived from watching his charm work on such a
cantankerous, refractory subject as Mary
Carson. While that long-dormant care for the
welfare of a single other person champed and stamped
up and down his mind, he acknowledged the existence of
another entity dwelling side by side with it: the
cat-cold cruelty of getting the better
of, making a fool of a conceited, masterful woman.
Oh, he'd always liked to do that! The old spider would
never get the better of him.
  Eventually he managed to shake free of Mary
Carson and run Meggie to earth in the little graveyard
under the shadow of the pallid, unwarlike avenging
angel. She was staring up into its mawkishly placid
face with shrinking fear written on her own, an
exquisite contrast between the feeling and the unfeeling,
he thought. But what was he doing here, chasing after her like
a clucky old hen when it was really none of his
business, when it ought to be her mother or her father to find
out what was the matter? Only that they hadn't seen
anything wrong, that she didn't matter to them the way
she mat- tered to him. And that he was a priest, he
must give comfort to the lonely or the despairing in spirit.
He couldn't bear to see her unhappy, yet he
shrank from the way he was tying himself to her by an
accumulation of events. He was making a whole
arsenal of happenings and memories out of her, and he
was afraid. His love for her and his priestly instinct
to offer himself in any required spiritual capacity
warred with an obsessive horror of becoming
utterly necessary to someone
  human, and of having someone human become
utterly necessary to himself. As she heard him walk across
the grass she turned to confront him, folding her
hands in her lap and looking down at her feet. He
sat near her, arms locked around his knees, the
soutane in folds no more graceful than the easy
length of the body inhabiting it. No sense beating
around the bush, he decided; if she could, she would
evade him.
  "What's the matter, Meggie?"
  "Nothing, Father."
  "I don't believe you."
  "Please, Father, please! I can't tell you!"
  "Oh, Meggie! Ye of little faith! You can tell
me anything, anything under the sun. That's what I'm
here for, that's why I'm a priest. I am Our
Lord's chosen representative here on earth, I
listen on His behalf, I even forgive on His
behalf. And, wee Meggie, there is nothing in
God's universe He and I cannot find it in our
hearts to forgive. You must tell me what the matter
is, my love, because if anyone can help you, 1 c.
As long as I live I'll try to help you, watch
over you. If you like, a sort of guardian angel,
better by far than that chunk of marble above your head."
He took a breath and leaned forward.
"Meggie, if you love me, tell me!"
  Her hands gripped one another. "Father, I'm
dying! I've got cancer!" First came a wild
desire to laugh, a great surge of uproarious
anticlimax; then he looked at the thin blue
skin, the wasting of her little arms, and there came an
awful longing to weep and cry, scream of its
unfairness to the roof of heaven. No, Meggie
wouldn't imagine this out of nothing; there had to be a
valid reason.
  "How do you know, dear heart?"
  It took her a long time to say it, and when she
did he had to bend his head right down to her lips in
an unconscious parody of the confessional pose, hand

  shielding his face from her eyes, finely modeled
ear presented for the sullying.
  "It's six months, Father, since it started. I
get the most awful pains in my tummy, but not like a
bilious attack, and-oh, Father!-a lot of blood
runs out of my bottom!"
  His head reared back, something which had never happened
inside the confessional; he stared down at her shamed
bent head with so many emotions assaulting him that he
could not marshal his wits. An absurd,
delicious relief; an anger at Fee so great
he wanted to kill her; awed admiration for such a little
thing as her, to bear so much so well; and a ghastly,
all-pervasive embarrassment.
  He was as much a prisoner of the times as she was.
The cheap girls in every town he had known from Dublin
to Gillanbone would deliberately come into the
confessional to whisper their fantasies to him as
actual happenings, concerned with the only facet of him
which interested them, his manhood, and not willing to admit
it lay beyond their power to arouse it. They muttered of men
violating every orifice, of illicit games with other
girls, of lust and adultery, one or two of
superior imagination even going so far as to detail
sexual relations with a priest. And he would listen
totally unmoved save for a sick contempt, for he
had been through the rigors of the seminary and that particular
lesson was an easy one for a man of his type. But
the girls, never, never mentioned that secret activity
which set them apart, demeaned them.
  Try as he would, he could not prevent the scorching
tide from diffusing up under his skin; Father Ralph de
Bricassart sat with his face turned away behind his
hand and writhed through the humiliation of his first blush. But
this wasn't helping his Meggie. When he was
sure the color had subsided he got to his
feet, picked 163
  her up and sat her on a flat-topped marble
pedestal, where her face and his were level.
  "Meggie, look at me. No, look at me!"
  She raised hunted eyes and saw that he was
smiling; an immeasurable contentment filled her soul
at once. He would not smile so if she were dying;
she knew very well how much she meant to him, for he
had never concealed it.
  "Meggie, you're not dying and you haven't got
cancer. It isn't my place to tell you what's the
matter, but I think I had better. Your mother should have
told you years ago, prepared you, and why she
didn't is beyond me." He looked up at the
inscrutable marble angel above him and gave a
peculiar, half-strangled laugh. "Dear
Jesus! The things Thou givest me to do!" Then, to the
waiting Meggie: "In years to come, as you grow
older and learn more about the ways of the world, you might be
tempted to remember today with embarrassment, even
shame. But don't remember today like that, Meggie.
There's absolutely nothing shameful or
embarrassing about it. In this, as in everything I do, I
am simply the instrument of Our Lord. It
is my only function on this earth; I must admit
no other. You were very frightened, you needed help, and Our
Lord has sent you that help in my person.
Remember that alone, Meggie. I am Our Lord's
priest, and I speak in His Name. "You're only
doing what all women do, Meggie. Once a month
for several days you'll pass blood. It starts
usually around twelve or thirteen years of age-
how old are you, as much as that?"
  "I'm fifteen, Father."
  "Fifteen? You?" He shook his head, only
half believing her. "Well, if you say you are,
I'll have to take your word for it. In which case you're
later than most girls. But it continues every month
until you're about fifty, and in some women it's as
regular as the phases of the moon, in others it's not
so predictable. Some 164
  women have no pain with it, others suffer a lot of
pain. No one knows why it's so different from one
woman to another. But to pass blood every month is a
sign that you're mature. Do you know what
"mature' means?" "Of course, Father! I read!
It means grown up."
  "All right, that will do. While ever the bleeding
persists, you're capable of having children. The
bleeding is a part of the cycle of procreation. In the
days before the Fall, it is said Eve didn't
menstruate. The proper name for it is menstruation,
to menstruate. But when Adam and Eve fell, God
punished the woman more than He did the man, because it
was really her fault they fell. She tempted the
man. Do you remember the words in your Bible
history? "In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children."
What God meant was that for a woman everything having
to do with children involves pain. Great joy, but also great
pain. It is your lot, Meggie, and you must accept
it." She didn't know it, but just so would he have offered
comfort and help to any of his parishioners, if with a
less intense personal involvement; so very kindly,
but never identifying himself with the trouble. And, perhaps not so
oddly, thereby the comfort and help he offered was all the
greater. As if he had gone beyond such small things, so
they were bound to pass. It was not a conscious thing in him,
either; no one who came to him for succor ever felt that
he looked down on them, or blamed them for their
weaknesses. Many priests left their people feeling
guilty, worthless or bestial, but he never did.
For he made them think that he, too, had his sorrows
and his struggles; alien sorrows and incomprehensible
struggles, perhaps, yet no less real.
He neither knew nor could have been brought to understand that the
larger part of his appeal and attraction lay not in his
person, but in this aloof, almost godlike, very human
something from his soul.
  As far as Meggie was concerned, he talked to her the
way Frank had talked to her: as if she were his
equal. 165
  But he was older, wiser and far better educated
than Frank, a more satisfactory confidant. And
how beautiful his voice was, with its faint
Irishness and pearshaped Britishness. It took all
the fear and anguish away. Yet she was young, full
of curiosity, eager now to know all there was to know, and
not troubled by the perplexing philosophies of those who
constantly question not the who of themselves but the why. He was
her friend, the cherished idol of her heart, the new sun
in her firmament. "Why shouldn't you tell me, Father?
Why did you say it ought to be Mum?" "It's a
subject women keep very much to themselves. To mention
menstruation or one's period in front of men or
boys just isn't done, Meggie. It's something
strictly between women."
  [*reggg'Why8[*macr]
  He shook his head, and laughed. "To be honest,
I really don't know why. I even wish it
weren't so. But you must take my word for it that it is
so. Never mention it to a soul except your mother, and
don't tell her you discussed it with me."
  "All right, Father, I won't."
  It was damnably difficult, this being a mother; so
many practical considerations to remember! "Meggie,
you must go home and tell your mother you've been passing
blood, and ask her to show you how to fix yourself up."
"Mum does it, too?"
  "All healthy women do. But when they're
expecting a baby they stop until after the baby is
born. That's how women tell they're expecting
babies." "Why do they stop when they're expecting
babies?" "I don't know, I really don't.
Sorry, Meggie."
  "Why does the blood come out of my bottom,
Father?" He glared up at the angel, which looked
back at him serenely, not troubled by women's
troubles. Things
  were getting too sticky for Father Ralph. Amazing
that she persisted when she was usually so reticent!
Yet realizing he had become the source of her knowledge
about everything she couldn't find in books, he knew
her too well to give her any hint of his
embarrassment or discomfort. She would
withdraw into herself and never ask him anything again.
  So he answered patiently, "It doesn't come
out of your bottom, Meggie. There is a hidden
passageway in front of your bottom, which has to do
with children."
  "Oh! Where they get out, you mean," she said. "I
always wondered how they got out."
  He grinned, and lifted her down from her pedestal.
"Now you know. Do you know what makes babies,
Meggie?"
  "Oh, yes," she said importantly, glad she
knew at least something. "You grow them, Father."
  "What causes them to start growing?"
  "You wish them."
  "Who told you that?"
  "No one. I worked it out for myself," she said. Father
Ralph closed his eyes and told himself that he
couldn't possibly be called a coward disfor leaving
matters where they stood. He could pity her, but he
couldn't help her any further. Enough was enough.
  Mary Carson was going to be seventy-two years
old, and she was planning the biggest party to be held
on Drogheda in fifty years. Her birthday fell
at the start of November, when it was hot but still
bearable-at least for Gilly natives.
  "Mark that, Mrs. Smith!" Minnie whispered.
"Do ye mark that! November the t'urrd herself was
born!"
  "What are you on about now, Min?" the housekeeper
asked. Minnie's Celtic mysteriousness got on
her own good steady English nerves. "Why, and to be
sure it means herself is a Scorpio woman,
does it not? A Scorpio woman, now!"
  "I haven't got the slightest idea what you're
talking about, Min!" "The wurrst sign a woman can
find herself born into, Mrs. Smith darlin".
Och, they're children of the Devil, so they are!" said
Cat, round-eyed, blessing herself.
  "Honestly, Minnie, you and Cat are the dizzy
limit," said Mrs. Smith, not a whit
impressed.
  But excitement was running high, and would run
higher. The old spider in her wing chair at the
exact center of her web issued a never-ending stream
of orders; this was to be done, that was to be done, such and
such was to be taken out of storage, or put into
  Storage. The two Irish maids ran polishing
silver and washing the best Haviland china, turning the
chapel back into a reception room and readying its
adjacent dining rooms.
  Hindered rather than helped by the little Cleary boys,
Stuart and a team of rouseabouts mowed and scythed the
lawn, weeded the flower beds, sprinkled damp
sawdust on the verandas to clear dust from between the
Spanish tiles, and dry chalk on the reception
room floor to make it fit for dancing. Clarence
O'Toole's band was coming all the way from Sydney,
along with oysters and prawns, crabs and lobsters;
several women from Gilly were being hired as temporary
helpers. The whole district from Rudna Hunish
to Inishmurray to Bugela to Narrengang was in a
ferment. As the marble hallways echoed to unaccustomed
sounds of objects being moved and people shouting, Mary
Carson shifted herself from her wing chair to her desk,
drew a sheet of parchment forward, dipped her pen in
the standish, and began to write. There was no hesitation,
not so much as a pause to consider the positioning of a
comma. For the last five years she had worked out every
intricate phrase in her mind, until it was
absolutely word perfect. It did not take her
long to finish; there were two sheets of paper, the
second one with a good quarter of it blank. But for a
moment, the last sentence complete, she sat on in her
chair. The roll-top desk stood alongside one
of the big windows, so that by simply turning
her head she could look out across the lawns. A laugh
from outside made her do so, idly at first, then in
stiffening rage. God damn him and his obsession!
Father Ralph had taught Meggie to ride; daughter
of a country family, she had never sat astride a
horse until the priest remedied the deficiency.
For oddly enough, the daughters of poor country
families did not often ride. Riding was a pastime
for the rich young women of country and city alike. Oh,
girls of Meggie's
  background could drive buggies and teams of heavy
horses, even tractors and sometimes cars, but
rarely did they ride. It cost too much to mount a
daughter.
  Father Ralph had brought elastic-sided ankle
boots and twill jodhpurs from Gilly and plumped
them down on the Cleary kitchen table noisily.
Paddy had looked up from his after-dinner book,
mildly surprised. "Well, what have you got there,
Father?" he asked. "Riding clothes for Meggie."
  "What?" bellowed Paddy's voice.
  "What?" squeaked Meggie's.
  "Riding clothes for Meggie. Honestly, Paddy,
you're a first-class idiot! Heir to the biggest,
richest station in New South Wales, and
you've never let your only daughter sit a horse!
How do you think she's going to take her place
alongside Miss Carmichael, Miss Hopeton
and Mrs. Anthony King, equestriennes all?
Meggie's got to learn to ride, sidesaddle as
well as astride, do you hear? I realize you're
busy, so I'm going to teach Meggie myself, and you can
like it or lump it. If it happens to interfere with her
duties in the house, too bad. For a few hours
each week Fee is just going to have to manage minus
Meggie, and that's that."
  One thing Paddy couldn't do was argue with a priest;
Meggie learned to ride forthwith. For years she had
longed for the chance, had once timidly ventured to ask
her father might she, but he had forgotten the next
moment and she never asked again, thinking that was Daddy's
way of saying no. To learn under the aegis of Father
Ralph cast her into a joy which she didn't show, for
by this time her adoration of Father Ralph had turned
into an ardent, very girlish crush. Knowing it was quite
impossible, she permitted herself the luxury of
dreaming about him, of wondering what it would be like to be
held in his arms, receive his kiss. Further than that
her dreams couldn't go, as she had no idea what
came next, or even that anything came
next. And if she knew it was wrong to dream so of a
priest, there
  didn't seem to be any way she could discipline
herself into not doing it. The best she could manage was
to make absolutely sure he had no idea of the
unruly turn her thoughts had taken.
  As Mary Carson watched through the drawing room
window, Father Ralph and Meggie walked down from the
stables, which were on the far side of the big house from the
head stockman's residence. The station men rode
rawboned stock horses which had never seen the inside
of a stable in all their lives, just shuffled around the
yards when penned for duty, or frisked through the
grass of the Home Paddock when being spelled. But
there were stables on Drogheda, though only Father
Ralph used them now. Mary Carson kept two
thoroughbred hacks there for Father Ralph's
exclusive use; no rawboned stock horses for
him. When he had asked her if Meggie might use
his mounts also, she could not very well object. The
girl was her niece, and he was right. She ought to be
able to ride decently.
  With every bitter bone in her swollen old body
Mary Carson had wished she had been able
to refuse, or else ride with them. But she
could neither refuse nor hoist herself on a horse
anymore. And it galled her to see them now,
strolling across the lawn together, the man in his breeches
and knee boots and white shirt as graceful as a
dancer, the girl in her jodhpurs slim and
boyishly beautiful. They radiated an easy
friendship; for the millionth time Mary Carson wondered
why no one save she deplored their close, almost
intimate relationship. Paddy thought it wonderful,
Fee-log that she was!-said nothing, as usual,
while the boys treated them as brother and sister. Was
it because she loved Ralph de Bricassart herself that
she saw what no one else saw? Or did she
imagine it, was there really nothing save the friendship of a
man in his middle thirties for a girl not yet all
the way into womanhood? Piffle! No man in his
middle thirties, even Ralph de Bricassart,
could
  fail to see the unfolding rose. Even Ralph
de Bricassart? Hah! Especially Ralph de
Bricassart! Nothing ever missed that man. Her
hands were trembling; the pen sprinkled darkblue
drops across the bottom of the paper. The gnarled finger
plucked another sheet from a pigeonhole, dipped
the pen in the standish again, and rewrote the words
as surely as the first time. Then she heaved herself to her
feet and moved her bulk to the door.
  "Minnie! Minnie!" she called.
  "Lord help us, it's herself!" the maid said
clearly from the reception room opposite. Her
ageless freckled face came round the door. "And
what might I be gettin' for ye, Mrs. Carson
darlin'?" she asked, wondering why the old woman
had not rung the bell for Mrs. Smith, as was her
wont. "Go and find the fencer and Tom. Send them
here to me at once." "Ought I not be reportin'
to Mrs. Smith furrst?" "No! Just do as you're
told, girl!"
  Tom, the garden rouseabout, was an old, wizened
fellow who had been on the track with his bluey and his
billy, and taken work for a while seventeen years
ago; he had fallen in love with the Drogheda gardens
and couldn't bear to leave them. The fencer, a drifter
like all his breed, had been pulled from the endless task
of stringing taut wire between posts in the paddocks
to repair the homestead's white pickets for the party.
Awed at the summons, they came within a few
minutes and stood in work trousers, braces and
flannel undershirts, hats screwed nervously in
their hands. "Can both of you write?" asked
Mrs. Carson.
  They nodded, swallowed.
  "Good. I want you to watch me sign this piece
of paper, then fix your own names and addresses just below
my signature. Do you understand?" They nodded.
  "Make sure you sign the way you always do, and
  print your permanent addresses clearly. I
don't care if it's a post office general
delivery or what, so long as you can be reached through
it." The two men watched her inscribe her name; it
was the only time her writing was not compressed. Tom
came forward, sputtered the pen across the paper
painfully, then the fencer wrote "Chas. Hawkins"
in large round letters, and a Sydney address. Mary
Carson watched them closely; when they were done she
gave each of them a dull red ten-pound note, and
dismissed them with a harsh injunction to keep their mouths
shut.
  Meggie and the priest had long since disappeared.
Mary Carson sat down at her desk heavily,
drew another sheet of paper toward her, and began
once more to write. This communication was not achieved with the
ease and fluency of the last. Time and time again she
stopped to think, then with lips drawn back in a
humorless grin, she would continue. It
seemed she had a lot to say, for her words were
cramped, her lines very close together, and still she
required a second sheet. At the end she read
what she had put down, placed all the sheets
together, folded them and slid them into an envelope, the
back of which she sealed with red wax.
  Only Paddy, Fee, Bob, Jack and
Meggie were going to the party; Hughie and Stuart were
deputed to mind the little ones, much to their secret
relief. For once in her life Mary Carson had
opened her wallet wide enough for the moths to fly out, for
everyone had new clothes, the best Gilly could
provide. Paddy, Bob and Jack were
immobilized behind starched shirt fronts, high
collars and white bow ties, black tails,
black trousers, white waistcoats. It was going
to be a very formal affair, white tie and tails for the
men, sweeping gowns for the women.
  Fee's dress was of crepe in a peculiarly
rich shade of blue-grey, and suited her, falling
to the floor in soft 173
  folds, low of neckline but tightly sleeved to the
wrists, lavishly beaded, much in the style of Queen
Mary. Like that imperious lady, she had her hair
done high in backsweeping puffs, and the
Gilly store had produced an imitation pearl
choker and earrings which would fool all but a close
inspection. A magnificent ostrich-feather fan
dyed the same color as her gown completed the
ensemble, not so ostentatious as it appeared at first
glance; the weather was unusually hot, and at seven in
the evening it was still well over a hundred degrees.
  When Fee and Paddy emerged from their room, the
boys gaped. In all their lives they had never seen
their parents so regally handsome, so foreign. Paddy
looked his sixty-one years, but in such a distinguished
way he might have been a statesman; whereas Fee
seemed suddenly ten years younger than her
forty-eight, beautiful, vital, magically smiling.
Jims and Patsy burst into shrieking tears,
refusing to look at Mum and Daddy until they
reverted to normal, and in the flurry of consternation
dignity was forgotten; Mum and Daddy behaved as they
always did, and soon the twins were beaming in admiration.
  But it was at Meggie everyone stared the longest.
Perhaps remembering her own girlhood, and angered that
all the other young ladies invited had ordered their
gowns from Sydney, the Gilly dressmaker had
put her heart into Meggie's dress. It was
sleeveless and had a low, draped
neckline; Fee had been dubious, but Meggie had
implored and the dressmaker assured her all the
girls would be wearing the same sort of thing-did she
want her daughter laughed at for being countrified and
dowdy? So Fee had given in gracefully. Of
crepe geor gette, a heavy chiffon, the dress
was only slightly fitted
  at the waist, but sashed around the hips with the same
material. It was a dusky, pale pinkish grey,
the color that in those days was called ashes of roses;
between them the dressmaker and Meggie had embroidered
the entire gown in tiny pink rosebuds. And
Meggie had cut 174
  her hair in the closest way she could to the shingle
creeping even through the ranks of Gilly girls. It
curled far too much for fashion, of course, but it
suited her better short than long.
  Paddy opened his mouth to roar because she was not his little
girl Meggie, but shut it again with the words unuttered;
he had learned from that scene in the presbytery with
Frank long ago. No, he couldn't keep her a
little girl forever; she was a young woman and shy of the
amazing transformation her mirror had shown her. Why
make it harder for the poor little beggar? He extended
his hand to her, smiling tenderly. "Oh,
Meggie, you're so lovely! Come on, I'm going
to escort you myself, and Bob and Jack shall take your
mother."
  She was just a month short of seventeen, and for the first
time in his life Paddy felt really old. But she was
the treasure of his heart; nothing should spoil her first
grown-up party.
  They walked to the homestead slowly, far too
early for the first guests; they were to dine with Mary
Carson and be on hand to receive with her. No one wanted
dirty shoes, but a mile through Drogheda dust meant
a pause in the cookhouse to polish shoes, brush
dust from trouser bottoms and trailing hems. Father
Ralph was in his soutane as usual; no male
evening fashion could have suited him half so well as
that severely cut robe with its slightly flaring
lines, the innumerable little black cloth buttons up
its front from hem to collar, the purple-edged
monsignor's sash. Mary Carson has chosen
comto wear white satin, white lace and white
ostrich feathers. Fee stared at her stupidly,
shocked out of her habitual indifference. It was so
incongruously bridal, so grossly unsuitablewhy
on earth had she tricked herself out like a raddled old
spinster playacting at being married? She
had got very fat of late, which didn't improve
matters. But Paddy seemed to see nothing amiss;
he strode 175
  forward to take his sister's hands, beaming. What a
dear fellow he was, thought Father Ralph as he
watched the little scene, half amused, half
detached.
  "Well, Mary! How fine you look! Like a young
girl!" In truth she looked almost exactly like that
famous photograph of Queen Victoria taken
not long before she died. The two heavy lines were there
on either side of the masterful nose, the mulish mouth was
set indomitably, the slightly protruding and
glacial eyes fixed without blinking on Meggie.
Father Ralph's own beautiful eyes passed from
niece to aunt, and back to niece again.
  Mary Carson smiled at Paddy, and put her
hand on his arm. "You may take me in to dinner,
Padraic. Father de Bricassart will escort
Fiona, and the boys must make do with Meghann between
them." Over her shoulder she looked back at
Meggie. "Do you dance tonight, Meghann?"
  "She's too young, Mary, she's not yet
seventeen," said Paddy quickly, remembering another
parental shortcoming; none of his children had
been taught to dance.
  "What a pity," said Mary Carson.
  It was a splendid, sumptuous, brilliant,
glorious party; at least, they were the adjectives
most bandied about. Royal O'Mara was there from
Inishmurray, two hundred miles away; he
came the farthest with his wife, sons and lone daughter,
though not by much. Gilly people thought little of traveling two
hundred miles to a cricket match, let alone a
party. Duncan Gordon, from Each-Uisge; no
one had ever persuaded him to explain why he had
called his station so far from the ocean the Scots
Gaelic for a sea horse. Martin King, his wife,
his son Anthony and Mrs. Anthony; he was
Gilly's senior squatter, since Mary Carson
could not be so called, being a woman. Evan Pugh,
from Braich y Pwll, which the district pronounced
Brakeypull. 176
  Dominic O'Rourke from Dibban-Dibban,
Horry Hopeton from Beel-Beel; and dozens
more.
  They were almost to the last family present
Catholic, and few sported Anglo-Saxon
names; there was about an equal distribution of Irish,
Scottish and Welsh. No, they could not
hope for home rule in the old country, nor, if
Catholic in Scotland or Wales, for much
sympathy from the Protestant indigenes. But here in
the thousands of square miles around Gillanbone they
were lords to thumb their noses at British lords,
masters of all they surveyed; Drogheda, the biggest
property, was greater in area than several European
principalities. Monegasque princelings,
Liechtensteinian dukes, be- ware! Mary
Carson was greater. So they whirled in waltzes to the
sleek Sydney band and stood back indulgently
to watch their children dance the Charleston, ate the lobster
patties and the chilled raw oysters, drank the
fifteen-year-old French champagne and the
twelveyear-old single-malt Scotch. If disthe
truth were known, they would rather have eaten roast leg of
lamb or corned beef, and much preferred to drink
cheap, very potent Bundaberg rum or Grafton
bitter from the barrel. But it was nice to know the better
things of life were theirs for the asking.
  Yes, there were lean years, many of them. The wool
checks were carefully hoarded in the good years to guard
against the depredations of the bad, for no one could
predict the rain. But it was a good period, had been
for some time, and there was little to spend the money
on in Gilly. Oh, once born to the black
soil plains of the Great Northwest there was no
place on earth like it. They made no nostalgic
pilgrimages back to the old country; it had done
nothing for them save discriminate against them for their
religious convictions, where Australia was too
Catholic a country to discriminate. And the Great
Northwest was home.
  Besides, Mary Carson was footing the bill tonight.
She could well afford it. Rumor said she was able to
  buy and sell the King of England. She had money
in steel, money in silver-lead-zinc, money in
copper and gold, money in a hundred different
things, mostly the sort of things that literally and
metaphorically made money. Drogheda had long
since ceased to be the main source of her income; it
was no more than a profitable hobby.
  Father Ralph didn't speak directly
to Meggie during dinner, nor did he afterward; throughout
the evening he studiously ignored her. Hurt, her
eyes sought him wherever he was in the reception room.
Aware of it, he ached to stop by her chair and explain
to her that it would not do her reputation (or his) any
good if he paid her more attention than he did, say,
Miss Car- michael, Miss Gordon
or Miss O'Mara. Like Meggie he didn't
dance, and like Meggie there were many eyes on him; they were
easily the two most beautiful people in the room.
  Half of him hated her appearance tonight, the short
hair, the lovely dress, the dainty
ashes-of-roses silk slippers with their two-inch
heels; she was growing taller, developing a very
feminine figure. And half of him was busy being
terrifically proud of the fact that she shone all the
other young ladies down. Miss Carmichael had the
patrician features, but lacked the special
glory of that red-gold hair; Miss King had
exquisite blond tresses, but lacked the lissome
body; Miss Mackail was stunning of body, but in
the face very like a horse eating an apple through a
wire-netting fence. Yet his overall reaction was
one of disappointment, and an anguished wish to turn
back the calendar. He didn't want Meggie
to grow up, he wanted the little girl he could treat as
his treasured babe. On Paddy's face he
glimpsed an expression which mirrored his own thoughts,
and smiled faintly. What bliss it would be if just
once in his life he could show his feelings! But
habit, training and discretion were too ingrained.
  As the evening wore on the dancing grew
more and
  more uninhibited, the liquor changed from champagne
and whiskey to rum and beer, and proceedings settled
down to something more like a woolshed ball. By two in the
morning only a total absence of station hands and working
girls could distinguish it from the usual entertainments of the
Gilly district, which were strictly democratic.
  Paddy and Fee were still in attendance, but promptly
at midnight Bob and Jack left with Meggie.
Neither Fee nor Paddy noticed; they were enjoying
themselves. If their children couldn't dance, they could, and did;
with each other mostly, seeming to the watching Father
Ralph suddenly much more attuned to each other, perhaps
because the times they had an opportunity to relax and
enjoy each other were rare. He never remembered
seeing them without at least one child somewhere around, and thought
it must be hard on the parents of large families,
never able to snatch moments alone save in the
bedroom, where they might excusably have other things
than conversation on their minds. Paddy was always cheerful
and jolly, but Fee tonight almost literally shone, and when
Paddy went to beg a duty dance of some squatter's
wife, she didn't lack eager partners; there were many
much younger women wilting on chairs around the room who
were not so sought after.
  However, Father Ralph's moments to observe the
Cleary parents were limited. Feeling ten years
younger once he saw Meggie leave the room, he
became a great deal more animated and flabbergasted the
Misses Hopeton, Mackail, Gordon and
O'Mara by dancing-and extremely well-the Black
Bottom with Miss Carmichael. But after that he
gave every unattached girl in the room her turn,
even poor homely Miss Pugh, and since by this time
everyone was thoroughly relaxed and oozing goodwill, no
one condemned the priest one bit. In fact, his zeal
and kindness were much admired and commented upon. No one could
say their daughter had not had an opportunity to dance
with Father de Bricassart. 179
  Of course, had it not been a private party he
could not have made a move toward the dance floor, but it
was so nice to see such a fine man really enjoy himself
for once.
  At three o'clock Mary Carson rose to her feet
and yawned. "No, don't stop the festivities!
If I'm tiredwhich I am-I can go to bed, which is
what I'm going to do. But there's plenty of food and
drink, the band has been engaged to play as long as
someone wants to dance, and a little noise will only speed
me into my dreams. Father, would you help me
up the stairs, please?" Once outside the
reception room she did not turn to the majestic
staircase, but guided the priest to her drawing
room, leaning heavily on his arm. Its door had
been locked; she waited while he used the key she
handed him, then preceded him inside.
  "It was a good party, Mary," he said.
  "My last."
  "Don't say that, my dear."
  "Why not? I'm tired of living, Ralph, and
I'm going to stop." Her hard eyes mocked. "Do
you doubt me? For over seventy years I've done
precisely what I wanted to do when I wanted to do
it, so if Death thinks he's the one to choose the time
of my going, he's very much mistaken. I'll die
when I choose the time, and no suicide, either. It's
our will to live keeps us kicking, Ralph; it
isn't hard to stop if we really want to. I'm
tired, and I want to stop. Very simple."
  He was tired, too; not of living, exactly, but
of the endless facade, the climate, the lack of friends
with common interests, himself. The room was only
faintly lit by a tall kerosene lamp of priceless
ruby glass, and it cast transparent crimson
shadows on Mary Carson's face,
conjuring out of her intractable bones something more
diabolical. His feet and back ached; it was a
long time since he had danced so much, though he
prided himself on keeping up with whatever was the latest
fad. Thirty-five years of age, a country
monsignor, and
  as a power in the Church? Finished before he had
begun. Oh, the dreams of youth! And the carelessness of
youth's tongue, the hotness of youth's temper. He
had not been strong enough to meet the test. But he would
never make that mistake again. Never, never . . .
  He moved restlessly, sighed; what was the use?
The chance would not come again. Time he faced that fact
squarely, time he stopped hoping and dreaming. "Do you
remember my saying, Ralph, that I'd beat you, that
I'd hoist you with your own petard?"
  The dry old voice snapped him out of the reverie
his weariness had induced. He looked across at Mary
Carson and smiled.
  "Dear Mary, I never forget anything you say.
What I would have done without you these past seven years
I don't know. Your wit, your malice, your
percep- tion . . ."
  "If I'd been younger I'd have got you in a
different way, Ralph. You'll never know
how I've longed to throw thirty years of my life
out the window. If the Devil had come to me and offered
to buy my soul for the chance to be young again, I'd have
sold it in a second, and not stupidly regretted
the bargain like that old idiot Faust. But no
Devil. I really can't bring myself to believe in
God or the Devil, you know. I've never seen a
scrap of evidence to the effect they exist. Have you?"
  "No. But belief doesn't rest on proof of
existence, Mary. It rests on faith, and faith is
the touchstone of the Church. Without faith, there is
nothing."
  "A very ephemeral tenet."
  "Perhaps. Faith's born in a man or a
woman, I think. For me it's a constant struggle,
I admit that, but I'll never give up."
  "I would like to destroy you."
  His blue eyes laughed, greyed in the light.
"Oh, my dear Mary! I know that."
  "But do you know why?"
  A terrifying tenderness crept against him, almost
  inside him, except that he fought it fiercely.
"I know why, Mary, and believe me, I'm
sorry."
  "Besides your mother, how many women have loved
you?" "Did my mother love me, I wonder? She
ended in hating me, anyway. Most women do. My
name ought to have been Hippolytos."
  "Ohhhhhh! That tells me a lot!"
  "As to other women, I think only Meggie . .
. But she's a little girl. It's probably not an
exaggeration to say hundreds of women have wanted me,
but loved me? I doubt it very much."
  "I have loved you," she said pathetically.
  "No, you haven't. I'm the goad of your old
age, that's all. When you look at me I remind
you of what you cannot do, because of age."
  "You're wrong. I have loved you. God, how much!
Do you think my years automatically preclude it?
Well, Father de Bricassart, let me tell you
something. Inside this stupid body I'm still young-I still
feel, I still want, I still dream, I still kick up
my heels and chafe at restrictions like my body.
Old age is the bitterest vengeance our vengeful
God inflicts upon us. Why doesn't He age
our minds as well?" She leaned back in her chair
and closed her eyes, her teeth showing sourly. "I
shall go to Hell, of course. But before I do, I hope
I get the chance to tell God what a mean,
spiteful, pitiful apology of a God
He is!"
  "You were a widow too long. God gave you
freedom of choice, Mary. You could have remarried.
If you chose not to remarry and in consequence you've
been intolerably lonely, it's your own doing, not
God's." . For a moment she said nothing, her hands
gripping the chair arms hard; then she began
to relax, and opened her eyes. They glittered in the
lamplight redly, but not with tears; with something harder,
more brilliant. He caught his breath, felt fear.
She looked like a spider.
  "Ralph, on my desk is an envelope. Would
you bring it to me, please?" Aching and afraid, he
got up and went to her desk, lifted the letter, eyed it
curiously. The face of it was blank, but the back
had been properly sealed with red wax and her ram's
head seal with the big D. He brought it to her and held
it out, but she waved him to his seat without taking it.
"It's yours," she said, and giggled. "The instrument of
your fate, Ralph, that's what it is. My last and
most telling thrust in our long battle. What a
pity I won't be here to see what happens. But I
know what will happen, because I know you, I know you much
better than you think I do. Insufferable conceit!
Inside that envelope lies the fate of your
life and your soul. I must lose you to Meggie, but
I've made sure she doesn't get you, either."
"Why do you hate Meggie so?"
  "I told you once before. Because you love her."
  "Not in that way! She's the child I can never have, the
rose of my life. Meggie is an idea, Mary,
an idea!"
  But. the old woman sneered. "I don't
want to talk about your precious Meggie! I shall
never see you again, so I don't want to waste my
time with you talking about her. The letter. I want you
to swear on your vows as a priest that you don't open
it until you've seen my dead body for yourself, but then
that you open it immediately, before you bury me. Swear!"
"There's no need to swear, Mary. I'll do as you
ask."
  "Swear to me or I'll take it back!"
  He shrugged. "All right, then. On my vows as
a priest I swear it. Not to open the letter until
I've seen you dead, and then to open it before you're
buried"
  "Good, good!"
  "Mary, please don't worry. This is a
fancy of yours, no more. In the morning you'll laugh
at it."
  "I won't see the morning. I'm going to die
tonight; I'm not weak enough to wait on the pleasure of
seeing
  you again. What an anticlimax! I'm going to bed
now. Will you take me to the top of the stairs?"
  He didn't believe her, but he could see it
served no purpose to argue, and she was not in the mood
to be jollied out of it. Only God decided when
one would die, unless, of the free will He had given,
one took one's own life. And she had said she
wouldn't do that. So he helped her pant up the
stairs and at the top took her hands in his, bent
to kiss them. She pulled them away. "No, not tonight.
On my mouth, Ralph! Kiss my mouth as if we
were lovers!"
  By the brilliant light of the chandelier, lit for the
party with four hundred wax candles, she saw the
disgust in his face, the instinctive recoil; she
wanted to die then, wanted to die so badly she could
not wait.
  "Mary, I'm a priest! I can't!"
  She laughed shrilly, eerily. "Oh, Ralph,
what a sham you are! Sham man, sham priest! And
to think once you actually had the temerity to offer
to make love to me! were you so positive
I'd refuse? How I wish I hadn't! I'd
give my soul to see you wriggle out of it if we could
have that night back again! Sham, sham, sham! That's
all you are, Ralph! An impotent, useless
sham! Im- potent man and impotent priest! I
don't think you could get it up and keep it up for the
Blessed Virgin herself! Have you ever managed to get it
up, Father de Bricassart? Sham!"
  Outside it was not yet dawn, or the lightening before
it. Darkness lay soft, thick and very hot over
Drogheda. The revels were becoming extremely
noisy; if the homestead had possessed
next-door neighbors the police would have been
called long since. Someone was vomiting copiously
and revoltingly on the veranda, and under a wispy
bottle brush two indistinct forms were locked
together. Father Ralph avoided the vomiter and the
lovers, treading silently across the springy new-mown
lawn with such torment in his mind he did not know
  or care where he was going. Only that he wanted
to be away from her, the awful old spider who was
convinced she was spinning her death cocoon on this
exquisite night. At such an early hour the heat
was not exhausting; there was a faint, heavy stirring in the
air, and a stealing of languorous perfumes
from boronia and roses, the heavenly stillness only
tropical and subtropical latitudes can ever
know. Oh, God, to be alive, to be really
alive! To embrace the night, and living, and be
free!
  He stopped on the far side of the lawn and stood
looking up at the sky, an instinctive aerial
searching for God. Yes, up there somewhere, between the
winking points of light so pure and unearthly; what
was it about the night sky? That the blue lid of day was
lifted, a man permitted glimpses of eternity?
Nothing save witnessing the strewn vista of the stars could
convince a man that timelessness and God existed. She's
right, of course. A sham, a total sham. No
priest, no man. Only someone who wishes he
knew how to be either. No! Not either! Priest and man
cannot coexist-to be a man is to be no priest.
Why did I ever tangle my feet in her web?
Her poison is strong, perhaps stronger than I
guess. What's in the letter? How like Mary to bait
me! How much does she know, how much does she
simply guess? What is there to know, or guess?
Only futility, and loneliness. Doubt, pain.
Always pain. Yet you're wrong, Mary. I can get
it up. It's just that I don't choose to,
that I've spent years proving to myself it can be
controlled, dominated, subjugated. For getting it
up is the activity of a man, and I am a priest.
  Someone was weeping in the cemetery. Meggie, of
course. No one else would think of it. He picked
up the skirts of his soutane and stepped over the
wroughtiron railing, feeling it was inevitable that he
had not yet done with Meggie on this night. If he
confronted one of the women in his life, he must also
deal with
  the other. His amused detachment was coming back; she
could not disperse that for long, the old spider. The
wicked old spider. God rot her, God rot
her!
  "Darling Meggie, don't cry," he said,
sitting on the dew-wet grass beside her. "Here,
I'll bet you don't have a decent handkerchief.
Women never do. Take mine and dry your eyes like a
good girl."
  She took it and did as she was told.
  "You haven't even changed out of your finery. Have you
been sitting here since midnight?"
  "Yes."
  "Do Bob and Jack know where you are?"
  "I told them I was going to bed."
  "What's the mattei, Meggie?"
  "You didn't speak to me tonight!"
  "Ali! I thought that might be it. Come, Meggie,
look at me!" Away in the east was a pearly
luster, a fleeing of total darkness, and the Drogheda
roosters were shrieking an early welcome to the dawn.
So he could see that not even protracted tears could
dim the loveliness of her eyes. "Meggie, you were
by far the prettiest girl at the party, and it's well
known that I come to Drogheda more often than I need.
I am a priest and therefore I ought to be above
suspicion-a bit like Caesar's wife comb I'm
afraid people don't think so purely. As priests go
I'm young, and not bad-looking." He paused to think
how Mary Carson would have greeted that bit of
understatement, and laughed soundlessly. "If I had paid
you a skerrick of attention it would have been all over
Gilly in record time. Every party line in the
district would have been buzzing with it. Do you know what
I mean?" She shookeaher head; the cropped curls
were growing brighter in the advancing light.
  "Well, you're young to come to knowledge of the ways of the world,
but you've got to learn, and it al-
  ways seems to be my province to teach you,
doesn't it? I mean people would be saying I
was interested in you as a man, not as a priest."
  "Father!"
  "Dreadful, isn't it?" He smiled. "But that's
what people would say, I assure you. You see,
Meggie, you're not a little girl anymore, you're a
young lady. But you haven't learned yet to hide your
affection for me, so had I stopped to speak to you with
all those people looking on, you'd have stared at me in a
way which might have been misconstrued."
  She was looking at him oddly, a sudden
inscrutability shuttering her gaze, then abruptly
she turned her head and presented him with her
profile. "Yes, I see. I was silly not to have
seen it."
  "Now don't you think it's time you went home?
No doubt everyone will sleep in, but if someone's
awake at the usual time you'll be in the soup. And you
can't say you've been with me, Meggie, even to your
own family." She got up and stood staring down at
him. "I'm going, Father. But I wish they knew you
better, then they'd never think such things of you. It
isn't in you, is it?"
  For some reason that hurt, hurt right down to his
soul as Mary Carson's cruel taunts had not.
"No, Meggie, you're right. It isn't in
me." He sprang up, smiling wryly. "Would you
think it strange if I said I wished it was?"
He put a hand to his head. "No, I don't
wish it was at all! Go home, Meggie, go
home!"
  Her face was sad. "Good night, Father."
  He took her hands in his, bent and kissed them.
"Good night, dearest Meggie."
  He watched her walk across the graves, step
over the railing; in the rosebud dress her
retreating form was graceful, womanly and a little
unreal. Ashes of roses. "How appropriate,"
he said to the angel. Cars were roaring away from
Drogheda as he strolled
  back across the lawn; the party was finally over.
Inside, the band was packing away its instruments,
reeling with rum and exhaustion, and the tired maids and
temporary helpers were trying to clear up. Father
Ralph shook his head at Mrs. Smith.
  "Send everyone to bed, my dear. It's a lot
easier to deal with this sort of thing when you're fresh.
I'll make sure Mrs. Carson isn't
angry." "Would you like something to eat, Father?"
  "Good Lord, nol I'm going to bed."
  In the late afternoon a hand touched his
shoulder. He reached for it blindly without the energy to open
his eyes, and tried to hold it against his cheek.
  "Meggie," he mumbled.
  "Father, Fatherl Oh, please will you wake up?"
At the tone of Mrs. Smith's voice his eyes
came suddenly very awake. "What is it, Mrs.
Smith?"
  "It's Mrs. Carson, Father. She's dead."
  His watch told him it was after six in the evening;
dazed and reeling from the heavy torpor the day's
terrible heat had induced in him, he struggled out of his
pajamas and into his priest's clothes, threw a
narrow purple stole around his neck and took the oil
of extreme unction, the holy water, his big
silver cross, his ebony rosary beads. It never
occurred to him for a moment to wonder if Mrs. Smith
was right; he knew the spider was dead. Had she taken
something after all? Pray God if she had, it was
neither obviously present in the room nor obvious
to a doctor. What possible use it was to administer
extreme unction he didn't know. But it had to be
done. Let him refuse and there would be
post-mortems, all sorts of complications. Yet
it had nothing to do with his sudden suspicion of
suicide; simply that to him laying sacred
things on Mary Carson's body was obscene.
  She was very dead, must have died within minutes of
retiring, a good fifteen hours earlier. The windows
  were closed fast, and the room humid from the great
flat pans of water she insisted be put in every
inconspicuous corner to keep her skin youthful.
There was a peculiar noise in the air; after a
stupid moment of wondering he realized what he
heard were flies, hordes of flies buzzing,
insanely clamoring as they feasted on her, mated on
her, laid their eggs on her. "For God's sake,
Mrs. Smith, open the windows!" he gasped,
moving to the bedside, face pallid.
  She had passed out of rigor mortis and was again
limp, disgustingly so. The staring eyes were mottling,
her thin lips black; and everywhere on her were the
flies. He had to have Mrs. Smith keep shooing
them away as he worked over her, muttering the ancient
Latin exhortations. What a farce, and she
accursed. The smell of herl Oh, God! Worse
than any dead horse in the freshness of a paddock.
He shrank from touching her in death as he had in
life, especially those flyblown lips. She would be
a mass of maggots within hours.
  At last it was done. He straightened.
"Go to Mr. Cleary at once, Mrs. Smith,
and for God's sake tell him to get the boys working
on a coffin right away. No time to have one sent out from
Gilly; she's rotting away before our very eyes.
Dear lord! I feel sick. I'm going to have a bath
and I'll leave my clothes outside my door.
Burn them. I'll never get the smell of her out of
them."
  Back in his room in riding breeches and shirt-for
he had not packed two soutanes-he remembered the
letter, and his promise. Seven o'clock had struck; he
could hear a restrained chaos as maids and temporary
helpers flew to clear the party mess away,
transform the reception room back into a chapel,
ready the house for tomorrow's funeral. No help for it,
he would have to go into Gilly tonight to pick up another
soutane and vestments for the Requiem Mass.
Certain things he was never without when he left the
presbytery for an out- 189
  lying station, carefully strapped in compartments in the
little black case, his sacraments for birth, death,
benediction, worship, and the vestments suitable for
Mass at whatever time of the year it was. But he was
an Irishman, and to carry the black mourning
accouterments of a Requiem was to tempt
fate. Paddy's voice echoed in the distance, but he
could not face Paddy at the moment; he knew Mrs.
Smith would do what had to be done. Sitting at his
window looking out over the vista of Drogheda in the
dying sun, the ghost gums golden, the mass of red and
pink and white roses in the garden all empurpled,
he took Mary Carson's letter from his case and held
it between his hands. But she had insisted he read it before
he buried her, and somewhere in his mind a little voice was
whispering that he must read it now, not later tonight after he
had seen Paddy and Meggie, but now before he had seen
anyone save Mary Carson.
  It contained four sheets of paper; he riffled them
apart and saw immediately that the lower two were her will. The
top two were addressed to him, in the form of a letter.
  My dearest Ralph,
  You will have seen that the second document in this
envelope is my will. I already have a perfectly good
will signed and sealed in Harry Gough's office in
Gilly; the will enclosed herein is a much later one,
and naturally nullifies the one Harry has.
  As a matter of fact I made it only the other
day, and had it witnessed by Tom and the fencer, since I
understand it is not permissible to have any beneficiary
witness one's will. It is quite legal, in
spite of the fact Harry didn't draw it up for
me. No court in the land will deny its validity, I
assure you.
  But why didn't I have Harry draw this testament
  up if I wanted to alter the disposition of my
effects? Very simple, my dear Ralph. I
wanted absolutely no one to know of this will's
existence apart from you, and me. This is the only copy,
and you hold it. Not a soul knows that you do. A very
important part of my plan.
  Do you remember that piece of the Gospel where
Satan took Our Lord Jesus Christ up onto
a mountaintop, and tempted Him with the whole world? How
pleasant it is to know I have a little of Satan's
power, and am able to tempt the one I love (do you
doubt Satan loved Christ? I do not) with the whole
world. The contemplation of your dilemma has
considerably enlivened my thoughts during the past few
years, and the closer I get to dying, the more delightful
my visions become.
  After you've read the will, you'll understand what I
mean. While I bum in Hell beyond the borders of
this life I know now, you'll still be in that life, but
burning in a hell with fiercer flames than any
God could possibly manufacture.
Oh, my Ralph, I've gauged you to a nicety!
If I never knew how to do anything else, I've
always known how to make the ones I love suffer. And
you're far better game than my dear departed
Michael ever was. When I first knew you, you
wanted Drogheda and my money, didn't you,
Ralph? You saw it as a way to buy back your
natural metier. But then came Meggie, and you
put your original purpose in cultivating me out
of your mind, didn't you? I became an excuse
to visit Drogheda so you could be with Meggie. I
wonder could you have switched allegiances so easily
had you known how much I'm actually worth? Do you
know, Ralph? I don't think you have an inkling. I
suppose it isn't ladylike to mention the exact
sum of one's assets in one's will, so I had
better tell you here just to make sure
  you have all the necessary information at your fingertips when it
comes to your making a decision. Give or take a
few hundred thousands, my fortune amounts to some
thirteen million pounds.
  I'm getting down toward the foot of the second
page, and I can't be bothered turning this into a thesis.
Read my will, Ralph, and after you've read it,
decide what you're going to do with it. Will you
tender it to Harry Gough for probate, or will you
burn it and never tell a soul it existed. That's the
decision you've got to make. I ought to add that the will
in Harry's office is the one I made the year after
Paddy came, and leaves everything I have to him. Just so
you know what hangs in the balance. Ralph, I
love you, so much I would have killed you for not wanting
me, except that this is a far better form of
reprisal. I'm not the noble kind; I love you but
I want you to scream in agony. Because, you see, 1
know what your decision will be. I know it as surely
as if I could be there, watching. You'll scream,
Ralph, you'll know what agony is. So read on,
my beautiful, ambitious priest! Read my will, and
decide your fate.
  It was not signed or initialed. He felt the
sweat on his forehead, felt it running down the back
of his neck from his hair. And he wanted to get up that
very moment to burn both documents, never read what the
second one contained. But she had gauged her quarry
well, the gross old spider. Of course he would
read on; he was too curious to resist. God!
What had he ever done, to make her want to do this
to him? Why did women make him suffer so? Why
couldn't he have been born small, twisted,
ugly? If he were so, he might have been happy.
The last two sheets were covered by the same
precise, almost minute writing. As mean and
grudging as her soul.
  1, Mary Elizabeth Carson, being of sound
mind and sound body, do hereby declare that this is my last
will and testament, thereby rendering null and void any
such testaments previously made by me. Save
only for the special bequests made below, all my
worldly goods and moneys and properties I bequeath to the
Holy Catholic Church of Rome, under the hereby
stated conditions of bequest:
  First, that the said Holy Catholic Church of
Rome, to be called the Church hereafter, knows in what
esteem and with what affection I hold her priest,
Father Ralph de Bricassart. It is solely
because of his kindness, spiritual guidance and unfailing
support that I so dispose of my assets.
Secondly, that the bequest shall continue in the favor
of the Church only so long as she appreciates the
worth and ability of the said Father Ralph de
Bricassart.
  Thirdly, that the said Father Ralph de
Bricassart be responsible for the administration and
channeling of these my worldly goods, moneys and
properties, as the chief authority in charge of my
estate. Fourthly, that upon the demise of the said Father
Ralph de Bricassart, his own last will and
testament shall be legally binding in the matter of the further
administration of my estate. That is, the Church shall
continue in full ownership, but Father Ralph de
Bricassart shall be solely responsible for the naming
of his successor in administration; he shall not be
obliged to select a successor who is either an
ecclesiastical or a lay member of the Church.
  Fifthly, that the station Drogheda be never sold
nor subdivided. Sixthly, that my brother,
Padraic Cleary, be retained as manager of the
station Drogheda with the right to dwell in my house, and that
he be paid
  a salary at the discretion of Father Ralph de
Bricassart and no other. Seventhly, that in the
event of the death of my brother, the said Padraic
Cleary, his widow and children be permitted to remain on
the station Drogheda and that the position of manager shall
pass consecutively to each of his sons, Robert,
John, Hugh, Stuart, James and Patrick, but
excluding Francis. Eighthly, that upon the demise
of Patrick or whichever son excluding Francis
is the last son remaining, the same rights be
permitted the said Padraic Cleary's grandchildren.
  Special bequests:
  To Padraic Cleary, the contents of my houses
on the station Drogheda. To Eunice Smith, my
housekeeper, that she remain at a fair salary so
long as she desires, and in addition that she be paid the
sum of five thousand pounds forthwith, and that upon her
retirement she be awarded an equitable pension.
  To Minerva O'Brien and Catherine Donnelly,
that they remain at fair salaries so long as they
desire, and in addition that they be paid the sum of one
thousand pounds each forthwith, and that upon their retirements
they be awarded equitable pensions.
  To Father Ralph de Bricassart the sum of ten
thousand pounds to be paid annually so long as he shall
live, for his own private and unquestioned use.
  It was duly signed, dated and witnessed.
  His room looked west. The sun was setting. The
pall of dust which came with every summer filled the
silent air, and the sun thrust its fingers through the
finestrung particles so that it seemed the whole world
had turned to gold and purple. Streaky clouds
rimmed in
  brilliant fire poked silver streamers across the
great bloody ball which hung just above the
trees of the far paddocks.
  "Bravo!" he said. "I admit, Mary, you've
beaten me. A master stroke. I was the fool, not
you."
  He could not see the pages in his hand through the tears,
and moved them before they could be blotched. Thirteen
million pounds. Thirteen million pounds! It was
indeed what he had been angling for in the days before
Meggie. And with her coming he had abandoned it, because he
couldn't carry on such a campaign in cold blood
to cheat her of her inheritance. But what if he had
known how much the old spider was worth? What then?
He had no idea it was a tenth so much. Thirteen
million pounds!
  For seven years Paddy and his family had lived
in the head stockman's house and worked themselves ragged for
Mary Carson. For what? The niggardly wages she
paid? Never to Father Ralph's knowledge had Paddy complained
of being shabbily treated, thinking no doubt that when his
sister died he would be amply repaid for managing the
property on ordinary stockman's pay, while his
sons did stockman's work for rouseabout's wages.
He had made do, and grown to love Drogheda as if
it were his own, rightly assuming it would be. "Bravo,
Mary!" said Father Ralph again, these first
tears since his boyhood dropping from his face onto
the backs of his hands, but not onto the paper.
Thirteen million pounds, and the chance to be Cardinal
de Bricassart yet. Against Paddy Cleary, his
wife, his sons and Meggie. How diabolically
well she had read him! Had she stripped Paddy of
everything, his way would have been clear: he could have taken
the will down to the kitchen stove and thrust it inside the
firebox without a qualm. But she had made sure
Paddy wouldn't want, that after her death he would be more
comfortable on Drogheda than during her life, and that
  Drogheda could not quite be taken from him. Its profits
and title, yes, but not the land itself. No, he wouldn't
be the owner of that fabulous thirteen million pounds,
but he would be well respected, comfortably provided
for. Meggie wouldn't go hungry, or be thrown
shoeless upon the world. Nor would she be Miss
Cleary, either, able to stand on an equal footing with
Miss Car- michael and that ilk. Quite respectable,
socially admissible, but not top drawer. Never top
drawer.
  Thirteen million pounds. The chance to get out of
Gillanbone and perpetual obscurity, the chance
to take his place within the hierarchy of Church
administration, the assured goodwill of his
peers and superiors. And all while he was still young enough
to make up the ground he had lost. Mary Carson
had made Gillanbone the epicenter of the Archbishop
Papal Legate's map with a vengeance; the
tremors would reach as far as the Vatican. Rich
though the Church was, thirteen million pounds was
thirteen million pounds. Not to be sneezed at,
even by the Church. And his was the sole hand which brought it
into the fold, his hand acknowledged in blue ink in Mary
Carson's own writing. He knew Paddy would never
contest the will; so had Mary Carson, God rot her.
Oh, certainly Paddy would be furious, would never
want to see him again or speak to him again, but his
chagrin wouldn't extend to litigation. Was there a
decision? Didn't he already know, hadn't he known
the moment he read her will what he was going to do? The
tears had dried. With his usual grace Father
Ralph got to his feet, made sure his shirt was
tucked in all the way round, and went to the door.
He must get to Gilly, pick up a soutane and
vestments. But first he wanted to see Mary Carson
again. In spite of the open windows the stench had become
a reeking fug; no hint of a breeze stirred the
limp curtains. With steady tread he crossed to the
bed and stood looking down. The fly eggs were
beginning to hatch maggots in all the wet parts of her
face, ballooning
  gases puffed up her fat arms and hands to greenish
blobs, her skin was breaking down. Oh, God. You
disgusting old spider. You've won, but what a
victory. The triumph of one disintegrating
caricature of humanity over another. You can't
defeat my Meggie, nor can you take from her what was
never yours. I might burn in Hell alongside
you, but I know the Hell they've got planned for you:
to see my indifference to you persist as we rot away
together through all eternity ....
  Paddy was waiting for him in the hall downstairs,
looking sick and bewildered.
  "Oh, Father!" he said, coming forward. "Isn't this
awful? What a shock! I never expected her to go
out like this; she was so well last night! Dear God,
what am I going to do?"
  "Have you seen her?"
  "Heaven help me, yes!"
  "Then you know what has to be done. I've never
seen a corpse decompose so fast. If you
don't get her decently into some sort of container
within the next few hours you'll have to pour her into a
petrol drum. She'll have to be buried
first thing in the morning. Don't waste time beautifying
her coffin; cover it with roses from the garden or
something. But get a move on, man! I'm going
into Gilly for vestments."
  "Get back as soon as you can, Father!" Paddy
pleaded. But Father Ralph was rather longer than a
simple visit to the presbytery demanded. Before he
turned his car in that direction he drove down one of
Gillanbone's more prosperous side streets, to a
fairly pretentious dwelling surrounded by a
well-laid-out garden.
  Harry Gough was just sitting down to his dinner, but
came into the parlor when the maid told him who had
called.
  "Father, will you eat with us? Corned beef and
cabbage with boiled potatoes and parsley sauce,
and for once the beef's not too salty."
  "No, Harry, I can't stay. I just came
to tell you Mary Carson died this morning."
  "Holy Jesus! I was there last night! She
seemed so well, Father!" "I know. She was
perfectly well when I took her up the stairs
about three, but she must have died almost the moment she
retired. Mrs. Smith found her at six this
evening. By then she'd been dead so long she
was hideous; the room was shut up like an incubator
all through the heat of the day. Dear Lord, I pray
to forget the sight of her! Unspeakable, Harry,
awful."
  "She'll be buried tomorrow?"
  "She'll have to be."
  "What time is it? Ten? We must eat dinner as
late as the Spaniards in this heat, but no need
to worry, it's too late to start phoning people. Would you
like me to do that for you, Father?"
  "Thank you, it would be a great kindness. I only
came into Gilly for vestments. I never expected
to be saying a Requiem when I started out. I must
get back to Drogheda as quickly as I can; they need
me. The Mass will be at nine in the morning."
  "Tell Paddy I'll bring her will with me, so I
can deal with it straight after the funeral. You're a
beneficiary, too, Father, so I'd appreciate
your staying for the reading."
  "I'm afraid we have a slight problem,
Harry. Mary made another will, you see. Last
night after she left the party she gave me a sealed
envelope, and made me promise I'd open it the
moment I saw her dead body for myself. When I
did so I found it contained a fresh will."
  "Mary made a new will? Without me?"
  "It would appear so. I think it was something she had
been mulling for a long time, but as to why she chose to be
so secretive about it, I don't know."
  "Do you have it with you now, Father?"
  "Yes." The priest reached inside his shirt and
handed over the sheets of paper, folded small.
  The lawyer had no compunction about reading them on the
spot. When he finished he looked up, and there was a
great deal in his eyes Father Ralph would rather not have
seen. Admiration, anger, a certain contempt.
"Well, Father, congratulations! You got the lot after
all." He could say it, not being a Catholic.
  "Believe me, Harry, it came as a bigger
surprise to me than it does to you."
  "This is the only copy?"
  "As far as I know, yes."
  "And she gave it to you as late as last night?"
"Yes."
  "Then why didn't you destroy it, make sure
poor old Paddy got what's rightfully his? The
Church has no right to Mary Carson's possessions
at all." The priest's fine eyes were bland.
"Ah, but that wouldn't have been fitting, Harry, would it
now? It was Mary's property, to dispose of
in any manner she wished."
  "I shall advise Paddy to contest."
  "I think you should."
  And on that note they parted. By the time everyone
arrived in the morning to see Mary Carson buried,
the whole of Gillanbone and all points of the compass
around it would know where the money was going. The die was
cast, there could be no turning back.
  It was four in the morning when Father Ralph got
through the last gate and into the Home Paddock, for he
hadn't hurried on the return drive. All through
it he had willed his mind to blankness; he wouldn't
let himself think. Not of Paddy or of Fee, or.
Meggie or that stinking gross thing they had (he
devoutly hoped) poured into her coffin. Instead he
opened his eyes and his mind to the night, to the ghostly
silver of dead trees standing lonely in the gleaming
grass, to the heart-of-
  darkness shadows cast by stands of timber, to the full
moon riding the heavens like an airy bubble. Once
he stopped the car and got out, walked to a wire fence
and leaned on its tautness while he breathed in the
gums and the bewitching aroma of wildflowers. The land was
so beautiful, so pure, so indifferent to the fates of the
creatures who presumed to rule it. They
might put their hands to it, but in the long run it ruled
them. Until they could direct the weather and summon
up the rain, it had the upper hand. He parked his car
some distance behind the house and walked slowly toward it.
Every window was full of light; faintly from the
housekeeper's quarters he could hear the sound of
Mrs. Smith leading the two Irish maids in a
rosary. A shadow moved under the blackness of the
wistaria vine; he stopped short, his hackles
rising. She had got to him in more ways than one, the
old spider. But it was only Meggie, patiently
waiting for him to come back. She was in jodhpurs and
boots, very much alive.
  "You gave me a fright," he said abruptly.
  "I'm sorry, Father, I didn't mean to. But
I didn't want to be inside there with Daddy and the
boys, and Mum is still down at our house with the
babies. I suppose I ought to be praying with
Mrs. Smith and Minnie and Cat, but I don't
feel like praying for her. That's a sin, isn't it?"
He was in no mood to pander to the memory of Mary
Carson. "I don't think it's a sin, Meggie,
whereas hypocrisy is. I don't feel like praying
for her, either. She wasn't . . . a very good
person." His smile flashed. "So if
you've sinned in saying it, so have I, and more seriously
at that. I'm supposed to love everyone, a burden
which isn't laid upon you." "Are you all right, Father?"
  "Yes, I'm all right." He looked up at the
house, and sighed. "I don't want to be in there,
that's all. I don't want to be where she is
until it's light and the demons 200,
  of the darkness are driven away. If I saddle the
horses, will you ride with me until dawn?"
  Her hand touched his black sleeve, fell. "I
don't want to go inside, either."
  "Wait a minute while I put my soutane in
the car."
  "I'll go on to the stables."
  For the first time she was trying to meet him on his
ground, adult ground; he could sense the difference in
her as surely as he could smell the roses in Mary
Carson's beautiful gardens. Roses. Ashes of
roses. Roses, roses, everywhere. Petals in the
grass. Roses of summer, red and white and
yellow. Perfume of roses, heavy and sweet in the
night. Pink roses, bleached by the moon to ashes.
Ashes of roses, ashes of roses. My Meggie,
I have forsaken you. But can't you see, you've become a
threat? Therefore have I crushed you beneath the
heel of my ambition; you have no more substance to me
than a bruised rose in the grass. The smell of
roses. The smell of Mary Carson. Roses and
ashes, ashes of roses.
  "Ashes of roses," he said, mounting. "Let's
get as far from the smell of roses as the moon. Tomorrow
the house will be full of them."
  He kicked the chestnut mare and cantered ahead of
Meggie down the track to the creek, longing to weep;
for until he smelled the future adornments of
Mary Carson's coffin it had not actually impinged
on his thinking brain as an imminent fact. He would
be going away very soon. Too many thoughts, too many
emotions, all of them ungovernable. They wouldn't
leave him in Gilly a day after learning the terms of
that incredible will; they would recall him to Sydney
immediately. Immediately! He fled from his pain, never having
known such pain, but it kept pace with him effortlessly.
It wasn't something in a vague sometime; it was going
to happen immediately. And he could almost see Paddy's
face, the revulsion, the turning 201
  away. After this he wouldn't be welcome on
Drogheda, and he would never see Meggie again.
  The disciplining began then, hammered by hoofs and in a
sensation of flying. It was better so, better
so, better so. Galloping on and on. Yes, it would
surely hurt less then, tucked safely in some
cell in a bishop's palace, hurt less and
less, until finally even the ache faded from
consciousness. It had to be better so. Better than
staying in Gilly to watch her change into a creature
he didn't want, then have to marry her one day to some
unknown man. Out of sight, out of mind.
  Then what was he doing with her now, riding through the stand
of box and coolibah on the far side of the creek?
He couldn't seem to think why, he only felt the
pain. Not the pain of betrayal; there wasn't room
for that. Only for the pain of leaving her.
  "Father, Fatherl I can't keep up with you! Slow
down, Father, please!" It was the call to duty, and
reality. Like a man in slow motion he wrenched the
mare around, sat it until it had danced out its
excitement. And waited for Meggie to catch him up.
That was the trouble. Meggie was catching him up.
Close by them was the roar of the borehead, a great
steaming pool smelling of sulphur, with a pipe like a
ship's ventilator jetting boiling water into its
depths. All around the perimeter of the little elevated
lake like spokes from a wheel's hub, the bore
drains dribbled off across the plain whiskered
in incongruously emerald grass. The banks of the
pool were slimy grey mud, and the freshwater
crayfish called yabbies lived in the mud. Father
Ralph started to laugh. "It smells like Hell,
Meggie, doesn't it? Sulphur and brimstone,
right here on her own property, in her own backyard.
She ought to recognize the smell when she gets there
decked in roses, oughtn't she? Oh, Meggie . .
."
  The horses were trained to stand on a dangling rein;
there were no fences nearby, and no trees closer than
  half a mile away. But there was a log on the
side of the pool farthest from the borehead itself, where the
water was cooler. It was the seat provided for winter
bathers as they dried their feet and legs. Father
Ralph sat down and Meggie sat some way from him,
turned side on to watch him.
  "What's the matter, Father?"
  It sounded peculiar, his oft-asked question from her
lips, to him. He smiled. "I've sold you, my
Meggie, sold you for thirteen million pieces of
silver."
  "Sold me?"
  "A figure of speech. It doesn't matter.
Come, sit closer to me. There may not be the
chance for us to talk together again."
  "While we're in mourning for Auntie, you
mean?" She wriggled up the log and sat next
to him. "What difference will being in mourning make?"
"I don't mean that, Meggie."
  "You mean because I'm growing up, and people might
gossip about us?" "Not exactly. I mean I'm
going away."
  There it was: the meeting of trouble head on, the
acceptance of another load. No outcry, no
weeping, no storm of protest. Just a tiny shrinking,
as if the burden sat askew, would not distribute itself
so she could bear it properly. And a caught breath, not
quite like a sigh. "When?"
  "A matter of days."
  "Oh, Father! It will be harder than Frank."
  "And for me harder than anything in my life. I have
no consolation. You at least have your family."
  "You have your God."
  "Well said, Meggie! You are growing up!"
  But, tenacious female, her mind had returned
to the question she had ridden three miles without a chance
to ask. He was leaving, it would be so hard to do without
him, but the question had its own importance.
  "Father, in the stables you said "ashes of
roses." Did you mean the color of my dress?"
  "In a way, perhaps. But I think really I
meant something else." "What?"
  "Nothing you'd understand, my Meggie. The dying of
an idea which had no right to be born, let alone
nurtured."
  "There is nothing which has no right to be born, even
an idea." He turned his head to watch her. "You
know what I'm talking about, don't you?"
  "I think so."
  "Not everything born is good, Meggie."
  "No. But if it was born at all, it was meant
to be."
  "You argue like a Jesuit. How old are you?"
  "I'll be seventeen in a month, Father."
  "And you've toiled all seventeen years of it.
Well, hard work ages us ahead of our years.
What do you think about, Meggie, when you've the time
to think?"
  "Oh, about Jims and Patsy and the rest of the
boys, about Daddy and Mum, about Hal and Auntie
Mary. Sometimes about growing babies. I'd like that very
much. And riding, the sheep. All the things the men
talk about. The weather, the rain, the vegetable garden,
the hens, what I'm going to do tomorrow." "Do you
dream of having a husband?"
  "No, except I suppose I'll have to have one
if I want to grow babies. It isn't nice for a
baby to have no father."
  In spite of his pain he smiled; she was such a
quaint mixture of ignorance and morality. Then
he swung sideways, took her chin in his hand and
stared down at her. How to do it, what had to be done?
"Meggie, I realized something not long ago which I
ought to have seen sooner. You weren't being quite truthful when
you told me what you thought about, were you?"
  "I. . ." she said, and fell silent.
  "You comdidn't say you thought about me, did you?
If there was no guilt in it, you would have mentioned my
name alongside your father's. I think perhaps it's a good
thing I'm going away, don't you? You're a little
old to be having schoolgirl crushes, but you're not
a very old almost-seventeen, are you? I like your lack
of worldly wisdom, but I know how painful
schoolgirl crushes can be; I've suffered enough of
them."
  She seemed about to speak, but in the end her lids
fell over tear-bright eyes, she shook her head
free.
  "Look, Meggie, it's simply a
phase, a marker on the road to being a woman. When
you've become that woman, you'll meet the man
destined to be your hus- band and you'll be far too
busy getting on with your life to think of me,
except as an old friend who helped you through some of the
terrible spasms of growing up. What you mustn't do
is get into the habit of dreaming about me in any
sort of romantic fashion. I can never regard you
the way a husband will. I don't think of you in that
light at all, Meggie, -- do you understand me? When
I say I love you, I don't mean I love you
as a man. I am a priest, not a man. So
don't fill your head with dreams of me. I'm going
away, and I doubt very much that I'll have time to come
back, even on a visit."
  Her shoulders were bent as if the load was very heavy,
but she lifted her head to look directly into his
face.
  "I won't fill my head with dreams of you,
don't worry. I know you're a priest."
  "I'm not convinced I chose my vocation wrongly.
It fills a need in me no human being ever could,
even you."
  "I know. I can see it when you say Mass. You
have a power. I suppose you must feel like
Our Lord."
  "I can feel every suspended breath in the church,
Meggie! As each day goes on I die, and in
each morning saying Mass I am reborn. But is
it because I'm
  God's chosen priest, or because I hear those awed
breaths, know the power I have over every soul present?"
  "Does it matter? It just is."
  "It would probably never matter to you, but it does
to me. I doubt, I doubt."
  She switched the subject to what mattered to her.
"I don't know how I shall get on without you, Father.
First Frank, now you. Somehow with Hal it's
different; I know he's dead and can never come back.
But you and Frank are alive! I'll aways be
wondering how you are, what you're doing, if you're
all right, if there's anything I could do to help you.
I'll even have to wonder if you're still alive,
won't I?"
  "I'll be feeling the same, Meggie, and I'm
sure that Frank does, too." "No. Frank's
forgotten us .... You will, too."
  "I could never forget you, Meggie, not as long as
I live. And for my punishment I'm going to live a
long, long time." He got up and pulled
her to her feet, put his arms about her loosely and
affectionately. "I think this is goodbye, Meggie.
We can't be alone again."
  "If you hadn't been a priest, Father, would you have
married me?" The title jarred. "Don't call
me that all the time! My name is Ralph." Which
didn't answer her question.
  Though he held her, he did not have any intention
of kissing her. The face raised to his was nearly
invisible, for the moon had set and it was very dark. He
could feel her small, pointed breasts low down on
his chest; a curious sensation, disturbing. Even more so
was the fact that as naturally as if she came into a
man's arms every day of her life, her arms had gone
up around his neck, and linked tightly.
  He had never kissed anyone as a lover, did not
want to now; nor, he thought, did Meggie. A
warm salute on the cheek, a quick hug, as she would
demand of her father were he to go away. She was
sensitive and proud;
  he must have hurt her deeply when he held up
her precious dreams to dispassionate inspection.
Undoubtedly she was as eager to be done with the
farewell as he was. Would it comfort her to know his pain
was far worse than hers? As he bent his
head to come at her cheek she raised herself on
tiptoe, and more by luck than good management touched his
lips with her own. He jerked back as if he tasted
the spider's poison, then he tipped his head forward
before he could lose her, tried to say something against the
sweet shut mouth, and in trying to answer she parted it.
Her body seemed to lose all its bones, become
fluid, a warm melting darkness; one of his arms was
clamped round her waist, the other across her back with
its hand on her skull, in her hair, holding her
face up to his as if frightened she would go from him in that
very moment, before he could grasp and catalogue this
unbelievable presence who was Meggie. Meggie, and
not Meggie, too alien to be familiar, for his
Meggie wasn't a woman, didn't feel like a
woman, could never be a woman to him. Just as he
couldn't be a man to her. The thought overcame his
drowning senses; he wrenched her arms from about his
neck, thrust her away and tried to see her face in
the darkness. But her head was down, she wouldn't look
at him.
  "It's time we were going, Meggie," he said.
  Without a word she turned to her horse, mounted and
waited for him; usually it was he who waited for her.
  Father Ralph had been right. At this time
of year Drogheda was awash with roses, so the house was
smothered in them. By eight that morning hardly one bloom
was left in the garden. The first of the mourners began
to arrive not long after the final rose was plundered from its
bush; a light breakfast of coffee and freshly
baked, buttered rolls was laid out in the small
dining room. After Mary Carson was deposited in the
  vault a more substantial repast would be served in
the big dining room, to fortify the departing mourners on
their long ways home. The word had got around; no
need to doubt the efficiency of the Gilly grapevine,
which was the party line. While lips shaped conventional
phrases, eyes and the minds behind them speculated,
deduced, smiled slyly.
  "I hear we're going to lose you, Father," said
Miss Carmichael nastily. He had never looked
so remote, so devoid of human feeling as he
did that morning in his laceless alb and dull black
chasuble with silver cross. It was as if he attended
only in body, while his spirit moved far away. But
he looked down at Miss Carmichael absently,
seemed to recollect himself, and smiled with genuine
mirth.
  "God moves in strange ways, Miss
Carmichael," he said, and went to speak
to someone else.
  What was on his mind no one could have guessed; it was
the coming confrontation with Paddy over the will, and his dread
of seeing Paddy's rage, his need of Paddy's
rage and contempt.
  Before he began the Requiem Mass he turned
to face his congregation; the room was jammed, and reeked
so of roses that open windows could not dissipate their
heavy perfume.
  "I do not intend to make a long eulogy," he
said in his clear, almost Oxford diction with its faint
Irish underlay. "Mary Carson was known to you all.
A pillar of the community, a pillar of the Church she
loved more than any living being."
  At that point there were those who swore his eyes
mocked, but others who maintained just as stoutly that they
were dulled with a real and abiding grief.
  "A pillar of the Church she loved more than any
living being," he repeated more clearly still; he was not
one to turn away, either. "In her last hour she was
alone, yet she was not alone. For in the hour of our
  death Our Lord Jesus Christ is with us, within us,
bearing the burden of our agony. Not the greatest nor
the humblest living being dies alone, and death is
sweet. We are gathered here to pray for her
immortal soul, that she whom we loved in life shall
enjoy her just and eternal reward. Let us pray."
The makeshift coffin was so covered in roses it could
not be seen, and it rested upon a small wheeled cart the
boys had cannibalized from various pieces of farm
equipment. Even so, with the windows gaping open and the
overpowering scent of roses, they could smell her. The
doctor had been talking, too.
  "When I reached Drogheda she was so rotten that I
just couldn't hold my stomach," he said on the party
line to Martin King. "I've never felt so sorry
for anyone in all my life as I did then for
Paddy Cleary, not only because he's been done out of
Drogheda but because he had to shove that awful seething
heap in a coffin."
  "Then I'm not volunteering for the office of
pallbearer," Martin said, so faintly because of all the
receivers down that the doctor had to make him repeat the
statement three times before he understood it. Hence the
cart; no one was willing to shoulder the remains of
Mary Carson across the lawn to the vault. And no
one was sorry when the vault doors were closed on
her and breathing could become normal at last. While
the mourners clustered in the big dining room eating,
or trying to look as if they were eating,
Harry Gough conducted Paddy, his family, Father
Ralph, Mrs. Smith and the two maids to the
drawing room. None of the mourners had any intention
of going home yet, hence the pretense at eating;
they wanted to be on hand to see what Paddy looked
like when he came out after the reading of the will. To do him and
his family justice, they hadn't comported themselves
during the funeral as if conscious of their elevated
status. As goodhearted as ever, Paddy had wept for
his sister, and Fee
  looked exactly as she always did, as if she
didn't care what happened to her.
  "Paddy, I want you to contest," Harry Gough
said after he had read the amazing document through in a
hard, indignant voice. "The wicked old
bitch!" said Mrs. Smith; though she liked the
priest, she was fonder by far of the Clearys. They had
brought babies and children into her life.
  But Paddy shook his head. "No, Harry! I
couldn't do that. The property was hers, wasn't it?
She was quite entitled to do what she liked with it. If
she wanted the Church to have it, she wanted the Church
to have it. I don't deny it's a bit of a
disappointment, but I'm just an ordinary sort of
chap, so perhaps it's for the best. I don't
think I'd like the responsibility of owning a
property the size of Drogheda."
  "You don't understand, Paddy!" the lawyer said in a
slow, distinct voice, as if he were explaining to a
child. "It isn't just Drogheda I'm talking about.
Drogheda was the least part of what your sister had
to leave, believe me. She's a major shareholder
in a hundred gilt-edged companies, she owns steel
factories and gold mines, she's Michar
Limited, with a ten-story office building all
to herself in Sydney. She was worth more than anyone in
the whole of Australia! Funny, she made me
contact the Sydney directors of Michar
Limited not four weeks ago, to find out the exact
extent of her assets. When she died she was worth
something over thirteen million pounds." "Thirteen
million pounds!" Paddy said it as one says the
distance from the earth to the sun, something totally
incomprehensible. "That settles it, Harry. I
don't want the responsibility of that kind of
money." "It's no responsibility, Paddy!
Don't you understand yet? Money like that looks after
itself! You'd have nothing to do with cultivating or harvesting
it; there are hundreds of people employed simply
to take care 210
  of it for you. Contest the will, Paddy, please!
I'll get you the best KC'S in the country and
I'll fight it for you all the way to the Privy
Council if necessary."
  Suddenly realizing that his family were as concerned as
himself, Paddy turned to Bob and Jack, sitting
together bewildered on a Florentine marble bench.
"Boys, what do you say? Do you want to go after
Auntie Mary's thirteen million quid? If
you do I'll contest, not otherwise."
  "But we can live on Drogheda anyway, isn't
that what the will says?" Bob asked.
  Harry answered. "No one can turn you off
Drogheda so long as even one of your father's grandchildren
lives."
  "We're going to live here in the big house, have
Mrs. Smith and the girls to look after us, and earn a
decent wage," said Paddy as if he could hardly
believe his good fortune rather than his bad.
  "Then what more do we want, Jack?" Bob
asked his brother. "Don't you agree?"
  "It suits me," said Jack.
  Father Ralph moved restlessly. He had not
stopped to shed his Requiem vestments, nor had he
taken a chair; like a dark and beautiful
sorcerer he stood half in the shadows at the back
of the room, isolated, his hands hidden beneath the black
chasuble, his face still, and at the back of the distant
blue eyes a horrified, stunned resentment. There
was not even going to be the longed-for chastisement of rage
or contempt; Paddy was going to hand it all to him on
a golden plate of goodwill, and thank him for
relieving the Clearys of a burden.
  "What about Fee and Meggie?" the priest asked
Paddy harshly. "Do you not think enough of your women
to consult them, too?" "Fee?" asked Paddy
anxiously.
  "Whatever you decide, Paddy. I don't
care."
  "Meggie?"
  "I don't want her thirteen million
pieces of silver," Meggie said, her eyes fixed
on Father Ralph.
  Paddy turned to the lawyer. "Then that's it,
Harry. We don't want to contest the will. Let the
Church have Mary's money, and welcome." Harry
struck his hands together. "God damn it, I hate
to see you cheated!" "I thank my stars for Mary,"
said Paddy gently. "If it wasn't for her I'd
still be trying to scrape a living in New
Zealand."
  As they came out of the drawing room Paddy stopped
Father Ralph and held out his hand, in full view of the
fascinated mourners clustering in the dining room
doorway.
  "Father, please don't think there are any hard
feelings on our side. Mary was never swayed
by another human being in all her life, priest or
brother or husband. You take it from me, she did
what she wanted to do. You were mighty good to her, and
you've been mighty good to us. We'll never forget
it." The guilt. The burden. Almost Father Ralph
did not move to take that gnarled stained hand, but the
cardinal's brain won; he gripped it feverishly
and smiled, agonized.
  "Thank you, Paddy. You may rest assured
I'll see you never want for a thing."
  Within the week he was gone, not having appeared on
Drogheda again. He spent the few days packing his
scant belongings, and touring every station in the district where
there were Catholic families; save Drogheda.
Father Watkin Thomas, late of Wales, arrived
to assume the duties of parish priest to the
Gillanbone district, while Father Ralph de
Bricassart became private secretary
to Archbishop Cluny Dark. But his work load was
light; he had two undersecretaries. For the most part
he was occupied in discovering just what and how much Mary
Carson had owned, and in gathering the reins of
government together on behalf of the Church.
  THREE
  1929-1932 Paddy
  The new year came in with Angus MacQueen's
annual Hogmanay party on Rudna Hunish, and
still the move to the big house had not been accomplished.
It wasn't something done overnight, between packing over
seven years' accumulation of everyday artifacts, and
Fee's declaration that the big house drawing room
at least be finished first. No one was in the slightest
hurry, though everyone was looking forward to it. In some
respects the big house would prove no different:
it lacked electricity and the flies populated it just
as thickly. But in summer it was about twenty
degrees cooler than outside, from the thickness of
its stone walls and the ghost gums shading its roof.
Also, the bathhouse was a true luxury, having hot
water all winter from pipes which ran up the back of the
vast fuel stove in the cookhouse next door, and
every drop in its pipes was rain water. Though baths
and showers had to be taken in this large
structure with its ten separate cubicles, the big
house and all the smaller houses were liberally endowed
with indoor water-closet toilets, an unheard-of
degree of opulence envious Gilly residents had
been caught calling sybaritism. Aside from the
Hotel Imperial, two pubs, the Catholic
presbytery and the convent, the Gillanbone district
survived on out-
  houses. Except Drogheda homestead, thanks
to its enormous number of tanks and roofs to catch
rain water. The rules were strict: no undue
flushing, and plenty of sheep-dip disinfectant. But
after holes in the ground, it was heaven.
  Father Ralph had sent Paddy a check for five
thousand pounds at the beginning of the preceding December,
to be going on with, his letter said; Paddy handed it to Fee
with a dazed exclamation. "I doubt I've managed
to earn this much in all my working days," he said.
"What shall I do with it?" Fee asked, staring at it and
then looking up at him, eyes blazing. "Money,
Paddy! Money at last, do you realize it? Oh,
I don't care about Auntie Mary's thirteen
million poundsthere's nothing real about so much. But this
is real! What shall I do with it?" "Spend it," said
Paddy simply. "A few new clothes
for the children and yourself? And maybe there are things you'd like
to buy for the big house? I can't think of anything
else we need."
  "Nor can I, isn't it silly?" Up got
Fee from the breakfast table, beckoning Meggie
imperiously. "Come on, girl, we're walking up
to the big house to look at it."
  Though at that time three weeks had elapsed since
the frantic week following Mary Carson's death,
none of the Clearys had been near the big house. But
now Fee's visit more than made up for their
previous reluctance. From one room to another she
marched with Meggie, Mrs. Smith, Minnie and
Cat in attendance, more animated than a bewildered
Meggie had ever known her. She muttered to herself
continually; this was dreadful, that was an absolute
horror, was Mary color-blind, did she have no
taste at all? In the drawing room Fee paused
longest, eyeing it expertly. Only the reception
room exceeded it in size, for it was forty feet long
and thirty wide, and had a fifteen-foot ceiling.
It was a curious mixture of the best
  and the worst in its decoration, painted a uniform
cream which had yellowed and did nothing to emphasize the
magnificent moldings on the ceiling or the
carved paneling on the walls. The enormous
floor-to-ceiling windows that marched uninterruptedly
for forty feet along the veranda side were heavily
curtained in brown velvet, casting a deep gloom
over the dingy brown chairs, two stunning malachite
benches and two equally beautiful benches in
Florentine marble, and a massive fireplace of
cream marble veined in deep pink. On the polished
teak floor three Aubusson carpets had been
squared with geometrical precision, and a Waterford
chandelier six feet long touched the ceiling, its chain
bunched round it.
  "You are to be commended, Mrs. Smith," Fee
pronounced. "It's positively awful, but
spotlessly clean. I shall give you something worth caring
for. Those priceless benches without anything to set them
of-it's a shame! Since the day I saw this room,
I've longed to make it into something every person who
walks into it will admire, and yet comfortable enough to make
every person who walks into it want to remain."
  Mary Carson's desk was a Victorian
hideousness; Fee walked to it and the phone which stood
upon it, flicking its gloomy wood contemptuously.
"My escritoire will do beautifully here," she
said. "I'm going to start with this room, and when
it's finished I'll move up from the creek, not before.
Then at least we'll have one place where we can
congregate without being depressed." She sat down and
plucked the receiver off its hook. While her
daughter and her servants stood in a small
bewildered huddle, she proceeded to set Harry
Gough in motion. Mark Foys would send fabric
samples on the night mail; Nock and Kirbys
would send paint samples; Grace Brothers would
send wallpaper samples; these and other Sydney
stores would send catalogues specially compiled for
her, describing their lines of furnishings. Laughter
in his voice, Harry guaranteed to
  produce a competent upholsterer and a team of
painters capable of doing the meticulous work Fee
demanded. Good for Mrs. Clearyl She was going
to sweep Mary Carson right out of the house.
  The phoning finished, everyone was directed to rip
down the brown velvet curtains at once. Out they
went onto the rubbish heap in an orgy of
wastefulness Fee supervised personally, even
putting the torch to them herself.
  "We don't need them," she said, "and I'm not
going to inflict them on the Gillanbone poor."
  "Yes, Mum," said Meggie,
paralyzed.
  "We're not going to have any curtains," said
Fee, not at all disturbed over a flagrant
breach of the decorating customs of the time. "The
veranda's far too deep to let the sun come in
directly, so why do we need curtains? I want
this room to be seen."
  The materials arrived, so did the painters and the
upholsterer; Meggie and Cat were sent up ladders
to wash and polish the top windows while Mrs.
Smith and Minnie coped with the bottom ones and Fee
strode around watching everything with an eagle eye.
  By the second week in January it was all done,
and somehow of course the news leaked out on the party
lines. Mrs. Cleary had made the Drogheda
drawing room into a palace, and wouldn't it be only
the civil thing for Mrs. Hopeton to accompany
Mrs. King and Mrs. O'Rourke on a
welcome-to-the-big-house visit? No one argued
that the result of Fee's efforts was absolute
beauty. The cream Aubusson carpets with their
faded bunches of pink and red roses and green
leaves had been strewn rather haphazardly around the
mirror-finished floor. Fresh cream paint
covered the walls and the ceiling, every molding and
carving painstakingly picked out in gilt, but the huge
oval-shaped flat spaces in the paneling had been
papered with faded black silk bearing the same
bunches of roses as the three carpets, like stilted
Japanese paintings in cream
  and gilt surrounds. The Waterford chandelier had
been lowered until its bottom pendant chimed a
bare six and a half feet from the floor, every prism
of its thousands polished to a flashing rainbow, and its
great brass chain tethered to the wall instead of being
bunched up. On spindly cream-and-gilt tables
Waterford lamps stood next to Waterford ashtrays
and Waterford vases stuffed with cream and pink roses;
all the big comfortable chairs had been re-covered in
cream watered silk and placed in small cozy
groupings with large ottomans drawn up to each one
invitingly; in one sunny corner stood the
exquisite old spinet with an enormous vase of
cream and pink roses on it. Above the fireplace
hung the portrait of Fee's grandmother in her pale
pink crinoline, and facing her at the other end of the
room was an even larger portrait of a youngish,
red-haired Mary Carson, face like the youngish
Queen Victoria, in a stiff black gown
fashionably bustled. "All right," said
Fee, "now we can move up from the creek. I'll
do the other rooms at my leisure. Oh, isn't
it lovely to have money and a decent home to spend it
on?"
  About three days before they moved, so early in the
morning the sun had not yet risen, the roosters in the
fowl yard were cock-a-doodling joyously.
"Miserable wretches," said Fee, wrapping old
newspapers around her china. "I don't know what
they think they've done to crow about. Not an egg in the
place for breakfast, and all the men at home
until we finish moving. Meggie, you'll have to go
down to the chook yard for me; I'm busy." She
scanned a yellowed sheet of the Sydney Morning
Herald, snorting over an advertisement for
wasp-waisted stays. "I don't know why Paddy
insists we get all the newspapers; no one ever
has time to read them. They just pile up too fast
to burn in the stove. Look at this! It's older
than our tenancy of the house. Well, at least
they're handy for packing."
  It was nice to see her dismother so cheerful, Meggie
thought as she sped down the back steps and across the
dusty yard. Though everyone was naturally looking
forward to living in the big house, Mum
seemed to hunger for it as if she could remember what
living in a big house was like. How clever she was,
what perfect taste she had! Things no one had ever
realized before, because there had been neither time nor money
to bring them out. Meggie hugged herself with excitement;
Daddy had sent in to the Gilly jeweler and used some
of the five thousand pounds to buy Mum a real pearl
disbbhoker and real pearl earrings, only these had little
diamonds in them as well. He was going to give them
to her at their first dinner in the big house. Now that she
had seen her mother's face freed of its habitual
dourness, she could hardly wait for the expression it would
wear when she received her pearls. From Bob to the
twins, the children were agog for that moment, because Daddy had
shown them the big flat leather case, opened it
to reveal the milky opalescent beads on their
black velvet bed. Their mother's blossoming
happiness had affected them deeply; it was like seeing
the start of a good drenching rain. Until now they had
never quite understood how unhappy she must have been all
the years they had known her.
  The chook yard was huge, and held four roosters
and upward of forty hens. At night they inhabited a
tumble-down shed, its rigorously swept floor
lined around the edges with straw-filled
orange crates for laying, and its rear crossed
by perches of various heights. But during the day the
chooks strutted clucking around a large,
wire-netted run. When Meggie opened the run
gate and squeezed inside, the birds clustered about
her greedily, thinking they would be fed, but since
Meggie fed them in the evenings she laughed at their
silly antics and stepped through them into the shed.
  "Honestly, what a hopeless lot of chookies you
are!"
  she lectured them severely as she poked in the
nests. "Forty of you, and only fifteen eggs! Not enough
for breakfast, let alone a cake. Well, I'm
warning you here and now-if you don't do something about it
soon, the chopping block for the lot of you, and that
applies to the lords of the coop as well as wives, so
don't spread your tails and ruffle up your necks
as if I'm not including you, gentlemen!"
  With the eggs held carefully in her apron,
Meggie ran back to the kitchen, singing.
  Fee was sitting in Paddy's chair staring at a
sheet of Smith's Weekly, her face white, her
lips moving. Inside Meggie could hear the men
moving about, and the sounds of six-year-old Jims and
Patsy laughing in their cot; they were never
allowed up until after the men had gone. "What's the
matter, Mum?" Meggie asked.
  Fee didn't answer, only sat staring in
front of her with beads of sweat along her upper
lip, eyes stilled to a desperately rational pain,
as if within herself she was marshaling every resource she
possessed not to scream. "Daddy, Daddy!"
Meggie called sharply, frightened. The tone of her
voice brought him out still fastening his flannel
undershirt, with Bob, Jack, Hughie and Stu behind
him. Meggie pointed wordlessly at her mother.
  Paddy's heart seemed to block his throat. He
bent over Fee, his hand picking up one limp
wrist. "What is it, dear?" he asked in tones more
tender than any of his children had ever heard him use;
yet somehow they knew they were the tones he used with her
when they were not around to hear. She seemed to recognize
that special voice enough to emerge from her shocked
trance, and the big grey eyes looked up into his
face, so kind and worn, no longer young.
  "Here," she said, pointing at a small item of
news toward the bottom of the page.
  Stuart had gone to stand behind his mother, his hand lightly
on her shoulder; before he started to read the article
Paddy glanced up at his son, into the eyes
so like Fee's, and he nodded. What had roused him
to jealousy in Frank could never do so in Stuart; as
if their love for Fee bound them tightly together instead
of separating them.
  Paddy read out loud, slowly, his tone growing
sadder and sadder. The little headline said: BOXER
RECEIVES
  LIFE SENTENCE.
  Francis Armstrong Cleary, aged 26,
professional boxer, was convicted today in Goulburn
District Court of the murder of Ronald Albert
Cumming, aged 32, laborer, last July. The
jury reached its verdict after only ten minutes'
deliberation, recommending the most severe punishment
the court could mete out. It was, said Mr.
Justice FitzHugh-Cunneally, a simple
open-and-closed case. Cumming and Cleary had
quarreled violently in the public bar of the Harbor
Hotel on July 23rd. Later the same night
Sergeant Tom Beardsmore of the Goulburn
police, accompanied by two constables, was called to the
Harbor Hotel by its proprietor, Mr.
James Ogilvie. In the lane behind the hotel the
police discovered Cleary kicking at the head of the
insensible Cumming. His fists were
bloodstained and bore tufts of Cumming's hair.
When arrested Cleary was drunk but lucid. He was
charged with assault with intent to commit grievous
bodily harm, but the charge was amended to murder after
Cumming died of brain injuries in the Goulburn
District Hospital next day. Mr. Arthur
Whyte, K.c., entered a plea of not guilty
by reason of insanity, but four medical witnesses for the
Crown stated unequivocally that under the provisions
of the M'naghten rules Cleary could not be called
insane. In addressing the jury,
  Mr. Justice FitzHugh-Cunneally told
them there was no question of guilt or innocence, the
verdict was clearly guilty, but he requested them
to take time considering their recommendation for either
clemency or severity, as he would be guided by their
opinion. When sentencing Cleary, Mr. Justice
FitzHugh-Cunneally called his act "subhuman
savagery," and regretted that the drunken
unpremeditated nature of the crime precluded
hanging, as he regarded Cleary's hands as a
weapon quite as deadly as a gun or knife. Cleary
was sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor,
the sentence to be served in Goulburn Gaol, this
institution being one designed for violently
disposed prisoners. Asked if he had anything so
say, Cleary answered, "Just don't tell my
mother."
  Paddy looked at the top of the page to see the
date: December 6, 1925. "It happened over
three years ago," he said helplessly. No one
answered him or moved, for no one knew what to do;
from the front of the house came the gleeful laughter
of the twins, their high voices raised in chatter.
  was "Just-don't-tell my mother,"" said Fee
numbly. "And no one did! Oh, God! My
poor, poor Frank!"
  Paddy wiped the tears from his face with the back of his
free hand, then squatted down in front of her,
patting her lap gently. "Fee dear, pack your
things. We'll go to him."
  She half-rose before sinking back, her eyes in
her small white face starred and glistening as if
dead, pupils huge and gold-filmed. "I can't
go," she said without a hint of agony, yet making
everyone feel that the agony was there. "It would kill
him to see me. Oh, Paddy, it would kill him! I
know him so well-his pride, his ambition, his
determination to be someone important. Let him bear
  the shame alone, it's what he wants.
You read it. "Just don't tell my mother."
We've got to help him keep his secret. What
good will it do him or us to see him?"
  Paddy was still weeping, but not for Frank; for the life
which had gone from Fee's face, for the dying in her
eyes. A Jonah, that's what the lad had always
been; the bitter bringer of blight, forever standing between
Fee and himself, the cause of her withdrawal from his
heart and the hearts of his children. Every time it looked as if
there might be happiness in store for Fee, Frank
took it away. But Paddy's love for her was as
deep and impossible to eradicate as hers was for
Frank; he could never use the lad as his whipping
boy again, not after that night in the presbytery. So he
said, "Well, Fee, if you think it's better not
to attempt to get in touch with him, we won't. Yet
I'd like to know he was all right, that whatever can be done
for him is being done. How about if I write to Father
de Bricassart and ask him to look out for
Frank?"
  The eyes didn't liven, but a faint pink stole
into her cheeks. "Yes, Paddy, do that. Only
make sure he knows not to tell Frank we found
out. Perhaps it would ease Frank to think for certain that
we don't know."
  Within a few days Fee regained most of her
energy, and her interest in redecorating the big house
kept her occupied. But her quietness became dour
again, only less grim, encapsulated by an
expressionless calm. It seemed she cared more for how
the big house would eventually look than she did for
her family's welfare. Perhaps she assumed they could
look after themselves spiritually, and that Mrs. Smith and the
maids were there to look after them physically.
  Yet the discovery of Frank's plight had
profoundly affected everyone. The older boys
grieved deeply for their mother, spent sleepless
nights remembering her face at that awful moment.
They loved her, and her cheerfulness during the previous
few weeks had given them a glimpse of her which was
never to leave them, 224
  and was to inspire them with a passionate desire to bring
it back again. If their father had been the pivot upon which
their lives turned until then, from that moment dison their
mother was put alongside him. They began to treat her
with a tender, absorbed care no amount of indifference
on her part could banish. From Paddy to Stu the
Cleary males conspired to make Fee's life
whatever she wanted, and they demanded adherence to this end
from everyone. No one must ever harm her or
hurt her again. And when Paddy presented her with the
pearls she took them with a brief, expressionless word
of thanks, no pleasure or interest in her
perusal; but everyone was thinking how different her
reaction would have been were it not for Frank. Had the
move to the big house not occurred, poor Meggie
would have suffered a great deal more than she did, for without
admitting her into full, exclusively male
membership of the protect-Mum society (perhaps
sensing that her participation was more grudging than theirs),
her father and older brothers expected that Meggie should
shoulder all the tasks Fee obviously found
repugnant. As it turned out, Mrs. Smith and the
maids shared the burden with Meggie. Chiefly
repugnant to Fee was the care of her two youngest
sons, but Mrs. Smith assumed full charge of
Jims and Patsy with such ardor Meggie couldn't
feel sorry for her, instead in a way she felt
glad that these two could at last belong entirely to the
housekeeper. Meggie grieved for her mother, too, but
by no means as wholeheartedly as the men, for her
loyalties were sorely tried; the big vein of
motherliness in her was deeply offended by Fee's mounting
indifference to Jims and Patsy. When I have my children,
she would think to herself, I'm never going
to love one of them more than the rest.
  Living in the big house was certainly very different.
At first it was strange to have a bedroom to oneself, and for the
women, not to have to worry about any sort of household
duty, inside or outside. Minnie, Cat and
  Mrs. Smith among them coped with everything from
washing and ironing to cooking and cleaning, and were
horrified by offers of help. In return for plenty
of food and a small wage, an endless procession of
swaggies were temporarily entered on the station books
as rouseabouts, to chop the wood for the homestead
fires, feed the fowls and pigs, do the milking,
help old Tom take care of the lovely gardens,
do all the heavy cleaning. Paddy had been
communicating with Father Ralph. "The income from
Mary's estate comes to roughly four million pounds
a year, thanks to the fact that Michar Limited is
a privately owned company with most of its assets
sunk in steel, ships and mining," wrote Father
Ralph. "So what I've assigned to you is a
mere drop in the Carson bucket, and doesn't
even amount to one-tenth of Drogheda station profits in
a year. Don't worry about bad years, either. The
Drogheda station account is so heavily in the black
I can pay you out of its interest forever, if
necessary. So what money comes to you is no more than you
deserve, and doesn't dent Michar Limited.
It's station money you're getting, not company money.
I require no more of you than to keep the station
books up to date and honestly entered for the
auditors."
  It was after he had this particular letter that Paddy
held a conference in the beautiful drawing room on a
night when everyone was at home. He sat with his
steelrimmed reading half-glasses perched on his
Roman nose, in a big cream chair, his feet
comfortably disposed on a matching ottoman, his pipe
in a Waterford ashtray.
  "How nice this is." He smiled, looking around
with pleasure. "I think we ought to give Mum a
vote of thanks for it, don't you, boys?" There were
murmurs of assent from the "boys"; Fee inclined
her head from where she sat in what had been Mary
Carson's wing chair, re-covered now in cream
watered silk. Meggie curled her feet around the

  1929-1932 PADDY
  ottoman she had chosen instead of a chair, and
kept her eyes doggedly on the sock she was mending.
  "Well, Father de Bricassart has
sorted everything out and has been very generous," Paddy
continued. "He's put seven thousand pounds in the
bank in my name, and opened a savings account for
everyone with two thousand pounds in each. I am to be
paid four thousand pounds a year as the station manager, and
Bob will be paid three thousand a year as the assistant
manager. All the working boys-Jack, Hughie and
Stu comw be paid two thousand a year, and the little boys
are to get one thousand a year each until they're
old enough to decide what they want to do.
  "When the little boys are grown up, the estate will
guarantee each of them a yearly income equal to a
full working member of Drogheda, even if they
don't want to work on Drogheda. When Jims and
Patsy turn twelve, they'll be sent
to Riverview College in Sydney to board and be
educated at the expense of the estate.
  "Mum is to have two thousand pounds a year for herself,
and so is Meggie. The household account will be kept
at five thousand pounds, though why Father thinks we
need so much to run a house, I don't know. He
says in case we want to make major alterations.
I have his instructions as to how much Mrs. Smith,
Minnie, Cat and Tom are to be paid, and I must
say he's generous. Other wages I
decide on myself. But my first decision as manager
is to put on at least six more stockmen, so
Drogheda can be run as it should be. It's too much
for a handful." That was the most he ever said about his
sister's management. No one had ever heard of
having so much money; they sat silent, trying
to assimilate their good fortune.
  "We'll never spend the half of it, Paddy,"
said Fee. "He hasn't left us anything to spend
it on."
  Paddy looked at her gently. "I know, Mum.
But isn't it nice to think we'll never have to worry
about money again?" He cleared his throat. "Now it
seems
  to me that Mum and Meggie in particular are going
to be at a bit of a loose end," he went on.
"I was never much good at figures, but Mum can add
and subtract and divide and multiply like an
arithmetic teacher. So Mum is going to be the
Drogheda bookkeeper, instead of Harry Gough's
office. I never realized it, but Harry has
employed one chap just to deal with Drogheda's accounts,
and at the moment he's a man short, so he
doesn't mind passing it back to us at all. In
fact, he was the one who suggested Mum
might make a good bookkeeper. He's going to send
someone out from Gilly to teach you properly, Mum.
It's quite complicated, apparently. You've got
to balance the ledgers, the cash books, the journals,
record everything in the log book, and so on. Enough
to keep you pretty busy, only it won't take the
starch out of you the way cooking and washing did, will it?"
  It was on the tip of Meggie's tongue to shout:
What about me? I did just as much washing and cooking as
Mum!
  Fee was actually smiling, for the first time since the
news about Frank. "I'll enjoy the job,
Paddy, really I will. It will make me feel like a
part of Drogheda."
  "Bob is going to teach you how to drive the new
Rolls, because you're going to have to be the one to go
into Gilly to the bank and see Harry. Besides, it will
do you good to know you can drive anywhere you want without
depending on one of us being around. We're too
isolated out here. I've always meant to teach you
girls how to drive, but there's never been the time before.
All right, Fee?"
  "All right, Paddy," she said happily.
  "Now, Meggie, we've got to deal with you."
  Meggie laid her sock and needle
down, looked up at her father in a mixture of
inquiry and resentment, sure she knew what he was
going to say: her mother would be busy with the books, so it
would be her job to supervise the house and its
environs.
  "I'd hate to see you turn into an idle,
snobby miss like some of the graziers' daughters we
know," Paddy said with a smile which robbed his words of
any contempt. "So I'm going to put you to work at a
full-time job, too, wee Meggie. You're going
to look after the inside paddocks for us-Borehead,
Creek, Carson, Winnemurra and North
Tank. You're also going to look after the Home
Paddock. You'll be responsible for the stock
horses, which ones are working and which ones are being
spelled. During musters and lambing we'll all
pitch in together, of course, but otherwise you'll
manage on your own, I reckon. Jack can teach
you to work the dogs and use a stock whip. You're a
terrible tomboy still, so I thought you might like to work in
the paddocks more than lie around the house," he
finished, smiling more broadly than ever. Resentment
and discontent had flown out the window while he
talked; he was once more Daddy, who loved her and
thought of her. What had been the matter with
her, to doubt him so? She was so ashamed of herself she
felt like jabbing the big darning needle into her leg, but
she was too happy to contemplate self-infliction of
pain for very long, and anyway, it was just an
extravagant way of expressing her remorse.
  Her face shone. "Oh, Daddy, I'll love
it!"
  "What about me, Daddy?" asked Stuart.
  "The girls don't need you around the house
anymore, so you'll be out in the paddocks again,
Stu."
  "All right, Daddy." He looked at Fee
longingly, but said nothing.
  Fee and Meggie learned to drive the new
RollsRoyce Mary Carson had taken delivery
of a week before she died, and Meggie learned to work the
dogs while Fee learned to keep the books.
  If it hadn't been for Father Ralph's continued
absence, Meggie for one would have been absolutely
happy. This was what she had always longed to do: be
  out there in the paddocks astride a horse, doing
stockman's work. Yet the ache for Father Ralph was
always there, too, the memory of his kiss something to be
dreamed about, treasured, felt again a thousand times.
However, memory wasn't a patch on
reality; try as she would, the actual sensation couldn't
be conjured up, only a shadow of it, like a thin sad
cloud. When he wrote to tell them about Frank,
her hopes that he would use this as a pretext
to visit them were abruptly shatttered. His
description of the trip to see Frank in Goulburn
Gaol was carefully worded, stripped of the pain it had
engendered, giving no hint of Frank's steadily
worsening psychosis. He had tried vainly to have
Frank committed to Morisset asylum for the
criminally insane, but no one had listened. So he
simply passed on an idealistic image of a
Frank resigned to paying for his sins to society, and
in a passage heavily underlined told Paddy
Frank had no idea they knew what had happened.
It had come to his ears, he assured Frank, through
Sydney newspapers, and he would make sure the
family never knew. After being told this, Frank
settled better, he said, and left it at that.
Paddy talked of selling Father Ralph's chestnut
mare. Meggie used the rangy black gelding she
had ridden for pleasure as a stock horse, for it was
lighter-mouthed and nicer in nature than the moody
mares or mean geldings in the yards. Stock
horses were intelligent, and rarely
placid. Even a total absence of stallions
didn't make them very amiable animals. "Oh,
please, Daddy, I can ride the chestnut, too!"
Meggie pleaded. "Think how awful it would be if after
all his kindnesses to us, Father should come back to visit
and discover we had sold his horse!" Paddy stared
at her thoughtfully. "Meggie, I don't think Father
will come back."
  "But he might! You never know!"
  The eyes so like Fee's were too much for him; he
couldn't bring himself to hurt her more than she was
  already hurt, poor little thing. "All right then,
Meggie, we'll keep the mare, but make sure you
use both the mare and the gelding regularly, for I
won't have a fat horse on Drogheda, do you
hear?" Until then she hadn't liked to use Father
Ralph's own mount, but after that she alternated
to give both the animals in the stables a chance to work
off their oats.
  It was just as well Mrs. Smith, Minnie and
Cat doted on the twins, forwith Meggie out in the
paddocks and Fee sitting for hours at her
escritoire in the drawing room, the two little
fellows had a wonderful time. They were into everything, but
with such glee and constant good humor that no
one could be angry with them for very long. At night in
her little house Mrs. Smith, long converted
to Catholicism, knelt to her prayers with such deep
thankfulness in her heart she could scarcely contain it.
Children of her own had never come to gladden her when Rob
had been alive, and for years the big house had been
childless, its occupants forbidden to mix with the
inhabitants of the stockmen's houses down by the eek.
Rut when the C1.5arrys came they were Mary
Carson's kin, and there were children at last. Especially
now, with Jims and Patsy permanent residents of the
big house.
  It had been a dry winter, and the summer rains
didn't come. Knee-high and lush, the tawny
grass dried out in the stark sun until even the inner
core of each blade was crisp. To look across the
paddocks required slitted eyes and a hat brim
drawn far down on the forehead; the grass was
mirror-silver, and little spiral whirlwinds sped
busily among shimmering blue mirages, trans-
ferring dead leaves and fractured grass blades from
one restless heap to another.
  Oh, but it was dry! Even the trees were dry, the
bark falling from them in stiff, crunchy ribbons.
No danger yet of the sheep starving-the
grass would last
  another year at least, maybe more-but no one liked
to see everything so dry. There was always a good chance the
rain would not come next year, or the year after. In a
good year they got ten to fifteen inches, in a bad
year less than five, perhaps close to none at
all.
  In spite of the heat and the flies, Meggie loved
life out in the paddocks, walking the chestnut mare
behind a bleating mob of sheep while the dogs lay
flat on the ground, tongues lolling,
deceptively inattentive. Let one sheep bolt
out of the tightly packed cluster and the nearest dog would
be away, a streak of vengeance, sharp teeth hungering
to nip into a hapless heel. Meggie rode ahead of
her mob, a welcome relief after breathing their dust
for several miles, and opened the paddock gate. She
waited patiently while the dogs, reveling in this
chance to show her what they could do, bit and goaded the
sheep through. It was harder mustering and droving cattle,
for they kicked or charged, often killing an unwary
dog; that was when the human herdsman had to be ready
to do his bit, use his whip, but the dogs loved the
spice of danger working cattle. However, to drove
cattle was not required of her; Paddy
attended to that himself.
  But the dogs never ceased to fascinate her; their
intelligence was phenomenal. Most of the Drogheda
dogs were kelpies, coated in rich brownish tan with
creamy paws, chests and eyebrows, but there were
Oueensland blues too, larger, with blue-grey
coats dappled in black, and all varieties of
crossbreds between kelpie and blue. The bitches
came in heat, were sci- entifically mated, increased
and whelped; after weaning and growing, their pups were tried
out in the paddocks, and if good were kept or sold,
if no good shot.
  Whistling her dogs to heel, Meggie shut the
gate on the mob and turned the chestnut mare toward
home. Nearby was a big stand of trees, stringybark
and ironbark and black box, an occasional wilga
on its outskirts. She rode into its shade
thankfully, and having
  now the leisure to look around, let her eyes
roam in delight. The gums were full of budgies,
skawking and whistling their parodies of songbirds;
finches wheeled from branch to branch; two
sulphur-crested cockatoos sat with their heads
to one side watching her progress with twinkling
eyes; willy-wagtails fossicked in the
dirt for ants, their absurd rumps bobbing; crows
carked eternally and mournfully. Theirs was the most
obnoxious noise in the whole bush song
repertoire, so devoid of joy, desolate and
somehow soul-chilling, speaking of rotting flesh, of
carrion and blowflies. To think of a crow singing like a
bellbird was impossible; cry and function fitted
perfectly. Of course there were flies everywhere;
Meggie wore a veil over her hat, but her bare
arms were constantly plagued, and the chestnut mare's
tail never stopped swishing, its flesh never stopped
shivering and creeping for a second. It amazed
Meggie that even through the thickness of hide and hair,
a horse could feel something as delicate and airy as
a fly. They drank sweat, which was why they tormented
horses and humans so, but humans never let them do
what sheep did, so they used the sheep for a more
intimate purpose, laying their eggs around the rump
wool, or wherever the wool was damp and dirty. The
air was full of the noise of bees, and alive with
brilliant quick dragonflies seeking out the bore
drains, alive with exquisitely colored
butterflies and day moths. Her horse turned
over a piece of rotting log with a hoof; Meggie
stared at its underside, her skin crawling.
There were witchetty grubs, fat and white and
loathsome, wood lice and slugs, huge centipedes
and spiders. From burrows rabbits hopped and
skittled, flashed back inside with white powder
puffs up in the air, then turned to peer out, noses
twitching. Farther on an echidna broke off its
quest after ants, panicked at her approach.
Burrowing so fast that its strong clawed feet were
hidden in seconds, it began to disappear under a huge
  log. Its antics as it dug were amusing, the
cruel spines lying flat all over its body
to streamline its entry into the ground, earth flying in
heaps. She came out of the timber on the main track
to the homestead. A sheet of dappled grey occupied
its dust, galahs picking for insects or grubs,
but as they heard her coming they took to the air en
masse. It was like being inundated by a magenta-pink
wave; breasts and underwings soared above her head, the
grey turned magically to rich pink. If I had
to leave Drogheda to- morrow, she thought, never again
to come back, in my dreams I'd live Drogheda in
a wash of pink galah undersides .... It must be
getting very dry farther out; the kangas are coming in, more
and more of them .... A great mob of kangaroos,
maybe two thousand strong, was startled out of
its placid grazing by the galahs and took off into the
distance in long, graceful leaps which swallowed the
leagues faster than any other animal save the
emu. Horses couldn't keep up with them.
  In between these delightful bouts of nature-studying
she thought of Ralph, as always. Privately
Meggie had never catalogued what she felt for him
as a schoolgirl crush, simply called it love,
as they did in books. Her symptoms and feelings
were no different from those of an Ethel M. Dell
heroine. Nor did it seem fair that a barrier as
artificial as his priesthood could stand between her and
what she wanted of him, which was to have him as her husband.
To live with him as Daddy did with Mum, in such
harmony he would adore her the way Daddy did
Mum. It had never seemed to Meggie that her mother
did very much to earn her father's adoration, yet worship
her he did. So Ralph would soon see that to live
with her was far better than living on his own; for it had
not dawned upon her that Ralph's priesthood was
something he could not abandon under any circumstances.
Yes, she knew it was forbidden to have a priest as
husband or lover, but she had got into the habit of
getting around it by stripping
  Ralph of his religious office. Her
formal education in Catholicism had never advanced
to discussions of the nature of priestly vows, and she was
not herself in need of religion, so didn't pursue
it voluntarily. Obtaining no satisfaction from
praying, Meggie obeyed the laws of the Church
simply because not to do so meant burning in Hell throughout
eternity. In her present daydream she rambled through
the bliss of living with him and sleeping with him, as
Daddy did with Mum. Then the thought of his nearness
excited her, made her shift in the saddle
restlessly; she translated it into a deluge of
kisses, having no other criterion. Riding the
paddocks hadn't advanced her sexual education at
all, for the mere sniff of a dog in the far distance
drove all desire to mate out of any animal's
mind, and as on all stations, indiscriminate mating
was not allowed. When the rams were sent among the ewes
of a particular paddock, Meggie was dispatched
elsewhere, and the sight of one dog humping another was
simply the signal to flick the pair with her whip,
stop their "playing."
  Perhaps no human being is equipped to judge which
is worse: inchoate longing with its attendant
restlessness and irritability, or specific
desire with its willful drive to achieve
the desire. Poor Meggie longed, quite what for she
didn't know, but the basic pull was there, and it
dragged her inexorably in the direction of Ralph
de Bricassart. So she dreamed of him, yearned for
him, wanted him; and mourned, that in spite of his
declared love for her she meant so little to him that he never
came to see her. Into the middle of her thoughts rode
Paddy, heading for the homestead on the same course as
she was; smiling, she reined in the chestnut mare and
waited for him to catch up.
  "What a nice surprise," said Paddy,
walking his old roan beside his daughter's middle-aged
mare.
  "Yes, it is," she said. "Is it dry farther
out?"
  "A bit worse than this, I think. Lord,
I've never seen so many kangas! It must be bone
dry out Milparinka way. Martin King was talking
of a big shoot, but I don't see how an army of
machine guns could reduce the number of kangas
by enough to see the difference."
  He was so nice, so thoughtful and forgiving and loving;
and it was rarely that she ever had the chance to be with him
without at least one of the boys in attendance. Before she
could change her mind, Meggie asked the
doubting question, the one which gnawed and preyed in spite of
all her internal reassurances.
  "Daddy, why doesn't Father de Bricassart
ever come to see us?" "He's busy, Meggie,"
Paddy answered, but his voice had become wary.
"But even priests have holidays, don't they? He
used to love Drogheda so, I'm sure he'd want
to spend his holidays here.?-" "In one way
priests have holidays, Meggie, but in another way
they're never off duty. For instance, every day of their
lives they have to say Mass, even if quite alone. I
think Father de Bricassart is a very wise man, and
knows that it's never possible to go back to a way of
life that's gone. For him, wee Meggie,
Drogheda's a bit of the past. If he came
back, it wouldn't give him the same sort of
pleasure it used to."
  "You mean he's forgotten us," she said dully.
"No, not really. If he had, he wouldn't write
so often, or demand news about each of us." He
turned in his saddle, his blue eyes pitying. "I
think it's best that he doesn't ever come back, so
I don't encourage him to think of it by inviting him."
  "Daddy!"
  Paddy plunged into muddy waters
doggedly. "Look, Meggie, it's wrong for you
to dream about a priest, and it's time you understood that.
You've kept your secret pretty well, I
don't think anyone else knows how you
  feel about him, but it's to me your questions come, isn't
it? Not many, but enough. Now take it from me, you've
got to stop, hear it? Father de Bricassart took
holy vows I know he has absolutely no
intention of breaking, and you've mistaken his fondness for
you. He was a grown man when he met you, and you were a
little girl. Well, that's how he thinks of you,
Meggie, to this very day."
  She didn't answer, nor did her face
change. Yes, he thought, she's Fee's daughter,
all right.
  After a while she said tautly, "But he could stop
being a priest. It's just that I haven't had a chance
to talk to him about it."
  The shock on Paddy's face was too genuine not
to believe it, so Meggie found it more convincing than his
words, vehement though they were. "Meggie! Oh, good
God, that's the worst of this bush existence! You ought
to be in school, my girl, and if Auntie Mary
had died sooner I would have packed you off to Sydney
in time to get at least a couple of years
under your belt. But you're too old, aren't you? I
wouldn't have them laugh at you at your age, poor wee
Meggie." He continued more gently, spacing his words
to give them a sharp, lucid cruelty, though it was not
his intention to be cruel, only to dispel illusions
once and for all. "Father de Bricassart is a
priest, Meggie. He can never, never stop being a
priest, understand that. The vows he took are sacred,
too solemn to break. Once a man is a priest
there can be no turning away, and his supervisors in the
seminary make absolutely sure that he knows what
he's swearing before he does. A man who takes
those vows knows beyond any doubt that once taken they
can't be broken, ever. Father de Bricassart took
them, and he'll never break them." He sighed. "Now
you know, Meggie, don't you? From this moment you have no
excuse to daydream about Father de Bricassart."
  They had come in from the front of the homestead,
  so the stables were closer than the stockyards; without a
word, Meggie turned the chestnut mare toward the
stables, and left her father to continue alone. For a while
he kept turning around to look after her, but when she
had disappeared inside the fence around the stables he dug
his roan in the ribs and finished his ride at a
canter, hating himself and the necessity of
saying what he had. Damn the man-woman thing! It
seemed to have a set of rules at variance with all
others.
  Father Ralph de Bricassart's voice was very
cold, yet it was warmer than his eyes, which never
veered from the young priest's pallid face as he
spoke his stiff, measured words.
  "You have not conducted yourself as Our Lord Jesus
Christ demands His priests conduct themselves. I think
you know it better than we who censure you could ever know
it, but I must still censure you on behalf of your
Archbishop, who stands to you not only as a fellow
priest but as your superior. You owe him perfect
obedience, and it is not your place to argue with his
sentiments or his decisions.
  "Do you really understand the disgrace you've brought on
yourself, on your parish, and especially on the Church you
purport to love more than any human being? Your vow
of cha/y was as solemn and binding as your other vows,
and to break it is to sin grievously. You will never see
the woman again, of course, but it behooves us
to assist you in your struggles to overcome temptation.
Therefore we have arranged that you leave immediately for duty
in the parish of Darwin, in the Northern Territory.
You will proceed to Brisbane tonight on the
express train, and from there you will proceed, again
by train, to Longreach. In Longreach you will board a
OANTAS plane for Darwin. Your belongings are being
packed at this moment and will be on the express before it
departs, so there is no need for you to return to your
present parish.
  "Now go to the chapel with Father John and pray. You
will remain in the chapel until it is time to join the
train. For your comfort and consolation, Father John will
travel with you to Darwin. You are dismissed." They were
wise and aware, the priests in administration; they would
permit the sinner no opportunity to have further
contact with the young girl he had taken as his mistress.
It had become the scandal of his present parish, and very
embarrassing. As for the girllet her wait, and
watch, and wonder. From now until he arrived in
Darwin he would be watched by the excellent Father
John, who had his orders, then after that every letter he
sent from Darwin would be opened, and he would not be allowed
to make any long-distance phone calls. She would
never know where he had gone, and he would never be able
to tell her. Nor would he be given any chance
to take up with another girl. Dar- win was a
frontier town; women were almost nonexistent. His
vows were absolute, he could never be
released from them; if he was too weak to police
himself, the Church must do it for him.
  After he had watched the young priest and his appointed
watchdog go from the room, Father Ralph got up from
his desk and walked through to an inner chamber.
Archbishop Cluny Dark was sitting in his customary
chair, and at right angles to him another man in
purple sash and skullcap sat quietly. The
Archbishop was a big man, with a shock of beautiful
white hair and intensely blue eyes; he was a
vital sort of fellow, with a keen sense of humor
and a great love of the table. His visitor was quite the
antithesis; small and thin, a few sparse strands of
black hair around his skullcap and beneath them an
angular, ascetic face, a sallow skin with a
heavy beard shadow, and large dark eyes. In age
he might have been anywhere between thirty and fifty, but
in actual fact he was thirty-nine, three years
older than Father Ralph de Bricassart.
  "Sit down, Father, have a cup of tea," said the
Arch- 239
  bishop heartily. "I was beginning to think we'd have
to send for a fresh pot. Did you dismiss the young man
with a suitable admonition to mend his conduct?"
  "Yes, Your Grace," said Father
Ralph briefly, and seated himself in the third chair
around the tea table, loaded with wafer-thin cucumber
sandwiches, pink and white iced fairy cakes, hot
buttered scones with crystal dishes of jam and
whipped cream, a silver tea service and
Aynsley china cups washed with a delicate coating
of gold leaf.
  "Such incidents are regrettable, my dear
Archbishop, but even we who are ordained the priests
of Our Dear Lord are weak, all-too-human
creatures. I find it in my heart to pity him
deeply, and I shall pray tonight that he finds more strength
in the future," the visitor said. His accent was
distinctly foreign, his voice soft, with a hint of
sibilance in its so's. By nationality he was
Italian, by title he was His Grace the
Archbishop Papal Legate to the Australian
Catholic Church, and by name he was Vittorio
Scarbanza di Contini-Verchese. His was the
delicate role of providing a link between the
Australian hierarchy and the Vatican nerve center;
which meant he was the most important priest in this
section of the world.
  Before. being given this appointment he had of course
hoped for the United States of America,
but on thinking about it he decided Australia would do
very nicely. If in population though not in area it was
a much smaller country, it was also far more Catholic.
Unlike the rest of the English-speaking world, it was no
social comedown in Australia to be Catholic,
no handicap to an aspiring politician or
businessman or judge. And it was a rich country,
it supported the Church well. No need to fear he
would be forgotten by Rome while he was in
Australia. The Archbishop Papal Legate was
also a very subtle man, and his eyes over the gold
rim of his teacup were fixed not on Archbishop
Cluny Dark but on Father 240
  Ralph de Bricassart, soon to become his own
secretary. That Archbishop Dark liked the priest
enormously was a well-known fact, but the
Archbishop Papal Legate was wondering how well
he was going to like such a man. They were all so big,
these Irish-Australian priests, they towered far
above him; he was so weary of forever having to tilt his
head up to see their faces. Father de
Bricassart's manner to his present master was
perfect: light, easy, respectful but
man-to-man, full of humor. How would he
adjust to working for a far different master? It
was customary to appoint the Legatal secretary from
the ranks of the Italian Church, but Father Ralph
de Bricassart held great interest for the
Vatican. Not only did he have the curious
distinction of being personally rich (contrary to popular
opinion, his superiors were not empowered to take his
money from him, and he had not volunteered to hand it
over), but he had single-handedly brought a great
fortune into the Church. So the Vatican had decided
that the Archbishop Papal Legate was to take Father
de Bricassart as his secretary, to study the young
man and find out exactly what he was like.
  One day the Holy Father would have to reward the
Australian Church with a cardinal's biretta, but
it would not be yet. Therefore it was up to him to study
priests in Father de Bricassart's age group,
and of these Father de Bricassart was clearly the leading
candidate. So be it. Let Father de Bricassart
try his mettle against an Italian for a while. It
might be interesting. But why couldn't the man have been just
a little smaller? As he sipped his tea gratefully
Father Ralph was unusually quiet. The Archbishop
Papal Legate noticed that he ate a small
sandwich triangle and eschewed the other
delicacies, but drank four cups of
tea thirstily, adding neither sugar nor milk.
Well, that was what his report said; in his personal
living habits the priest was remarkably
abstemious, his only weakness being a good (and very fast)
car.
  "Your name is French, Father," said the Archbishop
Papal Legate softly, "but I understand you are an
Irishman. How comes this phenomenon? Was your
family French, then?"
  Father Ralph shook his head, smiling. "It's a
Norman name, Your Grace, very old and honorable.
I am a direct descendant of one Ranulf de
Bricassart, who was a baron in the court of
William the Conqueror. In 1066 he came
to invade England with William, and one of his sons
took English land. The family prospered under the
Norman kings of England, and later on some of them
crossed the Irish Sea during the time of Henry the
Fourth, and settled within the Pale. When Henry the
Eighth removed the English Church from Rome's
au- thority we kept the faith of William, which
meant we felt we owed our first allegiance
to Rome, not to London. But when Cromwell set
up the Commonwealth we lost our lands and titles, and
they were never restored to us. Charles had
English favorites to reward with Irish land. It
is not causeless, you know, the Irish hatred of the
English.
  "However, we descended to relative obscurity,
still loyal to the Church, and to Rome. My older
brother has a successful stud farm in County
Meath, and hopes to breed a Derby or a Grand
National winner. I am the second son, and it has
always been a family tradition that the second son
embrace the Church if he feels the wish for it.
I'm very proud of my name and my lineage, you know. For
fifteen hundred years there have been de
Bricassarts." Ah, that was good! An old,
aristocratic name and a perfect record of keeping the
faith through emigrations and persecutions. "And the
Ralph?"
  "A constriction of Ranulf, Your Grace."
  "I see."
  "I'm going to miss you greatly, Father," said Arch-

  bishop Cluny Dark, piling jam and whipped
cream on half a scone and popping it whole into his
mouth.
  Father Ralph laughed at him. "You place me in
a dilemma, Your Grace! Here I am
seated between my old master and my new, and if I
answer to please one, I must displease the other. But
may I say I shall miss Your Grace, while
looking forward to serving Your Grace?"
  It was well said, a diplomat's answer.
Archbishop di Contini-Verchese began to think he
might do well with such a secretary. But too
good-looking by far, with those fine features, the striking
coloring, the magnificent body. Father Ralph
lapsed back into silence, staring at the tea table without
seeing it. He was seeing the young priest he had just
disciplined, the look in those already tormented eyes as
he realized they were not even going to let him say
goodbye to his girl. Dear God, what if it had
been him, and the girl Meggie? One could get away
with it for a while if one was discreet; forever if one
limited women to the yearly vacation away from the
parish. But let a serious devotion to one woman
enter the picture and they would inevitably find out.
  There were times when only kneeling on the marble
floor of the palace chapel until he was stiff with
physical pain prevented him from catching the next
train back to Gilly and Drogheda. He had told
himself that he was simply the victim of loneliness, that
he missed the human affection he had known
on Drogheda. He told himself nothing had changed
when he yielded to a passing weakness and kissed
Meggie back; that his love for her was still located in
realms of fancy and delight, that it had not passed
into a different world which had a distracting, disturbing
wholeness to it the earlier dreams had not. For he
couldn't admit anything had changed, and he kept
Meggie in his mind as a little girl, shutting out any
visions which might contradict this.
  He had been wrong. The pain didn't fade.
It seemed to grow worse, and in a colder, uglier
way. Before, his loneliness had been an impersonal
thing, he had never been able to say to himself that the
presence in his life of any one being could remedy it.
But now loneliness had a name: Meggie. Meggie,
Meggie, Meggie . . .
  He came out of his reverie to find Archbishop di
Contini-Verchese staring at him unwinkingly, and those
large dark eyes were far more dangerously omniscient
than the round vivid orbs of his present master.
Far too intelligent to pretend there was nothing
causing his brown study, Father Ralph gave his
master-to-be as penetrating a look as he was
receiving, then smiled faintly and shrugged his shoulders,
as if to say: Every man has sadness in him,
and it is no sin to remember a grief. "Tell
me, Father, has the sudden slump in economic
affairs affected your charge?" the Italian
prelate asked smoothly.
  "So far we have nothing to worry about, Your
Grace. Michar Limited isn't easily
affected by auctuations in the market. I should imagine
those whose fortunes are less carefully invested than
Mrs. Carson's are the ones who stand to lose the
most. Of course the station Drogheda won't do as
well; the price of wool is falling. However,
Mrs. Carson was too clever to sink her money
into rural pursuits; she preferred the solidity of
metal. Though to my mind this is an excellent time
to buy land, not only stations in the country but houses and
buildings in the major cities. Prices are
ridiculously low, but they can't remain low forever.
I don't see how we can lose on real estate in
years to come if we buy now. The Depression will be
over one day." "Quite," said the Archbishop Papal
Legate. So not only was Father de Bricassart
something of a diplomat, he was also something of a
businessman as well! Truly Rome had better
keep her eye upon him.
  But it was 1930, and Drogheda knew
all about the Depression. Men were out of work all over
Australia. Those who could stopped paying rent and
tying them- selves down to the futility of looking for
work when there was none. Left to fend alone, wives and
children lived in humpies on municipal land and
queued for the dole; fathers and husbands had gone
tramping. A man stowed his few essentials inside
his blanket, tied it with thongs and slung it across his
back before setting out on the track, hoping at least
for handouts of food from the stations he crossed, if not
employment. Humping a bluey through the Outback
beat sleeping in the Sydney Domain.
  The price of food was low, and Paddy stocked the
Drogheda pantries and storehouses to overflowing.
A man could always be sure of having his tuckerbag
filled when he arrived on Drogheda. The strange
thing was that the parade of drifters constantly changed;
once full of a good hot meal and loaded with
provisions for the track, they made no attempt
to remain, but wandered on in search of only they knew
what. Not every place was as hospitable or generous as
Drogheda by any means, which only added to the puzzle
of why men on the track seemed not to want to stay.
Perhaps the weari- ness and the purposelessness of having
no home, no
  place to go, made them continue to drift. Most
managed to live, some died and if found were buried before
the crows and pigs picked their bones clean. The
Outback was a huge place, and lonely.
  But Stuart was permanently in residence again, and the
shotgun was never far from the cookhouse door. Good
stockmen were easy to come by, and Paddy had nine
single men on his books in the old jackaroo
barracks, so Stuart could be spared from the paddocks.
Fee stopped keeping cash lying about, and had Stuart
make a camouflaged cupboard for the safe behind the
chapel altar. Few of the swaggies were bad men.
Bad men preferred to stay in the cities and the big
country towns, for life on the track was too
pure, too lonely and scant of pickings for bad
men. Yet no one blamed Paddy for not wanting
to take chances with his women; Drogheda was a very famous
name, and might conceivably attract what few
undesirables there were on the track. That winter brought
bad storms, some dry, some wet, and the following
spring and summer brought rain so heavy that Drogheda
grass grew lusher and longer than ever.
  Jims and Patsy were plowing through their
correspondence lessons at Mrs. Smith's
kitchen table, and chattered now of what it would
be like when it was time to go to Riverview, their boarding
school. But Mrs. Smith would grow so sharp and sour
at such talk that they learned not to speak of leaving
Drogheda when she was within hearing distance.
  The dry weather came back; the thigh-high grass
dried out completely and baked to a silver crisp in
a rainless summer. Inured by ten years . of the
black-soil plains to the hey-ho, up we go,
hey-ho, down we go oscillations of drought and
flood, the men shrugged and went about each day as if it
were the only one that could ever matter. This was true; the
main business was essentially to survive between one good
year and the next, whenever it might be. No one could
predict the
  rain. There was a man in Brisbane called
Inigo Jones who wasn't bad at long-range
weather predictions, using a novel concept of sun
spot activity, but out on the black-soil plains
no one put much credence in what he had to say.
Let Sydney and Melbourne brides petition
him for forecasts; the black-soil plainsmen would
stick with that old sensation in their bones. In the winter
of 1932 the dry storms came back, along with
bitter cold, but the lush grass kept dust to a
minimum and the flies weren't as numerous as
usual. No consolation to the freshly shorn sheep, which
shivered miserably. Mrs. Dominic O'Rourke,
who lived in a wooden house of no particular
distinction, adored to entertain visitors from
Sydney; one of the highlights of her tour program
was paying a call at Drogheda homestead, to show her
visitors that even out on the black-soil plains
some people lived graciously. And the subject would always
turn to those skinny, drowned-ratlooking sheep,
left to face the winter minus the five- and
six-inch-long fleeces they would have grown by the time
summer heat arrived. But, as Paddy said gravely
to one such visitor, it made for better wool. The
wool was the thing, not the sheep. Not long after he made
that statement a letter appeared in the Sydney Morning
Herald, demanding prompt parliamentary legislation
to end what it called "grazier cruelty." Poor
Mrs. O'Rourke was horrified, but Paddy
laughed until his sides ached.
  "Just as well the silly bloke never saw a
shearer rip up a sheep's belly and sew it with a
baling needle," he comforted the embarrassed Mrs.
O'Rourke. "It's not worth getting upset about,
Mrs. Dominic. Down in the city they don't know
how the other half lives, and they can afford
the luxury of doting on their animals as if they were
children. Out here it's different. You'll never see man,
woman or child in need of help go ignored out here,
yet in the city those same people who dote on their pets
will completely ignore a cry of help from a human
being."
  Fee looked up. "He's right, Mrs.
Dominic," she said. "We all have contempt for
whatever there's too many of. Out here it's sheep, but in
the city it's people."
  Only Paddy was far afield that day in August
when the big storm broke. He got down from his
horse, tied the animal securely to a tree and
sat beneath a wilga to wait it out. Shivering in fear,
his five dogs huddled together near him, while the
sheep he had been intending to transfer to another
paddock scattered into jumpy little groups trotting
aimlessly in all directions. And it was a terrible
storm, reserving the worst of its fury until the
center of the maelstrom was directly overhead.
Paddy stuffed his fingers in his ears, shut his eyes and
prayed.
  Not far from where he sat with the down-dropping wilga
leaves clashing restlessly in the rising wind was a
small collection of dead stumps and logs
surrounded by tall grass. In the middle of the white,
skeletal heap was one massive dead gum, its
bare body soaring forty feet toward the night-black
clouds, spindling at its top into a sharp, jagged
point. A blossoming blue fire so bright it seared
his eyes through their closed lids made Paddy jump
to his feet, only to be thrown down like a toy in the
heave of a huge explosion. He lifted his face from
the earth to see the final glory of the lightning bolt
playing shimmering halos of glaring blue and purple
all up and down the dead spear of gum tree; then,
so quickly he hardly had time to understand what was
happening, everything caught fire. The last drop of
moisture had long since evaporated from the
tissues of that decayed cluster, and the grass everywhere
was long and dry as paper. Like some defiant answer
of the earth to the sky, the giant tree shot a pillar
of flame far beyond its tip, the logs and stumps around
it went up at the same moment, and in a circle from
around the center great sheets of fire swept in the
swirling wind, round and round and round. Paddy had not
even time to reach his horse.
  The parched wilga caught and the gum resin at its
tender heart exploded outward. There were solid
walls of fire in every direction Paddy
looked; the trees were burning fiercely and the grass
beneath his feet was roaring into flames. He could hear his
horse screaming and his heart went out to it; he could not
leave the poor beast to die tied up and helpless. A
dog howled, its howl changing to a shriek of agony
almost human. For a moment it flared and danced, a
living torch, then subsided into the blazing grass.
More howls as the other dogs, fleeing, were enveloped
by the racing fire, faster in the gale than anything on
foot or wing. A streaming meteor scorched his
hair as he stood for a millisecond debating which
way was the best to get to his horse; he looked
down to see a great cockatoo roasting at his feet.
Suddenly Paddy knew this was the end. There was no
way out of the inferno for himself or his horse. Even as
he thought it, a desiccated stringybark behind him shot
flames in every direction; the gum in it exploding.
The skin on Paddy's arm shriveled and blackened,
the hair of his head dimmed at last by something brighter.
To die so is indescribable; for fire works its way
from outside to in. The last things that go, finally cooked
to the point of nonfunction, are brain and heart. His
clothes on fire, Paddy capered screaming and
screaming through the holocaust. And every awful cry was his
wife's name.
  All the other men made it back to Drogheda
homestead ahead of the storm, turned their mounts into the
stockyard and headed for either the big house or the
jackaroo barracks. In Fee's brightly lit
drawing room with a log fire roaring in the
cream-and-pink marble fireplace the Cleary boys
sat listening to the storm, not tempted these days to go
outside and watch it. The beautiful pungent smell
of burning eucalyptus wood in the grate and the
heaped cakes and sandwiches on the afternoon tea
trolley were too alluring. No one expected
Paddy to make it in.
  About four o'clock the clouds rolled away to the east,
and everyone unconsciously breathed easier; somehow it
was impossible to relax during a dry storm, even
though every building on Drogheda was equipped with a
lightning conductor. Jack and Bob got up and
went outside to get a little fresh air, they said, but
in reality to release pent breath. "Look!" said
Bob, pointing westward.
  Above the trees that ringed the Home Paddock
round, a great bronze pall of smoke was growing,
its margins torn to tattered streamers in the high
wind. "God Jesus!" Jack cried, running
inside to the telephone. "Fire, fire!"
he shouted into the receiver, while those still inside the room
turned to gape at him, then ran outside to see.
"Fire on Drogheda, and a big one!" Then he
hung up; it was all he needed to say to the Gilly
switch and to those along the line who habitually picked
up when the first tinkle came. Though there had not been
a big fire in the Gilly district since the
Clearys had come to Drogheda, everyone knew the
routine. The boys scattered to get horses, and the
stockmen were piling out of the jackaroo barracks, while
Mrs. Smith unlocked one of the storehouses and
doled out hessian bags by the dozen. The smoke was
in the west and the wind was blowing from that direction, which
meant the fire would be heading for the homestead. Fee
took off her long skirt and put on a pair of
Paddy's pants, then ran with Meggie for the stables;
every pair of hands capable of holding a bag would be
needed.
  In the cookhouse Mrs. Smith stoked up the
range firebox and the maids began bringing down
huge pots from their ceiling hooks. "Just as well
we killed a steer yesterday," said the housekeeper.
"Minnie, here's the key to the liquor storehouse.
You and Cat fetch all the beer and rum we've
got, then start making damper bread while
I carry on with the stew. And hurry, hurry!"
  The horses, unsettled by the storm, had smelled
smoke and were hard to saddle; Fee and Meggie
backed the two trampling, restive thoroughbreds
outside the stable into the yard to tackle them better.
As Meggie wrestled with the chestnut mare two
swaggies came pounding down the track from the Gilly
road.
  "Fire, Missus, fire! Got a couple of
spare horses? Give us a few bags." "Down
that way to the stockyards. Dear God, I hope
none of you are caught out there!" said Meggie, who
didn't know where her father was. The two men grabbed
hessian bags and water bags from Mrs. Smith;
Bob and the men had been gone five minutes. The
two swaggies followed, and last to leave, Fee and
Meggie rode at a gallop down to the creek,
across it and away toward the smoke.
  Behind them Tom, the garden rouseabout, finished
filling the big water truck from the bore-drain
pump, then started the engine. Not that any amount of
water short of a downpour from the sky would help put
out a fire this big, but he would be needed to keep the
bags damp, and the people wielding them. As he shoved the
truck down into bottom gear to grind up the
far creek bank he looked back for a moment at the
empty head stockman's house, the two vacant
houses beyond it; there was the homestead's soft
underbelly, the only place where flammable things
came close enough to the trees on the far side of the
creek to catch. Old Tom looked westward,
shook his head in sudden decision, and managed to get
the truck back across the creek and up the near bank
in reverse. They'd never stop that fire out in the
paddocks; they'd return. On top of the gully and
just beside the head stockman's house, in which he had been
camping, he attached the hose to the tank and began
saturating the building, then passed beyond it to the two
smaller dwellings, hosed them down. This was where he
could help the most; keep those three homes so wet
they'd never catch.
  As Meggie rode beside Fee the ominous cloud in
  the west grew, and stronger and stronger on the wind
came the smell of burning. It was growing dark;
creatures fleeing from the west came thicker and
thicker across the paddock, kangaroos and wild
pigs, frightened sheep and cattle, emus and
goannas, rabbits by the thousands. Bob was leaving the
gates open, she noticed as she rode from
Borehead into Billa-Billa; every
paddock on Drogheda had a name. But sheep were so
stupid they would blunder into a fence and stop three feet
from an open gate, never see it. The fire had gone
ten miles when they reached it, and it was spreading
laterally as well, along a front expanding with every
second. As the long dry grass and the high wind
took it leaping from timber stand to timber stand they sat
their frightened, jobbing horses and looked into the west
helplessly. No use trying to stop it here; an army
couldn't stop it here. They would have to go back to the
homestead and defend that if they could. Already the front
was five miles wide; if they didn't push their
weary mounts they too would be caught, and passed.
Too bad for the sheep, too bad. But it couldn't be
helped.
  Old Tom was still hosing the houses by the creek when
they clattered through the thin blanket of water on the
ford.
  "Good bloke, Tom!" Bob shouted. "Keep it
up until it gets too hot to stay, then get out in
plenty of time, hear me? No rash heroism; you're
more important than some bits of wood and glass."
  The homestead grounds were full of cars, and more
headlights were bouncing and glaring down the road from
Gilly; a large group of men stood
waiting for them as Bob turned into the horse yards.
  "How big is it, Bob?" Martin King asked.
  "Too big to fight, I think," said Bob
despairingly. "I reckon it's about five miles
wide and in this wind it's traveling almost as fast as a
horse can gallop. I don't know if we can save
the homestead, but I think Horry ought to get ready
to defend his place. He's going to 252
  get it next, because I don't see how we can ever
stop it. "Well, we're overdue for a big fire.
The last big one was in 1919. I'll organize
a party to go to Beel-Beel, but there are plenty of us
and more coming. Gilly can put out close to five
hundred men to fight a fire. Some of us will stay here
to help. Thank God I'm west of Drogheda is
all I can say." Bob grinned. "You're a
bloody comfort, Martin."
  Martin looked around. "Where's your father, Bob?"
"West of the fire, like Bugela. He was out in
Wilga mustering some ewes for the lambing, and
Wilga's at least five miles west of where the
fire started, I reckon."
  "No other men you're worried about?"
  "Not today, thank heavens."
  In a way it was like being in a war,
Meggie thought as she entered the house: a controlled
speed, a concern for food and drink, the keeping up of
one's strength and courage. And the threat of imminent
disaster. As more men arrived they went to join those already in
the Home Paddock, cutting down the few trees that
had sprung up close to the creek bank, and
clearing away any overlong grass on the
perimeter. Meggie remembered thinking when she first
arrived on Drogheda how much prettier the Home
Paddock might have been, for compared to the wealth of
timber all around it, it was bare and bleak. Now she
understood why. The Home Paddock was nothing less
than a gigantic circular firebreak.
  Everyone talked of the fires Gilly had seen in
its seventy-odd years of existence. Curiously
enough, fires were never a major threat during
prolonged drought, because there wasn't sufficient
grass then to keep a fire going far. It was times like
this, a year or two after heavy rain had made the
grass grow so long and tinderlush, that Gilly saw
its big fires, the ones which sometimes burned out of
control for hundreds of miles. Martin King had
taken charge of the three hundred men remaining
to defend Drogheda. He was the senior
  grazier of the district, and had fought
fires for fifty years. "I've got 150,000
acres on Bugela," he said, "and in 1905 I
lost every sheep and every tree on the place. It took
me fifteen years to recover, and I thought for a while
I wouldn't, because wool wasn't fetching much in those
days, nor was beef."
  The wind was still howling, the smell of burning was
everywhere. Night had fallen, but the western sky was
lit to unholy brilliance and lowering smoke was
beginning to make them cough. Not long afterward they saw the
first flames, vast tongues leaping and writhing a
hundred feet into the smoke, and a roaring came to their
ears like a huge crowd overexcited at a
football game. The trees on the western side
of the timber ringing the Home Paddock caught and went
up in a solid sheet of fire; as Meggie watched
petrified from the homestead veranda she could see little
pygmy silhouettes of men outlined against them,
jumping and cavorting like anguished souls in Hell.
"Meggie, will you get in here and stack those plates
on the sideboard, girl! We're not at a
picnic, you know!" came her mother's voice. She
turned away reluctantly.
  Two hours later the first relay of exhausted men
staggered in to snatch food and drink, gather
up their waning strength to go back and fight on. For this
had the station women toiled, to make sure there was stew
and damper bread, tea and rum and beer aplenty,
even for three hundred men. In a fire, everyone
did what he or she was best equipped to do, and that
meant the women cooked to keep up the superior
physical strength of the men. Case after case of
liquor emptied and was replaced by new cases;
black from soot and reeling with fatigue, the men
stood to drink copiously and stuff huge chunks of
damper into their mouths, gobble down a plateful of
stew when it had cooled, gulp a last tumbler of
rum, then out again to the fire.
  In between trips to the cookhouse Meggie watched the
fire, awed and terrified. In its way it had a
beauty beyond the beauty of anything earthly, for it was a
thing of the skies, of suns so far away their light
came coldly, of God and the Devil. The front
had galloped on eastward, they were completely
surrounded now, and Meggie could pick out details the
undefined holocaust of the front did not permit.
Now there were black and orange and red and white and
yellow; a tall tree in black silhouette
rimmed with an orange crust that simmered and glowered;
red embers floating and pirouetting like
frolicsome phantoms in the air above; yellow
pulsations from the exhausted hearts of burnedout
trees; a shower of spinning crimson sparks as a
gum exploded; sudden licks of orange-and-white
flames from something that had resisted until now, and
finally yielded its being to the fire. Oh, yes, it was
beautiful in the night; she would carry the memory of
it all her life. A sudden increase in the wind
velocity sent all the women up the wistaria boughs
onto the silver iron roof muffled in bags, for
all the men were out in the Home Paddock. Armed with
wet bags, their hands and knees scorched even through the
bags they wore, they beat out embers on the frying
roof, terrified the iron might give way under the
coals, drop flaming pieces down into the wooden
struts below. But the worst of the fire was ten miles
eastward on Beel-Beel.
  Drogheda homestead was only three miles from the
eastern boundary of the property, it being closest
to Gilly. Beel-Beel adjoined it, and beyond that
farther east lay Narrengang. When the wind picked
up from forty to sixty miles an hour the whole
district knew nothing but rain could prevent the fire
burning on for weeks, and laying waste to hundreds of
square miles of prime land.
  Through the worst of the blaze the houses by the creek
had endured, with Tom like a man possessed
  filling his tank truck, hosing, filling again,
hosing again. But the moment the wind increased the houses
went up, and Tom retreated in the truck, weeping.
  "You'd better get down on your knees and thank
God the wind didn't pick up while the front was
to the west of us," said Martin King. "If it had, not
only would the homestead have gone, but us as well.
God Jesus, I hope they're all right on
Beel-Beel!"
  Fee handed him a big glass of neat rum; he
was not a young man, but he had fought as long as it was
needed, and directed operations with a master's touch.
  "It's silly," she said to him, "but when it looked
as if it all might go I kept thinking of the most
peculiar things. I didn't think of dying, or of the
children, or of this beautiful house in ruins. All I
could think of were my sewing basket, my half-done
knitting, the box of odd buttons I'd been
saving for years, my heart-shaped cake pans
Frank made me years ago. How could I
survive without them? All the little things, you know, the
things which can't be replaced, or bought in a shop."
  "That's how most women think, as a
matter of fact. Funny, isn't it, how the mind
reacts? I remember in 1905 my wife running
back into the house while I yelled after her like a
madman, just to get a tambour with a bit of fancywork
on it." He grinned. "But we got out in time, though
we lost the house. When I built the new place,
the first thing she did was finish the fancywork. It was one
of those old-fashioned samplers, you know the sort I
mean. And it said "Home Sweet Home.""
He put down the empty glass, shaking his head
over the strangeness of women. "I must go. Gareth
Davies is going to need us on Narrengang, and
unless I miss my guess so will Angus on
Rudna Hunish." Fee whitened. "Oh, Martin!
So far away?"
  "The word's out, Fee. Booroo and Bourke are
rally- ing.gg*thorn]
  For three days more the fire rampaged eastward on
  a front that kept widening and widening, then came
a sudden heavy fall of rain that lasted for nearly
four days, and quenched every last coal. But it had gone
over a hundred miles and laid a charred,
blackened path twenty miles wide from midway out
across Drogheda to the boundary of the last property in the
Gillanbone district eastward, Rudna
Hunish. Until it began to rain no one expected
to hear from Paddy, for they thought him safely on the far
side of, the burned zone, cut off from them by heat in
the ground and the still-flaring trees. Had the fire not
brought the telephone line down, Bob thought they would
have got a call from Martin King, for it was logical
that Paddy would strike westward for shelter at
Bugela homestead. But when the rain had been
falling for six hours and there was still no sign of him,
they began to worry. For almost four days they had been
assuring themselves continually that there was no reason to be
anxious, that of course he was just cut off, and had
decided to wait until he could head for his own home
rather than go to Bugela.
  "He ought to be in by now," said Bob, pacing up and
down the drawing room while the others watched; the
irony of it was that the rain had brought a dank chill
into the air, and once more a bright fire burned in the
marble hearth.
  "What do you think, Bob?" Jack asked.
  "I think it's high time we went looking for him.
He might be hurt, or he might be on foot and
facing a long walk home. His horse might have
panicked and thrown him, he might be lying somewhere
unable to walk. He had food for
overnight, but nothing like enough for four days, though he
won't have passed out from starvation yet. Best not
to create a fuss just now, so I won't recall the
men from Narrengang. But if we don't find him
by nightfall I'll ride to Dominic's and we'll
get the whole district out tomorrow. Lord, I wish those
PMG blokes would get a move on with those phone
lines!" Fee was trembling, her eyes feverish,
almost savage. 257
  "I'll put on a pair of trousers," she said.
"I can't bear to sit here waiting."
  "Mum, stay home!" Bob pleaded.
  "If he's hurt it might be anywhere, Bob, and
he might be in any sort of condition. You sent the
stockmen to Narrengang, and that leaves us mighty
short for a search party. If I go paired with
Meggie the two of us will be strong enough together to cope with
whatever we find, but if Meggie goes on her own
she'll have to search with one of you, and that's wasting her, not
to mention me."
  Bob gave in. "All right, then. You can have
Meggie's gelding; you rode it to the fire. Everyone
take a rifle, and plenty of shells."
  They rode off across the creek and into the heart of that
blasted landscape. Not a green or a
brown thing was left anywhere, just a vast expanse of
soggy black coals, incredibly still steaming after
hours of rain. Every leaf of every tree was frizzled to a
curling limp string, and where the grass had been they
could see little black bundles here and there, sheep
caught in the fire, or an occasional bigger mound which
had been a steer or a pig. Their tears mingled with the
rain on their faces. Bob and Meggie headed the little
procession, Jack and Hughie in the middle, Fee
and Stuart bringing up the rear. For Fee and Stuart it
was a peaceful progress; they drew comfort from being
close together, not talking, each content in the company
of the other. Sometimes the horses drew close or
shied apart at the sight of some new horror, but it
seemed not to affect the last pair of riders. The
mud made the going slow and hard, but the charred,
matted grass lay like a coir-rope rug on the
soil to give the horses a foothold. And every few
yards they expected to see Paddy appear over the
far flat horizon, but time went on and he never
did.
  With sinking hearts they realized the fire had begun
farther out than first imagined, in Wilga paddock.
The storm clouds must have disguised the smoke until
the fire had gone 'q a long way. The
borderland was
  astonishing. One side of a clearly drawn line
was just black, glistening tar, while the other side was
the land as they had always known it, fawn and blue and
drear in the rain, but alive. Bob stopped and drew
back to talk to everyone.
  "Well, here's where we start. I'm going due
west from here; it's the most likely direction and
I'm the strongest. Has everyone got plenty of
ammunition? Good. If you find anything, three
shots in the air, and those who hear must answer with one
shot each. Then wait. Whoever fired the three
shots will fire three more five minutes later, and
keep on firing three shots every five minutes.
Those who hear, one shot in answer. "Jack, you go
south along the fire line. Hughie, you go southwest.
I'm going west. Mum and Meggie, you go
northwest. Stu, follow the fire line due north.
And go slowly, everyone, please. The rain doesn't
make it any easier to see far, and there's a lot of
timber out here in places. Call often; he might
not see you where he would hear you. But remember, no
shots unless you find something, because he didn't have a
gun with him and if he should hear a shot and be out of
voice range to answer, it would be dreadful
for him. "Good luck, and God bless."
  Like pilgrims at the final crossroads they
straggled apart in the steady grey rain, getting farther
and farther away from each other, smaller and smaller,
until each disappeared along the appointed path.
Stuart had gone a bare half mile when he
noticed that a stand of burned timber drew very close
to the fire's demarcation line. There was a little wilga
as black and crinkled as a pickaninny's mop, and the
remains of a great stump standing close to the charred
boundary. What he saw was Paddy's horse,
sprawled and fused into the trunk of a big gum, and
two of Paddy's dogs, little black stiff things with
all four limbs poking up like sticks. He got
down from his horse, boots sinking ankle deep in
mud, and took his rifle from its saddle scabbard.
His lips moved, praying, as he picked his
slippery
  way across the sticky coals. Had it not been for the
horse and the dogs he might have hoped for a swaggie
or some down-and equals out wayfarer caught,
trapped. But Paddy was horsed and had five dogs
with him; no one on the track rode a horse or
had more than one. dog. This was too far inside
Drogheda land to think of drovers, or
stockmen from Bugela to the west. Farther away were
three more incinerated dogs; five altogether, five
dogs. He knew he would not find a sixth, nor
did he.
  And not far from the horse, hidden as he approached
by a log, was what had been a man. There could be no
mistake. Glistening and shiny in the rain, the black
thing lay on its back, and its back was arched like a
great bow so that it bent upward in the middle and did not
touch the ground except at the buttocks and
shoulders. The arms were flung apart and curved at the
elbows as if beseeching heaven, the fingers with the flesh
dropping off them to reveal charred bones were clawing and
grasping at nothing. The legs were splayed apart also
but flexed at the knees, and the blob of a head looked
up sightless, eyeless at the sky.
  For a moment Stuart's clear, all-seeing gaze
rested on his father, and saw not the ruined shell but the
man, as he had been in life. He pointed his
rifle at the sky, fired a shot, reloaded,
fired a second shot, reloaded, let off the
third. Faintly in the distance he heard one answering
report, then, farther off and very faintly, a second
answer. It was then he remembered the closer shot
would have-come from his mother and sister. They were
northwest, he was north. Without waiting the
stipulated five minutes, he put another shell
in the rifle breech, pointed the gun due south, and
fired. A pause to reload, the second shot,
reload, the third shot. He put the weapon back
on the ground and stood looking south, his head cocked,
listening. This time the first answer was from the west,
Bob's shot, the second from Jack or Hughie,
and the third from his mother. He sighed in relief; he
didn't want the women reaching him first.
  Thus he didn't see the great wild pig
emerge from the trees to the north; he smelled it. As
big as a cow, its massive bulk rolled and
quivered on short, powerful legs as it drove its
head down, raking at the burned wet ground. The
shots had disturbed it, and it was in pain. The sparse
black hair on one side of its body was singed off
and the skin was redly raw; what Stuart smelled as he
stared into the south was the delectable odor of bubbled
pork skin, just as it is on a roasted joint fresh
from the oven and crisp all over the slashed outer
husk. Surprised out of the curiously peaceful
sorrow he always seemed to have known, his head turned,
even as he thought to himself that he must have been here before, that
this sodden black place had been etched
into some part of his brain on the day of his birth.
Stooping, he groped for the rifle, remembering it
wasn't loaded. The boar stood perfectly still, its
little reddened eyes mad with pain, the great yellow
tusks sharp and curving upward in a half circle.
Stuart's horse neighed, smelling the beast; the
pig's massive head swung to watch it, then lowered
for the charge. While its attention was on the horse
Stuart saw his only chance, bent quickly for the rifle
and snapped the breech open, his other hand in his
jacket pocket for a shell. All around the rain was
dropping down, muffling other sounds in its own
unchanging patter. But the pig heard the bolt
slide back, and at the last moment changed the
direction of its charge from the horse to Stuart. It was
almost upon him when he got one shot off straight into the
beast's chest, without slowing it down. The tusks
slewed up and sideways, and caught him in the
groin. He fell, blood appearing like a faucet
turned all the way on and saturating his clothes,
spurting over the ground.
  Turning awkwardly as it began to feel the
bullet, the pig came back to gore him again,
faltered, swayed, and tottered. The whole of that
fifteen-hundred-pound bulk came down
across him, and crushed his face into the tarry mud. For a
moment his hands clawed at the
  ground on either side in a frantic, futile
struggle to be free; this then was what he had always
known, why he had never hoped or dreamed or
planned, only sat and drunk of the living world so
deeply there had not been time to grieve for his waiting
fate. He thought: Mum, Mum! I can't stay with
you, Mum!, even as his heart burst within him.
  "I wonder why Stu hasn't fired again?"
Meggie asked her mother as they trotted toward the sound
of those two first triple volleys, not able to go any
faster in the mud, and desperately anxious. "I
suppose he decided we'd heard," Fee said.
But in the back of her mind she was remembering
Stuart's face as they parted in different directions
on the search, the way his hand had gone out to clasp
hers, the way he had smiled at her. "We can't be
far away now," she said, and pushed her mount into a
clumsy, sliding canter.
  But Jack had got there first, so had Bob, and they
headed the women off as they came across the last of the
living land toward the place where the bushfire had
begun.
  "Don't go in, Mum," said Bob as
she dismounted. Jack had gone to Meggie, and held
her arms.
  The two pairs of grey eyes turned, not so much
in bewilderment or dread as in knowledge, as if they did not
need to be told anything. "Paddy?" asked Fee in
a voice not like her own. "Yes. And Stu."
  Neither of her sons could look at her.
  "Stu? Stu! What do you mean, Stu? Oh,
God, what is it, what's happened? Not both of
them-no!"
  "Daddy got caught in the fire; he's dead.
Stu must have disturbed a boar, and it charged him. He
shot it, but it fell on him as it was dying and smothered
him. He's dead too, Mum."
  Meggie screamed and struggled, trying to break
free of Jack's hands, but Fee stood between
Bob's grimy, 262
  bloody ones as if turned to stone, her eyes as
glassy as a gazing-ball. "It is too much," she
said at last, and looked up at Bob with the rain
running down her face and her hair in straggling
wisps around her neck like golden runnels. "Let
me go to them, Bob. I am the wife of one and the mother
of one. You can't keep me away-you have no right
to keep me away. Let me go to them."
  Meggie had quietened, and stood within Jack's
arms with her head on his shoulder. As Fee began
to walk across the ruins with Bob's arm around her
waist, Meggie looked after them, but she made no
move to follow. Hughie appeared out of the dimming
rain; Jack nodded toward his mother and Bob. "Go after
them, Hughie, stay with them. Meggie and I are going
back to Drogheda, to bring the dray." He let
Meggie go, and helped her onto the chestnut mare.
"Come on, Meggie; it's nearly dark. We can't
leave them out all night in this, and they won't go
until we get back."
  It was impossible to put the dray or anything
else wheeled upon the mud; in the end Jack and old
Tom chained a sheet of corrugated iron behind two
draft horses, Tom leading the team on a stock
horse while Jack rode ahead with the biggest lamp
Drogheda possessed.
  Meggie stayed at the homestead and sat in front
of the drawing room fire while Mrs. Smith tried
to persuade her to eat, tears running down her face
to see the girl's still, silent shock, the way she
did not weep. At the sound of the front door
knocker she turned and went to answer it, wondering
who on earth had managed to get through the
mud, and as always astonished at the speed with which news
traveled the lonely miles between the far-flung
homesteads.
  Father Ralph was standing on the veranda, wet and
muddy, in riding clothes and oilskins.
  "May I come in, Mrs. Smith?"
  "Oh, Father, Father!" she cried, and threw herself
into his astounded arms. "How did you know?"
  "Mrs. Cleary telegrammed me, a
manager-to-owner courtesy I appreciated very
much. I got leave to come from Archbishop di
Contini-Verchese. What a mouth- ful! Would you
believe I have to say it a hundred times a day? I
flew up. The plane bogged as it landed and pitched
on its nose, so I knew what the ground was like before
I so much as stepped on it. Dear, beautiful
Gilly! I left my suitcase with Father Watty
at the presbytery and cadged a horse from the
Imperial publican, who thought I was crazy and
bet me a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black
Label I'd never get through the mud. Oh, Mrs.
Smith, don't cry so! My dear, the world hasn't
come to an end because of a fire, no matter how big and
nasty it was!" he said, smiling and patting her
heaving shoulders. "Here am I doing my
best to make light of it, and you're just not doing your
best to respond. Don't cry so, please."
  "Then you don't know," she sobbed.
  "What? Know what? What is it-what's
happened?" "Mr. Cleary and Stuart are dead."
  His face drained of color; his hands pushed the
housekeeper away. "Where's Meggie?" he barked.
  "In the drawing room. Mrs. Cleary's still out
in the paddock with the bodies. Jack and Tom have gone
to bring them in. Oh, Father, sometimes in spite of my
faith I can't help thinking God is too cruel!
Why did He have to take both of them?"
  But all Father Ralph had stayed to hear was where
Meggie was; he had gone into the drawing room
shedding his oilskins as he went, trailing muddy
water behind him.
  "Meggie!" he said, coming to her and kneeling at one
side of her chair, taking her cold hands in his wet
ones firmly.
  She slipped from the chair and crawled into his
arms, pillowed her head on his dripping shirt and
closed her
  eyes, so happy in spite of her pain and grief
that she never wanted the moment to end. He had come, it
was a vindication of her power over him, she
hadn't failed.
  "I'm wet, darling Meggie; you'll get
soaked," he whispered, his cheek on her hair.
  "It doesn't matter. You've come."
  "Yes, I've come. I wanted to be sure you were
safe, I had a feeling I was needed, I had
to see for myself. Oh, Meggie, your father and Stu!
How did it happen?"
  "Daddy was caught in the fire, and Stu found him.
He was killed by a boar; it fell on him after he
shot it. Jack and Tom have gone out to bring them in."
  He said no more, but held her and rocked her as if
she were a baby until the heat of the fire partially
dried his shirt and hair and he felt some of the stiffness
drain from her. Then he put his hand beneath her chin,
tilted her head until she looked up at him, and
without thinking kissed her. It was a confused impulse
not rooted in desire, just something he instinctively
offered when he saw what lay in the grey eyes.
Something apart, a different kind of sacrament. Her
arms slid up under his to meet across his back; he could
not stop himself flinching, suppress the exclamation of
pain. She drew back a little. "What's the
matter?"
  "I must have bruised my ribs when the
plane came in. We bogged to the fuselage in good
old Gilly mud, so it was a pretty rough landing.
I wound up balanced on the back of the seat in
front of me."
  "Here, let me see."
  Fingers steady, she unbuttoned the damp shirt and
peeled it off his arms, pulled it free of his
breeches. Under the surface of the smooth brown skin
a purpling ugly patch extended from one side clear
across to the other below the rib cage; her breath caught.
  "Oh, Ralph! You rode all the way from
Gilly with this? How it must have hurt! Do you feel
all right? No faintness? You might have ruptured
something inside!"
  "No, I'm fine, and I didn't feel it,
honestly. I was so anxious to get here,. make
sure you were all right, that 265
  I suppose I simply eliminated it from my
mind. If I was bleeding internally I'd have known
about. it long before now, I expect. God,
Meggie, don't!" Her head had gone down, she was
delicately touching her lips to the bruise, her
palms sliding up his chest to his shoulders with a
deliberate sensuousness that staggered him.
Fascinated, terrified, meaning to free
himself at any cost, he pulled her head away; but
somehow all he succeeded in doing was having her back
in his arms, a snake coiled tightly about his will,
strangling it. Pain was forgotten, Church was
forgotten, God was forgotten. He found her mouth,
forced it open hungrily, wanting more and more of her, not
able to hold her close enough to assuage the ghastly
drive growing in him. She gave him her neck,
bared her shoulders where the skin was cool, smoother and
glossier than satin; it was like drowning, sinking
deeper and deeper, gasping and helpless. Mortality
pressed down on him, a great weight crushing his
soul, liberating the bitter dark wine of his senses in
a sudden flood. He wanted to weep; the last of his
desire trickled away under the burden of his
mortality, and he wrenched her arms from about his
wretched body, sat back on his heels with his head
sunken forward, seeming to become utterly absorbed
in watching his hands tremble on his knees. Meggie,
what have you done to me, what might you do to me if I
let you? "Meggie, I love you, I always will. But
I'm a priest, I can't .... I just can't!"
  She got to her feet quickly, straightened her
blouse, stood looking down at him and smiling a
twisted smile which only threw the failed
pain in her eyes into greater emphasis.
  "It's all right, Ralph. I'll go and see if
Mrs. Smith can get you something to eat, then I'll
bring you the horse liniment. It's marvelous for bringing
out a bruise; stops the soreness much better than
kisses ever could, I daresay."
  "Is the phone working?" he managed to say.
  "Yes. They strung a temporary line on the
trees and reconnected us a couple of hours
ago."
  But it was some minutes after she left him before he
could compose himself sufficiently to seat himself at
Fee's escritoire. "Give me trunks,
please, switch. This is Father de Bricassart at
Drogheda- Oh, hello, Doreen; still on the
switch, I see. Nice to hear your voice, too.
One never knows who switch is in Sydney; she's
just a bored voice. I want to put an urgent
call through to His Grace the Archbishop Papal
Legate in Sydney. His number is
XX-2324. And while I'm waiting for
Sydney, put me through to Bugela, Doreen."
  There was barely time to tell Martin King what had
happened before Sydney was on the line, but one word
to Bugela was enough. Gilly would know from him
and the eavesdroppers on the party line, and those who
wished to brave a ride through Gilly mud would be at
the funerals.
  "Your Grace? This is Father de Bricassart .
. . . Yes, thank you, I arrived safely, but the
plane's bogged to its fuselage in mud and I'll
have to come back by train . . . . Mud, Your
Grace, m-u-d mud. No, Your Grace,
everything up here becomes impassable when it rains.
I had to ride from Gillanbone to Drogheda on
horseback; that's the only way one can even try in
rain . . . . That's why I'm phoning, Your
Grace. It was as well I came. I suppose
I must have had some sort of premonition . . .
.yes, things are bad, very bad. Padraic
Cleary and his son Stuart are dead, one burned
to death in the fire, one smothered by a boar . . . . A
b-o-a-r boar, Your Grace, a wild pig
.... Yes, you're right, one does speak a
slightly bizarre English up here." All down the
faint line he could hear gasps from the listeners, and
grinned in spite of himself. One couldn't yell into the
phone that everybody must get off the line-it was the
sole entertainment of a mass nature Gilly had
to offer its contact-hungry citizens-but if
they would only get off the line His Grace might
stand
  a better chance of hearing. "With your permission,
Your Grace, I'll remain to conduct the funerals
and make sure the widow and her surviving children are
all right . . . . Yes, your Grace, thank you.
I'll return to Sydney as soon as I can."
  Switch was listening, too; he clicked the lever and
spoke again immediately. "Doreen, put me back
to Bugela, please." He talked to Martin King
for a few minutes, and decided since it was August
and wintercold to delay the funerals until the day
after this coming day. Many people would want to attend in spite
of the mud and be prepared to ride to get there, but it was
slow and arduous work.
  Meggie came back with the horse liniment, but
made no offer to rub it on, just handed him the bottle
silently. She informed him abruptly that Mrs.
Smith was laying him a hot supper in the small
dining room in an hour, so he would have time to bathe.
He was uncomfortably aware that in some way Meggie
thought he had failed her, but he didn't know why she
should think so, or on what basis she had judged
him. She knew what he was; why was she angry?
  In grey dawnlight the little cavalcade
escorting the bodies reached the creek, and stopped.
Though the water was still contained within its banks, the
Gillan had become a river in full spate,
running fast and thirty feet deep. Father Ralph
swam his chestnut mare across to meet them, stole around
his neck and the instruments of his calling in a
saddlebag. While Fee, Bob, Jack,
Hughie and Tom stood around, he stripped the
canvas off the bodies and prepared to anoint them.
After Mary Carson nothing could sicken him; yet he
found nothing repugnant about Paddy and Stu. They were
both black after their fashion, Paddy from the fire and
Stu from suffocation, but the priest kissed them with love
and respect.
  For fifteen miles the rough sheet of iron had
jarred
  and bounced over the ground behind the team of draft
horses, scarring the mud with deep gouges which would still
be visible years later, even in the grass of other
seasons. But it seemed they could go no farther; the
swirling creek would keep them on its far side, with
Drogheda only a mile away. They stood staring
at the tops of the ghost gums, clearly visible even
in the rain.
  "I have an idea," said Bob, turning
to Father Ralph. "Father, you're the only one on a
fresh horse; it will have to be you. Ours will only
swim the creek oncethey've got no more in them after
the mud and the cold. Go back and find some empty
forty-four-gallon drums, and seal their lids shut
so they can't possibly leak or slip off. Solder
them if necessary. We'll need twelve of them, ten if
you can't find more. Tie them together and bring them back
across the creek. We'll lash them under the iron and
float it across like a barge."
  Father Ralph did as he was told without question; it was
a better idea than any he had to offer. Dominic
O'Rourke of Dibban-Dibban had ridden in with
two of his sons; he was a neighbor and not far away
as distances went. When Father Ralph explained what
had to be done they set about it quickly, scouring the sheds
for empty drums, tipping chaff and oats out of
drums empty of petrol but in use for storage,
searching for lids, soldering the lids to the drums if
they were rustfree and looked likely to withstand the
battering they would get in the water. The rain was still
falling, falling. It wouldn't stop for another two
days.
  "Dominic, I hate to ask it of you, but when these
people come in they're going to be half dead.
We'll have to hold the funerals tomorrow, and even if the
Gilly undertaker could make the coffins in time, we'd
never get them out through the mud. Can any of you have a go
at making a couple of coffins? I only need one
man to swim the creek with me."
  The O'Rourke sons nodded; they didn't want
to see what the fire had done to Paddy or the boar
to StuarLike 269
  "We'll do it, Dad," said Liam.
  Dragging the drums behind their horses, Father
Ralph and Dominic O'Rourke rode down to the
creek and swam it.
  "There's one thing, Father!" shouted Dominic. "We
don't have to dig graves in this bloody mud! I
used to think old Mary was putting on the dog a bit
too much when she put a marble vault in her
backyard for Michael, but right at this minute if she
was here, I'd kiss her!"
  "Too right!" yelled Father Ralph.
  They lashed the drums under the sheet of iron, six
on either side, tied the canvas shroud down
firmly, and swam the exhausted draft horses
across on the rope which would finally tow the raft.
Dominic and Tom sat astride the great beasts, and
at the top of the Drogheda-side bank
paused, looking back, while those still marooned
hooked up the makeshift barge, pushed it to the bank
and shoved it in. The draft horses began walking,
Tom and Dominic cooeeing shrilly as the raft
began to float. It bobbed and wallowed badly, but it
stayed afloat long enough to be hauled out safely; rather
than waste time dismantling the pontoons, the two
impromptu postilions urged their mounts up the
track toward the big house, the sheet of iron
sliding along on its drums better than it had
without them.
  There was a ramp up to great doors at the baling
end of the shearing shed, so they put the raft and its
burden in the huge empty building amid the reeks
of tar, sweat, lanolin and dung. Muffled in
oilskins, Minnie and Cat had come down from the big
house to take first vigil, and knelt one on either
side of the iron bier, rosary beads clicking,
voices rising and falling in cadences too well
known to need the effort of memory.
  The house was filling up. Duncan Gordon had
arrived from Each-Uisge, Gareth Davies from
Narrengang, Horry Hopeton from
Beel-Beel, Eden Carmichael from Barcoola.
Old Angus MacQueen had flagged
down
  one of the ambling local goods trains and ridden with the
engine driver to Gilly, where he borrowed a horse
from Harry Gough and rode out with him. He had covered
over two hundred miles of mud, one way or
another. "I'm wiped out, Father," Horry said to the
priest later as the seven of them sat in the small
dining room eating steak-and-kidney pie. "The fire
went through me from one end to the other and left hardly a
sheep alive or a tree green. Lucky the last
few years have been good is all I can say. I can
afford to restock, and if this rain keeps up the
grass will come back real quick. But heaven help us from
another disaster during the next ten years, Father, because
I won't have anything put aside to meet it.
"Well, you're smaller than me, Horry,"
Gareth Davies said, cutting into Mrs. Smith's
meltingly light flaky pastry with evident
enjoyment. Nothing in the line of disasters could depress
a black-soil plainsman's appetite for long;
he needed his food to meet them. "I reckon I
lost about half of my acreage, and maybe
twothirds of my sheep, worse luck. Father, we
need your prayers."
  "Aye," said old Angus. "I
wasna sae hard hit as wee Horry and Garry,
Father, but bad enough for a" that. I lost sixty thoosand
of ma acres, and half ma wee sheep. "Tis
times like this, Father, make me wish I hadna left
Skye as a young laddie."
  Father Ralph smiled. "It's a passing wish,
Angus, you know that. You left Skye for the same
reason I left Clunamara. It was too small
for you." "Aye, nae Boot. The heather. doesna
make sic a bonnie blaze as the gums, eh,
Father?"
  It would be a strange funeral, thought Father
Ralph as he looked around; the only women would be
Drogheda women, for all the visiting mourners were
men. He had taken a huge dose of laudanum
to Fee after Mrs. Smith had stripped her, dried
her and put her into the
  big bed she had shared with Paddy, and when she
refused to drink it, weeping hysterically, he had
held her nose and tipped it ruthlessly down her
throat. Funny, he hadn't thought of Fee breaking
down. It had worked quickly, for she hadn't eaten in
twenty-four hours. Knowing she was sound asleep, he
rested easier. Meggie he kept tabs on; she was
out in the cookhouse at the moment helping
Mrs. Smith prepare food. The boys were all in
bed, so exhausted they could hardly manage to peel
off their wet things before collapsing. When Minnie and
Cat concluded their stint of the vigil custom demanded
because the bodies lay in a deserted, unblessed
place, Gareth Davies and his son Enoch were taking
over; the others allotted hour-long spans among
themselves as they talked and ate.
  None of the young men had joined their elders in the dining
room. They were all in the cookhouse ostensibly
helping Mrs. Smith, but in reality so they could
look at Meggie. When he realized this fact Father
Ralph was both annoyed and relieved. Well, it
was out of their ranks she must choose her husband, as
she inevitably would. Enoch Davies was
twenty-nine, a "black Welshman," which meant he
was black-haired and very dark-eyed, a handsome man;
Liam O'Rourke was twenty-six, sandy-haired and
blue-eyed, like his twenty-five-year-old brother
Rory; Connor Carmichael was the spit of his
sister, older at thirty-two, and very good-looking
indeed, if a little arrogant; the pick of the bunch in
Father Ralph's estimation was old Angus's
grandson Alastair, the closest to Meggie in age
at twenty-four and a sweet young man, with his
grandfather's beautiful blue. Scots eyes and hair
already gray, a family trait. Let her fall in
love with one of them, marry him, have the children she wanted
so badly. Oh, God, my God, if You will do that
for me, I'll gladly bear the pain of loving her,
gladly . . . .
  No flowers smothered these coffins, and the vases all

  around the chapel were empty. What blossoms had
survived the terrible heat of the fiery air two
nights ago had succumbed to the rain, and laid themselves
down against the mud like ruined butterflies. Not even
a stalk of bottle brush, or an early rose.
And everyone was tired, so tired. Those who had ridden
the long miles in the mud to show their liking for Paddy
were tired, those who had brought the bodies in were tired,
those who had slaved to cook and clean were tired, Father
Ralph was so tired he felt as if he moved in a
dream, eyes sliding away from Fee's pinched,
hopeless face, Meggie's expression of mingled
sorrow and anger, the collective grief of that
collective cluster Bob, Jack and Hughie .
. . . He gave no eulogy; Martin King
spoke briefly and movingly on behalf of those
assembled, and the priest went on into the
Requiem immediately. He had as a matter of course
brought his chalice, his sacraments and a stole, for no
priest stirred without them when he went offering comfort or
aid, but he had no vestments with him, and the house
possessed none. But old Angus had called in
at the presbytery in Gilly on his way, and
carried the black mourning garb of a Requiem
Mass wrapped in an oilskin across his saddle. So
he stood properly attired with the rain hissing against
the windows, drumming on the iron roof two stories
up.
  Then out into it, the grieving rain, across the lawn
all browned and scorched by heat, to the little whiterailinged
cemetery. This time there were pallbearers willing
to shoulder the plain rectangular boxes, slipping and
sliding in the mud, trying to see where they were going through
the rain beating in their eyes. And the little bells on the
Chinese cook's grave tinkled drably: Hee
Sing, Hee Sing, Hee Sing.
  It got itself over and done with. The mourners departed
on their horses, backs hunched inside their
oilskins, some of them staring miserably at the
prospect of ruin; others thanking God they had
escaped death 273
  and the fire. And Father Ralph got his
few things together, knowing he must go before he couldn't go.
  He went to see Fee, where she sat at the
escritoire staring mutely down at her hands.
  "Fee, will you be all right?" he asked, sitting
where he could see her. She turned toward him, so still
and quenched within her soul that he was afraid, and closed
his eyes.
  "Yes, Father, I'll be all right. I have the
books to keep, and five sons left-six if you
count Frank, only I don't suppose we can
count Frank, can we? Thank you for that, more than I
can ever say. It's such a comfort to me knowing your people are
watching out for him, making his life a little easier.
Oh, if I could see him, just once!"
  She was like a lighthouse, he thought; flashes of
grief every time her mind came round to that pitch of
emotion which was too great to be contained. A huge
flare, and then a long period of nothing.
  "Fee, I want you to think about something."
  "Yes, what?" She was dark again.
  "Are you listening to me?" he asked sharply,
worried and suddenly more frightened than before.
  For a long moment he thought she had retreated so far
into herself even the harshness of his voice hadn't
penetrated, but up blazed the beacon again,
and her lips parted. "My poor Paddy! My poor
Stuart! My poor Frank!" she mourned, then
got herself under that iron control once more, as if she
was determined to elongate her periods of darkness
until the light shone no more in her lifetime.
  Her eyes roamed the room without seeming
to recognize it. "Yes, Father, I'm listening,"
she said.
  "Fee, what about your daughter? Do you ever
remember that you have a daughter?"
  The grey eyes lifted to his face, dwelled
on it almost pityingly. "Does any woman?
What's a daughter? Just a reminder of the pain, a
younger version of oneself 274
  who will do all the things one has done, cry the
same tears. No, Father. I try to forget I have a
daughter-if I do think of her, it is as one of my
sons. It's her sons a mother remembers."
  "Do you cry tears, Fee? I've only seen
them once."
  "You'll never see them again, for I've finished with
tears forever." Her whole body quivered. "Do you
know something, Father? Two days ago I discovered how
much I love Paddy, but it was like all of my life
comtoo late. Too late for him, too
late for me. If you knew how I wanted the chance
to.take him in my arms, tell him I loved him!
Oh, God, I hope no other human being ever
has to feel my pain!"
  He turned away from that suddenly ravaged face,
to give it time to don its calm, and himself time to cope
with understanding the enigma who was Fee. He said, "No
one else can ever feel your pain."
  One corner of her mouth lifted in a stern
smile. "Yes. That's a comfort, isn't it? It
may not be enviable, but my pain is mine."
  "Will you promise me something, Fee?"
  "If you like."
  "Look after Meggie, don't forget her. Make
her go to the local dances, let her meet a few young
men, encourage her to think of marriage and a home of
her own. I saw all the young men eyeing her today.
Give her the opportunity to meet them again under
happier circumstances than these."
  "Whatever you say, Father."
  Sighing, he left her to the contemplation of her thin
white hands. Meggie walked with him to the stables, where
the Imperial publican's bay gelding had been
stuffing itself on hay and bran and dwelling in some sort
of equine heaven for two days. He flung
the publican's battered saddle on its back and
bent to strap the surcingle and girth while Meggie
leaned against a bale of straw and watched him.
  "Father, look what I found," she said as he
finished and straightened. She held out her hand, in it
one pale, pinkish-gray rose. "It's the only
one. I found it on a bush under the tank stands, at
the back. I suppose it didn't get the same
heat in the fire, and it was sheltered from the rain. So
I picked it for you. It's something to remember me
by."
  He took the half-open bloom from her, his hand not
quite steady, and stood looking down at it. "Meggie,
I need no reminder of you, not now, not ever. I
carry you within me, you know that. There's no way I could
hide it from you, is there?"
  "But sometimes there's a reality about a keepsake,"
she insisted. "You can take it out and look at it, and
remember when you see it all the things you might forget
otherwise. Please take it, Father."
  "My name is Ralph," he said. He opened his
little sacrament case and took out the big missal which
was his own property, bound in costly mother-of-pearl.
His dead father had given it to him at his ordination,
thir- teen long years ago. The pages
fell open at a great
  thick white ribbon; he turned over several more,
laid the rose down, and shut the book upon it. "Do
you want a keepsake from me, Meggie, is that it?"
"Yes."
  "I won't give you one. I want you to forget
me, I want you to look around your world and find some
good kind man, marry him, have the babies you want so
much. You're a born mother. You mustn't cling to me, it
isn't right. I can never leave the Church, and I'm
going to be completely honest with you, for your own sake.
I don't want to leave the Church, because I don't
love you the way a husband will, do you understand? Forget
me, Meggie!" "Won't you kiss me goodbye?"
  For answer he pulled himself up on the
publican's bay and walked it to the door before
putting on the publican's old felt hat. His
blue eyes flashed a moment,
  then the horse moved out into the rain and slithered
reluctantly up the track toward Gilly. She
did not attempt to follow him, but stayed in the
gloom of the damp stable, breathing in the smells of
horse dung and hay; it reminded her of the barn in
New Zealand, and of Frank.
  Thirty hours later Father Ralph
walked into the Archbishop Papal Legate's
chamber, crossed the room to kiss his master's ring,
and flung himself wearily into a chair. It was only as
he felt those lovely, omniscient eyes on him
that he realized how peculiar he must look, why so
many people had stared at him since he got off the train
at Central. Without remembering the suit- case
Father Watty Thomas was keeping for him at the
presbytery, he had boarded the night mail with two
minutes to spare and come six hundred miles in a
cold train clad in shirt, breeches and boots,
soaking wet, never noticing the chill. So he
looked down at himself with a rueful smile, then across
at the Archbishop.
  "I'm sorry, Your Grace. So much has
happened I didn't think how odd I must look."
  "Don't apologize, Ralph." Unlike his
predecessor, he preferred to call his secretary
by his Christian name. "I think you look very
romantic and dashing. Only a trifle too
secular, don't you agree?"
  "Very definitely on the secular bit, anyway.
As to the romantic and dashing, Your Grace, it's just
that you're not used to seeing what is customary garb in
Gillanbone."
  "My dear Ralph, if you took it into your head
to don sackcloth and ashes, you'd manage to make
yourself seem romantic and dashing! The riding habit
suits you, though, it really does. Almost as well as
a soutane, and don't waste your breath telling me
you aren't very well aware it becomes you more than a
priest's black suit. You have a peculiar and a
most attractive way of moving, and you have kept your
fine, figure; I think 277
  perhaps you always will. I also think that when I am
recalled to Rome I shall take you with me. It will
afford me great amusement to watch your effect on our
short, fat Italian prelates. The beautiful
sleek cat among the plump startled pigeons."
  Rome! Father Ralph sat up in his chair.
  "Was it very bad, my Ralph?" the Archbishop
went on, smoothing his beringed milky hand rhythmically
across the silky back of his purring Abyssinian
cat. "Terrible, Your Grace."
  "These people, you have a great fondness for them."
  "Yes."
  "And do you love all of them equally, or do you
love some of them more than others?"
  But Father Ralph was at least as wily as his
master, and he had been with him now long enough
to know how his mind worked. So he parried the smooth question
with deceptive honesty, a trick he had discovered
lulled His Grace's suspicions at once. It
never occurred to that subtle, devious mind that an
outward display of frankness might be more mendacious
than any evasion. "I do love all of them, but as
you say, some more than others. It's the girl Meggie
I love the most. I've always felt her my
special responsibility, because the family is so
son-oriented they forget she exists." "How old
is this Meggie?"
  "I'm not sure exactly. Oh, somewhere around
twenty, I imagine. But I made her mother
promise to lift her head out of her ledgers long enough
to make sure the girl got to a few dances, met a
few young men. She's going to waste her life away
stuck on Drogheda, which is a shame."
  He spoke nothing but the truth; the Archbishop's
ineffably sensitive nose sniffed it out at once.
Though he was only three years his secretary's
senior, his career within the Church hadn't suffered the
checks Ralph's had, and in many ways he felt
immeasurably older than
  Ralph would ever be; the Vatican sapped one of
some vital essence if one was exposed to it
very early, and Ralph possessed that vital essence
in abundance.
  Relaxing his vigilance somewhat, he continued
to watch his secretary and resumed his interesting game
of working out precisely what made Father Ralph de
Bricassart tick. At first he had been sure
there would be a fleshly weakness, if not in one
direction, in another. Those stunning good looks and the
accompanying body must have made him the target of many
desires, too much so to preserve innocence or
unawareness. And as time went on he had found himself
half right; the awareness was undoubtedly there, but with it
he began to be convinced was a genuine innocence. So
whatever Father Ralph burned for, it was not the flesh.
He had thrown the priest together with skilled and quite
irresistible homosexuals if one was a
homosexual; no result. He had watched him
with the most beautiful women in the land; no result.
Not a flicker of interest or desire, even when he
was not in the slightest aware he was under observation.
For the Archbishop did not always do his own watching, and
when he employed minions it was not through secretarial
channels. He had begun to think Father Ralph's
weaknesses were pride in being a priest, and ambition;
both were facets of personality he
understood, for he possessed them himself. The Church
had places for ambitious men, as did all great and
self-perpetuating institutions. Rumor had it that
Father Ralph had cheated these Clearys he
purported to love so much out of their rightful inheritance.
If indeed he had, he was well worth hanging on
to. And how those wonderful blue eyes had blazed
when he mentioned Rome! Perhaps it was time he tried
another gambit. He poked forward a conversational
pawn lazily, but his eyes under hooded lids were very
keen.
  "I had news from the Vatican while you were
away,
  Ralph," he said, shifting the cat slightly.
"My Sheba, you are selfish; you make my legs
numb."
  "Oh?" Father Ralph was sinking down in his chair,
and his eyes were having a hard time staying open.
  "Yes, you may go to bed, but not before you have heard my
news. A little while ago I sent a personal and
private communication to the Holy Father, and an
answer came back today from my friend Cardinal
Monteverdi-I wonder if he is a descendant
of the Renaissance musician? Why do I never
remember to ask him when I see him?
Oh, Sheba, must you insist upon digging in your claws
when you are happy?"
  "I'm listening, Your Grace, I haven't
fallen asleep yet," said Father Ralph, smiling.
"No wonder you like cats so much. You're one yourself,
playing with your prey for your own amusement." He
snapped his fingers. "Here, Sheba, leave him and come
to me! He is unkind."
  The cat jumped down off the purple lap
immediately, crossed the carpet and leaped delicately
onto the priest's knees, stood waving its tail
and sniffing the strange smells of horses and mud,
entranced. Father Ralph's blue eyes smiled into the
Archbishop's brown ones, both half closed, both
absolutely alert.
  "How do you do that?" demanded the Archbishop. "A
cat will never go to anyone, but Sheba goes to you as if
you gave her caviar and valerian. Ingrate
animal."
  "I'm waiting, Your Grace."
  "And you punish me for it, taking my cat from me.
All right, you have won, I yield. Do you ever
lose? An interesting question. You are to be
congratulated, my dear Ralph. In future you will
wear the miter and the cope, and be addressed as
My Lord, Bishop de Bricassart."
  That brought the eyes wide open! he noted with
glee. For once Father Ralph didn't attempt
to dissimulate, or conceal his true feelings. He just
beamed.
  FOUR
  1933-1938 LUKE
  It was amazing how quickly the land mended; within a
week little green shoots of grass were poking out of the
gluey morass, and within two months the roasted
trees were coming into leaf. If the people were tough and
resilient, it was because the land gave them no
opportunity to be otherwise; those who were faint in
heart or lacking a fanatical streak of endurance
did not stay long in the Great Northwest. But it would
be years before the scars faded. Many coats of bark
would have to grow and fall to eucalyptoid tatters before
the tree trunks became white or red or grey
again, and a certain percentage of the timber would not
regenerate at all, but remain dead and dark. And for
years disintegrating skeletons would dew the plains,
subsiding into the matting of time, gradually covered
by dust and marching little hoofs. And straggling out across
Drogheda to the west the sharp deep channels cut by the
corners of a makeshift bier in the mud
remained, were pointed out by wanderers who knew the story
to more wanderers who did not, until the tale became a
part of black-soil plains lore.
  Drogheda lost perhaps a fifth of its acreage in
the fire, and 25,000 sheep, a mere bagatelle
to a station whose sheep tally in the recent good years lay
in the neighborhood of 125,000. There was
absolutely no point in railing at the malignity
of fate, or the wrath of
  God, however those concerned might choose to regard
a natural disaster. The only thing to do was cut the
losses and begin again. In no case was it the first time,
and in no case did anyone assume it would be the
last. But to see Drogheda's homestead gardens bare
and brown in spring hurt badly. Against drought they
could survive thanks to Michael Carson's water
tanks, but in a fire nothing survived. Even the
wistaria failed to bloom; when the flames came its
tender clusters of buds were just forming, and shriveled.
Roses were crisped, pansies were dead, stocks
turned to sepia straw, fuchsias in shady spots
withered past rejuvenation, babies'breath smothered,
sweet pea vines were sere and scentless. What had
been bled from the water tanks during the fire was
replaced by the heavy rain that followed hard
on it, so everyone on Drogheda sacrificed a
nebulous spare time to helping old Tom bring the
gardens back.
  Bob decided to keep on with Paddy's policy
of more hands to run Drogheda, and put on three more
stockmen; Mary Carson's policy had been
to keep no per- manent non-Cleary men on her
books, preferring to hire extra hands at mustering,
lambing and shearing time, but Paddy felt the men worked
better knowing they had permanent jobs, and it didn't
make much difference in the long run. Most stockmen
were chronically afflicted with itchy feet, and never
stayed very long anywhere.
  The new houses sitting farther back from the creek
were inhabited by married men; old Tom had a neat
new three-room cottage under a pepper tree behind
the horse yards, and cackled with proprietary glee
every time he entered it. Meggie continued to look after some
of the inner paddocks, and her mother the books.
  Fee had taken over Paddy's task of
communicating with Bishop Ralph, and being Fee
failed to pass on any information save those items
concerned with the running of the station. Meggie longed
to snatch his letters,
  read them greedily, but Fee gave her
no chance to do so, locking them in a steel box the
moment she had digested their contents. With Paddy and
Stu gone there was just no reaching Fee. As for
Meggie, the minute Bishop Ralph had gone
Fee forgot all about her promise. Meggie
answered dance and party invitations with polite
negatives; aware of it, Fee never remonstrated
with her or told her she ought to go. Liam
O'Rourke seized any opportunity to drive
over; Enoch Davies phoned constantly, so did
Connor Carmichael and Alastair MacQueen. But
with each of them Meggie was prooccupied, curt, to the
point where they despaired of interesting her.
  The summer was very wet, but not in spates
protracted enough to cause flooding, only keeping the
ground perpetually muddy and the thousand-mile
Barwon-Darling flowing deep, wide and strong. When
winter came sporadic rain continued; the flying
brown sheets were made up of water, not dust. Thus
the Depression march of foot-loose men along the
track tapered off, for it was hell tramping through the
blacksoil plains in a wet season, and with cold
added to damp, pneumonia raged among those not able
to sleep under warm shelter.
  Bob was worried, and began to talk of
foot rot among the sheep if. it kept up;
merinos couldn't take much moisture in the ground without
developing diseased hoofs. The shearing had been almost
impossible, for shearers would not touch soaked wool, and
unless the mud dried before lambing many offspring would
die in the sodden earth and the cold.
  The phone jangled its two longs, one short for
Drogheda; Fee answered and turned.
  "Bob, the AMLANDF for you."
  "Hullo, Jimmy, Bob here . . . . Yeah,
righto. . . . Oh, good! References all in order?
. . . Righto, send him out to see me .... Righto,
if he's that good you can tell
  him he's probably got the job, but I still
want to see him for myself; don't like pigs in pokes
and don't trust references . . . . Righto,
thanks. Hooroo."
  Bob sat down again. "New stockman coming, a
good bloke according to Jimmy. Been working out on the
West Queensland plains around Longreach and Charle-
ville. Was a drover, too. Good references and
all aboveboard. Can sit anything with four legs and a
tail, used to break horses. Was a shearer before that,
gun shearer too, Jimmy says, over two fifty
a day. That's what makes me a bit
suspicious. Why would a gun shearer want to work for
stockman's wages? Not too often a gun shearer will
give up the bo)i for a saddle. Be handy
paddock-crutching, though, eh?" With the passing of the
years Bob's accent grew more drawling and
Australian but his sentences shorter in compensation.
He was creeping up toward thirty, and much
to Meggie's disappointment showed no sign of being
smitten with any of the eligible girls he met at the
few festivities decency forced them to attend. For
one thing he was painfully shy, and for another he seemed
utterly wrapped in the land, apparently preferring
to love it without distraction. Jack and Hughie grew
more and more like him; indeed, they could have passed for
triplets as they sat together on one of the hard marble
benches, the closest to comfortable housebound relaxa
tion they could get. They seemed actually to prefer
  camping out in the paddocks, and when sleeping at
home stretched out on the floors of their bedrooms,
frightened that beds might soften them. The sun, the wind
and the dryness had weathered their fair, freckled skins
to a sort of mottled mahogany, in which their blue
eyes shone pale and tranquil, with the deep creases
beside them speaking of gazing into far distances and
silver-beige grass. It was almost
impossible to tell what age they were, or which was the
oldest and which the youngest. Each had Paddy's Roman
nose and kind homely face, but better bodies
than Paddy's, which had 286
  been stooped and arm-elongated from so many years
shearing. They had developed the spare, easy beauty
of horsemen instead. Yet for women and comfort and
pleasure they did not pine.
  "Is the new man married?" asked Fee,
drawing neat lines with a ruler and a
  red-inked pen.
  "Dunno, didn't ask. Know tomorrow when he
comes."
  "How is he getting here?"
  "Jimmy's driving him out; got to see about those
old wethers in Tankstand." "Well, let's hope
he stays awhile. If he's not married he'll be
off again in a few weeks, I suppose. Wretched
people, stockmen," said Fee. Jims and Patsy were
boarding at Riverview, vowing they wouldn't stay at
school a minute longer than the fourteen years of
age which was legal. They burned for the day when they would
be out in the paddocks with Bob, Jack and Hughie,
when Drogheda could run on family again and the
outsiders would be welcome to come and go as
frequently as they pleased. Sharing the family
passion for reading didn't endear Riverview to them
at all; a book could be carried in a saddlebag
or a jacket pocket and read with far more pleasure
in the noonday shade of a wilga than in a Jesuit
classroom. It had been a hard transition for
them, boarding school. The big-windowed
classrooms, the spacious green playing fields,
the wealth of gardens and facilities meant nothing
to them, nor did Sydney with its museums, concert
halls and art galleries. They chummed up with the
sons of other graziers and spent their leisure
hours longing for home, or boasting about the size and
splendor of Drogheda to awed but believing ears;
anyone west of Burren Junction had heard of
mighty Drogheda.
  Several weeks passed before Meggie saw the new
stockman. His name had been duly entered in the
books, Luke O'neill, and he was already talked
about in the big house far more than stockmen usually
were. For one thing, he had refused to bunk in the
jackaroos"
  barracks but had taken up residence in the last
empty house upon the creek. For another, he had
introduced himself to Mrs. Smith, and was in
that lady's good books, though she didn't usually
care for stockmen. Meggie was quite curious about him
long before she met him.
  Since she kept the chestnut mare and the black
gelding in the stables rather than the stockyards and was
mostly obliged to start out later of a morning than the
men, she would often go long periods of time without
running into any of the hired people. But she finally met
Luke O'neill late one afternoon as the summer
sun was flaring redly over the trees and the long shadows
crept toward the gentle oblivion of night. She
was coming back from Borehead to the ford across the creek,
he was coming in from southeast and farther out, also on a
course for the ford.
  The sun was in his eyes, so she saw him before he
saw her, and he was riding a big mean bay with a
black mane and tail and black points; she knew
the animal well because it was her job to rotate the work
horses, and she had wondered why this particular beast
was not so much in evidence these days. None of the men cared
for it, never rode it if they could help. Apparently
the new stockman didn't mind it at all, which
certainly indicated he could ride, for it was a
notorious earlymorning bucker and had a habit of
snapping at its rider's head the moment he
dismounted.
  It was hard to tell a man's height when he was
on horseback, for Australian stockmen used
small English saddles minus the high cantle and
horn of the American saddle, and rode with their
knees bent, sitting very upright. The new man
seemed tall, but sometimes height was all in the
trunk, the legs disproportionately short, so
Meggiie reserved judgment. However, unlike most
stockmen he preferred a white shirt and white
moleskins to grey flannel and grey twill;
somewhat of a dandy, she decided, amused. Good luck
to him, if he
  didn't mind the bother of so much washing and ironing.

  "G'day, Missus!" he called as they converged,
doffing his battered old grey felt hat and
replacing it rakishly on the back of his head.
Laughing blue eyes looked at Meggie in
undisguised admiration as she drew alongside.
  "Well, you're certainly not the Missus, so
you've got to be the daughter," he said. "I'm
Luke O'neill."
  Meggie muttered something but wouldn't look at him
again, so confused and angry she couldn't think
of any appropriately light conversation. Oh, it
wasn't fair! How dare someone else have eyes and
face like Father Ralph! Not the way he looked at
her: the mirth was something of his own and he had no love
burning for her there; from the first moment of seeing Father
Ralph kneeling in the dust of the Gilly station yard
Meggie had seen love in his eyes. To look
into his eyes and not see him! It was a cruel
joke, a punishment.
  Unaware of the thoughts his companion harbored,
Luke O'neill kept his wicked bay beside
Meggie's demure mare as they splashed through the
creek, still running strong from so much rain. She was a
beauty, all right! That hair! What was simply
carrots on the male Clearys was something else again
on
  this little sprig. If only she would look up,
give him a better chance to see that face! Just then
she did, with such a look on it that his brows came
together, puzzled; not as if she hated him, exactly,
but as if she was trying to see something and couldn't, or
had seen something and wished she hadn't. Or whatever.
It seemed to upset her, anyway. Luke was not
used to being weighed in a feminine balance and found
wanting. Caught naturally in a deli-
cious trap of sunset-gold hair and soft eyes,
his interest only fed on her displeasure and
disappointment. Still she was watching him, pink mouth
fallen slightly open, a silky dew of sweat on
her upper lip and forehead because it was so hot, her
reddish-gold brows arched in seeking wonderment. He
grinned to reveal Father Ralph's big white teeth;
  yet it was not Father Ralph's smile. "Do you know
you look exactly like a baby, all oh! and ah!?"
  She looked away. "I'm sorry, I didn't
mean to stare. You reminded me of someone, that's all."
  "Stare all you like. It's better than looking at
the top of your head, pretty though that might be.
Who do I remind you of?" "No one important.
It's just strange, seeing someone familiar and yet
terribly unfamiliar."
  "What's your name, little Miss Cleary?"
  "Meggie."
  "Meggie . . . It hasn't got enough dignity,
it doesn't suit you a bit. I'd rather you were called
something like Belinda or Madeline, but if Meggie's
the best you've got to offer, I'll go for it. What's
the Meggie stand for -Margaret?"
  "No, Meghann."
  "Ah, now that's more like! I'll call you
Meghann."
  "No, you won't!" she snapped. "I detest
it!"
  But he only laughed. "You've had too much of
your own way, little Miss Meghann. If I want
to call you Eustacia Sophronia Augusta, I
will, you know." They had reached the stockyards; he
slipped off his bay, aiming a punch at its
snapping head which rocked it into submission, and stood,
obviously waiting for her to offer him her hands so he
could help her down. But she touched the chestnut mare
with her heels and walked on up the track.
"Don't you put the dainty lady with the common old
stockmen?" he called after her.
  "Certainly not!" she answered without turning.
Oh, it wasn't fair! Even on his own two
feet he was like Father Ralph; as tall, as broad
in the shoulders and narrow in the hips, and with something of
  the same grace, though differently employed.
Father Ralph moved like a dancer, Luke
O'neill like an athlete. His hair was as thick
and black and curling, his eyes as blue, his nose as
fine and straight, his mouth as well cut.
  And yet he was no more like Father Ralph than-than
comthan a ghost gum, so tall and pale and
splendid, was like a blue gum, also tall and pale
and splendid.
  After that chance meeting Meggie kept her ears open
for opinions and gossip about Luke O'neill.
Bob and the boys were pleased with his work and seemed to
  get along well with him; apparently he hadn't
a lazy bone in his body, according to Bob. Even Fee
brought his name up in conversation one evening by
  remarking that he was a very handsome man.
  "Does he remind you of anyone?" Meggie
asked idly, flat on her stomach on the carpet
reading a book.
  Fee considered the question for a moment. "Well, I
suppose he's a bit like Father de Bricassart.
The same build, the same coloring. But it isn't
a striking likeness; they're too different as men.
"Meggie, I wish you'd sit in a chair like a
lady to read! Just because you're in jodhpurs you don't
have to forget modesty entirely." "Pooh!" said
Meggie. "As if anyone notices!"
  And so it went. There was a likeness, but the men behind
the faces were so unalike only Meggie was plagued
by it, for she was in love with one of them and resented
finding the other attractive. In the kitchen she found
he was a
  prime favorite, and also discovered how he could
afford the luxury of wearing white shirts and white
breeches into the paddocks; Mrs. Smith washed and
ironed them for him, succumbing to his ready, beguiling
charm. "Och, what a fine Irishman he is and
all!" Minnie sighed ecstatically. "He's an
Australian," said Meggie provocatively.
"Born here, maybe, Miss Meggie darlin', but
wit' a name like O'neill now, he's as Irish as
Paddy's pigs, not meanin' any disrespect to yer
sainted father, Miss Meggie, may he rest in
peace and sing wit' the angels. Mr. Luke not
Irish, and him wit' that black hair, thim blue
  eyes? In the old days the O'neills was the
kings of Ireland." "I thought the O'Connors were,"
said Meggie slyly. Minnie's round little eyes
twinkled. "Ah, well now, Miss Meggie,
'twas a big country and all."
  "Go on! It's about the size of Drogheda! And
anyway, O'neill is an Orange name; you
can't fool me."
  "It is that. But it's a great Irish name and it
existed before there were Orangemen ever thought of. It is
a name from Ulster parts, so it's logical there'd have
to be a few of thim Orange, isn't it
now? But there was the O'neill of Clandeboy and the
O'neill Mor back when, Miss Meggie
darlin'." Meggie gave up the battle; Minnie
had long since lost any militant Fenian
tendencies she might once have possessed, and could
pronounce the word "Orange" without having a
stroke.
  About a week later she ran into Luke
O'neill again, down by the creek. She suspected
he had lain in wait for her, but she didn't know
what to do about it if he had.
  "Good afternoon, Meghann."
  "Good afternoon," said she, looking straight between the
chestnut mare's ears.
  "There's a woolshed ball at Braich y
Pwll next Saturday night. Will you come with me?"
  "Thank you for asking me, but I can't dance. There
wouldn't be any point." "I'll teach you how to dance
in two flicks of a dead lamb's tail, so that's
no obstacle. Since I'll be taking the
squatter's sister, do you think Bob might let me
borrow the old Rolls, if not the new one?" "I
said I wouldn't go!" she said, teeth clenched. "You
said you couldn't dance, I said I'd teach you. You never
said you wouldn't go with me if you could dance, so
I assumed it was the dancing you objected to, not
me. Are you going to bark out?" Exasperated, she
glared at him fiercely, but he only laughed at
her.
  "You're spoiled rotten, young Meghann; it's
time you didn't get all your own way."
  "I'm not spoiled!"
  "Go on, tell me another! The only girl,
all those brothers to run round after you, all this land and
money, a posh house, servants? I know the
Catholic Church owns it, but the Clearys aren't
short of a penny either." That was the big difference between
them! she thought triumphantly; it had been eluding
her since she met him. Father Ralph would never have
fallen for outward trappings, but this man lacked his
sensitivity; he had no inbuilt antennae to tell
him what lay beneath the surface. He rode through
life without an idea in his head about its complexity
or its pain.
  Flabbergasted, Bob handed over the keys to the new
Rolls without a murmur; he had stared at Luke
for a moment without speaking, then grinned. "I never thought
of Meggie going to a dance, but take her, Luke, and
welcome! I daresay she'd like it, the poor little
beggar. She never gets out much. We ought
to think of taking her, but somehow we never do." "Why
don't you and Jack and Hughie come, too?" Luke
asked, apparently not averse to company.
  Bob shook his head, horrified. "No,
thanks. We're not too keen on dances." Meggie
wore her ashes-of-roses dress, not having anything
else to wear; it hadn't occurred to her to use some of the
stockpiling pounds Father Ralph put in the bank in
her name to have dresses made for parties and balls.
Until now she had managed to refuse invitations,
for men like Enoch Davies and Alastair MacQueen
were easy to discourage with a firm no. They didn't have
Luke O'neill's gall.
  But as she stared at herself in the mirror she thought
she just might go into Gilly next week when Mum
made her usual trip, visit old Gert and have
her make up a few new frocks.
  For she hated wearing this dress; if she had owned
one other even remotely suitable, it would have been
off in a second. Other times, a different
black-haired man; it was so tied up with love and
dreams, tears and loneli- ness, that to wear it for such
a one as Luke O'neill seemed a desecration.
She had grown used to hiding what she felt,
to appearing always calm and outwardly happy.
Self-control was growing around her thicker than bark
on a tree, and sometimes in the night she would think of
her mother, and shiver. Would she end up like Mum, cut
off from all feeling? Was this how it began for Mum
back in the days when there was Frank's father? And what
on earth would Mum do, what would she say if she
knew Meggie had learned the truth about Frank?
Oh, that scene in the presbytery! It seemed like
yesterday, Daddy and Frank facing each other, and
Ralph holding her so hard he hurt. Shouting those
awful things. Everything had fallen into place.
Meggie thought she must always have known, once she did.
She had grown up enough to realize there was more to getting
babies than she used to think; some sort of
physical contact absolutely forbidden between any but
a married couple. What disgrace and humiliation
poor Mum must have gone through over Frank. No
wonder she was the way she was. If it happened
to her, Meggie thought, she would want to die. In
books only the lowest, cheapest girls had babies
outside of marriage; yet Mum wasn't cheap,
could never have been cheap. With all her heart Meggie
wished Mum could talk to her about it, or that she her-
self had the courage to bring up the subject. Perhaps
in some small way she might have been able
to help. But Mum wasn't the sort of person one
could approach, nor would Mum do the approaching.
Meggie sighed at herself in the mirror, and hoped
nothing like that ever happened to her. Yet she was young; at
times like this, staring at herself in the ashes-of-roses
dress, she wanted to feel,
  wanted emotion to blow over her like a strong hot
wind. She didn't want to plod like a little
automaton for the rest of her life, she wanted
change and vitality and love. Love, and a husband,
and babies. What was the use of hungering after a man
she could never have? He didn't want her, he never
would want her. He said he loved her, but not as a
husband would love her. Because he was married to the
Church. Did all men do that, love some inanimate
thing more than they could love a woman? No, surely
not all men. The difficult ones, perhaps, the complex
ones with their seas of doubts and objections,
rationalities. But there had to be simpler men, men
who could surely love a woman before all else.
Men like Luke O'neill, for instance. "I think
you're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen,"
said Luke as he started the Rolls.
  Compliments were quite out of Meggie's ken; she gave
him a startled sidelong glance and said
nothing.
  "Isn't this nice?" Luke asked, apparently
not upset at her lack of enthusiasm. "Just turn
a key and press a button on the dashboard and the
car starts. No cranking a handle, no hoping the
darned donk catches before a man's exhausted. This
is the life, Meghann, no doubt about it." "You
won't leave me alone, will you?" she asked. "Good
Lord, no! You've come with me, haven't you? That
means you're mine all night long, and I don't
intend giving anyone else a chance." "How old are
you, Luke?"
  "Thirty. How old are you?"
  "Almost twenty-three."
  "As much as that, eh? You look like a baby."
  "I'm not a baby."
  "Oho! Have you ever been in love, then?"
  "Once."
  "Is that all? At twenty-three? Good Lord!
I'd been in and out of love a dozen times by your
age."
  "I daresay I might have been, too, but I
meet very
  few people to fall in love with on Drogheda. You're
the first stockman I remember who said more
than a shy hello."
  "Well, if you won't go to dances because you can't
dance, you're on the outside looking in right there,
aren't you? Never mind, we'll fix that up in no
time. By the end of the evening you'll be dancing, and in a
few weeks we'll have you a champion." He
glanced at her quickly. "But you can't tell me
  some of the squatters off other stations haven't tried
to get you to come to the odd dance with them. Stockmen I can
understand, you're a cut above the usual stockman's
inclinations, but some of the sheep cockies must have given
you the glad eye."
  "If I'm a cut above stockmen, why did you
ask me?" she parried. "Oh, I've got all the
cheek in the world." He grinned. "Come on now,
don't change the subject. There must be a few
blokes around Gilly who've asked." "A few,"
she admitted. "But I've really never wanted to go.
You pushed me into it."
  "Then the rest of them are sillier than pet
snakes," he said. "I know a good thing when I see
it."
  She wasn't too sure that she cared for the way he
talked, but the trouble with Luke was that he was a hard
man to put down. Everyone came to a
woolshed dance, from squatters' sons and daughters
to stockmen and their wives if any, maidservants,
governesses, town dwellers of all ages and
sexes. For instance, these were occasions when female
schoolteachers got the opportunity to fraternize
with the stock-and-station-agent apprentices, the bank
johnnies and the real bushies off the stations.
  The grand manners reserved for more formal affairs were
not in evidence at all. Old Mickey O'Brien
came out from Gilly to play the fiddle, and there was
always someone on hand to man the piano accordion or
the button accordion, taking turns to spell each
other as
  Mickey's accompanists while the old
violinist sat on a barrel or a wool bale for
hours playing without a rest, his pendulous lower lip
drooling because he
  had no patience with swallowing; it interfered with his
tempo, But it was not the sort of dancing Meggie had
seen at Mary Carson's birthday party. This was
energetic round-dancing: barn dances, jigs,
polkas, quadrilles, reels, mazurkas,
Sir Roger de Coverleys, with no more than a
passing touching of the partner's hands, or a wild
swirling in rough arms. There was no sense of
intimacy, no dreaminess. Everyone seemed to view
the proceedings as a simple dissipation of frustrations;
romantic intrigues were furthered better outside,
well away from the noise and bustle. Meggie soon
discovered she was much envied her big handsome escort.
He was the target of almost as many seductive or
languishing looks as Father Ralph used to be, and more
blatantly so. As Father Ralph used to be. Used
to be. How terrible to have to think of him in the very
remotest of all past tenses. True to his word,
Luke left her alone only so long as it took
him to visit the Men's. Enoch Davies and Liam
O'Rourke were there, and eager to fill his place
alongside her. He gave them no opportunity
whatsoever, and Meggie herself seemed too dazed
to understand that she was quite within her rights to accept invitations
to dance from men other than her escort. Though she
didn't hear the comments, Luke did, secretly
laughing. What a damned cheek the fellow had, an
ordinary stockman, stealing her from under their noses!
Disapproval meant nothing to Luke. They had had
their chances; if they hadn't made the most of them,
hard luck.
  The last dance was a waltz. Luke took
Meggie's hand and put his arm about her
waist, drew her against him. He was an excellent
dancer. To her surprise she found she didn't need
to do anything more than follow where he propelled her.
And it was a most extraordinary sen-
  sation to be held so against a man, to feel the
muscles of his chest and thighs, to absorb his body
warmth. Her brief contacts with Father Ralph had
been so intense she had not had time to perceive discrete
things, and she had honestly thought that what she felt in
his arms she would never feel in anyone else's.
Yet though this was quite different, it was exciting; her
pulse rate had gone up, and she knew he sensed
it by the way he turned her suddenly, gripped her more
closely, put his cheek on her hair. As the
Rolls purred home, making light of the bumpy
track and sometimes no track at all, they didn't
speak very much. Braich y Pwll was seventy
miles from Drogheda, across paddocks with never a
house to be seen all the way, no lights of
someone's home, no intrusion of humanity. The
ridge which cut across Drogheda was not more than a
hundred feet higher than the rest of the land, but out on
the black-soil plains to reach the crest of it was like
being on top of an Alp to a Swiss. Luke
stopped the car, got out and came round to open
Meggie's door. She stepped down beside him,
trembling a little; was he going to spoil everything
by trying to kiss her? It was so quiet, so far from
anyone!
  There was a decaying dogleg wooden fence wandering
off to one side, and holding her elbow lightly
to make sure she didn't stumble in her frivolous
shoes, Luke helped Meggie across the uneven
ground, the rabbit holes. Gripping the fence
tightly and looking out over the plains, she was
speechless; first from terror, then, her panic dying as
he made no move to touch her, from wonder.
  Almost as clearly as the sun could, the moon's still
pale light picked out vast sweeping stretches of
distance, the grass shimmering and rippling like a restless
sigh, silver and white and grey. Leaves on
trees sparkled suddenly like points of fire when the
wind turned their glossy tops upward, and great
yawning gulfs of shadows spread under timber stands as
mysteriously as
  mouths of the underworld. Lifting her head, she tried
to count the stars and could not; as delicate as drops of
dew on a wheeling spider's web the pinpoints
flared, went out, flared, went out, in a rhythm as
timeless as God. They seemed to hang over
her like a net, so beautiful, so very silent, so
watchful and searching of the soul, like jewel eyes of
insects turned brilliant in a spotlight, blind
as to expression and infinite as to seeing power. The
only sounds were the wind hot in the grass, hissing
trees, an occasional clank from the cooling
Rolls, and a sleepy bird somewhere close complaining
because they had broken its rest; the sole smell the
fragrant, indefinable scent of the bush.
  Luke turned his back on the night, pulled out
his tobacco pouch and booklet of rice papers, and
began to roll himself a cigarette. "Were you born
out here, Meghann?" he asked, rubbing the strands of
leaf back and forth in his palm, lazily.
  "No, I was born in New Zealand. We came
to Drogheda thirteen years ago." He slipped the
shaped tendrils into their paper sheath, twiddled it
expertly between thumb and forefinger, then licked it shut,
poked a few wisps back inside the tube with a
match end, struck the match and lit up. "You
enjoyed yourself tonight, didn't you?"
  "Oh, yes!"
  "I'd like to take you to all the dances."
  "Thank you."
  He fell silent again, smoking
quietly and looking back across the roof of the Rolls
at the stand of timber where the irate bird still
twittered querulously. When only a small
remnant of the tube sputtered between his stained fingers
he dropped it on the ground and screwed his boot
heel viciously down upon it until he was sure it
was out. No one kills a cigarette as dead as an
Australian bushman.
  Sighing, Meggie turned from the moon vista, and
he helped her to the car. He was far too wise
to kiss her at this early stage, because he intended
to marry her if he could; let her want to be
kissed, first. But there were other dances, as the summer
wore on and wore itself down in bloody, dusty
spendor; gradually the homestead got used to the
fact that Meggie had found herself a very good-looking
boyfriend. Her brothers forbore to tease, for they loved
her and liked him well enough. Luke O'neill was
the hardest worker they had ever employed; no better
recommendation than that existed. At heart more working
class than squatter class, it never occurred to the
Cleary men to judge him by his lack of
possessions. Fee, who might have weighed him in a
more selective balance, didn't care sufficiently
to do so. Anyway, Luke's calm
assumption that he was different from your average
stockman bore fruit; because of it, he was treated more
like one of themselves.
  It became his custom to call up the track at the
big house when he was in at night and not out in the
paddocks; after a while Bob declared it was silly for
him to eat alone when there was plenty on the Cleary
table, so he ate with them. After that it seemed rather
senseless to send him a mile down the track to sleep
when he was nice enough to want to stay talking to Meggie
until late, so he was bidden to move into one of the
small guesthouses out behind the big house.
  By this time Meggie thought about him a great deal, and not
as disparagingly as she had at first, always comparing him
to Father Ralph. The old sore was healing. After a
while she forgot that Father Ralph had smiled so with the
same mouth, while Luke smiled thus, that Father
Ralph's vivid blue eyes had had a distant
stillness to them while Luke's glittered with restless
passion. She was young and she had never quite got to savor
love, if
  for a moment or two she had tasted it. She wanted
to roll it round on her tongue, get the bou-
  quet of it into her lungs, spin it dizzying to her
brain. Father Ralph was Bishop Ralph;
he would never, never come back to her. He had sold
her for thirteen million pieces of silver, and it
rankled. If he hadn't used the phrase that night
by the borehead she would not have wondered, but he had used
it, and countless were the nights since when she had lain
puzzling as to
  what he could possibly have meant.
  And her hands itched with the feel of Luke's back
when he held her close in
  a dance; she was stirred by him, his touch, his crisp
vitality. Oh, she never felt that dark liquid
fire in her bones for him, she never thought that if she
didn't see him again she would wither and dry up, she
never twitched and trembled because he looked at her.
But she had grown to know men like Enoch Davies,
Liam O'Rourke, Alastair MacQueen
better as Luke squired her to more and more of the district
affairs, and none of them moved her the way Luke
O'neill did. If they were tall enough to oblige
her to look up, they would turn out not to have Luke's
eyes, or if they had the same sort of eyes, they
wouldn't have his hair. Something was always lacking which
wasn't lacking in Luke, though just what it was
Luke possessed she didn't know. Aside from the
fact that he reminded her of Father Ralph,
that is, and she refused to admit her attraction had
no better basis than that.
  They talked a lot, but always about general things;
shearing, the land, the sheep, or what he wanted out of
life, or perhaps about the places he had seen, or
some political happening. He read an occasional
book but he wasn't an inveterate reader like
Meggie, and try as she would, she couldn't seem
to persuade him to read this or that book simply because
she had found it interesting. Nor did he lead the
conversation into intellectual depths; most interesting and
irritating of all, he never evinced any interest in
her life, or asked her what she wanted from it.
Sometimes she longed to talk about matters far closer
to her heart than sheep or rain, but
  if she made a leading statement he was expert at
deflecting her into more impersonal channels.
  Luke O'neill was clever, conceited,
extremely hardworking and hungry to enrich himself. He
had been born in a wattle-and-daub shanty
exactly on the Tropic of Capricorn,
outside the town of Longreach in Western
Queensland. His father was the black sheep of a
prosperous but unforgiving Irish family, his mother was
the daughter of the German butcher in
Winton; when she insisted on
  marrying Luke senior, she also was disowned. There were
ten children in that humpy, none of whom possessed a
pair of shoes-not that shoes mattered much in
  torrid Longreach. Luke senior, who shore
for a living when he felt like it (but mostly all he
felt like doing was drinking OP rum), died in a
fire at the Blackall pub when young Luke was
twelve years old. So as soon as he could Luke
took himself off on the shearing circuit as a tar
boy, slapping molten tar on jagged wounds if a
shearer slipped and cut flesh as well as wool.
One thing Luke was never afraid of, and that was hard
work; he thrived on it the way some men thrived on
its opposite, whether because his father had been a barfly
and a town joke or because he had inherited his German
mother's love of industry no one had ever bothered
to find out. As he grew older he graduated from tar
boy to shed hand, running down the board catching the great
heavy fleeces as they flew off the boggis in one
piece billowing up like kites, and carrying them to the
wool-rolling table to
  be skirted. From that he learned to skirt, picking
the dirt-encrusted edges off the fleeces and
transferring them to bins ready for the attention
of the classer, who was shed aristocrat: the man who like
a winetaster or a perfume-tester cannot be trained
unless he also has instinct for the job. And Luke
didn't have a classer's instinct; either he turned
to pressing or to 302
  shearing if he wanted to earn more money, which he
certainly did. He had the strength to man the
press, tamp down the graded fleeces
into massive bales, but a gun shearer could make more
money.
  By now he was well known in Western Queensland as
a good worker, so he had no trouble getting himself a
learner's pen. With grace, coordination, strength and
endurance, all necessary and luckily present in
Luke, a man could become a gun shearer. Soon
Luke was shearing his two hundred-plus a day six
days a week, a quid a hundred; and this with the narrow
handpiece resembling a bo)i lizard, hence its
name. The big New Zealand handpieces with their
wide, coarse combs and cutters were illegal in
Australia, though they doubled a shearer's tally.
  It was grueling work; bending from his height with a sheep
clamped between his knees, sweeping his bo)i in blows
the length of the sheep's body to free the wool in one
piece and leave as few second cuts as
possible, close enough to the loose kinky skin to please
the shed boss, who would be down in a second on any
shearer not conforming to his rigorous standards. He
didn't mind the heat and the sweat and the thirst which forced
him to drink upward of three gallons of water a
day, he didn't even mind the tormenting hordes of
  flies, for he was born in fly country. Nor
did he mind the sheep, which were mostly a shearer's
nightmare; cobblers, wets, overgrowns, snobs,
dags, fly-strikes, they came in all
varieties, and they were all merinos, which meant wool
all the way down to their hoofs and noses, and a cobbled
fragile skin which moved like slippery paper.
  No, it wasn't the work itself Luke minded, for the
harder he worked the better he felt; what irked him
were the noise, the being shut inside, the stench. No
place on earth was quite the hell a shearing shed was.
Se he decided he wanted to be the boss cocky,
the man who strolled up and down the lines of stooping
shearers
  to watch the fleeces he owned being stripped away
by that smooth, flawless motion.
  At the end of the floor in his cane-bottomed
chair Sits the boss of the board with his eyes every where.
  That was what the old shearing song said, and that
was who Luke O'neill decided to be. The boss
cocky, the head peanut, the grazier, the squatter.
Not for him the perpetual stoop, the elongated arms
of a lifelong shearer; he
  wanted the pleasure of working out in the open air
while he watched the money roll in. Only the
prospect of becoming a dreadnought shearer might have
kept Luke inside a shed, one of the rare handful of
men who managed to shear over three hundred merino
sheep a day, all to standard, and using narrow boggis.
They made fortunes on the side by betting. But
unfortunately he was just a little too tall, those
extra seconds bending and ducking mounted up to the
difference between gun and dreadnought.
  His mind turned within its limitations to another
method of acquiring what he hungered for; at about this
stage in his life he discovered how attractive he
was to women. His first try had been in the guise of a
stockman on Gnarlunga, as that station had an heir
who was female, fairly young and fairly pretty.
It had been sheer bad luck that in the end she
preferred the Pommy jackaroo whose more bizarre
exploits were becoming bush legend. From Gnarlunga
he went to Bingelly and got a job breaking
horses, his eye on the homestead where the
aging and unattractive heiress lived with her
widowed father. Poor Dot, he had so nearly won
her; but in the end she had fallen in with her father's
wishes and married the spry sexagenarian who owned the
neighboring property.
  These two essays cost him over three years of
his life, and he decided twenty months per
heiress was far too long and boring. It would suit
him better for a while to
  journey far and wide, continually on the move,
until within this much larger sweep he found another
likely prospect. Enjoying himself enormously,
he began to drove the Western Queensland stock
routes, down the Cooper and the Diamantina, the
Barcoo and the Bulloo Overflow dwindling through the
top corner of western New South Wales. He
was thirty, and it was more than time he found the goose
who would lay at least part of his golden egg.
Everyone had heard of Drogheda, but Luke's ears
pricked up when he discovered there was an only
daughter. No hope she'd inherit, but perhaps they'd
want to dower her with a modest 100,000 acres out
around Kynuna or Winton. This was nice country
around Gilly, but too cramped and forested for him.
Luke yearned for the enormity of far western
Queensland, where the grass stretched into infinity and
trees were mostly something a man remembered as being
vaguely eastward. Just the grass, on and on and on
with no beginning and no end, where a man was lucky
to graze one sheep for every ten acres he owned. Because
sometimes there was no grass, just a flat desert of
cracked, panting black soil. The grass, the
sun, the heat and the flies; to each man his own kind of
heaven, and this was Luke O'neill's. He had
prised the rest of the Drogheda story out of Jimmy
Strong, the AMLANDF stock-and-station agent who
drove him out that first day, and it had been a bitter
blow to discover the Catholic Church owned Drogheda.
However, he had learned how few and far between female
heirs to properties were; when Jimmy Strong
went on to say that the only daughter had a nice little
cash sum of her own and many doting brothers, he
decided to carry on as planned. But though Luke
had long decided his life's objective lay in
100,000 acres out around Kynuna or Winton,
and worked toward it with single-minded zeal, the truth was that
at heart he loved hard cash far more than what it
  might eventually buy him; not the possession of
land, nor its inherent power, but the prospect of
stockpiling rows of neat figures in his
bankbook, in his name. It hadn't been Gnarlunga
or Bingelly he had wanted so desperately, but
their value in hard cash. A man who genuinely
wanted to be the boss cocky would never have settled for
landless Meggie Cleary. Nor would he have loved the
physical act of working hard as did Luke
O'neill.
  The dance at the Holy Cross hall in Gilly
was the thirteenth dance Luke had taken Meggie to in
as many weeks. How he discovered where they were and how
he wangled some of the invitations Meggie was too
naive to guess, but regularly on a Saturday
he would ask Bob for the keys to the Rolls, and take
her somewhere within 150 miles.
  Tonight it was cold as she stood by a fence looking
across a moonless landscape, and under her feet she could
feel the crunch of frost. Winter was coming. Luke's
arm came around her and drew her in to his side.
"You're cold," he said. "I'd better get you
home."
  "No, it's all right now, I'm getting warm,"
she answered breathlessly. She felt a change in
him, a change in the arm held loosely and
impersonally across her back. But it was nice to lean
against him, to feel the warmth radiating from his
body, the different construction of his frame. Even
through her cardigan she was conscious of his hand, moving
now in small, caressing circles, a tentative and
questioning massage. If at this stage she announced she
was cold he would stop; if she said nothing, he would
take it as tacit permission to proceed. She was
young, she wanted so badly to savor love
properly. This was the only man outside of Ralph
who interested her, so why not see what his kisses were
like? Only let them be different! Let them not be like
Ralph's kisses!
  Taking her silence as acquiescence, Luke put
his other hand on her shoulder, turned her to face him,
and bent his head. Was that how a mouth really felt?
Why, it was no more than a sort of pressurel
What was she supposed to do to indicate liking? She
moved her lips under his and at once wished she had
not. The pushing down increased; he opened his mouth
wide, forced her lips apart with his teeth and tongue,
and ran the tongue around the inside of her mouth.
Revolting. Why had it seemed so different when
Ralph kissed her? She hadn't been aware then of
how wet and faintly nauseating it was; she hadn't
seemed to think at all, only open to him like a
casket when the well-known hand touches a
secret spring. What on earth was he doing? Why
did her body jump so, cling to him when her mind
wanted badly to pull away? Luke had found the
sensitive spot on her side, and kept his fingers
on it to make her writhe; so far she wasn't
exactly enthusiastic. Breaking the kiss, he put
his mouth hard against the side of her neck. She
seemed to like that better, her hands came up around him
and she gasped, but when he slid his lips down her
throat at the same time as his hand attempted to push
her dress off her shoulder, she gave him a sharp
shove and stepped quickly away. "That's enough,
Luke!"
  The episode had disappointed her,
half-repelled her. Luke was very aware of
  it as he helped her into the car and rolled a
much-needed cigarette. He rather fancied himself as a
lover, none of the girls so far had ever complained-but
then they hadn't been ladies like Meggie. Even
Dot MacPherson, the Bingelly heiress,
richer by far than Meggie, was as rough as bags, no
posh Sydney boarding school and all that crap. In
spite of his looks Luke was about on a par with the
average rural workingman when it came to sexual
experience; he knew little of the mechanics
beyond what he liked himself, and he knew nothing of the
theory. The numer-
  ous girls he had made love to were nothing
loath to assure him they liked it, but that meant he
had to rely on a certain amount of personal
information, not always honest, either. A girl went into any
affair hoping for marriage when the man was as
attractive and hardworking as Luke, so a girl was
as likely as not to lie her head off to please him.
And nothing pleased a man more than being told he was the
best ever. Luke never dreamed how many men aside from
himself had been fooled with that one. Still thinking about old
Dot, who had given in and done as her father wanted
after he locked her in the shearers' barracks for a
week with a fly-blown carcass, Luke mentally
shrugged his shoulders. Meggie was going to be a tough
nut to crack and he couldn't afford to frighten or disgust
her. Fun and games would have to wait, that was all.
He'd woo her the way she obviously wanted,
flowers and attention and not too much slapand-tickle.
For a while an uncomfortable silence reigned, then
Meggie sighed and slumped back in her seat.
  "I'm sorry, Luke."
  "I'm sorry, too. I didn't mean to offend
you."
  "Oh, no, you didn't offend me, truly! I
suppose I'm not very used to it .... I was frightened,
not offended."
  "Oh, Meghann!" He took one hand off the
wheel and put it over her clasped ones. "Look,
don't worry about it. You're a bit of a girl and
I went too fast. Let's forget it.
  "Yes, let's," she said.
  "Didn't he kiss you?" Luke asked
curiously.
  "Who?"'
  Was there fear in her voice? But why should there be
fear in her voice? "You said you'd been in love
once, so I thought you knew the ropes. I'm
sorry, Meghann. I should have realized that stuck
all the way out here in a family like yours, what you
meant was you had a schoolgirl crush on some bloke
who never noticed you."
  Yes, yes, yes! Let him think that! "You're
quite right, Luke; it was just a schoolgirl crush."
  Outside the house he drew her to him again and
gave her a gentle, lingering kiss without any
open-mouth ,tongue business. She didn't
respond exactly, but clearly she liked it; he
went off to his guesthouse more satisfied that
he hadn't ruined his chances.
  Meggie dragged herself to bed and lay looking up at
the soft round halo the lamp cast on the ceiling.
Well, one thing had been established: there was nothing
in Luke's kisses to remind her of Ralph's.
And once or twice toward the end she had felt a
flicker of dismayed excitement, when he had dug his
fingers into her side and, when he had kissed her
neck. No use equating Luke with Ralph, and
she wasn't sure anymore that she wanted to try.
Better forget Ralph; he couldn't be her husband.
Luke could.
  The second time Luke kissed her Meggie
behaved quite differently. They had been to a wonderful
party on Rudna Hunish, the limit of the
territorial boundary Bob had drawn around their
jaunts, and the evening had gone well from its beginning.
Luke was in his best form, joking so much on the way out
he kept her helpless with laughter, then warmly
loving and attentive toward her all through the party. And
Miss Carmichael had been so determined to take
him away from her! Stepping in where Alastair
MacQueen and Enoch Davies feared to go, she
attached herself to them and flirted with Luke
blatantly, forced him for the sake of good
manners to ask her to dance. It was a formal affair,
the dancing ballroom style, and the dance Luke gave
Miss Carmichael was a slow waltz. But he had
come back to Meggie immediately it was over and said nothing,
only cast his eyes toward the ceiling in a way which
left her in no doubt that to him Miss Carmichael
was a bore. And she loved him for it; ever since the
day the lady had interfered with her pleasure at the
Gilly Show, Meggie had disliked her. She had
never
  forgotten the way Father Ralph had ignored the
lady to lift a small girl over a puddle; now
tonight Luke showed himself in those same colors. Oh,
bravo! Luke, you're splendid!
  It was a very long way home, and very cold. Luke
had cajoled a packet of sandwiches and a bottle of
champagne out of old Angus MacQueen, and when
they were nearly two-thirds of the way home he
stopped the car. Heaters in cars were extremely rare
in Australia then as now, but the Rolls was
equipped with a heater; that night it was very welcome,
for the frost lay two inches thick on the ground.
  "Oh, isn't it nice to sit without a coat on
a night like this?" Meggie smiled, taking the little
silver collapsible cup of champagne
Luke gave her, and biting into a ham sandwich.
  "Yes, it is. You look so pretty tonight,
Meghann."
  What was it about the color of her eyes? Grey
wasn't normally a color he cared for, too
anemic, but looking at her grey eyes he could have
sworn they held every color in the blue end of the
spectrum, violet and indigo and the sky on a rich
clear day, deep mossy green, a hint of tawny
yellow. And they glowed like soft, halfopaque
jewels, framed by those long curling lashes which
glittered as if they had been dipped in gold. He
reached out and delicately brushed his finger along the
lashes of one eye, then solemnly looked down at
its tip.
  "Why, Luke! What's the matter?"
  "I couldn't resist seeing for myself that you don't have
a pot of gold powder on your dressing table. Do you
know you're the only girl I've ever met with real
gold on her eyelashes?"
  "Oh!" She touched them herself, looked at her
finger, laughed. "So I have! It doesn't come off
at all." The champagne was tickling her nose and
fizzing in her stomach; she felt wonderful.
  "And real gold eyebrows that have the same
shape as a church roof, and the most beautiful real
gold hair 310
  . . . I always expect it to be hard like metal,
yet it's soft and fine like a baby's . . . . And
skin you must use gold powder on, it shines so . .
. And the most beautiful mouth, just made for kissing .
. ."
  She sat staring at him with that tender pink mouth
slightly open, the way it had been on their first
meeting; he reached out and took the empty cup from
her.
  "I think you need a little more. champagne," he
said, filling it. "I must admit this is nice,
to stop and give ourselves a little break from the track. And
thank you for thinking of asking Mr. MacQueen for the
sandwiches and wine."
  The big. Rolls engine ticked gently in the
silence, warm air pouring almost soundlessly through the
vents; two separate kinds of lulling noise.
Luke unknotted his tie and pulled it off, opened
his shirt collar. Their jackets were on the back
seat, too warm for the car.
  "Oh, that feels good! I don't know who invented
ties and then insisted a man was only properly
dressed when he wore one, but if ever I
meet him, I'll strangle him with his own invention."
  He turned abruptly, lowered his face to hers,
and seemed to catch the rounded curve of her lips
exactly into his, like two pieces of a jigsaw
puzzle; though he didn't hold her or touch her
elsewhere she felt locked to him and let her head
follow as he leaned back, drawing her forward onto
his. chest. His hands came up to clasp her head,
the better to work at that dizzying, amazingly
responsive mouth, drain it. Sighing, he abandoned
himself to feeling nothing else, at home at last with
those silky baby's lips finally fitting his own.
Her arm slid around his neck, quivering fingers sank
into his hair, the palm of her other hand coming to rest
on the smooth brown skin at the base of his throat.
This time he didn't hurry, though he had risen and
hardened before giving her the second cup of
champagne, just from looking at her. Not releasing her
head, he kissed
  her cheeks, her closed eyes, the curving bones
of the orbits beneath her brows, came back to her
cheeks because they were so satiny, came back to her mouth
because its infantile shape drove him mad, had
driven him mad since the day he first saw her.
  And there was her throat, the little hollow at
its base, the skin of her shoulder so delicate and
cool and dry . . . . Powerless to call a halt,
almost beside himself with fear lest she should call a halt,
he removed one hand from her head and plucked at the
long row of buttons down the back of her dress,
slid it off her obedient arms, then the straps of her
loose satin slip. Face buried between her neck
and shoulder, he passed the tips of his fingers down her
bare back, feeling her startled little shivers, the
sudden hard points to her breasts. He pushed his
face lower in a blind, compulsive touch-search of one
cold, cushioned surface, lips parted, pressing
down, until they closed over taut ruched flesh.
His tongue lingered for a dazed minute, then his hands
clutched in agonized pleasure on her back and he
sucked, nipped, kissed, sucked .... The old
eternal impulse, his particular preference, and it
never failed. It was so good, good, good, goooooood!
He did not cry out, only shuddered for a wrenching,
drenching moment, and swallowed in the depths of his
throat.
  Like a satiated nursling, he let the nipple
pop out of his mouth, formed a
  kiss of boundless love and gratitude against the
side of her breast, and lay utterly still
except for the heaves of his breathing. He could feel
her mouth in his hair, her hand down inside his shirt,
and suddenly he seemed to recollect himself, opened his
eyes. Briskly he sat up, pulled her slip
straps up her arms, then her dress, and fastened
all the buttons deftly. "You'd better marry
me, Meghann," he said, eyes soft and laughing.
"I don't think your brothers would approve one little
bit of what we just did." "Yes, I think I'd
better too," she agreed, lids lowered, a
delicate flush in her cheeks.
  "Let's tell them tomorrow morning."
  "Why not? The sooner the better."
  "Next Saturday I'll drive you
into Gilly. We'll see Father Thomas-I
suppose you'd like a church wedding-arrange for the
banns, and buy an engagement ring."
  "Thank you, Luke."
  Well, that was that. She had committed herself, there could
be no turning back. In a few weeks or however
long it took to call banns, she would marry Luke
O'neill. She would be . . . Mrs. Luke
O'neill! How strange! Why did she say
yes? Because he told me I must, he said I was to do
it. But why? To remove him from danger?
To protect himself, or me? Ralph de
Bricassart, sometimes I think I hate you ....
  The incident in the car had been startling and
disturbing. Not a bit like that first time. So many
beautiful, terrifying sensations. Oh, the touch of his
hands! That electrifying tugging at her breast sending
vast widening rings clear through her! And he did it right
at the moment her conscience had reared its head, told
the mindless thing she seemed to have become that he was taking
off her clothes, that she must scream, slap him, run
away. No longer lulled and half senseless from
champagne, from warmth, from the discovery that it was
delicious to be kissed when it was done right, his first
great gulping taking-in of her breast had transfixed
her, stilled common sense, conscience and all thought of
flight. Her shoulders came up off his chest, her
hips seemed to subside against him, her thighs and that
un- named region at their top rammed by his
squeezing hands against a ridge of his body hard as a
rock, and she had just wanted to stay like that for the rest of
her days, shaken to her soul and yawning empty,
wanting . . . . Wanting what? She didn't know.
In the moment at which he had put her away from him she
hadn't wanted to go, could even have flown at him like a
savage. But it had set the seal on her
hardening resolve to marry
  Luke O'neill. Not to mention that she was convinced
he had done to her the thing which made babies start.
  No one was very surprised at the news, and no one
dreamed of objecting. The only thing which did startle
them was Meggie's adamant refusal to write and
tell Bishop Ralph, her almost hysterical
rejection of Bob's idea that they invite Bishop
Ralph to Drogheda and have a big house wedding.
No, no, no! She had screamed it at them;
Meggie who never raised her voice. Apparently
she was miffed that he had never come back to see them,
maintaining that her marriage was her own business, that
if he didn't have the common decency to come
to Drogheda for no reason, she was not going to furnish
him with an obligation he could not refuse.
  So Fee promised not to say a word in her letters;
she seemed not to care one way or the other, nor did
she seem interested in Meggie's choice of a
husband. Keeping the books of a station as large as
Drogheda was a full-time job. Fee's records
would have served a historian with a perfect description
of life on a sheep station, for they didn't simply
consist of figures and ledgers. Every movement of every
mob of sheep was rigidly described, the
changes of the seasons, the weather each day, even what
Mrs. Smith served for dinner. The entry in the log
book for Sunday, July 22, 1934, said:
Sky clear, no cloud, temperature at dawn
34 degrees. No Mass today. Bob in,
Jack out at Murrimbah with 2 stockmen,
Hughie out at West Dam with 1 stockman,
Beerbarrel droving 3-year wethers from Budgin
to Winnemurra. Temperature high at 3 o'clock,
85 degrees. Barometer steady, 30.6 inches.
Wind due west. Dinner menu corned beef,
boiled potatoes, carrots and cabbage, then plum
duff. Meghann Cleary is to marry Mr. Luke
O'neill, stockman, on Saturday August
25 at the Holy Cross Church, Gillanbone.
Entered 9 o'clock evening, temperature 45
degrees, moon last quarter.
  Luke bought Meggie a diamond engagement ring,
modest but quite pretty, its twin quarter-carat stones
set in a pair of platinum hearts. The banns were
called for noon on Saturday, August 25th, in
the Holy Cross Church. This would be followed by a
family dinner at the Hotel Imperial, to which
Mrs. Smith, Minnie and Cat were naturally
invited, though Jims and Patsy had been
left in Sydney after Meggie said firmly that she
couldn't see the point in bringing them six hundred
miles to witness a ceremony they didn't really
understand. She had received their letters of congratulations;
Jims's long, rambling and childlike, Patsy's
consisting of three words, "Lots of luck." They
knew Luke, of course, having ridden the Drogheda
paddocks with him during their vacations.
  Mrs. Smith was grieved at Meggie's
insistence on as small an affair as possible; she
had hoped to see the only girl married on
Drogheda with flags flying and cymbals clashing,
days of celebration. But Meggie was so against a fuss
she even refused to wear bridal regalia; she would
be married in a day dress and an ordinary hat, which
could double afterwards as her traveling outfit.
  "Darling, I've decided where to take you for our
honeymoon," Luke said, slipping into a chair
opposite hers the Sunday after they had made their
wedding plans.
  "Where?"
  "North Queensland. While you were at the
dressmaker I got talking to some chaps in the
Imperial bar, and they were telling me there's money
to be made up in cane country, if a
man's strong and not afraid of hard work." "But
Luke, you already have a good job here!" "A man
doesn't feel right, battening on his in-laws. I
want to get us the money to buy a place out in
Western Queensland, and I want it before I'm too
old to work it. A man with no education finds it hard
to get high-paying work in this Depression, but there's a
shortage of men in North Queensland, and the money's
at least ten times what I earn as a stockman on
Drogheda." "Doing what?"
  "Cutting sugar cane."
  "Cutting sugar cane? That's coolie labor"
  "No, you're wrong. Coolies aren't big enough
to do it as well as the white cutters, and besides, you know
as well as I do that Australian law forbids the
importation of black or yellow men to do slave
labor or work for wages lower than a white
man's, take the bread out of a white
Australian's mouth. There's a shortage of
cutters and the money's terrific. Not too many
blokes are big enough or strong enough to cut cane. But
1 am. It won't beat mel" "Does this mean
you're thinking of making our home in North
Queensland, Luke?"
  "Yes."
  She stared past his shoulder through the great bank of
windows at Drogheda: the ghost gums, the Home
Paddock, the stretch of trees beyond. Not to live on
  Drogheda! To be somewhere Bishop Ralph could
never find her, to live without ever seeing him again,
to cleave to this stranger sitting facing her so
irrevocably there could be no going back .... The
grey eyes rested on Luke's vivid,
impatient face and grew more beautiful,
  but unmistakably sadder. He sensed it only;
she had no tears there, her lids didn't droop,
or the corners of her mouth. But he wasn't concerned
with whatever sorrows Meggie owned, for he had no
intention of letting her become so important to him
she caused him worry on her behalf.
Admittedly she was something of a bonus to a man who
had tried to marry Dot MacPherson of
Bingelly, but her physical desirability and
tractable nature only increased Luke's guard
over his own heart. No woman, even one as sweet
and beautiful as
  Meggie Cleary, was ever going to gain sufficient
power over him to tell him what to do.
  So, remaining true to himself, he plunged straight
into the main thing on his mind. There were times when
guile was necessary, but in this matter it wouldn't serve him
as well as bluntness.
  "Meghann, I'm an old-fashioned man," he
said. She stared at him, puzzled. "Are you?" she
asked, her tone implying: Does it matter?
  "Yes," he said. "I believe that when a man and
woman marry, all the woman's property should
become the man's. The way a dowry did in the old
days. I know you've got a bit of money, and I'm
telling you now that when we marry you're to sign it over
to me. It's only fair you know what's in my mind
While you're still single, and able to decide whether you
want to do it."
  It had never occurred to Meggie that she would retain
her money; she had simply assumed when she married
it would become Luke's, not hers. All save the
most educated and sophisticated Australian women
were reared to think themselves more or less the chattels of
their men, and this was especially true of Meggie.
Daddy had always ruled Fee and his children, and since his
death Fee had deferred to Bob as his successor.
The man owned the money, the house, his wife and his
children. Meggie had never questioned his right to do
  so.
  "Oh!" she exclaimed. "I didn't
know signing any- 317
  thing was necessary, Luke. I thought that what was mine
automatically became yours when we married."
  "It used to be like that, but those stupid drongos in
Canberra stopped it when they gave women the vote.
I want everything to be fair and square between us,
Meghann, so I'm telling you now how things are going
to be." She laughed, "It's all right, Luke, I
don't mind."
  She took it like a good old-fashioned wife;
Dot wouldn't have given in so readily. "How much have
you got?" he asked.
  "At the moment, fourteen thousand pounds. Every year
I get two thousand more."
  He whistled. "Fourteen thousand pounds! Phew!
That's a lot of money, Meghann. Better to have me
look after it for you. We can see the bank manager
next week, and remind me to make sure everything
coming in in the future gets put in my name, too.
I'm not going to touch a penny of it, you know that. It's
to buy our station later on. For the next few years
we're both going to work hard, and save every penny we
earn. All right?" She nodded. "Yes, Luke."
  A simple oversight on Luke's part nearly
scotched the wedding in midplan. He was not
a Catholic. When Father Watty found out he threw
up his hands in horror.
  "Dear Lord, Luke, why didn't you tell me
earlier? Indeed and to goodness, it will take all of our
energies to have you converted and baptized before the wedding!"
  Luke stared at Father Watty, astonished. "Who
said anything about converting, Father? I'm quite happy as
I am being nothing, but if it worries you, write
me down as a Calathumpian or a Holy
Roller or whatever you like. But write me down a
Catholic you will not."
  In vain they pleaded; Luke refused to entertain

  idea of conversion for a moment. "I've got nothing
against Catholicism or Eire, and I think the
Catholics in Ulster are hard done by. But I'm
Orange, and I'm not a turncoat. If I was a
Catholic and you wanted me to convert to Methodism,
I'd react the same. It's being a turncoat I
object to, not being a Catholic. So you'll have to do
without me in the flock, Father, and that's that."
  "Then you can't get married!"
  "Why on earth not? If you don't want to marry
us, I can't see why the Reverend up at the Church
of England will object, or Harry Gough the
J.p." Fee smiled sourly, remembering her
contretemps with Paddy and a priest; she had won that
encounter.
  "But, Luke, I have to be married in church!"
Meggie protested fearfully. "If I'm not,
I'll be living in sin!"
  "Well, as far as I'm concerned, living in sin
is a lot better than turning my coat inside
out," said Luke, who was sometimes a curious
contradiction; much as he wanted Meggie's money,
a blind streak of stubbornness in him wouldn't let him
back down.
  "Oh, stop all this silliness!" said Fee, not
to Luke but to the priest. "Do what Paddy and I
did and have an end to argument! Father Thomas can marry
you in the presbytery if he doesn't want to soil
his church!" Everyone stared at her, amazed, but it
did the trick; Father Watkin gave in
  and agreed to marry them in the presbytery, though he
refused to bless the ring.
  Partial Church sanction left Meggie feeling
she was sinning, but not badly enough to go to Hell, and
ancient Annie the presbytery housekeeper did
her best to make Father Watty's study as
churchlike as possible, with great vases of
flowers and many brass candlesticks. But it was an
uncomfortable ceremony, the very displeased priest making
everyone feel he only went through with it to save himself
the embarrassment of a secular wedding elsewhere. No
Nuptial Mass, no blessings.
  However, it was done. Meggie was Mrs. Luke

  O'neill, on her way to North Queensland
and a honeymoon somewhat delayed by the time it would take
getting there. Luke refused to spend that Saturday
night at the Imperial, for the branch-line train
to Goondiwindi left only once a week, on
Saturday night, to connect with the
Goondiwindi-Brisbane mail train on
Sunday. This would bring them to Bris on Monday in
time to catch the Cairns express.
  The Goondiwindi train was crowded. They had no
privacy and sat up all night because it carried no
sleeping cars. Hour after hour it trundled its
erratic, grumpy way northeast, stopping
interminably every time the en- gine driver felt like
brewing a billy of tea for himself, or to let a mob
of
  sheep wander along the rails, or to have a yarn with a
drover. "I wonder why they pronounce
Goondiwindi Gundiwindi if they don't want
to spell it that way?" Meggie asked idly as they
waited in the only place open in Goondiwindi
on a Sunday, the awful institutional-green station
waiting room with its hard black wooden benches.
Poor Meggie, she was nervous and ill at ease.
  "How do I know?" sighed Luke, who didn't
feel like talking and was starving into the bargain. Since it
was Sunday they couldn't even get a cup of tea; not
until the Monday-morning breakfast stop on the
Brisbane
  mail did they get an opportunity to fill their
empty stomachs and slake their thirst. Then
Brisbane, into South Bris station, the trek across
the city to Roma Street Station and the Cairns
train. Here Meggie discovered Luke had booked
them two second-class upright seats. "Luke,
we're not short of money!" she said, tired and
exasperated. "If you forgot to go to the bank, I've
got a hundred pounds Bob gave me here in my
purse. Why didn't you get us a first-class
sleeping compartment?" He stared down at her, astounded.
"But it's only three nights and three days
to Dungloe! Why spend money on a sleeper when
we're both young, healthy
  and strong? Sitting up on a train for a while
won't kill you, Meghann! It's about time you
realized you've married a plain old workingman, not a
bloody squatter! his
  So Meggie slumped in the window seat Luke
seized for her and rested her trembling chin on her hand
to look out the window so Luke wouldn't notice her
tears. He had spoken to her as one speaks to an
irresponsible child, and she was beginning to wonder if
indeed this was how he regarded her. Rebellion
began to stir, but it was very small and her fierce
pride forbade the indig- nity of quarreling. Instead
she told herself she was this mart's wife, but it
  was such a new thing he wasn't used to it. Give
him time. They would live together, she would cook his
meals, mend his clothes, look after him, have his
babies, be a good wife to him. Look how much
Daddy had appreciated Mum, how much he had
adored her. Give Luke time.
  They were going to a town called Dungloe, only
fifty miles short of Cairns, which was the far
northern terminus of the line which ran all the way
along the Queensland coast. Over a thousand miles
of narrow three-foot-six-gauge rail, rocking and
pitching back and forth, every seat in the compartment
occupied, no chance to lie down or stretch disou.
Though it was far more densely settled countryside
than Gilly, and far more colorful, she couldn't
summon up interest in it.
  Her head ached, she could keep no food down and the
heat was much, much worse than anything Gilly had
ever cooked up. The lovely pink silk wedding
dress was filthy from soot blowing in the windows, her
skin was clammy with a sweat which wouldn't evaporate,
and what was more galling than any of her physical
discomforts, she was close to hating Luke.
Apparently not in the least tired or out of sorts because
of the journey, he sat at his ease yarning with two
men going to Cardwell. The only times he glanced in
her direction he also got up, leaned across her so
carelessly she shrank, and 321
  flung a rolled-up newspaper out the window to some
event-hungry gang of tattered men beside the line with
steel hammers in their hands, calling: "Paip!
Paip!"
  "Fettlers looking after the rails," he
explained as he sat down again the first time it
happened.
  And he seemed to assume she was quite as happy and
comfortable as he was, that the coastal plain
flying by was fascinating her. While she sat staring
at it and not seeing it, hating it before she had so much as
set foot on it. At Cardwell the two men got
off, and Luke went to the fish-and-chip shop across the
road from the station to bring back a newspaper-wrapped
bundle. "They say Cardwell fish has to be
tasted to be believed, Meghann love. The best
fish in the world. Here, try some. It's your first bit
of genuine Bananaland food. I tell you, there's
no place like Queensland." Meggie glanced at the
greasy pieces of batter-dipped fish, put her
handkerchief to her mouth and bolted for the toilet. He
was waiting in the corridor when she came out some time
later, white and shaking. "What's the matter?
Aren't you feeling well?" "I haven't felt
well since we left Goondiwindi."
  "Good Lord! Why didn't you tell me?"
  "Why didn't you notice?"
  "You looked all right to me."
  "How far is it now?" she asked, giving up.
  "Three to six hours, give or take a bit.
They don't run to timetable up here too much. There's
plenty of room now those blokes are gone; lie
down and put your tootsies in my lap."
  "Oh, don't baby-talk me!" she
snapped tartly. "It would have been a lot better
if they'd got off two days ago in Bundaberg!"
"Come on now, Meghann, be a good sport!
Nearly there. Only Tully and Innisfail, then
Dungloe."
  It was late afternoon when they stepped off the train,
  Meggie clinging desperately to Luke's arm,
too proud to admit she wasn't able to walk
properly. He asked the stationmaster for the name of a
workingmen's hotel, picked up their cases and walked
out onto the street, Meggie behind him weaving
drunkenly.
  "Only to the end of the block on the other side of the
street," he comforted. "The white two-storied
joint."
  Though their room was small and filled to overflowing
with great pieces of Victorian furniture, it
looked like heaven to Meggie, collapsing on the edge
of the double bed.
  "Lie down for a while before dinner, love. I'm
going out to find my landmarks," he said, sauntering from
the room looking as fresh and rested as he had on their
wedding morning. That had been Saturday, and this was
late Thursday afternoon; five days sitting up in
crowded trains, choked by cigarette smoke
and soot.
  The bed was rocking monotonously in time to the
clickety-click of steel wheels passing over
rail joins, but Meggie turned her head into the
pillow gratefully, and slept, and slept.
  Someone had taken off her shoes and stockings, and
covered her with a sheet; Meggie stirred, opened her
eyes and looked around. Luke was sitting on
  the window ledge with one knee drawn up, smoking.
Her movement made him turn to look at her, and
he smiled.
  "A nice bride you are! Here I am looking
forward to my honeymoon and my wife conks out for
nearly two days! I was a bit worried when I
couldn't wake you up, but the publican says it
hits women like that, the trip up in the train and the
humidity. He said just let you sleep it off. How
do you feel now?"
  She sat up stiffly, stretched her arms and
yawned, "I feel much better, thank you. Oh,
Luke! I know I'm young and strong, but I'm a
woman! I can't take the sort of physical
punishment you can."
  He came to sit on the edge of the bed, rubbing her
  arm in a rather charming gesture of contrition.
"I'm sorry, Meghann, I really am. I
didn't think of your being a woman. Not used to having
a wife with me, that's all. Are you hungry,
darling?"
  "Starved. Do you realize it's almost a week
since I've eaten?" "Then why don't you have a
bath, put on a clean dress and come outside
to look at Dungloe?"
  There was a Chinese cafe next door to the
hotel, where Luke led Meggie for her first-ever
taste of Oriental food. She was so hungry
anything would have tasted good, but this was superb. Nor
did she care if it was made of rats" tails and
sharks' fins and fowls' bowels, as rumor had it in
Gillanbone, which only possessed a cafe run
by Greeks who served steak and chips. Luke had
brown-bagged two quart bottles of beer from the
hotel and insisted she drink a glass in spite of
her dislike for beer. "Go easy on the water at
first," he advised. "Beer won't give you the
trots."
  Then he took her arm and walked her around
Dungloe proudly, as if he owned it. But then,
Luke was born a Queenslander. What a place
Dungloe was! It had a look and a character
far removed from western towns. In size it was
probably the same as Gilly, but instead of
rambling forever down one main street. Dungloe was
built in ordered square blocks, and all its
shops and houses were painted white, not brown.
Windows were vertical wooden transoms,
presumably to catch the breeze, and wherever possible
roofs had been dis- pensed with, like the movie theater,
which had a screen, transomed walls and rows of
ship's canvas desk chairs, but no roof at
all. All around the edge of the town encroached a gen
uine jungle. Vines and creepers sprawled
everywhere up posts, across roofs, along walls.
Trees sprouted
  casually in the middle of the road, or had houses
built around them, or perhaps had grown up through the

  1933-1938 LUKE
  houses. It was impossible to tell which had come first,
trees or human habitations, for the overwhelming
impression was one of uncontrolled, hectic growth
of vegetation. Coconut palms taller and
straighter than the Drogheda ghost gums waved
fronds against a deep, swimming blue sky;
everywhere Meggie looked was a blaze of
color. No brown-and-grey land, this. Every kind of
tree seemed to be in flower-purple, orange,
scarlet, pink, blue, white. There were many Chinese
in black silk trousers, tiny black-and-white
shoes with white socks, white Mandarin-collared
shirts, pigtails down their backs. Males and
females looked so alike Meggie found it
difficult to tell which were which. Almost the entire commerce
of the town seemed to be in the hands of Chinese; a
large department store, far more opulent than anything
Gilly possessed, bore a Chinese name: AH
worrc's, said the sign. All the houses were built
on top of very high piles, like the old head
stockman's residence on Drogheda. This was
to achieve maximum air circulation, Luke
explained, and keep the termites from causing them
to fall down a year after they were built. At the top
of each pile was a tin plate with turned-down
edges; termites couldn't bend their bodies in the
middle and thus couldn't crawl over the tin parapet
into the wood of the house itself. Of course they feasted on
the piles, but when a pile rotted it was removed and
replaced by a new one. Much easier and less
expensive than putting up a new house. Most
of the gardens seemed to be jungle, bamboo
and palms, as if the inhabitants had given up
trying to keep floral order. The men and women
shocked her. To go for dinner and a walk with Luke she
had dressed as custom demanded in heeled shoes,
silk stockings, satin slip, floating silk
frock with belt and elbow sleeves. On her head
was a big straw hat, on her hands were gloves. And
what irritated her the most was an uncomfortable
feeling 325
  from the way people stared that she was the one improperly
dressed! The men were bare-footed, bare-legged and
mostly bare-chested, wearing nothing but drab khaki
shorts; the few who covered their chests did so with
athletic singlets, not shirts. The women were
worse. A few wore skimpy cotton dresses
clearly minus anything in the way of underwear, no
stockings, sloppy sandals. But the majority wore
short shorts, went bare-footed and shielded their
breasts with indecent little sleeveless vests.
Dungloe was a civilized town, not a beach. But
here were its native white inhabitants strolling
around in brazen undress; the Chinese were better
clad. There were bicycles everywhere, hundreds of
them; a few cars, no horses at all. Yes, very
different from Gilly. And it was hot, hot,
hot. They passed a
  thermometer which incredibly said a mere ninety
degrees; in Gilly at 115 degrees it
seemed cooler than this. Meggie felt as if she
moved through solid air which her body had to cut like
wet, steamy butter, as if when she breathed her
lungs filled with water.
  "Luke, I can't bear it! Please, can we go
back?" she gasped after less than a mile.
  "If you want. You're feeling the humidity. It
rarely gets below ninety percent, winter or
summer, and the temperature rarely gets below
eighty-five or above ninety-five. There's not much
of a seasonal variation, but in summer the monsoons
send the humidity up to a hundred percent all the
flaming time." "Summer rain, not winter?"
  "All year round. The monsoons always come, and
when they're not blowing, the southeast trades are. They
carry a lot of rain, too. Dungloe has an
annual rainfall of between one and three hundred
inches."
  Three hundred inches of rain a year! Poor
Gilly ecstatic if it got a princely
fifteen, while here as much as three hundred fell,
two thousand miles from Gilly.
  "Doesn't it cool off at night?" Meggie
asked as they
  reached the hotel; hot nights in Gilly were
bearable compared to this steam bath.
  "Not very much. You'll get used to it." He opened
the door to their room and stood back for her to enter.
"I'm going down to the bar for a beer, but I'll be
back in half an hour. That ought to give you enough time."
Her eyes flew to his face, startled. "Yes,
Luke."
  Dungloe was seventeen degrees south of the
equator, so night fell like a thunderclap; one
minute it seemed the sun was scarcely setting, and the
next minute pitchblack darkness spread itself thick
and warm like treacle. When Luke came back
Meggie had switched off the light and was lying in the
bed with the sheet pulled up to her chin. Laughing, he
reached out and tugged it off her, threw it on the
floor.
  "It's hot enough, love! We won't need a
sheet."
  She could hear him walking about, see his faint
shadow shedding its clothes. "I put your pajamas
on the dressing table," she whispered. "Pajamas?
In weather like this? I know in Gilly they'd
have a stroke at the thought of a man not wearing
pajamas, but this is Dungloe! Are you really
wearing a nightie?"
  "Yes."
  "Then take it off. The bloody thing will only be
a nuisance anyway." Fumbling, Meggie managed
to wriggle out of the lawn nightgown Mrs. Smith had
embroidered so lovingly for her wedding night,
thankful that it was too dark for him to see her. He was
right; it was much cooler lying bare and letting the
breeze from the wideopen transoms play over her
thinly. But the thought of another hot body in the bed with
her was depressing. The springs creaked; Meggie
felt damp skin touch her arm and jumped. He
turned on his side, pulled her into his arms and
kissed her. At first she lay passively, trying
not to think of that wide-open mouth and its probing,
indecent tongue, but then she began to struggle 327
  to be free, not wanting to be close in the heat, not
wanting to be kissed, not wanting Luke. It
wasn't a bit like that night in the Rolls coming back
from Rudna Hunish. She couldn't seem to feel
anything in him which thought of
  her, and some part of him was pushing insistently at her
thighs while one hand, its nails squarely
sharp, dug into her buttocks. Her fear blossomed
into terror, she was overwhelmed in more than a
physical way by his strength and determination, his
lack of awareness of her. Suddenly he let her go,
sat up and seemed to fumble with himself, snapping and
pulling at something. . "Better be safe," he
gasped. "Lie on your back, it's time. No, not
like that! Open-your legs, for God's sake! Don't
you know anything?" No, no, Luke, I don't!
she wanted to cry. This is horrible, obscene;
whatever it is you're doing to me can't possibly be
permitted by the laws of Church or men! He
actually lay down on top of her, lifted his hips
and poked at her with one hand, the other so firmly in
her hair she didn't dare move. Twitching and
jumping at the alien thing between her legs, she tried
to do as
  he wanted, spread her legs wider, but he was
much broader than she was, and her groin muscles
went into crampy spasm from the weight of him and the un-
accustomed posture. Even through the darkening mists of
fright and exhaustion she could sense the gathering of some
mighty power; as he entered her a long high scream
left her lips.
  "Shut up!" he groaned, took his hand
out of her hair and clamped it defensively over her
mouth. "What do you want to do, make everyone in this
bloody pub think I'm murdering you? Lie still and it
won't hurt any more than it has to! Lie still,
lie still!"
  She fought like one possessed to be rid of that
ghastly, painful thing, but his weight pinned her down and
his hand deadened her cries, the agony went on and
on. Utterly dry because he hadn't roused her, the
even 328
  drier condom scraped and rasped her tissues as
he worked himself in and out, faster and faster, the breath
beginning to hiss between his teeth; then some change stilled
him, made him shudder, swallow hard. The pain
dulled to raw soreness and he mercifully rolled off
her to lie on his back, gasping. "It'll be better
for you the next time," he managed to say. "The first
time always hurts the woman."
  Then why didn't you have the decency to tell me that
beforehand? she wanted to snarl, but she hadn't the energy
to utter the words, she was too busy wanting to die.
Not only because of the pain, but also from the discovery that she
had possessed no identity for him, only been an
instrument. The second time hurt just as much, and the
third; exasperated, expecting her
discomfort (for so he deemed it) to disappear magically
after the first time and thus not understanding why she continued
to fight and cry out, Luke grew angry, turned his
back on her and went to sleep. The tears slipped
sideways from Meggie's eyes into her hair; she
lay on her back wishing for death, or else for her
old life on Drogheda.
  Was that what Father Ralph had meant years ago,
when he had told her of the hidden passageway to do with
having children? A nice way to find out what he meant.
No wonder he had preferred not to explain it more
clearly himself. Yet Luke had liked the activity
well enough to do it three times in quick succession.
Obviously it didn't hurt him. And for that she found
herself hating him, hating it.
  Exhausted, so sore moving was agony, Meggie
inched herself over onto her side with her back
to Luke, and wept into the pillow. Sleep eluded
her, though Luke slept so soundly her small
timid movements never caused so much as a change in
the pattern of his breathing. He was an economical
sleeper and a quiet one, he neither snored nor
flopped about, and she thought while waiting for the late
dawn that if it had just been a 329
  matter of lying down together, she might have
found him nice to be with. And the dawn came, as quickly
and joylessly as darkness had; it seemed strange not
to hear roosters crowing, the other sounds of a rousing
Drogheda with its sheep and horses and pigs and
dogs.
  Luke woke, and rolled over, she felt him
kiss her on the shoulder and was so tired, so
homesick that she forgot modesty, didn't care about
covering herself.
  "Come on, Meghann, let's have a look at
you," he commanded, his hand on her hip. "Turn over,
like a good little girl."
  Nothing mattered this morning; Meggie turned
over, wincing, and lay looking up at him dully.
"I don't like Meghann," she said, the only form of
protest she could manage. "I do wish you'd call
me Meggie."
  "I don't like Meggie. But if you really dislike
Meghann so much, I'll call you Meg." His
gaze roved her body dreamily. "What a nice
shape you've got." He touched one breast, pink
nipple flat and unaroused. "Especially these."
Bunching the pillows into a heap, he lay back on
them and smiled. "Come on, Meg, kiss me. It's
your turn to make love to me, and maybe
you'll like that better, eh?"
  I never want to kiss you again as long as I
live, she thought, looking at the long, heavily
muscled body, the mat of dark hair on the chest
diving down the belly in a thin line and then flaring
into a bush, out of which grew the deceptively small
and innocent shoot which could cause so much pain. How
hairy his legs were! Meggie had grown up with men
who never removed a layer of their clothes in the
presence of women, but open-necked shirts showed
hairy chests in hot weather. They were all fair
men, and not offensive to her; this dark man was alien,
repulsive. Ralph had a head of hair just as
dark, but well she remembered that smooth, hairless
brown chest. "Do as you're told, Meg! Kiss
me."
  Leaning over, she kissed him; he cupped her
breasts
  in his palms and made her go on kissing him,
took one of her hands and pushed it down to his groin.
Startled, she took her unwilling mouth away from his
to look at what lay under her hand, changing and growing.
"Oh, please, Luke, not again!" she cried.
"Please, not again! Please, please!"
  The blue eyes scanned her
speculatively. "Hurts that much? All right,
we'll do something different, but for God's sake try
to be enthusiastic!" Pulling her on top of him,
he pushed her legs apart, lifted her shoulders and
attached himself to her breast, as he had done in the car
the night she committed herself to marrying him. There only
in body, Meggie endured it; at least he didn't
put himself inside her, so it didn't hurt any more
than simply moving did. What strange
creatures men were, to go at this as if it was the most
pleasurable thing in the world. It was disgusting, a mockery
of love. Had it not been for her hope that it would
culminate in a baby, Meggie would have refused
flatly to have anything more to do with it.
  "I've got you a job," Luke said over
breakfast in the hotel dining room. "What? Before
I've had a chance disffmake our home nice,
Luke? Before we've even got a home?"
  "There's no point in our renting a house, Meg.
I'm going to cut cane; it's all arranged. The
best gang of cutters in Oueensland is a gang of
Swedes, Poles and Irish led by a bloke called
Arne Swenson, and while you were sleeping off the
journey I went to see him. He's a man short
and he's willing to give me a trial. That
means I'll be living in barracks with them. We
cut six days a week, sunrise to sunset. Not
only that, but we move around up and down the coast,
wherever the next job takes us. How much I earn
depends on how much sugar I cut, and if I'm
good enough to cut with Arne's gang I'll be pulling in
more than twenty quid a week. Twenty quid a
week! Can you imagine that?"
  "Are you trying to tell me we won't be living
togther, Luke?" "We can't, Meg! The men
won't have a woman in the barracks, and what's the
use of your living alone in a house? You may as
well work, too; it's all money toward our station."
  "But where will I live? What sort of work can I
do? There's no stock to drove up here."
  "No, more's the pity. That's why I've got
you a livein job, Meg. You'll get free
board, I won't have the expense of keeping you.
You're going to work as a housemaid on
Himmelhoch, Ludwig Mueller's place.
He's the biggest cane cocky in the district and his
wife's an invalid, can't manage the house on
her own. I'll take you there tomorrow morning."
  "But when will I see you, Luke?"
  "On Sundays. Luddie understands you're
married; he doesn't mind if you disappear on
Sundays"
  "Welll You've certainly arranged things to your
satisfaction, haven't you?" "I reckon. Oh,
Meg, we're going to be richl We'll work hard and
save every penny, and it won't be long before we can buy
ourselves the best station in Western Queensland. There's
the fourteen thousand I've got in the Gilly bank,
the two thousand a year more coming in there, and the thirteen
hundred or more a year we can earn between us. It
won't be long, love, I promise. Grin and
bear it for me, eh? Why be content with a rented house
when the harder we
  work now means the sooner you'll be looking around your
own kitchen?" "If it's what you want." She
looked down at her purse. "Luke, did you
take my hundred pounds?"
  "I put it in the bank. You can't carry money like
that around, Meg.@.@. "But you took every bit of itl
I don't have a pennyl What about spending money?"
  "Why on earth do you want spending money? You'll
be out at Himmelhoch in the morning, and you can't
  spend anything there. I'll take care of the hotel
bill. It's time you realized you've married a
workingman, Meg, that you're not the pampered
squatter's daughter with money to burn. Mueller will
pay your wages straight into my bank account, where
they'll stay along with mine. I'm not spending the
money on myself, Meg, you know that. Neither of us is
going to touch it, because it's for our future, our station."
  "Yes, I understand. You're very sensible, Luke.
But what if I should have a baby?"
  For a moment he was tempted to tell her the truth,
that there would be no baby until the station was a reality,
but something in her face made him decide not to.
  "Well, let's cross that bridge when we come
to it, eh? I'd rather we didn't have one until
we've got our station, so let's just hope we
don't." No home, no money, no babies.
No husband, for that matter. Meggie started to laugh.
Luke joined her, his teacup lifted in a toast.
"Here's to French letters," he said.
  In the morning they went out to Himmelhoch on the
local bus, an old Ford with no glass in its
windows and room for twelve people. Meggie was feeling
better, for Luke had left her alone when she
offered him a breast, and seemed to like it quite as well as
that other awful thing. Much and all as she wanted
babies, her courage had failed her. The first
Sunday that she wasn't sore at all,
she told herself, she would be willing to try again. Perhaps
there was a baby already on the way, and she needn't
bother with it ever again unless she wanted more. Eyes
brighter, she looked around her with in- terest as the bus
chugged out along the red dirt road. It was
breath-taking country, so different from Gilly; she
had to admit there was a grandeur and beauty here
Gilly quite lacked. Easy to see there was never a
shortage of water. The soil was the color of
freshly spilled blood, brilliant scarlet,
and the cane in the fields not
  THE THORN BIRDS
  fallow was a perfect contrast to the soil: long
brightgreen blades waving fifteen or twenty feet
above claretcolored stalks as thick as Luke's
arm. Nowhere in the world, raved Luke, did cane
grow as tall or as rich in sugar; its yield was the
highest known. That bright-red soil was over a hundred
feet deep, and so stuffed with exactly the right
nutrients the cane couldn't help but be perfect,
especially considering the rainfall. And nowhere else
in the world was it cut by white men, at the white man's
driving, money-hungry pace. "You look good on
a soapbox, Luke," said Meggie ironically.
He glanced sideways at her,
suspiciously, but refrained from comment because the bus had
stopped on the side of the road to let them off.
Himmelhoch was a large white house on top of a
hill, surrounded by coconut palms, banana
palms and beautiful smaller palms whose leaves
splayed outward in great fans like the tails of
peacocks. A grove of bamboo forty feet high
cut the house off from the worst of the northwest
monsoonal winds; even with its hill elevation it was
still mounted on top of fifteen-foot piles. Luke
carried her case; Meggie toiled up the red road
beside him, gasping, still in correct shoes and stockings,
her hat wilting around her face. The cane baron
himself wasn't in, but his wife came onto the veranda
as they mounted the steps, balancing herself between two
sticks. She was smiling; looking at her dear kind
face, Meggie felt better at once. "Come
in, come in!" she said in a strong Australian
accent. Expecting a German voice, Meggie was
immeasurably cheered. Luke put her case down,
shook hands when the lady took her right one off its
stick, then pounded away down the steps in a hurry
to catch the bus on its return journey. Arne
Swenson was picking him up outside the pub at ten
o'clock. "What's your first name, Mrs.
O'neill?" 334
  "Meggie."
  "Oh, that's nice. Mine is Anne, and I'd
rather you called me Anne. It's been so lonely up
here since my girl left me a month ago, but
it's not easy to get good house help, so I've
been battling on my own. There's only Luddie and
me to look after; we have no children. I hope you're
going to like living with us, Meggie."
  "I'm sure I will, Mrs. Mueller-Anne."
  "Let me show you to your room. Can you manage the
case? I'm not much good at carrying things, I'm
afraid."
  The room was austerely furnished, like the rest of the
house, but it looked out on the only side of the house
where the view was unimpeded by some sort of windbreak,
and shared the same stretch of veranda as the living room,
which seemed very bare to Meggie with its cane
furniture and lack of fabric. "It's just too
hot up here for velvet or chintz," Anne
explained. "We live with wicker, and as little on
ourselves as decency allows. I'll have to educate you,
or you'll die. You're hopelessly overclothed."
  She herself was in a sleeveless, low-necked vest
and a pair of short shorts, out of which her
poor twisted legs poked doddering. In no time at
all Meggie found herself similarly clad, loaned
from Anne until Luke could be persuaded to buy her
new clothes. It was humiliating to have to explain that
she was allowed no money, but at least having to endure
this attenuated her embarrassment over wearing so little.
  "Well, you certainly decorate my shorts
better than I do," said Anne. She went on with
her breezy lecture. "Luddie will bring you
firewood; you're not to cut your own or drag it up
the steps. I wish we had electricity like the
places closer in to Dunny, but the government is
slower than a wet week. Maybe next year the
line will reach as far as Himmelhoch, but until then
it's the awful old fuel stove, I'm afraid.
But you wait, Meggie!
  The minute they give us power we'll have an
electric stove, electric lights and a
refrigerator."
  "I'm used to doing without them."
  "Yes, but where you come from the heat is dry. This is
far, far worse. I'm just frightened that your health will
suffer. It often does in women who weren't born and
brought up here; something to do with the blood. We're on
the same latitude south as Bombay and
Rangoon are north, you know; not fit country for
man or beast unless born to it." She smiled.
"Oh, it's nice hav- ing you already! You and I are
going to have a wonderful time! Do you like reading? Luddie
and I have a passion for it."
  Meggie's face lit up. "Oh, yes!"
  "Splendid! You'll be too content to miss that
big handsome husband of yours."
  Meggie didn't answer. Miss Luke? Was
he handsome? She thought that if she never saw him again
she would be perfectly happy. Except that he was
her hus- band, that the law said she had to make her
life with him. She had gone into it with her eyes open;
she had no one to blame save herself. And perhaps as the
money came in and the station in Western Queensland
became a reality, there would be time for Luke and her
to live together, settle down, know each other, get
along.
  He wasn't a bad man, or unlikable; it was
just that he had been alone so long he didn't know how
to share himself with someone else. And he was a simple
man, ruthlessly single of purpose, untormented.
What he desired was a
  concrete thing, even if a dream; it was a
positive reward which would surely come as the
result of unremitting work, grinding sacrifice.
For that one had to respect him. Not for a moment did
she think he would use the money to give himself
luxuries; he had meant what he said; It would
stay in the bank. The trouble was he didn't have the time
or the inclination to understand a
  woman, he didn't seem to know a woman was
different, needed things he didn't need,
  as he needed things she didn't. Well, it could be
worse. He might have put her to work for someone far
colder and less considerate than Anne Mueller.
On
  top of this hill she wouldn't come to any harm. But
oh, it was so far from Drogheda!
  That last thought came again after they finished touring the
house, and stood together on the living room veranda
looking out across Himmelhoch. The great fields of
cane (one couldn't call them paddocks, since they
were small enough to encompass with the eyes) plumed lushly
in the wind, a restlessly sparkling and
polished-by-rain green, falling away in a long
slope to the jungle-clad banks of a great river,
wider by far than the Barwon. Beyond the river the cane
lands rose again, squares of poisonous green
interspersed with bloody fallow fields,
until at the foot of a vast mountain the cultivation
stopped, and the jungle took over. Behind the cone of
mountain, farther away, other peaks reared and died
purple into the distance. The sky was a richer, denser
blue than Gilly skies, puffed with white
billows of thick cloud, and the color of the whole was
vivid, intense.
  "That's Mount Bartle Frere," said Anne,
pointing to the isolated peak. "Six thousand feet
straight up out of a sea-level plain. They say
it's solid tin, but there's no hope of mining it for the
jungle."
  On the heavy, idle wind came a strong,
sickening stench Meggie hadn't stopped trying to get
out of her nostrils since stepping off the train. Like
decay, only not like decay; unbearably sweet,
all-pervasive, a tangible presence which never
seemed to diminish no matter how hard the breeze
blew. "What you can smell is molasses," said
Anne as she noticed Meggie's flaring nose; she
lit a tailor-made Ardath cigarette.
  "It's disgusting."
  "I know. That's why I smoke. But to a certain
extent you get used to it, though unlike most
smells it never
  quite disappears. Day in and day out, the molasses is
always there." "What are the buildings on the river with the
black chimney?" "That's the mill. It
processes the cane into raw sugar. What's left
over, the dry remnants of the cane minus its sugar
content, is called bagasse. Both raw sugar and
bagasse are sent south to Sydney for further
refining. Out of raw sugar they get molasses,
treacle, golden syrup, brown sugar, white
sugar and liquid glucose. The bagasse is
made into fibrous building board like Masonite.
Nothing is wasted, absolutely nothing. That's why
even in this Depression growing cane is still a very
profitable business."
  Arne Swenson was six feet two inches tall,
exactly Luke's height, and just as handsome. His
bare body was coated a dark golden brown
by perpetual exposure to the sun, his thatch of bright
yellow hair curled all over his head; the fine
Swedish features were so like Luke's in type that it
was easy to see how much Norse blood had
percolated into the veins of the Scots and Irish.
  Luke had abandoned his moleskins and white shirt
in favor of shorts. With Arne he climbed into an
ancient, wheezing qiodel-T utility
truck and headed for where the gang was cutting out
by Goondi. The secondhand bicycle he had bought
lay in the utility's tray along with his case, and
he was dying to begin work.
  The other men had been cutting since dawn and
didn't lift their heads when Arne appeared from the
direction of the barracks, Luke in tow. The cutting
uniform consisted of shorts, boots with thick woolen
socks, and canvas hats. Eyes narrowing, Luke
stared at the toiling men, who were a peculiar sight.
Coal-black dirt covered them from head to foot, with
sweat making bright pink streaks down chests, arms,
backs.
  "Soot and muck from the cane," Arne explained.
"We have to burn it before we can cut it."
  He bent down to pick up two instruments, gave
one to Luke and kept one. "This is a cane
knife," he said, hefting his. "With this you cut the
cane. Very easy if you know how." He grinned,
proceeding to demonstrate and making it look far
easier than it probably was.
  Luke looked at the deadly thing he gripped, which
was not at all like a West Indian machete. It
widened into a large triangle instead of tapering to a
point, and had a wicked hook like a
rooster's spur at one of the two blade ends.
  "A machete is too small for North
Queensland cane," Arne said, finished his
demonstration. "This is the right toy, you'll find.
Keep it sharp, and good luck."
  Off he went to his own section, leaving Luke
standing undecided for a moment. Then, shrugging, he
started work. Within minutes he understood why they left
it to slaves and to races not sophisticated enough to know
there were easier ways to make a living; like shearing, he
thought with wry humor. Bend, hack, straighten,
clutch the unwieldy topheavy bunch securely,
slide its length through the hands, whack off the leaves,
drop it in a tidy heap, go to the next cluster
of-stems, bend, hack, straighten, hack, add it
to the heap ....
  The cane was alive with vermin: rats,
bandicoots, cockroaches, toads, spiders,
snakes, wasps, flies and bees. Everything that
pould bite viciously or sting unbearably was
well represented. For that reason the cutters
burned the cane first, preferring the filth of working
charred crops to the depredations of green, living
cane. Even so they were stung, bitten and cut. If
it hadn't been for the boots Luke's feet
would have been worse off than his hands, but no cutter
ever wore gloves. They slowed a man down, and time
was money in this game. Besides, gloves were sissy.
At sundown Arne called a halt, and came
to see how Luke had fared.
  "Hey, mate not bad!" he shouted, thumping
Luke on the back. "Five tons; not bad for a
first day!"
  It was not a long walk back to the barracks, but
tropical night fell so suddenly it was dark as they
arrived. Before going inside they collected naked in
a communal shower, then, towels around their waists, they
trooped into the barracks, where whichever cutter on
cook duty that week had mountains of whatever was his
specialty ready on the table. Today it was steak and
potatoes, damper bread and jam roly-poly; the
men fell on it and wolfed every last particle down,
ravenous.
  Two rows of iron pallets faced each other
down either side of a long room made of corrugated
iron; sighing and cursing the cane with an originality
a bullocky might have envied, the men flopped naked
on top of unbleached sheets, drew their mosquito
nets down from the rings and within moments were asleep,
vague shapes under gauzy tents.
  Arne detained Luke. "Let me see your
hands." He inspected the bleeding cuts, the
blisters, the stings. "Bluebag them first, then use this
ointment. And if you take my advice you'll rub
coconut oil into them every night of your life. You've
got big hands, so if your back can take it you'll
make a good cutter. In a week you'll harden, you
won't be so sore."
  Every muscle in Luke's splendid body had its
own separate ache; he was consciou@. of nothing but a
vast, crucifying pain. Hands wrapped and anointed,
he stretched himself on his allotted bed, pulled down
his mosquito net and closed his eyes on a world of
little suffocating holes. Had he dreamed what he was
in for he would never have wasted his essence on Meggie;
she had become a withered, unwanted and unwelcome
idea in the back of his mind, shelved. He knew
he would never have anything for her while he cut the
cane. It took him the predicted week to harden,
and attain the eight-ton-a-day minimum Arne
demanded of his
  gang members. Then he settled down to becoming
better than Arne. He wanted the biggest share of the
money, maybe a partnership. But most of all he
wanted to see that same look that came into every
face for Arne directed at himself; Arne was something
of a god, for he was the best cutter in Queensland, and
that probably meant he was the be*ment cutter in the
world. When they went into a town on Saturday night
the local men couldn't buy Arne enough rums and beers,
and the local women whirred about him like hummingbirds.
There were many similarities between Arne and Luke.
They were both vain and enjoyed evoking intense female
admiration, but admiration was as far as it went. They
had nothing to give to women; they gave it all to the
cane.
  For Luke the work had a beauty and a pain he
seemed to have been waiting all his life to feel.
To bend and straighten and bend in that ritual rhythm was
to participate in some mystery beyond the scope of
ordinary men. For, as watching Arne taught him, to do
this superbly was to be a top member of the most elite
band of workingmen in the world; he could bear himself with pride
no matter where he was, knowing that almost every man he
met would never last a day in a cane field. The
King of England was no better than he, and the King of
England would admire him if he knew him. He could
look with pity and contempt on doctors, lawyers,
pen-pushers, cockies. To cut sugar the money-
hungry white man's way-that was the greatest
achievement. He would sit on the edge of his cot
feeling the ribbed, corded muscles of his arm
swell, look at the horny, scarred palms of his
hands, the tanned length of his beautifully structured
legs, and smile. A man who could do this and not only
survive but like it was a man. He wondered if the
King of England could say as much.
  It was four weeks before Meggie saw Luke.
Each Sunday she powdered her sticky nose, put
on a pretty 341
  silk dress-though she gave up the purgatory
of slips and stockings-and waited for her husband, who
never came. Anne and Luddie Mueller said
nothing, just watched her animation fade as each
Sunday darkened dramatically, like a
  curtain falling on a brilliantly lit,
empty stage. It wasn't that she wanted him,
precisely; it was just that he was hers, or she was
his, or however best it might be described.
To imagine that he didn't even think of her while
she passed her days and weeks waiting with him in her
thoughts all the time, to imagine that was to be filled with
rage, frustration, bitterness, humiliation, sorrow.
Much as she had loathed those two nights at the
Dunny pub, at least then she had come first
with him; now she found herself actually wishing she had
bitten off her tongue sooner than cried out in
pain. That was it, of course. Her suffering had made
him tire of her, ruined his own pleasure. From anger
at him, at his indifference to her pain, she passed
to remorse, and ended in blaming it all on herself. The
fourth Sunday she didn't bother dressing up, just
padded around the kitchen bare-footed in shorts and
vest, getting a hot breakfast for Luddie and
Anne, who enjoyed this incongruity once a week.
At the sound of footsteps on the back stairs she
turned from bacon sizzling in the pan; for a moment she
simply stared at the big, hairy fellow in the
doorway. Luke? Was this Luke? He seemed
made of rock, inhuman. But the effigy crossed the
kitchen, gave her a smacking kiss and sat down
at the table. She broke eggs into the pan and put on
more bacon.
  Anne Mueller came in, smiled civilly and
inwardly fumed at him. Wretched man, what was he
about, to leave his new wife neglected for so long?
"I'm glad to see you've remembered you have a
wife," she said. "Come out onto the veranda, sit with
Luddie and me and we'll all have breakfast.
Luke, help Meggie carry the bacon and
eggs. I can manage the toast rack in my teeth."
  Ludwig Mueller was Australian-born, but his
German heritage was clearly on him: the beefy
red complexion not able to cope with beer and sun combined,
the square grey head, the pale-blue Baltic
eyes. He and his wife liked Meggie very much, and
counted themselves fortunate to have acquired her services.
Especially was Luddie grateful, seeing how much
happier Anne was since that goldy head had been
glowing around the house.
  "How's the cutting, Luke?" he asked,
shoveling eggs and bacon onto his plate.
  "If I said I liked it, would you believe me?"
Luke laughed, heaping his own plate.
  Luddie's shrewd eyes rested on the handsome
face, and he nodded. "Oh, yes. You've got the
right sort of temperament and the right sort of body, I
think. It makes you feel better than other men,
superior to them." Caught in his heritage of cane
fields, far from academia and with no chance of
exchanging one for the other, Luddie was an ardent
student of human nature; he read great fat
tomes bound in Morocco leather with names on their
spines like Freud and Jung, Huxley and
Russell.
  "I was beginning to think you were never going to come and see
Meggie," Anne said, spreading ghee on her toast
with a brush; it was the only way they could have butter up
here, but it was better than none. "Well, Arne and
I decided to work on Sundays for a while. Tomorrow
we're off to Ingham."
  "Which means poor Meggie won't see you too
often."
  "Meg understands. It won't be for more than a
couple of years, and we do have the summer layoff.
Arne says he can get me work at the CSR in
Sydney then, and I might take Meg with me."
  "Why do you have to work so hard, Luke?" asked
Anne. "Got to get the money together for my
property out west, around Kynuna. Didn't Meg
mention it?"
  "I'm afraid our Meggie's not much good at
personal talk. You tell us, Luke."
  The three listeners sat watching the play of
expression on the tanned, strong face, the glitter
of those very blue eyes; since he had come before
breakfast Meggie hadn't uttered a word to anyone.
On and on he talked about the marvelous country
Back of Beyond; the grass, the big grey brolga
birds mincing delicately in the dust of
Kynuna's only road, the thousands upon thousands of
flying kangaroos, the hot dry sun. "And one day
soon a big chunk of all that is going to be mine.
Meg's put a
  bit of money toward it, and at the pace we're
working it won't take more than four or five years.
Sooner, if I was content to have a poorer place, but
knowing what I can earn cutting sugar, I'm tempted
to cut a bit longer and get a really decent bit of
land." He leaned forward, big scarred hands around his
teacup. "Do you know I nearly passed Ame's
tally the other day? Eleven tons I cut in one
day!"
  Luddie's whistle was genuinely admiring, and they
embarked upon a discussion of tallies. Meggie
sipped her strong dark milkless tea. Oh,
Luke! First it had been a couple of years, now it
was four or five, and who knew how long it would be the
next time he mentioned a period of years? Luke
loved it, no one could mistake that. So would he
give it up when the time came? Would he? For that
matter, did she want to wait around to find out? The
Muellers were very kind and she was far from overworked, but
if she had to live without a husband, Drogheda was the
best place. In the month of her stay at
Himmelhoch she hadn't felt really well for one
single day; she didn't want to eat, she suffered
bouts of painful diarrhea, she seemed dogged
by lethargy and couldn't shake it off. Not used to feeling
anything but tiptop well, the vague malaise
frightened her.
  After breakfast Luke helped her wash the
dishes, then took her for a walk down to the nearest
cane field, talking all the time about the sugar and
what it was like
  to cut it, what a beaut life it was out in the open
air, what a beaut lot of
  blokes they were in Ame's gang, how different it
was from shearing, and how much better.
  They turned and walked up the hill again; Luke
led her into the exquisitely cool cavern under the
house, between the piles. Anne had made a
conservatory out of it, stood pieces of
terra-cotta pipe of differing lengths and girths
upright, then filled them with soil and planted
trailing, dangling things in them; orchids of every kind
and color, ferns, exotic creepers and bushes.
The ground was soft and redolent of wood chips; great
wire baskets hung from the joists overhead, full
of ferns or orchids or tuberoses;
staghorns in bark nests grew on the piles;
magnificent begonias in dozens of brilliant
colors had been planted around the bases of the
pipes. It was Meggie's favorite retreat, the
one thing of Himmelhoch's she preferred to anything of
Drogheda's. For Drogheda could never hope to grow so
much on one small spot; there just wasn't enough
moisture in the air.
  "Isn't this lovely, Luke? Do you think perhaps
after a couple of years up here we might be able
to rent a house for me to live in? I'm dying to try
something like this for myself."
  "What on earth do you want to live alone in a
house for? This isn't Gilly, Meg; it's the
sort of place where a woman on her own isn't
safe. You're much better off here, believe me.
Aren't you happy here?" "I'm as happy as one can
be in someone else's home."
  "Look, Meg, you've just got to be content with
what you have now until we move out west. We can't
spend money renting houses and having you live a
life of leisure and still save. Do you hear me?"
  "Yes, Luke."
  He was so upset he didn't do what he had
intended to do when he led her under the house,
namely kiss her. Instead he gave her a casual
smack on the bottom 345
  which hurt a little too much to be casual, and set
off down the road to the spot where he had left his
bike propped against a tree. He had pedaled
twenty miles to see her rather than spend money on a
rail motor and a bus, which meant he had to pedal
twenty miles back.
  "The poor little soul!" said Anne to Luddie.
"I could kill him!"
  January came and went, the slackest month of the
year for cane cutters, but there was no sign of
Luke. He had murmured about taking Meggie
to Sydney, but instead he went to Sydney with Arne
and without her. Arne was a bachelor and had an aunt
with a house in Rozelle, within walking distance (no
tram fares; save money) of the CSR, the
Colonial Sugar Refineries. Within those
gargantuan concrete walls like a fortress on a
hill, a cutter with connections could get work. Luke
and Arne kept in trim stacking sugar bags, and
swimming or surfing in their spare time.
  Left in Dungloe with the Muellers, Meggie
sweated her way through The Wet, as the monsoon
season was called. The Dry lasted from
March to November and in this part of the continent wasn't
exactly dry, but compared to The Wet it was heavenly.
During The Wet the skies just opened and vomited
water, not all day but in fits and starts; in "
etween deluges the land steamed, great clouds of
white vapor rising from the cane, the soil, the
jungle, the mountains.
  And as time went on Meggie longed for home more and
more. North Queensland, she knew now, could never
become home to her. For one thing, the climate
didn't suit her, perhaps because she had spent most of
her life in dryness. And, she hated the loneliness,
the unfriendliness, the feeling of remorseless lethargy.
She hated the prolific insect and reptile life
which made each night an ordeal of giant toads,
tarantulas, cockroaches, rats; nothing seemed
to keep them out of the house, and she was terrified of them.
They were so
  huge, so aggressive, so hungry. Most of
all she hated the dunny, which was not only the local
patois for toilet but the diminutive for
Dungloe, much to the delight of the local
populace, who punned on it perpetually. But a
Dunny dunny left one's stomach churning in
revolt, for in this seething climate holes
in the ground were out of the question because of typhoid and other
enteric fevers. Instead of being a hole in the ground,
a Dunny dunny was a tarred tin can which stank, and as
it filled came alive with noisome maggots and
worms. Once a week the can was removed and
replaced with an empty one, but once a week
wasn't soon enough.
  Meggie's whole spirit rebelled against the casual
local acceptance of such things as normal; a
lifetime in North Queensland couldn't reconcile
her to them. Yet dismally she reflected that it
probably would be a whole lifetime, or at least
until Luke was too old to cut the sugar. Much as
she longed for and dreamed of Drogheda, she was far too
proud to admit to her family that her husband
neglected her; sooner than admit that, she'd
take the lifetime sentence, she told herself
fiercely.
  Months went by, then a year, and time crept
toward the second year's end. Only the constant
kindness of the Muellers kept Meggie in residence
at Himmelhoch, trying to resolve her dilemma.
Had she written to ask Bob for the fare home he
would have sent it by return telegram, but poor
Meggie couldn't face telling her family
that Luke kept her without a penny in her purse.
The day she did tell them was the day she would leave
Luke, never to go back to him, and she hadn't made
up her mind yet to take such a step. Everything in
her upbringing conspired to prevent her leaving Luke:
the sacredness of her marriage vows, the hope she
might have a baby one day, the position Luke
occupied as husband and master of her destiny. Then there
were the things which sprang from her own nature: that
stubborn, stiff-necked pride, and the niggling
conviction
  that the situation was as much her fault as Luke's.
If there wasn't something wrong with her, Luke might
have behaved far differently. She had seen him six
times in the eighteen months of her exile, and often
thought, quite unaware such a thing as homosexuality
existed, that by rights Luke should have married Arne, because
he certainly lived with Arne and much preferred his
company. They had gone into full partnership and
drifted up and down the thousand-mile coast following
the sugar harvest, living, it seemed, only to work.
When Luke did come to see her he didn't
attempt any kind of intimacy, just sat around for
an hour or two yarning to Luddie and Anne, took
his wife for a walk, gave her a friendly
kiss, and was off again. The three of them, Luddie,
Anne and Meggie, spent all their spare time
reading. Himmelhoch had a library far larger than
Drogheda's few shelves, more erudite and more
salacious by far, and Meggie learned a great deal
while she read.
  One Sunday in June of 1936 Luke and
Arne turned up together, very pleased with themselves. They
had come, they said, to give Meggie a real treat, for
they were taking her to a ceilidh.
  Unlike the general tendency of ethnic groups in
Australia to scatter and become purely
Australian, the various nationalities in the North
Queensland peninsula tended to preserve their
traditions fiercely: the Chinese, the Italians,
the Germans and the Scots-Irish, these four groups
making up the bulk of the population. And when the
Scots threw a ceilidh every Scot for miles
attended.
  To Meggie's astonishment, Luke and Arne were
wearing kilts, looking, she thought when she got her
breath back, absolutely magnificent. Nothing
is more masculine on a masculine man than a
kilt, for it swings with a long clean stride in a
flurry of pleats behind and stays perfectly
still in front, the sporran like a loin
  guard, and below the mid-knee hem strong fine
legs in diamond checkered hose, buckled shoes.
It was far too hot to wear the plaid and the jacket;
they had contented themselves with white shirts open
halfway down their chests, sleeves rolled up
above their elbows.
  "What's a ceilidh anyway?" she asked as
they set off. "It's Gaelic for a gathering, a
shindig."
  "Why on earth are you wearing kilts?"
  "We won't be let in unless we are, and we're
well known at all the ceilidhs between Bris and
Cairns."
  "Are you now? I imagine you must indeed go to quite a
few, otherwise I can't see Luke outlaying
money for a kilt. Isn't that so, Arne?" "A
man's got to have some relaxation," said Luke, a little
defensively. The ceilidh was being held in a
barnlike shack falling to rack and ruin down in the
midst of the mangrove swamps festering about the mouth
of the Dungloe River. Oh, what a country this was
for smells! Meggie thought in despair, her nose
twitching to yet another indescribably disgusting
aroma. Molasses, mildew,
Bunnies, and now mangroves. All the rotting
effluvia of the seashore rolled into one smell.
  Sure enough, every man arriving at the shed wore a
kilt; as they went in and she looked around, Meggie
understood how drab a peahen must feel when dazzled
by the vivid gorgeousness of her mate. The women were
overshadowed into near nonexistence, an impression which
the later stages of the evening only sharpened.
  Two pipers in the complex, light-blue-based
Anderson tartan were standing on a rickety dais at
one end of the hall, piping a cheerful reel in
perfect synchrony, sandy hair on end, sweat
running down ruddy faces. A few couples were
dancing, but most of the noisy activity seemed to be
centered around a group of men who were passing out
glasses of what was surely Scotch whiskey.
Meggie found herself thrust into a corner with several
other women, and was content to stay there
  watching, fascinated. Not one woman wore a
clan tartan, for indeed no Scotswoman wears the
kilt, only the plaid, and it was too hot to drape
a great heavy piece of material around the shoulders.
So the women wore their dowdy North Queensland
cotton dresses, which stuttered into limp silence beside
the men's kilts. There was the blazing red and
white of Clan Menzies, the cheery black and
yellow of Clan MacLeod of Lewis, the
windowpane blue and red checks of Clan Skene,
the vivid complexity of Clan Ogilvy, the
lovely red, grey and black of Clan
MacPherson. Luke in Clan Macationeil,
Arne in the Sassenach's Jacobean tartan.
Beautiful!
  Luke and Arne were obviously well known and
well liked. How often did they come without her, then?
And what had possessed them to bring her tonight? She
sighed, leaned against the wall. The other women were
eyeing her curiously, especially the rings on her
wedding finger; Luke and Arne were the objects of
  much feminine admiration, herself the object of much
feminine envy. I wonder what they'd say if I
told them the big dark one, who is my husband,
has seen me precisely twice in the last eight
months, and never sees me with the idea of getting into a
bed? Look at the pair of them, the conceited
Highland fops! And neither of them Scottish at
all, just playacting because they know they look sensational
in kilts and they like to be the center of attention. You
magnificent pair of frauds! You're too much in
love with yourselves to want or need love from
anyone else.
  At midnight the women were relegated to standing around
the walls; the pipers skirled into "Caber
Feidh" and the serious dancing began. For the rest of
her life, whenever she heard the sound of a piper
Meggie was back in that shed. Even the swirl of a
kilt could do it; there was that dreamlike merging of sound
and sight, of life and brilliant vitality, which
means a memory so piercing, so spellbinding, that it
will never be lost. Down went the crossed swords on
conhe floor; two men 350
  in Clan MacDonald of Sleat kilts
raised their arms above their heads, hands flicked over
like ballet dancers, and very gravely, as if at the
end the swords would be plunged into their breasts, began
to pick their delicate way through, between, among the
blades.
  A high shrill scream ripped above the airy
wavering of the pipes, the tune became "All the
Blue Bonnets over the Border," the sabers were
scooped up, and every man in the room swung into the
dance, arms linking and dissolving, kilts flaring.
Reels, strathspeys, flings; they danced them all,
feet on the board floor sending echoes among the
rafters, buckles on shoes flashing, and
every time the pattern changed someone would throw back his
head, emit that shrill, ululating whoop, set off
trains of cries from other exuberant throats.
While the women watched, forgotten.
  It was close to four in the morning when the ceilidh
broke up; outside was not the astringent crispness of
Blair Atholl or Skye but the torpor of a
tropical night, a great heavy moon dragging itself
along the spangled wastes of the heavens, and over it
all the stinking miasma of mangroves. Yet as
Arne drove them off in the wheezing old Ford, the
last thing Meggie heard was the drifting dwindling
lament "Flowers o" the Forest," bidding the
revelers home. Home. Where was home?
  "Well, did you enjoy that?" asked Luke.
  "I would have enjoyed it more had I danced more," she
answered. "What, at a ceilidh? Break it
down, Meg! Only the men are supposed to dance, so
we're actually pretty good to you women, letting you
dance at all." "It seems to me only men do a
lot of things, and especially if they're good things,
enjoyable things."
  "Well, excuse me!" said Luke stiffly.
"Here was I thinking you might like a bit of a change,
which was why I brought you. I didn't have to,
you know! And if you're not grateful I won't bring
you again."
  "You probably don't have any intention of doing
so,
  anyway," said Meggie. "It isn't good
to admit me into your life. I learned a lot these
past few hours, but I don't think it's what you
intended to teach me. It's getting harder to fool me,
Luke. In fact, I'm fed up with you, with the life
I'm leading, with everything!"
  "Ssssh!" he hissed, scandalized. "We're
not alone!" "Then come alone!" she snapped. "When
do I ever get the chance to see you alone for more than a
few minutes?"
  Arne pulled up at the bottom of the
Himmelhoch hill, grinning at Luke
sympathetically. "Go on, mate," he said.
"Walk her up; I'll wait here for you. No
hurry."
  "I mean it, Luke!" Meggie said as soon as
they were out of Arne's hearing. "The worm's turning,
do you hear me? I know I promised to obey you, but
you promised to love and cherish me, so we're both
liars! I want to go home to Drogheda!"
  He thought of her two thousand pounds a
year and of its ceasing to be put in his name.
  "Oh, Meg!" he said helplessly. "Look,
sweetheart, it won't be forever, I promise! And
this summer I'm going to take you to Sydney with me,
word of an O'neill! Arne's aunt has a
flat coming vacant in her house, and we can live there
for three months, have a wonderful time! Bear with me
another year or so in the cane, then we'll buy our
property and settle down, eh?" The moon lit
up his face; he looked sincere, upset,
anxious, contrite. And very like Ralph de
Bricassart.
  Meggie relented, because she still wanted his babies.
"All right," she said. "Another year. But I'm
holding you to that promise of Sydney, Luke, so
remember!"
  Once a month Meggie wrote a dutiful letter
to Fee, Bob and the boys, full of
  descriptions of North Queensland, carefully
humorous, never hinting of any differences between her and
Luke. That pride again. As far as Drogheda
knew, the Muellers were friends of Luke's with whom
she boarded because Luke traveled so much. Her
genuine affection for the couple came through in every word she
wrote about them, so no one on Drogheda
worried. Except that it grieved them she never
came home. Yet how could she tell them that she
didn't have the money to visit without also telling them
how miserable her marriage to Luke O'neill had
become?
  Occasionally she would nerve herself to insert a casual
question about Bishop Ralph, and even less often Bob
would remember to pass on the little he
  learned from Fee about the Bishop. Then came a
letter full of him. "He arrived out of the blue one
day, Meggie," Bob's letter said, "looking a bit
upset and down in the mouth. I must say he was
floored not to find you here. He was spitting mad because
we hadn't told him about you and Luke, but when Mum
said you'd got a bee in your bonnet about it and
didn't want us to tell him, he shut
  up and never said another word. But I thought he
missed you more than he would any of the rest of us, and I
suppose that's quite natural because you spent more time with
him than the rest of us, and I think he always thought of
you as his little sister. He wandered around as if he
couldn't believe you wouldn't pop up all of a sudden,
poor chap. We didn't have any pictures to show
him either, and I never thought until he asked to see
them that it was funny you never had any wedding
pictures taken. He asked if you had any
kids, and I said I didn't think so. You don't,
do you, Meggie? How long is it now since you were
married? Getting on for two years? Must be, because
this is July. Time flies, eh? I hope you have
some kids soon, because I think the Bishop would be
pleased to hear of it. I offered to give him your
address, but he said no. Said it wouldn't be any
use because he8ness going to Athens, Greece, for a
while with the archbishop he works for. Some Dago name
four yards long, I never can remember it. Can you
imagine, Meggie, they're flying? "Struth!
Anyway, once he found out you weren't on
Drogheda to go round with him he didn't stay long, just
took a ride or two, said Mass for us every day, and
went six days after he got here."
  Meggie laid the letter down. He knew, he
knew! At last he knew. What had he
  thought, how much had it grieved him? And why had he
pushed her to do this? It hadn't made things any
better. She didn't love Luke, she never would
love Luke. He was nothing more than a
substitute, a man who would give her children similar
in type to those she might have had with Ralph de
Bricassart. Oh, God, what a
mess!
  Archbishop di Contini-Verchese preferred to stay
in a secular hotel than avail himself of the offered
quarters in an Athens Orthodox palace. His
mission was a very delicate one, of some moment; there were
matters long overdue for discussion with the chief
prelates of the 354
  Greek Orthodox Church, the Vatican having
a fondness for Greek and Russian Orthodoxy that
it couldn't have for Protestantism. After all, the
Orthodoxies were schisms, not heresies; their
bishops, like Rome's, extended back to Saint
Peter in an unbroken line.
  The Archbishop knew his appointment for this mission
was a diplomatic testing, a stepping stone to greater
things in Rome. Again his gift for languages had
been a boon, for it was his fluent Greek which had
tipped the balance in his favor. They had sent for him
all the way to Australia, flown him out.
  And it was unthinkable that he go without Bishop de
Bricassart, for he had grown to rely upon that
amazing man more and more with the passing of the years. A
Mazarin, truly a Mazarin; His Grace admired
Cardinal Mazarin far more than he did Cardinal
Richelieu, so the comparison was high
praise. Ralph was everything the Church liked in her
high officials. His theology was conservative, so were
his ethics; his brain was quick and subtle, his face
gave away nothing of what went on behind it; and he
had an exquisite knack of
  knowing just how to please those he was with, whether he
liked them or loathed them, agreed with them or differed
from them. A sycophant he was not, a diplomat he
was. If he was repeatedly brought to the attention of
those in the Vatican hierarchy, his rise to prominence
would be certain. And that would please His Grace di
Contini-Verchese, for he didn't want to lose
contact with His Lordship de Bricassart.
  It was very hot, but Bishop Ralph didn't mind
the dry Athens air after Sydney's humidity.
Walking rapidly, as usual in boots, breeches
and soutane, he strode up the rocky ramp to the
Acropolis, through the frowning Propylon, past the
Erechtheum, on up the incline with its slippery
rough stones to the Parthenon, and. down to the wall beyond.
  There, with the wind ruffling his dark curls, a little
grey about the ears now, he stood and looked across
  the white city to the bright hills and the clear,
astonishing aquamarine of the Aegean Sea. Right below
him was the Plaka with its rooftop cafes,
its colonies of Bohemians, and to one side a
great theater lapped up the rock. In
  the distance were Roman columns, Crusader forts
and Venetian castles, but never a sign of the
Turks. What amazing people, these Greeks. To hate
the race who had ruled them for seven hundred years
so much that once freed they hadn't left a mosque
or a minaret standing. And so ancient, so full of
rich heritage. His Normans had been fur-clad
barbarians when Pericles clothed the top of the rock
in marble, and Rome had been a rude village.
Only now, eleven thousand miles away, was he able
to think of Meggie without wanting to weep. Even so, the
distant hills blurred for a moment before he brought his
emotions under control. How could he possibly
blame her, when he had told her to do it? He
understood at once why she had been determined not
to tell him; she didn't want him to meet her new
husband, or be a part of her new life. Of course
in his mind he had assumed she would bring whomever she
married to Gillanbone if not to Drogheda itself, that she
would continue to live where he knew her to be safe,
free from care and danger. But once he thought about it,
he could see this was the last thing she would want. No,
she had been bound to go away, and so long as
she and this Luke O'neill were together, she wouldn't
come back. Bob said they were saving to buy a
property in Western Queensland, and that news had
been the death knell. Meggie meant never to come
back. As far as he was concerned, she intended to be
dead.
  But are you happy, Meggie? Is he good to you?
Do you love him, this Luke O'neill? What
kind of man is he, that you turned from me to him?
What was it about him, an ordinary stockman, that you
liked better than Enoch Davies or Liam
O'Rourke or Alastair MacQueen? Was it that
1 didn't know him, that 1 could 356
  make no comparisons? Did you do it to torture
me, Meggie, to pay me back? But why are there no
children? What's the matter with the man, that he roams up
and down the state like a vagabond and puts you to live
with friends? No wonder you have no child; he's not with you
long enough. Meggie, why? Why did you marry this
Luke O'neill?
  Turning, he made his way down from the
Acropolis, and walked the busy streets of
Athens. In the open-air markets around Evripidou
Street he lingered, fascinated by the people, the huge
baskets of kalamari and fish reeking in the
sun, the vegetables and tinsel slippers hung
side by side; the women amused him, their unashamed
and open cooing over him, a legacy of a culture
basically very different from his puritanical own. Had
their unabashed admiration been lustful (he could not
think of a better word) it would have embarrassed him
acutely, but he accepted it in the spirit intended, as
an accolade for extraordinary physical beauty.
The hotel was on Omonia Square, very luxurious
and expensive. Archbishop di
  Contini-Verchese was, sitting in a chair by his
balcony windows, quietly thinking; as Bishop
Ralph came in he turned his head, smiling.
"In good time, Ralph. I would like to pray."
  "I thought everything was settled? Are there sudden
complications, Your Grace?"
  "Not of that kind. I had a letter from Cardinal
Monteverdi today, expressing the wishes of the Holy
Father."
  Bishop Ralph felt his shoulders tighten, a
curious prickling of the skin around his ears. "Tell
me."
  "As soon as the talks are over-and they are
overI am to proceed to Rome. There I am to be
blessed with the biretta of a cardinal, and
continue my work in Rome under the direct supervision
of His Holiness."
  "Whereas I?"
  "You will become Archbishop de Bricassart, and
go back to Australia to fill my shoes as Papal
Legate."
  The prickling skin around his ears flushed red hot;
his head whirled, rocked. He, a non-Italian,
to be honored with the Papal Legation! It was unheard
of! Oh, depend on it, he would be Cardinal de
Bricassart yet! "Of course you will receive training
and instruction in Rome first. That will take about six
months, during which I will be with you to introduce you to those
who are my friends. I want them to know you, because the time
will come when I shall send for you, Ralph, to help me with
my work in the Vatican."
  "Your Grace, I can't thank you enough! It's
due to you, this great chance." "God grant I am
sufficiently intelligent to see when a man is
too able to leave in obscurity, Ralph! Now let
us kneel and pray. God is very good." His rosary
beads and missal were sitting on a table nearby; hand
trembling, Bishop Ralph reached for the beads and
knocked the missal to the floor. It fell open at
the middle. The Archbishop; who was closer
to it, picked it up and looked curiously at the
brown, tissuethin shape which had once been a
rose.
  "How extraordinary! Why do you keep this? Is
it a memory of your home, or perhaps of your mother?"
The eyes which saw through guile and dissimulation were
looking straight at him, and there was no time to disguise
his emotion, or his apprehension.
  "No." He grimaced. "I want no
memories of my mother."
  "But it must have great meaning for you, that you store it so
lovingly within the pages of the book most dear to you. Of
what does it speak?" "Of a love as pure as that
I bear my God, Vittorio. It does the
book nothing but honor."
  "That I deduced, because I know you. But the-love,
does it endanger your love for the Church?"
  "No. It was for the Church I forsook her, that I
always will forsake her. I've gone so far beyond her, and
I can never go back again."
  "So at last I understand the sadness! Dear
Ralph, it is not as bad as you think, truly it is
not. You will live to do great good for many people, you will be
loved by many people. And she, having the love which is
contained in such an old, fragrant
memory as this, will never want. Because you kept the
love alongside the rose."
  "I don't think she understands at all."
  "Oh, yes. If you have loved her thus, then she
is woman enough to understand. Otherwise you would have forgotten
her, and abandoned this relic long since."
  "There have been times when only hours on my
knees have stopped me from leaving my post, going
to her."
  The Archbishop eased himself out of his chair and came
to kneel beside his friend, this beautiful man whom he
loved as he had loved few things other than his God
and his Church, which to him were indivisible. "You will not
leave, Ralph, and you know it well. You belong to the
Church, you always have and you always will. The vocation for you
is a true one. We shall pray now, and I shall add
the Rose to my prayers for the rest of my life. Our
Dear Lord sends us many griefs and much pain during
our progress to
  eternal life. We must learn to bear it, I as
much as you."
  At the end of August Meggie got a letter from
Luke to say he was in Townsville Hospital with
Weil's disease, but that he was in no danger and would be
out soon.
  "So it looks like we don't have to wait until the
end of the year for our holiday, Meg. I can't go
back to the cane until I'm one hundred percent
fit, and the best way to make sure I am is to have a
decent holiday. So I'll be along in a week
or so to pick you up. We're going to Lake
Eacham on the Atherton Tableland for a couple of
weeks, until I'm well enough to go back to
  work."
  Meggie could hardly believe it, and didn't know
if
  she wanted to be with him or not, now that the
opportunity presented itself. Though the pain of her
mind had taken a lot longer to heal than the pain of
her body, the memory of her honeymoon ordeal in
the Dunny pub had been pushed from thought so long it
had lost the power to terrify her, and from her reading she
understood better now that much of it had been due
to ignorance, her own and Luke's. Oh, dear Lord,
pray this holiday would mean a child! If she could only
have a baby to love it would be so much easier. Anne
wouldn't mind a baby around, she'd love it. So would
Luddie. They had told her so a hundred times,
hoping Luke would come once for long enough to rectify his
wife's barren loveless existence.
  When she told them what the letter said they were
delighted, but privately skeptical.
  "Sure as eggs is eggs that wretch will find some
excuse to be off without her," said Anne to Luddie.
  Luke had borrowed a car from somewhere, and picked
Meggie up early in the morning. He looked thin,
wrinkled and yellow, as if he had been pickled.
Shocked, Meggie gave him her case and climbed
in beside him. "What is Weil's disease, Luke?
You said you weren't in any danger, but it looks to me
as if you've been very sick indeed."
  "Oh, it's just some sort of jaundice most
cutters get sooner or later. The cane rats
carry it, we pick it up through a cut or sore.
I'm in good health, so I wasn't too sick
compared to some who get it. The quacks say I'll be
fit as a fiddle in no time."
  Climbing up through a great gorge filled with
jungle, the road led inland, a river in full
spate roaring and tumbling below, and at one spot a
magnificent waterfall spilling to join it from somewhere
up above, right athwart the road. They drove between the
cliff and the angling water in a wet, glittering
archway of fantastic light and shadow. And as they
climbed the air grew
  cool, exquisitely fresh; Meggie had
forgotten how good cool air made her feel. The
jungle leaned across them, so impenetrable no one ever
dared to enter it. The bulk of it was quite invisible under the
weight of leafy vines lying sagging from treetop
to treetop, continuous and endless, like a vast sheet of
green velvet flung across the forest. Under the eaves
Meggie caught glimpses of wonderful flowers and
butterflies, cartwheeling webs with great elegant
speckled spiders motionless at their hubs,
fabulous fungi chewing at mossy trunks,
birds with long trailing red or blond tails.
Lake Eacham lay on top of the tableland,
idyllic in its unspoiled setting. Before night
fell they strolled out onto the veranda of their
boardinghouse to look across the still water. Meggie
wanted to watch the enormous fruit bats called
flying foxes wheel like precursors of doom in
thousands down toward the places where they found their
food. They were monstrous and repulsive, but
singularly timid, entirely benign. To see them
come across a molten sky in dark, pulsating sheets
was awesome; Meggie never missed watching for them from the
Himmelhoch veranda.
  And it was heaven to sink into a soft cool
bed, not have to lie still until one spot was
sweat-saturated and then move carefully to a new
spot, knowing the old one wouldn't dry out anyway.
Luke took a flat brown packet out of his
case, picked a handful of small round objects out
of it and laid them in a row on the bedside table.
  Meggie reached out to take one, inspect it.
"What on earth is it?" she asked curiously.
  "A French letter." He had forgotten his decision
of two years ago, not to tell her he practiced
contraception. "I put it on myself before I go
inside you. Otherwise I might start a baby, and
we can't afford to do that until we get our place."
He was sitting naked on the side of the bed, and he was
thin, ribs and hips protruding. But his blue eyes
shone, he reached out to clasp her hand as it held the
French letter. "Nearly there, 361
  Meg, nearly there! I reckon another five
thousand pounds will buy us the best property to be had
west of Charters Towers."
  "Then you've got it," she said, her voice quite
calm. "I can write to Bishop de Bricassart
and ask him for a loan of the money. He won't charge
us interest."
  "You most certainly won't!" he
snapped. "Damn it, Meg, where's your pride?
We'll work for what we have, not borrow! I've never
owed anyone a penny in all my life, and I'm not
going to start now."
  She scarcely heard him, glaring at him through a
haze of brilliant red. In all her life she
had never been so angry! Cheat, liar, egotist!
How dared he do it to her, trick her out of a baby,
try to make her believe he ever had any intention of
becoming a grazier! He'd found his niche, with Arne
Swenson and the sugar.
  Concealing her rage so well it surprised her,
she turned her attention back to the little rubber wheel
in her hand. "Tell me about these French letter things.
How do they stop me having a baby?"
  He came to stand behind her, and contact of their
bodies made her shiver; from excitement he thought,
from disgust she knew. "Don't you know anything,
Meg?"
  "No," she lied. Which was true about French letters,
at any rate; she could not remember ever seeing a
mention of them.
  His hands played with her breasts, tickling.
"Look, when I come I make this-I don't
know-stuff, and if I'm up inside you with
nothing on, it stays there. When it stays there long enough
or often enough, it makes a baby." So that was it!
He wore the thing, like a skin on a sausage!
Cheat! Turning off the light, he drew her down
onto the bed, and it wasn't long before he was groping
for his antibaby device; she heard him making the
same sounds he had made in the Dunny pub
bedroom, knowing now
  they meant he was pulling on the French letter. The
cheat! But how to get around it?
  Trying not to let him see how much he hurt her,
she endured him. Why did it
  have to hurt so, if this was a natural thing?
  "It's no good, is it, Meg?" he asked afterward.
"You must be awfully small for it to keep on hurting
so much after the first time. Well, I won't do it again.
You don't mind if I do it on your breast, do you?"
"Oh, what does it matter?" she asked wearily.
"If you mean you're not going to hurt me, all right!"
  "You might be a bit more enthusiastic, Meg!"
  "What for?"
  But he was rising again; it was two years since he
had had time or energy for this. Oh, it was nice to be
with a woman, exciting and forbidden. He didn't
feel at all married to Meg; it wasn't
any different from getting'a bit in the paddock behind the
Kynuna pub, or having high-and-mighty Miss
Carmichael against the shearing shed wall. Meggie had
nice breasts, firm from all that riding, just the way
he liked them, and he honestly preferred to get his
pleasure at her breast, liking the sensation of
unsheathed penis sandwiched between their bellies. French
letters cut a man's sensitivity a lot, but not
to don one when he put himself inside her was asking for
trouble.
  Groping, he pulled at her buttocks and made
her lie on top of him, then seized one nipple
between his teeth, feeling the hidden point swell and
harden on his tongue. A great contempt for him had
taken. possession of Meggie; what ridiculous
creatures men were, grunting and sucking and straining
for what they got out of it. He was becoming more
excited, kneading her back and bottom, gulping
away for all the world like a great overgrown kitten
sneaked back to its mother. His hips began to move in
a rhythmic, jerky fashion, and sprawled across him
awkwardly because she was hating 363
  it too much to try helping him, she felt the tip
of his unprotected penis slide between her legs.
  Since she was not a participant in the
act, her thoughts were her own. And it was then the idea
came. As slowly and unobtrusively as she could,
she maneuvered him until he was right at the most
painful part of her; with a great indrawn breath to keep
her courage up, she forced the penis in, teeth
clenched. But though it did hurt, it didn't hurt
nearly as much. Minus its rubber sheath, his member was
more slippery, easier to introduce and far easier
to tolerate.
  Luke's eyes opened. He tried to push her
away, but oh, God! It was unbelievable without the
French letter; he had never been inside a woman
bare, had never realized what a difference it made.
He was so close, so excited he couldn't bring himself
to push her away hard enough, and in the end he put his
arms round her, unable to keep up his breast
activity. Though it wasn't manly to cry out, he
couldn't prevent the noise leaving him, and afterward
kissed her softly.
  "Luke?"
  "What?"
  "Why can't we do that every time? Then you wouldn't have
to put on a French letter."
  "We shouldn't have done it that time, Meg, let
alone again. I was right in you when I came."
  She leaned over him, stroking his chest. "But
don't you see? I'm sitting up! It doesn't
stay there at all, it runs right out again! Oh,
Luke, please! It's so much nicer, it doesn't
hurt nearly as much. I'm sure it's all right,
because I can feel it running out. Please!"
  What human being ever lived who could resist the
repetition of perfect pleasure when offered so
plausibly? Adam-like, Luke nodded, for at this
stage he was far less informed than Meggie.
  "I suppose there's truth in what you say, and
it's much nicer for me when you're not fighting it. All
right, Meg, we'll do it that way from now on."
  And in the darkness she smiled, content. For it had not
all run out. The moment she felt him shrink out of
her she had drawn up all the internal muscles
into a knot, slid off him onto her back, stuck
her crossed knees in the air casually and hung on
to what she had with every ounce of determination in her.
Oho, my fine gentleman, I'll fix you yetl
You wait and see, Luke O'neill! I'll
get my baby if it kills me! Away from the heat
and humidity of the coastal plain Luke mended
rapidly. Eating well, he began to put the
weight he needed back again, and his skin
faded from the sickly yellow to its usual brown.
With the lure of an eager, responsive Meggie in
his bed it wasn't too difficult to persuade him
to prolong the original two weeks into three, and then
into four. But at the end of a month he rebelled.
  "There's no excuse, Meg. I'm as well as
I've ever been. We're sitting up here on top
of the world like a king and queen, spending money. Arne
needs me."
  "Won't you reconsider, Luke? If you really
wanted to, you could buy your station now."
  "Let's hang on a bit longer the way we
are, Meg."
  He wouldn't admit it, of course, but the lure
of the sugar was in his bones, the strange fascination some
men have for utterly demanding labor. As long as his young
man's strength held up, Luke would remain
faithful to the sugar. The only thing Meggie could
hope for was to force him into changing his mind by giving him
a child, an heir to the property out around Kynuna.
  So she went back to Himmelhoch to wait and
hope. Please, please, let there be a babyl A
baby would solve everything, so please let there be a
baby. And there was. When she told Anne and
Luddie, they were overjoyed. Luddie
especially turned out to be a treasure. He did
the most exquisite smocking and embroidery, two
crafts Meggie had never had time to master, so while
he pushed a tiny needle through delicate fabric
  with his horny, magical hands, Meggie helped
Anne get the nursery together. The only trouble was the
baby wasn't sitting well, whether because of the heat
or her unhappiness Meggie didn't know. The
morning sickness was all day, and persisted long after it
should have stopped; in spite of her very slight weight
gain she began to suffer badly from too much fluid in
the tissues of her body, and her blood pressure
went up to a point at which Doc Smith became
apprehensive. At first he talked of hospital
in Cairns for the remainder of her pregnancy, but
after a long think about her husbandless, friendless situation
he decided she would be better off with Luddie and
Anne, who did care for her. For the last three
weeks of her term, however, she must definitely go
to Cairns.
  "And try to get her husband to come and see her!"
he roared to Luddie. Meggie had written right
away to tell Luke she was pregnant, full of the
usual feminine conviction that once the not-wanted was
an irrefutable fact, Luke would become
wildly enthusiastic. His answering letter scotched
any such delusions. He was furious. As far as he
was concerned, becoming a father simply meant he would have
two nonworking mouths to feed, instead of none. It
  was a bitter pill for Meggie to swallow, but
swallow it she did; she had no choice. Now the
coming child bound her to him as tightly as her pride. But
she felt ill, helpless, utterly unloved; even
the baby didn't love her, didn't want to be
conceived or born. She could feel it inside her, the
weakly tiny creature's feeble protests against
growing into being. Had she been able to tolerate the
two-thousand-mile rail journey home, she would have
gone, but Doc Smith shook his lead firmly.
Get on a train for a week or more, even in broken
stages, and that would be the end of the baby. Disappointed
and unhappy though she was, Meggie wouldn't
consciously do anything to harm the baby. Yet as time
went on her enthusiasm and her
  longing to have someone of her own to love withered in her; the
incubus child hung heavier, more resentful.
  Doc Smith talked of an earlier transfer
to Cairns; he wasn't sure Meggie could
survive a birth in Dungloe, which had only a
cottage infirmary. Her blood
pressure was recalcitrant, the fluid kept
mounting; he talked of toxemia and eclampsia,
other long medical words which frightened Anne and
Luddie into agreeing, much as they longed to see the
baby born at Himmelhoch. By the end of May
there were only four weeks left to go, four weeks
until Meggie could rid herself of this intolerable
burden, this ungrateful child. She was learning to hate
it, the very being she had wanted so much before discovering what
trouble it would cause. Why had she assumed Luke
would look forward to the baby once its existence was a
reality? Nothing in his attitude or conduct since
their marriage indicated he would. Time she admitted
it was a disaster, abandoned her silly pride and tried
to
  salvage what she could from the ruins. They had
married for all the wrong reasons: he for her money,
she as an escape from Ralph de Bricassart
while trying to retain Ralph de Bricassart.
There had never been any pretense at love, and
only love might have helped her and Luke
to overcome the enormous difficulties their differing
aims and desires created. Oddly enough, she never
seemed able to hate Luke, where she found herself hating
Ralph de Bricassart more and more
frequently. Yet when all was said and done,
Ralph had been far kinder and fairer to her than
Luke. Not once had he encouraged her to dream of
him in any roles save priest and friend, for even on
the two occasions when he had kissed her, she had
begun the move herself.
  Why be so angry with him, then? Why hate
Ralph and not Luke? Blame her own fears and
inadequacies, the huge, outraged resentment she
felt because he had consistently rejected her when she
loved and wanted
  him so much. And blame that stupid impulse which had
led her to marry Luke O'neill. A betrayal
of her own self and Ralph. No matter if she
could never have married him, slept with him, had his child.
No matter if he didn't want her, and he
didn't want her. The fact remained that he was who
she wanted, and she ought never to have settled for less.
  But knowing the wrongs couldn't alter them. It was still
Luke O'neill she had married, Luke
O'neill's child she was carrying. How could she be
happy at
  the thought of Luke O'neill's child, when even he
didn't want it? Poor little thing. At least when it
was born it would be its own piece of
humanity, and could be loved as that. Only . . .
What wouldn't she give, for Ralph de
Bricassart's child? The impossible, the
never-to-be. He served an institution which insisted
on having all of him, even that part of him she had no
use for, his manhood. That Mother Church required from
him as a sacrifice to her power as an institution, and
thus wasted him, stamped his being out of being, made
sure that when he stopped he would be stopped forever.
Only one day she would have to pay for her greed. One
day there wouldn't be any more Ralph de
Bricassarts, because they'd value their manhood enough
to see that her de- manding it of them was a useless
sacrifice, having no meaning whatsoever ....
Suddenly she stood up and waddled through to the living
room, where Anne was sitting reading an underground
copy of Norman Lindsay's banned novel,
Redheap, very obviously enjoying every forbidden word.
"Anne, I think you're going to get your wish."
  Anne looked up absently. "What, dear?"
  "Phone Doc Smith. I'm going to have this
wretched baby here and now." "Oh, my God!
Get into the bedroom and lie downnot your bedroom,
ours!" Cursing the whims of fate and the determination of
babies, Doc Smith hurried out from
Dungloe in his 368
  battered car with the local midwife in the back and
as much equipment as he could carry from his little cottage
hospital. No use taking her there; he could do as
much for her at Himmelhoch. But Cairns was where
she ought to be. "Have you let the husband know?" he
asked as he pounded up the front steps, his
midwife behind him.
  "I sent a telegram. She's in my room;
I thought it would give you more space."
  Hobbling in their wake, Anne went into her
bedroom. Meggie was lying on the bed, wide-eyed and
giving no indication of pain except for an occasional
spasm of her hands, a drawing-in of her body.
She turned her head to smile at
  Anne, and Anne saw that the eyes were very frightened.
"I'm glad I never got to Cairns" she said.
"My mother never went to hospital to have hers, and
Daddy said once she had a terrible time with Hat.
But she survived, and so will I. We're hard
to kill, we Cleary women." It was hours later
when the doctor joined Anne on the veranda. "It's
a long, hard business for the little woman. First
babies are rarely easy, but this one's not lying
well and she just drags on without getting
anywhere. If she was in Cairns she could have a
Caesarean, but that's out of the question here. She'll just have
to push it out all by herself." "Is she conscious?"
  "Oh, yes. Gallant little soul, doesn't
scream or complain. The best ones usually have the
worst time of it in my opinion. Keeps asking me
if Ralph's here yet, and I have to tell her some
lie about the Johnstone in flood. I thought her
husband's name was Luke?"
  "It is."
  "Hmmm! Well, maybe that's why she's asking
for this Ralph, whoever he is. Luke's no comfort,
is he?"
  "Luke's a bastard."
  Anne leaned forward, hands on the veranda railing.
A taxi was coming from the Dunny road, and had turned
off up the incline to Himmelhoch. Her excellent
eyesight just discerned a black-haired man in the
back, and she crowed with relief and joy.
  "I don't believe what I see, but I think
Luke's finally remembered he's got a wife!"
  "I'd best go back to her and leave you to cope with
him, Anne. I won't mention it to her, in case it
isn't him. If it is him, give him a cup of
tea and save the hard stuff for later.
He's going to need it."
  The taxi drew up; to Anne's surprise the
driver got out and went to the back door to open it for
his passenger. Joe Castiglione, who ran
Dunny's sole taxi, wasn't usually given
to such courtesies.
  "Himmelhoch, Your Grace," he said, bowing
deeply. A man in a long, flowing black
soutane got out, a purple grosgrain sash about his
waist. As he turned, Anne thought for a dazed
moment that Luke O'neill was playing some
elaborate trick on her. Then she saw that this was
a far different man, a good ten years older than
Luke. My God! she thought as
  the graceful figure mounted her steps two at a
time. He's the handsomest chap I've ever seen! An
archbishop, no less! What does a Catholic
archbishop want with a pair of old Lutherans like
Luddie and me? "Mrs. Mueller?" he asked,
smiling down at her with kind, aloof blue eyes.
As if he had seen much he would give anything not to have
seen, and had managed to stop feeling long ago.
  "Yes, I'm Anne Mueller."
  "I'm Archbishop Ralph de Bricassart,
His Holiness's Legate in Australia.
I
  understand you have a Mrs. Luke O'neill staying
with you?" "Yes, sir." Ralph? Ralph? Was this
Ralph?
  "I'm a very old friend of hers. I wonder if I
might see her, please?" "Well, I'm sure
she'd be delighted, Archbishop"!--- 370
  no, that wasn't right, one didn't say
Archbishop, one said Your Grace, like Joe
Castiglione-"under more normal circumstances, but
at the moment Meggie's in labor, and having a very
hard time."
  Then she saw that he hadn't succeeded in stopping
feeling at all, only disciplined it to a doglike
abjection at the back of his thinking mind. His eyes
were so blue she felt she drowned in them, and what she
saw in them now made her wonder what Meggie was
to him, and what he was to Meggie. "I knew something was
wrong! I've felt that something was wrong for a long
time, but of late my worry's become an
obsession. I had to come and see for myself. Please,
let me see her! If you wish for a reason, I am
a priest." Anne had never intended to deny him.
"Come along, Your Grace, through here, please." And
as she shuffled slowly between her two sticks
she kept thinking: Is the house clean and tidy? Have
I dusted? Did we remember to throw out that smelly
old leg of lamb, or is it all through the place?
What a time for a man as important as this one to come
calling! Luddie, will you never get your fat arse off
that tractor and come in? The boy should have found you
hours ago! He went past Doc Smith and the
midwife as if they didn't exist to drop on his
knees beside the bed, his hand reaching for hers.
"Meggie!"
  She dragged herself out of the ghastly dream into which she
had sunk, past caring, and saw the beloved face
close to hers, the strong black hair with two white
wings in its darkness now, the fine aristocratic
features a little more lined, more patient if possible,
and the blue eyes looking into hers with love and longing.
How had she ever confused Luke with him? There was no
one like him, there never would be for her, and she had
betrayed what she felt for him. Luke was the dark
side of
  the mirror; Ralph was as splendid as the sun,
and as remote. Oh, how beautiful to see him!
  "Ralph, help me," she said.
  He kissed her hand passionately, then held it
to his cheek. "Always, my Meggie, you know
that."
  "Pray for me, and the baby. If anyone can save
us, you can. You're much closer to God than we are.
No one wants us, no one has ever wanted us,
even you."
  "Where's Luke?"
  "I don't know, and I don't care." She
closed her eyes and rolled her head upon the plllow,
but the fingers in his gripped strongly, wouldn't let him
go.
  Then Doc Smith touched him on the shoulder.
"Your Grace, I think you ought to step outside
now."
  "If her life is in danger, you'll call
me?"
  "In a second."
  Luddie had finally come in from the cane, frantic
because there was no one to be seen and he didn't dare
enter the bedroom. "Anne, is she all right?" he
asked as his wife came out with the Archbishop.
  "So far. Doc won't commit himself, but I think
he's got hope. Luddie, we have a visitor.
This is Archbishop Ralph de Bricassart, an
old friend of Meggie's."
  Better versed than his wife, Luddie
dropped on one knee and kissed the ring on the hand
held out to him. "Sit down, Your Grace, talk
to Anne. I'll go and put a kettle on for some
tea."
  "So you're Ralph," Anne said, propping her
sticks against a bamboo table while the priest sat
opposite her with the folds of his soutane falling about
him, his glossy black riding boots clearly
visible, for he had crossed his knees. It was an
effeminate thing for a man to do, but he was a priest so
it didn't matter; yet there was something intensely
masculine about him, crossed legs or no. He was
probably not as old as she had first thought; in his very
early forties, perhaps. What a waste of a
magnificent man!
  "Yes, I'm Ralph."
  "Ever since Meggie's labor started she's been
asking for someone called Ralph. I must admit I
was puzzled. I don't ever remember her mentioning a
Ralph before."
  "She wouldn't."
  "How do you know Meggie, Your Grace? For how
long?" The priest smiled wryly and clasped his
thin, very beautiful hands together so they made a pointed
church roof. "I've known Meggie since
she was ten years old, only days off the boat from
New Zealand. You might in all truth say that
I've known Meggie through flood and fire and
emotional famine, and through death, and life. All that
we have to bear. Meggie is the mirror in which I'm
forced to view my mortality."
  "You love her!" Anne's tone was surprised.
  "Always."
  "It's a tragedy for both of you."
  "I had hoped only for me. Tell me about her,
what's happened to her since she married. It's many
years since I've seen her, but I haven't been
happy about her."
  "I'll tell you, but only after you've told me
about Meggie. Oh, I don't mean personal
things, only about what sort of life she led before she
came to
  Dunny. We know absolutely nothing of her,
Luddie and I, except that she used to live somewhere
near Gillanbone. We'd like to know more, because we're
very fond of her. But she would never tell us a
thing-pride, I think." Luddie carried in a tray
loaded with tea and food, and sat down while the
priest gave them an outline of Meggie's life
before she married Luke. "I would never have
guessed it in a million years! To think Luke
O'neill had the temerity to take her from all that and
put her to work as a housemaid! And had the hide
to stipulate that her wages be put in his bank-
book! Do you know the poor little thing has never had a
penny in her purse to
  spend on herself since she's been here? I had
Luddie give her a cash bonus last
  Christmas, but by then she needed so many things it was
all spent in a day, and she'd never take more from us."
  "Don't feel sorry for Meggie," said
Archbishop Ralph a little harshly. "I don't
think she feels sorry for herself, certainly not over
lack of money. It's brought little joy to her after
all, has it? She knows where to go if she can't do
without it. I'd say Luke's apparent indifference
has hurt her far more than the lack of money. My
poor Meggie!" Between them Anne and Luddie
filled in the outline of Meggie's life, while
Archbishop de Bricassart sat, his hands still
steepled, his gaze on the lovely sweeping fan of a
traveler's palm outside. Not once did a
muscle in his face move, or a change come into those
detachedly beautiful eyes. He had learned much
since being in the service of Vittorio
Scarbanza, Cardinal di ContiniVerchese.
  When the tale was done he sighed, and shifted his
gaze to their anxious faces. "Well, it seems
we must help her, since Luke will not. If Luke
truly doesn't want her, she'd be better off
back on Drogheda. I know you don't want
to lose her, but for her sake try to persuade her to go
home. I shall send you a check from Sydney for her,
so she won't have the embarrassment of asking her
brother for money. Then when she gets home she can
tell them what she likes." He glanced toward the
bedroom door and moved restlessly. "Dear God,
let the child be born!"
  But the child wasn't born until nearly
twenty-four hours later, and Meggie almost dead from
exhaustion and pain. Doc Smith had given her
copious doses of laudanum, that still being the best
thing, in his oldfashioned opinion; she seemed
to drift whirling through spiraling nightmares in which things
from without and within ripped and tore, clawed and spat,
howled and whined and roared. Sometimes Ralph's face
would come into focus for a small moment, then go again on
  a heaving tide of pain; but the memory of him
persisted, and while he kept watch she knew neither
she nor the baby would die. Pausing,
while the midwife coped alone, to snatch food and a
stiff tot of rum and check that none of his other
patients were inconsiderate enough to think of dying, Doc
Smith listened to as much of the story as Anne and
Luddie thought wise to tell him.
  "You're right, Anne," he said. "All that riding
is probably one of the reasons for her trouble now.
When the sidesaddle went out it was a bad thing for
women who must ride a lot. Astride develops
the wrong muscles." "I'd heard that was an old
wives' tale," said the Archbishop mildly. Doc
Smith looked at him maliciously. He wasn't
fond of Catholic priests, deemed them a
sanctimonious lot of driveling fools. "Think
what you like," he said. "But tell me, Your
Grace, if it came down to a choice between
Meggie's life and the baby's, what would your
conscience advise?"
  "The Church is adamant on that point,
Doctor. No choice must ever be made. The child cannot
be done to death to save the mother, nor the mother done to death
to save the child." He smiled back at Doc Smith
just as maliciously. "But if it should come to that,
Doctor, I won't hesitiate to tell you
to save Meggie, and the hell with the baby."
  Doc Smith gasped, laughed, and clapped him
on the back. "Good for you! Rest easy, I won't
broadcast what you said. But so far the child's alive,
and I can't see what good killing it is going to do."
  But Anne was thinking to herself: I wonder what your
answer would have been if the child was yours, Archbishop?
  About three hours later, as the afternoon sun was
sliding sadly down the sky toward Mount Bartle
Frere's misty bulk, Doc Smith came out of the
bedroom.
  "Well, it's over," he said with some
satisfaction. "Meggie's got a long road
ahead of her, but she'll be all right, God willing.
And the baby is a skinny, cranky, five-pound
girl with a whopping great head and a temper to match the
most poisonous red hair I've ever seen on a
newborn baby. You couldn't kill that little mite with
an axe, and I know, because I nearly tried."
  Jubilant, Luddie broke out the bottle of
champagne he had been saving, and the five of them
stood with their glasses brimming; priest, doctor,
midwife, farmer and cripple toasted the health and
well-being of the mother and her screaming, crotchety
baby. It was the first of June, the first day of the
Australian winter.
  A nurse had arrived to take over from the
midwife, and would stay until Meggie was
pronounced out of all danger. The doctor and the
midwife left, while Anne, Luddie and the
Archbishop went to see Meggie. She looked so
tiny and wasted in the double bed that Archbishop Ralph
was obliged to store away another, separate pain in
the back of his mind, to be taken out later, inspected
and endured. Meggie, my torn and beaten Meggie .
. . I shall love you always, but I cannot give you what
Luke O'neill did, however grudgingly.
  The grizzling scrap of humanity responsible for
all this lay in a wicker bassinet by the far wall,
not a bit appreciative of their attention as they
stood around her and peered down. She yelled her
resentment, and kept on yelling. In the end the
nurse lifted her, bassinet and all; and put her
in the room designated as her nursery.
  "There's certainly nothing wrong with her lungs."
Archbishop Ralph smiled, sitting on the edge of the
bed and taking Meggie's pale hand. "I don't
think she likes life much," Meggie said with an
answering smile. How much older he looked! As
fit and supple as ever, but immeasurably older.
She turned her head to Anne and Luddie,
and held out her other
  hand. "My dear good friends! Whatever would I have
done without you? Have we
  heard from Luke?"
  "I got a telegram saying he was too busy
to come, but wishing you good luck."
  "Big of him," said Meggie.
  Anne bent quickly to kiss her check. "We'll
leave you to talk with the Archbishop, dear. I'm sure
you've got a lot of catching up to do." Leaning on
  Luddie, she crooked her finger at the nurse,
who was gaping at the priest as if she couldn't
believe her eyes. "Come on, Nettie, have a
cup of tea with us. His Grace will let you know if
Meggie needs you."
  "What are you going to call your noisy daughter?"
he asked as the door closed and they were alone.
  "Justine."
  "It's a very good name, but why did you choose it?"
"I read it somewhere, and I liked it."
  "Don't you want her, Meggie?"
  Her face had shrunk, and seemed all eyes;
they were soft and filled with a
  misty light, no hate but no love either. "I
suppose I want her. Yes, I do
want her. I schemed enough to get her. But while I
was carrying her I couldn't feel anything for her,
except that she didn't want me. I don't think
Justine will ever be mine, or Luke's, or
anyone's. I think she's always going to belong
to herself."
  "I must go, Meggie," he said gently.
  Now the eyes grew harder, brighter: her mouth
twisted into an unpleasant shape. "I expected
that! Funny how the men in my life all scuttle
off into the woodwork, isn't it?"
  He winced. "Don't be bitter, Meggie. I
can't bear to leave thinking of you like this. No matter
what's happened to you in the past, you've always retained
your sweetness and it's the thing about you I find most
endearing. Don't change, don't become hard because
of this. I know it must be terrible to think that Luke
didn't
  care enough to come, but don't change. You wouldn't be
my Meggie anymore." But still she looked at him
half as if she hated him. "Oh, come off it,
Ralph! I'm not your Meggie, I never was! You
didn't want me, you sent me to him, to Luke.
What do you think I am, some sort of saint, or a
nun? Well, I'm not! I'm an
ordinary human being, and you've spoiled my lifel
All the years I've loved you, and wanted to forget
you, but then I married a man I thought looked a little
bit like you, and he doesn't want me or need me
either. Is it
  so much to ask of a man, to be needed and wanted
by him?" She began to sob, mastered it; there were fine
lines of pain on her face that he had never seen
before, and he knew they weren't the kind that rest and
returning health would smooth away.
  "Luke's not a bad man, or even an
unlikable one," she went on. "Just a man. You're
all the same, great big hairy moths bashing yourselves
to pieces after a silly flame behind a glass so
clear your eyes don't see it. And if you do
manage to blunder your way inside the glass to fly
into the flame, you fall down burned and dead. While
all the time out there in the cool night there's food, and
love, and baby moths to get. But do you see it, do
you want it? No! It's back after the flame again,
beating yourselves senseless until you burn yourselves dead!"
  He didn't know what to say to her, for this was a
side of her he had never seen. Had it always been
there, or had she grown it out of her terrible trouble and
abandonment? Meggie, saying things like this?
He hardly heard what she said, he was so upset that
she should say it, and so didn't understand that it came from
her loneliness, and her guilt. "Do you remember the
rose you gave me the night I left Drogheda?"
he asked tenderly.
  "Yes, I remember." The life had gone out of
her voice, the hard light out of her eyes. They
stared at
  him now like a soul without hope, as expressionless and
glassy as her mother's.
  "I have it still, in my missal. And every time I see
a rose that color, I think of you. Meggie, I
love you. You're my rose, the most beautiful
human image and thought in my life."
  Down went the corners of her mouth again, up shone
that tense, glittering fierceness with the tang of hate in
it. "An image, a thought! A human image and
thought! Yes, that's right, that's all I am to you!
You're nothing but a
  romantic, dreaming fool, Ralph de
Bricassart! You have no more idea of what life is
all about than the moth I called you! No wonder you
became a priest! You couldn't live with the ordinariness
of life if you were an ordinary man any more than
ordinary man Luke does!
  "You say you love me, but you have no idea what
love is; you're just mouthing words you've memorized
because you think they sound good! What floors me is why
you men haven't managed to dispense with us women altogether,
which is what you'd like to do, isn't it? You should work out a
way of marrying each other; you'd be divinely
happy!" "Meggie, don't! Please don't!"
  "Oh, go away! I don't want to look at
you! And you've forgotten one thing about your precious
roses, Ralph-they've got nasty, hooky
thorns!" He left the room without looking back.
  Luke never bothered to aqswer the telegram informing
him he was the proud father of a five-pound girl named
Justine. Slowly Meggie got better, and the baby
began to thrive. Perhaps if Meggie could have managed
to feed her she might have developed more rapport with the
scrawny, bad-tempered little thing, but she had
absolutely no milk in the plenteous breasts
Luke had so loved to suck. That's an ironic
justice, she thought. She dutifully changed and
bottle-fed the red-faced, red-
  headed morsel just as custom dictated she should,
waiting for the commencement of some wonderful, surging
emotion. But it never came; she felt no desire
to smother the tiny face with kisses, or bite
the wee fingers, or do any of the thousand silly things
mothers loved to do with babies. It didn't feel like
her baby, and it didn't want or need her any more
than she did it. It, it! Her, her! She couldn't
even remember to call it her. Luddie and Anne
never dreamed Meggie did not adore Justine, that
she felt less for Justine than she had for any of
her mother's younger babies. Whenever Justine cried
Meggie was right there to pick her up, croon to her,
rock her, and never was a baby drier or more comfortable.
The strange thing was that Justine didn't seem
to want to be picked up or crooned over; she
quieted much faster if she was left alone.
  As time went on she improved in looks. Her
infant skin lost its redness, acquired that thin
blue-veined transparency which goes so often with red
hair, and her little arms and legs filled out to pleasing
plumpness. The hair began to curl and thicken and
to assume forever the same violent shade her grandfather
Paddy had owned. Everyone waited anxiously to see
what color her eyes would turn out to be, Luddie
betting on her father's blue, Anne on her mother's
grey, Meggie without an opinion. But Justine's
eyes were very definitely her own, and unnerving to say
the least. At six weeks they began
to change, and by the ninth week had gained their final
color and form. No one had even seen anything like
them. Around the outer rim of the iris was a
  very dark grey ring, but the iris itself was so pale it
couldn't be called either blue or grey; the closest
description of the color was a sort of dark white.
They were riveting, uncomfortable, inhuman eyes, rather
blind-looking; but as time went on it was obvious
Justine saw through them very well. Though he didn't
mention it, Doc Smith had been worried by the size
of her head when she was born, and
  kept a close watch on it for the first six months
of her life; he had wondered, especially after
seeing those strange eyes, if she didn't perhaps have
what he still called water on the brain, though the
textbooks these days were calling it
hydrocephalus. But it appeared Justine wasn't
suffering from any kind of cerebral dysfunction or
malformation; she just had a very big head, and as she
grew the rest of her more or less caught up to it.
Luke stayed away. Meggie had written to him
repeatedly, but he neither answered nor came to see
his child. In a way she was glad; she wouldn't have known
what to say to him, and she didn't think he would be at
all entranced with the odd little creature who was
his daughter. Had Justine been a strapping big
son he might have relented, but Meggie was fiercely
glad she wasn't. She was living proof the great
Luke O'neill wasn't perfect, for if he
  was he would surely have sired nothing but sons. The
baby thrived better than Meggie did, recovered
faster from the birth ordeal. By the time she was four
months old she ceased to cry so much and began
to amuse herself as she lay in her bassinet, fiddling
and pinching at the rows of brightly colored beads
strung within her reach. But she never smiled at
anyone, even in the guise of gas pains. The Wet
came early, in October, and it was a very wet
Wet. The humidity climbed to 100 percent and
stayed there; every day for hours the rain roared and whipped
about Himmelhoch, melting the scarlet soil,
drenching the cane, filling the wide, deep
Dungloe River but not overflowing it, for its course
was so short the water got away into the sea quickly
enough. While Justine lay in her bassinet
contemplating her world through those strange eyes,
Meggie sat dully watching Bartle Frere
disappear behind a wall of dense rain, then reappear.
  The sun would come out, writhing veils of steam
issue from the ground, the wet cane shimmer
and
  sparkle diamond prisms, and the river seem like
a great gold snake. Then hanging right across the
vault of the sky a double rainbow would materialize,
perfect throughout its length on both bows, so rich in
its coloring against the sullen dark-blue clouds that
all save a North Queensland landscape would have
been paled and diminished. Being North Queensland,
nothing was washed out by its ethereal glow, and Meggie
thought she knew why the Gillanbone countryside was
so brown and grey; North Queensland had usurped
its share of the palette as well.
  One day at the beginning of December, Anne
came out onto the veranda and sat down beside her,
watching her. Oh, she was so thin, so lifeless! Even
the lovely goldy hair had dulled.
  "Meggie, I don't know whether I've done the
wrong thing, but I've done it anyway, and I want
you at least to listen to me before you say no." Meggie
turned from the rainbows, smiling. "You sound so
solemn, Anne! What is it I must listen to?"
  "Luddie and I are worried about you. You haven't
picked up properly since Justine was born, and
now The Wet's here you're looking even worse.
You're not eating and you're losing weight.
I've never thought the climate here agreed with you, but
as long as nothing happened to drag you down you managed
to cope with it. Now we think you're sick, and unless
something's done you're going to get really ill."
  She drew a breath. "So a couple of weeks
ago I wrote to a friend of mine in
  the tourist bureau, and booked you a holiday. And
don't start protesting about the expense; it won't
dent Luke's resources or ours. The Archbishop
sent us a very big check for you, and your brother sent us
another one for you and the baby-I think he was hinting go
home for a while-from everyone on Drogheda. And after
we talked it over, Luddie and I decided the best
thing we
  could do was spend some of it on a holiday for you. I
don't think going
  home to Drogheda is the right sort of holiday,
though. What Luddie and I feel you need most is
a thinking time. No Justine, no us, no Luke,
no Drogheda. Have you ever been on your own,
Meggie? It's time you were. So we've booked you
a cottage on Matlock Island for two months,
from the beginning of January to the beginning of March.
Luddie and I will look after Justine. You know she
won't come to any harm, but if we're the
slightest bit worried about her, you have our word
we'll notify you right away, and the island's on the
phone so it wouldn't take long to fetch you back."
The rainbows had gone, so had the sun; it was getting
ready to rain again. "Anne, if it hadn't been for you
and Luddie these past three years, I would have gone
mad. You know that. Sometimes in the night I wake up
wondering what would have happened to me had Luke put
me with people less kind. You've cared for me more than
Luke has."
  "Twaddle! If Luke had put you with
unsympathetic people you would have gone back to Drogheda,
and who knows? Maybe that might have been the best
course." "No. It hasn't been pleasant, this
thing with Luke, but it was far better for me to stay and
work it out."
  The rain was beginning to inch its way across the dimming
cane blotting out everything behind its edge, like a grey
cleaver. "You're right, I'm not well," Meggie
said. "I haven't been well since Justine was
conceived. I've tried to pull myself up, but I
suppose one reaches a point where there isn't the
energy to do it. Oh, Anne, I'm so tired and
discouraged! I'm not even a good mother to Justine, and
I owe her that. I'm the one caused her
to be; she didn't ask for it. But mostly I'm
discouraged because Luke, won't even give me a
chance to make him happy. He won't live with me
or let me make a home for him; he doesn't
want our children. I don't love him -I never did
love him the way a woman ought to love
  the man she marries, and maybe he sensed it from the
word go. Maybe if I had loved him, he would have
acted differently. So how can I blame him?
I've only myself to blame, I think."
  "It's the Archbishop you love, isn't it?"
  "Oh, ever since I was a little girl! I was hard
on him when he came. Poor Ralph! I had no
right to say what I did to him, because he never
encouraged me, you know. I hope he's had time
to understand that I was in pain, worn out, and terribly
unhappy. All I could think was it ought by rights to be
his child and it never would be, never could be. It isn't
fair! Protestant clergy can marry, why can't
Catholic? And don't try to tell me ministers
don't care for their flocks the way priests do, because
I won't believe you. I've met heartless
priests and wonderful ministers. But because of the
celibacy of priests I've had to go away from
Ralph, make my home and my life with
someone else, have someone else's baby. And do you know
something, Anne? That's as disgusting a sin as Ralph
breaking his vows, or more so. I resent the Church's
implication that my loving Ralph or his loving me
is wrong!" "Go away for a while, Meggie. Rest
and eat and sleep and stop fretting. Then maybe when
you come back you can somehow persuade Luke to buy that
station instead of talking about it. I know you don't
love him, but I think if he gave you half a
chance you might be happy with him."
  The grey eyes were the same color as the rain
falling in sheets all around the house; their voices
had risen to shouting pitch to be audible above the
incredible din on the iron roof.
  "But that's just it, Anne! When Luke and I went
up to Atherton I realized at last that he'll never
leave the sugar while he's got the strength to cut
it. He loves the life, he really does. He
loves being with men as strong and independent as he is
himself; he loves roaming from one place to the other.
He's always been a 384
  wanderer, now I come to think of it. As for needing a
woman for pleasure if nothing else, he's too
exhausted by the cane. And how can I put it? Luke
is the kind of man who quite genuinely
doesn't care if he eats his food off a packing
crate and sleeps on the floor. Don't you see?
One can't appeal to him as to one who likes nice
things, because he doesn't. Sometimes I think he
despises nice things, pretty things. They're
soft, they might make him soft. I have
absolutely no enticements powerful enough to sway him
from his present way of life."
  She glanced up impatiently at the veranda roof,
as if tired of shouting. "I
  don't know if I'm strong enough to take the
loneliness of having no home for the next ten or
fifteen years, Anne, or however long it's going
to take Luke to wear himself out. It's lovely here with
you; I don't want you to think I'm ungrateful.
But I want a home! I want Justine to have
brothers and sisters, I want to dust my own
furniture, I want to make curtains for my own
windows, cook on my own stove for my own man.
Oh, Anne! I'm just an ordinary sort of a
woman; I'm not ambitious or intelligent or
well educated, you know that. All I want is a
husband, children, my own home. And a bit of love from
someone!"
  Anne got out her handkerchief, wiped
her eyes and tried to laugh. "What a soppy pair
we are! But I do understand, Meggie, really I do.
I've been married to Luddie for ten years, the
only truly happy ones of my life. I had
infantile paralysis when I was five years old,
and it left me like this. I was convinced no one would ever
look at me. Nor did they, God knows. When
I met Luddie I was thirty years old, teaching
for a living. He was ten years younger than me, so I
couldn't take him seriously when he said he loved
me and wanted to marry me. How terrible, Meggie,
to ruin a very young man's life! For five years I
treated him to the worst display of downright nastiness you
could imagine, but he always came back for more. So I
married him, and I've
  been happy. Luddie says he is, but I'm not
sure. He's had to give up a lot, including
children, and he looks older than I do these days,
poor chap." "It's the life, Anne, and the
climate."
  The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun; the
sun came out, the rainbows waxed to full glory in
the steamy sky; Mount Bartle Frere loomed
lilac out of the scudding clouds.
  Meggie spoke again. "I'll go. I'm
very grateful to you for thinking of it; it's probably
what I need. But are you sure Justine won't be
too much trouble?"
  "Lord, no! Luddie's got it all worked out.
Anna Maria, who used to work for me before you came,
has a younger sister, Annunziata, who wants to go
nursing in Townsville. But she won't be sixteen
until March, and she finishes school in a few
days. So while you're away she's going to come here.
She's an expert foster mother, too. There are
hordes of babies in the Tesoriero clan."
"Matlock Island. Where is it?"
  "Just near Whitsunday Passage on the Great
Barrier Reef. It's very quiet and private,
mostly a honeymoon resort, I suppose. You
know the sort of thing-cottages instead of a central
hotel. You won't have to go to dinner in a crowded dining
room, or be civil to a whole heap of people you'd rather not
talk to at all. And at this time of year it's just about
deserted, because of
  the danger of summer cyclones. The Wet isn't
a problem, but no one ever seems to want to go to the
Reef in summer. Probably because most of the people who
go to the Reef come from Sydney or Melbourne, and
summer down there is lovely without going
away. In June and July and August the
southerners have it booked out for three years ahead."
  On the last day of 1937 Meggie caught the
train to Townsville. Though her holiday had
scarcely begun, she already felt much better, for she
had left the molasses reek of Dunny behind her.
The biggest settlement in North Queensland,
Townsville was a thriving town of several thousands
living in white wooden houses atop stilts. A
tight connection between train and boat left her with no
time to explore, but in a way Meggie wasn't
sorry she had to
  rush to the wharf without a chance to think; after that ghastly
voyage across the Tasman sixteen years ago she
wasn't looking forward to thirty-six hours in a
ship much smaller than the Wahine.
  But it was quite different, a whispering slide in
glassy waters, and she was twenty-six, not ten. The
air was between cyclones, the sea was exhausted; though it
was only midday Meggie put her head down and
slept dreamlessly until the steward woke her at
six the next morning with a cup of tea and a plate of
plain sweet biscuits.
  Up on deck was a new Australia, different
again. In a high clear sky, delicately
colorless, a pink and pearly glow suffused slowly
upward from the eastern rim of the ocean until the sun
stood above the horizon and the light lost its
neonatal redness, became day. The ship was slithering
soundlessly through water which had no
  taint, so translucent over the side that one could
look fathoms down to grottoes of purple and see
the forms of vivid fish flashing by. In distant
vistas the sea was a greenish-hued aquamarine,
splotched with wine-dark stains where weed or coral
covered the floor, and on all sides it seemed
islands with palmy shores of brilliant white sand
just grew out of it spontaneously like crystals in
silica-jungle-clad and mountainous islands or
flat, bushy islands not much higher than the water.
"The flat ones are the true coral islands,"
explained a crewman. "If they're ring-shaped and
enclose a lagoon they're called atolls, but if
they're just a lump of reef risen above the sea
they're called cays. The hilly islands are the
tops of mountains, but they're still surrounded by coral
reefs, and they have lagoons."
  "Where's Matlock Island?" Meggie asked.
  He looked at her curiously; a lone woman
going on holiday to a honeymoon island like
Matlock was a contradiction in terms. "We're
sailing down Whitsunday Passage now, then we
head out to the Pacific edge of the reef.
Matlock's ocean side is pounded by the big
breakers that come in for a hundred miles off the deep
Pacific like express trains, roaring so you can't
hear yourself think. Can you imagine riding the same
wave for a hundred miles?" He sighed wistfully.
"We'll be at Matlock before sundown, madam."
And an hour before sundown the little ship heaved its way
through the backwash of the surf whose spume rose like a
towering misty wall into the eastern sky. A jetty
on spindling piles doddered literally half a mile
out across the reef exposed by low tide, behind it a
high, craggy coastline which didn't fit in with
Meggie's expectations of tropical splendor.
An elderly man stood waiting, helped her from
ship to jetty, and took her cases from a crewman.
  "How d'you do, Mrs. O'neill," he
greeted her. "I'm Rob Walter. Hope your
husband gets the chance to come after all. Not too much
company on Matlock this time of year; it's really a
winter resort."
  They walked together down the uneasy planking, the
exposed coral molten in the dying sun and the
fearsome sea a reflected, tumultuous glory of
crimson foam.
  "Tide's out, or you'd have had a rougher trip.
See the mist in the east? That's the edge of the Great
Barrier Reef itself. Here on Matlock we hang
onto it by the skin of our teeth; you'll feel the
island shaking all the time from the pounding out there." He
helped her into a car. "This is the windward side of
Matlock-a bit wild and unwelcome looking,
eh? But you wait until you see the leeward side,
ah! Something like, it is."
  They hurtled with the careless speed natural to the
only car on Matlock down a narrow road of
crunchy coral bones, through palms and thick
undergrowth with a tall hill rearing to one side, perhaps
four miles across the island's spine.
  "Oh, how beautiful!" said Meggie.
  They had emerged on another road which ran all
around the looping sandy shores of the lagoon side,
crescent-shaped and hollow. Far out was more white
spray where the ocean broke in dazzling lace on the
edges of the lagoon reef, but within the coral's
embrace the water was still and calm, a polished
silver mirror tinged with bronze.
  "Island's four miles wide and eight
long," her guide explained. They drove past a
straggling white building with a deep veranda and
shoplike windows. "The general store," he said with a
proprietary flourish. "I live there with the
Missus, and she's not too happy about a lone
woman coming here, I can tell you. Thinks I'll be
seduced was how she put it. Just as well the bureau
said you wanted complete peace and quiet, because it
soothed the Missus a bit when I put you in the
farthestout place we have. There's not a soul in your
direction; the only other couple here are on the other
side. You can lark around without a stitch on-no one will
see you. The Missus isn't going to let me out of
her sight while you're here. When you need something, just
pick up your phone and I'll bring it out. No
sense walking
  all the way in. And Missus or no, I'll
call in on you once a day at sunset, just to make
sure you're all right. Best that you're in the house
then-and wear a proper dress, in case the Missus
comes along for the ride." A one-story structure with
three rooms, the cottage had its own private
curve of white beach between two prongs of the hill
diving into the sea, and here the road ended. Inside it
was very plain, but comfortable. The island generated
its own power, so there was a little refrigerator,
electric light, the promised phone, and even a
wireless set. The toilet flushed, the bath had
fresh water; more modern amenities than either
Drogheda or Himmelhoch, Meggie thought in
amusement. Easy to see most of the patrons were from
Sydney or Melbourne, and so inured
to civilization they couldn't do without it. Left alone
while Rob sped back to his suspicious
Missus, Meggie unpacked and surveyed her
domain. The big double bed was a great deal more comfortable
than her own nuptial couch had been. But then, this was
a genuine honeymoon paradise and the one thing its
clients would demand was a decent bed; the clients of the
Dunny pub were usually too drunk to object
to herniating springs. Both the refrigerator and the
overhead cupboards were well stocked with food, and
on the counter stood a great basket of bananas,
passionfruit, pineapples and mangoes. No
reason why she shouldn't sleep well, and eat
well.
  For the first week Meggie seemed to do nothing but eat
and sleep; she hadn't realized how tired she was,
nor that Dungloe's climate was what had killed
her appetite. In the beautiful bed she
slept the moment she lay down, ten and twelve
hours at a stretch, and food had an appeal it
hadn't possessed since Drogheda. She seemed
to eat every minute she was awake, even carrying
mangoes into the water with her. Truth to tell, that was
the most logical place to eat mangoes other than
a bathtub; they just ran juice. Since her tiny
beach lay
  within the lagoon, the sea was mirror calm and quite
free of currents, very shallow. All of which she
loved, because she couldn't swim a stroke. But in
water so salty it seemed almost to hold her up, she
began to experiment; when she could float for ten
seconds at a time she was delighted. The sensation of
  being freed from the pull of the earth made her long
to be able to move as easily as a fish.
  So if she mourned her lack of company, it was
only because she would have liked to have someone to teach her
to swim. Other than that, being on her own was
wonderful. How right Anne had been! All her
life there had been people in
  the house. To have no one was such a relief, so
utterly peaceful. She wasn't lonely at all;
she didn't miss Anne or Luddie or Justine
or Luke, and for the first time in three years
she didn't yearn for Drogheda. Old Rob never
disturbed her solitude, just chugged far enough down the
road each sunset to make sure her friendly wave
from the veranda wasn't a signal of distress, turned
the car and puttered off again, his surprisingly pretty
Missus grimly riding shotgun. Once he
phoned her to say he was taking the other couple in
residence out in his glass-bottomed boat, and would
she like to come along? It was like having a ticket of
admission to a whole new planet, peering through the
glass down into that teeming, exquisitely fragile
world, where delicate forms were buoyed and bolstered by the
loving intimacy of water. Live coral, she
discovered, wasn't garishly hued from dyes the way it
was in the souvenir counter of the store. It was soft pink
or beige or blue-grey, and around every knob and
branch wavered a marvelous rainbow of color, like a
visible aura. Great anemones twelve inches
wide fluttered fringes of blue or red or
orangeddor purple tentacles; white fluted
clams as big as rocks beckoned unwary
explorers to take a look inside with tantalizing
glimpses of colorful, restless things through feathery
lips; red lace fans swayed in water winds;
  bright-green ribbons of weed danced
loose and drifting. Not one of the four in the boat would
have been in the least surprised to see a mermaid: a
gleam of polished breast, a twisting glitter of
tail, lazily spinning clouds of hair, an
alluring smile taunting the siren's spell
to sailors. But the fish! Like living jewels they
darted in thousands upon thousands, round like Chinese
lanterns, slender like bullets, raimented in
colors which glowed with life and the light-splitting
quality water imparts, some on fire with scales of
gold and scarlet, some cool and silvery blue, some
swimming rag bags gaudier than parrots. There were
needle-nosed garfish, pug-nosed toadfish,
fanged barracuda, a cavernous-mawed grouper
lurking half seen in a grotto, and once a
sleek grey nurse shark which seemed to take forever
to pass silently beneath them.
  "But don't worry," said Rob. "We're too
far south here for sea wasps, so if
  anything on the Reef is going to kill you, it's
most likely to be a stonefish. Never go walking on
the coral without your shoes."
  Yes, Meggie was glad she went. But she
didn't yearn to go again, or make friends with the couple
Rob brought along. She immersed herself in
the sea, and walked, and lay in the sun. Curiously
enough, she didn't even miss having books to read,
for there always seemed to be something interesting to watch.
She had taken Rob's advice and stopped wearing
clothes. At first she had tended to behave like a
rabbit catching whiffs of dingo on the breeze,
bolting for cover if a twig cracked or a
coconut fell like a cannonball from a palm. But
after several days of patent solitude she really
began to feel no
  one would come near her, that indeed it was as Rob said,
a completely private domain. Shyness was wasted.
And walking the tracks, lying in the sand, paddling in that
warm salty water, she began to feel like an
animal born and brought up in a cage, suddenly
let loose in a gentle, sunny, spacious and
welcoming world.
  Away from Fee, her brothers, Luke, the
unsparing, unthinking domination of her whole life,
Meggie discovered pure leisure; a whole
kaleidoscope of thought patterns wove and unwove
novel designs in her mind. For the first time in her
life she wasn't keeping her conscious self
absorbed in work thoughts of one description or
another. Surprised, she realized that
keeping physically busy is the most effective
blockade against totally mental activity human
beings can erect. .
  Years ago Father Ralph had asked her what she
thought about, and she had answered: Daddy and Mum,
Bob, Jack, Hughie, Stu, the little boys,
Frank, Drogheda, the house, work, the rainfall.
She hadn't said him, but he was at the top of the list,
always. Now add to those Justine, Luke, Luddie and
Anne, the cane, homesickness, the rainfall. And
always, of course, the lifesaving release she found in
books. But it had all come and gone in such tangled,
unrelated clumps and chains; no opportunity,
no training to enable her to sit down quietly and think
out who exactly was Meggie Cleary, Meggie
O'neill? What did she want? What did she
think she was put on this earth for? She mourned the
lack of training, for that was an omission no amount of
time on her own could ever rectify. However, here was the
time, the peace, the laziness of idle physical
well-being; she could lie on the sand and try. Well,
there was Ralph. A wry, despairing laugh. Not a
good place to start, but in a sense Ralph was like
God; everything began and ended with him. Since the day
he had knelt in the sunset dust of the
Gilly station yard to take her between his hands, there had
been Ralph, and though she never saw him again as long
as she lived, it seemed likely that her last thought this
side of the grave would combe of him. How frightening, that
one person could mean so much, so many things.
  What had she said to Anne? That her wants and
needs were quite ordinary-a husband, children, a home of her
own. Someone to love. It didn't seem much
  to ask; after all, most women had the lot. But how
many of the women who had them were truly content? Meggie
thought she would be, because for her they were so hard to come by.
  Accept it, Meggie Cleary. Meggie
ON-EILL. The someone you want is Ralph de
Bricassart, and you just can't have him. Yet as a man
he seems to have ruined you for anyone else. All
right, then. Assume that a man and the someone to love
can't occur. It will have to be children to love, and the love you
receive will have to come from those children. Which in turn means
Luke, and Luke's children.
  Oh, dear God, dear God! No, not dear
God! What's God ever done for me, except
deprive me of Ralph? We're not too fond of
each other, God and I. And do You know something,
God? You don't frighten me the way You used to.
How much I feared You, Your punishment!
All my life I've trodden the straight and
narrow, from fear of Y. And what's it got me? Not
one scrap more than if I'd broken every rule in
Your book. You're a fraud, God, a demon of
fear. You treat us like children, dangling punishment. But
You don't frighten me anymore. Because it isn't
Ralph I ought to be hating, it's Y. It's all
Your fault, not poor Ralph's. He's just living
in fear of You, the way I always have. That he could
love You is something I can't understand. I don't
see what there is about You to love.
  Yet how can I stop loving a man who loves
God? No matter how hard I try, I
  can't seem to do it. He's the moon, and I'm
crying for it. Well, you've just got to stop crying for
it, Meggie ON-EILL, that's all there is to it.
You're going to have to content yourself with Luke, and
Luke's children. By hook or by crook you're going
to wean Luke from the wretched sugar, and live with him
out where there aren't even any trees. You're going
to tell the Gilly bank manager that your future
income stays in your own name, and you're going. to use
it to have the comforts and conveniences in your treeless
  home that Luke won't think to provide for you.
You're going to use it to educate Luke's
children properly, and make sure they never want. And
that's all there is to be said about it, Meggie
O'neill. I'm Meggie O'neill, not
Meggie de Bricassart. It even sounds silly,
Meggie de Bricassart. I'd have to be Meghann
de Bricassart, and I've always hated Meg-
hann. Oh, will I ever stop regretting that they're
not Ralph's children? That's the question, isn't it? Say
it to yourself, over and over again: Your life is your own,
Meggie O'neill, and you're not going to waste it
dreaming of a man and children you can never have.
  There! That's telling yourself! No use thinking of
what's past, what must be buried. The future's the
thing, and the future belongs to Luke, to Luke's children.
It doesn't belong to Ralph de Bricassart.
He is the past. Meggie rolled over in the sand and
wept as she hadn't wept since she was three years
old: noisy wails, with only the crabs and the
birds to hear her desolation.
  Anne Mueller had chosen Matlock Island
deliberately, planning to send Luke there as soon
as she could. The moment Meggie was on her way she
sent Luke a
  telegram saying Meggie needed him
desperately, please to come. By nature
she wasn't given to interfering in other people's lives,
but she loved and pitied Meggie, and adored the
difficult, capricious scrap Meggie had
borne and Luke fathered. Justine must have a home, and
both her parents. It would hurt to see her go away,
but better that than the present situation. Luke
arrived two days later. He was on his way to the
CSR in Sydney, so it didn't cost him much time
to go out of his way. Time he saw the baby; if it had
been a boy he would have come when it was born, but news
of a girl had disappointed him badly. If Meggie
insisted on having children, let them at least be capable
of carrying on the Kynuna station one day. Girls were
no flaming use at all; they just ate a man out of
house and
  home and when they were grown up they went and worked for
someone else instead of staying put like boys to help
their old father in his last years. "How's Meg?" he
asked as he came up onto the front veranda. "Not
sick, I hope?"
  "You hope. No, she's not sick. I'll tell
you in a minute. But first come and see your beautiful
daughter."
  He stared down at the baby, amused and interested
but not emotionally moved, Anne thought.
  "She's got the queerest eyes I've ever
seen," he said. "I wonder whose they are?"
  "Meggie says as far as she knows no one in her
family."
  "Nor mine. She's a throwback, the funny little
thing. Doesn't look too happy, does she?"
  "How could she look happy?" Anne snapped,
hanging on to her temper grimly. "She's never
seen her father, she has no real home and not much
likelihood of
  one before she's grown up if you go on the way you
are!" "I'm saving, Annel" he protested.
  "Rubbish! I know how much money you've got.
Friends of mine in Charters Towers send me the-
local paper from time to time, so I've seen the ads for
western properties a lot closer in than
Kynuna, and a lot more fertile. There's a
Depression on, Luke! You could pick up a
beauty of a place for a lot less by far than the
amount you have in the bank, and you know it." "Now that's just
itl There's a Depression on, and west of the
ranges a bloody terrible drought from Junee to the
Isa. It's in its second year and there's no rain
at all, not a drop. Right now I'll bet
Drogheda's hurting, so
  what do you think it's like out around Winton and
Blackall? No, I reckon I ought to wait."
  "Wait until the price of land goes up in a
good wet season? Come off it, Luke! Now's the
time to buy! With Meggie's assured two thousand a
year, you can wait out a ten-year drought! Just don't
stock the place. Live
  on Meggie's two thousand a year until the
rains come, then put your stock on."
  "I'm not ready to leave the sugar yet," he said,
stubbornly, still staring at his daughter's strange
light eyes.
  "And that's the truth at last, isn't it? Why
don't you admit it, Luke? You don't want
to be married, you'd rather live the way you are at the
moment, hard, among men, working your innards out, just like
one out of every two Australian men I've ever known!
What is it about this frigging country, that its men
prefer being with other men to having a home life with their
wives and children? If the bachelor's life is what
they truly want, why on earth do
  they try marriage at all? Do you know how many
deserted wives there are in Dunny alone, scraping
an existence and trying to rear their children without fathers?
Oh, he's just off in the sugar, he'll be
back, you know, it's only for a little while. Hah!
And every mail they're there hanging over the front
gate waiting for the postie, hoping the bastard's sent
them a little money. And mostly he hasn't, sometimes
he hasnot enough, but something to keep things going!"
  She was trembling with rage, her gentle brown
eyes sparking. "You know, I read in the Brisbane
Mail that Australia has the highest percentage of
deserted wives in the civilized world? It's the
only thing we beat every other country at-isn't that a
record to be proud of!" "Go easy, Anne! I
haven't deserted Meg; she's safe and she's not
starving. What's the matter with you?"
  "I'm sick of the way you treat your wife, that's
what! For the love of God, Luke, grow up,
shoulder your responsibilities for a while! You've
got a wife and baby! You should be making a home for
them-be a husband and a father, not a bloody stranger!"
  "I will, I will! But I can't yet; I've got
to carry on in the sugar for a couple more years just
to make sure. I don't want to say I'm living
off Meg, which is what I'd be doing until things
got better."
  Anne lifted her lip contemptuously. "Oh,
bullshit! You married her for her money,
didn't you?"
  A dark-red flush stained his brown face. He
wouldn't look at her. "I admit the money
helped, but I married her because I liked her better
than anyone else."
  "You liked her! What about loving her?"
  "Love! What's love? Nothing but a figment of
women's imagination, that's all." He turned away
from the crib and those unsettling eyes, not sure someone
with eyes like that couldn't understand what was being said. "And
if you've quite finished telling me off, where's Meg?"
"She wasn't well. I sent her away for a
while. Oh, don't panic! Not on your money.
I was hoping I could persuade you to join her, but I
see that's impossible."
  "Out of the question. Arne and I are on our way
to Sydney tonight." "What shall I tell Meggie when
she comes back?" He shrugged, dying to get away.
"I don't care. Oh, tell her to hang on a
while longer. Now that she's gone ahead with the family
business, I wouldn't mind a son."
  Leaning against the wall for support, Anne bent
over the wicker basket and lifted the baby up, then
managed to shuffle to the bed and sit down. Luke
made no move to help her, or take the
baby; he looked rather frightened of his daughter.
  "Go away, Luke!-You don't deserve what
you've got. I'm sick of the sight of
  you. Go back to bloody Arne, and the flaming
sugar, and the backbreak!" At the door he paused.
"What did she call it? I've forgotten its
name." "Justine, Justine, Justine!"
  "Bloody stupid name," he said, and went out.
  Anne put Justine on the bed and burst
into tears. God damn all men but Luddie, God
damn them! Was it the soft, sentimental, almost
womanish streak in Luddie made him capable of
loving? Was Luke right? Was it just a figment of
women's imaginations? Or was it something only women
were able to feel, or
  men with a little woman in them? No woman could ever
hold Luke,
  no woman ever had. What he wanted no woman
could ever give him. But by the next day she had calmed
down, no longer feeling she had tried for nothing. A
postcard from Meggie had come that morning, waxing
enthusiastic about Matlock Island and how well she
was. Something good had come out of it. Meggie was
feeling better. She would come back as the monsoons
diminished and be able to face her life. But
Anne resolved not to tell her about Luke.
  So Nancy, short for Annunziata, carried
Justine out onto the front veranda, while Anne
hobbled out with the baby's wants in a little basket between
her teeth; clean diaper, tin of powder and toys.
She settled in a cane chair, took the baby from
Nancy and began to feed her from the bottle of
Lactogen Nancy had warmed. It was very pleasant,
life was very pleasant; she had done her best to make
Luke see sense, and if she had failed, at least
it meant Meggie and Justine would remain at
Himmelhoch a while longer. She had no doubt that
eventually Meggie would realize there was no hope of
salvaging her relationship with Luke, and would then
return to Drogheda. But Anne dreaded the day.
  A red English sports car roared off the
Dunny road and up the long, hilly drive; it was
new and expensive, its bonnet strapped down with
leather, its silver exhausts and scarlet paintwork
glittering. For a while she didn't recognize the
man who vaulted over the low door, for he wore the
North Queensland uniform of a pair of shorts and
nothing else. My word, what a beautiful bloke!
she thought, watching him appreciatively andwitha twinge
of memory as he took the steps two at
a time. I wish Luddie wouldn't eat so much; he
could do with a bit of this chap's condition. Now, he's
no chicken-look at those marvelous silver
templesbut I've never seen a cane cutter in
better nick.
  When the calm, aloof eyes looked into hers, she
realized who he was.
  "My God!" she said, and dropped the baby's
bottle. He retrieved it, handed it to her and leaned
against the veranda railing, facing her: "It's all right.
The teat didn't strike the ground; you can feed her with
it." The baby was just beginning a deprived quiver.
Anne stuck the rubber in her mouth and got enough breath
back to speak. "Well, Your Grace, this is a
surprise!" Her eyes slid over him, amused.
"I must say you don't exactly look like an
archbishop. Not that you ever did, even in the proper
togs. I always imagine archbishops of any
religious denomination to be fat and
self-satisfied."
  "At the moment I'm not an archbishop, only a
priest on a well-earned holiday, so you can call
me Ralph. Is this the little thing caused Meggie so
much trouble when I was here last? May I have her? I
think I can manage to hold the bottle at
the appropriate angle."
  He settled into a chair alongside Anne,
took baby and bottle and continued to feed her, his
legs crossed casually.
  "Did Meggie name her Justine?"
  "Yes."
  "I like it. Good Lord, look at the color of her
hair! Her grandfather all over."
  "That's what Meggie says. I hope the poor
little mite doesn't come out in a million
freckles later on, but I think she will."
  "Well, Meggie's sort of a redhead and she
isn't a bit freckled. Though Meggie's skin
is a different color and texture, more opaque."
He put the empty bottle down, sat the baby
bolt upright on his knee, facing him, bent her
forward in a salaam and began rhythmically rubbing her
back hard. "Among my other duties I have
to visit Catholic orphanages, so I'm quite
deedy with babies. Mother Gonzaga at my
favorite infants' home always says this is the
only way to burp a baby. Holding it over one's
shoulder doesn't flex the body forward enough, the
wind can't escape so easily, and when it does come
up there's usually lots of milk as well.
This way the baby's bent in the middle, which corks the
milk
  in while it lets the gas escape." As if
to prove his point, Justine gave several huge
eructations but held her gorge. He laughed,
rubbed again, and when nothing further happened settled
her in the crook of his arm comfort- ably. "What
fabulously exotic eyes! Magnificent, aren't
they? Trust Meggie to
  have an unusual baby."
  "Not to change the subject, but what a father you'd have
made, Father." "I like babies and children, I always have.
It's much easier for me to enjoy them, since I
don't have any of the unpleasant duties fathers do."
"No, it's because you're like Luddie. You've got a
bit of woman in you." Apparently Justine,
normally so isolationist, returned his liking; she had
gone to sleep. Ralph settled her more snugly and
pulled a packet of Capstans from his shorts
pocket.
  "Here, give them to me. I'll light one for you."
  "Where's Meggie?" he asked, taking a lit
cigarette from her. "Thank you. I'm sorry,
please take one for yourself."
  "She's not here. She never really got
over the bad time she had when Justine was born, and
The Wet seemed to be the last straw. So Luddie
and I sent her away for two months. She'll be
back around the first of March; another seven weeks
to go."
  The moment Anne spoke she was aware of the change
in him; as if the whole of his purpose had suddenly
evaporated, and the promise of some very special
pleasure.
  He drew a long breath. "This is the second
time I've come to say goodbye and not found her ....
Athens, and now again. I was away for a year then and it
might have been a lot longer; I didn't know at the
time. I had never visited Drogheda since Paddy
and Stu died, yet when it came I found I couldn't
leave Australia without seeing Meggie. And she'd
married, gone away. I wanted to come after her, but
I knew it wouldn't have
  been fair to her or to Luke. This time I came
because I knew I couldn't harm what isn't there."
  "Where are you going?"
  "To Rome, to the Vatican. Cardinal di
ContiniVerchese has taken over the duties of
Cardinal Monteverdi, who died not long ago. And
he's asked for me, as I knew he would.
It's a great compliment, but more than that. I cannot
refuse to go."
  "How long will you be away?"
  "Oh, a very long time, I think. There are war
rumbles in Europe, though it seems so far away
up here. The Church in Rome needs every diplomat
she has, and thanks to Cardinal di
Contini-Verchese I'm classified as a
diplomat. Mussolini is closely allied
to Hitler, birds of a feather, and somehow the
Vatican has to reconcile two opposing
ideologies, Catholicism and Fascism. It
  won't be easy. I speak German very well,
learned Greek when I was in Athens and Italian
when I was in Rome. I alsq speak French and
Spanish fluently." He
  sighed. "I've always had a talent for
languages, and I cultivated it deliberately.
It was inevitable that I would be transferred."
  "Well, Your Grace, unless you're sailing tomorrow
you can still see Meggie."
  The words popped out before Anne let herself stop
to think; why shouldn't Meggie see him once before he
went away, especially if, as he seemed to think,
he was going to be away a very long time? His
head turned toward her. Those beautiful, distant
blue eyes were very intelligent and very hard to fool.
Oh, yes, he was a born diplomat! He knew
exactly what she was saying, and every reason at the
back of her mind. Anne found herself hanging
breathlessly on his answer, but for a long time he said
nothing, just sat staring out over the emerald cane toward
the brimming river, with the baby forgotten in the crook
of his arm. Fascinated, she stared at his profile-the
curve of eyelid, the straight nose, the
secretive mouth, the determined chin. What forces was
he marshaling while he
  contemplated the view? What complicated balances
of love, desire, duty, expediency, will power,
longing, did he weigh in his mind, and which against which? His
hand lifted the cigarette to his lips; Anne saw
the fingers tremble and soundlessly let go her breath.
He was not indifferent, then. For perhaps ten minutes he
said nothing; Anne lit him another Capstan, handed
it to him in place of the burned-out stub. It, too,
he smoked down steadiliy, not once lifting his
gaze from the far mountains and the monsoon clouds
lowering.the sky.
  "Where is she?" he asked then in a perfectly
normal voice, throwing the second stub
over the veranda railing after the first. And on what she
answered depended his decision; it was her turn
to think. Was one right to push other human beings on a
course which led one knew not where, or to what? Her
loyalty was all to Meggie; she didn't honestly
care an
  iota what happened to this man. In his way he was
no better than Luke. Off after some male thing with
never the time or the inclination to put a woman ahead of
it, running and clutching at some dream which probably
only existed in has addled head. No more substance
than the smoke from the mill dissi- pating itself in the
heavy, molasses-laden air. But it was what he
wanted, and he would spend himself and his life in chasing
it. He hadn't lost his good sense, no matter what
Meggie meant to him. Not even for her-and Anne was
beginning to believe he loved Meggie more than anything
except that strange ideal-would he jeopardize the
chance of grasping what he wanted in his hands one day.
No, not even for her. So if she answered that
Meggie was in some crowded resort hotel where he
might be recognized, he wouldn't go. No one
knew better than he that he wasn't the sort who
could become anonymous in a crowd. She licked her
lips, found her voice. "Meggie's in a
cottage on Matlock Island."
  "On where?"
  "Matlock Island. It's a resort just off
Whitsunday Passage, and it's specially
designed for privacy. Besides, at this time of the year
there's hardly a soul on it." She couldn't resist
adding, "Don't worry, no one will see you!"
  "How reassuring." Very gently he eased the
sleeping baby out of his arms, handed her to Anne.
"Thank you," he said, going to the steps. Then he
turned back, in his eyes a rather pathetic appeal.
"You're quite wrong," he said. "I
  just want to see her, no more than that. I shall never
involve Meggie in anything which might endanger her
immortal soul."
  "Or your own, eh? Then you'd better go as
Luke O'neill; he's expected. That way
you'll be sure to create no scandal, for Meggie or
for yourself." "And what if Luke turns up?"
  "There's no chance of that. He's gone to Sydney
and he won't be back until March. The only
way he could have known Meggie was on Matlock is
through me, and I didn't tell him, Your Grace."
  "Does Meggie expect Luke?"
  Anne smiled wryly. "Oh, dear
me, no."
  "I shan't harm her," he insisted. "I just
want to see her for a little while, that's all."
  "I'm well aware of it, Your Grace. But the
fact remains that you'd harm her a great deal less
if you wanted more," said Anne.
  When old Rob's car came sputtering along the
road Meggie was at her station on the cottage
veranda, hand raised in the signal that everything was fine
and she needed nothing. He stopped in the usual spot
to reverse, but before he did so a man in shorts,
shirt and sandals sprang out of the car, suitcase in
hand.
  "Hooroo, Mr. O'neill!" Rob yelled
as he went. But never again would Meggie mistake
them, Luke O'neill and Ralph de
Bricassart. That wasn't Luke; even at the
distance and in the fast-fading light she wasn't deceived.
She stood dumbly and waited while he
  walked down the road toward her, Ralph de
Bricassart. He had decided he wanted her after
all. There could be no other reason for his joining her in
a place like this, calling himself Luke O'neill.
Nothing in her seemed to be functioning, not legs or
mind or heart. This was Ralph come
to claim her, why couldn't she feel? Why wasn't
she running down the road to his arms, so utterly
glad to see him nothing else mattered? This was
Ralph, and he was all she had ever wanted out of
living; hadn't she just spent more than a week trying
to get that fact out of her mind? God damn him,
God damn him! Why the hell did he have to come when
she was finally beginning to get him out of her thoughts, if
not out of her heart? Oh, it was all going to start again!
Stunned, sweating, angry, she stood woodenly
waiting, watching that graceful form grow larger.
"Hello, Ralph," she said through clenched teeth, not
looking at him. "Hello, Meggie."
  "Bring your case inside. Would you like a hot cup
of tea?" As she spoke she led the way into the living
room, still not looking at him. "That would be nice,"
he said, as stilted as she. He followed her into the
kitchen and watched while she plugged in an
electric jug, filled the teapot from a little
hot-water geyser over the sink, and busied herself
getting cups and saucers down from a cupboard. When
she handed him the big five-pound tin of Arnotts
biscuits he took a couple of handfuls of
cookies out of it and put them on a plate. The
jug boiled, she emptied the hot water out
of the teapot, spooned loose tea into it and filled it
with bubbling water. While she carried the cookie
plate and the teapot, he
  followed with the cups and saucers, back into the living
room. The three rooms had been built
alongside each other, the bedroom opening off one
side of the living room and the kitchen off the other, with the
bathroom beyond it. This meant the house had two
verandas, one 405
  facing the road and the other the beach. Which in turn
meant they each had somewhere excusable to look without
having to look at each other. Full darkness had
fallen with tropical suddenness, but the air through the
wide-open sliding doors was filled with the lapping of
water, the distant surf on the reef, the coming and going
of the warm soft wind. They drank the tea in silence,
though neither could eat a biscuit, and the silence
stretched on after the tea was finished, he shifting his
gaze to her and she keeping hers steadfastly on the
breezy antics- of a baby palm outside the
road-veranda doors.
  "What's the matter, Meggie2" he asked, so
gently and tenderly her heart knocked frantically,
and seemed to die from the pain of it, the old query of the
grown man to the little girl. He hadn't come
to Matlock to see the woman at all. He had come
to see the child. It was the child he loved, not the woman.
The woman he had hated from the moment she came
into being. Round and up came her eyes to his,
amazed, outraged, furious; even now, even now!
Time suspended, she stared at him so, and he was forced
to see, breath caught astounded, the grown woman in
those glass-clear eyes. Meggie's eyes. Oh,
God, Meggie's eyes!
  He had meant what he said to Anne Mueller;
he just wanted to see her, nothing more. Though he loved
her, he hadn't come to be her lover. Only to see
her, talk to her, be her friend, sleep on the living
room couch while he tried once more to unearth the
taproot of that eternal fascination she possessed for
him, thinking that if only he could see it fully
exposed, he might gain the spiritual means
to eradicate it. It had been hard to adjust to a
Meggie with breasts, a waist, hips; but he had
done it because when he looked into her eyes, there like the
pool of light in a sanctuary lamp shone his
Meggie. A mind and a spirit whose pulls he had never
been free from since first meeting her, still unchanged
inside that distressingly changed body; but while he
could see proof of their
  continued existence in her eyes, he could accept the
altered body, discipline his attraction to it.
  And, visiting his own wishes and dreams upon her,
he had never doubted she wanted to do the same until
she had turned on him like a goaded cat, at
Justine's birth. Even then, after the anger and hurt
died in him, he had attributed her behavior to the
pain she had gone through, spiritual more than physical.
Now, seeing her at last as she was, he could
pinpoint to a second the moment when she had shed the
lenses of childhood, donned the lenses of a
  woman: that interlude in the Drogheda cemetery
after Mary Carson's birthday party. When he had
explained to her why he couldn't show her any
special attention, because people might deem him interested
in her as a man. She had looked at him with something
in her eyes he had not understood, then looked away,
and when she turned back the expression was gone. From
that time, he saw now, she had thought of him in a
different light; she hadn't kissed him in a passing
weakness when she had kissed him, then gone back
to thinking of him in the old way, as he had her. He
had perpetuated his illusions, nurtured them,
tucked them into his unchanging way of life as best
he could, worn them like a hair shirt.
While all the time she had furnished her love for
him with woman's objects.
  Admit it, he had physically wanted her from the
time of their first kiss, but the want had never plagued
him the way his love for her had; seeing them as
separate and distinct, not facets of the same thing.
She, poor misunderstood creature, had never
succumbed to this particular folly. At that moment, had
there been any way he could have got off Matlock
Island, he would have fled from her like Orestes from the
Eumenides. But he couldn't quit the island, and he
did have the courage to remain in her presence rather than
senselessly walk the night. What can I do, how can
I possibly make reparation? I do love her!
And if I love her, it has to be because of the way she
is now, not because of a juvenile way 407
  station along her road. It's womanly things
I've always loved in her; the bearing of the burden.
So, Ralph de Bricassart, take off your
blinkers, see her as she really is, not as she was
long ago. Sixteen years ago, sixteen long
incredible years . . . I am forty-four and she is
twenty-six; neither of
  us is a child, but I am by far the more immature. You
took it for granted the minute I stepped
out of Rob's car, isn't that so, Meggie? You
assumed I had given in at last. And before you even
had time to get your breath back I had to show you how
wrong you were. I ripped the fabric of your
delusion apart as if it had been a dirty old
rag. Oh, Meggie! What have I done to you? How
could I have been so blind, so utterly self-centered?
I've accomplished nothing in coming to see you, unless it
is to cut you into little pieces. All these years
we've been loving at cross-purposes.
  Still she was looking into his eyes, her own filling
with shame, humiliation, but as the expressions flew
across his face to the final one of despairing pity she
seemed to realize the magnitude of her mistake,
the horror of it. And more than that: the fact that he
knew her mistake. Go, run! Run, Meggie,
get out of here with the scrap of pride he's left you!
The instant she thought it she acted on it, she was up
out of her chair and fleeing.
  Before she could reach the veranda he caught her, the
impetus of her flight spinning her round against him so
hard he staggered. It didn't matter, any of
  it, the grueling battle to retain his soul's
integrity, the long pressing down of will upon desire;
in moments he had gone lifetimes. All that
power held dormant, sleeping, only needing the
detonation of a touch to trigger a chaos in which mind was
subservient to passion, mind's will extinguished in
body's will.
  Up slid her arms around his neck, his across her
back, spasmed; he bent his head, groped with his
mouth for hers, found it. Her mouth, no longer an
unwanted, unwelcome memory but real; her arms
about him as if
  she couldn't bear to let him go; the way she seemed
to lose even the feel of
  her bones; how dark she was like the night, tangled
memory and desire, unwanted memory and
unwelcome desire. The years he must have longed for
this, longed for her and denied her power, kept himself even
from the thought of her as a woman!
  Did he carry her to the bed, or did they walk?
He thought he must have carried her, but he could not be
sure; only that she was there upon it, he was there upon it,
her skin under his hands, his skin under hers. Oh,
God! My
  Meggie, my Meggie! How could they rear me from
infancy to think you profanation?
  Time ceased to tick and began to flow, washed over
him until it had no meaning, only a
depth of dimension more real than real time. He could
feel her yet he did not feel her, not as a
separate entity; wanting to make her finally and forever
a part of himself, a graft which was himself, not a
symbiosis which acknowledged her as distinct. Never again
would he not know the upthrusts of breasts and belly and
buttocks; the folds and crevices in between.
Truly she was made for him, for he had made her;
for sixteen years he had shaped and molded her without
knowing that he did, let alone why he did. And he
forgot that he had ever given her away, that another
man had shown her the end of what he had begun for
himself, had always intended for himself, for she was his
downfall, his rose; his creation. It was a dream from
which he would never again awaken, not as long as he was a
man, with a man's body. Oh, dear God! 1
know, 1 know! I know why I kept her as an idea
and a child within me for so long after she had grown beyond both,
but why does it have to be learned like this?
  Because at last he understood that what he had aimed
to be was not a man. Not a man, never a man; something
far greater, something beyond the fate of a mere man. Yet
after all his fate was here under his hands, struck
quivering and alight with him, her man. A man, forever
a man. Dear Lord, couldst Thou not
  have kept this from me? I am a man, I can never be
God; it was a delusion, that life in search of
godhead. Are we all the same, we priests,
yearning to be God? We abjure the one act which
irrefutably proves us men. He wrapped his
arms about her and looked down with eyes full of tears
at the still, faintly lit face, watched its
rosebud mouth drop open, gasp, become a
helpless O of astonished pleasure. Her arms and
legs were round him, living ropes which bound him to her,
silkily, sleekly tormented him; he put his chin
into her shoulder and his cheek against the softness of hers,
gave himself over to the maddening, exasperating drive
of a man grappling with fate. His mind reeled,
slipped, became utterly dark and blindingly bright;
for one moment he was within the sun, then the brilliance
faded, grew grey, and went out. This was being a man.
He could be no more. But that was not the source of the pain.
The pain was in the final moment, the finite moment, the
empty, desolate realization: ecstasy is
fleeting. He couldn't bear to let her go, not now that
he had her; he had made her for himself. So he
clung to her like a drowning man to a spar in a lonely
sea, and soon, buoyant, rising again on a tide
grown quickly familiar, he succumbed to the
inscrutable fate which is a man's.
  What was sleep? Meggie wondered. A blessing,
a respite from life, an echo of death, a demanding
nuisance? Whatever it was, he had yielded himself
to it, and lay with his arm over her and his head beside her
shoulder, possessive even in it. She was tired,
too, but she would not let herself sleep. Somehow she
felt if she relaxed her grasp on consciousness
he might not be there when she picked it up again.
Later she could sleep, after he was awake and the
secretive, beautiful mouth uttered its first words.
What would he say to her? Would he regret it? Had
she been a pleasure to him worth what he had
abandoned? So many years he had fought it, made her
fight it with him; she could hardly make herself believe
he had lain down his arms at last,
  but there had been things he had said in the night and in
the midst of his pain which blotted out his long denial of
her.
  She was supremely happy, happier than she
could remember ever being. From the moment he had pulled
her back from the door it had been a body poem, a
thing of arms and hands and skin and utter pleasure. I
was made for him, and only for him .... That's why I
felt so little with Luke! Borne out beyond the
limits of endurance on her body's tide, all
she could think was that to give him everything she could was more
necessary to her than life itself. He must never regret
it, never. Oh, his pain! There had been moments when
she seemed actually to feel it as if it had been her
own. Which only contributed to her happiness; there was
some justice in his pain.
  He was awake. She looked down into his eyes
and saw the same love in their blueness which had warmed
her, given her purpose since childhood; and with it
  a great, shadowed fatigue. Not a weariness of the
body, but a weariness of the soul.
  He was thinking that in all his life he had never
woken in the same bed as another person; it was in a
way more intimate than the sexual act preceding it,
a deliberate indication of emotional ties, a
cleaving to her. Light and empty as the air so
alluringly full of marine tang and sun-soaked
vegetation, he drifted for a while on the wings of a
different kind of freedom: the relief of
relinquishing his mandate to fight her, the peace of
losing a long, incredibly bloody war and finding the
surrender far sweeter than the battles. Ah, but
I gave you a good fight, my Meggie! Yet in the
end it isn't your fragments I must glue
together, but the dismembered chunks of myself. You were put in
my life to show me how false, how presumptuous
is the pride of a priest of my kind; like Lucifer
I aspired to that which is God's alone, and like
Lucifer, I fell. I had the cha/y, the
obedience, even the poverty before Mary Carson. But
until this morning 411
  I have never known humility. Dear Lord, if she
meant nothing to me it would be easier to bear, but sometimes
I think I love her far more than I do Thee, and
that, too, is a part of Thy punishment. Her I do
not doubt; Thou? A trick, a phantom, a jest.
How can I love a jest? And yet, I do. "If
I could get the energy together, I'd go for a swim and
then make breakfast," he said, desperate for something
to say, and felt her smile against his chest.
  "Go for the swim part, I'll make the breakfast.
And there's no need to put anything on here. No one
comes."
  "Truly paradise!" He swung his legs off
the bed, sat up and stretched. "It's a beautiful
morning. I wonder if that's an omen."
  Already the pain of parting; just because he had left the
bed; she lay watching him as he walked to the sliding
doors giving onto the beach, stepped
outside and paused. He turned, held out his hand.
"Come with me? We can get breakfast together."
  The tide was in, the reef covered, the early sun
hot but the restless summer wind cool; coarse
grass sent feelers down onto the crumbling,
unsandlike sand, where crabs and insects scuttled
after pickings. "I feel as if I've never seen the
world before," he said, staring. Meggie clutched at his
hand; she felt visited, and found this sunny aftermath
more incomprehensible than the night's dreamy reality.
Her eyes rested on him, aching. It was time out of
mind, a different world. So she said, "Not this world.
How could you? This is our world, for as long as it
lasts."
  "What's Luke like?" he asked, over
breakfast. She put her head on one side,
considering. "Not as much like you physically as I used
to think, because in those days I missed you more, I hadn't
got used to doing without you. I believe I married
him because he reminded me of you. At any rate, I
had made up my mind to marry someone, and he stood
head and shoulders above the rest. I don't mean in
worthiness, or niceness,
  or any of the things women are supposed to find
desirable in a husband. Just in some way I
can't put a finger on. Except perhaps that he is like
you. He doesn't need women, either."
  His face twisted. "Is that how you see me,
Meggie?" "Truthfully? I think so. I'll never
understand why, but I think so. There's something in Luke
and in you which believes that needing a woman is a
weakness. I don't mean to sleep with; I mean
to need, really need." "And accepting that, you can still
want us?"
  She shrugged, smiled with a trace of pity. "Oh,
Ralph! I don't say it isn't important,
and it's certainly caused me a lot of
unhappiness, but it is the way things are. I'd be a
fool to waste myself trying to eradicate it, when it
  can't be eradicated. The best I can do is
exploit the weakness, not ignore its existence. Because
I want and need, too. And apparently I want
and need people like you and Luke, or I wouldn't have spent
myself over the pair of you the way I have. I'd have
married a good, kind, simple man like my father,
someone who did want and need me. But there's a
streak of Samson in every man, I think. It's just that
in men like you and Luke, it's more pronounced." He
didn't seem at all insulted; he was smiling.
"My wise Meggie!" "That's not
wisdom, Ralph. Just common sense. I'm not a very
wise person at
  all, you know that. But look at my brothers. I
doubt the older ones at any rate will ever get
married, or. have girlfriends even. They're terribly
shy, they're frightened of the power a woman might have
over them, and they're quite wrapped up in Mum."
  Day followed day, and night followed night.
Even the heavy summer rains were beautiful, to be
walked in naked and listened to on the iron roof, as
warm and full of caresses as the sun. And when the
sun was out they walked too, lazed on the beach,
swam; for he was teaching her to swim.
  Sometimes when he didn't know he was being watched
Meggie would look at him and try desperately
to imprint his face upon her brain's core,
remembering how in spite of the love she had borne
Frank, with the passing of the years his image had
dimmed, the look of him. There were the eyes, the
nose, the mouth, the stunning silver wings in that black
hair, the long hard body which had kept the slenderness
and tautness of youth, yet had set a little, lost
elasticity. And he would turn to find her watching
him, a look in his eyes of
  haunted grief, a doomed look. She
understood the implicit message, or thought she
did; he must go, back to the Church and his duties.
Never again with the same spirit, perhaps, but more able to serve.
For only those who have slipped and fallen know the
vicissitudes of the way.
  One day, when the sun had gone down far enough
to bloody the sea and stain the coral sand a hazy
yellow, he turned to her as they lay on the beach.
"Meggie, I've never been so happy, disor so
unhappy."
  "I know, Ralph."
  "I believe you do. Is it why I love you?
You're not much out of the ordinary way, Meggie, and
yet you aren't ordinary at all. Did I sense
it, all those years ago? I must have, I suppose.
My passion for titian hair! Little did I know
where it would lead me. I love you, Meggie."
  "Are you leaving?"
  "Tomorrow. I must. My ship sails for Genoa in
less than a week." "Genoa?"
  "Rome, actually. For a long time, perhaps the rest
of my life. I don't know."
  "Don't worry, Ralph, I'll let you go
without any fuss. My time is almost up, too.
I'm leaving Luke, I'm going home
to Drogheda."
  "Oh, my dear! Not because of this, because of me?"
"No, of course not," she lied. "I'd made up
my mind before you arrived. Luke doesn't want me
or need me, he won't miss me in the slightest.
But I need a home,
  somewhere of my own, and I think now that Drogheda is
always going to be that place. It isn't right that poor
Justine should grow up in a house where I'm the
servant, though I know Anne and Luddie don't
think of me like a servant. But it's how I think of
myself, and how Justine will think of me when she's old
enough to understand she hasn't a normal sort of home.
In a way she never will enjoy that, but I must do as much
for her as I can. So I'm going back to Drogheda."
  "I'll write to you, Meggie."
  "No, don't. Do you think I need letters, after
this? I don't want anything between us which might
endanger you, fall into the hands of unscrupulous people.
So no letters. If you're ever in Australia it would
be natural and normal of you to visit Drogheda,
though I'm warning you, Ralph, to think before you do.
There are only two places in the world where you belong
to me ahead of God-here on Matlock, and on
Drogheda."
  He pulled her into his arms and held her,
stroking her bright hair. "Meggie, I wish with all
my heart I could marry you, never be apart from you again.
I don't want to leave you .... And in a way
I'll never be free of you again. I wish I hadn't
come to Matlock. But we can't change what we are,
and perhaps it's just as well. I know things about myself I
would never have known or faced if I hadn't come.
It's better to contend with the known than the unknown. I
love you. I always have, and I always will. Remember
it." The next day Rob appeared for the first time since
he had dropped Ralph, and waited patiently
while they said their farewells. Obviously not a
couple of newlyweds, for he'd come later than she
and was leaving first. Not illicit lovers, either. They were
married; it was written all over them. But they were
fond of each other, very fond indeed. Like him and his
Missus; a big difference in age, and that made for a
good marriage. "Goodbye, Meggie."
  "Goodbye, Ralph. Take care of yourself."
  "I will. And you."
  He bent to kiss her; in spite of her
resolution she clung to him, but when he plucked her
hands from around his neck she put them stiffly behind her and
kept them there.
  He got into the car and sat while Rob reversed,
then stared ahead through the windscreen without once looking
back at her. It was a rare man who could do that,
Rob reflected, without ever having heard of
Orpheus. They drove in silence through the rain forest
and came at last to the sea side of Matlock, and the
long jetty. As they shook hands Rob looked
into his face, wondering. He had never seen eyes
so human, or so sad. The aloofness has passed from
Archbishop Ralph's gaze forever.
  When Meggie came back to Himmelhoch Anne
knew at once she would lose her. Yes, it was the
same Meggie comb so much more, somehow. Whatever
Archbishop Ralph might have told himself before he
went to Matlock, on Matlock things had gone
Meggie's way at last, not his. About time, too.
She took Justine into her arms as if she only now
understood what having Justine meant, and stood
rocking the little thing while she looked around the room,
smiling. Her eyes met Anne's, so alive, so
shining with emotion that Anne felt her own eyes fill
with reciprocal tears of that same joy. "I can't
thank you enough, Anne."
  "Pish, for what?"
  "For sending Ralph. You must have known it
would mean I'd leave Luke, so I
  thank you just that much more, dear. Oh, you have no idea
what it did for me! I had made up my mind I
was going to stay with Luke, you know. Now I'm going
back to Drogheda, and I'm never going to leave it
again."
  "I hate to see you go and especially I hate
to see Justine go, but I'm glad for both of you,
Meggie. Luke will never give you anything but
unhappiness." "Do you know here he is?"
  "Back from the CSR. He's cutting near
Ingham,"
  "I'll have to go and see him, tell him. And, much
as I loathe the idea, sleep with him."
  "What?"
  The eyes shone. "I'm two weeks overdue, and
I'm never a day overdue. The only other time I
was, Justine was starting. I'm pregnant,
Anne, I know I am!"
  "My God!" Anne gasped at Meggie as if
she had never seen her before; and perhaps she had not. She
licked her lips and stammered, "It could be a false
alarm."
  But Meggie shook her head positively.
"Oh, no. I'm pregnant. There are
some things one just knows."
  "A nice pickle if you are," Anne
muttered.
  "Oh, Anne, don't be blind! Don't you see
what this means? I can never have Ralph, I've always
known I could never have Ralph. But I have, I have!"
She laughed, gripping Justine so hard Anne was
frightened the baby would scream, but strangely she did
not. "I've got the part of Ralph the Church can
never have, the part of him which carries on from generation
to generation. Through me he'll continue to live, because I
know it's going to be a son! And that son will have sons,
and they'll have sons-I'll beat God yet. I've
loved Ralph since I was ten years old, and I
suppose I'll still be loving him if I live to be
a hundred. But he isn't mine, where his child will be.
Mine, Anne, mine!"
  "Oh, Meggie!" Anne said helplessly.
  The passion died, the exhilaration; she became
once more familiar Meggie, quiet and sweet but
with the faint thread of iron, the capacity to bear much.
Only now Anne trod carefully, wondering just
what she had done in sending Ralph de
Bricassart to Matlock Island. Was it possible
for anyone to change this much? Anne didn't
think so. It must have been there all the time, so well
hidden its presence was rarely suspected. There was
far more than a faint thread of iron in Meggie; she
was solid steel. "Meggie, if you love me at
all, please remember something for me?"
  The grey eyes crinkled at the corners.
"I'll try!" "I've picked up most of
Luddie's tomes over the years, when I've run
out of
  my own books. Especially the ones with the ancient
Greek stories, because they fascinate me. They
say the Greeks have a word for everything, and that there's
no human situation the Greeks didn't
describe."
  "I know. I've read some of Luddie's books,
too."
  "Then don't you remember? The Greeks say
it's a sin against the gods to love something beyond all
reason. And do you remember that they say when someone
is loved so, the Gods become jealous, and strike
the object down in the very fullness of its flower?
There's a lesson in it, Meggie. It's profane
to love too much."
  "Profane, Anne, that's the key word! I
shan't love Ralph's baby
profanely, but with the purity of the Blessed Mother herself."
  Anne's brown eyes were very sad. "Ah, but did
she love purely? The object of her love was
struck down in the very fullness of His flower, wasn't
He?" Meggie put Justine in her cot. "What
must be, must be. Ralph I can't have, his baby I
can. I feel . . . oh, as if there's a purpose
to my life after all! That's been the worst thing about
these three and a half years, Anne. I
  was beginning to think there was no purpose to my
life." She smiled briskly, decisively.
"I'm going to protect this child in every way I can, no
matter what the cost to myself. And the first thing is that no
one, including Luke, shall ever imply it has no right
to the only name I'm at liberty to give it. The very
thought of sleeping with Luke makes me ill, but
I'll do it. I'd sleep with the Devil himself if it
could help this baby's future. Then I'm going
home to Drogheda, and I hope I never see
Luke again." She turned from the cot. "Will you and
Luddie come to see us? Drogheda always has room for
friends."
  "Once a year, for as many years as you'll have us.
Luddie and I want to see Justine grow up."
  Only the thought of Ralph's baby
kept Meggie's sagging courage up as the little rail
motor rocked and jolted the long miles to Ingham.
Had it not been for the new life she was sure was growing
in her, getting into a bed with Luke ever again would have
been the ultimate sin against herself; but for Ralph's
baby she would indeed have entered into a contract with the
Devil. From a practical viewpoint it wasn't
going to be easy either, she knew that. But she had
laid her plans with what foresight she could, and with
Luddie's aid, disoddly enough. It hadn't been
possible to conceal much from him; he was too shrewd, and
too deeply in Anne's confidence. He had
looked at
  Meggie sadly, shaken his head, and then proceeded
to give her some excellent advice. The actual
aim of her mission hadn't been mentioned, of course,
but IAW-DIE was as adept at adding two and two as
ntpst people who read massive tomes.
  "You won't wint to have to tell Luke you're leaving
him when he's worn out after the cane," said Luddie
delicately. "Much better if you catch him in a
good mood, isn't it? Best thing is, see him on
a Saturday night or a Sunday after it's been his
week cooking. The grapevine says Luke's the
best cook on the cutting circuitlearned
to cook when he was low man on the shearing totem
pole, and shearers are much fussier eaters than
cutters. Means cooking doesn't upset him, you
know. Probably finds it as easy as falling off a
log. That's the speed, then, Meggie. You slap the
news on him when he's feeling real good after a
week in the barracks kitchen."
  It seemed to Meggie lately that she had gone a
long way from blushing days; she looked at Luddie
steadily without going the least bit pink. "Could you find
out which week Luke cooks, Luddie? Or is there
any way I could find out, if you can't?"
  "Oh, she's apples," he said cheerfully.
"I've got my branches on the old grapevine.
I'll find out."
  It was mid Saturday afternoon when Meggie checked
into the Ingham pub that looked the most respectable.
All North Queensland towns were famous for one
thing: they had pubs on all four corners of every
block. She put her small case in her room,
then made her way back to the unlovely foyer
to find a telephone. There was a Rugby League
football team in town for a preseason training
match, and the corridors were full of half-naked,
wholly drunk players who greeted her
appearance with cheers and affectionate pats on the
back and behind. By the time she got the use of the phone
she was shaking with fright; everything about this venture seemed
to be an ordeal. But through the din and the looming drunken
faces she managed to call Braun's, the farm where
Luke's gang was cutting, and ask that a message
be relayed to him that his wife was in Ingham, wanting
to see him. Seeing her fear, the publican walked
back to her room with her, and waited until he
heard her turn the key.
  Meggie leaned against the door, limp with relief;
if it meant she didn't eat again until she was
back in Dunny, she wasn't venturing to the dining
room. Luckily the publican had put her right
next to the women's bathroom, so
  she ought to be able to make that journey when necessary. The
moment she thought her legs would hold her up she
wobbled to the bed and sat on it, her head bowed,
looking at her quivering hands.
  All the way down she had thought about the best way
of going about it, and everything in her cried, Quickly,
quickly! Until coming to live at Himmelhoch she
had never read a description of a seduction, and even
now, armed with several such recountings, she wasn't
confident of her ability to go about one herself.
But that was what she had to do, for she knew once she
started to talk to Luke it would be all over. Her
tongue itched to tell him what she really thought of
him. But more than that, the desire to be back on
Drogheda with Ralph's baby made safe consumed
her.
  Shivering in the sultry sugary air she took off
her
  clothes and lay down on the bed, eyes closed,
willing herself not to think beyond the expediency of making
Ralph's baby safe. The footballers didn't
worry Luke at all when he entered the pub alone
at nine o'clock; by then most of them were insensible, and the
few still on their feet were too far gone to notice
anything farther away than their beer glasses.
  Luddie had been exactly right; at the end of his
week's stint as cook Luke was rested, eager for a
change and oozing goodwill. When Braun's young son
had brought Meggie's message down to the barracks
he was just washing the last of the supper dishes and
planning to cycle into Ingham, join Arne and the
blokes on their customary Saturday-night binge.
The prospect of Meggie was a very agreeable
alternative; ever since that holiday on the
Atherton he had found himself wanting her
occasionally in spite of his physical exhaustion.
Only his horror of starting her off on the
let's-settle-down-in- our-own-home cry had
kept him away from Himmelhoch whenever he was near
Dunny. But now she had come to him, and he was not at
all averse to a night in bed. So he finished the
dishes in a hurry, and was lucky enough to be picked
up by a truck after he had pedaled a scant half
mile. But as he walked his bike the three blocks
from where his ride had dropped him to the pub where
Meggie was staying, some of his anticipation flattened.
All the chemist shops were closed, and he didn't have
any French letters. He stopped, stared in a window
full of moth-eaten, heat-stippled chocolates and
dead blowflies, then shrugged. Well, he'd just have
to take his chances. It would only be tonight, and if there was
a baby, with any luck it would be a boy this time.
Meggie jumped nervously when she heard his knock,
got off the bed and padded over to the door.
  "Who is it?" she called.
  "Luke," came his voice.
  She turned the key, opened the door a tiny
way, and stepped behind it as Luke pushed it wider.
The moment
  he was inside she slammed it shut, and
stood looking at him. He looked at her; at the
breasts which were bigger, rounder, more enticing than ever, the
nipples no longer pale pink but a rich dark red
from the baby. If he had been in need of stimuli
they were more than adequate; he reached out to pick her
up, and carried her to the bed.
  By daylight she still hadn't spoken a word, though her
touch had welcomed him to a pitch of fevered want
he had never before experienced. Now she lay moved
away from him, and curiously divorced from him. He
stretched luxuriously, yawned, cleared his throat.
"What brings you down to Ingham, Meg?" he
asked.
  Her head turned; she regarded him with wide,
contemptuous eyes. "Well, what brings you here?"
he repeated, nettled. No reply, only the
same steady, stinging gaze, as if she couldn't be
bothered answering. Which was ridiculous, after the night.
Her lips opened; she smiled. "I came to tell
you I'm going home to Drogheda," she said.
  For a moment he didn't believe her, then he
looked at her face more closely and saw she meant
it, all right. "Why?" he asked. "I told you
what would happen if you didn't take me
to Sydney," she said. His astonishment was
absolutely genuine. "But, Meg! That's flaming
eighteen months ago! And I gave you a holiday!
Four bloody expensive weeks on the Atherton!
I couldn't afford to take you to Sydney on top of
that!" "You've been to Sydney twice since then,
both times without me," she said stubbornly. "I can
understand the first time, since I was expecting Justine,
but heaven knows I could have done with a holiday away from
The Wet this last January."
  "Oh, Christ!"
  "What a skinflint you are, Luke," she went
on gently. "Twenty thousand pounds you've had from
me, money that's rightfully mine, and yet you begrudge
the few
  measly pounds it would have cost you to take me
to Sydney. You and your money! You make me
sick."
  "I haven't touched it," he said feebly.
"It's there, every penny of it, and more besides."
  "Yes, that's right. Sitting in the bank, where it
always will. You haven't any intention of spending it, have
you? You want to adore it, like a golden calf.
Admit it, Luke, you're a miser. And what an
unforgivable idiot you are into the bargain! To treat your
wife and daughter the way you wouldn't dream
of treating a pair of dogs, to ignore their
existences, let alone their needs! You complacent,
conceited, self-centered bastard!" White-faced,
trembling, he searched for speech; to have Meg turn
on him, especially after the night, was like being bitten
to death by a butterfly. The injustice of her
accusations appalled him, but there didn't seem to be
any way he could make her understand the purity of his
motives. Womanlike, she saw only the
obvious; she just couldn't appreciate the grand
design at back of it all.
  So he said, "Oh, Meg!" in tones of
bewilderment, despair, resignation. "I've never
ill-treated you," he added. "No, I definitely
haven't! There's no
  one could say I was cruel to you. No one! You've
had enough to eat, a roof over your head, you've been
warm-was
  "Oh, yes," she interrupted.. "That's one thing
I'll grant you. I've never been warmer in my
life." She shook her head, laughed. "What's the
use? It's like talking to a brick wall."
  "I might say the same!"
  "By all means do," said Meggie icily, getting
off the bed and slipping on her panties.
"I'm not going to divorce you," she said. "I
don't want to marry again. If you want a
divorce, you know where to find me. Technically
speaking, I'm the one at fault, aren't I? I'm
deserting you-or at least that's the way the courts in this
country will see it. You and the judge can cry on each
other's shoulders about the perfidies and ingratitude
of women."
  "I never deserted you," he maintained.
  "You can keep my twenty thousand pounds, Luke.
But not another penny do you ever get from me. My
future income I'm going to use to support
Justine, and perhaps another child if I'm lucky."
  "So that's it!" he said. "All you were after was
another bloody baby, wasn't it? That's why you
came down here-a swan song, a little present from me
for you to take back to Drogheda with you! Another
bloody baby, not me! It
  never was me, was it? To you I'm just a breeder!
Christ, what a have!" "That's all most men are
to most women," she said maliciously. "You bring out
the worst in me, Luke, in more ways than you'll ever
understand. Be of good cheer! I've earned you more money in
the last three and a half years than the sugar has.
If there is another child, it's none of your
concern. As of this minute I never want to see you
again, not as long as I live." She was into her
clothes. As she picked up her handbag and the little
case by the door she turned back, her hand on the
knob. "Let me give you a little word of advice,
Luke. In case you ever get yourself another woman,
when you're too old and too tired to give yourself to
  the cane any more. You can't kiss for toffee. You
open your mouth too wide, you swallow a woman
whole like a python. Saliva's fine, but not a
deluge of it." She wiped her hand viciously across
her mouth. "You make me want to be sick! Luke
O'neill, the great I-am! You're a nothing!"
After she had gone he sat on the edge of the bed staring
at the closed door for a long while. Then he
shrugged and started to dress. Not a long procedure,
in North Queensland. Just a pair of shorts. If
he hurried he could get a ride back to the
barracks with Arne and the blokes. Good old Arne.
Dear old mate. A man was a fool. Sex was
one thing, but a man's mates were quite another.
  FIVE
  1938-1953 FEE
  Not wanting anyone to know of her return, Meggie
rode out to Drogheda on the mail truck with
old Bluey Williams, Justine in a basket
on the seat beside her. Bluey was delighted to see her
and eager to know what she had been doing for the last four
years, but as they neared the homestead he fell
silent, divining her wish to come home in peace.
  Back to brown and silver, back to dust, back
to that wonderful purity and spareness North Queensland
so lacked. No profligate growth here, no hastening
of decay to make room for more; only a slow,
wheeling inevitability like the constellations.
Kangaroos, more than ever. Lovely little
symmetrical wilgas, round and ma- tronly,
almost coy. Galahs, soaring in pink waves of
undersides above the truck. Emus at full run.
Rabbits, hopping out of the road with white powder
puffs lashing cheekily. Bleached skeletons of
dead trees in the grass. Mirages of timber
stands on the far curving horizon as they came across
the Dibban-Dibban plain, only the unsteady blue
lines across their bases to indicate that the trees
weren't real. The sound she had so missed but never
thought to miss, crows carking desolately. Misty
brown veils of dust whipped along by the dry
autumn wind like dirty rain. And the grass, the
silver-
  beige grass of the Great Northwest, stretching
to the sky like a benediction.
  Drogheda, Drogheda! Ghost gums and sleepy
giant pepper trees a-hum with bees.
Stockyards and buttery yellow sandstone buildings,
alien green lawn around the big house, autumn
flowers in the garden, wallflowers and zinnias, asters
and dahlias, marigolds and calendulas,
chrysanthemums, roses, roses. The gravel of the
backyard, Mrs. Smith standing gaping, then laughing,
crying, Minnie and Cat running, old stringy arms
like chains around her heart. For Drogheda was home, and
here was her heart, for always. Fee came out to see
what all the fuss was about. "Hello, Mum.
I've come home."
  The grey eyes didn't change, but in the new
growth of her soul Meggie understood. Mum was
glad; she just didn't know how to show it. "Have you
left Luke?" Fee asked, taking it for granted
that Mrs. Smith and the maids were as entitled to know as
she was herself. "Yes. I shall never go back to him.
He didn't want a home, or his children, or me."
  "Children?"
  "Yes. I'm going to have another baby."
  Oohs and aahs from the servants, and
Fee speaking her judgment in that measured voice,
gladness underneath.
  "If he doesn't want you, then you were right to come
home. We can look after you here."
  Her old room, looking out across the Home
Paddock, the gardens. And a room next door for
Justine, the new baby when it came. Oh, it was so
good to be home!
  Bob was glad to see her, too. More and more like
Paddy, he was becoming a little bent and sinewy as the
sun baked his skin and his bones to dryness. He had the
same gentle strength of character, but perhaps because he had
never been the progenitor of a large family, he
lacked Paddy's fatherly mien. And he was like Fee,
  also. Quiet, self-contained, not one to air his
feelings or opinions. He had to be into his
middle thirties, Meggie thought in sudden
surprise, and still he wasn't married. Then Jack
and Hughie came in, two duplicate Bobs
without his authority, their shy smiles welcoming her
home. That must be it, she reflected; they are so
shy, it is the land, for the land doesn't need
articulateness or social graces. It needs
only what they bring to it, voice- less love and
wholehearted fealty.
  The Cleary men were all home that night,
to unload a truck of corn Jims and Patsy had
picked up from the AMLANDF in Gilly.
  "I've never seen it so dry, Meggie," Bob
said. "No rain in two years, not a drop. And the
bunnies are a bigger curse than the kangas;
they're eating more grass than sheep and kangas
combined. We're going to try to hand-feed, but you know
what sheep are."
  Only too well did Meggie know what sheep
were. Idiots, incapable of understanding even the
rudiments of survival. What little brain the
original animal had ever possessed was entirely
bred out of these woolly aristocrats. Sheep wouldn't
eat anything but grass, or scrub cut from their
natural environment. But there just weren't enough hands
to cut scrub to satisfy over a hundred thousand
sheep.
  "I take it you can use me?" she asked.
  "Can we! You'll free up a man's hands for
scrubcutting, Meggie, if you'll ride the inside
paddocks the way you used to."
  True as their word, the twins were home for good. At
fourteen they quit Riverview forever, couldn't head
back to the black-oil plains quickly enough.
Already they looked like juvenile Bobs, Jacks and
Hughies, in what was gradually replacing the
old-fashioned grey twill and flannel as the
uniform of the Great Northwest grazier: white
moleskin breeches, white shirt, a fffat-
crowned grey felt hat with a broad brim, and
anklehigh elastic-sided riding boots with flat
heels. Only the handful of half-caste
aborigines who lived in Gilly's
  shanty section aped the cowboys of the American
West, in high-heeled fancy boots and
ten-gallon Stetsons. To a black-soil
plainsman such gear was a useless affectation, a part
of a different culture. A man couldn't walk through
the scrub in high-heeled boots, and a man often had
to walk through the scrub. And a ten-gallon Stetson
was far too hot and heavy. The chestnut mare and the
black gelding were both dead; the stables were empty.
Meggie insisted she was happy with a stock horse, but
Bob went over to Martin King's to buy her two of
his part-thoroughbred hacks coma creamy mare with a
black mane and tail, and a leggy chestnut gelding.
For some reason the loss of the old chestnut mare hit
Meggie harder than her actual parting from Ralph,
a delayed reaction; as if in this the fact
of his going was more clearly stated. But it was so good to be
out in the paddocks again, to ride with the dogs, eat the
dust of a bleating mob of sheep, watch the birds, the
sky, the land.
  It was terribly dry. Drogheda's grass had
always managed to outlast the droughts Meggie
remembered, but this was different. The grass was patchy
now; in between its tussocks the dark ground showed,
cracked into a fine network of fissures gaping like
parched mouths. For which mostly thank the rabbits. In
the four years of her absence they had suddenly
multiplied out of all rea- son, though she
supposed they had been bad for many years before that. It
was just that almost overnight their numbers had reached far
beyond saturation point. They were everywhere, and they, too,
ate the precious grass. She learned to set
rabbit traps, hating in a way to see the sweet
little things mangled in steel teeth, but too much of a
land person herself to flinch from doing what had to be done.
To kill in the name of survival wasn't cruelty.
  "God rot the homesick Pommy who shipped the
first rabbits out from England," said Bob bitterly.
  They were not native to Australia, and their
sentimental importation had completely upset the
ecological 430
  balance of the continent where sheep and cattle had not,
these being scientifically grazed from the moment of their
introduction. There was no natural Australian
predator to control the rabbit numbers, and imported
foxes didn't thrive. Man must be an
unnatural predator, but there were too few men,
too many rabbits.
  After Meggie grew too big to sit a horse,
she spent her days in the homestead with Mrs.
Smith, Minnie and Cat, sewing or knitting for the
little thing squirming inside her. He (she always thought
of it as he) was a part of her as Justine never had
been; she suffered no sickness or depression, and
looked forward eagerly to bearing him. Perhaps Justine
was inadvertently responsible for some of this; now that the
little pale-eyed thing was changing from a mindless baby
to an extremely intelligent girl child, Meggie
found herself fascinated with the process and the child. It was a
long time since she had been indifferent to Justine, and
she yearned to lavish love upon her daughter, hug
her, kiss her, laugh with her. To be politely
rebuffed was a shock, but that was what Justine did at
every affectionate overture. When Jims and Patsy
left Riverview, Mrs. Smith had thought to get
them back under her wing again, then came the
disappointment of discovering they were away in the paddocks
most of the time. So Mrs. Smith turned to little
Justine, and found herself as firmly shut out as
Meggie was. It seemed that Justine didn't
want to be hugged, kissed or made to laugh. She
walked and talked early, at nine months. Once
upon her feet and in command of a very articulate tongue,
she proceeded to go her own way and do precisely
whatever she wanted. Not that she was either noisy or
defiant; simply that she was made of very hard
metal indeed. Meggie knew nothing about genes, but
if she had she might have pondered upon the result of
an intermingling of Cleary, Armstrong and
O'neill. It couldn't fail to be powerful human
soup.
  But the most dismaying thing was Justine's dogged
  refusal to smile or laugh. Every soul on
Drogheda turned inside out performing antics to make
her germinate a grin, without success. When it came
to innate solemnity she outdid her grandmother. On the
first of October, when Justine was exactly sixteen
months old, Meggie's son was born on
Drogheda. He was almost four weeks early and not
expected; there were two or three sharp contractions,
the water broke, and he was delivered
by Mrs. Smith and Fee a few minutes after they
rang for the doctor. Meggie had scarcely, had time
to dilate. The pain was minimal, the ordeal so quickly
over it might hardly have been; in spite of the
stitches she had to have because his entry into the world had been
so precipitate, Meggie felt wonderful.
Totally dry for Justine, her breasts were full
to overflowing. No need for bottles or tins of
Lactogen this time. And he was so beautiful! Long and
slender, with a quiff of flaxen hair atop his
perfect little skull, and vivid blue eyes which
gave no hint of changing later to some other color.
How could they change? They were Ralph's eyes, as
he had Ralph's hands, Ralph's nose and mouth,
even Ralph's feet. Meggie was unprincipled enough
to be very thankful Luke had been much the same
build and coloring as Ralph, much the same in
features. But the hands, the way the brows grew in,
the downy widow's peak, the shape of the fingers and
toes; they were so much Ralph, so little Luke.
Better hope no one remembered which man owned
what.
  "Have you decided- on his name?" asked Fee; he
seemed to fascinate her. Meggie watched her as she
stood holding him, and was grateful. Mum
was going to love again; oh, maybe not the way she had
loved Frank, but at least she would feel something.
  "I'm going to call him Dane."
  "What a queer name! Why? Is it an
O'neill family name? I thought you were finished with the
O'neills?"
  "It's got nothing to do with Luke. This is his name,
no one else's. I hate family names; it's like
wishing a
  piece of someone different onto a new person.
I called Justine Justine simply because I liked
the name, and I'm calling Dane Dane for the same
reason.
  "Well, it does have a nice ring to it," Fee
admitted. Meggie winced; her breasts were too
full. "Better give him to me, Mum. Oh, I
hope he's hungry! And I hope old Blue
remembers to bring that breast pump. Otherwise you're
going to have to drive into Gilly for it."
  He was hungry; he tugged at her so hard his
gummy little mouth hurt. Looking down on him, the
qlosed eyes with their dark, gold-tipped lashes, the
feathery brows, the tiny working cheeks, Meggie loved
him so much the love hurt her more than his sucking ever
could.
  He is enough; he has to be enough, I'll not
get any more. But by God, Ralph de
Bricassart, by that God you love more than me,
you'll never know what I stole from you-and from Him.
I'm never going to tell you about Dane. Oh, my
baby! Shifting on the pillows to settle him more
comfortably into the crook of her arm, to see more easily
that perfect little face. My baby! You're mine, and
I'm never going to give you up to anyone else.
Least of all to your father, who is a priest and can't
acknowledge you. Isn't that wonderful?
  The boat docked in Genoa at the beginning of
April. Archbishop Ralph landed in an Italy
bursting into full, Mediterranean spring, and caught
a train to Rome. Had he requested it he could have
been met, chauffeured in a Vatican car
to Rome, but he dreaded to feel the Church close
around him again; he wanted to put the moment off as long
as comhe could. The Eternal City. It was truly that,
he thought, staring out of the taxi windows at the
campaniles and domes, and pigeon-strewn
plazas, the ambitious fountains, the Roman
columns with their bases buried deep in the
centuries. Well, to him they were all
superfluities. What mattered to him was the
part of Rome called the Vatican, its sumptuous
public rooms, its anything but sumptuous
private rooms.
  A black-and-cream-robed Dominican monk led
him through high marble corridors, amid bronze and
stone figures worthy of a museum, past great
paintings in the styles of Giotto, Raphael,
Botticelli, Fra Angelico. He was in the
public rooms of a great cardinal, and no doubt the
wealthy Contini-Verchese family had given much
to enhance their august scion's surroundings.
  In a room of ivory and gold, rich with color
from tapestries and pictures, French carpeted and
furnished, everywhere touches of crimson, sat
Vittorio Scarbanza, Cardinal di
Contini-Verchese. The small smooth hand, its
ruby ring glowing, was extended to him in welcome;
glad to fix his eyes downward, Archbishop Ralph
crossed the room, knelt, took the hand to kiss the
ring. And laid his cheek against the hand, knowing he
couldn't lie, though he had meant to right up until the
moment his lips touched that symbol of spiritual power,
temporal authority.
  Cardinal Vittorio put his other hand on the
bent shoulder, nodding a dismissal to the
monk, then as the door closed softly his hand went from
shoulder to hair, rested in its dark thickness,
smoothed it back tenderly from the half-averted
forehead. It had changed; soon it would be no longer
black, but the color of iron. The bent spine
stiffened, the shoulders went back, and Archbishop
Ralph looked directly up into his master's
face. Ah, there had been a change! The mouth had
drawn in, knew pain and was more vulnerable; the
eyes, so beautiful in color and shape and setting,
were yet completely different from the eyes he still
remembered as if bodily they had never left him.
Cardinal Vittorio had always had a fancy that the
eyes of Jesus were blue, and like Ralph's:
calm, removed from what He saw and therefore able
to encompass all, understand all. But perhaps it had been
a mistaken fancy. How could one feel for
humanity and suffer oneself without its showing in the eyes?
  "Come, Ralph, sit down."
  "Your Eminence, I wish to confess."
  "Later, later! First we will talk, and in
English. There are ears everywhere these days, but, thank
our dear Jesus, not English-speaking ears. Sit
down, Ralph, please. Oh, it is so good to see
you! I have missed your wise counsel, your
rationality, your perfect brand of companionship. They
have not given me anyone I like half so well as you."
  He could feel his brain clicking into the formality
already, feel the very thoughts in his mind take on more
stilted phrasing; more than most people, Ralph de
Bricassart knew how everything about one changed with
one's company, even one's speech. Not for these ears
the easy fluency of colloquial English. So he
sat down not far away, and directly opposite the
slight figure in its scarlet moire, the color
changing yet not changing, of a quality which made its
edges fuse with the surroundings rather than stand out from them.
The desperate weariness he had known for weeks
seemed to be easing a little from his shoulders; he
wondered why he had dreaded this meeting so, when he
had surely known in his heart he would be understood,
forgiven. But that wasn't it, not it at all. It was his
own guilt at having failed, at being less than
he had aspired to be, at disappointing a man who
had been interested, tremendously kind, a true
friend. His guilt at walking into this pure presence no
longer pure himself.
  "Ralph, we are priests, but we are something
else before that; something we were before we became priests,
and which we cannot escape in spite of our ex-
clusiveness. We are men, with the weaknesses and
failings of men. There is nothing you can tell me which
could alter the impressions I formed of you during our
years together, nothing you could tell me which will make me
think less of you, or like you less. For many years I
have known that you had escaped this realization of our
intrinsic weakness, of our humanity, but I knew you
must come to it, for we all do. Even the Holy Father,
who is the most humble and human of us all."
  "I broke my vows, Your Eminence. That isn't
easily forgiven. It's sacrilege."
  "Poverty you broke years ago, when you accepted
the bequest of Mrs. Mary Carson. Which leaves
cha/y and obedience, does it not?" "Then all three
were broken, Your Eminence."
  "I wish you would call me Vittorio, as you
used to! I am not shocked, Ralph, nor
disappointed. It is as Our Lord Jesus Christ
wills, and I think perhaps you had a great lesson
to learn which could not be learned in any way less
destructive. God is mysterious, His reasons
beyond our poor comprehension. But I think what you did
was not done lightly, your vows thrown away as having
no value. I know you very well. I know you to be
proud, very much in love with the idea of being a
priest, very conscious of your exclusiveness. It is
possible that you needed this particular lesson to reduce
that pride, make you understand that you are first a man, and
therefore not as exclusive as you think. Is it not so?"
"Yes. I lacked humility, and I believe in a
way I aspired to be God Himself. I've sinned
most grievously and inexcusably. I can't forgive
mysclf, so how can I hope for divine forgiveness?"
  "The pride, Ralph, the pride! It is not your
place to forgive, do you not understand that yet? Only
God can forgive. Only God! And He will forgive
if the sincere repentance is there. He has forgiven
greater sins from far greater saints, you know, as well as
from far greater villains. Do you think Prince
Lucifer is not forgiven? He was forgiven in the very
moment of his rebellion. His fate as ruler of
Hell is his own, not God's doing. Did he not
say it? "Better to rule in Hell than serve in
Heaven!" For he could not overcome his pride, he
could not bear to subjugate his will to the Will of Someone
else, even though that Someone was God Himself. I do
not want to see you make the same mistake, my
dearest friend. Humility was the one quality you
lacked,
  and it is the very quality which makes a great
saint-or a great man. Until you can leave the
matter of forgiveness to God, you will not have acquired
true humility."
  The strong face twisted. "Yes, I know you're
right. I must accept what I am without question, only
strive to be better without having pride in what I
am. I repent, therefore I shall confess and await
forgiveness. I do repent, bitterly." He sighed;
his eyes betrayed the conflict his measured words
couldn't, not in this room.
  "And yet, Vittorio, in a way there was nothing
else I could do. Either I ruined her, or I took
the ruin upon myself. At the time there didn't seem
to be a choice, because I do love her. It wasn't
her fault that I've never wanted the love to extend
to a physical plane. Her fate became more
important than my own, you see. Until that
moment I had always considered myself first, as more
important than she, because I was a priest, and she
was a lesser being. But I saw that I was responsible
for what she is .... I should have let her go when she
was a child, but I didn't. I kept her in my heart
and she knew it. If I had truly plucked her out
she would have known that, too, and she would have become someone
I couldn't influence." He smiled. "You
see that I have much to repent. I tried a little creating
of my own."
  "It was the Rose?"
  The head went back; Archbishop Ralph looked
at the elaborate ceiling with its gilded moldings and
baroque Murano chandelier. "Could it have been
anyone else? She's my only attempt at
creation."
  "And will she be all right, the Rose? Did you do
her more harm by this than in denying her?"
  "I don't know, Vittorio. I wish I
did! At the time it just seemed the only thing to do.
I'm not gifted with Promethean foresight, and
emotional involvement makes one a poor judge.
Besides, it simply . . . hap pened! But I think
perhaps she needed most what I
  gave her, the recognition of her identity as a
woman. I don't mean that she didn't know she was
a woman. I 437
  mean 1 didn't know. If I had first met her
as a woman it might have been different, but I knew
her as a child for many years."
  "You sound rather priggish, Ralph, and not yet ready
for forgiveness. It hurts, does it not? That you could have
been human enough to yield to human weakness.
Was it really done in such a spirit of noble
selfsacrifice?" Startled, he looked into the
liquid dark eyes, saw himself reflected in them as
two tiny manikins of insignificant proportion.
"No," he said. "I'm a man, and as a man I
found a pleasure in her I didn't dream existed.
I didn't know a woman felt like that, or could be the
source of such profound joy. I wanted never
to leave her, not only because of her body, but because I just
loved to be with her-talk to her, not talk to her, eat
the meals she cooked, smile at her, share her
thoughts. I shall miss her as long as I live." There
was something in the sallow ascetic visage which
unaccountably reminded him of Meggie's face in that
moment of parting; the sight of a spiritual burden being
taken up, the resoluteness of a character well able to go
forward in spite of its loads, its griefs, its
pain. What had he known, the red silk cardinal whose
only human addiction seemed to be his languid
Abyssinian cat?
  "I can't repent of what I had with her in that
way," Ralph went on when His Eminence didn't
speak. "I repent the breaking of vows as solemn and
binding as my life. I can never again approach my
priestly duties in the same light, with the
same zeal. I repent that bitterly. But
Meggie?" The look on his face when he uttered
her name made Cardinal Vittorio turn away
to do battle with his own thoughts.
  "To repent of Meggie would be to murder her." He
passed his hand tiredly across his eyes. "I don't
know if that's very clear, or even if it gets close
to saying what I mean. I can't for the life of me ever
seem to express what I feel for Meggie
adequately." He leaned 438
  forward in his chair as the Cardinal turned back,
and watched his twin images grow a little larger.
Vittorio's eyes were like mirrors; they threw
back what they saw and didn't permit one a
glimpse of what went on behind them. Meggie's
eyes were exactly the opposite; they went down and
down and down, all the way to her soul. "Meggie is
a benediction," he said. "She's a holy thing
to me, a different kind of sacrament."
  "Yes, I understand," sighed the Cardinal. "It
is well you feel so. In Our Lord's eyes I
think it will mitigate the great sin. For your own sake
you had better confess to Father Giorgio, not to Father
Guillermo. Father Giorgio will not misinterpret
your feelings and your reasoning. He will see
the truth. Father Guillermo is less perceptive,
and.might deem your true repentance debatable." A
faint smile crossed his thin mouth like a wispy
shadow. "They, too, are men, my Ralph, those who
hear the confessions of the great. Never forget it as long
as you live. Only in their priesthood do they act
as vessels containing God. In all else they are
men. And the forgiveness they mete out comes from God, but
the ears which listen and judge belong to men."
  There was a discreet knock on the door;
Cardinal Vittorio sat silently and watched the
tea tray being carried to a buhl table. "You see,
Ralph? Since my days in Australia I have
become addicted to the afternoon tea habit. They make
it quite well in my kitchen, though they used not to at
first." He held up his hand as Archbishop Ralph
started to move toward the teapot. "Ah, no! I shall
pour it myself. It amuses me to be 'mother.""
  "I saw a great many black shirts in the
streets of Genoa and Rome," said Archbishop
Ralph, watching Cardinal Vittorio pour. "The
special cohorts of II Duce. We have a very
difficult time ahead of us, my Ralph. The
Holy Father is adamant that there be no fracture
between the Church and the secular government of
Italy, and he is right in this as in ail things. No
matter what happens, we
  must remain free to minister to all our children, even
should a war mean our children will be divided, fighting each
other in the name of a Catholic God. Wherever our
hearts and our emotions might lie, we must endeavor
always to keep the Church removed from political
ideologies and international squabbles. I wanted
you to come to me because I can trust your face not to give
away what your brain is thinking no matter what your
eyes might be seeing, and because you have the best
diplomatic turn of mind I have ever encountered."
  Archbishop Ralph smiled ruefully. "You'll
further my career in spite of me, won't you! I
wonder what would have happened to me if I hadn't
met you?" "Oh, you would have become Archbishop of
Sydney, a nice post and an important one,"
said His Eminence with a golden smile. "But the ways
of our lives lie not in our hands. We met because it
was meant to be, just as it is meant that we work together now
for the Holy Father."
  "I can't see success at the end of the road,"
said Archbishop Ralph. "I think the result will be
what the result of impartiality always is. No one
will like us, and everyone will condemn us."
  "I know that, so does His Holiness. But we can do
nothing else. And there is nothing to prevent our
praying in private for the speedy downfall of 11
Duce and Der Fiihrer, is there?"
  "Do you really think there will be war?"
  "I cannot see any possibility of avoiding it."
  His Eminence's cat stalked out of the sunny corner
where it had been sleeping, and jumped upon the scarlet
shimmering lap a little awkwardly, for it was old.
  "Ah, Sheba! Say hello to your old friend
Ralph, whom you used to prefer to me."
  The satanic yellow eyes regarded Archbishop
Ralph haughtily, and closed. Both men laughed.
  Drogheda had a wireless set. Progress had
finally come to Gillanbone in the shape of an
Australian Broadcasting Commission radio station,
and at long last there was something to rival the party line
for mass entertainment. The wireless itself was a rather ugly
object in a walnut case which sat on a small
exquisite cabinet in the drawing room, its
car-battery power source hidden in the cupboard
underneath.
  Every morning Mrs. Smith, Fee and Meggie
turned it on to listen to the Gillanbone district
news and weather, and every evening Fee and
Meggie turned it on to listen to the ABC national
news. How strange it was to be instantaneously
connected with Outside; to hear of floods, fires,
rainfall in every part of the nation, an uneasy
Europe, Australian politics, without benefit
of Bluey Williams and his aged newspapers.
When the national news on Friday, September
1/, announced that Hitler had invaded Poland,
only Fee and Meggie were home to hear it, and neither
of them paid any attention. There had been speculation
for months; besides, Europe was half a world away.
Nothing to do with Drogheda, which was the center of the
universe. But on Sunday, September 3rd
all the men were in from the paddocks to hear Father Watty
  Thomas say Mass, and the men were interested in
Europe. Neither Fee nor Meggie thought to tell
them of Friday's news, and Father Watty, who
might have, left in a hurry for Narrengang.
  As usual, the wireless set was switched on that
evening for the national news. But instead of the crisp,
absolutely Oxford tones of the announcer, there
came the genteel, unmistakably Australian
voice of the Prime Minister, Robert Gordon
Menzies.
  "Fellow Australians. It is my
melancholy duty to inform you officially that in
consequence of the persistence by Germany in her invasion of
Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her, and
that, as a result, Australia is also at war . .
. .
  "It may be taken that Hitler's ambition is not
to unite all the German people under one rule, but to bring
under that rule as many countries as can be subdued
by force. If this is to go on, there can be no security
in Europe and no peace in the world .... There can be
no doubt that where Great Britain stands, there stand the people
of the entire British world .... "Our staying power,
and that of the Mother Country, will be best assisted by keeping
our production going, continuing our avocations and
business, maintaining employment, and with it, our
strength. I know that in spite of the emotions we are
feeling, Australia is ready to see it through.
"May God, in His mercy and compassion, grant that
the world may soon be delivered from this agony."
  There was a long silence in the drawing room,
broken by the megaphonal tones of a short-wave
Neville Chamberlain speaking to the British people;
Fee and Meggie looked at their men.
  "If we count Frank, there are six of us," said
Bob into the silence. "All of us except
Frank are on the land, which means they won't want
to let us serve. Of our present stockmen, I
reckon six will want to go and two will want to stay."
  "I want to go!" said Jack, eyes shining.
  "And me," said Hughie eagerly.
  "And us," said Jims on behalf of himself and the
inarticulate Patsy. But they all looked at
Bob, who was the boss. "We've got to be
sensible," he said. "Wool is a staple of war, and
not only for clothes. It's used as packing in
ammunition and explosives, for all sorts of
funny things we don't hear of, I'm sure.
Plus we have beef cattle for food, and the old
wethers and ewes go for hides, glue, tallow,
lanolin-all war staples.
  "So we can't go off and leave Drogheda to run
itself, no matter what we might want to do. With a war
on it's going to be mighty hard to replace the
stockmen we're bound to lose. The drought's in its
third year, we're scrub-cutting, and the bunnies
are driving us silly. For the moment our job's here
on Drogheda; not very exciting compared to getting
into action, but just as necessary. We'll be doing our best
bit here."
  The male faces had fallen, the
female ones lightened. "What if it goes on
longer than old Pig Iron Bob thinks it will?"
asked Hughie, giving the Prime Minister his
national nickname. Bob thought hard, his weatherbeaten
visage full of frowning lines. "If things get
worse and it goes on for a long time, then I
reckon as long as we've got two stockmen we can
spare two Clearys, but only if Meggie's
willing to get back into proper harness and work the
inside paddocks. It would be awfully hard and in good
times we wouldn't stand a chance, but in this drought I
reckon five men and Meggie working seven days a
week could run Drogheda. Yet that's asking a lot
of Meggie, with two little babies." "If it has
to be done, Bob, it has to be done," said
Meggie. "Mrs. Smith won't mind doing her
bit by taking charge of Justine and Dane. When you
give the word that I'm needed to keep Drogheda up
to full production, I'll start riding the inside
paddocks."
  "Then that's us, the two who can be spared," said
Jims, smiling. "No, it's Hughie and I," said
Jack quickly.
  "By rights it ought to be Jims and Patsy," Bob
said slowly. "You're the youngest and least
experienced as stockmen, where as soldiers we'd all
be equally inexperienced. But you're only sixteen
now, chaps."
  "By the time things get worse we'll be
seventeen," offered Jims. "We'll look older
than we are, so we won't have any trouble enlisting
if we've got a letter from you witnessed by Harry
Gough."
  "Well, right at the moment no one is going.
Let's see if we can't bring Drogheda up
to higher production, even with the drought and the bunnies."
Meggie left the room quietly, went upstairs
to the nursery. Dane and Justine were asleep, each
in a whitepainted cot. She passed her daughter
by, and stood over her son, looking down at him
for a long time. "Thank God you're only a
baby," she said.
  It was almost a year before the war intruded upon the little
Drogheda universe, a year during which one by one the
stockmen left, the rabbits continued to multiply, and
Bob battled valiantly to keep the station books
looking worthy of a wartime effort. But at the beginning
of June 1940 came the news that the British
Expeditionary Force had been evacuated from the
European mainland at Dunkirk;
volunteers for the second Australian Imperial
Force poured in thousands into the recruiting centers,
Jims and Patsy among them.
  Four years of. riding the paddocks in all
weathers had passed the twins' faces and bodies beyond
youth, to that ageless calm of creases at the outer
corners of the eyes, lines down the nose to the mouth.
They presented their letters and were accepted without comment.
Bushmen were popular. They could usually shoot well,
knew the value of obeying an order, and they were
tough. Jims and Patsy had enlisted in Dubbo, but
camp was
  to be Ingleburn, outside Sydney, so everyone
saw them off on the night mail. Cormac
Carmichael, Eden's youngest son, was on the same
train for the same reason, going to the same camp as it
turned out. So the two families packed their boys
comfortably into a firstclass compartment and stood around
awkwardly, aching to weep and kiss and have something warming
to remember, but stifled by their peculiar British
mistrust of demonstrativeness. The big C-36
steam locomotive howled mournfully, the stationmaster
began blowing his whistle.
  Meggie leaned over to peck her brothers on their
cheeks self-consciously, then did the
same to Cormac, who looked just like his oldest
brother, Connor; Bob, Jack and Hughie wrung
three different young hands; Mrs. Smith, weeping,
was the only one who did the kissing and cuddling everyone
was dying to do. Eden Carmichael, his wife and aging but
still handsome daughter with him, went through the same
formalities. Then everyone was outside on the
Gilly platform, the train was jerking against its
buffers and creeping forward. "Goodbye, goodbye!"
everyone called, and waved big white handkerchiefs
until the train was a smoky streak in the shimmering
sunset distance. Together as they had requested, Jims
and Patsy were gazetted to the raw, half-trained
Ninth Australian Division and shipped to Egypt
at the beginning of 1941, just in time to become a part
of the rout at Benghazi. The newly arrived General
Erwin Rommel had put his formidable weight on the
Axis end of the seesaw and begun the first reversal of
direction in the great cycling rushes back and forth
across North Africa. And, while the rest of the
British forces retreated ignominiously ahead of the
new Afrika Korps back to Egypt, the Ninth
Australian Division was detailed to occupy and
hold Tobruk, an outpost in Axis-held
territory. The only thing which made the
plan feasible was that it was
  still accessible by sea and could be supplied as long as
British ships could move in the Mediterranean. The
Rats of Tobruk holed up for eight months, and
saw action after action as Rommel threw everything he
had at them from time to, time, without managing to dislodge
them.
  "Do youse know why youse is here?" asked
Private Col Stuart, licking the paper on his
cigarette and rolling it shut lazily. Sergeant
Bob Malloy shifted his Digger hat far enough
upward to see his questioner from under its brim. "Shit,
no," he said, grinning; it was an oft-asked
  query.
  "Well, it's better than whiting gaiters in the
bloody glasshouse," said Private Jims
Cleary, pulling his twin brother's shorts down a
little so he could rest his head comfortably on soft warm
belly. "Yair, but in the glasshouse youse
don't keep getting shot at," objected Col,
flicking his dead match at a sunbathing lizard.
"I know this much, mate," said Bob, rearranging his
hat to shade his eyes. "I'd rather get shot at than
die of fuckin' boredom."
  They were comfortably, disposed in a dry,
gravelly dugout just opposite the mines and barbed
wire which cut off the southwest corner of the perimeter;
on the other side Rommel hung doggedly on
to his single piece of the Tobruk territory. A
big .50-caliber Browning machine gun shared the
hole with them, cases of ammunition neatly beside it,
but no one seemed very energetic or interested in the
possibility of attack. Their rifles were propped
against one wall, bayonets glittering in the
brilliant Tobruk sun. Flies buzzed
everywhere, but all four were Australian bushmen, so
Tobruk and North Africa held no
surprises in the way of heat, dust or flies.
"Just as well youse is twins, Jims," said
Col, throwing pebbles at the lizard, which didn't
seem disposed to
  move. "Youse look like a pair of poofters,
all tied up together." "You're just jealous." Jims
grinned, stroking Patsy's belly. "Patsy's the
best pillow in Tobruk."
  "Yair, all right for you, but what about poor
Patsy? Go on, Harpo, say something!" Bob
teased.
  Patsy's white teeth appeared in a smile, but
as usual he remained silent. Everyone
had tried to get him to talk, but no one had ever
succeeded beyond an essential yes or no; in
consequence nearly everyone called him Harpo, after the
voiceless Marx brother.
  "Hear the news?" asked Col suddenly.
  "What?"
  "The Seventh's Matildas got plastered by the
eightyeights at Halfaya. Only gun in the
desert big enough to wipe out a Matilda. Went through
them big buggers of tanks like a dose of salts."
  "Oh, yeah, tell me another!" said Bob
skeptically. "I'm a sergeant and I never heard
a whisper, you're a private and you know all about it.
Well, mate, there's just nothing Jerry's got
capable of wiping out a brigade of Matildas."
  "I was in Morshead's tent on a message from
the CO when I heard it come through on the wireless, and
it is true," Col maintained. For a while no one
spoke; it was necessary to every inhabitant of a beleaguered
outpost like Tobruk that he believe implicitly his
own side had sufficient military thrust to get him
out. Col's news wasn't very welcome, more so because
not one soldier in Tobruk held Rommel
lightly. They had resisted his efforts to blow them out
because they genuinely believed the Australian
fighting man had no peer save a Gurkha, and if
faith is nine-tenths of power, they had certainly
proved themselves formidable. "Bloody Poms," said
Jims. "What we need in North Africa is more
Aussies." The chorus of agreement was interrupted
by an ex- 447
  plosion on the rim of the dugout which blew the lizard
into nothing and sent the four soldiers diving for the machine
gun and their rifles. "Fuckin' Dago grenade,
all splinters and no punch," Bob said with a sigh of
relief. "If that was a Hitler special we'd be
playing our harps for sure, and wouldn't you like that, eh,
Patsy?"
  At the beginning of Operation Crusader the Ninth
Australian Division was evacuated by sea
to Cairo, after a weary, bloody siege which seemed
to have accomplished nothing. However, while the Ninth had
been holed up inside Tobruk, the steadily
swelling ranks of British troops in North
Africa had become the British Eighth Army,
its new commander General Bernard Law
Montgomery.
  Fee wore a little silver brooch formed into the
rising sun emblem of the AIF; suspended on two
chains below it was a silver bar, on which she
had two gold stars, one for each son under arms. It
assured everyone she met that she, too, was Doing
Her Bit for the Country. Because her husband was not a
soldier, nor her son, Meggie wasn't entitled
to wear a brooch. A letter had come from Luke informing
her that he would keep on cutting the sugar; he thought
she would like to know in case she had been worried he
might join up. There was no indication that he
remembered a word of what she had said that morning in the
Ingham pub. Laughing wearily and shaking her head,
she had dropped the letter in Fee's wastepaper
basket, wondering as she did so if Fee worried
ab.her sons under arms. What did she really think
of the war? But Fee never said a word, though she wore
her brooch every single day, all day. Sometimes a letter
would come from Egypt, falling into tatters when it was
spread open because the censor's scissors had filled
it with neat rectangular holes, once the names of
places or regiments. Reading these letters was largely
a matter of piecing together much
  out of- virtually nothing, but they served one
purpose which cast all others into the shade: while ever
they came, the boys were still alive. There had been no
rain. It was as if even the divine elements conspired
to blight hope, for 1941 was the fifth year
of a disastrous drought. Meggie, Bob, Jack,
Hughie and Fee were desperate. The Drogheda
bank account was rich enough to buy all the feed necessary
to keep the sheep alive, but most of the sheep wouldn't
eat. Each mob had a natural leader, the
Judas; only if they could persuade the Judas
to eat did they stand a hope with the rest, but sometimes
even the sight of a chewing Judas couldn't impress
the rest of the mob into emulating it.
  So Drogheda, too, was seeing its share of
bloodletting, and hating it. The grass was all
gone, the ground a dark cracked waste lightened
only by grey and dunbrown timber stands. They armed
themselves with knives as well as rifles; when they saw
an animal down someone would cut its throat to spare
it a lingering death, eyeless from the crows. Bob put
on more cattle and hand-fed them to keep up
Drogheda's war effort. There was no profit to be had
in it with the price of feed, for the agrarian regions
closer in were just as hard hit by lack of rain as the
pastoral regions farther out. Crop returns were
abysmally low. However, word had come from Rome that they
were to do what they could regardless of the cost.
  What Meggie hated most of all was the time she
had to put in working the paddocks. Drogheda
had managed to retain only one of its stockmen, and
so far there were no replacements; Australia's
greatest shortage had always been manpower. So unless
Bob noticed her irritability and fatigue, and
gave her Sunday off, Meggie worked the paddocks
seven days a week. However, if Bob gave her
time off it meant he himself worked harder, so she tried
not to let her distress show. It never occurred to her that
she could simply refuse to
  ride as a stockman, plead her babies as an
excuse. They were well cared for, and Bob needed her
so much more than they did. She didn't have the insight
to understand her babies needed her, too; thinking of her
longing to be with them as selfishness when they were so well
cared for by loving and familiar hands. It was selfish,
she told herself. Nor did she have the kind of
confidence that might have told her that in her children's eyes
she was just as special as they were to her. So she rode
the paddocks, and for weeks on end got to see her children
only after they were in bed for the night. Whenever Meggie
looked at Dane her heart turned over. He was
a beautiful child; even strangers on the streets of
Gilly remarked on it when Fee took him
into town. His habitual expression was a smiling
one, his nature a curious combination of
quietness and deep, sure happiness; he seemed
to have grown into his identity and acquired his self-knowledge
with none of the pain children usually experience, for he
rarely made mistakes about people or things, and nothing
ever exasperated or bewildered him. To his mother his
likeness to Ralph was sometimes very frightening, but
apparently no one else ever noticed. Ralph had
been gone from Gilly for a long time, and though Dane
had the same features, the same build, he had
one great difference, which tended to cloud the issue. His
hair wasn't black like Ralph's, it was a pale
gold; not the color of wheat or sunset but the
color of Drogheda grass, gold with silver and
beige in it.
  From the moment she set eyes on him, Justine
adored her baby brother. Nothing was too good for
Dane, nothing too much trouble to fetch or present
in his honor. Once he began to walk she never
left his side, for which Meggie was very grateful,
worrying that Mrs. Smith and the maids were getting
too old to keep a satisfactorily sharp eye
on a small boy. On one of her rare Sundays
off Meggie took her daughter onto her lap and
spoke to her seriously about looking after Dane.
  "I can't be here at the homestead to look
after him myself," she said, "so it all depends on you,
Justine., He's your baby brother and you must always
watch out for him, make sure he doesn't get
into danger or trouble." The light eyes were very
intelligent, with none of the rather wandering attention span
typical of a four-yearold. Justine nodded
confidently. "Don't worry, Mum," she said
briskly. "I'll always look after him for you." "I
wish I could myself," Meggie sighed.
  "I don't," said her daughter smugly. "I like
having Dane all to myself. So don't worry. I
won't let anything happen to him."
  Meggie didn't find the reassurance a comfort,
though it was reassuring. This precocious little scrap
was going to steal her son from her, and there was no way she
could avert it. Back to the paddocks, while Justine
staunchly guarded Dane. Ousted by her own daughter,
who was a monster. Who on earth did she take after?
Not Luke, not herself, not Fee. At least these days
she was smiling and laughing. She was four years old
before she saw anything funny in anything, and that she ever
did was probably due to Dane, who had laughed from
babyhood. Because he laughed, so did she.
Meggie's children learned from each other all the time. But
it was galling, knowing they could get on without
their mother very well. By the time this wretched conflict is
over, Meggie thought, he'll be too old to feel
what he should for me. He's always going to be closer
to Justine. Why is it that every time I think I've
got my life under control, something happens? I
didn't ask for this war or this drought, but I've got
them.
  Perhaps it was as well Drogheda was having such a
hard time of it. If things had been easier, Jack
and Hughie would have been off to enlist in a second.
As it was, they had no choice but to buckle down and
sal- 451
  vage what they could out of the drought which would come to be
called the Great Drought. Over a million square
miles of crop- and stock-bearing land was affected, from
southern Victoria to the waist-high Mitchell
grasslands of the Northern Territory.
  But the war rivaled the drought for attention. With the
twins in North Africa, the homestead people followed
that campaign with painful eagerness as it pushed and
pulled back and forth across Libya. Their heritage
was working class, so they were ardent Labor
supporters and loathed the present government,
Liberal by name but conservative by nature. When in
August of 1941 Robert Gordon
Menzies stepped down, admitting he couldn't
govern, they were jubilant, and when on October
3rd the Labor leader John Curtin was asked
to form a government, it was the best news Drogheda had
heard in years. All through 1940 and 1941
unease about Japan had been growing, especially
after Roosevelt and Churchill cut off her
petroleum supplies. Europe was a long way
away and Hitler would have to march his armies twelve
thousand miles in order to invade Australia, but
Japan was Asia, part of the Yellow Peril poised
like a descending pendulum above Australia's rich,
empty, underpopulated pit. So no one in
Australia was at all surprised when the
Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor; they had
simply been waiting for it to come, somewhere. Suddenly
the war was very close, and might even become their own
backyard. There were no great oceans separating
Australia from Japan, only big islands and little
seas.
  On Christmas Day 1941, Hong Kong
fell; but the Japs would never succeed in taking
Singapore, everyone said, relieved. Then news
came of Japanese landings in Malay and in the
Philippines; the great naval base at
the toe of the Malayan peninsula kept its huge,
flat-trajectoried guns trained on the sea, its
fleet at the ready. But on February 8th,
1942, the Japanese crossed the narrow 452
  Strait of Johore, landed on the north side of
Sbbngapore Island and came across to the city behind
its impotent guns. Singapore fell without even a
struggle.
  And then great news! All the Australian
troops in North Africa were to come home.
Prime Minister Curtin rode the swells of
Churchillian wrath undismayed, insisting that
Australia had first call on Australian men.
The Sixth and Seventh Australian Divisions
embarked in Alexandria quickly; the Ninth, still
recovering in Cairo from its battering at Tobruk,
was to follow as soon as more ships could be provided.
Fee smiled, Meggie was delirious with joy.
Jims and Patsy were coming home.
  Only they didn't. While the North waited for
its troopships the seesaw tipped again; the Eighth
Army was in full retreat back from Benghazi.
Prime Minister Churchill struck a bargain with
Prime Minister Curtin. The Ninth Australian
Division would remain in North Africa,
in exchange for the shipment of an American division
to defend Australia.. Poor soldiers, shuttled
around by decisions made in offices not even belonging
to their own countries. Give a little here, take a little
there. But it was a hard jolt for Australia,
to discover that the Mother Country was booting all her Far
Eastern chicks out of the nest, even a poult as fat
and promising as Australia.
  On the night of October 23rd, 1942, it was
very quiet in the desert. Patsy shifted slightly,
found his brother in the darkness, and leaned. like a small
child right into the curve of his shoulder. Jims's arm went
around him and they sat together in companionable silence.
Sergeant Bob Malloy nudged Private Col
Stuart, grinned.
  "Pair of poofs," he said.
  "Fuck you, too," said Jims.
  "Come on, Harpo, say something," Col
murmured. Patsy gave him an angelic smile
only half seen in the
  darkness, opened his mouth and hooted an excellent
imitation of Harpo Marx's horn. Everyone for
several yards hissed at Patsy to shut up; there was
an all-quiet alert on.
  "Christ, this waiting's killing me,"
Bob sighed. Patsy spoke in a shout: "It's the
silence that's killing me!" "You fuckin' side-show
fraud, I'll do the killing!" Col croaked
hoarsely, reaching for his bayonet.
  "For Crissake pipe down!" came the
captain's whisper. "Who's the bloody idiot
yelling?"
  "Patsy," chorused half a dozen voices.
  The roar of laughter floated reassuringly across
the minefields, died down in a stream of low-toned
profanity from the captain. Sergeant Malloy
glanced at his watch; the second hand was just sweeping
up to 9:40 pip-emma. Eight hundred and
eighty-two British guns and howitzers spoke
together. The heavens reeled, the ground lifted,
expanded, could not settle, for the barrage went on and
on without a second's diminution in the mindshattering
volume of noise. It was no use plugging fingers in
ears; the gargantuan booming came up through the earth
and traveled inward to the brain via the bones. What
the effect must have been on Rommel's front the
troops of the Ninth in their trenches could only
imagine. Usually it was possible to pick out this type
and size of artillery from that, but tonight their iron
throats chorused in perfect harmony, and
thundered on as the minutes passed. The desert fit not
with the light of day but with the fire of the sun itself; a vast
billowing cloud of dust rose like coiling smoke
thousands of feet, glowing with the flashes of exploding
shells and mines, the leaping flames of massive
concentrations of detonating casings, igniting
payloads. Everything Montgomery had was aimed at
the minefields-guns, howitzers, mortars. And
everything Montgomery had was thrown as fast as the
sweating 454
  artillery crews could throw it, slaves feeding the
maws of their weapons like small frantic birds a
huge cuckoo; gun casings grew hot, the time between
recoil and reload shorter and shorter as the
artillerymen got carried away on their own
impetus. Madmen, maddened, they danced a
stereotyped pattern of attendance on their
fieldpieces.
  It was beautiful, wonderful-the high point of an
artilleryman's life, which he lived and relived in
his dreams, waking and sleeping, for the rest of his
anticlimactic days. And yearned to have back again,
those fifteen minutes with Montgomery's guns.
  Silence. Stilled, absolute silence, breaking
like waves on distended eardrums; unbearable
silence. Five minutes before ten, exactly. The
Ninth got up and moved forward out of its trenches
into no man's land, fixing bayonets, feeling for
ammunition clips, releasing safety catches,
checking water bottles, iron rations, watches,
tin hats, whether bootlaces were well tied, the
location of those carrying the machine guns. It was easy
to see, in the unholy glow of fires and red-hot sand
melted into glass; but comthe dust pall hung between the
Enemy and them, they were safe. For the moment. On the very
edge of the minefields they halted, waited.
  Ten pip-emma, on the dot. Sergeant
Malloy put his whistle to his lips and blew a
shrill blast up and down the company lines; the
captain shouted his forward command. On a two-mile
front the Ninth stepped off into the minefields and the
guns began again behind them, bellowing. They could see
where they were going as if it had been day, the howitzers
trained on shortest range bursting shells not yards
in front of them. Every three minutes the range
lifted another hundred yards; advance those hundred
yards praying it was only through antitank mines, or
that the S-mines, the man mines, had been shelled out
of existence by Montgomery's guns. There were still
Germans and Italians in the field,
outposts of machine guns, 50-mm small artil-
  lery, mortars. Sometimes a man would step on an
Unexploded S-mine, have time to see it leap
upward out of the sand before it blew him in half. No
time to think, no time to do anything save crabscuttle
in time to the guns, a hundred yards forward every three
minutes, praying. Noise, light, dust, smoke,
gut-watering terror. Minefields which had no end,
two or three miles of them to the other side, and no
going back. Sometimes in the tiny pauses between
barrages came the distant, eerie skirl of a
bagpipe on the roasting gritty air; on the left
of the Ninth Australian, the Fiftyfirst
Highlanders were trekking through the minefields with a piper
to lead every company commander. To a Scot the sound of. his
piper drawing him into battle was the sweetest lure
in the world, and to an Australian very friendly, comforting.
But to a German or an Italian it was
hackle-raising. The battle went on for twelve
days, and twelve days is a very long battle. The
Ninth was lucky at first; its casualties were
relatively light through the minefields and through those
first days of continued advance into Rommel's
territory.
  "You know, I'd rather be me and get shot
at than be a sapper," said Col Stuart, leaning
on his shovel.
  "I dunno, mate; I think they've got the
best of it," growled his sergeant. "Waiting behind the
fuckin' lines until we've done all the work, then
out they toddle with their bloody minesweepers to clear
nice little paths for the fuckin' tanks."
  "It isn't the tanks at fault, Bob; it's
the brass who deploy them," Jims said, patting the
earth down around the top of his section of their new
trench with the fiat of his spade. "Christ, though, I
wish they'd decide to keep us in one place for a
while! I've dug more dirt in the last five days
than a bloody anteater."
  "Keep digging, mate," said Bob
unsympathetically.
  "Hey, look!" cried Col, pointing skyward.
  Eighteen RAF light bombers came down the
valley
  in perfect flying-school formation, dropping their
sticks of bombs among the Germans and Italians
with deadly accuracy.
  "Bloody beautiful," said Sergeant Bob
Malloy, his long neck tilting his head at the
sky.
  Three days later he was dead; a huge piece
of shrapnel took off his arm and half his side in a
fresh advance, but no one had time to stop except
to pluck his whistle from what was left of his mouth. Men
were going down now like flies, too tired to maintain the
initial pitch of vigilance and swiftness; but what
miserable barren ground they took they held on to,
in the face of a bitter defense by the cream of a
magnificent army. It had become to them all no more
than a dumb, stubborn refusal to be defeated.
The Ninth held off Graf von Sponeck and
Lungerhausen while the tanks broke out to the south,
and finally Rommel was beaten. By November 8 he
was trying to rally beyond the Egyptian border, and
Montgomery was left in command of the entire field.
A very important tactical victory, Second
Alamein; Rommel had been forced to leave behind many
of his tanks, guns and equipment. Operation Torch
could commence its push eastward from Morocco and
Algeria with more security. There was still plenty of
fight in the Desert Fox, but a large part of his
brush was on the ground at El Alamein. The
biggest and most decisive battle of the North
African theater had been fought, and Field
Marshal Viscount Montgomery of
Alamein was its victor. Second Alamein was the
swan song of the Ninth Australian Division in
North Africa. They were finally going home to contend
with the Japanese, on the main land of New Guinea.
Since March of 1941 they had
  been more or less permanently in the front line,
arriv ing poorly trained and equipped, but going
home now
  with a reputation exceeded only by the Fourth
Indian-, 457
  Division. Andwiththe Ninth went Jims and Patsy,
safe and whole.
  Of course they were granted leave to go home
to Drogheda. Bob drove into Gilly to collect
them from the Goondiwindi train, for the Ninth was based
in Brisbane and would depart after jungle training for
New Guinea. When the Rolls swept round the
drive all the women were out on the lawn waiting,
Jack and Hughie hanging back a little but just as
eager to see their young brothers. Every sheep left
alive on Drogheda could drop dead if it so
desired, but this was a holiday.
  Even after the car stopped and they got out, no one
moved. They looked so different. Two years in the
desert had ruined their original uniforms;
they were dressed in a new issue of jungle green,
and looked like strangers. For one thing, they seemed to have
grown inches, which indeed they had; the last two years
of their development had occurred far from Drogheda, and
had pushed them way above their older brothers. Not
boys any more but men, though not men in the
BobJack-Hughie mold; hardship, battle
euphoria and violent death had made something out of
them Drogheda never could. The North African sun
had dried and darkened them to rosy mahogany, peeled
away every layer of childhood. Yes, it was possible
to believe these two men in their simple uniforms,
slouch hats pinned above their left ears with the badge
of the AIF rising sun, had killed fellow men. It
was in their eyes, blue as Paddy's but sadder, without
his gentleness.
  "My boys, my boys!" cried Mrs. Smith,
running to them, tears streaming down her face. No,
it didn't matter what they had done, how much they
had changed; they were still her little babies she had
washed, diapered, fed, whose tears ske had dried,
whose wounds she had kissed better. Only the wounds
they harbored now were beyond her power to heal.
  Then everyone was around them, British reserve
  broken down, laughing, crying, even
poor Fee patting them on their backs, trying
to smile. After Mrs. Smith there was Meggie
to kiss, Minnie to kiss, Cat to kiss, Mum
to hug bashfully, Jack and Hughie to wring by the hand
speechlessly. The Drogheda people would never know what it
was like to be home, they could never know how much this moment
had been longed for, feared for.
  And how the twins ate! Army tucker was never like
this, they said, laughing. Pink and white fairy
cakes, chocolate-soaked lamingtons rolled in
coconut, steamed spotted dog pudding, pavlova
dripping passionfruit and cream from Drogheda cows.
Remembering their stomachs from earlier days, Mrs.
Smith was convinced they'd be ill for a week, but as
long as there was unlimited tea to wash it down, they
didn't seem to have any trouble with their digestions.
  "A bit different from Wog bread, eh,
Patsy?"
  "Yair."
  "What's Wog mean?" asked Mrs. Smith.
  "A Wog's an Arab, but a Wop's an
Italian, right, Patsy?" "Pair."
  It was peculiar. They would talk, or at least
Jims would talk, for hours about North Africa:
the towns, the people, the food, the museum in
Cairo, life on board a troopship, in rest
camp. But no amount of questioning could elicit anything but
vague, change-thesubject answers as to what the
actual fighting had been like, what Gazala,
Benghazi, Tobruk, El Alamein had been like.
Later on after the war was over the women were to find this
constantly; the men who had actually been in the thick
of battle never opened their mouths about it, refused
to join the ex-soldiers' clubs and leagues, wanted
nothing to do with institutions perpetuating the memory of
war. Drogheda held a party for them. Alastair
MacQueen was in the Ninth as well and was home, so
of course
  Rudna Hunish held a party. Dominic
O'Rourke's two youngest sons were in the Sixth in
New Guinea, so even though they couldn't be
present, Dibban-Dibban held a party. Every
property in the district with a son in uniform wanted
to celebrate the safe return of the three Ninth
boys. Women and girls flocked around them, but the
Cleary returned heroes tried to escape at every
op- portunity, more scared than they had been on
any field of war. In fact, Jims and Patsy
didn't seem to want to have anything to do with women; it
was to Bob, Jack and Hughie they clung.
Late into the night after the women had gone to bed they
sat talking to the brothers who had been forced to remain
behind, opening their sore, scarred hearts. And they
rode the paddocks of parched Drogheda, in its
seventh year of the drought, glad to be in civvies.
  Even so racked and tortured, to Jims and
Patsy the land was ineffably lovely, the sheep
comforting, the late roses in the garden a perfume of
some heaven. And somehow they had to drink of it all so
deeply they'd never again forget, for that first going away
had been a careless one; they had had no idea what
it would be like. When they left this time it would be with every
moment hoarded to remember and treasure, and with
Drogheda roses pressed into their wallets along
with a few blades of scarce Drogheda grass.
To Fee they were kind and pitying, but to Meggie, Mrs.
Smith, Minnie and Cat they were loving, very tender.
They had been the real mothers. What delighted
Meggie most was the way they loved Dane, played
with hum for hours, took him with them for rides,
laughed with him, rolled him over and over on the
lawn. Justine seemed to frighten them; but then, they were
awkward with anyone female whom they didn't know as
well as they knew the older women. Besides which, poor
Justine was furiously jealous of the
  way they monopolized Dane's company, for it
meant she hod no one to play with.
  "He's a bonzer little bloke, Meggie," said
Jims to Meggie when she came out onto the veranda
one day; he was sitting in a cane chair watching
Patsy and Dane playing on the lawn.
  "Yes, he is a little beauty, isn't he?"
She smiled, sitting where she could see her youngest
brother. Her eyes were soft with pity; they had been
her babies, too. "What's the matter, Jims?
Can't you tell me?" His eyes lifted to hers,
wretched with some deep pain, but he shook his head as
if not even tempted "No, Meggie. It isn't
anything I could ever tell a woman."
  "What about when all this is over and you marry?
Won't you want to tell your wife?"
  "Us marry? I don't think so. War takes
all that out of a man. We were itching to go, but we're
wiser now. If we married we'd have sons, and for
what? See them grow up, get pushed off to do what
we've done, see what we've seen?"
  "Don't, Jims, don't!"
  His gaze followed hers, to Dane chuckling in
glee because Patsy was holding him upside down.
  "Don't ever let him leave Drogheda,
Meggie. On Drogheda he can't come to any harm,"
said Jims.
  Archbishop de Bricassart ran down the
beautiful high corridor, heedless of the surprised
faces turning to watch him; he burst into the
Cardinal's room and stopped short. His Eminence was
entertaining Monsieur Papee, the Polish
government-in-exile's ambassador to the Holy
See. "Why, Ralph! What is it?"
  "It's happened, Vittorio. Mussolini has
been overthrown."
  "Dear Jesus! The Holy Father, does he
know?"
  "I telephoned Castel Gandolfo myself, though

  radio should have it any minute. A friend at
German headquarters phoned me." "I do hope the
Holy Father has his bags packed," said
Monsieur Papee with a faint, a very faint
relish.
  "If we disguised him as a Franciscan
mendicant he might get out, not otherwise,"
Archbishop Ralph snapped. "Kesselring has the
city sealed tighter than a drum."
  "He wouldn't go anyway," said
Cardinal Vittorio. Monsieur Papee got
up. "I must leave you, Your Eminence. I am the
representative of a government which is Germany's
enemy. If His Holiness is not safe, nor am
1. There are papers in my rooms I must attend
to. Prim and precise, diplomat to his
fingertips, he left the two priests alone.
  "He was here to intercede for his persecuted peo-
ple?"
  "Yes. Poor man, he cares so much for them."
  "And don't we?"
  "Of course we do, Ralph! But the situation is
more difficult than he knows."
  "The truth of the matter is he's not believed."
  "Ralph!"
  "Well, isn't it the truth? The Holy Father
spent his early years in Munich, he fell in
love with the Germans and he still loves them, in spite
of everything. If proof in the form of those poor wasted
bodies was laid out in front of his eyes, he'd
say it must be the Russians did it. Not his so-dear
Germans, never a people as cultured and civilized as
they are!" "Ralph, you are not a member of the
Society of Jesus, but you are here only because you have
taken a personal oath of allegiance to the
Holy Father. You have the hot blood of your Irish and
Norman forebears, but I beg of you, be sensible!
Since last September we have been only waiting
for the axe to fall, praying 11 Duce would remain
to shelter us from German reprisal.
  Adolf Hitler has a curious streak of
contradiction in his personality, for there are two things
he knows to be his enemies yet wishes if at all
possible to preserve: the British Empire and the
Holy Catholic Church of Rome. But when pushed
to it, he has done his level best to crush the
British Empire. Do you think he would not crush
us, too, if we push him to it? One word of de-
nunciation from us as to what is happening in Poland and
he will certainly crush us. And what earthly good do you
think our denouncing that would achieve, my friend? We have
no armies, no soldiers. Reprisal would be
immediate, and the Holy Father would be sent to Berlin, which is
what he fears. Do you not remember the puppet
pope in Avignon all those centuries ago? Do
you want our Pope a puppet in Berlin?"
  "I'm sorry, Vittorio, I can't see it that
way. I say we must denounce Hitler, shout his
barbarity from the rooftops! If he has us shot
we'll die martyrs, and that would be more
effective still."
  "You are not usually obtuse, Ralph! He would
not have us shot at all. He understands the impact of
martyrdom just as well as we do. The Holy Father
would be shipped to Berlin, and we would be shipped
quietly to Poland. Poland, Ralph, Poland! Do
you want to die in Poland of less use than you are
now?"
  Archbishop Ralph sat down, clenched his hands
between his knees, stared rebelliously out the window at
the doves soaring, golden in the setting sun, toward
their cote. At forty-nine he was thinner than of
yore, and was aging as splendidly as he did most
things.
  "Ralph, we are what we are. Men, but only
as a secondary consideration. First we are priests."
  "That wasn't how you listed our priorities when
I came back from Australia, Vittorio."
  "I meant a different thing then, and you know it. You
are being difficult. I mean now that we cannot think as
men. We must think as priests, because that is the most
important aspect of our lives. Whatever we
  may think or want to do as men, our allegiance
is to the Church, and to no temporal power! Our
loyalty lies only with the Holy Father!
You vowed obedience, Ralph. Do you wish to break it
again? The Holy Father is infallible in all matters
affecting the welfare of God's Church." "He's
wrong! His judgment's biased. All of his energies
are directed toward fighting Communism. He sees
Germany as its greatest enemy, the only real factor
preventing the westward spread of Communism. He
wants Hitler to remain firmly in the German
saddle, just as he was content to see Mussolini rule
Italy."
  "Believe me, Ralph, there are things you do not
know. He is the Pope, he is infallible! If you
deny that, you deny your very faith."
  The door opened discreetly, but hastily.
  "Your Eminence, Herr General Kesselring."
  Both prelates rose, their late differences
smoothed from their faces, smiling.
  "This is a great pleasure, Your Excellency.
Won't you sit down? Would you like tea?"
  The conversation was conducted in German, since many
of the senior members of the Vatican spoke it. The
Holy Father was fond of speaking and listening
to German.
  "Thank you, Your Eminence, I would. Nowhere
else in Rome does one get such
superbly English tea."
  Cardinal Vittorio smiled guilelessly. "It
is a habit I acquired while I was the Papal
Legate in Australia, and which, for all my innate
Italianness, I have not been able to break."
  "And you, Your Grace?"
  "I'm an Irishman, Herr General. The
Irish, too, are brought up on tea." General
Albert Kesselring always responded to Archbishop
de Bricassart as one man to another; after these
slight, oily Italian prelates he was so
refreshing, a man without subtlety or cunning,
straightforward.
  "As always, Your Grace, I am amazed at the
purity of your German accent," he complimented.
  "I have an ear for languages, Herr General,
which means it's like all talents-not worth praising."
  "What may we do for Your Excellency?" asked
the Cardinal sweetly. "I presume you will have
heard of the fate of Il Duce by now?" "Yes,
Your Excellency, we have."
  "Then you will know in part why I came. To assure
you that all is well, and to ask you if perhaps you would
convey the message to those summering at Castel
Gandolfo? I'm so busy at the moment
it's impossible for me to visit Castel Gandolfo
myself."
  "The message will be conveyed. You are so busy?"
"Naturally. You must surely comrealize this is now
an enemy country for us Germans?"
  "This, Herr General? This is not Italian
soil, and no man is an enemy here except those
who are evil."
  "I beg your pardon, Your Eminence. Naturally
I was referring to Italy, not to the Vatican. But in
the matter of Italy I must act as my Fiihrer
commands. Italy will be occupied, and my troops,
present until now as allies, will become
policemen."
  Archbishop Ralph, sitting comfortably and looking
as if he had never had an ideological struggle
in his life, watched the visitor closely. Did
he know what his Fiihrer was doing in Poland? How
could he not know? Cardinal Vittorio arranged his
face into an anxious look. "Dear General, not
Rome herself, surely? Ah, nol Rome, with her
history, her priceless artifacts? If you bring
troops within her seven hills there will be strife,
destruction. I beg of you, not thatl"
  General Kesselring looked
uncomfortable. "I hope it won't come to that, Your
Eminence. But I took an oath also, I too am
under orders. I must do as my Fiihrer wishes."
  "You'll try for us, Herr General? Please, you
must!
  I was in Athens some years ago," said Archbishop
Ralph quickly, leaning forward, his eyes charmingly
wide, a lock of white-sprinkled hair falling
across his brow; he was well aware of his effect on the
general, and used it without compunction. "Have you been in
Athens, sir?" "Yes, I have," said the general
dryly.
  "Then I'm sure you know the story. How it took
men of relatively modern times to destroy the
buildings atop the Acropolis? Herr General,
Rome stands as she always was, a monument to two
thousand years of care, attention, love. Please,
I beg of you! Don't endanger Rome."
  The general stared at him in startled admiration; his
uniform became him very well, but no better than the
soutane with its touch of imperial purple became
Archbishop Ralph. He, too, had the look of a
soldier, a soldier's sparely beautiful body,
and the face of an angel. So must the Archangel
Michael look; not a smooth young
Renaissance boy but an aging perfect man, who had
loved Lucifer, fought him, banished Adam and
Eve, slain the serpent, stood at God's right
hand. Did he know how he looked? He was indeed a
man to remember.
  "I shall do my best, Your Grace, I promise
you. To a certain extent the decision is mine, I
admit it. I am, as you know, a civilized man.
But you're asking a lot. If I declare Rome an
open city, it means I cannot blow up her bridges
or convert her buildings into fortresses, and that might
well be to Germany's eventual disadvantage. What
assurances do I have that Rome won't repay me with
treachery if I'm kind to her?"
  Cardinal Vittorio pursed his lips and made
kissing noises at his cat, an elegant
Siamese nowadays; he smiled gently, and looked
at the Archbishop. "Rome would never repay kindness
with treachery, Herr General. I am sure when you do
find the time to visit those summering at Castel
Gandolfo that you will receive the
  same assurances. Here, Kheng-see, my
sweetheart! Ah, what a lovely girl you are!"
His hands pressed it down on his scarlet lap,
caressed it. "An unusual animal,
Your Eminence."
  "An aristocrat, Herr General. Both the
Archbishop and myself bear old and venerable names, but beside
her lineage, ours are as nothing. Do you like her name?
It is Chinese for silken flower. Apt, is it
not?" The tea had arrived, was being arranged; they were
all comquiet until the lay sister left the room.
  "You won't regret a decision to declare Rome
an open city, Your Excellency," said Archbishop
Ralph to the new master of Italy with a melting
smile. He turned to the Cardinal, charm falling
away like a dropped cloak, not needed with this beloved
man. "Your Eminence, do you intend to be "mother,"
or shall I do the honors?"
  was "Mother"?" asked General Kesselring
blankly. Cardinal di Contini-Verchese laughed.
"It is our little joke, we celibate men. Whoever
pours the tea is called "mother." An English
saying, Herr General."
  That night Archbishop Ralph was tired, restless,
on edge. He seemed to be doing nothing to help end
this war, only dicker about the preservation of
antiquities, and he had grown to loathe Vatican
inertia passionately. Though he was conservative
by nature, sometimes the snaillike caution
of those occupying the highest Church positions irked
him intolerably. Aside from the humble nuns and
priests who acted as servants, it was weeks since
he had spoken to an ordinary man, someone without a
political, spiritual or military axe to grind.
Even prayer seemed to come less easily to him these
days, and God seemed light-years away, as if
He had withdrawn to allow His human creatures
full rein in destroying the world He had made for
them. What he needed, he thought, was a stiff dose
of Meggie and Fee, or a stiff dose of someone
who wasn't interested in the fate of the Vatican or
of Rome.
  His Grace walked down the private stairs
into the great basilica of Saint Peter's, whence his
aimless progress had led him. Its doors were
locked these days the moment darkness fell, a sign
of the uneasy peace which lay over Rome more telling
than the companies of greyclad Germans moving through
Roman streets. A faint, ghostly glow
illuminated the yawning empty apse; his footsteps
echoed hollowly on the stone floor as he walked,
stopped and merged with the silence as he genuflected in
front of the High Altar, began again. Then, between one
foot's noise of impact and the next, he
heard a gasp. The flashlight in his hand sprang
into life; he leveled his beam in the direction of the
sound, not frightened so much as curious. This was his world;
he could defend it secure from fear.
  The beam played upon what had become in his eyes
the most beautiful piece of sculpture in all
creation: the Pieta of Michelangelo. Below the
stilled stunned figures was another face, made not
of marble but of flesh, all shadowed hollows and
deathlike.
  "Ciao," said His Grace, smiling.
  There was no answer, but he saw that the clothes were
those of a German infantryman of lowest rank; his
ordinary man! That he was a German didn't
matter.
  "Wie geht's?" he asked, still smiling.
  A movement caused sweat on a wide,
intellectual brow to flash suddenly out of the dimness.
  "Du bist krank?" he asked then, wondering if
the lad, for he was no more, was ill.
  Came the voice, at last: "Nein."
  Archbishop Ralph laid his flashlight down on
the floor and went forward, put his hand under the
soldier's chin and lifted it to look into the dark
eyes, darker in the darkness.
  "What's the" matter?" he asked in German,
and laughed. "There!" he continued, still in German.
"You don't know it, but that's been my main function
in life comto ask people what's the matter. And, let
me tell you,
  it's a question which has got me into a lot of trouble in
my time." "I clime to pray," said the lad in a
voice too deep for his age, with a heavy Bavarian
accent.
  "What happened, did you get locked in?"
  "Yes, but that isn't what the matter is."
  His grace picked up the flashlight. "Well,
you can't stay here all night, and I haven't got a
key to the doors. Come with me." He began walking
back toward the private stairs leading up to the
papal palace, talking in a slow, soft voice.
"I came to pray myself, as a matter of fact.
Thanks to your High Command, it's been a rather nasty
day. That's it, up here .... We'll have to hope that
the Holy Father's staff don't assume I've
been arrested, but can see I'm doing the escorting, not
you."
  After that they walked for ten more minutes in silence,
through corridors, out into open courts and gardens,
inside hallways, up steps; the young
German did not seem anxious to leave his
protector's side, for he kept close. At
last His Grace opened a door and led his waif
into a small sitting room, sparsely and humbly
furnished, switched on a lamp and closed the
door. They stood staring at each other, able to see.
The German soldier saw a very tall man with a fine
face and blue, discerning eyes; Archbishop Ralph
saw a child tricked out in the garb which all of Europe
found fearsome and awe-inspiring. A child; no more than
sixteen years old, certainly. Of average
height and youthfully thin, he had a frame
promising later bulk and strength, and very long arms.
His f-ace had rather an Italianate cast, dark and
patrician, extremely attractive; wide,
dark brown eyes with long black lashes, a
magnificent head of wavy black hair. There was
nothing usual or ordinary about him after all, even
if his role was an ordinary one; in spite of the
fact that he had longed to talk to an average,
ordinary man, His Grace was interested.
  "Sit down," he said to the boy, crossing to a
chest
  and unearthing a bottle of Marsala wine. He
poured some into two glasses, gave the boy
one and took his own to a chair from which he could watch the
fascinating countenance comfortably. "Are they reduced
to drafting children to do their fighting?" he asked, crossing
his legs. "I don't know," said the boy. "I was in
a children's home, so I'd be taken early anyway."
  "What's your name, lad?"
  "Rainer Moerling Hartheim," said the boy, rolling
it out with great pride. "A magnificent name," said
the priest gravely. "It is, isn't it? I
chose it myself. They called me Rainer Schmidt
at the home, but when I went into the army I changed
it to the name I've always wanted."
  "You were an orphan?"
  "The Sisters called me a love child."
  Archbishop Ralph tried not to smile; the boy
had such dignity and self-possession, now he had
lost his fear. Only what had frightened him? Not being
found, or being locked in the basilica.
  "Why were you so frightened, Rainer?"
  The boy sipped his wine gingerly, looked up with a
pleased expression. "Good, it's sweet." He
made himself more comfortable. "I wanted to see Saint
Peter's because the Sisters always used to talk about it and
show us pictures. So when they posted us to Rome I
was glad. We got here this morning. The
minute I could, I came." He frowned. "But it
wasn't as I had expected. I thought rd feel
closer to Our Lord, being in His own Church. Instead
it was only enormous and cold. I couldn't feel
Him."
  Archbishop Ralph smiled. "I know what you
mean. But Saint Peter's isn't really a church,
you know. Not in the sense most churches are. Saint
Peter's is the Church. It took me a long time
to get used to it, I remember." "I wanted
to pray for two things," the boy said, nod- 470
  ding his head to indicate he had heard but that it
wasn't what he wished to hear.
  "For the things which frighten you?"
  "Yes. I thought being in Saint Peter's might
help."
  "What are the things which frighten you, Rainer?" "That
they'll decide I'm a Jew, and that my regiment
will be sent to Russia after all."
  "I see. No wonder you're frightened. Is there
indeed a possibility they'll decide you're a
Jew?"
  "Well, look at me!" said the boy simply.
"When they were writing down my particulars they said
they'd have to check. I don't know if they can
or not, but I suppose the Sisters might know more
than they ever told me." "If they do, they'll not
pass it on," said His Grace comfortingly. "They'll
know why they're being asked."
  "Do you really think so? Oh, I hope so!"
  "Does the thought of having Jewish blood disturb
you?" "What my blood is doesn't matter," said
Rainer. "I was born a German, that's the only
important thing."
  "Only they don't look at it like that, do they?"
"No."
  "And Russia? There's no need to worry about
Russia now, surely. You're in Rome, the
opposite direction."
  "This morning I heard our commander saying we might
be sent to Russia after all. It isn't going well
there."
  "You're a child," said Archbishop Ralph
abruptly. "You ought to be in school."
  "I wouldn't be now anyway." The boy smiled.
"I'm sixteen, so I'd be working." He sighed.
"I would have liked to keep going to school. Learning
is important."
  Archbishop Ralph started to laugh, then got up
and refilled the glasses. "Don't take
any notice of me, Rainer. I'm not making any
sense. Just thoughts, one after the other. It's my hour
for them, thoughts. I'm not a very good host, am I?"
  "You're all right," said the boy.
  "So," said His Grace, sitting down again.
"Define yourself, Rainer Moerling Hartheim."
  A curious pride settled on the young face.
"I'm a German, and a Catholic. I want
to make Germany a place where race and religion
won't mean persecution, and I'm going to devote
my life to that end, if I live." "I shall pray for
you-that you live, and succeed."
  "Would you?" asked the boy shyly. "Would you really
pray for me personally, by name?"
  "Of course. In fact, you've taught me
something. That in my business there is only one weapon
at my disposal-prayer. I have no other function."
"Who are you?" asked Rainer, the wine beginning
to make him blink drowsily. "I'm Archbishop
Ralph de Bricassart."
  "Oh! I thought you were an ordinary priest!"
  "I am an ordinary priest. Nothing more."
  "I'll strike a bargain with you!" said the boy, his
eyes sparkling. "You pray for me, Father, and if I
live long enough to get what I want,
I'll come back to Rome to let you see what your
prayers have done."
  The blue eyes smiled tenderly. "All right,
it's a bargain. And when you come, I'll tell you
what 1 think happened to my prayers." He got
up. "Stay there, little politician. I'll find you
something to eat."
  They talked until dawn glowed round the domes
and campaniles, and the wings of pigeons whirred
outside the window. Then the Archbishop conducted his
guest through the public rooms of the palace, watching
his awe with delight, and let him out into the cool,
fresh air. Though he didn't know it, the boy with the
splendid name was indeed to go to Russia, carrying with
him a memory oddly sweet and reassuring: that in
Rome, in Our Lord's own Church, a man was
praying for him every day, by name.
  By the time the Ninth was ready to be shipped to New
Guinea, it was all over bar the mopping up. Dis-
  gruntled, the most elite division in
Australian military history could only hope
there might be further glory to amass somewhere else,
chasing the Japanese back up through Indonesia.
Guadalcanal had defeated all Japanese
hopes in the drive for Australia. And
yet, like the Germans, they yielded bitterly,
grudgingly. Though their resources were pitifully
stretched, their armies foundering from lack of supplies
and reinforcements, they made the Americans and the
Australians pay for every inch they gained back. In
retreat, the Japanese abandoned Buna, Gona,
Salamaua, and slipped back up the north coast,
to Lae and Finschafen.
  On the fifth of September 1943 the Ninth
Division was landed from the sea just east of Lae. It was
hot, the humidity was 100 percent, and it rained every
afternoon though The Wet wasn't due for another two
full months. The threat of malaria meant everyone
was taking Atabrine, and the little yellow tablets made
everyone feel as sick as if they had the actual
malaria. Already the constant moisture meant
permanently damp boots and socks; feet were
becoming spongy, the flesh between the toes raw and
bloody. Mocka and mosquito bites turned
angry, ulcerated.
  In Port Moresby they had seen the wretched
state of the New Guinea natives, and if they
couldn't stand the climate without developing yaws,
beriberi, malaria, pneumonia, chronic skin
diseases, enlarged livers and spleens, there
wasn't much hope for the white man. There were
survivors of Kokoda in Port Moresby as
well, victims not so much of the Japanese but of
New Guinea, emaciated, masses of sores,
delirious with fever. Ten times as many had died from
pneumonia nine thousand feet up in freezing cold
wearing thin tropical kit as died from the
Japanese. Greasy dank mud, unearthly forests
which glowed with cold pale spectral light after dark
from phosphorescent fungi, precipitous climbs
over a gnarled tangle of exposed roots which meant
a man couldn't look up for a second 473
  and was a sitting duck for a sniper. It was about as
different from North Africa as any place could
get, and the Ninth wasn't a bit sorry it had
stayed to fight the two Alameins instead of Kokoda
Trail. Lae was a coastal town amid heavily
forested grasslands, far from the eleven-thousand-foot
elevations of the deep interior, and far more salubrious
as a battleground than Kokoda. Just a few
European houses, a petrol pump, and a
collection of native huts. The Japanese were as
ever game, but few in number and impoverished, as
worn out from New Guinea as the Australians they
had been fighting, as disease ridden. After the
massive ordnance and extreme mechanization of
North Africa it was strange never to see a
mortar or a fieldpiece; just Owen guns and
rifles, with bayonets in place all the time.
Jims and Patsy liked hand-to-hand fighting, they
liked to go in close together, guard each other. It was
a terrible comedown after the Afrika Korps, though,
there was no doubt about it. Pint-size yellow men who
all seemed to wear glasses and have buck teeth.
They had absolutely no martial panache.
  Two weeks after the Ninth landed at Lae, there were
no more Japanese. It was, for spring in New
Guinea, a very beautiful day. The humidity had
dropped twenty points, the sun shone out of a sky
suddenly blue instead of steamily white, the watershed
reared green, purple and lilac beyond the town.
Discipline had relaxed, everyone seemed to be taking
the day off to play cricket, walk around, tease the
natives to make them laugh and display their
blood-red, toothless gums, the result of chewing
betel nut. Jims and Patsy were strolling through the
tall grass beyond the town, for it reminded them of
Drogheda; it was the same bleached, tawny color,
and long the way Drogheda grass was after a season of
heavy rain.
  "Won't be long now until we're back,
Patsy," said Jims. "We've got the Nips
on the run, and Jerry, too. Home, Patsy,
home to Drogheda! I can hardly wait."
  "Yair," said Patsy.
  They walked shoulder to shoulder, much closer than was
permissible between ordinary men; they would touch each other
sometimes, not consciously but as a man touches his own
body, to relieve a mild itch or absently
assure himself it is still all there. How nice it was
to feel genuinely sunny sun on their faces instead
of a molten ball in a Turkish bath! Every so often
they would lift their muzzles to the sky, flare their
nostrils to take in the scent of hot light on
Drogheda-like grass, dream a little that they were back
there, walking toward a wilga in the daze of noon
to lie down through the worst of it, read a book,
drowse. Roll over, feel the friendly, beautiful
earth through their skins, sense a mighty heart beating
away down under somewhere, like a mother's heart to a
sleepy baby.
  "Jims! Look! A dinkum Drogheda
budgie!" said Patsy, shocked into speaking. Perhaps
budgerigars were natives of the Lae country, too,
but the mood of the day and this quite unexpected
reminder of home suddenly triggered a wild elation
in Patsy. Laughing, feeling the grass tickling his
bare legs, he took off after it, snatching his
battered slouch hat from his head and holding it out as if
he truly believed he could snare the vanishing
bird. Smiling, Jims stood watching him.
  He was perhaps twenty yards away when the machine
gun ripped the grass to flying shreds around him;
Jims saw his arms go up, his body spin round so that
the arms seemed stretched out in supplication. From
waist to knees he was brilliant blood, life's
blood.
  "Patsy, Patsy!" Jims screamed; in every
cell of his own body he felt. the bullets,
felt himself ebbing, dying.
  His legs opened in a huge stride, he gained
momentum to run, then his military caution asserted
itself and he dived headlong into the grass just as the
machine gun opened up again.
  "Patsy, Patsy, are you all right?" he cried
stupidly, having seen that blood.
  Yet incredibly, "Yair," came a faint
answer.
  Inch by inch Jims dragged himself forward through the
fragrant grass, listening to the wind, the
rustlings of his own progress. When he reached his
brother he put his head against the naked shoulder, and
wept.
  "Break it down," said Patsy. "I'm not dead
yet."
  "How bad is it?" Jims asked, pulling down
the bloodsoaked shorts to see blood-soaked
flesh, shivering.
  "Doesn't feel as if I'm going to die,
anyway."
  Men had appeared all around them, the cricketers
still wearing their leg pads and gloves; someone went
back for a stretcher while the rest proceeded to silence
the gun at the far side of the clearing. The deed was
done with more than usual ruthlessness, for everyone was
fond of Harpo. If anything happened to him,
Jims would never be the same.
  A beautiful day; the budgerigar had long gone,
but other birds trilled and twittered fearlessly,
silenced only during the actual battle.
"Patsy's bloody lucky," said the medic
to Jims some time later. "There must be a dozen
bullets in him, but most of them hit the thighs. The
two or three higher up seem to have embedded themselves
in pelvic bone or muscle. As far as
I can judge, his gut's in one piece, so is his
bladder. The only thing is . . ."
  "Well, what?" Jims prompted
impatiently; he was still shaking, and blue around the
mouth.
  "Difficult to say anything for certain at this
stage, of course, and I'm not a genius surgeon
like some of the blokes in Moresby. They'll be able
to tell you a lot more. But the urethra has been
damaged, so have many of the tiny little nerves in the
perineum. I'm pretty sure he can be patched
up as good as new, except maybe for the nerves.
Nerves don't patch up too well,
unfortunately." He cleared his throat. "What
I'm trying to
  say is L%- "caret might never have much
sensation in the genital region." Jims uropped his
head, looked at the ground through a crystal wall of
tears. "At least he's alive," he said.
  He was granted leave to fly to Port Moresby
with his brother, and to stay until Patsy was
pronounced out of danger. The injuries were little short
of miraculous. Bullets had scattered all around
the lower abdomen without penetrating it. But the Ninth
medic had been right; lower pelvic sensation
was badly impaired. How much he might regain
later on no one was prepared to say.
  "It doesn't much matter," said Patsy from the
stretcher on which he was to be flown to Sydney. "I
was never too keen on marrying, anyway. Now, you
look after yourself, Jims, do you hear? I hate
leaving you."
  "I'll look after myself, Patsy. Christ!"
Jims grinned, holding hard onto his brother's
hand. "Fancy having to spend this. rest of the war without
my best mate. I'll write an. I tell you
what it's like. Say hello to Mrs. Smith and
Megg'e and Mum and the brothers.for me, eh? Half
your luck, going home to Drogheda."
  Fee an. Mrs. Smith flew down to Sydney
to meet the Americas plane. which brought Patsy from
Townsville; Fee remacncd only a few
days, but Mrs. Smith rtayed on in a Randwick
hotel close to the Prince of Wales military
hospital. Patsy remained there for three months.
His part in the war was over. Many tears had Mrs.
Smith shed; but there was much to be thankful for, too.
In one way he would never be able to lead a full
life, but he could do everything else: ride, walk,
run. Mating didn't seem to be in the
Cleary line, anyway. When he was discharged from
hospital Meggie drove down from Gilly in the
Rolls, and the two women tucked him up on the
back seat amid blankets and magazines, praying
for one more boon: that Jims would come home, too.
  Not until the Emperor Hirohito's
delegate signed Japan's official surrender
did Gillanbone believe the war was finally over.
The news came on Sunday, September 2,
1945, which was exactly six years after the start.
Six agonizing years. So many places empty,
never to be filled again: Dominic O'Rourke's
son Rory, Horry Hopeton's son John,
Eden Carmichael's son Cormac. Ross
MacQueen's youngest son, Angus, would never
walk again, Anthony King's son David would
walk but never see where he was going, Paddy
Cleary's son Patsy would never have children. And there were
those whose wounds weren't visible, but whose scars went just
as deep; who had gone off gaily, eager and
laughing, but came home quietly, said little, and
laughed only rarely. Who could have dreamed when it
began that it would go on so long, or take such a
toll? Gillanbone was not a particularly
superstitious community, but even the most
cynical resident shivered that Sunday,
September 2nd. For on the same day that the war
ended, so did the longest drought in the history of
Australia. For nearly ten years no useful rain
had fallen, but that day the clouds filled the sky
thousands of feet deep, blackly, cracked themselves
open and poured twelve inches of rain on the thirsty
earth. An
  inch of rain may not mean the breaking of a drought, it
might not be followed by anything more, but twelve inches
of rain means grass. Meggie, Fee, Bob,
Jack, Hughie and Patsy stood on the veranda
watching it through the darkness, sniffing the unbearably
sweet perfume of rain on parched and crumbling
soil. Horses, sheep, cattle and pigs
spraddled their legs against the shifting of the melting
ground and let the water pour over their twitching
bodies; most of them had been born since rain like
this had last passed across their world. In the cemetery the
rain washed the dust away, whitened everything, washed the
dust off the outstretched wings of the bland Botticelli
angel. The creek produced a tidal wave, its
roaring flood mingling with the drumming of the soaking rain.
Rain, rainl Rain. Like a benediction from some vast
inscrutable hand, long withheld, finally
given. The blessed, wonderful rain. For rain meant
grass, and grass was life. A pale-green fuzz
appeared, poked its little blades skyward,
ramified, burgeoned, grew a darker green as it
lengthened, then faded and waxed fat, became the
silver-beige, knee-high grass of Drogheda.
The Home Paddock looked like a field of wheat,
rippling with every mischievous puff of wind, and the
homestead gardens exploded into color, great buds
unfurling, the ghost gums suddenly white and
lime-green again after nine years of griming dust. For
though Michael Carson's insane proliferation of
water tanks still held enough to keep the homestead
gardens alive, dust had long settled on every leaf
and petal, dimmed and drabbed. And an old legend
had been proven fact: Drogheda did indeed have
sufficient water to survive ten years of drought, but
only for the homestead.
  Bob, Jack, Hughie and Patsy went back
to the paddocks, began seeing how best to restock;
Fee opened a brand-new bottle of black ink and
savagely screwed the lid down on her bottle of
red ink; Meggie saw an end coming to her life in the
saddle, for it would not be
  long before Jims was home and men turned
up looking for jobs. After nine years there were very few
sheep or cattle left, only the prize breeders
which were always penned and hand-fed in any time, the nucleus
of champion stock, rams and bulls. Bob went
east to the top of the Western slopes to buy ewes of
good blood line from properties not so hard hit by the
drought. Jims came home. Eight stockmen were
added to the Drogheda payroll. Meggie hung up
her saddle.
  It was not long after this that Meggie got a letter from
Luke, the second since she had left him.
  "Not long now, I reckon," he said. "A few
more years in the sugar should see me through. The old
back's a bit sore these days, but I can still cut
with the best of them, eight or nine tons a day. Arne
and I have twelve other gangs cutting for us, all
good blokes. Money's getting very loose,
Europe wants sugar as fast as we can produce
it. I'm making over five thousand quid a year,
saving almost all of it. Won't be long now, Meg,
before I'm out around Kynuna. Maybe when I get
things together you might want to come back to me. Did
I give you the kid you wanted? Funny, how women
get their hearts set on kids. I reckon that's
what really broke us up, eh? Let me
know how you're getting on, and how Drogheda weathered
the drought. Yours, Luke." Fee came out onto the
veranda, where Meggie sat with the letter in her hand, staring
absently out across the brilliant green of the
homestead lawns. "How's Luke?"
  "The same as ever, Mum. Not a bit changed.
Still on about a little while longer in the damned sugar,
the place he's going to have one day out around
Kynuna."
  "Do you think he'll ever actually do it?"
  "I suppose so, one day."
  "Would you go to join him, Meggie?"
  "Not in a million years."
  Fee sat down in a cane chair beside her
daughter, pulling it round so she could see Meggie
properly. In the distance men were shouting, hammers
pounded; at long last the verandas and the upper-story
windows of the homestead were being enclosed by fine wire
mesh to screen out the flies. For years Fee had
held out, obdurate. No matter how many flies
there were, the lines of the house would never be spoiled
by ugly netting. But the longer the drought dragged on the
worse the flies became, until two weeks before
it ended Fee had given in and hired a contractor
to enclose every building on the station, not only
the homestead itself but all the staff houses and
barracks as well.
  But electrify she would not, though since 1915
there had been a "donk," as the shearers called it,
to supply power to the shearing shed. Drogheda without the
gentle diffusion of lamps? It wasn't to be thought
of. However, there was one of the new gas stoves which
burned off cylindered gas on order, and a dozen of the
new kerosene refrigerators; Australian
industry wasn't yet on a peacetime footing, but
eventually the new appliances would come. "Meggie,
why don't you divorce Luke, marry again?" Fee
asked suddenly. "Enoch Davies would have you in a
second; he's never looked at anyone else."
Meggie's lovely eyes surveyed her mother in
wonder. "Good Lord, Mum, I do believe you're
actually talking to me as one woman to another!"
Fee didn't smile; Fee still rarely smiled.
"Well, if you aren't a woman by now, you'll never
be one. I'd say you qualified. I must be getting
old; I feel garrulous."
  Meggie laughed, delighted at her mother's
overture, and anxious not to destroy this new mood.
"It's the rain, Mum. It must be. Oh, isn't
it wonderful to see grass on Drogheda
again, and green lawns around the homestead?"
  "Yes, it is. But you're side-stepping my question.
Why not divorce Luke, marry again?"
  "It's against the laws of the Church."
  "Piffle!" exclaimed Fee, but gently.
"Half of you is me, and I'm not a Catholic.
Don't give me that, Meggie. If you really
wanted to marry, you'd divorce Luke."
  "Yes, I suppose I would. But I don't
want to marry again. I'm quite happy with my children and
Drogheda."
  A chuckle very like her own echoed from the interior of the
bottle-brush shrubbery nearby, its drooping
scarlet cylinders hiding the author of the chuckle.
  "Listen! There he is, that's Dane! Do you know
at his age he can sit a horse as well as I
can?" She leaned forward. "Dane! What are you up
to? Come out of there this instant!"
  He crawled out from under the closest bottle
brush, his hands full of black earth, suspicious
black smears all around his mouth. "Mum! Did you
know soil tastes good? It really does, Mum,
honestly!" He came to stand in front of her; at
seven he was tall, slender, gracefully strong, and
had a face of delicate porcelain
beauty. Justine appeared, came to stand beside him.
She too was tall, but skinny rather than slender, and
atrociously freckled. It was hard to see what her
features were like beneath the brown spots, but those unnerving
eyes were as pale as they had been in infancy, and the
sandy brows and lashes were too-fair to emerge from the
freckles. Paddy's fiercely red tresses
rioted in a mass of curls around her rather pixyish
face. No one could have called her a pretty child, but
no one ever forgot her, not merely on account of the
eyes but also because she had remarkable strength of character.
Astringent, forth- right and uncompromisingly
intelligent, Justine at eight cared as little what
anyone thought of her as she had when a baby. Only
one person was very close to her: Dane. She still
adored him, and still regarded him as her own property.
  Which had led to many a tussle of wills between her
  and her mother. It had been a rude shock to Justine
when Meggie hung up her saddle and got back
to being a mother. For one thing, Justine didn't seem
to need a mother, since she was convinced she was right about
everything. Nor was she the sort of little girl who
required a confidante, or warm approval. As
far as she was concerned, Meggie was mostly someone who
interfered with her pleasure in Dane. She
got on a lot better with her grandmother, who was just the
sort of person Justine heartily approved of;
she kept her distance and assumed one had a little
sense.
  "I told him not to eat dirt," Justine said.
  "Well, it won't kill him, Justine, but it
isn't good for him, either." Meggie turned to her
son. "Dane, why?"
  He considered the question gravely. "It was there, so
I ate it. If it was bad for me, wouldn't it taste
bad, too? It tastes good."
  "Not necessarily," Justine interrupted
loftily. "I give up on you, Dane, I really
do. Some of the best-tasting things are the most
poisonous." "Name one!" he challenged.
  "Treaclel" she said triumphantly.
  Dane had been very ill after finding a tin of
treacle in Mrs. Smith's pantry and eating the
lot. He admitted the thrust, but countered. "I'm
still here, so it can't be all that poisonous."
  "That's only because you vomited. If you hadn't
vomited, you'd be dead." This was inarguable. He and his
sister were much of a height, so he tucked his arm
companionably through hers and they sauntered away across
the lawn toward their cubbyhouse, which their
uncles had erected as instructed amid the
down-drooping branches of a pepper tree. Danger
from bees had led to much adult opposition to this site,
but the children were proven right. The bees dwelled with them
amicably. For, said the children, pepper trees were the
nicest of all trees, very private. They had such
a dry, fragrant smell, and the 483
  grapelike clusters of tiny pink globules they
bore crumbled into crisp, pungent pink flakes
when crushed in the hand.
  "They're so different from each other, Dane and
Justine, yet they get along so well together," said
Meggie. "It never ceases to amaze me. I
don't think I've ever seen them quarrel, though how
Dane avoids quarreling with some one as determined and
stubborn as Justine, I don't understand."
  But Fee had something else on her mind. "Lord,
he's the living image of his father," she said, watching
Dane duck under the lowest fronds of the pepper
tree and disappear from sight.
  Meggie felt herself go cold, a reflex
response which years of hearing people say this had not
scotched. It was just her own guilt, of course. People
always meant Luke. Why not? There were basic
similarities between Luke O'neill and
Ralph de Bricassart. But try as she would, she
could never be quite natural when Dane's likeness
to his father was commented upon. She drew a carefully
casual breath. "Do you think so, Mum?" she
asked, nonchalantly swinging her foot. "I can
never see it myself. Dane is nothing like Luke in
nature or attitude to life."
  Fee laughed. It came out as a snort, but it was
a genuine laugh. Grown pallid with age and
encroaching cataracts, her eyes rested on
Meggie's startled face, grim and ironic. "Do
you take me for a fool, Meggie? I don't mean
Luke O'neill. I mean Dane is the living
image of Ralph de Bricassart." Lead. Her
foot was made of lead. It dropped to the Spanish
tiles, her leaden body sagged, the lead heart within
her breast struggled against its vast weight to beat.
Beat, damn you, beat! You've got to go on beating
for my son!
  "Why, Mum!" Her voice was leaden, too.
"Why, Mum, what an extraordinary thing to say!
Father Ralph de Bricassart?"
  "How many people of that name do you know? Luke
O'neill never bred that boy; he's Ralph de
Bricassart's son. I knew it the
minute I took him out of you at his birth."
  "Then-why haven't you said something? Why wait
until he's seven years old to make such an
insane and unfounded accusation?" Fee stretched her
legs out, crossed them daintily at the ankles.
"I'm getting old at last, Meggie. And things
don't hurt as much anymore. What a blessing old
age can be! It's so good to see Drogheda coming
back, I feel better within myself because of it. For the
first time in years I feel like talking."
  "Well, I must say when you decide to talk you
really know how to pick your subject! Mum, you have
absolutely no right to say such a thing: It isn't
true!" said Meggie desperately, not sure if
her mother was bent on torture or commiseration.
  Suddenly Fee's hand came out, rested on
Meggie's knee, and she was smiling-not bitterly or
contemptuously, but with a curious sympathy.
"Don't lie to me, Meggie. Lie to anyone
else under the sun, but don't lie to me. Nothing will
ever convince me Luke O'neill fathered that boy.
I'm not a fool, I have eyes. There's no Luke
in him, there never was because there couldn't be. He's the
image of the priest. Look at his hands, the way his
hair grows in a widow's peak, the shape
of his face, the eyebrows, the mouth. Even how he
moves. Ralph de Bricassart, Meggie,
Ralph de Bricassart."
  Meggie gave in, the enormity of her relief
showing in the way she sat, loosely now, relaxed.
"The distance in his eyes. That's what I notice
myself most of all. Is it so obvious? Does
everyone know, Mum?" "Of course not," said Fee
positively. "People don't look any further than
the color of the eyes, the shape of the nose, the general
build. Like enough to Luke's. I knew because I'd
been watching you and Ralph de Bricassart for
years. All he had to do was crook his
  little finger and you'd have gone running, so a fig for your
"it's against the laws of the Church" when it comes
to divorce. You were panting to break a far more serious
law of the Church than the one about divorce.
Shameless, Meggie, that's what you were.
Shamelessl" A hint of hardness crept into her
voice. "But he was a stubborn man. His heart was
set on being a perfect priest; you came a very bad
second. Oh, idiocyl It didn't do him any
good, did it? It was only a matter of time before
something happened." Around the corner of the veranda someone
dropped a hammer, and let fly with a string
of curses; Fee winced, shuddered. "Dear heaven,
I'll be glad when they're done with the screening!"
She got back to the subject. "Did you think you
fooled me when you wouldn't have Ralph de
Bricassart to marry you to Luke? 1 knew. You
wanted him as the bridegroom, not as the officiating
cleric. Then when he came to Drogheda before he
left for Athens and you weren't here, I knew sooner
or later he'd have to go and find you. He wan- dered
around the place as lost as a little boy at the
Sydney Royal Easter Show. Marrying Luke was
the smartest move you made, Meggie. As long as
he knew you were pining for him Ralph didn't want
you, but the minute you became somebody else's he
exhibited all the classical signs of the dog in
the manger. Of course he'd convinced himself that his
attachment to you was as pure as the driven snow, but the
fact remained that he needed you. You were necessary to him in
a way no other woman ever had been, or I
suspect ever will be. Strange," said Fee with real
puzzlement. "I always wondered what on earth he
saw in you, but I suppose mothers are always a little blind
about their daughters until they're too old to be
jealous of youth. You are about Justine, the same as
I was about you."
  She leaned back in her chair, rocking
slightly, her eyes half closed, but she watched
Meggie like a scientist his specimen.
  "Whatever it was he saw in you," she went on,
"he saw it the first time he met you, and it never left
off enchanting him. The hardest thing he had to face was
your growing up, but he faced it that time he came
to find you gone, married. Poor Ralph! He had
no choice but to look for you. And he did find you,
didn't he? I knew it when you came home, before
Dane was born. Once you had Ralph de
Bricassart it wasn't necessary to stay any longer with
Luke." "Yes," sighed Meggie, "Ralph found
me. But it didn't solve anything for us, did it?
I knew he would never be willing to give up his
God. It was for that reason I was determined to have the
only part of him I ever could. His child. Dane."
  "It's like listening to an echo," Fee said, laughing
her rusty laugh. "You might be me, saying that."
  "Frank?"
  The chair scraped; Fee got up, paced the
tiles, came back and stared hard at her daughter.
"Well, well! Tit for tat, eh, Meggie?
How long have you known?"
  "Since I was a little girl. Since the
time Frank ran away."
  "His father was married already. He was a lot older
than me, an important politician. If I
told you his name, you'd recognize it. There are
streets named for him all over New Zealand, a
town or two probably. But for the purpose,
I'll call him Pakeha. It's Maori for
"white man," but it'll do. He's dead now, of
course. I have a trace of Maori blood in me,
but Frank's father was half Maori. It showed in
Frank because he got it from both of us. Oh, but I
loved that man! Perhaps it was the call of our blood,
I don't know. He was handsome. A big man with a
mop of black hair and the most brilliant, laughing
black eyes. He was everything Paddy
wasn'tcultured, sophisticated, very charming. I
loved him to the point of madness. And I thought I'd
never love anyone else; I wallowed in that
delusion so long I left it too late, too
late!" Her voice broke. She turned to look
  at the garden. "I have a lot to answer for,
Meggie, believe me." "So that's why you loved
Frank more than the rest of us," Meggie said. "I
thought I did, because he was Pakeha's son and the rest
belonged to Paddy," She sat down, made
a queer, mournful noise. "So history does
repeat itself. I had a quiet laugh when I saw
Dane, I tell you."
  "Mum, you're an extraordinary woman!"
  "Am I?" The chair creaked; she leaned forward.
"Let me whisper you a little secret, Meggie.
Extraordinary or merely ordinary, I'm a very
unhappy woman. For one reason or another
I've been unhappy since the day I met
Pakeha. Mostly my own fault. I loved him,
but what he did to me shouldn't happen to any woman.
And there was Frank .... I kept hanging on
to Frank, and ignoring the rest of you. Ignoring
Paddy, who was the best thing ever happened to me.
Only I didn't see it. I was too busy
comparing him with Pakeha. Oh, I was grateful
to him, and I couldn't help but see what a fine man
he was . . . ." She shrugged. "Well, all that's
past. What I wanted to say was that it's wrong,
Meggie. You know that, don't you?"
  "No, I don't. The way I see it, the
Church is wrong, expecting to take that from her
priests as well."
  "Funny, how we always infer the Church is
feminine. You stole a woman's man,
Meggie, just as I did."
  "Ralph had absolutely no allegiance to any
woman, except to me. The Church isn't a
woman, Mum. It's a thing, an institution."
  "Don't bother trying to justify yourself to me. I
know all the answers. I thought as you do myself, at the
time. Divorce was out of the question for him. He was one of the
first people of his race to attain political greatness; he
had to choose between me and his people. What man could resist
a chance like that to be noble? Just as your Ralph chose the
Church, didn't he? So I thought,
  I don't care. I'll take what I can get
of him, I'll have his child to love at least."
  But suddenly Meggie was too busy hating her mother
to be able to pity her, too busy resenting the inference
that she herself had made just as big a mess of things.
So she said, "Except that I far outdid you in
subtlety, Mum. My son has a name no one can
take from him, even including Luke." Fee's
breath hissed between her teeth. "Nasty! Oh, you're
deceptive, Meggie! Butter wouldn't melt in
your mouth, would it? Well, my father bought my husband
to give Frank a name and get rid of me: I'll
bet you never knew that! How did you know?"
  "That's my business."
  "You're going to pay, Meggie. Believe me,
you're going to pay. You won't get away with it any
more than I did. I lost Frank in the worst way
a mother could; I can't even see him and I long to
.... You wait! You'll lose Dane, too."
  "Not if I can help it. You lost Frank because
he couldn't pull in tandem with Daddy. I made
sure Dane had no daddy to harness him. I'll
harness him instead, to Drogheda. Why do you think I'm
making a stockman out of him already? He'll be safe
on Drogheda."
  "Was Daddy? Was Stuart? Nowhere is safe.
And you won't keep Dane here if he wants to go.
Daddy didn't harness Frank. That was it. Frank
couldn't be har- nessed. And if you think you, a
woman, can harness Ralph de Bricassart's
son, you've got another think coming. It stands
to reason, doesn't it? If neither of us could hold the
father, how can we hope to hold the son?" "The only
way I can lose Dane is if you open your mouth,
Mum. And I'm warning you, I'd kill you first."
  "Don't bother, I'm not worth swinging for. Your
secret's safe with me; I'm just an interested
onlooker. Yes indeed, that's all I am. An
onlooker." "Oh, Mum! What could
possibly have made you like this? Why like this, so
unwilling to give?"
  Fee sighed. "Events which took place years
before you were even born," she said pathetically.
  But Meggie shook her fist vehemently. "Oh,
no, you don't! After what you've just told me?
You're not going to get away with flogging that dead
horse to me ever again! Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish!
Do you hear me, Mum? You've wallowed in it for
most of your life, like a fly in syrup!" Fee
smiled broadly, genuinely pleased. "I used
to think having a daughter wasn't nearly as
important as having sons, but I was wrong. I
enjoy you, Meggie, in a way I can never enjoy my
sons. A daughter's an equal. Sons aren't,
you know. They're just defenseless dolls we set up
to knock down at our leisure."
  Meggie stared. "You're remorseless. Tell
me, then, where do we go wrong?" "In being born,"
said Fee.
  Men were returning home in thousands upon thousands,
shedding their khaki uniforms and slouch hats for
civvies. And the Labor government, still in office,
took a long, hard look at the great properties
of the western plains, some of the bigger stations
closer in. It wasn't right that so much land should belong
to one family, when men who had done their bit for
Australia needed room for their belongings and the country
needed more intensive working of its land. Six million
people to fill an area as big as the United States of
America, but a mere handful of those six million
holding vast tracts in a handful of names. The
biggest properties would have to be subdivided,
yield up some of their acreages to the war veterans.
Bugela went from 150,000 acres to 70,000;
two returned soldiers got 40,000 acres
each off Martin King. Rudna Hunish had
120,000 acres, therefore Ross MaoQueen lost
60,000 acres and two more returned soldiers were
endowed. So it went. Of course the government
compensated the graziers, though at lower figures
than
  the open market would have given. And it hurt. Oh,
it hurt. No amount of argument prevailed with
Canberra; properties as large as Bugela and
Rudna Hunish would be partitioned. It was
self-evident no man needed so much, since the
Gilly district had many thriving stations of less
than 50,000 acres. What hurt the most was the knowledge
that this time it seemed the returned soldiers
would persevere. After the First World War most of the big
stations had gone through the same partial resumption, but
it had been poorly done, the fledgling graziers
without training or experience; gradually the squatters
bought their filched acres back at rock-bottom
prices from discouraged veterans. This time the
government was prepared to train and educate the new
settlers at its own expense.
  Almost all the squatters were avid members of the
Country Party, and on principle loathed a
Labor government, identifying it with blue-collar
workers in industrial cities, trade unions and
feckless Marxist intellectuals. The unkindest
cut of all was to find that the Clearys, who were known
Labor voters, were not to see a single acre pared from
the formidable bulk of Drogheda. Since the
Catholic Church owned it, naturally it was
subdivision-exempt. The howl was heard in
Canberra, but ignored. It came very hard to the
squatters, who always thought of themselves as the most
powerful lobby group in the nation, to find that he who
wields the Canberra whip does pretty much as
he likes. Australia was heavily federal, its
state governments virtually powerless.
  Thus, like a giant in a
Lilliputian world, Drogheda carried on, all
quarter of a million acres of it.
  The rain came and went, sometimes adequate,
sometimes too much, sometinkes too little, but not, thank
God, ever another drought like the great one. Gradually
the number of sheep built up and the quality of the
wool improved over pre-drought times, no mean
feat.
  Breeding was the "in" thing. People talked of Haddon
Rig near Warren, started actively competing with its
owner, Max Falkiner, for the top ram and ewe
prizes at the Royal Easter Show in Sydney.
And the price of wool began to creep up, then
skyrocketed. Europe, the United States and
Japan were hungry for every bit of fine wool
Australia. could produce. Other countries
yielded coarser wools for heavy fabrics,
carpets, felts; but only the long, silky fibers
from Australian merinos could make a woolen
textile so fine it slipped through the fingers like softest
lawn. And that sort of wool reached its peak out on
the black-soil plains of northwest New South
Wales and southwest Queensland.
  It was as if after all the years of tribulation, a
just reward had arrived. Drogheda's
profits soared out of all imagination. Millions of
pounds every year. Fee sat at her desk radiating
contentment, Bob put another two stockmen on the
books. If it hadn't been for the rabbits,
pastoral conditions would have been ideal, but the rabbits
were as much of a blight as ever. On the homestead life
was suddenly very pleasant. The wire screening had
excluded flies from all Drogheda interiors; now
that it was up and everyone had grown used to its
appearance, they wondered how they had ever survived
without it. For there were multiple compensations for the look
of it, like being able to eat al fresco on the veranda
when it was very hot, under the tapping leaves of the wistaria
vine.
  The frogs loved the screening, too. Little
fellows they were, green with a delicate overlay of
glossy gold. On suckered feet they crept up
the outside of the mesh to stare motionless at the diners, very
solemn and dignified. Suddenly one would leap,
grab at a moth almost bigger than itself, and settle
back into inertia with twothirds of the moth flapping
madly out of its overladen mouth. It amused Dane
and Justine to time how long it took a frog
to swallow a big moth completely, staring gravely
through the wire and every ten minutes getting
  a little more moth down. The insect lasted a long
time, and would often still be kicking when the final piece of
wingtip was engulfed. "Erckle! What a fate!"
chuckled Dane. "Fancy half of you still being
alive while the other half of you is busy being
digested."
  Avid reading-that Drogheda passion-had given the
two O'neill children excellent vocabularies at
an early age. They were intelligent, alert and
interested in everything. Life was particularly
pleasant for them. They had their thoroughbred ponies,
increasing in size as they did; they endured their
correspondence lessons at Mrs. Smith's
green kitchen table; they played in the pepper tree
cubbyhouse; they had pet cats, pet dogs, even
a pet goanna, which walked beautifully on a leash
and answered to its name. Their favorite pet was a
miniature pink pig, as intelligent as any dog,
called Iggle-Piggle. So far from urban
congestion, they caught few diseases and never had
colds or influenza. Meggie was terrified of
infantile paralysis, diphtheria, anything which
might swoop out of nowhere to carry them off, so whatever
vaccines became available they received. It was an
ideal existence, full of physical
activity and mental stimulation.
  When Dane was ten and Justine eleven they were sent
to boarding school in Sydney, Dane to Riverview
as tradition demanded, and Justine to Kincoppal.
When she put them on the plane the first time, Meggie
watched as their white, valiantly composed little
faces stared out of a window, handkerchiefs waving; they
had never been away from home before. She had wanted
badly to go with them, see them settled in for herself, but
opinion was so strongly against her she yielded. From
Fee down to Jims and Patsy, everyone felt they
would do a great deal better on their own.
  "Don't mollycoddle them," said Fee sternly.
  But indeed she felt like two different people as the
  DC-3 took off in a cloud of dust and staggered
into the shimmering air. Her heart was breaking at losing
Dane, and light at the thought of losing Justine.
There was no ambivalence in her feelings about Dane;
his gay, even-tempered nature gave and accepted
love as naturally as breathing. But Justine was a
lovable, horrible monster. One had to love her, because
there was much to love: her strength, her integrity, her
self-reliancelots of things. The trouble was that she
didn't permit love the way Dane did, nor
did she ever give Meggie the wonderful
feeling of being needed. She wasn't matey or
full of pranks, and she had a disastrous habit of
putting people down, chiefly, it seemed, her mother.
Meggie found much in her that had been exasperating in
Luke, but at least Justine wasn't a miser. For
that much be thankful.
  A thriving airline meant that all the children's
vacations, even the shortest ones, could be spent on
Drogher da. However, after an initial period of
adjustment both children enjoyed their schooling. Dane was
always homesick after a visit to Drogheda, but
Justine took to Sydney as if she had always lived
there, and spent her Drogheda time longing to be back in
the city. The Riverview Jesuits were delighted;
Dane was a marvelous student, in the classroom and
on the playing field.
  The Kincoppal nuns, on the other hand, were
definitely not delighted; no one with eyes and a
tongue as sharp as Justine's could hope to be
popular. A class ahead of Dane, she was perhaps
the better student of the two, but only in the
classroom.
  The Sydney Morning Herald of August 4th,
1952, was very interesting. Its big front page
rarely bore more than one photograph,
usually middle and high up, the interest story of the
day. And that day the picture was a handsome portrait
of Ralph de Bricassart.
  His Grace Archbishop Ralph de
Bricassart, at
  the present time aide to the Secretary of State
of the Holy See of Rome, was today created
Cardinal de Bricassart by His Holiness
Pope Pius XII. Ralph Raoul, Cardinal
de Bricassart has had a long and illustrious
association with the Roman Catholic Church in
Australia, extending from his arrival as a newly
ordained priest in July 1919 to his departure
for the Vatican in March 1938.
  Born on September 23, 1893, in the
Republic of Ireland, Cardinal de
Bricassart was the second son of a family which can
trace its descent from Baron Ranulf de
Bricassart, who came to England in the train of
William the Conqueror. By tradition, Cardinal
de Bricassart espoused the Church. He en-
tered the seminary at the age of seventeen, and upon his
ordination was sent to Australia. His first months were
spent in the service of the late Bishop Michael
Clabby, in the Diocese of
Winnemurra.
  In June 1920 he was transferred to serve as
pastor of Gillanbone, in northwestern New
South Wales. He was made Monsignor, and
continued at Gillanbone until December
1928. From there he became private secretary
to His Grace Archbishop Cluny Dark, and
finally private secretary to the then Archbishop
Papal Legate, His Eminence Cardinal di
Contini-Verchese. During this time he was created
Bishop. When Cardinal di Contini-Verchese was
transferred to Rome to commence his remarkable career at
the Vatican, Bishop de Bricassart was created
Archbishop, and returned to Australia from Athens as
the Papal Legate himself. He held this
important Vatican appointment until his
transfer to Rome in 1938; since that time his rise
within the central hierarchy of the Roman Catholic
Church has been spectacular. Now 58 years of
age, he is rumored to be one of the few men
actively concerned in the determination of papal
policy.
  A Sydney Morning Herald representative
talked to some of Cardinal de Bricassart's
ex-parishioners in the Gillanbone area
yesterday. He is well remembered, and with much
affection. This rich sheep district is
predominantly Roman Catholic in its
religious adherence. "Father de Bricassart founded
the Holy Cross Bush Bibliophilic
Society," said Mr. Harry Gough, Mayor of
Gillanbone. "It was-for the time especially-a
remarkable service, splendidly endowed first by the
late Mrs. Mary Carson, and after her death by the
Cardinal himself, who has never forgotten us or our
needs."
  "Father de Bricassart was the finest-looking man
I've ever seen," said Mrs. Fiona Cleary,
present doyenne of Drogheda, one of the largest and
most prosperous stations in New South Wales.
"During his time in Gilly he was a great spiritual
support to his parishioners, and particularly to those
of us on Drogheda, which as you know now belongs to the
Catholic Church. During floods he helped us
move our stock, during fires he came to our
aid, even if it was only to bury our dead. He
was, in fact, an extraordinary man in every way,
and he had more charm than any man I've ever met.
One could see he was meant for great things. Indeed we
remember him, though it's over twenty
years since he left us. Yes, I think it's quite
truthful to say that there are some around Gilly who still
miss him very much."
  During the war the then Archbishop de Bricassart
served His Holiness loyally and unswervingly, and is
credited with having influenced Field Mar- shal
Albert Kesselring in deciding to maintain Rome
as an open city after Italy became a German
enemy. Florence, which had asked in vain for the same
privilege, lost many of its treasures, only
restored later because Germany lost the war. In the
  immediate postwar period, Cardinal de Bricassart
helped thousands of displaced persons seek asylum
in new countries, and was especially vigorous in
aiding the Australian immigration program.
  Though by birth he is an Irishman, and though it
seems he will not exert his influence as Cardinal de
Bricassart in Australia, we still feel that to a
large extent Australia may rightly claim this
re- markable man as her own.
  Meggie handed the paper back to Fee, and smiled
at her mother ruefully. "One must congratulate him,
as I said to the Herald reporter. They didn't
print that, did they? Though they printed your little
eulogy almost verbatim, I see. What
a barbed tongue you've got! At least I know where
Justine gets it from. I wonder how many people will be
smart enough to read between the lines of what you said?"
  "He will, anyway, if he ever sees it."
  "I wonder does he remember us?" Meggie
sighed. "Undoubtedly. After all, he still finds time
to administer Drogheda himself. Of course he
remembers us, Meggie. How could he forget?"
"True, I had forgotten Drogheda. We're right
up there on top of the earnings, aren't we? He must be
very pleased. With our wool at a pound per pound in the
auctions, the Drogheda wool check this year must have
made even the gold mines look sick. Talk about
Golden Fleece. Over four million pounds, just
from shaving our baa-lambs."
  "Don't be cynical, Meggie, it doesn't
suit you," said Fee; her manner toward Meggie
these days, though often mildly withering, was tempered with
respect and affection. "We've done well enough,
haven't we? Don't forget we get our money every
year, good or bad. Didn't he pay Bob a
hundred thousand as a bonus, the rest of us fifty
thousand each? If he threw us off Droghe- 497
  da tomorrow we could afford to buy Bugela, even at
today's inflated land prices. And how much
has he given your children? Thousands upon thousands. Be
fair to him."
  "But my children don't know it, and they're not going
to find out. Dane and Justine will grow up to think they
must make their own ways in the world, without benefit of
dear Ralph Raoul, Cardinal de Bricassart.
Fancy his second name being Raoul! Very Norman,
isn't it?"
  Fee got up, walked over to the fire and threw
the front page of the Herald onto the flames.
Ralph Raoul, Cardinal de Bricassart
shuddered, winked at her, and then shriveled up.
  "What will you do if he comes back, Meggie?"
  Meggie sniffed. "Fat chance!"
  "He might," said Fee enigmatically.
  He did, in December. Very quietly, without
anyone knowing, driving an Aston Martin sports
car all the way from Sydney himself. Not a word about his
pres- ence in Australia had reached the press, so
no one on Drogheda had the remotest suspicion
he was coming. When the car pulled in to the gravelly
area at one side of the house there was no one about, and
apparently no one had heard him arrive, for no one
came out onto the veranda. He had felt the miles
from Gilly in every cell of his body, inhaled
the odors of the bush, the sheep, the dry grass
sparkling restlessly in the sun. Kangaroos and
emus, galahs and goannas, millions of
insects buzzing and flipping, ants marching across the
road in treacly columns, fat pudgy sheep
everywhere. He loved it so, for in one curious
aspect it conformed to what he loved in all things; the
passing years scarcely seemed to brush it. Only
the fly screening was different, but he noted with
amusement that Fee hadn't permitted the big house
veranda facing the Gilly road to be enclosed like the
rest, only the windows opening onto it. She was right,
  of course; a great expanse of mesh would have rained
the lines of that lovely Georgian fagade. How
long did ghost gums live? These must have been
transplanted from the Dead Heart interior eighty
years ago. The bougainvillaea in their high
branches was one sliding mass of copper and
purple.
  It was already summer, two weeks left before
Christmas, and the Drogheda roses were at their
height. There were roses everywhere, pink and white and
yellow, crimson like heart's blood, scarlet like
a cardinal's soutane. In among the wistaria,
green now, rambling roses drowsed pink and
white, fell off the veranda roof, down the wire
mesh, clung lovingly to the black shutters of the
second story, stretched tendrils past them to the .
sky. The tank stands were quite smothered from sight now, so were
the tanks themselves. And one color was everywhere among the
roses, a pale pinkish-grey. Ashes of roses?
Yes, that was the name of the color. Meggie must have
planted them, it had to be Meggie.
  He heard Meggie's laugh, and stood motionless,
quite terrified, then made his feet go in the direction
of the sound, gone down to delicious giggling trills.
Just the way she used to laugh when she was a little girl.
There it wasl Over there, behind a great clump of
pinkishgrey roses near a pepper tree. He
pushed the clusters of blossoms aside with his hand, his
mind reeling from their perfume, and that laugh.
  But Meggie wasn't there, only a boy
squatting in the lush lawn, teasing a little pink pig
which ran in idiotic rushes up to him, galloped
off, sidled back. Unconscious of his audience,
the boy threw his gleaming head back and laughed.
Meggie's laugh, from that unfamiliar throat. Without
meaning to, Cardinal Ralph let the roses fall
into place and stepped through them, heedless of the thorns.
The boy, about twelve or fourteen years
of age, just prepubescent, looked up, startled; the
pig squealed, curled up its tail tightly and
ran off.
  Clad in an old pair of khaki shorts and
nothing else,
  bare-footed, he was golden brown and
silky-skinned, his slender, boyish body already
hinting at later power in the breadth of the young square
shoulders, the welldeveloped calf and thigh
muscles, the flat belly and narrow hips. His
hair was a little long and loosely curly, just the
bleached color of Drogheda grass, his eyes through
absurdly thick black lashes intensely blue.
He looked like a very youthful escaped angel.
  "Hello," said the boy, smiling.
  "Hello," said Cardinal Ralph, finding it
impossible to resist the charm of that smile. "Who are
you?"
  "I'm Dane O'neill," answered the boy.
"Who are you?" "My name is Ralph de
Bricassart."
  Dane O'neill. He was Meggie's boy,
then. She had not left Luke O'neill after
all, she had gone back to him, borne this beautiful
lad who might have been his, had he not
married the Church first. How old had he been when
he married the Church? Not much older than this, not very
much more mature. Had he waited, the boy might
well have been his. What nonsense, Cardinal de
Bricassart! If you hadn't married the Church you
would have remained in Ireland to breed horses and never
known your fate at all, never known Drogheda or
Meggie Cleary.
  "May I help you?" asked the boy politely,
getting to his feet with a supple grace Cardinal
Ralph recognized, and thought of as Meggie's.
"Is your father here, Dane?"
  "My father?" The dark, finely etched brows
knitted. "No, he's not here. He's never been
here."
  "Oh, I see. Is your mother here, then?"
  "She's in Gilly, but she'll be back soon.
My Nanna is in the house, though. Would you like
to see her? I can take you." Eyes as blue as
cornflowers stared at him, widened, narrowed.
"Ralph de Bricassart. I've heard of you.
Oh! Cardinal de Bricassart! Your Eminence,
I'm sorry! I didn't mean to be rude."
  Though he had abandoned his clerical regalia in
favor of boots, breeches and a white
shirt, the ruby ring was still on his finger, must never be
withdrawn as long as he lived. Dane O'neill
knelt, took Cardinal Ralph's slender hand in
his own slender ones, and kissed the ring reverently.
"It's all right, Dane. I'm not here as Cardinal
de Bricassart. I'm here as a friend of your mother's
and your grandmother's."
  "I'm sorry, Your Eminence, I ought to have
recognized your name the minute I heard it. We
say it often enough round here. Only you pronounce it a
bit differently, and your Christian name threw me
off. My mother will be very glad to see you, I know."
  "Dane, Dane, where are you?" called an
impatient voice, very deep and entrancingly
husky.
  The hanging fronds of the pepper tree parted and a
girl of about fifteen ducked out, straightened. He
knew who she was immediately, from those astonishing eyes.
Meggie's daughter. Covered in freckles,
sharp-faced, small-featured, disappointingly
unlike Meggie.
  "Oh, hello. I'm sorry, I didn't
realize we had a visitor. I'm Justine
O'neill."
  "Jussy, this is Cardinal de
Bricassart!" Dane said in a loud whisper.
"Kiss his ring, quickly!"
  The blind-looking eyes flashed scorn." "You're
a real prawn about religion, Dane," she said
without bothering to lower her voice. "Kissing a ring is
unhygienic; I won't do it. Besides, how do we
know this is Cardinal de Bricassart? He looks
like an old-fashioned grazier to me. You know, like
Mr. Gordon."
  "He is, he is!" insisted Dane. "Please,
Jussy, be good! Be good for me!" "I'll be good,
but only for you. But I won't kiss his ring, even for
you. Disgusting. How do I know who kissed it last?
They might have had a cold." "You don't have to kiss
my ring, Justine. I'm here on a holiday; I'm
not being a cardinal at the moment."
  "That's good, because I'll tell you frankly,
I'm an atheist," said Meggie Cleary's daughter
calmly. "After four years at Kincoppal I
think it's all a load of utter codswallop."
  "That's your privilege," said Cardinal
Ralph, trying desperately to look as dignified
and serious as she did. "May I find your
grandmother?" "Of course. Do you need us?" Justine
asked.
  "No, thank you. I know my way."
  "Good." She turned to her brother, still gaping up
at the visitor. "Come on, Dane, help me.
Come on!"
  But though Justine tugged painfully at his arm,
Dane stayed to watch Cardinal Ralph's tall,
straight figure disappear behind the roses. "You
really are a prawn, Dane. What's so special
about him?" "He's a cardinal!" said Dane.
"Imagine that! A real live cardinal on
Drogheda!"
  "Cardinals," said Justine, "are Princes of the
Church. I suppose you're right, it is rather
extraordinary. But I don't like him."
  Where else would Fee be, except at her
desk? He stepped through the windows into the drawing
room, but these days that necessitated opening a
screen. She must have heard him, but kept on working,
back bent, the lovely golden hair gone
to silver. With difficulty he remembered she must be
all of seventy-two years old.
  "Hello, Fee," he said.
  When she raised her head he saw a change in
her, of what precise nature he couldn't be
sure; the indifference was there, but so were several
other things. As if she had mellowed and hardened
simultaneously, become more human, yet human
in a Mary Carson mold. God, these Drogheda
matriarchs! Would it happen to Meggie, too, when
her turn came?
  "Hello, Ralph," she said, as if he stepped
through the windows every day. "How nice to see you."
  "Nice to see you, too."
  "I didn't know you were in Australia."
  "No one does. I have a few weeks"
holiday."
  "You're staying with us, I hope?"
  "Where else?" His eyes roamed round the
magnificent walls, rested on Mary Carson's
portrait. "You know, Fee, your taste is
impeccable, unerring. This room rivals anything in the
Vatican. Those black egg shapes with the roses
are 4 stroke of genius."
  "Why, thank you! We try our humble best.
Personally I prefer the dining room; I've done
it again since you were here last. Pink and white and
green. Sounds awful, but wait until you see it.
Though why I try, I don't know. It's your
house, isn't it?"
  "Not while there's a Cleary alive,
Fee," he said quietly. "How comforting. Well,
you've certainly come up in the world since your Gilly
days, haven't you? Did you see the Herald
article about your promotion?"
  He winced. "I did. Your tongue's sharpened,
Fee."
  "Yes, and what's more, I'm enjoying it. All
those years I shut up and never said a thing! I
didn't know what I was missing." She smiled.
"Meggie's in Gilly, but she'll be back
soon."
  Dane and Justine came through the windows.
  "Nanna, may we ride down to the borehead?"
  "You know the rules. No riding unless your mother
gives her permission personally. I'm sorry, but
they're your mother's orders. Where are your manners?
Come and be introduced to our visitor."
  "I've already met them."
  "Oh."
  "I'd have thought you'd be away at boarding
school," he said to Dane, smiling.
  "Not in December, Your Eminence. We're off
for two months-the summer holidays."
  Too many years away; he had forgotten that
southern hemisphere children would enjoy their long
vacation during December and January.
  "Are you going to be staying here long, Your
Eminence?" Dane queried, still fascinated.
  "His Eminence will be with us for as long as he can
manage, Dane," said his grandmother, "but I think
he's going to find it a little wearing to be addressed as
Your Eminence all the time. What shall it be? Uncle
Ralph?" "Uncle!" exclaimed Justine. "You
know "uncle' is against the family rules,
Nanna! Our uncles are just Bob, Jack,
Hughie, Jims and Patsy. So that means he's
Ralph."
  "Don't be so rude, Justine! What on
earth's the matter with your manners?" demanded Fee.
  "No, Fee, it's all right. I'd prefer that
everyone call me plain Ralph, really," the
Cardinal said quickly. Why did she dislike him so,
the odd mite? "I couldn't!" gasped Dane. "I
couldn't call you just Ralph!"
  Cardinal Ralph crossed the room, took the
bare shoulders between his hands and smiled down, his blue
eyes very kind, and vivid in the room's shadows.
"Of course you can, Dane. It isn't a sin."
  "Come on, Dane, let's get back to the
cubbyhouse," Justine ordered. Cardinal
Ralph and his son turned toward Fee, looked at
her together. "Heaven help us!" said Fee. "Go on,
Dane, go outside and play, will you?" She clapped
her hands. "Buzz!"
  The boy ran for his life, and Fee edged toward
her books. Cardinal Ralph took pity on her
and announced that he would go to the cookhouse. How little
the place had changed! Still lamplit, obviously.
Still redolent of beeswax and great vases of roses.
  He stayed talking to Mrs. Smith and the maids
for a long time. They had grown much older in the years
since he had left, but somehow age suited them more
than it did Fee. Happy. That's what they were.
Genuinely almost perfectly happy. Poor Fee,
who wasn't
  1938-1953 FEE
  happy. It made him hungry to see Meggie,
see if she was happy. But when he left the
cookhouse Meggie wasn't back, so to fill in
time he strolled through the grounds toward the creek.
How peaceful the cemetery was; there were six
bronze plaques on the mausoleum wall, just as
there had been last time. He must see that he himself was
buried here; he must remember to instruct them, when
he returned to Rome. Near the
mausoleum he noticed two new graves, old
Tom, the garden rouseabout, and the wife of one of the
stockmen, who had been on the payroll since
1946. Must be some sort of record. Mrs.
Smith thought he was still with them because his wife lay here.
The Chinese cook's ancestral umbrella was quite
faded from all the years of fierce sun, had dwindled
from its original imperial red through the various shades
he remembered to its present whitishpink, almost
ashes of roses. Meggie, Meggie. You went
back to him after me, you bore him a son. It was very
hot; a little wind came, stirred the weeping willows
along the creek, made the bells on the Chinese
cook's umbrella chime their mournful tinny
tune: Hee Sing, Hee Sing, Hee Sing.
TANKSTAND CHARLIE HE WAS A GOOD
BLOKE. That had faded, too, was practically
indecipherable. Well, it was fitting. Graveyards
ought to sink back into the bosom of Mother Earth, lose
their human cargo under a wash of time, until it all
was gone and only the air remembered, sighing. He
didn't want to be buried in a Vatican
crypt, among men like himself. Here, among people who had
really lived. Turning, his eyes caught the
glaucous glance of the marble angel. He
raised his hand, saluted it, looked across the grass
toward the big house. And she was coming, Meggie.
Slim, golden, in a pair of breeches and a white
man's shirt exactly like his own, a man's grey
felt hat on the back of her head, tan boots
on her feet. Like a boy, like her son, who should have
been his son. 505
  He was a man, but when he too lay here there would
be nothing left living to mark the fact.
  She came on, stepped over the white fence,
came so close all he could see were her eyes, those
grey, lightfilled eyes which hadn't lost their
beauty or their hold over his heart. Her arms were
around his neck, his fate again within his touch, it was as if
he had never been away from her, that mouth alive under
his, not a dream; so long wanted, so long. A
different kind of sacrament, dark like the earth, having
nothing to do with the sky. "Meggie, Meggie," he said,
his face in her hair, her hat on the grass, his
arms around her.
  "It doesn't seem to matter, does it? Nothing
ever changes," she said, eyes closed..
  "No, nothing changes," he said, believing it.
"This is Drogheda, Ralph. I warned you, on
Drogheda you're mine, not God's."
  "I know. I admit it. But I came." He
drew her down onto the grass. "Why, Meggie?"
  "Why what?" Her hand was stroking his hair, whiter
than Fee's now, still thick, still beautiful.
  "Why did you go back to Luke? Have his son?"
he asked jealously. Her soul looked out from behind its
lucent grey windows and veiled its thoughts from him.
"He forced me to," she said blandly. "It was only
once. But I had Dane, so I'm not sorry.
Dane was worth everything I went through to get him."
  "I'm sorry, I had no right to ask. I gave
you to Luke in the first place, didn't I?"
  "That's true, you did."
  "He's a wonderful boy. Does he look like
Luke?" She smiled secretly, plucked at the
grass, laid her hand inside his shirt, against his
chest. "Not really. Neither of my children looks very much like
Luke, or me."
  "I love them because they're yours."
  "You're as sentimental as ever. Age suits you,
Ralph.
  I knew it would, I hoped I'd have the chance
to see it. Thirty years I've known you! It
seems like thirty days."
  "Thirty years? As many as that?"
  "I'm forty-one, my dear, so it must be." She
got to her feet. "I was officially sent to summon
you inside. Mrs. Smith is laying on a
splendid tea in your honor, and later on when it's
a bit cooler there's to be roast leg of pork, with
lots of crackling."
  He began to walk with her, slowly. "Your son
laughs just like you, Meggie. His laugh was the first
human noise I heard on Drogheda. I thought
he was you; I went to find you and I discovered him
instead."
  "So he was the first person you saw on Drogheda."
  "Why, yes, I suppose he was."
  "What did you think of him, Ralph?" she asked
eagerly. "I liked him. How could I not, when
he's your son? But I was attracted to him very
strongly, far more so than to your daughter. She
doesn't like me, either."
  "Justine might be my child, but she's a prize
bitch. I've learned to swear in my old age,
mostly thanks to Justine. And you, a little. And
Luke, a little. And the war, a little. Funny how they
all mount up."
  "You've changed a lot, Meggie."
  "Have I?" The soft, full mouth curved
into a smile. "I don't think so, really. It's just
the Great Northwest, wearing me down, stripping off
the layers like Salome's seven veils. Or like an
onion, which is how Justine would rather put it. No
poetry, that child. I'm the same old Meggie,
Ralph, only more naked."
  "Perhaps so."
  "Ali, but you've changed, Ralph."
  "In what way, my Meggie?"
  "As if the pedestal rocks with every passing
breeze, and as if the view from up there is a
disappointment."
  "It is." He laughed soundlessly. "And to think
I once had the temerity to say you weren't anything out
of the
  ordinary! I take it back. You're the one
woman, Meggie. The one!" "What happened?"
  "I don't know. Did I discover even Church
idols have feet of clay? Did I sell myself for a
mess of pottage? Am I grasping at nothing?"
His brows drew togther, as if in pain. "And that's
it, perhaps, in a nutshell. I'm a mass of
cliches. It's an old, sour, petrified world, the
Vatican world." "I was more real, but you could never
see it."
  "There was nothing else I could do, truly! I
knew where I should have gone, but I couldn't. With you I
might have been a better man, if less august.
But I just couldn't, Meggie. Oh, I wish I could
make you see that!" Her hand stole along his bare
arm, tenderly. "Dear Ralph, I do see it. I
know, I know.... Each of us has something within us which
won't be denied, even if it makes us scream
aloud to die. We are what we are, that's all. Like
the old Celtic legend of the bird with the thorn in its
breast, singing its heart out and dying. Because it has to,
it's driven to. We can know what we do wrong even
before we do it, but self-knowledge can't affect or change the
outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song,
convinced it's the most wonderful song the world has ever
heard. Don't you see? We create our own
thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do
is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth
it."
  "That's what I don't understand. The pain." He
glanced down at her hand, so gently on his arm,
hurting him so unbearably. "Why the pain,
Meggie?" "Ask God, Ralph," said Meggie.
"He's the authority on pain, isn't He? He
made us what we are, He made the whole
world. Therefore He made the pain, too."
  Bob, Jack, Hughie, Jims and Patsy were
in for dinner, since it was Saturday night. Tomorrow
Father 508
  Watty was due out to say Mass, but Bob
called him and said no one would be there. A white
lie, to preserve Cardinal Ralph's anonymity.
The five Cleary boys were more like Paddy than ever,
older, slower in speech, as steadfast and enduring as the
land. And how they loved Dane! Their eyes never
seemed to leave him, even followed him from the room
when he went to bed. It wasn't hard to see they
lived for the day when he would be old enough to join them in
running Drogheda.
  Cardinal Ralph had also discovered the reason for
Justine's enmity. Dane had taken a fancy
to him, hung on his words, lingered near him; she was
plain jealous.
  After the children had gone upstairs, he looked at
those who were left: the brothers, Meggie, Fee.
  "Fee, leave your desk for a moment," he said.
"Come and sit here with us. I want to talk to all of
you."
  She still carried herself well and hadn't lost her
figure, only slackened in the breasts,
thickened very slightly in the waist; more a shaping due
to old age than to an actual weight gain.
Silently she seated herself in one of the big cream
chairs opposite the Cardinal, with Meggie to one
side, and the brothers on stone benches close by.
  "It's about Frank," he said.
  The name hung between them, resounding distantly.
"What about Frank?" asked Fee composedly.
  Meggie laid her knitting down, looked at her
mother, then at Cardinal Ralph. "Tell us,
Ralph," she said quickly, unable to bear her mother's
composure a moment longer.
  "Frank has served almost thirty years in
jail, do you realize that?" asked the Cardinal. "I
know my people kept you informed as we arranged, but I had
asked them not to distress you unduly. I honestly
couldn't see what good it could do Frank or yourselves
to hear the
  harrowing details of his loneliness and despair,
because there was nothing any of us might have done. I Oink
  Frank would have been released some years ago had
he
  not gained a reputation for violence and instability
during his early years in Goulburn Gaol. Even
as late as the war, when some other prisoners
were released into armed service, poor Frank was
refused."
  Fee glanced up from her hands. "It's his
temper," she said without emotion. The Cardinal
seemed to be having some difficulty in finding the right
words; while he sought for them, the family watched him
in mingled dread and hope, though it wasn't
Frank's welfare they cared about. "It must be
puzzling you greatly why I came back
to Australia after all these years," Cardinal
Ralph said finally, not looking at Meggie. "I
haven't always been mindful of your lives, and I know
it. From the day I met you, I've thought of myself first,
put myself first. And when the Holy Father rewarded my
labors on behalf of the Church with a cardinal's
mantle, I asked myself if there was any service
I could do the Cleary family which in some way would
tell them how deeply I care." He drew a
breath, focused his gaze on Fee, not on
Meggie. "I came back to Australia to see
what I could do about Frank. Do you remember,
Fee, that time I spoke to you after Paddy and Stu
died? Twenty years ago, and I've never been able
to forget the look in your eyes. So much energy and
vitality, crushed."
  "Yes," said Bob abruptly, his eyes
riveted on his mother. "Yes, that's it." "Frank
is being paroled," said the Cardinal. "It was the only
thing I could do to show you that I do care."
  If he had expected a sudden, dazzling blaze
of light from out of Fee's long darkness, he would have
been very disappointed; at first it was no more than a
small flicker, and perhaps the toll of age would never
really permit it to shine at full brightness. But in the
eyes of Fee's sons he saw its true
magnitude, and knew a sense of his own purpose
he hadn't felt since that time during the war when he
had talked to the young German soldier with the imposing
name. 510
  "Thank you," said Fee.
  "Will you welcome him back to Drogheda?" he
asked the Cleary men. "This is his home, it's where
he ought to be," Bob answered elliptically.
Everyone nodded agreement save Fee, who seemed
intent on some private vision.
  "He isn't the same Frank," Cardinal
Ralph went on gently. "I visited him in
Goulburn Gaol to tell him the news before I
came here, and I had to let him know everyone on
Drogheda had always been aware what had
happened to him. If I tell you that he didn't
take it hard, it might give you some idea of the
change in him. He was simply . . . grateful.
And so looking forward to seeing his family again,
especially you, Fee."
  "When's he being released?" Bob asked, clearing
his throat, pleasure for his mother clearly warring with
fear of what would happen when Frank returned.
  "In a week or two. He'll come up on the
night mail. I wanted him to fly, but he said he
preferred the train."
  "Patsy and I will meet him," Jims offered
eagerly, then his face fell. "Oh! We don't
know what he looks like!"
  "No," said Fee. "I'll meet him myself.
On my own. I'm not in my dotage yet; I can
still drive to Gilly."
  "Mum's right," said Meggie firmly, forestalling
a chorus of protests from her brothers. "Let
Mum meet him on her own. She's the one ought
to see him first."
  "Well, I have work to do," said Fee gruffly,
getting up and moving toward her desk.
  The five brothers rose as one man. "And I
reckon it's our bedtime," said Bob,
yawning elaborately. He smiled shyly at
Cardinal Ralph. "It will be like old times, to have you
saying Mass for us in the morning."
  Meggie folded her knitting, put it away,
got up. "I'll say good night, too,
Ralph."
  "Good night, Meggie." His eyes followed her
as she
  went out of the room, then turned to Fee's hunched
back. "Good night, Fee." "I beg your
pardon? Did you say something?"
  "I said good night."
  "Oh! Good night, Ralph."
  He didn't want to go upstairs so soon after
Meggie. "I'm going for a walk before I turn in,
I think. Do you know something, Fee?" "No." Her
voice was absent.
  "You don't fool me for a minute."
  She snorted with laughter, an eerie sound.
"Don't I? I wonder about that." Late, and the
stars. The southern stars, wheeling across the heavens.
He had lost his hold upon them forever, though they were still
there, too distant to warm, too remote to comfort.
Closer to God, Who was a wisp between them. For a
long time he stood looking up, listening to the
wind in the trees, smiling.
  Reluctant to be near Fee, he used the
flight of stairs at the far end of the house; the lamp
over her desk still burned and he could see her bent
silhouette there, working. Poor Fee. How much she
must dread going to bed, though-perhaps when Frank came
home it would be easier. Perhaps. At the top of the
stairs silence met him thickly; a crystal lamp
on a narrow hall table shed a dim pool of light
for the comfort of nocturnal wanderers, flickering as the
night breeze billowed the curtains inward around the
window next to it. He passed it by, his feet on
the heavy carpeting making no sound.
  Meggie's door was wide open, more light welling
through it; blocking the rays for a moment, he shut her
door behind him and locked it. She had donned a
loose wrapper and was sitting in a chair by the window
looking out across the invisible Home Paddock, but her
head turned to watch him walk to the bed, sit on its
edge. Slowly she got up and came to him.
  "Here, I'll help you get your boots off.
That's the reason I never wear knee ones myself. I
can't get them off without a jack, and a jack ruins
good boots."
  "Did you wear that color
deliberately, Meggie?" "Ashes of roses?"
She smiled. "It's always been my favorite
color. It doesn't clash with my hair."
  He put one foot on her backside while she
pulled a boot off, then changed it for the bare foot.
  "Were you so sure I'd come to you, Meggie?"
  "I told you. On Drogheda you're mine. Had
you not come to me, I'd have gone to you, make no
mistake." She drew his shirt over his head, and for a
moment her hand rested with luxurious sensitivity on
his bare back, then she went across to the lamp and
turned it out, while he draped his clothes over a
chair back. He could hear her moving about, shedding
her wrapper. And tomorrow morning I'll say Mass.
But that's tomorrow morning, and the magic has long gone.
There is still the night, and Meggie. I have wanted
her. She, too, is a sacrament.
  Dane was disappointed. "I thought you'd wear a red
soutane!" he said. "Sometimes I do, Dane, but
only within the walls of the palace. Outside it, I
wear a black soutane with a red sash, like this."
  "Do you really have a palace?"
  "Yes."
  "Is it full of chandeliers?"
  "Yes, but so is Drogheda."
  "Oh, Drogheda!" said Dane in disgust.
"I'll bet ours are little ones compared to yours. I'd
love to see your palace, and you in a red soutane."
Cardinal Ralph smiled. "Who knows, Dane?
Perhaps one day you will." The boy had a curious
expression always at the back of his eyes; a distant
look. When he turned during the Mass, Cardinal
Ralph saw it reinforced, but he didn't
  recognize it, only felt its familiarity.
No man sees himself in a mirror as he really
is, nor any woman.
  Luddie and Anne Mueller were due in for
Christmas, as indeed they were every year. The big house
was full of light-hearted people, looking forward to the best
Christmas in years; Minnie and Cat sang
tunelessly as they worked, Mrs. Smith's plump
face was wreathed in smiles, Meggie relinquished
Dane to Cardinal Ralph without comment, and Fee
seemed much happier, less glued to her desk. The
men seized upon any excuse to make it back in
each night, for after a late dinner the drawing room
buzzed with conversation, and Mrs. Smith had taken
to preparing a bedtime supper snack of melted cheese
on toast, hot buttered crumpets and raisin
scones. Cardinal Ralph protested that so
much good food would make him fat, but after three days
of Drogheda air, Drogheda people and Drogheda food,
he seemed to be shedding the rather gaunt, haggard look
he had worn when he arrived.
  The fourth day came in very hot. Cardinal
Ralph had gone with Dane to bring in a mob of
sheep, Justine sulked alone in the pepper tree,
and Meggie lounged on a cushioned cane settee
on the veranda. Her bones felt limp, glutted, and
she was very happy. A woman can live without it quite
well for years at a stretch, but it was nice, when it
was the one man. When she was with Ralph every part of her
came alive except that part which belonged to Dane; the
trouble was, when she was with Dane every part of her came
alive except that which belonged to Ralph. Only when
both of them were present in her world simultaneously,
as now, did she feel utterly complete. Well,
it stood to reason. Dane was her son, but Ralph
was her man. Yet one thing marred her happiness;
Ralph hadn't seen. So her mouth remained closed
upon her secret. If he couldn't see it for himself,
why should she tell him? What had he ever done,
to earn the telling? That he
  could think for a moment she had gone back to Luke
willingly was the last straw. He didn't
deserve to be told, if he could think that of her.
Sometimes she felt Fee's pale, ironic eyes
upon her, and she would stare back, unperturbed. Fee
understood, she really did. Understood the
half-hate, the resentment, the desire to pay back
the lonely years. Off chasing rainbows, that was
Ralph de Bricassart; and why should she gift him
with the most exquisite rainbow of all, his son?
Let him be deprived. Let him suffer, never knowing
he suffered.
  The phone rang its Drogheda code; Meggie
listened idly, then realizing her mother must be elsewhere,
she got up reluctantly and went to answer it.
"Mrs. Fiona Cleary, please," said a man's
voice. When Meggie called her name, Fee
returned to take the receiver. "Fiona Cleary
speaking," she said, and as she stood listening the color
faded gradually from her face, making it look as it
had looked in the days after Paddy and Stu died; tiny
and vulnerable. "Thank you," she said, and hung up.
  "What is it, Mum?"
  "Frank's been released. He's coming up on the
night mail this afternoon." She looked at her watch.
"I must leave soon; it's after two."
  "Let me come with you," Meggie offered,
so filled with her own happiness she couldn't bear
to see her mother disappointed; she sensed that this meeting
couldn't be pure joy for Fee.
  "No, Meggie, I'll be all right. You take
care of things here, and hold dinner until I get
back."
  "Isn't it wonderful, Mum? Frank's coming
home in time for Christmas!" "Yes," said Fee,
"it is wonderful."
  No one traveled on the night mail these days
if they could fly, so by the time it had huffed the six
hundred miles from Sydney, dropping its mostly
second-class 515
  passengers at this small town or that, few people were
left to be disgorged in Gilly.
  The stationmaster had a nodding acquaintance with Mrs.
Cleary but would never have dreamed of engaging her in
conversation, so he just watched her descend the wooden
steps from the overhead footbridge, and left her
alone to stand stiffly on the high platform. She was a
stylish old girl, he thought; up-to-date dress
and hat, high-heeled shoes, too. Good figure,
not many lines on her face really for an old girl;
just went to show what the easy life of a grazier could do
for a woman.
  So that on the surface Frank recognized his
mother more quickly than she did him, though her heart
knew him at once. He was fifty-two years
old, and the years of his absence were those which had carried
him from youth to middle age. The man who stood in the
Gilly sunset was too thin, gaunt almost, very
pale; his hair was cropped halfway up his head,
he wore shapeless clothes which hung on a frame still
hinting at power for all its small size, and his
well-shaped hands were clamped on the brim of a grey
felt hat. He wasn't stooped or ill-looking,
but he stood helplessly twisting that hat between his hands
and seemed not to expect anyone to meet him, nor
to know what next he ought to do.
  Fee, controlled, walked briskly down the
platform. "Hello, Frank," she said.
  He lifted the eyes which used to flash and sparkle
so, set now in the face of an aging man. Not
Frank's eyes at all. Exhausted, patient,
intensely weary. But as they absorbed the sight of
Fee an extraordinary expression came into them,
wounded, utterly defenseless, filled with the appeal of a
dying man.
  "Oh, Frank!" she said, and took him in her
arms, rocking his head on her shoulder.
"It's all right, it's all right," she crooned, and
softer still, "It's all right!"
  He sat slumped and silent in the car at first, but
as
  the Rolls picked up speed and headed out of town
he began to take an interest in his surroundings, and
glanced out of the window. "It looks exactly the
same," he whispered.
  "I imagine it does. Time moves slowly out
here."
  They crossed the rumbling wooden-planked
bridge over the thin, muddy river lined with weeping
willows, most of its bed exposed in a tangle of
roots and gravel, pools lying in still brown
patches, gum trees growing everywhere in the stony
wastes.
  "The Barwon," he said. "I never thought I'd
see it again."
  Behind them rose an enormous cloud of dust, in
front of them the road sped straight as a
perspective exercise across a great grassy plain
devoid of trees.
  "The road's new, Mum?" He seemed
desperate to find conversation, make the situation
appear normal.
  "Yes, they put it through from Gilly to Milparinka
just after the war ended."
  "They might have sealed it with a bit of tar instead of
leaving it the same old dirt."
  "What for? We're used to eating dust out here, and
think of the expense of making a bed strong enough to resist
the mud. The new road is straight, they keep it
well graded and it cut out thirteen of our
twenty-seven gates. Only fourteen left between
Gilly and the homestead, and just you wait and see what
we've done to them, Frank. No more opening and
closing gates." The Rolls ran up a ramp
toward a steel gate which lifted lazily; the moment
the car passed under it and got a few yards down the
track, the gate lowered itself closed.
  "Wonders never cease!" said Frank.
  "We were the first station around here to install the
automatic ramp gates--only between the
Milparinka road and the homestead, of course. The
paddock gates still have to be opened and closed by hand."
  "Well, I reckon the bloke that invented these
gates
  must have opened and closed a lot in his time, eh?"
Frank grinned; it was the first sign of amusement he
had shown.
  But then he fell silent, so his mother concentrated
on her driving, unwilling to push him too quickly.
When they passed under the last gate and entered the
Home Paddock, he gasped.
  "I'd forgotten how lovely it is," he said.
  "It's home," said Fee. "We've looked after
it."
  She drove the Rolls down to the garages and then
walked with him back to the big house, only this time
he carried his case himself. "Would you rather have a room in
the big house, Frank, or a guesthouse all
to yourself?" his mother asked.
  "I'll take a guesthouse, thanks." The
exhausted eyes rested on her face. "It will be
nice to be able to get away from people," he explained.
That was the only reference he ever made to conditions in
jail. "I think it will be better for you," she said,
leading the way into her drawing room. "The big house
is pretty full at the moment, what with the Cardinal
here, Dane and Justine home, and Luddie and
Anne Mueller arriving the day after tomorrow for
Christmas." She pulled the bell cord for tea and
went quickly round the room lighting the kerosene
lamps. "Luddie and Anne Mueller?" he
asked.
  She stopped in the act of turning up a wick,
looked at him. "It's been a long time, Frank.
The Muellers are friends of Meggie's." The lamp
trimmed to her satisfaction, she sat down in her
wing chair. "We'll have dinner in an hour, but first
we'll have a cup of tea. I have to wash the dust of the
road out of my mouth."
  Frank seated himself awkwardly on the edge of one
of the cream silk ottomans, gazing at the room in
awe. "It looks so different from the days of
Auntie Mary."
  Fee smiled. "Well, I think so," she said.
  Then Meggie came in, and it was harder
to assimilate 518
  the fact of Meggie grown into a mature woman
than to see his mother old. As his sister hugged and
kissed him he turned his face away, shrank
inside his baggy coat and searched beyond her to his mother,
who sat looking at him as if to say: It doesn't
matter, it will all seem normal soon, just give
it time. A minute later, while he was still searching for
something to say to this stranger, Meggie's daughter
came in; a tall, skinny young girl who sat
down stiffly, her big hands pleating folds in her
dress, her light eyes fixed first on one
face, then on another. Meggie's son entered with the
Cardinal and went to sit on the floor beside his sister,
a beautiful, calmly aloof boy.
  "Frank, this is marvelous," said Cardinal
Ralph, shaking him by the hand, then turning to Fee with
his left brow raised. "A cup of tea? Very good
idea."
  The Cleary men came into the room together, and that was
very hard, for they hadn't forgiven him at all.
Frank knew why; it was the way he had hurt their
mother. But he didn't know of anything to say which would
make them understand any of it, nor could he tell them
of the pain, the loneliness, or beg forgiveness. The
only one. who really mattered was his mother, and she had
never thought there was anything to forgive. It was the
Cardinal who tried to hold the evening together, who led
the conversation round the dinner table and then afterward back in
the drawing room, chatting with diplomatic ease and
making a special point of including Frank in the
gathering.
  "Bob, I've meant to ask you ever since I
arrivedwhere are the rabbits?" the Cardinal asked.
"I've seen millions of burrows, but nary a
rabbit." "The rabbits are all dead," Bob
answered.
  "Dead?"
  "That's right, from something called myxomatosis.
Between the rabbits and the drought years, Australia was just
about finished as a primary producing nation by nineteen
forty-seven. We were desperate," said Bob, 519
  warming to his theme and grateful to have something to discuss
which would exclude Frank.
  At which point Frank unwittingly antagonized
his next brother by saying, "I knew it was bad, but
not as bad as all that." He sat back, hoping he
had pleased the Cardinal by contributing his mite to the
discussion. "Well, I'm not exaggerating, believe
me!" said Bob tartly; how would Frank know?
  "What happened?" the Cardinal asked quickly.
  "The year before last the Commonwealth Scientific
and Industrial Research Organization started an
experimental program in Victoria, infecting
rabbits with this virus thing they'd bred. I'm not
sure what a virus is, except I think it's a
sort of germ. Anyway, they.called theirs the
myxomatosis virus. At first it didn't seem
to spread too well, though what bunnies caught it
all died. But about a year after the experimental
infection it began to spread like wildfire, they think
mosquito-borne, but something to do with
saffron thistle as well. And the bunnies have died in
millions and millions ever since, it's just wiped
them out. You'll sometimes see a few sickies around
with huge lumps all over their faces, very
ugly-looking things. But it's a marvelous piece of
work, Ralph, it really is. Nothing else can catch
myxo- matosis, even close relatives. So
thanks to the blokes at the CSIRO, the rabbit
plague is no more."
  Cardinal Ralph stared at Frank. "Do you
realize what it is, Frank? Do you?" Poor
Frank shook his head, wishing everyone would let him
retreat into anonymity.
  "Mass-scale biological warfare. I
wonder does the rest of the world know that right here in
Australia be tween 1949 and 1952 a virus
war was waged against a
  population of trillions upon trillions, and
succeeded in obliterating it? Well! It's feasible,
isn't it? Not simply yellow journalism at
all, but scientific fact. They may as well
bury their atom bombs and hydrogen bombs. I
know it had to be done, it was absolutely necessary,

  and it's probably the world's most
unsung major scientific achievement. But it's
terrifying, too."
  Dane had been following the conversation closely.
"Biological warfare? I've never heard of it.
What is it exactly, Ralph?"
  "The words are new, Dane, but I'm a papal
diplomat and the pity of it is that I must keep
abreast of words like "biological warfare." In a
nutshell, the term means myxomatosis. Breeding
a germ capable of specifically killing and maiming
only one kind of living being."
  Quite unself-consciously Dane made the Sign
of the Cross, and leaned back against Ralph de
Bricassart's knees. "We had better pray,
hadn't we?" The Cardinal looked down on his
fair head, smiling.
  That eventually Frank managed to fit
into Drogheda life at all was thanks to Fee, who
in the face of stiff male Cleary opposition
continued to act as if her oldest son had been gone
but a short while, and had never brought disgrace on his
family or bitterly hurt his mother. Quietly and
inconspicuously she slipped him into the niche he
seemed to want to occupy, removed from her other
sons; nor did she encourage him
to regain some of the vitality of other days. For it had
all gone; she had known it the moment he looked at
her on the Gilly station platform. Swallowed up
by an existence the nature of which he refused to discuss
with her. The most she could do for him was to make him as
happy as possible, and surely the way to do that was
to accept the now Frank as the always Frank.
  There was no question of his working the paddocks, for his
brothers didn't want him, nor did he want a
kind of life he had always hated. The sight of
growing things pleased him, so Fee put him to potter
in the homestead gardens, left him in peace. And
gradually the Cleary men grew used to having
Frank back in the family bosom, began to understand
that the threat Frank used to represent to their own
welfare was quite empty.
  Nothing would ever change what their mother felt for him,
it didn't matter whether he was in jail or on
Drogheda, she would still feel it. The important thing
was that to have him on Drogheda made her happy. He
didn't intrude upon their lives, he was no more or
no less than always. Yet for Fee it wasn't a
joy to have Frank home again; how could it be? Seeing
him every day was simply a different kind of sorrow from
not being able to see him at all. The terrible
grief of having to witness a ruined life, a ruined
man. Who was her most beloved son, and must have
endured agonies beyond her imagination.
  One day after Frank had been home about six
months, Meggie came into the drawing room to find
her mother sitting looking through the big windows to where
Frank was clipping the great bank of roses
alongside the drive. She turned away, and something
in her calmly arranged face sent Meggie's hands
up to her heart.
  "Oh, Mum!" she said helplessly.
  Fee looked at her, shook her head and smiled.
"It doesn't matter, Meggie," she said.
  "If only there was something I could do!"
  "There is. Just carry on the way you have been.
I'm very grateful. You've become an ally."
  six
  1954-1965 Dane
  "Well," said Justine to her mother, "I've
decided what I'm going to do." "I thought it was already
decided. Arts at Sydney University, isn't
that right?"
  "Oh, that was just a red herring to lull you into a
false sense of security while I made my
plans. But now it's all set, so I can
tell you." Meggie's head came up from her task,
cutting fir-tree shapes in cookie dough; Mrs.
Smith was ill and they were helping out in the cookhouse.
She regarded her daughter wearily, impatiently,
helplessly. What could one do with someone like Justine?
If she announced she was going off to train as a
whore in a Sydney bordello, Meggie very much
doubted whether she could be turned aside. Dear,
horrible Justine, queen among juggernauts.
  "Go on, I'm all agog," she said, and went
back to producing cookies. "I'm going to be an
actress."
  "A what?"
  "An actress."
  "Good Lord!" The fir trees were abandoned again.
"Look, Justine, I hate to be a spoilsport
and truly I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but
do you think
  you're-well, quite physically equipped to be an
actress?" "Oh, Mum!" said Justine, disgusted.
"Not a film star; an actress! I don't want
to wiggle my hips and stick out my breasts and pout
my wet lips! I want to act." She was pushing
chunks of defatted beef into the corning barrel.
"I have enough money to support myself during
whatever sort of training I choose, isn't that
right?"
  "Yes, thanks to Cardinal de Bricassart."
  "Then it's all settled. I'm going to study
acting with Albert Jones at the Culloden Theater,
and I've written to the Royal Academy of
Dramatic Art in London, asking that I be put
on their waiting list."
  "Are you quite sure, Jussy?"
  "Quite sure. I've known for a long time." The last
piece of bloody beef was tucked down under the
surface of the corning solution; Justine put the
lid on the barrel with a thump. "There! I hope I
never see another bit of corned beef as long as
I live."
  Meggie handed her a completed tray of cookies.
"Put these in the oven, would you? Four hundred
degrees. I must say this comes as something of a
surprise. I thought little girls who wanted to be
actresses roleplayed constantly, but the only
person I've ever seen you play has been yourself."
"Oh, Mum! There you go again, confusing film stars with
actresses. Honestly, you're hopeless."
  "Well, aren't film stars actresses?"
  "Of a very inferior sort. Unless they've
been on the stage first, that is. I mean, even
Laurence Olivier does an occasional film."
  There was an autographed picture of Laurence
Olivier on Justine's dressing table; Meggie
had simply deemed it juvenile crush stuff, though
at the time she remembered thinking at least Justine
had taste. The friends she sometimes brought home with her
to stay 526
  a few days usually treasured pictures of
Tab Hunter and Rory Calhoun. "I still don't
understand," said Meggie, shaking her head. "An
actress!" Justine shrugged. "Well, where else
can I scream and yell and howl but on a stage?
I'm not allowed to do any of those here, or at
school, or anywhere! I like screaming and yelling and
howling, dammit!" "But you're so good at art,
Jussy! Why not be an artist?" Meggie
persevered.
  Justine turned from the huge gas stove, flicked
hef finger against a cylinder gauge. "I must tell
the kitchen rouseabout to change bottles; we're
low. It'll do for today, though." The light eyes
surveyed Meggie with pity. "You're so
impractical, Mum, really. I thought it was
supposed to be the children who didn't stop
to consider a career's practical aspects. Let
me tell you, I don't want to starve to death in a
garret and be famous after I'm dead. I want
to enjoy a bit of fame while I'm still alive, and
be very comfortable financially. So I'll paint as a
hobby and act for a living. How's that?"
  "You've got an income from Drogheda,
Jussy," Meggie said desperately, breaking her
vow to remain silent no matter what. "It would never
come to starving in a garret. If you'd rather paint, it's
all right. You can." Justine looked alert,
interested. "How much have I got, Mum?" "Enough that
if you preferred, you need never work at anything."
"What a bore! I'd end up talking on the
telephone and playing bridge; at least that's what
the mothers of most of my school friends do. Because I'd be
living in Sydney, not on Drogheda. I like
Sydney much better than Drogheda." A gleam of
hope entered her eye. "Do I have enough to pay to have my
freckles removed with this new electrical
treatment?"
  "I should think so. But why?"
  "Because then someone might see my face, that's
why."
  I thought looks didn't matter to an
actress?"
  "Enough's enough, Mum. My freckles are a
pain."
  "Are you sure you wouldn't rather be an artist?" "Quite
sure, thank you." She did a little dance. "I'm
going to tread the boards, Mrs. Worthington!"
  "How did you get yourself into the Culloden?" "I
auditioned."
  "And they took you?"
  "Your faith in your daughter is touching, Mum.
Of course they took me! I'm superb, you know.
One day I shall be very famous."
  Meggie beat green food coloring into a bowl of
runny icing and began to drizzle it over already baked
fir trees. "Is it important to you, Justine?
Fame?"
  "I should say so." She tipped sugar in on top
of butter so soft it had molded itself to the inner contours
of the bowl; in spite of the gas stove instead of the wood
stove, the cookhouse was very hot. "I'm
absolutely iron-bound determined to be famous."
  "Don't you want to get married?"
  Justine looked scornful. "Not bloody
likely! Spend my life wiping snotty noses
and cacky bums? Salaaming to some man not
half my equal even though he thinks he's
better? Ho ho ho, not me!"
  "Honestly, you're the dizzy limit! Where do you
pick up your language?" Justine began cracking
eggs rapidly and deftly into a basin, using one
hand. "At my exclusive ladies" college,
of course." She drubbed the eggs unmercifully with a
French whisk. "We were quite a decent bunch of
girls, actually. Very cultured. It isn't every
gaggle of silly adolescent females can
appreciate the delicacy of a Latin limerick:
  There was a Roman from Vinidium Whose shirt was
made of iridium;
  When asked why the vest, He replied, "Id est
Bonum sanguinem praesidium."
  Meggie's lips twitched. "I'm going to hate
myself for asking, but what did the Roman say?"
  was "It's a bloody good protection." his
  "Is that all? I thought it was going to be a lot
worse. You surprise me. But getting back
to what we were saying, dear girl, in spite of your
neat effort to change the subject, what's wrong with
marriage?" Justine imitated her grandmother's rare
snort of ironic laughter. "Mum! Really!
You're a fine one to ask that, I must
say."
  Meggie felt the blood well up under her skin,
and looked down at the tray of bright-green trees.
"Don't be impertinent, even if you are a ripe
old seventeen."
  "Isn't it odd?" Justine asked the mixing
bowl. "The minute one ventures onto strictly
parental territory, one becomes impertinent. I
just said: You're a fine one to ask. Perfectly
true, dammit! I'm not necessarily im- plying
you're a failure, or a sinner, or worse.
Actually I think you've shown remarkable 'gd
sense, dispensing with your husband. What have you needed one
for? There's been tons of male influence for your children
with the Unks around, you've got enough money to live on.
I agree with you! Marriage is for the birds."
  "You're just like your father!"
  "Another evasion. Whenever I displease you, I
become just like my father. Well, I'll have to take your
word for that, since I've never laid eyes on the
gentleman."
  "When are you leaving?" Meggie asked
desperately. Justine grinned. "Can't wait
to get rid of me, eh? It's all right, Mum, I
don't blame you in the least. But I can't
help it, I just love shocking people, especially you.
Hew about taking me into the 'drome tomorrow?" "Make it
the day after. Tomorrow I'll take you to
  the bank. You'd better know how much you've got.
And, Justine . . ." Justine was adding flour and
folding expertly, but she looked up at the change
in her mother's voice. "Yes.
  "If ever you're in trouble, come home, please.
We've always got room for you on Drogheda, I
want you to remember that. Nothing you could ever do would be
so bad you couldn't come home."
  Justine's gaze softened. "Thanks, Mum.
You're not a bad old stick underneath, are you?"
  "Old?" gasped Meggie. "I am not old!
I'm only forty-three!" "Good Lord, as much as
that?"
  Meggie hurled a cookie and hit Justine on
the nose. "Oh, you wretch!" she laughed. "What
a monster you are! Now I feel like a hundred."
  Her daughter grinned.
  At which moment Fee walked in to see how things in
the cookhouse were going; Meggie hailed her arrival
with relief.
  "Mum, do you know what Justine just told me?"
Fee's eyes were no longer up to anything
beyond the uttermost effort of keeping the books, but the
mind at back of those smudged pupils was as acute
as ever.
  "How could I possibly know what Justine just
told you?" she inquired mildly, regarding the green
cookies with a slight shudder. "Because sometimes it
strikes me that you and Jussy have little secrets from
me, and now, the moment my daughter finishes telling
me her news, in you walk when you never do."
  "Mmmmmm, at least they taste better than they
look," commented Fee, nibbling. "I assure you,
Meggie, I don't encourage your daughter
to conspire with me behind your back. What have you done
to upset the applecart now, Justine?" she asked,
turning to
  where Justine was pouring her sponge mixture
into greased and floured tins. "I told Mum I was
going to be an actress, Nanna, that's all."
"That's all, eh? Is it true, or only one of
your dubious jokes?" "Oh, it's true. I'm
starting at the Culloden."
  "Well, well, well!" said Fee, leaning against
the table and surveying her own daughter ironically.
"Isn't it amazing how chidren have minds of their own,
Meggie?"
  Meggie didn't answer.
  "Do you disapprove, Nanna?" Justine growled,
ready to do battle. "I? Disapprove? It's none
of my business what you do with your life, Justine.
Besides, I think you'll make a good actress."
  "You do?" gasped Meggie.
  "Of course she will," said Fee. "Justine's not
the sort to choose unwisely, are you, my girl?"
  "No." Justine grinned, pushing a damp curl
out of her eye. Meggie watched her regarding her
grandmother with an affection she never seemed to extend
to her mother.
  "You're a good girl, Justine," Fee
pronounced, and finished the cookie she had started so
unenthusiastically. "Not bad at all, but I wish
you'd iced them in white."
  "You can't ice trees in white," Meggie
contradicted. "Of course you can when they're firs;
it might be snow," her mother said. "Too late now,
they're vomit green," laughed Justine.
"Justine!"
  "Ooops! Sorry, Mum, didn't mean
to offend you. I always forget you've got a weak
stomach."
  "I haven't got a weak stomach," said
Meggie, exasperated. "I came to see if there was
any chance of a cuppa,"
  Fee broke in, pulling out a chair and sitting
down. "Put on the kettle, Justine, like a good
girl."
  Meggie sat down, too. "Do you really think this
will work out for Justine, Mum?" she asked
anxiously.
  "Why shouldn't it?" Fee answered, watching her
granddaughter attending to the tea ritual.
  "It might be a passing phase."
  "Is it a passing phase, Justine?" Fee
asked.
  "No," Justine said tersely, putting cups and
saucers on the old green kitchen table.
  "Use a plate for the biscuits, Justine,
don't put them out in their barrel," said Meggie
automatically, "and for pity's sake don't dump the
whole milk can on the table, put some in a proper
afternoon tea jug." "Yes, Mum, sorry, Mum,"
Justine responded, equally mechanically. "Can't
see the point of frills in the kitchen. All
I've got to do is put whatever isn't eaten
back where it came from, and wash up a couple of
extra dishes." "Just do as you're told;
it's so much nicer."
  "Getting back to the subject," Fee pursued,
"I don't think there's anything to discuss. It's my
opinion that Justine ought to be allowed to try, and will
probably do very well."
  "I wish I could be so sure," said Meggie
glumly. "Have you been on about fame and glory,
Justine?" her grandmother demanded. "They enter the
picture," said Justine, putting the old brown
kitchen teapot on the table defiantly and sitting
down in a hurry. "Now don't complain, Mum;
I'm not making tea in a silver pot for the kitchen and
that's final."
  "The teapot is perfectly appropriate."
Meggie smiled. "Oh, that's good! There's nothing like
a nice cup of tea," sighed Fee, sipping.
"Justine, why do you persist in putting things to your mother
so badly? You know it isn't a question of fame and
fortune. It's a question of self, isn't it?"
  "Self, Nanna?"
  "Of course. Self. Acting is what you feel
you were meant to do, isn't that right?"
  "Yes."
  "Then why couldn't you have explained it so to your mother?
Why upset her with a lot of flippant
nonsense?"
  Justine shrugged, drank her tea down and pushed
the empty cup toward her mother for more. "Dunno," she
said.
  "I-dont-know," Fee corrected. "You'll
articulate properly on the stage, I trust. But
self is why you want to be an actress, isn't
it?" "I suppose so," answered Justine
reluctantly. "Oh, that stubborn, pigheaded
Cleary pride! It will be your downfall, too,
Justine, unless you learn to rule it. That stupid
fear of being laughed at, or held up to some sort of
ridicule. Though why you think your mother would be so
cruel I don't know." She tapped Justine on
the back of her hand. "Give a little, Justine;
cooperate."
  But Justine shook her head and said, "I can't."
  Fee sighed. "Well, for what earthly good it will
do you, child, you have my blessing on your enterprise."
  "Ta, Nanna, I appreciate it."
  "Then kindly show your appreciation in a concrete
fashion by finding your uncle Frank and telling him
there's tea in the kitchen, please." Justine went
off, and Meggie stared at Fee.
  "Mum, you're amazing, you really are."
  Fee smiled. "Well, you have to admit I never
tried to tell any of my children what to do."
  "No, you never did," said Meggie tenderly.
"We did appreciate it, too."
  The first thing Justine did when she arrived back in
Sydney was begin to have her freckles removed. Not
a quick process, unfortunately; she had so many it
  would take about twelve months, and then she would have
to stay out of the sun for the rest of her life, or they would
come back. The second thing she did was to find herself
an apartment, no mean feat in Sydney at that time,
when people built private homes and regarded living
en masse in buildings as anathema. But eventually
she found a two-room fiat in Neutral Bay,
in one of the huge old waterside Victorian
mansions which had fallen on hard times and been made
over into dingy semi-apartments. The rent was five
pounds ten shillings a week, outrageous considering that
the bathroom and kitchen were communal, shared by all the
tenants: However, Justine was quite satisfied. Though
she had been well trained domestically, she had
few homemaker instincts.
  Living in Bothwell Gardens was more fascinating
than her acting apprenticeship at the Culloden,
where life seemed to consist in skulking behind
scenery and watching other people rehearse, getting an
occasional walk-on, memorizing masses of
Shakespeare, Shaw and Sheridan. Including
Justine's, Bothwell Gardens had six flats,
plus Mrs. Devine the landlady. Mrs. Devine
was a sixty-five-year-old Londoner with a
doleful sniff, protruding eyes and a great
contempt for Australia and Australians, though she
wasn't above robbing them. Her chief concern in life
seemed to be how much gas and electricity cost, and
her chief weakness was Justine's next-door
neighbor, a young Englishman who exploited his
nationality cheerfully.
  "I don't mind giving the old duck an
occasional tickle while we reminisce," he
told Justine. "Keeps her off my back, you
know. You girls aren't allowed to run electric
radiators even in winter, but I was given one and
I'm allowed to run it all summer as well if I
feel like it."
  "Pig," said Justine dispassionately.
  His name was Peter Wilkins, and he was a
traveling 534
  salesman. "Come in and I'll make you a nice
cuppa sometime," he called after her, rather
taken with those pale, intriguing eyes. Justine
did, careful not to choose a time when Mrs. Devine
was lurking jealously about, and got quite used to fighting
Peter off. The years of riding and working on
Drogheda had endowed her with considerable strength, and she
was untroubled by shibboleths like hitting below the belt.
"God damn you, Justine!" gasped Peter, wiping
the tears of pain from his eyes. "Give in, girl!
You've got to lose it sometime, you know! This isn't
Victorian England, you aren't expected to save it
for marriage." "I have no intention of saving it for
marriage," she answered, adjusting her dress.
"I'm just not sure who's going to get the honor,
that's all." "You're nothing to write home about!"
he snapped nastily; she had really hurt.
  "No, that I'm not. Sticks and stones, Pete.
You can't hurt me with words. And there are plenty of
men who will shag anything if it's a virgin."
"Plenty of women, too! Watch the front
flat."
  "Oh, I do, I do," said Justine.
  The two girls in the front flat were
lesbians, and had hailed Justine's advent
gleefully until they realized she not only
wasn't interested, she wasn't even
intrigued. At first she wasn't quite sure what they
were hinting at, but after they spelled it out baldly she
shrugged her shoulders, unimpressed. Thus after a
period of adjustment she became their sounding board,
their neutral confidante, their port in all
storms; she bailed Billie out of jail, took
Bobbie to the Mater hospital to have her stomach
pumped out after a particularly bad quarrel with
Billie, refused to take sides with either of them when
Pat, Also, Georgie and Ronnie hove in
turns on the horizon. It did seem a very
insecure kind of emotional life, she thought. Men
were bad enough, but at least they had the spice of
intrinsic difference.
  So between the Culloden and Bothwell Gardens and
girls she had known from Kincoppal days, Justine
had quite a lot of friends, and was a good friend herself. She
never told them all her troubles as they did her; she
had Dane for that, though what few troubles she
admitted to having didn't appear to prey upon her.
The thing which fascinated her friends the most about her was her
extraordinary self-discipline; as if she had
trained herself from infancy not to let circumstances
affect her well-being. Of chief interest to everyone
called a friend was how, when and with whom Justine
would finally decide to become a fulfilled woman,
but she took her time.
  Arthur Lestrange was Albert Jones's most
durable juvenile lead, though he had wistfully
waved goodbye to his fortieth birthday the year before
Justine arrived at the Culloden. He had a good
body, was a steady, reliable actor and his
clean-cut, manly face with its surround of yellow
curls was always sure to evoke audience applause.
For the first year he didn't notice Justine, who was
very quiet and did exactly as she was told. But at
the end of the year her freckle treatments were finished,
and she began to stand out against the scenery instead of blending
into it.
  Minus the freckles and plus makeup to darken
her brows and lashes, she was a good-looking girl in
an elfin, understated way. She had none of Luke
O'neill's arresting beauty, or her mother's
exquisiteness. Her figure was passable though not
spectacular, a trifle on the thin side. Only
the vivid red hair ever stood out. But on a stage
she was quite different; she could make people think she was as
beautiful as Helen of Troy or as ugly as a
witch.
  Arthur first noticed her during a teaching
period, when she was required to recite a passage
from Conrad's Lord Jim using various accents. She
was extraordinary, really; he could feel the
excitement in Albert Jones, and finally understood
why Also devoted so much time
  to her. A born mimic, but far more than that; she
gave character to every word she said. And there was the voice, a
wonderful natural endowment for any actress,
deep, husky, penetrating.
  So when he saw her with a cup of tea in her hand,
sitting with a book open on her knees, he came
to sit beside her.
  "What are you reading?"
  She looked up, smiled. "Proust."
  "Don't you find him a little dull?"
  "Proust dull? Not unless one doesn't care for
gossip, surely. That's what he is, you know. A
terrible old gossip."
  He had an uncomfortable conviction that she was
intellectually patronizing him, but he forgave her.
No more than extreme youth. "I heard you doing the
Conrad. Splendid."
  "Thank you."
  "Perhaps we could have coffee together sometime and discuss
your plans" "If you like," she said,
returning to Proust. He was glad he had
stipulated coffee, rather than dinner; his wife kept
him on short commons, and dinner demanded a degree
of gratitude he couldn't be sure Justine was
ready to manifest. However, he followed his casual
invitation. up, and bore her off to a dark little place
in lower Elizabeth Street, where he was
reasonably sure his wife wouldn't think of looking
for him.
  In self-defense Justine had learned to smoke,
tired of always appearing goody-goody in refusing offered
cigarettes. After they were seated she took her own
cigarettes out of her bag, a new pack, and
peeled the top cellophane from the flip-top box
carefully, making sure the larger piece of
cellophane still sheathed the bulk of the packet.
Arthur watched her deliberateness, amused and
interested.
  "Why on earth go to so much trouble? Just rip it all
off, Justine." "How untidy!"
  He picked up the box and stroked its intact
shroud reflectively. "Now, if I was a
disciple of the eminent Sigmund Freud . . ."
  "If you were Freud, what?" She glanced up,
saw the waitress standing beside her.
"Cappuccino, please."
  It annoyed him that she gave her own order, but
he let it pass, more intent on pursuing the thought in
his mind. "Vienna, please. Now, getting back
to what I was saying about Freud. I wonder what
he'd think of this? He might say . . ."
  She took the packet off him, opened it,
removed a cigarette and lit it herself without giving
him time to find his matches. "Well?" "He'd think
you liked to keep membranous substances intact,
wouldn't he?" Her laughter gurgled through the smoky
air, caused several male heads to turn
curiously. "Would he now? Is that a roundabout way
of asking me if I'm still a virgin, Arthur?"
  He clicked his tonque, exasperated.
"Justine! I can see that among other things I'll have
to teach you the fine art of prevarication."
  "Among what other things, Arthur?" She leaned
her elbows on the table, eyes gleaming in the dimness.
  "Well, what do you need to learn?"
  "I'm pretty well educated, actually."
  "In everything?"
  "Heavens, you do know how to emphasize words,
don't you? Very good, I must remember how you said
that."
  "There are things which can only be learned from firsthand
experience," he said softly, reaching out a hand to tuck
a curl behind her ear. "Really? I've always found
observation adequate."
  "Ah, but what about when it comes to love?" He
  put a delicate deepness into the word. "How can you
play Juliet without knowing what love is?" "A
good point. I agree with you." "Have you ever been in
love?"
  [*reg] [*macr]
  No.
  "Do you know anything about love?" This time he put
the vocal force on "anything," rather than "love."
  "Nothing at all."
  "Ah! Then Freud would have been right, eh?"
  She picked up her cigarettes and looked at
their sheathed box, smiling. "In some things, perhaps."
  Quickly he grasped the bottom of the
cellophane, pulled it off and held it in his hand,
dramatically crushed it and dropped it in the
ashtray, where it squeaked and writhed, expanded.
"I'd like to teach you what being a woman is, if I
may."
  For a moment she said nothing, intent on the antics
of the cellophane in the ashtray, then she
struck a match and carefully set fire to it. "Why
not?" she asked the brief flare. "Yes, why not?"
  "Shall it be a divine thing of moonlight and roses,
passionate wooing, or shall it be short and sharp, like an
arrow?" he declaimed, hand on heart. She
laughed. "Really, Arthur! I hope it's long and
sharp, myself. But no moonlight and roses, please.
My stomach's not built for passionate wooing."
He stared at her a little sadly, shook his head.
"Oh, Justine! Everyone's stomach is built for
passionate wooing-even yours, you cold-blooded young
vestal. One day, you wait and see. You'll long for
it."
  "Pooh!" She got up. "Come on, Arthur,
let's get the deed over and done with before I change
my mind."
  "Now? Tonight?" .
  "Why on earth not? I've got plenty of money
for a hotel room, if you're short."
  The Hotel Metropole wasn't far away;
they walked through the drowsing streets with her arm tucked
cozily in his, laughing. It was too late for
diners and too early
  for the theaters to be out, so there were few people around, just
knots of American sailors off a
visiting task force, and groups of young girls
window-shopping with an eye to sailors. No one
took any notice of them, which suited Arthur fine.
He popped into a chemist shop while Justine
waited outside, emerged beaming happily.
  "Now we're all set, my love."
  "What did you buy? French letters?"
  He grimaced. "I should hope not. A French
letter ,ness like coming wrapped in a page of the Reader's
Digest -condensed tackiness. No, I got you some
jelly. How do you know about French letters, anyway?"
  "After seven years in a Catholic boarding
school? What do you think we did? Prayed?" She
grinned. "I admit we didn't do much, but we
talked about every- thing."
  Mr. and Mrs. Smith surveyed their kingdom, which
wasn't bad for a Sydney hotel room of that era.
The days of the Hilton were still to come. It was very large,
and had superb views of the Sydney Harbor
Bridge. There was no bathroom, of course, but there
was a basin and ewer on a marble-topped stand, a
fitting accompaniment to the enormous Victorian
relics of furniture. "Well, what do I do
now?" she asked, pulling the curtains back.
"It's a beautiful view, isn't it?"
  "Yes. As to what you do now, you take your pants
off, of course." "Anything else?" she asked
mischievously.
  He sighed. "Take it all off, Justine! If
you don't feel skin with skin it isn't nearly so
good."
  Neatly and briskly she got out of her clothes,
not a scrap coyly, clambered up on the bed and
spread her legs apart. "Is this right, Arthur?"
"Good Lord!" he said, folding his trousers
carefully; his wife always looked to see if they were
crushed.
  "What? What's the matter?"
  "You really are a redhead, aren't you?"
  "What did you expect, purple feathers?"
  "Facetiousness doesn't set the right mood,
darling, so stop it this instant." He sucked in his
belly, turned, strutted to the bed and climbed onto
it, began dropping expert little kisses down the
side of her face, her neck, over her left
breast. "Mmmmmm, you're nice." His arms went
around her. "There! Isn't this nice?"
  "I suppose so. Yes, it is quite nice."
  Silence fell, broken only by the sound of
kisses, occasional murmurs. There was a
huge old dressing table at the far end of the bed, its
mirror still tilted to reflect love's arena by some
erotically minded previous tenant. "Put out the
light, Arthur."
  "Darling, no! Lesson number one. There's no
aspect of love which won't bear the light."
  Having done the preparatory work with his fingers and
deposited the jelly where it was supposed to be,
Arthur managed to get himself between Justine's legs.
A bit sore but quite comfortable, if not lifted
into ecstasy at least feeling rather motherly, Justine
looked over Arthur's shoulder and straight down the
bed into the mirror.
  Foreshortened, their legs looked weird with his
darkly matted ones sandwiched between her smooth
defreckled ones; however, the bulk of the image in the
mirror consisted of Arthur's buttocks, and as he
maneuvered they spread and contracted, hopped up and
down, with two quiffs of yellow hair like
Dagwood's just poking above the twin globes and
waving at her cheerfully.
  Justine looked; looked again. She stuffed her
fist against her mouth wildly, gurgling and moaning.
  "There, there, my darling, it's all right! I've
broken you already, so it can't hurt too
much," he whispered.
  Her chest began to heave; he wrapped his arms
closer about her and murmured inarticulate
endearments.
  Suddenly her head went back, her mouth opened in
a long, agonized wail, and became peal after peal
of uproarious laughter. And the more limply furious
he got, the harder she laughed, pointing her finger
helplessly toward the foot of the bed, tears streaming
down her face. Her whole body was convulsed, but not
quite in the manner poor Arthur had envisioned.
  In many ways Justine was a lot closer to Dane
than their mother was, and what they felt for Mum
belonged to Mum. It didn't impinge upon or clash
with what they felt for each other. That had been forged very
early, and had grown rather than diminished. By the time
Mum was freed from her Drogheda bondage they were
old enough to be at Mrs. Smith's kitchen table,
doing their correspondence lessons; the habit of
finding solace in each other had been established for
all time.
  Though they were very dissimilar in character, they also shared many
tastes and appetites, and those they didn't share they
tolerated in each other with instinctive respect, as
a necessary spice of difference. They knew
each other very well indeed. Her natural tendency
was to deplore human failings in others and ignore
them in herself; his natural tendency was to understand and
forgive human failings in others, and be merciless upon
them in himself. She felt herself invincibly strong; he
knew himself perilously weak. And somehow it all
came together as a nearly perfect friendship, in the name
of which nothing was impossible. However, since Justine
was by far the more talkative, Dane always got to hear
a lot more about her and what she was feeling than the other
way around. In some respects she was a little bit of a
moral imbecile, in that nothing was sacred, and he
understood that his function was to provide her with the
scruples she lacked within herself. Thus he accepted
his role of passive listener with a tenderness and
compassion which would have irked Justine enormously had
she suspected them.
  Not that she ever did; she had been bending his ear about
absolutely anything and everything since he was old enough
to pay attention. "Guess what I did last
night?" she asked, carefully adjusting her big
straw hat so her face and neck were well shaded.
  "Acted in your first starring role," Dane said.
"Prawn! As if I wouldn't tell you so you could be
there to see me. Guess again."
  "Finally copped a punch Bobbie meant for
Billie."
  "Cold as a stepmother's breast."
  He shrugged his shoulders, bored. "Haven't a
clue."
  They were sitting in the Domain on the grass, just
below the Gothic bulk of Saint Mary's
Cathedral. Dane had phoned to let Justine know
he was coming in for a special ceremony in the
cathedral, and could she meet him for a while first in the
Dom? Of course she could; she was dying to tell him
the latest episode.
  Almost finished his last year at Riverview,
Dane was captain of the school, captain of the
cricket team, the Rugby, handball and tennis
teams. And dux of his class into the bargain. At
seventeen he was two inches over six feet, his
voice had settled into its final baritone, and he
had miraculously escaped such afflictions as
pimples, clumsiness and a bobbing Adam's apple.
Because he was so fair he wasn't really shaving yet,
but in every other way he looked more like a young man than
a schoolboy. Only the Riverview uniform
cate- gorized him.
  It was a warm, sunny day. Dane
removed his straw boater school hat and stretched out
on the grass, Justine sitting hunched beside him, her
arms about her knees to make sure all exposed
skin was shaded. He opened one lazy blue eye in
her direction.
  "What did you do last night, Jus?"
  "I lost my virginity. At least I think I
did."
  Both his eyes opened. "You're a prawn."
  "Pooh! High time, I say. How can I hope
to be a
  good actress if I don't have a clue what
goes on between men and women?" "You ought to save yourself
for the man you marry."
  Her face twisted in exasperation. "Honestly,
Dane, sometimes you're so archaic I'm
embarrassed! Suppose I don't meet the man
I marry until I'm forty? What do you expect
me to do? Sit on it all those years? Is that what
you're going to do, save it for marriage?"
  "I don't think I'm going to get married."
  "Well, nor am 1. In which case, why tie a
blue ribbon around it and stick it in my nonexistent
hope chest? I don't want to die wondering."
He grinned. "You can't, now." Rolling
over onto his stomach, he propped his chin on his hand
and looked at her steadily, his face soft, concerned.
"Was it all right? I mean, was it awful? Did you
hate it?" Her lips twitched, remembering. "I
didn't hate it, at any rate. It wasn't
awful, either. On the other hand, I'm afraid I
don't see what everyone raves about. Pleasant
is as far as I'm prepared to go. And it isn't as
if I chose just anyone; I selected someone very
attractive and old enough to know what he was doing."
  He sighed. "You are a prawn, Justine. I'd
have been a lot happier to hear you say, "He's not
much to look at, but we met and I couldn't help
myself." I can accept that you don't want to wait
until you're married, but it's still something you've got
to want because of the person. Never because of the act, Jus.
I'm not surprised you weren't ecstatic."
  All the gleeful triumph faded from her face.
"Oh, damn you, now you've made me feel awful!
If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were
trying to put me down-or my motives, at any
rate."
  "But you do know me better, don't you? I'd never
put you down, but sometimes your motives are plain
thoughtlessly silly." He adopted a
tolling, monotonous voice. "I am the voice of
your conscience, Justine O'neill."
  "You are, too, you prawn." Shade forgotten,
she flopped back on the grass beside him so he
couldn't see her face. "Look, you know why.
Don't you?" "Oh, Jussy," he said sadly, but
whatever he was going to add was lost, for she spoke
again, a little savagely.
  "I'm never, never, never going to love anyone!
If you love people, they kill you. If you need people, they
kill you. They do, I tell you!" It always hurt
him, that she felt left out of love, and hurt more that
he knew himself the cause. If there was one overriding
reason why she was so important to him, it was because she
loved him enough to bear no grudges, had never made
him feel a moment's lessening of her' love through
jealousy or resentment. To him, it was a cruel
fact that she moved on an outer circle while he
was the very hub. He had prayed and prayed things would
change, but they never did. Which hadn't lessened his
faith, only pointed out to him with fresh emphasis that
somewhere, sometime, he would have to pay for the emotion squandered
on him at her expense. She put a good face on
it, had managed to convince even herself that she did very
well on that outer orbit, but he felt her
pain. He knew. There was so much worth loving in
her, so little worth loving in himself. Without a hope of
understanding differently, he assumed he had the lion's
share of love because of his beauty, his more tractable na-
ture, his ability to communicate with his mother and the other
Drogheda people. And because he was male. Very little escaped
him beyond what he simply couldn't know, and he had had
Justine's confidence and companionship in ways no
one else ever had. Mum mattered to Justine far more
than she would admit.
  But I will atone, he thought. I've had everything.
Somehow I've got to pay it back, make it up
to her.
  Suddenly he chanced to see his watch, came to his
feet bonelessly; huge though he admitted his debt
to his sister was, to Someone else he owed even more.
  "I've got to go, Jus."
  "You and your bloody Church! When are you going
to grow out of it?" "Never, I hope."
  "When will I see you?"
  "Well, since today's Friday, tomorrow of course,
eleven o'clock, here." "Okay. Be a good boy."
  He was already several yards away, Riverview
boater back on his head, but he turned to smile
at her. "Am I ever anything else?"
She grinned. "Bless you, no. You're too good to be
true; I'm the one always in trouble. See you tomorrow."
  There were huge padded red leather doors inside the
vestibule of Saint Mary's; Dane poked one
open and slipped inside. He had left Justine a
little earlier than was strictly necessary, but he always
liked to get into a church before it filled, became a
shifting focus of sighs, coughs, rustles,
whispers. When he was alone it was so much better.
There was a sacristan kindling branches of candles
on the high altar; a deacon, he judged
unerringly. Head bowed, he genuflected and made the
Sign of the Cross as he passed in front of the
tabernacle, then quietly slid into a pew. On
his knees, he put his head on his folded hands and
let his mind float freely. He didn't
consciously pray, but rather became an intrinsic part
of the atmosphere, which he felt as dense yet
ethereal, unspeakably holy, brooding. It was as
if he had turned into a flame in one of the little red
glass sanctuary lamps, always just fluttering on the
brink of extinction, sustained by a small puddle of
some vital essence, radiating a minute but enduring
glow out into the far darknesses. Stillness, formlessness,
forgetfulness of his human identity; these were
what Dane got from being in a church. Nowhere else
did he feel so right, so much at peace with himself, so
removed from pain. His lashes lowered, his eyes
closed.
  From the organ gallery came the shuffling of feet,
a preparatory wheeze, a breathy expulsion of
air from pipes. The Saint Mary's Cathedral
Boys' School choir was coming in early to sandwich a
little practice between now and the coming ritual. It was
only a Friday midday Benediction, but one of
Dane's friends and teachers from Riverview was
celebrating it, and he had wanted to come.
  The organ gave off a few chords, quietened
into a rippling accompaniment, and into the dim
stone-lace arches one unearthly boy's voice
soared, thin and high and sweet, so filled with innocent
purity the few people in the great empty church closed
their eyes, mourned for that which could never come to them again.
  Panis angelicus
  Fit panis hominum,
  Dat panis coelicus
  Figuris terminum,
  O res mirabilis,
  Manducat Dominus,
  Pauper, pauper,
  Servus et humilis . . . .
  Bread of angels, heavenly bread, O thing of
wonder. Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee,
O Lord; Lord, hear my voice! Let Thine ear
be attuned to the sounds of my supplication. Turn not
away, O Lord, turn not away. For Thou art my
Sovereign, my Master, my God, and I am
Thy humble servant. In Thine eyes only one thing
counts, goodness. Thou carest not if Thy servants be
beautiful or ugly. To Thee only the heart
matters; in Thee all is healed, in Thee I know
peace.
  Lord, it is lonely. I pray it be over soon,
the pain of life. They do not understand that I, so
gifted, find so much pain in living. But Thou dost,
and Thy comfort is all which sustains me. No matter
what Thou requirest of me, O Lord, shall be given,
for I love
  Thee. And if I might presume to ask anything
of Thee, it is that in Thee all else shall be forever
forgotten . . . .
  "You're very quiet, Mum," said Dane.
"Thinking of what? Of Drogheda?" "No," said
Meggie drowsily. "I'm thinking that I'm getting
old. I found half a dozen grey
hairs this morning, and my bones ache."
  "You'll never be old, Mum," he said
comfortably. "I wish that were true, love, but
unfortunately it isn't. I'm beginning to need the
borehead, which is a sure sign of old age."
  They were lying in the warm winter sun on towels
spread over the Drogheda grass, by the borehead.
At the far end of the great pool boiling water thundered
and splashed, the reek of sulphur drifted and
floated into nothing. It was one of the great winter
pleasures, to swim in the borehead. All the aches
and pains of encroaching age were soothed away,
Meggie thought, and turned to lie on her back, her
head in the shade of the log on which she and Father Ralph
had sat so long ago. A very long time ago; she was
unable to conjure up even a faint echo of what she
must have felt when Ralph had kissed her.
  Then she heard Dane get up, and opened her
eyes. He had always been her baby, her lovely
little boy; though she had watched him change and grow with
proprietary pride, she had done so with an image
of the laughing baby superimposed on his maturing
face. It had not yet occurred to her that actually he
was no longer in any way a child.
  However, the moment of realization came
to Meggie at that instant, watching him stand outlined
against the crisp sky in his brief cotton
swimsuit. My God, it's all over! The
babyhood, the boyhood. He's a man.
Pride, resentment, a female melting at the quick,
a terrific consciousness of some impending tragedy,
anger, adoration, sadness; all these and more Meg-

  gie felt, looking up at her son. It is a
terrible thing to create a man, and more terrible to create
a man like this. So amazingly male, so amazingly
beautiful.
  Ralph de Bricassart, plus a little of herself.
How could she not be moved at seeing in its extreme
youth the body of the man who had joined in love with
her? She closed her eyes, embarrassed, hating
having to think of her son as a man. Did he look
at her and see a woman these days, or was she still that
wonderful cipher, Mum? God damn him, God
damn him! How dared he grow up? "Do you know
anything about women, Dane?" she asked suddenly,
opening her eyes again.
  He smiled. "The birds and the bees, you mean?"
"That you know, with Justine for a sister. When she
discovered what lay between the covers of
physiology textbooks she blurted it all out
to everyone. No, I mean have you ever put any of
Justine's clinical treatises into practice?"
  His head moved in a quick negative shake, he
slid down onto the grass beside her and looked into her
face. "Funny you should ask that, Mum. I've
been wanting to talk to you about it for a long time, but I
didn't know how to start."
  "You're only eighteen, love. Isn't it a
bit soon to be thinking of putting theory
into practice?" Only eigh equals teen.
Only. He was a man, wasn't he? "That's it,
what I wanted to talk to you about. Not putting it
into practice at all."
  How cold the wind was, blowing down from the Great
Divide. Peculiar, she hadn't noticed until
now. Where was her robe? "Not putting it
into practice at all," she said dully, and it was not
a question. "That's right. I don't want to, ever. Not
that I haven't thought about it, or wanted a wife and
children. I have. But I can't. Because there isn't enough room
to love them and God as well, not the way I want
to love God. I've known that for a long time. I
don't seem to
  remember a time when I didn't, and the
older I become the greater my love for God
grows. It's a great mystery, loving God."
  Meggie lay looking into those calm, distant blue
eyes. Ralph's eyes, as they used to be. But
ablaze with something quite alien to Ralph's. Had he
had it, at eighteen? Had he? Was it perhaps something
one could only experience at eighteen? By the time she
entered Ralph's life, he was ten years beyond that.
Yet her son was a mystic, she had always known it.
And she didn't think that at any stage of his life
Ralph had been mystically inclined. She
swallowed, wrapped the robe closer about her lonely
bones. "So I asked myself," Dane went on,
"what I could do to show Him how much I loved Him.
I fought the answer for a long time, I didn't want
to see it. Because I wanted a life as a man,
too, very much. Yet I knew what the offering had
to be, I knew .... There's only one thing I can
offer Him, to show Him nothing else will ever exist in
my heart before Him. I must offer up His only
rival; that's the sacrifice He demands of me.
I am His servant, and He will have no rivals. I
have had to choose. All things He'll let me have and
enjoy, save that." He sighed, plucked at a
blade of Drogheda grass. "I must show
Him that I understand why He gave me so much at my
birth. I must show Him that I realize how
unimportant my life as a man is."
  "You can't do it, I won't let you!" Meggie
cried, her hand reaching for his arm, clutching it. How
smooth it felt, the hint of great power under the skin,
just like Ralph's. Just like Ralph's! Not to have some
glossy girl put her hand there, as a right?
  "I'm going to be a priest," said Dane.
"I'm going to enter His service completely, offer
everything I have and am to Him, as His priest.
Poverty, cha/y and obedience. He demands no
less than all from His chosen servants. It won't
be easy, but I'm going to do it.
  The look in her eyes! As if he had killed
her, ground her into the dust beneath his foot. That he should
have to suffer this he hadn't known, dreaming only of her
pride in him; her pleasure at giving her son
to God. They said she'd be thrilled, uplifted,
completely in accord. Instead she was staring at him as
if the prospect of his priesthood was her death
sentence. "It's all I've ever wanted to be," he
said in despair, meeting those dying eyes. "Oh,
Mum, can't you understand? I've never, never wanted
to be anything but a priest! I can't be
anything but a priest!" Her hand fell from his arm; he
glanced down and saw the white marks of her fingers, the
little arcs in his skin where her nails had bitten
deeply. Her head went up, she laughed on and on
and on, huge hysterical peals of bitter,
derisive laughter.
  "Oh, it's too good to be true!" she gasped
when she could speak again, wiping the tears from the corners
of her eyes with a trembling hand. "The incredible
irony! Ashes of roses, he said that night riding
to the borehead. And I didn't understand what he
meant. Ashes thou wert, unto ashes return.
To the Church thou belongest, to the Church thou shalt be
given. Oh, it's beautiful, beautiful! God
rot God, I say! God the sod! The utmost
Enemy of women, that's what God is! Everything we
seek to do, He seeks to undo!" "Oh, don't!
Oh, don't! Mum, don't!" He wept for her,
for her pain, not understanding her pain or the words she was
saying. His tears fell, twisted in his heart; already
the sacrifice had begun, and in a way he hadn't
dreamed. But though he wept for her, not even for her
could he put it aside, the sacrifice. The offering
must be made, and the harder it was to make, the more valuable
it must be in His eyes.
  She had made him weep, and never in all his
life until now had she made him weep. Her own
rage and grief were put away resolutely. No,
it wasn't fair to visit herself upon him. What he
was his genes had made
  him. Or his God. Or Ralph's God. He
was the light of her life, her son. He should not be
made to suffer because of her, ever. "Dane, don't
cry," she whispered, stroking the angry marks on his
arm. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. You
gave me a shock, that's all. Of course I'm
glad for you, truly I am! How could 1 not be?
I was shocked; I just didn't expect it, that's
all." She chuckled, a little shakily. "You did rather
drop it on me like a rock."
  His eyes cleared, regarded her doubtfully. Why
had he imagined he killed her? Those were Mum's
eyes as he had always known them; full of love, very
much alive. The strong young arms gathered her close,
hugged her. "You're sure you don't mind?"
  "Mind? A good Catholic mother mind her son
becoming a priest? Impossible!" She jumped to her
feet. "Brr! How cold it's got! Let's be
getting back." They hadn't taken the horses, but
a jeeplike LandRover; Dane climbed
behind the wheel, his mother sat beside him.
  "Do you know where you're going?" asked Meggie,
drawing in a sobbing breath, pushing the tumbled hair out
of her eyes. "Saint Patrick's College,
I suppose. At least until I find my
feet. Perhaps then I'll espouse an order. I'd
rather like to be a Jesuit, but I'm not quite sure enough of that
to go straight into the Society of Jesus." Meggie
stared at the tawny grass bouncing up and down through the
insect-spattered windscreen. "I have a much better
idea, Dane." "Oh?" He had to concentrate on
driving; the track dwindled a bit and there were always
new logs across it.
  "I shall send you to Rome, to Cardinal de
Bricassart. You remember him, don't you?"
  "Do I remember him? What a question, Mum! I
don't think I could forget him in a million
years. He's 552
  my example of the perfect priest. If I could
be the priest he is, I'd be very happy."
  "Perfection is as perfection does!" said
Meggie tartly. "But I shall give you into his
charge, because I know he'll look after you for my
sake. You can enter a seminary in Rome."
  "Do you really mean it, Mum? Really?"
Anxiety pushed the joy out of his face. "Is there
enough money? It would be much cheaper if I stayed in
Aus- tralia."
  "Thanks to the selfsame Cardinal de
Bricassart, my dear, you'll never lack money."
  At the cookhouse door she pushed him inside.
"Go and tell the girls and Mrs. Smith," she
said. "They'll be absolutely thrilled."
  One after the other she put her feet down, made
them plod up the ramp to the big house, to the drawing
room where Fee sat, miraculously not working but
talking to Anne Mueller instead, over an afternoon
tea tray. As Meggie came in they looked up,
saw from her face that something serious had happened.
  For eighteen years the Muellers had been
visiting Drogheda, expecting that was how it always would
be. But Luddie Mueller had died suddenly the
preceding autumn, and Meggie had written immediately
to Anne to ask her if she would like to live
permanently on Drogheda. There was plenty of
room, a guest cottage for privacy; she could
pay board if she was too proud not to, though heaven
knew there was enough money to keep a thousand permanent
houseguests. Meggie saw it as a chance
to reciprocate for those lonely Queensland
years, and Anne saw it as salvation. Himmelhoch
without Luddie was horribly lonely. Though she had
put on a manager, not sold the place; when she
died it would go to Justine.
  "What is it, Men!" Anne asked.
  MeRQ-IE sat down. "I think I've been
struck by a retributory bolt of lightning."
  "What?"
  "You were right, both of you. You said I'd lose him.
I didn't believe you, I actually thought I could
beat God. But there was never a woman born who could
beat God. He's a Man."
  Fee poured Meggie a cup of tea. "Here,
drink this," she said, as if tea had the restorative
powers of brandy. "How have you lost him?" "He's
going to become a priest." She began to laugh,
weeping at the same time.
  Anne picked up her sticks, hobbled
to Meggie's chair and sat awkwardly on its arm,
stroking the lovely redgold hair. "Oh, my
dear! But it isn't as bad as all that."
  "Do you know about Dane?" Fee asked Anne.
  "I've always known," said Anne.
  Meggie sobered. "It isn't as bad as all that?
It's the beginning of the end, don't you see?
Retribution. I stole Ralph from God, and
I'm paying with my son. You told me it was stealing,
Mum, don't you remember? I didn't want
to believe you, but you were right, as always."
  Is he going to Saint Pat's?" Fee asked
practically. Meggie laughed more normally. "That's
no sort of reparation, Mum. I'm going to send him
to Ralph, of course. Half of him is Ralph;
let Ralph finally enjoy him." She shrugged.
"He's more important than Ralph, and 1 knew
he'd want to go to Rome." "Did you ever tell
Ralph about Dane?" asked Anne; it wasn't a
subject ever discussed.
  "No, and I never will. Never!"
  "They're so alike he might guess."
  "Who, Ralph? He'll never guess! That much
I'm going to keep. I'm sending him my son, but
no more than that. I'm not sending him his son."
"Beware of the jealousy of the gods, Meggie," said
Anne softly. "They might not have done, with you
yet."
  "What more can thev do to me?" mourned Meggie. When
Justine heard the news she was furious, though
  for the last three or four years she had had a
sneaking suspicion it "Vas comic,,.
0 , M:;;"'bbi[*thorn] ., burst ilk--
a clap of thunder, b less-than less-than ,
:bbffi JWL-INE it ,iescended lice an
expected shower of icy water. First of all, because
Jccne had been at school in Sydney with him,
an.l as his confidante had listened to him talk of the
things he didn't mention to his mother. Justine knew
how vitally important his religion was to Dan
caret .; not only God, but the mystical
significance of Catholic rituals. Had he
been born and brought up a Protestant, she thought,
he was the type to have eventually turned
to Catholicism to satisfy something in his soul. Not for
Dane an austere, calvinistic God. His God
was limned in stained glass, wreathed in incense,
wrapped in lace and gold embroidery, hymned in
musical complexity, and worshipped in lovely
Latin cadences.
  Too, it was a kind of ironic perversity that
someone so wonderfully endowed with beauty should deem it
a crippling handicap, and deplore its existence.
For Dane did. He shrank from any reference
to his looks; Justine fancied he would far rather have
been born ugly, totally unprepossessing. She
and[*thorngg'rstood in part why he felt
so, and perhaps because her own career lay in a notori-
ously narcissistic profession, she rather approved of
his attitude toward his appearance. What she couldn't
begin to understand was why he positively loathed his
looks, instead of simply ignoring them. Nor was
he highly sexed, for what reason she wasn't
sure: whether he had taught himself to sublimate his
passions almost perfectly, or whether in spite of his
bodily endowments some necessary cerebral essence was in
short supply. Probably- the former, since he
played some sort of vigorous sport every day of his
life to make sure he went to bed exhausted. She
knew very well that his inclinations were "normal," that
is, heterosexual, and she knew what type of
girl appealed to him comtall, dark and voluptuous.
But he just wasn't 555
  sensually aware; he didn't notice the feel of
things when he held them, or the odors in the air
around him, or understand the special satisfaction of
shape and color. Before he experienced a sexual
pull the provocative object's impact had
to be irresistible, and only at such rare moments
did he seem to realize there was an earthly plane
most men trod, of choice, for as long as they
possibly could.
  He told her backstage at the Culloden, after
a performance. It had been settled with Rome that day;
he was dying to tell her and yet he knew she
wasn't going to like it. His religious ambitions were
something he had never discussed with her as much as he
wanted to, for she became angry. But when he
came backstage that night it was too difficult
to contain his joy any longer. "You're a prawn,"
she said in disgust.
  "It's what I want."
  "Idiot."
  "Calling me names won't change a thing,
Jus."
  "Do you think I don't know that? It affords me a
little much-needed emotional release, that's all."
  "I should think you'd get enough on the stage, playing
Electra. You're really good, Jus."
  "After this news I'll be better," she said
grimly. "Are you going to Saint Pat's?"
  "No. I'm going to Rome, to Cardinal de
Bricassart. Mum arranged it." "Dane, no!
It's so far away!"
  "Well, why don't you come, too, at least
to England? With your background and ability you ought to be
able to get a place somewhere without too much
trouble."
  She was sitting at a mirror wiping off
Electra's paint, still in Electra's robes;
ringed with heavy black arabesques, her strange
eyes seemed even stranger. She nodded slowly.
"Yes, I could, couldn't I?" she asked
thoughtfully. "It's more than time I did ....
Australia's getting a bit too small . . .
. Right, mate! You're on! England it is!"
  "Super! Just think! I get holidays, you know,
one always does in the seminary, as if it was a
university. We can plan to take them together, trip
around Europe a bit, come home to Drogheda.
Oh, Jus, I've thought it all out! Having you not
far away makes it perfect."
  She beamed. "It does, doesn't it? Life
wouldn't be the same if I couldn't talk to you."
  "That's what I was afraid you were going to say."
He grinned. "But seriously, Jus, you worry
me. I'd rather have you where I can see you from time to time.
Otherwise who's going to be the voice of your
conscience?" He slid down between a hoplite's
helmet and an awesome mask of the Pythoness to a
position on the floor where he could see her, coiling
himself into an economical ball, out of the
way of all the feet. There were only two stars"
dressing rooms at the Culloden and Justine
didn't rate either of them yet. She was in the general
dressing room, among the ceaseless traffic.
"Bloody old Cardinal de Bricassart!" she
spat. "I hated him the moment I laid eyes on
him!"
  Dane chuckled. "You didn't, you know."
  "I did! I did!"
  "No, you didn't. Aunt Anne told me one
Christmas hol, and I'll bet you don't know."
  "What don't I know?" she asked warily.
  "That when you were a baby he fed you a bottle and
burped you, rocked you to sleep. Aunt Anne said
you were a horrible cranky baby and hated being held,
but when he held you, you really liked it."
  "It's a flaming lie!"
  "No, it's not." He grinned. "Anyway, why
do you hate him so much now?" "I just do. He's like a
skinny old vulture, and he gives me the dry
heaves."
  "I like him. I always did. The perfect priest,
that's what Father Watty calls him. I think he
is, too."
  "Well, fuck him, I say!"
  "Justine!"
  "Shocked you that time, didn't I? I'll bet you
never even thought I knew that word."
  His eyes danced. "Do you know what it means?
Tell me, Jussy, go on, I dare you!"
  She could never resist him when he teased; her own
eyes began to twinkle. "You might be going to be a
Father Rhubarb, you prawn, but if you don't already
know what it means, you'd better not investigate."
  He grew serious. "Don't worry, I
won't."
  A very shapely pair of female legs stopped
beside Dane, pivoted. He looked up, went red,
looked away, and said, "Oh, hello, Martha," in
a casual voice. "Hello yourself."
  She was an extremely beautiful girl, a little
short on acting ability but so decorative she was
an asset to any production; she also happened to be
exactly Dane's cup of tea, and Justine had
listened to his admiring comments about her more than once.
Tall, what the movie magazines always called
sexsational, very dark of hair and eye, fair of
skin, with magnificent breasts.
  Perching herself on the corner of Justine's table,
she swung one leg provocatively under
Dane's nose and watched him with an undisguised
appreciation he clearly found disconcerting. Lord,
he was really something! How had plain old
cart-horse Jus collected herself a brother who
looked like this? He might be only eighteen and it
might be cradle-snatching, but who cared?
  "How about coming over to my place for coffee and
whatever?" she asked, looking down at Dane. "The
two of you?" she added reluctantly. Justine
shook her head positively, her eyes lighting up
at a sudden thought. "No, thanks, I can't.
You'll have to be content with Dane." He shook his
head just as positively, but rather regretfully, as if
he was truly tempted. "Thanks anyway,
Martha, but I can't." He glanced at his watch as
  at a savior. "Lord, I've only got a
minute left on my meter! How much longer are you
going to be, Jus?"
  "About ten minutes."
  "I'll wait for you outside, all right?"
  "Chicken!" she mocked.
  Martha's dusky eyes followed him. "He is
absolutely gorgeous. Why won't he look at
me?"
  Justine grinned sourly, scrubbed her
face clean at last. The freckles were coming back.
Maybe London would help; no sun. "Oh,
don't worry, he looks. He'd like, too. But
will he? Not Dane."
  "Why? What's the matter with him? Never tell
me he's a poof! Shit, why is it every gorgeous
man I meet is a poof? I never thought Dane
was, though; he doesn't strike me that way at
all."
  "Watch your language, you dumb wart! He
most certainly isn't a poof. In fact, the day
he looks at Sweet William, our screaming
juvenile, I'll cut his throat and Sweet
William's, too."
  "Well, if he isn't a pansy and he
likes, why doesn't he take? Doesn't he
get my message? Does he think I'm too
old for him?" "Sweetie, at a hundred you
won't be too old for the average man, don't
worry about it. No, Dane's sworn off sex for
life, the fool. He's going to be a priest."
  Martha's lush mouth dropped open, she swung
back her mane of inky hair. "Go on!"
  "True, true."
  "You mean to say all that's going to be
wasted?" "Afraid so. He's offering it to God."
  "Then God's a bigger poofter than Sweet
Willie."
  "You might be right," said Justine. "He
certainly isn't too fond of women, anyway.
Second-class, that's us, way back in the Upper
Circle. Front Stalls and the Mezzanine,
strictly male."
  "Oh."
  Justine wriggled out of Electra's robe,
flung a thin cotton dress over her head,
remembered it was chilly
  outside, added a cardigan, and patted Martha
kindly on the head. "Don't worry about it,
sweetie. God was very good to you; he didn't give
you any brains. Believe me, it's far more comfortable
that way. You'll never offer the Lords of Creation any
competition."
  "I don't know, I wouldn't mind competing with
God for your brother." "Forget it. You're fighting
the Establishment, and it just can't be done. You'd
seduce Sweet Willie far quicker, take my word
for it."
  A Vatican car met Dane at the airport,
whisked him through sunny faded streets
full of handsome, smiling people; he glued his nose to the
window and drank it all in, unbearably excited
at seeing for himself the things he had seen only in
pictures-the Roman columns, the rococo
palaces, the Renaissance glory of Saint
Peter's.
  And waiting for him, clad this time in scarlet from
head to foot, was Ralph Raoul, Cardinal de
Bricassart. The hand was outstretched, its ring
glowing; Dane sank on both knees to kiss it.
  "Stand up, Dane, let me look at you."
  He stood, smiling at the tall man who was almost
exactly his own height; they could look each other
hi the eye. To Dane the Cardinal had an immense
aura of spiritual power which made him think of a pope rather
than a saint, yet those intensely sad eyes were not
the eyes of a pope. How much he must have suffered
to appear so, but how nobly he must have risen above his
suffering to become this most perfect of priests. And
Cardinal Ralph gazed at the son he did not know
was his son, loving him, he thought, because he was dear
Meggie's boy. Just so would he have wanted to see a
son of his own body; as tall, as strikingly good
looking, as graceful. In all his life he had
never seen
  a man move so well. But far more satisfying
than any 560
  physical beauty was the simple beauty of his
soul. He had the strength of the angels, and something of
their unearthliness. Had he been so himself, at
eighteen? He tried to remember, span the crowded
events of threefifths of a lifetime; no, he had
never been so. Was it because this one came truly of his
own choice? For he himself had not, though he had had the
vocation, of that much he still was sure.
  "Sit down, Dane. Did you do as I asked,
start to learn Italian?" "At this stage I speak
it fluently but without idiom, and I read it very
well. Probably the fact that it's my fourth
language makes it easier. I seem to have a
talent for languages. A couple of weeks here and
I ought to pick up the vernacular."
  "Yes, you will. I, too, have a talent for
languages."
  "Well, they're handy," said Dane lamely.
The awesome scarlet figure was a little daunting; it
was suddenly hard to remember the man on the chestnut
gelding at Drogheda.
  Cardinal Ralph leaned forward, watching him.
  "I pass the responsibility for him
to you, Ralph," Meggie's letter had said. "I charge
you with his wellbeing, his happiness. What I stole,
I give back. It is demanded of me. Only
promise me two things, and I'll rest in the knowledge
you've acted in his best interests. First, promise
me you'll make sure before you accept him that this is
what he truly, absolutely wants.
Secondly, that if this is what he wants, you'll
keep your eye on him, make sure it remains
what he wants. If he should lose heart for it,
I want him back. For he belonged to me first. It
is I who gives him to you." "Dane, are you
sure?" asked the Cardinal.
  "Absolutely."
  "Why?"
  His eyes were curiously aloof, uncomfortably
familiar, but familiar in a way which was of the past.
  "Because of the love I bear Our Lord. I want
to serve Him as His priest all of my days."
  "Do you understand what His service entails,
Dane?" "Yes."
  "That no other love must ever come between you and Him?
That you are His exclusively, forsaking all others?"
  "Yes."
  "That His Will be done in all things, that in
His service you must bury your personality, your
individuality, your concept of yourself as uniquely
important?"
  "Yes."
  "That if necessary you must face death, imprisonment,
starvation in His Name? That you must own nothing, value
nothing which might tend to lessen your love for Him?"
  "Yes."
  "Are you strong, Dane?"
  "I am a man, Your Eminence. I am first a
man. It will b[*thorn] hard, I know. But I
pray that with His help I shall find the strength."
  "Must it be this, Dane? Will nothing less than this
content you?" "Nothing."
  "And if later on you should change your mind, what
would you do?" "Why, I should ask to leave," said
Dane, surprised. "If I changed my mind it
would be because I had genuinely mistaken my vocation,
for no other reason. Therefore I should ask to leave.
I wouldn't be loving Him any less, but I'd know
this isn't the way He means me to serve Him."
  "But once your final vows are taken and you are
ordained, you realize there can be no going back, no
dispensation, absolutely no release?" "I understand
that," said Dane patiently. "But if
  there is a decision to be made, I will have come to it
before then." Cardinal Ralph leaned back in his
chair, sighed. Had he ever been that sure? Had he
ever been that strong? "Why to me, Dane? Why did
you want to come to Rome? Why not have remained in
Australia?" "Mum suggested Rome, but it had
been in my mind as a dream for a long time. I never
thought there was enough money."
  "Your mother is very wise. Didn't she tell you?"
"Tell me what, Your Eminence?"
  "That you have an income of five thousand pounds a
year and many thousands of pounds already in the bank in your
own name?" Dane stiffened. "No. She never told
me."
  "Very wise. But it's there, and Rome is yours if
you want. Do you want Rome?"
  "Yes."
  "Why do you want me, Dane?"
  "Because you're my conception of the perfect priest,
Your Eminence." Cardinal Ralph's face
twisted. "No, Dane, you can't look up to me as
that. I'm far from a perfect priest. I have broken
all my vows, do you understand? I had to learn what you
already seem to know in the most painful way a priest
can, through the breaking of my vows. For I
refused to admit that I was first a mortal man, and
only after that a priest."
  "Your Eminence, it doesn't matter," said
Dane softly. "What you say doesn't make you
any less my conception of the perfect priest. I
think you don't understand what I mean, that's all. I
don't mean an inhuman automaton, above the
weaknesses of the flesh. I mean that you've suffered, and
grown. Do I sound presumptuous? I don't
intend to, truly. If I've offended you, I
beg vour nardr)n. It's iust that it's so hard
to express my thoughts! What I mean is that becoming
a perfect
  priest must take years, terrible pain, and all the
time keeping before you an ideal, and Our Lord."
  The telephone rang; Cardinal Ralph picked
it up in a slightly unsteady hand, spoke in
Italian.
  "Yes, thank you, we'll come at once." He
got to his feet. "It's time for afternoon tea, and
we're to have it with an old, old friend of mine. Next
to the Holy Father he's probably the most
important priest in the Church. I told him you
were coming, and he expressed a wish to meet you."
  "Thank you, Your Eminence."
  They walked through corridors, then through pleasant
gardens quite unlike Drogheda's, with tall
cypresses and poplars, neat rectangles of
grass surrounded by pillared walkways, mossy
flagstones; past Gothic arches, under Renaissance
bridges. Dane drank it in, loving it. Such a
different world from Australia, so old, perpetual.
  It took them fifteen minutes at a brisk
pace to reach the palace; they entered, and passed up
a great marble staircase hung with priceless
tapestries.
  Vittorio Scarbanza, Cardinal di
Contini-Verchese was sixty-six now, his body
partially crippled by a rheumatic complaint, but his
mind as intelligent and alert as it had always been.
His present cat, a Russian blue named
Natasha, was curled purring in his lap. Since he
couldn't rise to greet his visitors he contented
himself with a wide smile, and beckoned them. His eyes
passed from Ralph's beloved face to Dane
O'neill and widened, narrowed, fixed on him
stilly. Within his chest he felt his heart falter,
put the welcoming hand to it in an instinctive gesture
of protection, and sat staring stupidly up at the
younger edition of Ralph de Bricassart.
"Vittorio, are you all right?" Cardinal Ralph
asked anxiouslv, taking the frail wrist between his
fingers, feeling for a pulse. "Of
rn[*macrgg'rse. A little passing pain, no more.
Sit down, sit down!"
  "First, I'd like you to meet Dane O'neill,
who is as I told you the son of a very dear friend of
mine. Dane, this is His Eminence Cardinal di
Contini-Verchese."
  Dane knelt, pressed his lips to the ring; over
his bent tawny head Cardinal Vittorio's gaze
sought Ralph's face, scanned it more closely
than in many years. Very slightly he relaxed; she
had never told him, then. And he wouldn't suspect,
of course, what everyone who saw them together would
instantly surmise. Not father-son, of course, but a
close relationship of the blood. Poor Ralph!
He had never seen himself walk, never watched the
expressions on his own face, never caught the
upward flight of his own left eyebrow. Truly
God was good, to make men so blind. "Sit down. The
tea is coming. So, young man! You wish to be a
priest, and have sought the assistance of Cardinal de
Bricassart?" "Yes, Your Eminence."
  "You have chosen wisely. Under his care you
will come to no harm. But you look a little nervous, my
son. Is it the strangeness?" Dane smiled
Ralph's smile, perhaps minus conscious charm, but so
much Ralph's smile it caught at an old,
tired heart like a passing flick from barbed wire.
"I'm overwhelmed, Your Eminence. I hadn't
realized quite how important cardinals are. I never
dreamed I'd be met at the airport, or be having
tea with you."
  "Yes, it is unusual .... Perhaps a source
of trouble, I see that. Ah, here is our tea!"
Pleased, he watched it laid out, lifted an
admonishing finger. "Ah, no! I shall be "mother."
How do you take your tea, Dane?" "The same as
Ralph," he answered, blushed deeply. "Ym
sorry, Your Eminence, I didn't mean to say
that!"
  "It's all right, Dane, Cardinal di
Contini-Verchese understands. We met first as Dane
and Ralph, and we knew each other far better that
way, didn't we? Formality is new to our
relationship. I'd prefer it remain Dane
  and Ralph in private. His Eminence won't
mind, will you, Vittorio?" "No. I am fond of
Christian names. But returning to what I
was saying about having friends in high places, my son.
It could be a trifle uncomfortable for you when you enter
whichever seminary is decided upon, this long friendship with
our Ralph. To have to keep going into involved
explanations every time the connection between you is remarked
upon would be very tedious. Sometimes Our Lord permits
of a little white lie"-he smiled, the gold in his
teeth flashing-"and for everyone's comfort I would prefer that
we resort to one such tiny fib. For it is
difficult to explain satisfactorily the tenuous
connections of friendship, but very easy to explain the
crimson cord of blood. So we will say to all and
sundry that Cardinal de Bricassart is your
uncle, my Dane, and leave it at that," ended
Cardinal Vittorio suavely. Dane looked
shocked, Cardinal Ralph resigned. "Do not be
disappointed in the great, my son," said Cardinal
Vittorio gently. "They, too, have feet of
clay, and resort to comfort via little white lies. It
is a very useful lesson you have just learned, but looking
at you, I doubt you will take advantage of it.
However, you must understand that we scarlet gentlemen are
diplomats to our fingertips. Truly I think
only of you, my son. Jealousy and resentment are not
strangers to seminaries any more than they are
to secular institutions. You will suffer a little because they
think Ralph is your uncle, your mother's brother, but
you would suffer far more if they thought no blood bond
linked you together. We are first men, and it is with men you
will deal in this world as in others."
  Dane bowed his head, then leaned forward to stroke the
cat, pausing with his hand extended. "May I? I
love cats, Your Eminence."
  No quicker pathway to that old but constant heart could
he have found. "You may. I confess she grows
  too heavy for me. She is a glutton, are you
not, Natasha? Go to Dane; he is the new
generation."
  There was no possibility of Justine transferring
herself and her belongings from the southern to the northern
hemisphere as quickly as Dane had; by the time she
worked out the season at the Culloden and bade a not
unregretful farewell to Bothwell Gardens, her
brother had been in Rome two months. "How on
earth did I manage to accumulate so much junk?"
she asked, surrounded by clothes, papers, boxes.
  Meggie looked up from where she was crouched, a box
of steel wool soap pads in her hand.
  "What were these doing under your bed?"
  A look of profound relief swept
across her daughter's flushed face. "Oh, thank
God! Is that where they were? I thought Mrs.
D's precious poodle ate them; he's been off
color for a week and I wasn't game to mention my
missing soap pads. But I knew the wretched
animal ate them; he'll eat anything that doesn't
eat him first. Not," continued Justine thoughtfully, "that
I wouldn't be glad to see the last of him."
  Meggie sat back on her heels, laughing.
"Oh, Jus! Do you know how funny you are?" She
threw the box onto the bed among a mountain of things
already there. "You're no credit to Drogheda, are you?
After all the care we took pushing neatness and
tidiness into your head, too."
  "I could have told you it was a lost cause. Do you
want to take the soap pads back to Drogheda? I
know I'm sailing and my luggage is unlimited, but
I daresay there are tons of soap pads in
London."
  Meggie transferred the box into a large carton
marked MRS. D. "I think we'd better
donate them to Mrs. Devine; she has to render this
flat habitable for the next tenant." An unsteady
tower of unwashed dishes stood on the end of the table,
sprouting gruesome whiskers of mold. "Do
you ever wash your dishes?"
  Justine chuckled unrepentantly. "Dane
says I don't wash them at all, I shave them
instead."
  "You'd have to give this lot a haircut first. Why
don't you wash them as you use them?"
  "Because it would mean trekking down to the kitchen again,
and since I usually eat after midnight, no one
appreciates the patter of my little feet."
"Give me one of the empty boxes. I'll take
them down and dispose of them now," said her mother,
resigned; she had known before volunteering to come what
was bound to be in store for her, and had been rather looking
forward to it. It wasn't very often anyone had the chance
to help Justine do anything; whenever Meggie had
tried to help her she had ended feeling an utter
fool. But in domestic matters the situation was
reversed for once; she could help to her heart's
content without feeling a fool.
  Somehow it got done, and Justine and Meggie set
out in the station wagon Meggie had driven down from
Gilly, bound for the Hotel Australia, where
Meggie had a suite.
  "I wish you Drogheda people would buy a house at
Palm Beach or Avalon," Justine
said, depositing her case in the suite's second
bedroom. "This is terrible, right above Martin
Place. Just imagine being a hop, skip and jump
from the surf! Wouldn't that induce you to hustle yourselves
on a plane from Gilly more often?"
  "Why should I come to Sydney? I've been down
twice in the last seven years-to see Dane off,
and now to see you off. If we had a house it would
never be used."
  "Codswallop."
  "Why? 11
  "Why? Because there's more to the world than bloody
Drogheda, dammit! That place, it drives me
batty!"
  Meggie sighed. "Believe me, Justine,
there'll come a time when you'll yearn to come home
to Drogheda."
  "Does that go for Dane, too?"
  Silence. Without looking at her daughter,
Meggie took her bag from the table. "We'll be
late. Madame Rocher said two o'clock. If you
want your dresses before you sail, we'd better
hurry."
  "I am put in my place," Justine said, and
grinned. "Why is it, Justine, that you
didn't introduce me to any of your friends? I
didn't see a sign of anyone at Bothwell
Gardens except Mrs. Devine," Meggie said as
they sat in Germaine Rocher's salon watching the
languid mannequins preen and simper.
  "Oh, they're a bit shy . . . . I like that
orange thing, don't you?" "Not with your hair.
Settle for the grey."
  "Pooh! I think orange goes perfectly with
my hair. In grey I look like something the cat
dragged in, sort of muddy and half rotten.
Move with the times, Mum. Redheads don't have to be
seen in white, grey, black, emerald green or
that horrible color- you're so addicted to-what is
it, ashes of roses? Victorian!"
  "You have the name of the color right," Meggie said.
She turned to look at her daughter. "You're a
monster," she said wryly, but with affection. Justine
didn't pay any attention; it was not the first time she
had heard it. "I'll take the orange, the
scarlet, the purple print, the moss green, the
burgundy suit . . . ."
  Meggie sat torn between laughter and rage. What
could one do with a daughter like Justine?
  The Himalaya sailed from Darling
Harbor three days later. She was a lovely old
ship, flat-hulled and very seaworthy, built in the
days when no one was in a tearing hurry and everyone
accepted the fact England was four weeks away via
Suez or five weeks away via the Cape of
Good Hope. Nowadays even the ocean liners were
streamlined, hulls shaped like destroyers to get there
faster. But what they did to a sensitive stomach
made seasoned sailors quail. "What fun!"
Justine laughed. "We've got a whole
  lovely footie team in first class, so it
won't be as dull as I thought. Some of them are
gorgeous."
  "Now comaren't you glad I insisted on first
class?" "I suppose so."
  "Justine, you bring out the worst in me, you always
have," Meggie snapped, losing her temper at what
she took for ingratitude. Just this once couldn't the
little wretch at least pretend she was sorry to be
going? "Stubborn, pig-headed, self-willed! You
exasperate me."
  For a moment Justine didn't answer, but turned
her head away as if she was more interested in the fact
that the all-ashore gong was ringing than in what her mother
was saying. She bit the tremor from her
lips, put a bright smile on them. "I know I
exasperate you," she said cheerfully as she faced her
mother. "Never mind, we are what we are. As you always
say, I take after my dad."
  They embraced self-consciously before Meggie
slipped thankfully into the crowds converging on
gangways and was lost to sight. Justine made her
way up to the sun deck and stood by the rail with
rolls of colored streamers in her hands. Far below
on the wharf she saw the figure in the pinkish-grey
dress and hat walk to the appointed spot, stand
shading her eyes. Funny, at this distance one could
see Mum was getting up toward fifty. Some way
to go yet, but it was there in her stance. They waved in the
same moment, then Justine threw the first of her
streamers and Meggie caught its end deftly. A
red, a blue, a yellow, a pink, a green, an
orange; spiraling round and round, tugging in the
breeze.
  A pipe band had come to bid the football team
farewell and stood with pennons flying, plaids
billowing, skirling a quaint version of "Now Is the
Hour." The ship's rails were thick with people hanging
over, holding desperately to their ends of the thin paper
streamers; on the wharf hundreds of people
craned their necks upward, lingering hungrily on the
faces going so far 570
  away, young faces mostly, off to see what the
hub of civilization on the other side of the world was
really like. They would live there, work there, perhaps come
back in two years, perhaps not come back at all.
And everyone knew it, wondered.
  The blue sky was plumped with silver-white
clouds and there was a tearing Sydney wind. Sun
warmed the upturned heads and the shoulder blades of those
leaning down; a great multicolored swath of
vibrating ribbons joined ship and shore. Then
suddenly a gap appeared between the old boat's side
and the wooden struts of the wharf; the air filled with
cries and sobs; and one by one in their thousands the
streamers broke, fluttered wildly, sagged
limply and crisscrossed the surface of the water like
a mangled loom, joined the orange peels and the
jellyfish to float away.
  Justine kept doggedly to her place at the rail
until the wharf was a few hard lines and little pink
pinheads in the distance; the Himalaya's tugs
turned her, towed her helplessly under the booming
decks of the Sydney Harbor Bridge, out into the
mainstream of that exquisite stretch of
sunny water. It wasn't like going to Manly on the
ferry at all, though they followed the same path
past Neutral Bay and Rose Bay and
Cremorne and Vaucluse; no. For this time it was out
through the Heads, beyond the cruel cliffs and the high lace
fans of foam, into the ocean. Twelve thousand
miles of it, to the other side of the world. And whether they
came home again or not, they would belong neither here nor
there, for they would have lived on two continents and
sampled two different ways of life.
  Money, Justine discovered, made London a
most alluring place. Not for her a penniless
existence clinging to the fringes of Earl's
Court-"Kangaroo Valley" they called it because so
many Australians made it their headquarters. Not for
her the typical fate of Australians in England,
youth-hosteling on a shoestring,
  working for a pittance in some office or school or
hospital, shivering thin-blooded over a tiny
radiator in a cold, damp room. Instead, for
Justine a mews flat in Kensington close
to Knightsbridge, centrally heated; and a place in
the company of Clyde Daltinham-Roberts, The
Elizabethan Group. When the summer came she
caught a train to Rome. In afteryears
she would smile, remembering how little she saw of that
long journey across France, down Italy; her
whole mind was occupied with the things she had to tell
Dane, memorizing those she simply mustn't forget.
There were so many she was bound to leave some out.
  Was that Dane? The tall, fair man on the
platform, was that Dane? He didn't look any
different, and yet he was a stranger. Not of her world
anymore. The cry she was going to give to attract
his attention died unuttered; she drew back a little
in her seat to watch him, for the train had halted only
a few feet beyond where he stood, blue eyes
scanning the windows without anxiety. It was going to be
a pretty one-sided conversation when she told him about
life since he had gone away, for she knew now
there was no thirst in him to share what he experienced with
her. Damn him! He wasn't her baby brother
anymore; the life he was living had as little to do with
her as it did with Drogheda. Oh, Dane! What's
it like to live something twentyfour hours of every day?
  "Hah! Thought I'd dragged you down here on a
wild-goose chase, didn't you?" she said,
creeping up behind him unseen.
  He turned, squeezed her hands and stared down at
her, smiling. "Prawn," he said
lovingly, taking her bigger suitcase and tucking her
free arm in his. "It's good to see you," he added
as he handed her into the red Lagonda he drove
everywhere; Dane had always been a sports car
fanatic, and had owned one since he was old enough
to hold a license.
  "Good to see you, too. I hope you found me a
nice pub, because I meant what I wrote. I
refuse to be stuck in a Vatican cell among a
heap of celibates." She laughed.
  "They wouldn't have you, not with the Devil's hair.
I've booked you into a little pension not far from me, but
they speak English so you needn't worry if I'm
not with you. And in Rome it's no problem getting around
on English; there's usually someone who can speak it."
  "Times like this I wish I had your gift for foreign
languages. But I'll manage; I'm very good at
mimes and charades."
  "I have two months, Jussy, isn't it super?
So we can take a look at France and Spain and still
have a month on Drogheda. I miss the old
place." "Do you?" She turned to look at him,
at the beautiful hands guiding the car expertly through the
crazy Roman traffic. "I don't miss it at
all; London's too interesting."
  "You don't fool me," he said. "I know what
Drogheda and Mum mean to you." Justine clenched her
hands in her lap but didn't answer him. "Do you
mind having tea with some friends of mine this afternoon?" he
asked when they had arrived. "I rather anticipated
things by accepting for you already. They're so anxious
to meet you, and as I'm not a free man until tomorrow,
I didn't like to say no."
  "Prawn! Why should I mind? If this was
London I'd be inundating you with my friends, so why
shouldn't you? I'm glad you're giving me a
look-see at the blokes in the seminary, though it's
a bit unfair to me, isn't it? Hands off thA
lot of them."
  She walked to the window, looked down at a shabby
little square with two tired plane trees in its
paved quadrangle, three tables strewn
b-ne..th them, and to one side a church of no
particular architectural grace or beauty,
covered in peeling stucco.
  "Dane . . . ."
  "Yes?"
  "I do understand, really I do."
  "Yes, I know." His face lost its smile.
"I wish Mum did, Jus." "Mum's
different. She feels you deserted her; she
doesn't realize you haven't. Never mind about her.
She'll come round in time."
  "I hope so." He laughed. "By the way, it
isn't the blokes from the seminary you're going to meet
today. I wouldn't subject them or you to such
temptation. It's Cardinal de Bricassart. I
know you don't like him, but promise you'll be good."
  Her eyes lit with peculiar witchery. "I
promise! I'll even kiss every ring that's offered
to me."
  "Oh, you remember! I was so mad at you that day,
shaming me in front of him."
  "Well, since then I've kissed a lot of
things less hygienic than a ring. There's one
horrible pimply youth in acting class with
halitosis and decayed tonsils and a rotten
stomach I had to kiss a total of twenty-nine
times, and I can assure you, mate, that after him
nothing's impossible." She patted her hair,
turned from the mirror. "Have I got time to change?"
"Oh, don't worry about that. You look fine."
  "Who else is going to be there?"
  The sun was too low to warm the ancient square,
and the leprous patches on the plane tree
trunks looked worn, sick. Justine shivered.
"Cardinal di Contini-Verchese will be there."
  She had heard that name, and opened her eyes wider.
"Phew! You move in pretty exalted circles,
don't you?"
  "Yes. I try to deserve it."
  "Does it mean some people make it hard on you in
other areas of your life here, Dane?" she asked,
shrewdly.
  "No, not really. Who one knows isn't
important. I never think of it, so nor does
anyone else."
  The room, the red men! Never in all her life
had Justine been so conscious of the redundancy of
women in the lives of some men as at that moment,
walking into a world where women simply had no place
except as humble nun servants. She was still in the
olive-green linen suit she had put on outside
Turin, rather crumpled from the train, and she advanced
across the soft crimson carpet cursing Dane's
eagerness to be there, wishing she had insisted on donning
something less travel-marked.
  Cardinal de Bricassart was on his feet,
smiling; what a handsome old man he was.
  "My dear Justine," he said, extending
his ring with a wicked look which indicated he well
remembered the last time, and searching her face for
something she didn't understand. "You don't look at
all like your mother." Down on one knee, kiss the
ring, smile humbly, get up, smile less
humbly. "No, I don't, do I? I could have
done with her beauty in my chosen profession, but on
a stage I manage. Because it has nothing to do with
what the face actually is, you know. It's what you and
your art can convince people the face is."
  A dry chuckle came from a chair; once more she
trod to salute a ring on an aging wormy hand, but
this time she looked up into dark eyes, and strangely
in them saw love. Love for her, for someone he had
never seen, could scarcely have heard mentioned. But it was
there. She didn't like Cardinal de Bricassart
any more now than she had at fifteen, but she warmed
to this old man.
  "Sit down, my dear," said Cardinal
Vittorio, his hand indicating the chair next to him.
  "Hello, pusskins," said Justine, tickling the
bluegrey cat in his scarlet lap. "She's
nice, isn't she?"
  "Indeed she is."
  "What's her name?"
  "Natasha."
  The door opened, but not to admit the tea
trolley. A man, mercifully clad as a
layman; one more red soutane, thought Justine, and
I'll bellow like a bull.
  But he was no ordinary man, even if he was a
layman. They probably had a little house rule in
the Vatican, continued Justine's unruly mind, which
specifically barred ordinary men. Not exactly
short, he was so powerfully built he seemed more
stocky than he was, with massive shoulders and a
huge chest, a big leonine head, long arms like a
shearer. Ape-mannish, except that he exuded
intelligence and moved with the gait of someone who would
grasp whatever he wanted too quickly for the mind
to follow. Grasp it and maybe crush it, but never
aimlessly, thoughtlessly; with exquisite deliberation.
He was dark, but his thick mane of hair was
exactly the color of steel wool and of much the same
consistency, could steel wool have been crimped
into tiny, regular waves.
  "Rainer, you come in good time," said Cardinal
Vittorio, indicating the chair on his other side,
still speaking in English. "My dear," he said,
turning to Justine as the man finished kissing
his ring and rose, "I would like you to meet a very good friend.
Herr Rainer Moerling Hartheim. Rainer, this is
Dane's sister, Jus- 72
  tine.
  He bowed, clicking his heels punctiliously,
gave her a brief smile without warmth and sat
down, just too far off to one side to see. Justine
breathed a sigh of relief, especially when she saw
that Dane had draped himself with the ease of habit on
the floor beside Cardinal Ralph's chair, right in
her central vision. While she could see someone she
knew and loved well, she would be all right. But the
room and the red men and now this dark man were beginning
to irritate her more than Dane's presence calmed;
she resented the way they shut her out. So she leaned
to one side and
  tickled the cat again, aware that Cardinal
Vittorio sensed and was amused by her reactions.
  "Is she spayed?" asked Justine.
  "Of course."
  "Of course! Though why you needed to bother I
don't know. Just being a permanent inhabitant of this
place would be enough to neuter anyone's ovaries."
  "On the contrary, my dear," said Cardinal
Vittorio, enjoying her hugely. "It
is we men who have psychologically neutered ourselves."
  "I beg to differ, Your Eminence."
  "So our little world antagonizes you?"
  "Well, let's just say I feel a bit
superfluous, Your Eminence. A nice place
to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here."
  "I cannot blame you. I also doubt that you like
to visit. But you will get used to us, for you must visit
us often, please."
  Justine grinned. "I hate being on my best
behavior," she confided. "It brings out the
absolute worst in meI can feel Dane's
horrors from here without even looking at him."
  "I was wondering how long it was going to last," said
Dane, not at all put out. "Scratch Justine's
surface and you find a rebel. That's why she's such
a nice sister for me to have. I'm not a rebel, but
I do admire them." Herr Hartheim shifted his
chair so that he could continue to keep her in his line of
vision even when she straightened, stopped playing with the
cat. At that moment the beautiful animal grew
tired of the hand with an alien female scent, and without
getting to its feet crawled delicately from red
lap to grey, curling itself under Herr Hartheim's
strong square stroking hands, purring so
loudly that everyone laughed.
  "Excuse me for living," said Justine, not proof
against a good joke even when she was its victim.
  "Her motor is as good as ever," said Herr
Hartheim, the amusement working fascinating changes in
his face. 577
  His English was so good he hardly had an accent,
but it had an American inflection; he rolled his
rather's.
  The tea came before everyone settled down again, and
oddly enough it was Herr Hartheim who poured, handing
Justine her cup with a much friendlier look than he had
given her at introduction.
  "In a British community," he said to her,
"afternoon tea is the most important refreshment of the
day. Things happen over teacups, don't they? I
suppose because by its very nature it can be demanded and
taken at almost any time between two and five-thirty,
and talking is thirsty work." The next half hour
seemed to prove his point, though Justine took no
part in the congress. Talk veered from the Holy
Father's precarious health to the cold war and then the
economic recession, all four men speaking and
listening with an alertness Justine found absorbing,
beginning to grope for the qualities they shared,
even Dane, who was so strange, so much an unknown.
He contributed actively; and it wasn't lost upon
her that the three older men listened to him with a curious
humility, almost as if he awed them. His comments were
neither uninformed nor naive, but they were different,
original, holy. Was it for his holiness they paid such
serious attention to him? That he possessed it, and they
didn't? Was it truly a virtue they admired,
yearned for themselves? Was it so rare? Three men so
vastly different one from the other, yet far closer
bound together than any of them were to Dane. How
difficult it was to take Dane as seriously as they
did! Not that in many ways he hadn't acted as an
older brother rather than a younger; not that she wasn't
aware of his wisdom, his intellect or his holiness.
But until now he had been a part of her world. She
had to get used to the fact that he wasn't anymore.
  "If you wish to go straight to your devotions,
Dane, I'll see your sister back to her
hotel," commanded Herr
  Rainer Moerling Hartheim without consulting anyone's
wishes on the subject. And so she found herself
walking tongue-tied down the marble stairs in the
company of that squat, powerful man. Outside in the
yellow sheen of a Roman sunset he
took her elbow and guided her into a black
Mercedes limousine, its chauffeur standing to attention.
  "Come, you don't want to spend your first evening in
Rome alone, and Dane is otherwise occupied,"
he said, following her into the car. "You're tired and
bewildered, so it's better you have company."
  "You don't seem to be leaving me any choice,
Herr Hartheim." "I would rather you called me
Rainer."
  "You must be important, having a posh car and your
own chauffeur." "I'll be more important still when
I'm chancellor of West Germany." Justine
snorted. "I'm surprised you're not already."
  "Impudent! I'm too young."
  "Are you?" She turned sideways to look at
him more closely, discovering that his dark skin was
unlined, youthful, that the deeply set eyes weren't
embedded in the fleshy surrounds of age.
  "I'm heavy and I'm grey, but I've been
grey since I was sixteen and heavy since I've
had enough to eat. At the present moment I'm a mere
thirty-one." "I'll take your word for it," she
said, kicking her shoes off. "That's still old
to me-I'm sweet twentyone."
  "You're a monster," he said, smiling.
  "I suppose I must be. My mother says the
same thing. Only I'm not sure what either of you
means by monster, so you can give me your version,
please." "Have you already got your mother's version?"
"I'd embarrass the hell out of her if I
asked."
  "Don't you think you embarrass me?"
  "I strongly suspect, Herr Hartheim, that
you're a monster, too, so I doubt if anything
embarrasses you."
  "A monster," he said again under his breath. "All
right then, Miss O'neill, I'll try to define
the term for you. Someone who terrifies others; rolls
over the top of people; feels so strong only God can
defeat; has no scruples and few morals."
  She chuckled. "It sounds like you, to me. And I have
so too got morals and scruples. I'm
Dane's sister."
  "You don't look a bit like him."
  "More's the pity."
  "His face wouldn't suit your personality."
  "You're undoubtedly right, but with his face I
might have developed a different personality."
  "Depending on which comes first, eh, the chicken or the
egg? Put your shoes on; we're going
to walk."
  It was warm, and growing dark; but the lights were
brilliant, there were crowds it seemed no matter
where they walked, and the roads were jammed with shrieking
motor scooters, tiny aggressive Fiats,
Goggomobils looking like hordes of panicked
frogs. Finally he halted in a small square,
its cobbles worn to smoothness by the feet of many
centuries, and guided Justine into a restaurant.
  "Unless you'd prefer alfresco?" he asked.
  "Provided you feed me, I don't much care
whether it's inside, outside, or halfway between."
  "May I order for you?"
  The pale eyes blinked a little wearily perhaps, but
there was still fight in Justine. "I don't know that I
go for all that high-handed masterful-male business,"
she said. "After all, how do you know what I
fancy?" "Sister Anna carries her banner,"
he murmured. "Tell me what sort of food you
like, then, and I'll guarantee to please you. Fish?
Veal?" "A compromise? All right, I'll meet
you halfway, why not? I'll have pate, some scampi
and a huge plate of
  saltimbocca, and after that I'll have a cassata
and a cappuccino coffee. Fiddle around with that
if you can."
  "I ought to slap you," he said, his good humor quite
unruffled. He gave her order to the waiter
exactly as she had stipulated it, but in rapid
Italian. "You said I don't look a bit like
Dane. Aren't I like him in any way at all?"
she asked a little pathetically over coffee, too
hungry to have wasted time talking while there was food
on the table. He lit her cigarette, then his own,
and leaned into the shadows to watch her quietly, thinking
back to his first meeting with the boy months ago.
Cardinal de Bricassart minus forty years of
life; he had seen it immediately, and then had learned
they were uncle and nephew, that the mother of the boy and the
girl was Ralph de Bricassart's sister.
  "There is a likeness, yes," he said. "Sometimes
even of the face. Expressions far more than
features. Around the eyes and the mouth, in the way you
hold your eyes open and your mouths closed. Oddly
enough, not likenesses you share with your uncle the
Cardinal."
  "Uncle the Cardinal?" she repeated blankly.
  "Cardinal de Bricassart. Isn't he your
uncle? Now, I'm sure I was told he was."
  "That old vulture? He's no relation
of ours, thank heavens. He used to be our parish
priest years ago, a long time before I was born."
  She was very intelligent; but she was also very tired.
Poor little girl-for that was what she was, a little
girl. The ten years between them yawned like a hundred.
To suspect would bring her world to ruins, and she was so
valiant in defense of it. Probably she would
refuse to see it, even if she were told outright.
How to make it seem unimportant? Not labor the
point, definitely not, but not drop it immediately, either.
  "That accounts for it, then," he said lightly.
"Accounts for what?"
  "The fact that Dane's likeness to the Cardinal
is in general things-height, coloring, build."
  "Oh! My grandmother told me our father was ratheFrom
like the Cardinal to look at," said Justine
comfortably.
  "Haven't you ever seen your father?"
  "Not even a picture of him. He and Mum
separated for good before Dane was born." She
beckoned the waiter. "I'd like another cappuccino,
please." "Justine, you're a savage! Let me
order for you!" "No, dammit, I won't! I'm
perfectly capable of thinking for myself, and I don't
need some bloody man always to tell me
what I want and when I want it, do you hear?"
  "Scratch the surface and one finds a rebel;
that was what Dane said." "He's right. Oh, if you
knew how I hate being petted and cosseted and
fussed over! I like to act for myself, and I won't be
told what to do! I don't ask for quarter, but I
don't give any, either."
  "I can see that," he said dryly. "What made
you so, Herzchen? Does it run in the family?"
  "Does it? I honestly don't know. There aren't
enough women to tell, I suppose. Only one per
generation. Nanna, and Mum, and me. Heaps of men,
though."
  "Except in your generation there are not heaps of men.
Only Dane." "Due to the fact Mum left my
father, I expect. She never seemed to get interested
in anyone else. Pity, I think. Mum's a real
homebody; she would have liked a husband to fuss
over."
  "Is she like you?"
  "I don't think so."
  "More importantly, do you like each other?"
  "Mum and I?" She smiled without rancor, much
as her mother would have done had someone asked her whether she
liked her daughter. "I'm not sure if
we like each other, but there is something there. Maybe
it's a simple biological bond; I don't
know." Her eyes
  kindled. "I've always wanted her to talk to me the
way she does to Dane, and wanted to get along with
her the way Dane does. But either there's something
lacking in her, or something lacking in me. Me,
I'd reckon. She's a much finer person than I
am."
  "I haven't met her, so I can't agree or
disagree with your judgment. If it's of any
conceivable comfort to you, Herzchen, I like you exactly the
way you are. No, I wouldn't change a thing about you,
even your ridiculous pugnacity."
  "Isn't that nice of you? And after I insulted you,
too. I'm not really like Dane, am I?"
  "Dane isn't like anyone else in the world."
  "You mean because he's so not of this world?" "I
suppose so." He leaned forward, out of the shadows
into the weak light of the little candle in its Chianti
bottle. "I am a Catholic, and my religion
has been the one thing in my life which has never
failed me, though I have failed it many times. I
dislike speaking of Dane, because my heart tells me
some things are better left undiscussed.
Certainly you aren't like him in your attitude
to life, or God. Let's leave it, all right?"
She looked at him curiously. "All right,
Rainer, if you want. I'll make a pact with
you-no matter what we discuss, it won't be the
nature of Dane, or religion."
  Much had happened to Rainer Moerling Hartheim
since that meeting with Ralph de Bricassart in
July 1943. A week afterward his regiment had been
dispatched to the Eastern Front, where he spent the
remainder of the war. Torn and rudderless, too young to have
been indoctrinated into the Hitler Youth in its
leisurely prewar days, he had faced the
consequences of Hitler in feet of snow, without
ammunition, the front line stretched so thin there was
only one soldier for every hundred yards of it. And out
of the war he carried two memories: that bitter
campaign in bitter cold, and the face of Ralph
de Bricassart. Horror and beauty,
  the Devil and God. Half crazed, half
frozen, waiting defenseless for Khrushchev's
guerrillas to drop from low-flying planes
parachuteless into the snowdrifts, he beat his breast and
muttered prayers. But he didn't know what he
prayed for: bullets for his gun, escape
from the Russians, his immortal soul, the man in the
basilica, Germany, a lessening of grief. In the
spring of 1945 he had retreated back across
Poland before the Russians, like his fellow soldiers
with only one objective-to make it into British-
or American-occupied Germany. For if the
Russians caught him, he would be shot. He
tore his papers into shreds and burned them, buried his
two Iron Crosses, stole some clothes and
presented himself to the British authorities on the
Danish border. They shipped him to a camp for
displaced persons in Belgium. There for a year he
lived on the bread and gruel * which was all the
exhausted British could afford to feed the thousands upon
thousands of people in their charge, waiting until the
British realized their only course was release.
  Twice officials of the camp had summoned him
to present him with an ultimatum. There was a boat
waiting in Ostend harbor loading immigrants for
Australia. He would be given new papers and
shipped to his new land free of charge, in return
for which he would work for the Australian government for two
years in whatever capacity they chose, after which his
life would become entirely his own. Not slave
labor; he would be paid the standard wage, of
course. But on both occasions he managed to talk
himself out of summary emi- gration. He had hated
Hitler, not Germany, and he was not ashamed of being a
German. Home meant Germany; it had occupied his
dreams for over three years. The very thought of yet again
being stranded in a country where no one spoke his
language nor he theirs was anathema. So at the
beginning of 1947 he found himself penniless on the
streets of Aachen, ready to
  pick up the pieces of an existence he knew
he wanted very badly. He and his soul had
survived, but not to go back to poverty and obscurity.
For Rainer was more than a very ambitious man; he was
also something of a genius. He went to work for
Grundig, and studied the field which had fascinated
him since he first got acquainted with radar:
electronics. Ideas teemed in his brain, but he
refused to sell them to Grundig for a millionth part
of their value. Instead he gauged the market
carefully, then married the widow of a man who had
managed to keep a couple of small radio
factories, and went into business for himself. That he was
barely into his twenties didn't matter. His mind
was characteristic of a far older man, and the chaos of postwar
Germany created opportunities for young
men. Since his wedding had been a civil one, the
Church permitted him to divorce his wife; in
1951 he paid Annelise Hartheim exactly
twice the current value of her first husband's two
factories, and did just that, divorced her. However,
he didn't remarry.
  What had happened to the boy in the frozen terror
of Russia did not produce a soulless
caricature of a man; rather it arrested the growth of
softness and sweetness in him, and threw into high
relief other qual ities he
possessed-intelligence, ruthlessness, determin ation.
A man who has nothing to lose has everything
  to gain, and a man without feelings cannot be hurt. Or
so he told himself. In actual fact, he was
curiously similar to the man he had met in Rome
in 1943; like Ralph de Bricassart he
understood he did wrong even as he did it. Not that
his awareness of the evil in him stopped him for a
second; only that he paid for his material advancement
in pain and self-torment. To many people it might not have
seemed worth the price he paid, but to him it was worth
twice the suffering. One day he was going to run
Germany and make it what he had dreamed, he was going
to scotch the 585
  Aryan Lutheran ethic, shape a broader one.
Because he couldn't promise to cease sinning he had
been refused absolution in the confessional several
times, but somehow he and his religion muddled through in
one piece, until accumulated money and power
removed him so many layers beyond guilt he could
present himself repentant, and be shriven.
  In 1955, one of the richest and most powerful men in
the new West Germany and a fresh face in its Bonn
parliament, he went back to Rome. To seek out
Cardinal de Bricassart, and show him the end
result of his prayers. What he had imagined that
meeting might be he could not afterward remember, for from
beginning to end of it he was conscious of only one thing:
that Ralph de Bricassart was disappointed in him.
He had known why, he hadn't needed to ask. But he
hadn't expected the Cardinal's parting remark: "I
had prayed you would do better than I, for you were so
young. No end is worth any means. But I
suppose the seeds of our ruin are sown before our
births."
  Back in his hotel room he had wept, but
calmed after a while and thought: What's past is done
with; for the future I will be as he hoped. And sometimes
he succeeded, sometimes he failed. But he
tried. His friendship with the men in the Vatican became
the most precious earthly thing in his life, and Rome
became the place to which he fled when only their comfort
seemed to stand between himself and despair. Comfort. Theirs was
a strange kind. Not the laying on of hands, or soft
words. Rather a balm from the soul, as if they understood his
pain.
  And he thought, as he walked the warm Roman
night after depositing Justine in her pension, that he
would never cease to be grateful to her. For as he had
watched her cope with the ordeal of that afternoon interview,
he had felt a stirring of tenderness. Bloody but
unbowed, the little monster. She could match them every inch
of the way; did they realize it? He felt, he
  decided, what he might have felt on behalf of a
daughter he was proud of, only he had no
daughter. So he had stolen her from Dane, carried
her off to watch her aftermath reaction to that overpowering
ecclesiasticism, and to the Dane she had never seen
before; the Dane who was not and could not ever be a
full-hearted part of her life.
  The nicest thing about his personal God, he went
on, was that He could forgive anything; He could forgive
Justine her innate godlessness and himself the shutting
down of his emotional powerhouse until such
time as it was convenient to reopen it. Only for a while
he had panicked, thinking he had lost the key forever.
He smiled, threw away her cigarette. The
key. . . . Well, sometimes keys had strange
shapes. Perhaps it needed every kink in every curl of that red
head to trip the tumblers; perhaps in a room of
scarlet his God had handed him a scarlet key.
  A fleeting day, over in a second. But on
looking at his watch he saw it was still early, and
knew the man who had so much power now that His
Holiness lay near death would still be wakeful, sharing the
nocturnal habits of his cat. Those dreadful
hiccups filling the small room at Castel
Gandolfo, twisting the thin, pale, ascetic face
which had watched beneath the white crown for so many years;
he was dying, and he was a great Pope. No matter
what they said, he was a great Pope. If he had
loved his Germans, if he still liked to hear German
spoken around him, did it alter anything? Not for
Rainer to judge that.
  But for what Rainer needed to know at the moment,
Castel Gandolfo was not the source. Up the marble
stairs to the scarlet-and-crimson room, to talk
to Vittorio Scarbanza, Cardinal di
Contini-Verchese. Who might be the next
Pope, or might not. For almost three years now he
had watched those wise, loving dark eyes rest where
they most liked to rest; yes, better to seek the
answers from him than from Cardinal de Bricassart.

  "I never thought I'd hear myself say it, but thank
God we're leaving for Drogheda," said Justine,
refusing to throw a coin in the Trevi Fountain.
"We were supposed to take a look at France and
Spain; instead we're still in Rome and I'm as
unnecessary as a navel. Brothers!"
  "Hmmm, so you deem navels unnecessary?
Socrates was of the same opinion, I remember,"
said Rainer.
  "Socrates was? I don't recollect that!
Funny, I thought I'd read most of Plato,
too." She twisted to stare at him, thinking the
casual clothes of a holidaymaker in Rome suited
him far better than the sober attire he wore for
Vatican audiences.
  "He was absolutely convinced navels were
unnecessary, as a matter of fact. So much so that
to prove his point he unscrewed his own navel and
threw it away."
  Her lips twitched. "And what
happened?"
  "His toga fell off."
  "Hook! Hook!" She giggled. "Anyway,
they didn't wear togas in Athens then. But I have
a horrible feeling there's a moral in your story."
Her face sobered. "Why do you bother with me,
Rain?"
  "Stubborn! I've told you before, my name is
pronounced Ryner, not Rayner." "Ah, but you
don't understand," she said, looking thoughtfully at the
twinkling streams of water, the dirty pool loaded
with dirty coins. "Have you ever been to Australia?"
  His shoulders shook, but he made no sound.
"Twice I almost went, Herzchen, but I managed
to avoid it."
  "Well, if you had gone you'd understand. You have a
magical name to an Australian, when it's
pronounced my way. Rainer. Rain. Life in the
desert." Startled, he dropped his cigarette.
"Justine, you aren't falling in love with me, are
you?"
  "What egotists men are! I hate to disappoint
you, but no." Then, as if to soften any unkindness in
her
  words, she slipped her hand into his,
squeezed. "It's something much nicer." "What could be
nicer than falling in love?"
  "Almost anything, I think. I don't want
to need anyone like that, ever." "Perhaps you're right. It's
certainly a crippling handicap, taken on too
early. So what is much nicer?"
  "Finding a friend." Her hand rubbed his. "You are
my friend, aren't you?" "Yes." Smiling, he threw
a coin in the fountain. "There! I must have given it a
thousand D-marks over the years, just for reassurance
that I would continue to feel the warmth of the south.
Sometimes in my nightmares I'm cold again."
  "You ought to feel the warmth of the real south," said
Justine. "A hundred and fifteen in the shade, if
you can find any."
  "No wonder you don't feel the heat." He
laughed the soundless laugh, as always; a hangover from the
old days, when to laugh aloud might have tempted
fate. "And the heat would account for the fact that you're
hard-boiled." "Your English is colloquial, but
American. I would have thought you'd have learned English
in some posh British university."
  "No. I began to learn it from Cockney or
Scottish or Midlands tommies in a Belgian
camp, and didn't understand a word of it
except when I spoke to the man who had taught it
tome. One said "abaht," one said "aboot,"
one said "about," but they all meant "about." So
when I got back to Germany I saw every motion
picture I could, and bought the only records
available in English, records made by American
comedians. But I played them over and over again at
home, until I spoke enough English to learn more."
  Her shoes were off, as usual; awed, he had
watched her walk barefooted on pavements hot enough
to fry an egg, and over stony places. 589
  "Urchin! Put your shoes on."
  "I'm an Aussie; our feet are too broad
to be comfortable in shoes. Comes of no really cold
weather; we go barefoot whenever we can. I can walk
across a paddock of bindy-eye burns and pick them
out of my feet without feeling them," she said proudly.
"I could probably walk on hot coals." Then
abruptly she changed the subject. "Did you
love your wife, Rain?" "No."
  "Did she love you?"
  "Yes. She had no other reason to marry me."
  "Poor thing! You used her, and you dropped her."
  "Does it disappoint you?"
  "No, I don't think so. I rather
admire you for it, actually. But I do feel very
sorry for her, and it makes me more determined than
ever not to land in the same soup she did."
  "Admire me?" His tone was blank, astonished.
  "Why not? I'm not looking for the things in you she
undoubtedly did, now am I? I like you, you're my
friend. She loved you, you were her husband." "I think,
Herzchen," he said a little sadly, "that ambitious
men are not very kind to their women."
  "That's because they usually fall for utter doormats
of women, the "Yes, dear, no, dear, three
bags full, dear, and where would you like it put?"'
sort. Hard cheese all round, I say. If
I'd been your wife, I'd have told you to go pee
up a rope, but I'll bet she never did, did
she?" His lips quivered. "No, poor
Annelise. She was the martyour kind, so her
weapons were not nearly so direct or so
deliciously expressed. I wish they made
Australian films, so I knew your vernacular.
The "Yes, dear' bit I got, but I have no
idea what hard cheese is."
  "Tough luck, sort of, but it's more
unsympathetic." Her broad toes clung like
strong fingers to the inside of the fountain wall,
she teetered precariously backward and righted herself
easily. "Well, you were kind to her
  in the end. You got rid of her. She's far
better off without you, though she probably doesn't
think so. Whereas I can keep you, because I'll never
let you get under my skin."
  "Hard-boiled. You really are, Justine. And how
did you find out these things about me?"
  "I asked Dane. Naturally, being Dane he
just gave me the bare facts, but I deduced the
rest."
  "From your enormous store of past experience, no
doubt. What a fraud you are! They say you're a
very good actress, but I find that incredible. How do you
manage to counterfeit emotions you can never have
experienced? As a person you're more emotionally
backward than most fifteen-year-olds." She
jumped down, sat on the wall and leaned to put her
shoes on, wriggling her toes ruefully. "My
feet are swollen, dammit." There was no indication
by a reaction of rage or indignation that she had even
heard the last part of what he said. As if when
aspersions or criticisms were leveled at her she
simply switched off an internal hearing aid. How
many there must have been. The miracle was that she
didn't hate Dane.
  "That's a hard question to answer," she said. "I must
be able to do it or I wouldn't be so good, isn't that
right? But it's like . . . a waiting. My life off
the stage, I mean. I conserve myself, I can't
spend it offstage. We only have so much to give,
don't we? And up there I'm not myself, or perhaps more
correctly I'm a succession of selves. We
must all be a profound mixture of selves,
don't you think? To me, acting is first and foremost
intellect, and only after that, emotion. The one
liberates the other, and polishes it. There's so much
more to it than simply crying or screaming or
producing a convincing laugh. It's wonderful, you
know. Thinking myself into another self, someone I might
have been, had the circumstances been there. That's the
secret. Not becoming someone else, but incorporating
the role into me as if she was myself. And so she
becomes me." As
  though her excitement was too great to bear in
stillness, she jumped to her feet. "Imagine,
Rain! In twenty years' time I'll be able to say
to myself, I've committed murders, I've
suicided, I've gone mad, I've saved men or
ruined them. Oh! The possibilities are
endless!" "And they will all be you." He rose, took
her hand again. "Yes, you're quite right, Justine. You
can't spend it offstage. In anyone else, I'd
say you would in spite of that, but being you, I'm not so
sure."
  If they applied themselves to it, the Drogheda people could
imagine that Rome and London were no farther away
than Sydney, and that the grown-up Dane and
Justine were still children going to boarding school.
Admittedly they couldn't come home for all the
shorter vacations of other days, but once a year they
turned up for a month at least. Usually in August
or September, and looking much as always. Very young.
Did it matter whether they were fifteen and sixteen
or twentytwo and twenty-three? And if the
Drogheda people lived for that month in early spring, they
most definitely never went round saying things like,
Well, only a few weeks to go! or, Dear
heaven, it's not a month since they left! But around
July everyone's step became brisker, and
permanent smiles settled on every face. From the
cookhouse to the paddocks to the drawing room, treats
and gifts were planned. In the meantime there were letters.
Mostly these reflected the personalities of their
authors, but sometimes they contradicted. One
would have thought, for instance, that Dane would be a
meticulously regular correspondent and Justine
a scrappy one. That Fee would never write at
all. That the Cleary men would write twice a
year. That Meggie would enrich the postal
  service with letters every day, at least to Dane. That
Mrs. Smith, Minnie and Cat would send birthday
and Christmas cards. That Anne Mueller would
write often to Justine, never to Dane.
  Dane's intentions were good, and he did indeed
write regularly. The only trouble was he forgot
to post his efforts, with the result that two or three
months would go by without a word, and then Drogheda would
receive dozens on the same mail run. The
loquacious Justine wrote lengthy missives which
were pure streamof-consciousness, rude enough to evoke
blushes and clucks of alarm, and entirely
fascinating. Meggie wrote once every two weeks
only, to both her children. Though Justine never received
letters from her grand- mother, Dane did quite often. He
also got word regularly from all his uncles, about the
land and the sheep and the health of the Drogheda women, for they
seemed to think it was their duty to assure him all was
truly well at home. However, they didn't
extend this to Justine, who would have been
flabbergasted by it anyway. For the rest, Mrs.
Smith, Minnie, Cat and Anne Mueller,
correspondence went as might be expected. It was
lovely reading letters, and a burden writing them. That
is, for all save Justine, who experienced twinges
of exasperation because no one ever sent her the kind she
desired-fat, wordy and frank. It was from Justine the
Drogheda people got most of their information about Dane, for
his letters never plunged his readers right into the middle of a
scene. Whereas Justine's did.
  Rain flew into London today [she wrote
once],
  and he was telling me he saw Dane in Rome
last week. Well, he sees a lot more of Dane
than of me, since Rome is at the top of his
travel agenda and London is rock bottom.
So I must confess Rain is one of the prime
reasons why I meet Dane in Rome every year before
we come home. Dane 594
  likes coming to London, only I won't let
him if Rain is in Rome. Selfish. But you've
no idea how I enjoy Rain. He's one of the few
people I know who gives me a run for my money, and
I wish we met more often. In one respect
Rain's luckier than I am. He gets
to meet Dane's fellow students where I don't.
I think Dane thinks I'm going to rape them on the
spot. Or maybe he thinks they'll rape me.
Hah. Only happen if they saw me in my
Charmian cos tume. It's a stunner, people, it
really is. Sort of
  up-to-date Theda Bara. Two little round
bronze shields for the old tits, lots and lots of
chains and what I reckon is a cha/y belt you'd
need a pair of tin-cutters to get inside it,
anyway. In a long black wig, tan body
paint and my few scraps of metal I look a
smasher .
  . . . Where was I??? Oh, yes, Rain in
Rome last week meeting Dane and his pals. They
all went out on the tiles. Rain insists on
paying, saves Dane embarrassment. It was some
night. No women, natch, but everything else. Can you
imagine Dane down on his knees in some seedy
Roman bar saying "Fair daffodils, we haste
to see thee weep so soon away" to a vase of
daffodils? He tried for ten minutes to get the
words of the quotation in their right order and couldn't, then
he gave up, put one of the daffodils between his teeth
instead and did a dance. Can you ever imagine
Dane doing that? Rain says it's harmless and necessary,
all work and no play, etc. Women being out, the
next best thing is a skinful of grog. Or so
Rain insists. Don't get the idea it happens
often, it doesn't, and I gather when it does Rain
is the ringleader, so he's along to watch out for them, the
naive lot of raw prawns. But I did laugh
to think of Dane's halo slipping during the course
of a flamenco dance with a daffodil.
  It took Dane eight years in Rome to attain
his priesthood, and at their beginning no one thought they
could ever end. Yet those eight years used themselves up
faster than any of the Drogheda people had imagined. Just
what they thought he was going to do after he was ordained they
didn't know, except that they did assume he would
return to Australia. Only Meggie and Justine
suspected he would want to remain in Italy, and
Meggie at any rate could lull her doubts with
memories of his content when he came back each
year to his home. He was an Australian, he
would want to come home. With Justine it was different.
No one dreamed she would come home for good. She was
an actress; her career would founder in Australia.
Where Dane's career could be pursued with equal zeal
anywhere at all. Thus in the eighth year
there were no plans as to what the children would do when they
came for their annual holiday; instead the Drogheda
people were planning their trip to Rome, to see Dane
ordained a priest.
  "We fizzled out," said Meggie.
  "I beg your pardon, dear?" asked Anne.
  They were sitting in a warm corner of the veranda
reading, but Meggie's book had fallen neglected
into her lap, and she was absently watching the antics
of two willy-wagtails on the lawn. It had
been a wet year; there were worms everywhere and the
fattest, happiest birds anyone ever remembered.
Bird songs filled the air from dawn to the last of
dusk. "I said we fizzled out," repeated
Meggie, crowlike. "A damp squib. All that
promise! Whoever would have guessed it in 1921, when
we arrived on Drogheda?" "How do you mean?"
  "A total of six sons, plus me. And a year
later, two more sons. What would you think? Dozens
of children, half a hundred grandchildren? So look at us
now. Hal and Stu are dead, none of the ones left
alive seem to
  have any intention of ever getting married, and I, the
only.one not entitled to pass on the name, have been the
only one to give Drogheda its heirs.
And even then the gods weren't happy, were they? A
son and a daughter. Several grandchildren at least, you
might think. But what happens? My son
embraces the priesthood and my daughter's an
old maid career woman. Another dead end for
Drogheda."
  "I don't see what's so strange about it," said
Anne. "After all, what could you expect from the men?
Stuck out here as shy as kangas, never meeting the
girls they might have married. And with Jims and
Patsy, the war to boot. Could you see Jims
marrying when he knows Patsy can't? They're far
too fond of each other for that. And besides, the land's
demanding in a neutered way. It takes just about all
they've got to give, because I don't think they have a
great deal. In a physical sense, I mean.
Hasn't it ever struck you, Meggie? Yours isn't
a very highly sexed family, to put it bluntly.
And that goes for Dane and Justine, too. I mean,
there are some people who compulsively hunt it like
tomcats, but not your lot. Though perhaps Justine will
marry. There's this German chap Rainer; she seems
terribly fond of him."
  "You've hit the nail on the head," said
Meggie, in no mood to be comforted. "She
seems terribly fond of him. Just that. After all,
she's known him for seven years. If she wanted
to marry him, it would have happened ages ago." "Would
it? I know Justine pretty well," answered
Anne truthfully, for she did; better than
anyone else on Drogheda, including Meggie and
Fee. "I think she's terrified of committing herself
to the kind of love marriage would entail, and I must
say I admire Rainer. He seems to understand her
very well. Oh, I don't say he's in love with
her for sure, but if he is, at least he's got the
sense to wait until she's ready to take the
plunge." She leaned forward, her book falling
forgotten to the
  tiles. "Oh, will you listen to that bird? I'm
sure even a nightingale couldn't match it." Then
she said what she had been wanting to say for weeks.
"Meggie, why won't you go to Rome to see Dane
ordained? Isn't that peculiar? Dane-ordain."
  "I'm not going to Rome!" said Meggie between
clenched teeth. "I shall never leave Drogheda again."
  "Meggie, don't! You can't disappoint him so!
Go, please! If you don't, Drogheda won't have
a single woman there, because you're the only woman young
enough to take the flight. But I tell you, if
I thought for one minute my body would survive
I'd be right on that plane."
  "Go to Rome and see Ralph de Bricassart
smirking? I'd rather be dead!" "Oh, Meggie,
Meggie! Why must you take out your frustrations on
him, and on your son? You said it once yourself-it's your
own fault. So beggar your pride, and go to Rome.
Please!"
  "It isn't a question of pride." She shivered.
"Oh, Anne, I'm frightened to go! Because I don't
believe it, I just don't! My flesh creeps when
I think about it."
  "And what about the fact he mightn't come home
after he's a priest? Did that ever occur to you? He
won't be given huge chunks of leave the way he
was in the seminary, so if he decides to remain in
Rome you may well have to take yourself there if you ever
want to see him at all. Go to Rome, Meggie!"
"I can't. If you knew how frightened I am! It's
not pride, or Ralph scoring one over on me,
or any of the things I say it is to stop people asking me
questions. Lord knows, I miss both my men so much
I'd crawl on my knees to see them if I thought
for a minute they wanted me. Oh, Dane would be
glad to see me, but Ralph? He's
forgotten I ever existed. I'm frightened, I tell
you. I know in my bones that if I go to Rome something
will happen. So I'm not going."
  "What could happen, for pity's sake?" 598
  "I don't know . . . . If I did, I'd
have something to battle. A feeling, how can I battle
a feeling? Because that's all it is. A premonition.
As if the gods are gatheringea[*macr]
  Anne laughed. "You're becoming a real old
woman, Meggie. Stop!" "I can't, I can't!
And I am an old woman."
  "Nonsense, you're just in brisk middle age.
Well and truly young enough to hop on that plane."
  "Oh, leave me alone!" said Meggie
savagely, and picked up her book.
  Occasionally a crowd with a purpose converges upon
Rome. Not tourism, the voyeuristic sampling of
past glories in present relics; not the filling in
of a little slice of time between A and B, with Rome a
point on the line between those two places. This is a
crowd with a single uniting emotion; it bursts with
pride, for it is coming to see its son, nephew,
cousin, friend ordained a priest in the great basilica
which is the most venerated church in the world. Its
members put up in humble pensiones,
luxury hotels, the homes of friends or
relatives. But they are totally united, at peace
with each other andwiththe world. They do the rounds dutifully;
the Vatican Museum with the Sistine Chapel at
its end like a prize for endurance; the Forum, the
Colosseum, the Appian Way, the Spanish
Steps, the greedy Trevi Fountain, the son et
lumiere. Waiting for the day, filling in time. They will
be accorded the special privilege of a private
audience with the Holy Father, and for them Rome will find
nothing too good.
  This time it wasn't Dane waiting on the platform
to meet Justine, as it had been every other time; he was
in retreat. Instead, Rainer Moerling Hartheim
prowled the dirty paving like some great animal. He
didn't greet her with a kiss, he never did; he
just put an arm about her shoulders and squeezed. "Rather
like a bear," said Justine.
  "A bear?"
  "I used to think when I first met you that you were some
sort of missing link, but I've finally decided
you're more of a bear than a gorilla. It was an
unkind comparison, the gorilla."
  "And bears are kind?"
  "Well, perhaps they do one to death just as
quickly, but they're more cuddly." She linked her arm
through his and matched his stride, for she was almost as tall
as he. "How's Dane? Did you see him before he
went into retreat? I could kill Clyde, not letting
me go sooner."
  "Dane is as always."
  "You haven't been leading him astray?"
  "Me? Certainly not. You look very nice,
Herzchen."
  "I'm on my very best behavior, and I bought out
every couturier in London. Do you like my new short
skirt? They call it the mini."
  "Walk ahead of me, and I'll tell you."
  The hem of the full silk skirt was about midthigh;
it swirled as she turned and came back to him.
"What do you think, Rain? Is it scandalous? I
noticed no one in Paris is wearing this length
yet."
  "It proves a point, Herzchen-that with legs as
good as yours, to wear a skirt one millimeter longer
is scandalous. I'm sure the Romans will agree
with me."
  "Which means my arse will be black and blue in an
hour instead of a day. Damn them! Though do you know
something, Rain?" "What?"
  "I've never been pinched by a priest. All these
years I've been flipping in and out of the Vatican
with nary a pinch to my credit. So I thought maybe
if I wore a miniskirt, I might be the undoing
of some poor prelate yet." "You might be my
undoing." He smiled.
  "No, really? In orange? I thought you hated
me in orange, when I've got orange hair."
  "It inflames the senses, such a busy color."
  "You're teasing me," she said, disgusted, climbing
into his Mercedes limousine, which had a German
pennant fluttering from its bonnet talisman.
"When did you get the little flag?"
  "When I got my new post in the government."
  "No wonder I rated a mention in the News of
comthe World! Did you see it?" "You know I never read
rags, Justine."
  "Well, nor do I; someone showed it to me," she
said, then pitched her voice higher and endowed it with a
shabby-genteel, fraightfully naice accent.
"What upand-coming carrot-topped Australian
actress is cementing very cordial relations with what
member of the West German cabinet?" "They can't be
aware how long we've known each other," he said
tranquilly, stretching out his legs and
making himself comfortable. Justine ran her eyes over his
clothes with approval; very casual, very Italian.
He was rather in the European fashion swim himself,
daring to wear one of the fishing-net shirts which enabled
Italian males to demonstrate the hairiness of
their chests.
  "You should never wear a suit and collar and tie,"
she said suddenly. "No? Why not?"
  "Machismo is definitely your style-you know,
what you've got on now, the gold medallion and
chain on the hairy chest. A suit makes you look
as if your waistline is bulging, when it really
isn't at all."
  For a moment he gazed at her in surprise, then
the expression in his eyes became alert, in what she
called his "concentrated thinking look." "A first,"
he said.
  "What's a first?"
  "In the seven years I've known you, you've never
before commented upon my appearance except perhaps to disparage
it."
  "Oh, dear, haven't I?" she asked, looking
a little
  ashamed. "Heavens, I've thought of it often enough,
and never disparagingly." For some reason she
added hastily, "I mean, about things like the way you
look in a suit."
  He didn't answer, but he was smiling, as at a
very pleasant thought. That ride with Rainer seemed to be
the last quiet thing to happen for days. Shortly after
they returned from visiting Cardinal de
Bricassart and Cardinal di Contini-Verchese, the
limousine Rainer had hired deposited the Drogheda
contingent at their hotel. Out of the corner of her eye
Justine watched Rain's reaction to her family,
entirely uncles. Right until the moment her eyes
didn't find her mother's face, Justine had been
convinced she would change her mindea"come to Rome. That
she hadn't was a cruel blow; Justine didn't know
whether she ached more on Dane's behalf or on her
own. But in the meantime here were the Unks, and she was
undoubtedly their hostess. Oh, they were so shy! Which
one of them was which? The older they got, the more alike
they looked. And in Rome they stuck out like-well, like
Australian graziers on holiday in Rome.
Each one was clad in the citygoing uniform of affluent
squatters: tan elastic-sided riding boots,
neutral trousers, tan sports jackets of very
heavy, fuzzy wool with side vents and plenty of
leather patches, white shirts, knitted
wool ties, flat-crowned grey hats with broad
brims. No novelty on the streets of Sydney
during Royal Easter Show time, but in a late
Roman summer, extraordinary. And I can say with
double sincerity, thank God for Rain! How good he
is with them. I wouldn't have believed anyone could
stimulate Patsy into speech, but he's doing it,
bless him. They're talking away like old hens, and
where did he get Australian beer for them? He
likes them, and he's interested, I suppose.
Everything is grist to the mill of a German
industrialist-poli- tician, isn't it? How can
he stick to his faith, being what
  he is? An enigma, that's what you are, Rainer
Moerling Hartheim. Friend of popes and cardinals, friend
of Justine O'neill. Oh, if you weren't so
ugly I'd kiss you, I'm so terribly
grateful. Lord, fancy being stuck in Rome with the
Unks and no Rain! You are well named.
  He was sitting back in his chair, listening while
Bob told him about shearing, and having nothing better
to do because he had so completely taken charge, Justine
watched him curiously. Mostly she noticed
everything physical about people immediately, but just occasionally that
vigilance slipped and people stole up on her,
carved a niche in her life without her having made that
vital initial assessment. For if it wasn't
made, sometimes years would go by before they intruded into her
thoughts again as strangers. Like now, watching Rain. That
first meeting had been responsible, of course;
surrounded by churchmen, awed, frightened, brazening it out.
She had noticed only the obvious things: his powerful
build, his hair, how dark he was. Then when he
had taken her off to dinner the chance to rectify things
had been lost, for he had forced an awareness of himself
on her far beyond his physical attributes; she had
been too interested in what the mouth was saying to look
at the mouth.
  He wasn't really ugly at all, she decided
now. He looked what he was, perhaps, a mixture
of the best and the worst. Like a Roman emperor. No
wonder he loved the city. It was his spiritual home.
A broad face with high, wide cheekbones and a
small yet aquiline nose. Thick black
brows, straight instead of following the curve of the
orbits. Very long, feminine black lashes and quite
lovely dark eyes, mostly hooded to hide his
thoughts. By far his most beautiful possession was his
mouth, neither full nor thin-lipped, neither small
nor large, but very well shaped, with a distinct
cut to the boundaries of its lips and a peculiar
firmness in the way he held it; as if perhaps were he
to relax his hold upon it, it might give away
secrets about what he was
  really like. Interesting, to take a face apart which was
already so well known, yet not known at all.
  She came out of her reverie to find him watching her
watch him, which was like being stripped naked in front of a
crowd armed with stones. For a moment his eyes held
hers, wide open and alert, not exactly startled, rather
arrested. Then he transferred his gaze calmly
to Bob, and asked a pertinent question about boggis.
Justine gave herself a mental shake, told herself not
to go imagining things. But it diswas fascinating,
suddenly to see a man who had been a friend for years
as a possible lover. And not finding the thought at all
repulsive.
  There had been a number of successors to Arthur
Lestrange, and she hadn't wanted to laugh. Oh,
I've come a long way since that memorable night.
But I wonder have I actually progressed at
all? It's very nice to have a man, and the hell with what
Dane said about it being the one man. I'm not going
to make it one man, so I'm not going to sleep with
Rain; oh, no. It would change too many
things, and I'd lose my friend. I need my friend, I
can't afford to be without my friend. I shall keep him as
I keep Dane, a male human being without any
physical significance for me.
  The church could hold twenty thousand people, so it
wasn't crowded. Nowhere in the world had so much time and
thought and genius been put into the creation of a temple
of God; it paled the pagan works of antiquity
to insignificance. It did. So much love, so much
sweat. Bramante's basilica,
Michelangelo's dome, Bernini's colonnade.
A monument not onlv to God, but to Man. Deep
under the confessio in a little stone room Saint Peter
himself was buried; here the Emperor Charlemagne had
been crowned. The echoes of old voices seemed
to whisn-r among the pourins slivers of li*ht,
dead finners polished the bronze ravs behind the high
altar and caressed the twisted bronze columns of the
baldacchino.
  He was lying on the steps, face down, as though
dead. What was he thinking? Was there a pain in him that
had no right to be there, because his mother had not come?
Cardinal Ralph looked through his tears, and knew
there was no pain. Beforehand, yes; afterward, certainly.
But now, no pain. Everything in him was
projected into the moment, the miracle. No room in
him for anything which was not God. It was his day of days,
and nothing mattered save the task at hand, the vowing of
his life and soul to God. He could probably do it,
but how many others actually had? Not Cardinal
Ralph, though he still remembered his own ordination as
filled with holy wonder. With every part of him he had
tried, yet something he had withheld.
  Not so august as this, my ordination, but I live it
again through him. And wonder what he truly is, that in
spite of our fears for him he could have passed among
us so many years and not made an unfriend, let alone a
real enemy. He is loved by all, and he loves
all. It never crosses his mind for an instant that this
state of affairs is extraordinary. And yet, when
he came to us first he was not so sure of himself; we have
given him that, for which perhaps our existences are
vindicated. There have been many priests made here,
thousands upon thousands, yet for him there is something
special. Oh, Meggie! Why wouldn't you come
to see the gift you've given Our Lord-the gift I
could not, having given Him myself? And I suppose
that's it, how he can be here today free of pain. Because for
today I've been empowered to take his pain to myself,
free him from it. I weep his tears, I
mourn in his place. And that is how it should be.
  Later he turned his head, looked at the row
of-Drogheda people in alien dark suits. Bob,
Jack, Hughie, Jims, Patsy. A vacant
chair for Meggie, then Frank. Justine's fiery
hair dimmed under a black lace veil, the only
female Cleary present. Rainer next to her. And
then a lot of people he didn't know, but who shared in today
as
  fully as the Drogheda people did. Only today it was
different, today it was special for him. Today he felt
almost as if he, too, had had a son to give. He
smiled, and sighed. How must Vittorio feel,
bestowing Dane's priesthood upon him?
  Perhaps because he missed his mother's presence so
acutely, Justine was the first person Dane
managed to take aside at the reception Cardinal
Vittorio and Cardinal Ralph gave for him. In
his black soutane with the high white collar he
looked magnificent, she thought; only not like a
priest at all. Like an actor playing a priest,
until one looked into the eyes. And there it was, the
inner light, that something which transformed him from a very
good-looking man into one unique.
  "Father O'neill," she said.
  "I haven't assimilated it yet, Jus."
  "That isn't hard to understand. I've never felt quite
the way I did in Saint Peter's, so what it must
have been like for you I can't imagine." "Oh, I think
you can, somewhere inside. If you truly couldn't, you
wouldn't be such a fine actress. But with you, Jus,
it comes from the unconscious; it doesn't erupt
into thought until you need to use it."
  They were sitting on a small couch in a far
corner of the room, and no one came to disturb them.
  After a while he said, "I'm so pleased Frank
came," looking to where Frank was talking with Rainer,
more animation in his face than his niece and nephew
had ever seen. "There's an old Rumanian
refugee priest I know," Dane went on, "who
has a way of saying, "Oh, the poor one!" with
such compassion in his voice .... I don't know,
somehow that's what I always find myself saying about our
Frank. And yet, Jus, why?"
  But Justine ignored the gambit, went straight
to the crux. "I could kill Mum!" she said through her
teeth. "She had no right to do this to you!" "Oh,
Jus! I understand. You've got to try, too. If
it
  had been done in malice or to get
back at me I might be hurt, but you know her as
well as I do, you know it's neither of those. I'm going
down to Drogheda soon. I'll talk to her then,
find out what's the matter." "I suppose
daughters are never as patient with their mothers as sons
are." She drew down the corners of her mouth
ruefully, shrugged. "Maybe it's just as well
I'm too much of a loner ever to inflict myself on
anyone in the mother role."
  The blue eyes were very kind, tender; Justine
felt her hackles rising, thinking Dane pitied
her.
  "Why don't you marry Rainer?" he asked
suddenly. Her jaw dropped, she gasped. "He's
never asked me," she said feebly. "Only because he
thinks you'd say no. But it might be arranged."
Without thinking, she grabbed him by the ear, as she used
to do when they were children. "Don't you dare, you
dog-collared prawn! Not one word, do you hear? 1
don't love Raird He's just a friend, and I
want to keep it that way. If you so much as light a
candle for it, I swear I'll sit down, cross
my eyes and put a curse on you, and you remember
how that used to scare the living daylights out of you,
don't you?"
  He threw back his head and laughed. "It wouldn't
work, Justine! My magic is stronger than yours
these days. But there's no need to get so worked up about
it, you twit. I was wrong, that's all. I assumed
there was a case between you and Rain."
  "No, there isn't. After seven years? Break it
down, pigs might fly." Pausing, she seemed
to seek for words, then looked at him almost shyly.
"Dane, I'm so happy for you. I think if Mum
was here she'd feel the same. That's all it needs,
for her to see you now, like this. You wait, she'll come
around."
  Very gently he took her pointed face between his
hands, smiling down at her with so much love that her own
hands came up to clutch at his wrists, soak it in
  through every pore. As if all those childhood years
were remembered, treasured.
  Yet behind what she saw in his eyes on her
behalf she sensed a shadowy doubt, only perhaps
doubt was too strong a word; more like anxiety.
Mostly he was sure Mum would understand eventually, but
he was human, though all save he tended to forget the
fact.
  "Jus, will you do something for me?" he asked as he
let her go. "Anything," she said, meaning
it.
  "I've got a sort of respite, to think about
what I'm going to do. Two months. And I'm going
to do the comheavy thinking on a Drogheda horse after
I've talked to Mum-somehow I feel I can't
sort anything out until after I've talked to her.
But first, well . . . I've got to get up my
courage to go home. So if you could manage it, come
down to the Peloponnese with me for a couple of
weeks, tick me off good and proper about being a
coward until I get so sick of your voice I
put myself on a plane to get away from it." He
smiled at her. "Besides, Jussy, I don't
want you to think I'm going to exclude you from my
life absolutely, any more than I will Mum. You
need your old conscience around occasionally."
  "Oh, Dane, of course I'll go!"
  "Good," he said, then grinned, eyed her
mischievously. "I really do need you, Jus.
Having you bitching in my ear will be just like old times."
"Uh-uh-uh! No obscenities, Father
O'neill!"
  His arms went behind his head, he leaned back on the
couch contentedly. "I am! Isn't it marvelous?
And maybe after I've seen Mum, I can
concentrate on Our Lord. I think that's where my
inclinations lie, you know. Simply thinking about Our
Lord."
  "You ought to have espoused an order, Dane."
  "I still can, and I probably will. I have a whole
lifetime; there's no hurry."
  Justine left the party with Rainer, and after she
talked of going to Greece with Dane, he talked of
going to his office in Bonn. "About bloody time,"
she said. "For a cabinet minister you don't seem to do
much work, do you? All the papers call you a
playboy, fooling around with carrottopped
Australian actresses, you old dog, you."
  He shook his big fist at her. "I pay for my
few pleasures in more ways than you'll ever know."
  "Do you mind if we walk, Rain?"
  "Not if you keep your shoes on."
  "I have to these days. Miniskirts have their
disadvantages; the days of stockings one could peel
off easily are over. They've invented a sheer
version of theatrical tights, and one can't shed those in
public without causing the biggest furor since
Lady Godiva. So unless I want to ruin a
five-guinea pair of tights, I'm imprisoned
in my shoes."
  "At least you improve my education in feminine
garb, under as well as over," he said mildly.
  "Go on! I'll bet you've got a dozen
mistresses, and undress them all." "Only one,
and like all good mistresses she waits for me in her
negligee." "Do you know, I believe we've never
discussed your sex life before? Fascinating! What's
she like?"
  "Fair, fat, forty and flatulent."
  She stopped dead. "Oh, you're kidding me," she
said slowly. "I can't see you with a woman like that."
  "Why not?"
  "You've got too much taste."
  "Chacun a son gout, my dear. I'm nothing
much to look at, myself-why should you assume I could
charm a young and beautiful woman into being my
mistress?" "Because you could!" she said indignantly.
"Oh, of course you could!" "My money, you mean?"
  "Not, not your money! You're teasing me, you al-

  ways do! Rainer Moerling Hartheim, you're very
well aware how attractive you are, otherwise you
wouldn't wear gold medallions and netting shirts.
Looks aren't everything-if they were, I'd still be
wondering."
  "Your concern for me is touching, Herzchen."
  "Why is it that when I'm with you I feel as if
I'm forever running to catch up with you, and I never
do?" Her spurt of temper died; she stood looking
at him uncertainly. "You're not serious, are you?"
"Do you think I am?"
  "No! You're not conceited, but you do know how very
attractive you are." "Whether I do or not isn't
important. The important thing is that you think
I'm attractive."
  She was going to say: Of course I do; I was
mentally trying you on as a lover not long ago, but then
I decided it wouldn't work, I'd rather keep on
having you for my friend. Had he let her say it, he
might have concluded his time hadn't come, and acted
differently. As it was, before she could shape the words
he had her in his arms, and was kissing her. For at
least sixty seconds she stood, dying, split
open, smashed, the power in her screaming in wild
elation to find a matching power. His mouth-it was
beautiful! And his hair, incredibly thick,
vital, something to seize in her fingers fiercely.
Then he took her face between his hands and looked at
her, smiling. "I love you," he said.
  Her hands had gone up to his wrists, but
not to enclose them gently, as with Dane; the nails
bit in, scored down to meat savagely. She
stepped back two paces and stood rubbing her arm
across her mouth, eyes huge with fright, breasts heaving.
  "It couldn't work," she panted. "It could never
work, Rain!" Off came the shoes; she bent to pick
them up, then turned and ran, and within three seconds
the soft quick pad of her feet had vanished.
  Not that he had any intention of following her, though
apparently she had thought he might. Both his wrists
were bleeding, and they hurt. He pressed his
handkerchief first to one and then to the other, shrugged, put
the stained cloth away, and stood concentrating on the
pain. After a while he unearthed his cigarette
case, took out a cigarette, lit it, and began
to walk slowly. No one passing by could have told from his
face what he felt. Everything he wanted within his
grasp, reached for, lost. Idiot girl. When would
she grow up? To feel it, respond to it, and deny
it. But he was a gambler, of the win-a-few,
lose-a-few kind. He had waited seven long
years before trying his luck, feeling the change in her
at this ordination time. Yet apparently he had moved
too soon. Ah, well. There was always tomorrow-or knowing
Justine, next year, the year after that.
Certainly he wasn't about to give up. If he
watched her carefully, one day he'd get lucky.
  The soundless laugh quivered in him; fair, fat,
forty and flatulent. What had brought it to his lips
he didn't know, except that a long-time ago his
ex-wife had said it to him. The four F's,
describing the typical victim of gallstones.
She had been a martyour to them, poor Annelise,
even though she was dark, skinny, fifty and as well
corked as a genie in a bottle. What am I
thinking of Annelise for, now? My patient
campaign of years turned into a rout, and I can do
no better than poor Annelise. So,
Frdulein Justine O'neill! We shall see.
  There were lights in the palace windows; he would go
up for a few minutes, talk to Cardinal Ralph,
who was looking old. Not well. Perhaps he ought to be
persuaded into a medical examination. Rainer ached, but
not for Justine; she was young, there was time. For Cardinal
Ralph, who had seen his own son ordained, and not
known it.
  It was still early, so the hotel foyer was crowded.
Shoes on, Justine crossed quickly to the stairs and
ran
  up them, head bent. Then for some time her
trembling hands couldn't find the room key in her
bag and she thought she would have to go down again, brave the
t.mentearonv about the desk. But it was there; she must have
passed her fingers over it a dozen times.
  Inside at last, she groped her way to the bed;
sat down on its edge and let coherent thought
gradually return. Telling herself she was revolted,
horrified, disillusioned; all the while staring
drearily at the wide rec- tangle of pale
light which was the night sky through the window, wanting
to curse, wanting to weep. It could never be the same
again, and that was a tragedy. The loss of the dearest friend.
Betrayal. Empty words, untrue; suddenly she
knew very well what had frightened her so, made her
flee from Rain as if he had attempted murder, not
a kiss. The rightness of it! The feeling of coming home,
when she didn't want to come home any more than she
wanted the liability of love. Home was
frustration, so was love. Not only that, even if the
admission was humiliating; she wasn't sure she
could love. If she was capable of it, surely once
or twice her guard would have slipped; surely
once or twice she would have experienced a pang of
something more than tolerant affection for her infrequent
lovers. It di.t occur to her that she
deliberately chose lovers who would never threaten
her self-imposed detachment, so much a part of herself
by now that she regarded it as completely natural.
For the first time in her life she had no reference point
to assist her. There was no time in the past she could
take comfort from, no once-deep involvement, either for
herself or for those shadowy lovers. Nor could the
Drogheda people help, because she had always withheld herself from
them, too.
  She had had to run from Rain. To say yes, commit
herself to him, and then have to watch him recoil when he
found out the extent of her inadequacy? Unbearable!
He would learn what she was really like, and the knowledge would
kill his love for her. Unbearable to say yes,
  and end in being rebuffed for all time. Far better
to do any rebuffing herself. That way at least pride
would be satisfied, and Justine owned all her mother's
pride. Rain must never discover what she was like beneath
all that brick flippancy.
  He had fallen in love with the Justine he saw;
she had not allowed him any opportunity to suspect
the sea of doubts beneath. Those only Dane
suspected-no, knew.
  She bent forward to put her forehead against the cool
bedside table, tears running down her
face. That was why she loved. Dane so, of course.
Knowing what the real Justine was like, and still loving her.
Blood helped, so did a lifetime of shared
memories, problems, pains, joys. Whereas Rain
was a stranger, not committed to her the way Dane
was, or even the other members of her family.
Nothing obliged him to love her.
  She sniffled, wiped her palm around her face,
shrugged her shoulders and began the difficult business
of pushing her trouble back into some corner of her mind
where it could lie peacefully, unremembered. She
knew she could do it; she had spent all her life
perfecting the technique. Only it meant ceaseless
activity, continuous absorption in things outside
herself. She reached over and switched on the bedside
lamp.
  One of the Unks must have delivered the letter to her
room, for it was lying on the bedside table, a
pale-blue air letter with Queen Elizabeth in its
upper corner.
  "Darling Justine," wrote Clyde
Daltinham-Roberts, "Come back to the fold,
you're needed! At once! There's a part going begging
in the new season's repertoire, and a tiny little
dicky-bird told me you just might want
it. Desdemona, darling? With Marc Simpson as
your Othello? Rehearsals for the principals start
neat week, if you're interested" If she was
interested! Desdemona! Desdemona in
London! And with Marc Simpson as Othello! The
opportunity of a lifetime. Her mood
skyrocketed to a point where the scene with Rain lost
significance, or
  rather assumed a different significance. Perhaps if
she was very, very careful she might be able to keep
Rain's love; a highly acclaimed, successful
actress was too busy to share much of her life with
her lovers. It was worth a try. If he looked
as if he were getting too close to the truth, she could
always back off again. To keep Rain in her life, but
especially this new Rain, she would be prepared to do
anything save strip off the mask. In the meantime,
news like this deserved some sort of celebration. She
didn't feel up to facing Rain yet, but there were
other people on hand to share her triumph. So she put
on her shoes, walked down the corridor to the
Unks' communal sitting room, and when Patsy
let her in she stood with arms spread wide, beaming.
  "Break out the beer, I'm going to be
Desdemona!" she announced in ringing
tones.
  For a moment no one answered, then Bob said
warmly, "That's nice, Justine." Her pleasure
didn't evaporate; instead it built up to an
uncontrollable elation. Laughing, she flopped into a
chair and stared at her uncles. What truly
lovely men they were! Of course her news meant
nothing to them! They didn't have a clue who
Desdemona was. If she had come to tell them she
was getting married, Bob's answer would have been much
the same. Since the beginning of memory they had been
a part of her life, and sadly she had dismissed them
as contemptuously as she did everything about Drogheda.
The Unks, a plurality having nothing to do with
Justine O'neill. Simply members of a
conglomerate who drifted in and out of the homestead,
smiled at her shyly, avoided her if it meant
conversation. Not that they didn't like her, she realized
now; only that they sensed how foreign she was, and it
made them uncomfortable. But in this Roman world which was
alien to them and familiar to her, she was beginning to understand
them better. Feeling a glow of something for them which
might
  have been called love, Justine stared from one
creased, smiling face to the next. Bob,
who was the life force of the unit, the Boss of
Drogheda, but in such an unobtrusive way;
Jack, who merely seemed to follow Bob around,
or maybe it was just that they got along so well together;
Hughie, who had a streak of mischief the other two
did not, and yet so very like them; Jims and Patsy, the
positive and negative sides of a
self-sufficient whole; and poor quenched Frank,
the only one who seemed plagued by fear and
insecurity. All of them save Jims and Patsy
,were grizzled now, indeed Bob and Frank were
white-haired, but they didn't really look very
different from the way she remembered them as a little
girl.
  "I don't know whether I ought to give you a
beer," Bob said doubtfully, standing with a cold
bottle of Swan in his hand. The remark would have
annoyed her intensely even half a day ago, but
at the moment she was too happy to take offense.
  "Look, love, I know it's never occurred to you
to offer me one through the course of our sessions with
Rain, but honestly I'm a big girl now, and I
can handle a beer. I promise it isn't a sin."
She smiled. "Where's Rainer?" Jims asked,
taking a full glass from Bob and handing it
to her.
  "I had a fight with him."
  "With Rainer?"
  "Well, yes. But it was all my fault. I'm
going to see him later and tell him I'm sorry."
  None of the Unks smoked. Though she had never
asked for a beer before, on earlier occasions she had
sat smoking defiantly while they talked with
Rain; now it took more courage than she could command
to produce her cigarettes, so she contented herself with the
minor victory of the beer, dying to gulp it down
thirstily but mindful of their dubious regard.
Ladylike sips, Justine, even if you are dryer
than a secondhand sermon.
  "Rain's a bonzer bloke," said Hughie,
eyes twinkling. Startled, Justine suddenly
realized why she had grown so much in importance in
their thoughts: she had caught herself a man they'd like to have
in the family. "Yes, he is rather," she said
shortly, and changed the subject. "It was a
lovely day, wasn't it?"
  All the heads bobbed in unison, even
Frank's, but they didn't seem to want to discuss
it. She could see how tired they were, yet she
didn't regret her impulse to visit
them. It took a little while for near-atrophied
senses and feelings to learn what their proper
functions were, and the Unks were a good practice
target. That was the trouble with being an island; one forgot
there was anything going on beyond its shores.
  "What's Desdemona?" Frank asked from the
shadows where he hid. Justine launched into a vivid
description, charmed by their horror when they learned
she would be strangled once a night, and only
remembered how tired they must be half an hour
later when Patsy yawned. "I must go," she said,
putting down her empty glass. She had not been
offered a second beer; one was apparently the limit
for ladies. "Thanks for listening to me blather."
  Much to Bob's surprise and confusion, she kissed
him good night; Jack edged away but was easily
caught, while Hughie accepted the farewell with
alacrity. Jims turned bright red, endured it
dumbly. For Patsy, a hug as well as a
kiss, because he was a little bit of an island himself.
And for Frank no kiss at all, he averted his
head; yet when she put her arms around him she could
sense a faint echo of some intensity quite missing in the
others. Poor Frank. Why was he like that?
  Outside their door, she leaned for a
moment against the wall. Rain loved her. But when she
tried to phone his room the operator informed her he
had checked out, returned to Bonn.
  No matter. It might be better to wait until
London to
  see him, anyway. A contrite apology via
the mail, and an invitation to dinner next time he was in
England. There were many things she didn't know about
Rain, but of one characteristic she had no doubt at
all; he would come, because he hadn't a grudging bone
in his body. Since foreign affairs had become his
forte, England was one of his most regular ports of
call. "You wait and see, my lad," she said,
staring into her mirror and seeing his face instead of her
own. "I'm going to make England your most
important foreign affair, or my name isn't
Justine O'neill."
  It had not occurred to her that perhaps as far as Rain was
concerned, her name was indeed the crux of the matter. Her
patterns of behavior were set, and marriage was no
part of them. That Rain might want to make her over
into Justine Hartheim never even crossed her mind.
She was too busy remembering the quality of his
kiss, and dreaming of more.
  There remained only the task of telling
Dane she couldn't go to Greece with him, but about this
she was untroubled. Dane would understand, he always did.
Only somehow she didn't think she'd tell him
all the reasons why she wasn't able to go. Much as
she loved her brother, she didn't feel like listening
to what would be one of his sternest homilies ever. He
wanted her to marry Rain, so if she told him what
her plans for Rain were, he'd cart her off
to Greece with him if it meant forcible abduction.
What Dane's ears didn't hear, his heart
couldn't grieve about.
  "Dear Rain," the note said. "Sorry I ran
like a hairy goat the other night, can't think what
got into me. The hectic day and everything, I
suppose. Please forgive me for behaving like an
utter prawn. I'm ashamed of myself for making so much
fuss about a trifle. And I daresay the day had
got to you, too, words of love and all, I mean.
So I tell you what-you forgive me, and I'll
forgive you. Let's be friends, please. I can't bear
to be at
  outs with you. Next time you're in London, come
to dinner at my place and we'll formally draft out a
peace treaty."
  As usual it was signed plain
"Justine." No words even of affection; she never
used them. Frowning, he studied the artlessly casual
phrases as if he could see through them to what was really
in her mind as she wrote. It was certainly an
overture of friendship, but what else? Sighing, he was
forced to admit probably very little. He had frightened
her badly; that she wanted to retain his friendship
spoke of how much he meant to her, but he very much
doubted whether she understood exactly what she felt
for him. After all, now she knew he loved her; if
she had sorted herself out sufficiently to realize she
loved him too, she would have come straight out with it in
her letter. Yet why had she returned to London
instead of going to Greece with Dane? He knew he
shouldn't hope it was because of him, but despite his
misgivings, hope began to color his thoughts so
cheerfully he buzzed his secretary. It was 10
A.m. Greenwich Mean Time, the best hour to find
her at home. "Get me Miss O'neill's
London flat," he instructed, and waited the
intervening seconds with a frown pulling at the inner
corners of his brows. "Rain!" Justine said,
apparently delighted. "Did you get my letter?"
"This minute."
  After a delicate pause she said. "And
will you come to dinner soon?" "I'm going to be in
England this coming Friday and Saturday. Is the
notice too short?"
  "Not if Saturday evening is all right with you.
I'm in rehearsal for Desdemona, so Friday's
out."
  "Desdemona?"
  "That's right, you don't know! Clyde wrote to me
in Rome and offered me the part. Marc Simpson as
  Othello, Clyde directing personally. Isn't
it wonderful? I came back to London on the first
plane."
  He shielded his eyes with his hand, thankful his
secretary was safely in her outer office, not
sitting where she could see his face. "Justine,
Herzchen, that's marvelous news!" he managed
to say enthusiastically. "I was wondering what brought
you back to London."
  "Oh, Dane understood," she said lightly, "and
in a way I think he was quite glad to be alone. He
had concocted a story about needing me to bitch at him
to go home, but I think it was all more for his second
reason, that he doesn't want me to feel
excluded from his life now he's a priest."
"Probably," he agreed politely.
  "Saturday evening, then," she-said. "Around six,
then we can have a leisurely peace treaty session
with the aid of a bottle or two, and I'll feed you
after we've reached a satisfactory compromise.
All right?" "Yes, of course. Goodbye,
Herzchen."
  Contact was cut off abruptly by the sound of her
receiver going down; he sat for a moment with his still in his
hand, then shrugged and replaced it on its cradle.
Damn Justine! She was beginning to come between him and his
work. She continued to come between him and his work during the
succeeding days, though it was doubtful if anyone
suspected. And on Saturday evening a little after
six he presented himself at her apartment, emptyhanded
as usual because she was a difficult person to bring
gifts. She was indifferent to flowers, never ate candy
and would have thrown a more expensive offering carelessly in
some corner, then forgotten it. The only gifts
Justine seemed to prize were those Dane had given
her.
  "Champagne before dinner?" he asked, looking at
her in surprise. "Well, I think the occasion
calls for it, don't you? It was our first-ever breaking
of relations, and this is our
  first-ever reconciliation," she answered
plausibly, indicating a comfortable chair for him and
settling herself on the tawny kangaroo-fur rug,
lips parted as if she had already rehearsed replies
to anything he might say next. But conversation was beyond
him, at least until he was better able to assess
her mood, so he watched her in silence. Until
he had kissed her it had been easy to keep himself
partially aloof, but now, seeing her again for the first time
since, he admitted that it was going to be a great deal
harder in the future.
  Probably even when she was a very old woman she
would still retain something not quite fully mature about face
and bearing; as though essential womanliness would always
pass her by. That cool, self-centered, logical
brain seemed to dominate her completely, yet for
him she owned a fascination so potent he doubted if
he would ever be able to replace her with any other
woman. Never once had he questioned whether she was
worth the long struggle. Possibly from a
philosophical standpoint she wasn't. Did it
matter? She was a goal, an aspiration.
  "You're looking very nice tonight; Herzchen," he said
at last, tipping his champagne glass to her in a
gesture half toast, half acknowledgment of an
adversary.
  A coal fire simmered unshielded in the small
Victorian grate, but Justine didn't seem
to nund the heat, huddled close to it with her eyes
fixed on him. Then she put her glass on the
hearth with a ringing snap and sat forward, her arms linked
about her knees, bare feet hidden by folds of
densely black gown. "I can't stand beating around the
bush," she said. "Did you mean it, Rain?"
Suddenly relaxing deeply, he lay back in his
chair. "Mean what?" "What you said in Rome . .
. That you loved me."
  "Is that what this is all about, Herzchen?"
  She looked away, shrugged, looked back at
him and nodded. "Well, of course."
  "But why bring it up again? You told me what you
thought, and I had gathered tonight's invitation wasn't
extended to bring up the past, only plan a
future."
  "Oh, Rain! You're acting as if I'm making
a fuss! Even if I was, surely you can see
why."
  "No, I can't." He put his glass down and
bent forward to watch her more closely. "You gave me
to understand most emphatically that you wanted no part of
my love, and I had hoped you'd at least
have the decency to refrain from discussing it."
  It had not occurred to her that this meeting, no matter
what its outcome, would be so uncomfortable; after all,
he had put himself in the position of a suppliant, and
ought to be waiting humbly for her to reverse her
decision. Instead he seemed to have turned the tables
neatly. Here she was feeling like a naughty
schoolgirl called upon to answer for some idiotic
prank. "Look, sport, you're the one who changed
the status quo, not me! I didn't ask you to come
tonight so I could beg forgiveness for having wounded the great
Hartheim ego!"
  "On the defensive, Justine?"
  She wriggled impatiently. "Yes, dammit!
How do you manage to do that to me, Rain? Oh, I
wish just once you'd let me enjoy having the upper
hand!" "If I did, you'd throw me out like a
smelly old rag," he said, smiling. "I can do that
yet, mate!"
  "Nonsense! If you haven't done it by now you
never will. You'll go on seeing me because I keep you
on the hop-you never know what to expect from me."
  "Is that why you said you loved me?" she asked
painfully. "Was it only a ploy to keep me on
the hop?"
  "What do you think?"
  "I think you're a prize bastard!" she said through
her teeth, and marched across the rug on her knees
until she
  was close enough to give him the full benefit of her
anger. "Say you love me again, you big Kraut
prawn, and watch me spit in your eye!" He was
angry, too. "No, I'm not going to say it again!
That isn't why you asked me to come, is it? My
feelings don't concern you one bit, Justine. You
asked me to come so you could experiment with your own
feelings, and it didn't enter your mind to consider
whether that was being fair to me." Before she could move
away he leaned forward, gripped her arms near the
shoulders and clamped her body between his legs, holding
her firmly. Her rage vanished at once; she
flattened her palms on his thighs and lifted her
face. But he didn't kiss her. He let go of
her arms and twisted to switch off the lamp behind him,
then relaxed his hold on her and laid his head back
against the chair, so that she wasn't sure if he had
dimmed the room down to glowing coals as the first move
in his love-making, or simply to conceal his
expression. Uncertain, afraid of outright
rejection, she waited to be told what
to do. She should have realized earlier that one didn't
tamper with people like Rain. They were as invincible as death.
Why couldn't she put her head on his lap and say:
Rain, love me, I need you so much and I'm so
sorry? Oh, surely if she could get him to make
love to her some emotional key would turn and it would
all come tumbling out, released .... Still withdrawn,
remote, he let her take off his jacket and
tie, but by the time she began to unbutton his shirt she
knew it wasn't going to work. The kind of instinctive
erotic skills which could make the most mundane
operation exciting were not in her repertoire. This was so
important, and she was making an absolute mess
of it. Her fingers faltered, her mouth puckered. She
burst into tears.
  "Oh, no! Herzchen, liebchen, don't cry!"
He pulled her onto his lap and turned her head
into his shoulder, 622
  his arms around her. "I'm sorry, Herzchen, I
didn't mean to make you cry." "Now you know," she
said between sobs. "I'm a miserable failure; I
told you it wouldn't work! Rain, I wanted so
badly to keep you, but I knew it wouldn't work if
I let you see how awful I am!"
  "No, of course it wouldn't work. How
could it? I wasn't helping you, Herzchen." He
tugged at her hair to bring her face up to his,
kissed her eyelids, her wet cheeks, the corners
of her mouth. "It's my fault, Herzchen, not yours.
I was paying you back; I wanted to see how far you
could go without encouragement. But I think I have
mistaken your motives, nicht wahr?" His voice
had grown thicker, more German. "And I say, if
this is what you want you shall have it, but it shall be together."
  "Please, Rain, let's call it off! I
haven't got what it takes. I'll only
disappoint you!"
  "Oh, you've got it, Herzchen, I've seen it
on the stage. How can you doubt yourself when you're with
me?"
  Which was so right her tears dried.
  "Kiss me the way you did in Rome," she
whispered. Only it wasn't like the kiss in Rome
at all. That had been something raw, startled,
explosive; this was very languorous and deep, an
opportunity to taste and smell and feel, settle
by layers into voluptuous ease. Her fingers
returned to the buttons, his went to the zipper of her
dress, then he covered her hand with his and thrust it
inside his shirt, across skin matted with fine
soft hair. The sudden hardening of his mouth against her
throat brought a helpless response so acute she
felt faint, thought she was falling and found she had,
flat on the silky rug with Rain looming above her.
His shirt had come off, perhaps more, she couldn't see,
only the fire glancing off his shoulders spread over
her, and the beautiful stern mouth. Determined to destroy
its discipline for all time, she locked her fingers in
his hair and made him kiss her again, harder, harder!
  And the feel of him! Like coming home, recognizing every
part of him with her lips and hands and body, yet
fabulous and strange. While the world sank down to the
minute width of the firelight lapping against darkness,
she opened herself to what he wanted, and learned something
he had kept entirely concealed for as long as she had
known him; that he must have made love to her in
imagination a thousand times. Her own experience and
newborn intuition told her so. She was completely
disarmed. With any other man the intimacy and astonishing
sensuality would have appalled her, but he forced her
to see that these were things only she had the right to command. And
command them she did. Until finally she cried for him
to finish it, her arms about him so strongly she could
feel the contours of his very bones. The minutes wore
away, wrapped in a sated peace. They
had fallen into an identical rhythm of breathing,
slow and easy, his head against her shoulder, her leg
thrown across him. Gradually her rigid clasp on
his back relaxed, became a dreamy, circular
caress. He sighed, turned over and reversed the
way they were lying, quite unconsciously inviting her
to slide still deeper into the pleasure of being with him.
She put her palm on his flank to feel the
texture of his skin, slid her hand across warm
muscle and cupped it around the soft, heavy mass in
his groin. To feel the curiously alive,
independent movements within it was a sensation quite new
to her; her past lovers had never interested her
sufficiently to want to prolong her sexual
curiosity to this languid and undemanding aftermath.
Yet suddenly it wasn't languid and undemanding
at all, but so enormously exciting she wanted him
all over again. Still she was taken unaware, knew a
suffocated surprise when he slipped his arms across
her back, took her head in his hands and held her
close enough to see there was nothing controlled about his mouth,
shaped now solely because of her, and for her. Tenderness and
  humility were literally born in her in that moment.
It must have shown in her face, for he was gazing at her
with eyes grown so bright she couldn't bear
them, and bent over to take his upper lip between her own.
Thoughts and senses merged at last, but her cry was
smothered soundless, an unuttered wail of gladness which
shook her so deeply she lost awareness of everything
beyond impulse, the mindless guidance of each urgent
minute. The world achieved its ultimate contraction,
turned in upon itself, and totally disappeared.
  Rainer must have kept the fire going, for when gentle
London daylight soaked through the folds of the
curtains the room was still warm. This time when he moved
Justine became conscious of it, and clutched his arm
fearfully. "Don't go!"
  "I'm not, Herzchen." He twitched another
pillow from the sofa, pushed it behind his head and shifted
her closer in to his side, sighing softly. "All
right?"
  "Yes."
  "Are you cold?"
  "No, but if you are we could go to bed."
  "After making love to you for hours on a fur rug?
What a comedown! Even if your sheets are black
silk."
  "They're ordinary old white ones, cotton.
This bit of Drogheda is all right, isn't it?"
  "Bit of Drogheda?"
  "The rug! It's made of Drogheda
kangaroos," she explained. "Not nearly exotic
or erotic enough. I'll order you a tiger skin from
India."
  "Reminds me of a poem I heard once:
  Would you like to sin
  With Elinor Glyn
  On a tiger skin?
  Or would you prefer
  To err with her On some other fur?
  "Well, Herzchen, I must say it's high time you
bounced back! Between the demands of Eros and
Morpheus, you haven't been flippant in half
a day." He smiled.
  "I don't feel the need at the moment," she said
with an answering smile, settling his hand comfortably
between her legs. "The tiger skin doggerel just popped
out because it was too good to resist, but I haven't got
a single skeleton left to hide from you, so there's not
much point in flippancy, is there?" She sniffed,
suddenly aware of a faint odor of stale fish
drifting on the air. "Heavens, you didn't get
any dinner and now it's time for breakfast! I can't
expect you to live on love!"
  "Not if you expect such strenuous
demonstrations of it, anyway." "Go on, you enjoyed
every moment of it."
  "Indeed I did." He sighed, stretched,
yawned. "I wonder if you have any idea how
happy I am."
  "Oh, I think so," she said quietly:
  He raised himself on one elbow to look at her.
"Tell me, was Desdemona the only reason you
came back to London?"
  Grabbing his ear, she tweaked it painfully. "Now
it's my turn to pay you back for all those
headmasterish questions! What do you think?" He prized
her fingers away easily, grinning. "If you don't
answer me, Herzchen, I'll strangle you far more
permanently than Marc does." "I came back
to London to do Desdemona, but because of you. I
haven't been able to call my life my own since you
kissed me in Rome, and well you know it. You're a
very intelligent man, Rainer Moerling Hartheim."
  "Intelligent enough to have known I wanted you for my
wife almost the first moment I saw you," he said.
  She sat up quickly. "Wife?"
  "Wife. If I'd wanted you for my mistress
I'd have taken you years ago, and I could have. I know
how your mind works; it would have been
relatively easy. The only reason I didn't
was because I wanted you for my wife and I knew you
weren't ready to accept the idea of a husband."
  "I don't know that I am now," she said,
digesting it. He got to his feet, pulling her up
to stand against him. "Well, you can put in a little
practice by getting me some breakfast. If this was
my house I'd do the honors, but in your kitchen
you're the cook."
  "I don't mind getting your breakfast this
morning, but theoretically to commit myself until the day
I die?" She shook her head. "I don't think
that's my cup of tea, Rain."
  It was the same Roman emperor's face, and
imperially unperturbed by threats of insurrection.
"Justine, this is not something to play with, nor am I
someone to play with. There's plenty of time. You have every
reason to know I can be patient. But get it out of your
head entirely that this can be settled in any way but
marriage. I have no wish to be known as anyone
less important to you than a husband."
  "I'm not giving up acting!" she said
aggressively. "Verfluchte Kiste, did I
ask you to? Grow up, Justine! Anyone would think
I was condemning you to a life sentence over a
sink and stove! We're not exactly on the
breadline, you know. You can have as many servants as you
want, nannies for the children, whatever else is necessary."
  "Erk!" said Justine, who hadn't thought of children.
He threw back his head and laughed. "Oh,
Herzchen, this is what's known as the morning after with a
vengeance! I'm a fool to bring up realities. so
soon, I know, but all you have to do at this stage is
think about them. Though I give you fair warning-while
you're making
  your decision, remember that if I can't have you for
my wife, I don't want you at all."
  She threw her arms around him, clinging fiercely.
"Oh, Rain, don't make it so hard!" she
cried.
  Alone, Dane drove his Lagonda up the
Italian boot, past Perugia, Firenze,
Bologna, Ferrara, Padova, better by-pass
Venezia, spend the night in Trieste. It was one
of his favorite cities, so he stayed on the
Adriatic coast a further two days before heading
up the mountain road to Ljubljana, another night
in Zagreb. Down the great Sava River valley
amid fields blue with chicory flowers
to Beograd, thence to Nis, another night.
Macedonia and Skopje, still in crumbling ruins from
the earthquake two years before; and Tito-Veles the
vacation city, quaintly Turkish with its mosques
and minarets. All the way down Yugoslavia he
had eaten frugally, too ashamed to sit with a great
plate of meat in front of him when the people of the country
contented themselves with bread.
  The Greek border at Evzone, beyond it
Thessalonika. The Italian papers had been
full of the revolution brewing in Greece; standing in
his hotel bedroom window watching the bobbing thousands of
flaming torches moving restlessly in the darkness of a
Thessalonika night, he was glad Justine had not
come. "Pap-an-dre-out! Pap-an-dre-out!
Pap-an-dre-out!" the crowds roared, chanting,
milling among the torches until after midnight. But
revolution was a phenomenon of cities, of dense
concentrations of people and poverty; the scarred countryside
of Thessaly must still look as it had looked
to Caesar's legions, marching across the stubble-burned
fields to Pompey at Pharsala. Shepherds
slept in the shade of skin tents, storks stood
one-legged in nests atop little old white buildings,
and everywhere was a terrifying aridity. It reminded him,
with its high clear sky, its brown treeless
wastes, of Australia. And he
  breathed of it deeply, began to smile at the thought
of going home. Mum would understand, when he talked
to her.
  Above Larisa he came onto the sea, stopped
the car and got out. Homer's wine-dark sea, a
delicate clear aquamarine near the beaches,
purple-stained like grapes as it stretched to the curving
horizon. On a greensward far below him stood a
tiny round pillared temple, very white in the sun, and
on the rise of the hill behind him a frowning Crusader
fortress endured. Greece, you are very beautiful, more
beautiful than Italy, for all that I love
Italy. But here is the cradle, forever.
  Panting to be in Athens, he pushed on, gunned
the red sports car up the switchbacks of the
Domokos Pass and descended its other side
into Boeotia, a stunning panorama of olive
groves, rusty hillsides, mountains. Yet in
spite of his haste he stopped to look at the oddly
Hollywoodish monument to Leonidas and his
Spartans at Thermopylae. The stone said:
"Stranger, go tell the Spartans that here we lie,
in obedience to their command." It struck a chord in him,
almost seemed to be words he might have heard
in a different context; he shivered and went on
quickly.
  In melted sun he paused for a while above
Kamena Voura, swam in the clear water looking
across the narrow strait to Euboea; there must the thousand
ships have sailed from Aulis, on their way to Troy.
It was a strong current, swirling seaward; they must
not have had to ply their oars very hard. The ecstatic
cooings and strokings of the ancient black-garbed crone
in the bath- house embarrassed him; he douldn't
get away from her fast enough. People never referred
to his beauty to his face anymore, so most of the
time he was able to forget it. Delaying only to buy a
couple of huge, custard-filled cakes in the shop,
he went on down the Attic coast and finally came
to Athens as the sun was setting, gilding the great rock
and its precious crown of pillars.
  But Athens was tense and vicious, and the open
admiration of the women mortified him; Roman women
were more sophisticated, subtle. There was a feeling in
the crowds, pockets of rioting, grim determination
on the part of the people to have Papandreou. No, Athens
wasn't herself; better to be elsewhere. He put the
Lagonda in a garage and took the ferry
to Crete. And there at last, amid the
olive groves, the wild thyme and the mountains, he
found his peace. After a long bus ride with trussed
chickens screeching and the all-pervasive reek of
garlic in his nostrils, he found a tiny
white-painted inn with an arched colonnade and three
umbrellaed tables outside on the flagstones, gay
Greek bags hanging festooned like lanterns.
Pepper trees and Australian gum trees,
planted from the new South Land in soil too arid for
European trees. The gut roar of cicadas.
Dust, swirling in red clouds.
  At night he slept in a tiny cell-like room
with shutters wide open, in the hush of dawn he
celebrated a solitary Mass, during the day he
walked. No one bothered him; he bothered no one.
But as he passed the dark eyes of the peasants would
follow him in slow amazement, and every face would
crease deeper in a smile. It was hot, and so
quiet, and very sleepy. Perfect peace. Day
followed day, like beads slipping through a leathery
Cretan hand. Voicelessly he prayed, a
feeling, an extension of what lay all through him,
thoughts like beads, days like beads. Lord, I am
truly Thine. For Thy many blessings I thank Thee.
For the great Cardinal, his help, his deep
friendship, his unfailing love. For Rome and the chance
to be at Thy heart, to have lain prostrate before Thee
in Thine own basilica, to have felt the rock of Thy
Church within me. Thou hast blessed me above my
worth; what can I do for Thee, to show my
appreciation? I have not suffered enough. My life
has been one long, absolute joy since I
began in Thy service. I must suffer, and Thou Who
suffered will know that. It is only through
  suffering that I may rise above myself, understand Thee
better. For that is what this life is: the passage
toward understanding Thy mystery. Plunge Thy spear
into my breast, bury it there so deeply I am never
able to withdraw it! Make me suffer . . . . For
Thee I forsake all others, even my mother and my
sister and the Cardinal. Thou alone art my pain, my
joy. Abase me and I shall sing Thy beloved Name.
Destroy me, and I shall rejoice. I love Thee.
Only Thee. . .
  He had come to the little beach where he liked to swim,
a yellow crescent between beetling cliffs, and stood
for a moment looking across the Mediterranean to what must
be Libya, far below the dark horizon. Then he
leaped lightly down the steps to the sand, kicked off his
sneakers, picked them up, and trod through the
softly yielding contours to the spot where he usually
dropped shoes, shirt, outer shorts. Two young
Englishmen talking in drawling Oxford accents lay
like broiling lobsters not far away, and beyond them two
women drowsily speaking in German. Dane glanced
at the women and self-consciously hitched his
swimsuit, aware they had stopped conversing and had
sat up to pat their hair, smile at him.
  "How goes it?" he asked the Englishmen, though
in his mind he called them what all Australians
call the English, Pommies. They seemed to be
fixtures, since they were on the beach every day.
  "Splendidly, old boy. Watch the
current-it's too strong for us. Storm out there
somewhere."
  "Thanks." Dane grinned, ran down to the
innocently curling wavelets and dived cleanly
into shallow water like the expert Surfer he was.
Amazing, how deceptive calm water could be. The
current was vicious, he could feel it tugging at his
legs to draw him under, but he was too strong a
swimmer to be worried by it. Head down, he slid
smoothly through the water, reveling in the coolness, the
freedom. When he paused and scanned the beach he
saw the 631
  two German women pulling on their caps,
running down laughing to the waves. Cupping his hands
around his mouth, he called to them in German to stay in
shallow water because of the current. Laughing, they waved
acknowledgment. He put his head down then, swam
again, and thought he heard a cry. But he swam a little
farther, then stopped to tread water in a spot where the
undertow wasn't so bad. There were cries; as he
turned he saw the women struggling, their twisted
faces screaming, one with her hands up, sinking. On
the beach the two Englishmen had risen to their feet and
were reluctantly approaching the water.
  He flipped over onto his belly and flashed through
the water, closer and closer. Panicked arms reached
for him, clung to him, dragged him under; he managed
to grip one woman around the waist long enough to stun her
with a swift clip on the chin, then grabbed the other by the
strap of her swimsuit, shoved his knee hard into her
spine and winded her. Coughing, for he had swallowed
water when he went under, he turned on his back and
began towing his helpless burdens in.
  The two Pommies were standing shoulder-deep, too
frightened to venture any farther, for which Dane didn't
blame them in the least. His toes just touched the sand;
he sighed in relief. Exhausted, he
exerted a last superhuman effort and thrust the women
to safety. Fast regaining their senses, they began
screaming again, thrashing about wildly. Gasping,
Dane managed a grin. He had done his bit; the
Poms could take over now. While he rested, chest
heaving, the current had sucked him out again, his feet
no longer brushed the bottom even when he stretched
them downward. It had been a close call. If
he hadn't been present they would certainly have
drowned; the Poms hadn't the strength or skill
to save them. But, said a voice, they only wanted
to swim so they could be near you; until they saw you they

  hadn't any intention of going in. It was your
fault they were in danger, your fault.
  And as he floated easily a terrible pain
blossomed in his chest, surely as a spear would
feel, one long and red-hot shaft of screaming
agony. He cried out, threw his arms up above his
head, stiffening, muscles convulsed; but the pain grew
worse, forced his arms down again, thrust his fists
into his armpits, brought up his knees. My heart!
I'm having a heart attack, I'm dying! My
heart! I don't want to die! Not yet, not before
I've begun my work, not before I've had a
chance to prove myself! Dear Lord, help me! I
don't want to die, I don't want to die!
  The spasmed body stilled, relaxed; Dane
turned onto his back, let his arms float wide
and limp in spite of the pain. Wet-lashed, he stared
--up at the soaring vault of the sky. This is it; this
is Thy spear, that I in my pride begged for not an
hour ago. Give me the chance to suffer, I said,
make me suffer. Now when it comes I resist, not
capable of perfect love. Dearest Lord, Thy
pain! I must accept it, I must not fight it, I
must not fight Thy will. Thy hand is mighty and this is
Thy pain, as Thou must have felt it on the Cross.
My God, my God, I am Thine! If this is
Thy will, so be it. Like a child I put myself into Thy
infinite hand. Thou art too good to me. What have I
done to deserve so much from Thee, and from the people who love
me better than they love anyone else? Why bast
Thou given me so much, when I am not worthy? The
pain, the pain! Thou art so good to me. Let it not be
long, I asked, and it has not been long. My
suffering will be short, quickly over. Soon I shall see
Thy face, but now, still in this life, I thank Thee.
The pain! My dearest Lord, Thou art too good
to me. I love Thee! A huge tremor
passed through the still, waiting body. His lips moved,
murmured a Name, tried to smile. Then the pupils
dilated, drove all the blue from his eyes forever.
Safe on the beach at last, the two Englishmen

  dumped their weeping charges on the sand and stood
looking for him. But the placid deep blue sea was
empty, vast; the wavelets ran up rushing and
retreated. Dane was gone.
  Someone thought of the United States Air Force
station nearby, and ran for help. Not thirty minutes
after Dane had disappeared a helicopter took off,
beat the air frantically and swooped in ever-increasing
circles outward from the beach, searching. No one
expected to see anything. Drowned men sank to the
bottom and didn't come up for days. An hour
passed; then fifteen miles out to sea they sighted
Dane floating peacefully on the bosom of the
deep, arms outstretched., face turned up to the
sky. For a moment they thought he was alive and cheered,
but as the craft came low enough to throw the water
into hissing foam, it was plain he was dead. The
coordinates were given over the helicopter's
radio, a launch sped out, and three hours later
returned. Word had spread. The
Cretans had loved to see him pass, loved
to exchange a few shy words. Loved him, though they
didn't know him. They flocked down to the sea,
women all in black like dowdy birds, men in
old-fashioned baggy trousers, white shirts open
at the collar and sleeves rolled up. And stood in
silent groups, waiting.
  When the launch came in a burly master sergeant
sprang out onto the sand, turned back to receive a
blanket-draped form into his arms. He marched a
few fleet up the beach beyond the water line, andwiththe
help of another man laid his burden down. The
blanket fell apart; there was a high, rustling
whisper from the Cretans. They came crowding around,
pressing crucifixes to weather-beaten lips, the
women softly keening, a wordless ohhhhhhhh! that had
almost a melody in it, mournful, patient,
earthbound, female. It was about five in the afternoon; the
barred sun was sliding westward behind the frowning
cliff, but was 634
  still high enough to light up the little dark cluster on the
beach, the long, still form on the sand with its golden skin,
its closed eyes whose lashes were spiky from drying
salt, the faint smile on the blued lips. A
stretcher was brought forward, then all together
Cretans and American servicemen bore Dane
away.
  Athens was in turmoil, rioting crowds
overturning all order, but the USAF colonel
got through to his superiors on a special
frequency band, Dane's blue Australian
passport in his hand. It said, as such documents do,
nothing about him. His profession was simply marked
"Student," and in the back under next of kin
Justine's name was listed, with her London address.
Unconcerned by the legal meaning of the term, he had
put her name because London was far closer to Rome
than Drogheda. In his little room at the inn, the
square black case which housed his priestly
implements had not been opened; it waited with his
suitcase for directions as to where it should be sent.
  When the phone rang at nine in the morning
Justine rolled over, opened a bleary eye and lay
cursing it, vowing she would have the bloody thing
disconnected. Because the rest of the world thought it only right
and proper to commence whatever they did at nine in the
morning, why did they assume the same of her?
  But it rang, and rang, and rang. Maybe it was
Rain; that thought tipped the balance toward consciousness,
and Justine got up, slopped reeling out
to the living room. The German parliament was in
urgent session; she hadn't seen Rain in a week
and hadn't been optimistic about her chances of seeing
him for at least another week. But perhaps the crisis
had resolved, and he was calling to tell her he was
on his way over.
  "Hello?"
  "Miss Justine O'neill?"
  "Yes, speaking."
  "This is Australia House, in the Aldwych, you
  know?" The voice had an English inflection,
gave a name she was too tired to hear because she was still
assimilating the fact that the voice was not Rain's.
  "Okay, Australia House." Yawning, she
stood on one foot and scratched its top with the sole
of the other.
  "Do you have a brother, a Mr. Dane
O'neill?"
  Justine's eyes opened. "Yes, I do."
  "Is he at present in Greece, Miss
O'neill?"
  Both feet settled into the rug, stood braced.
"Yes, that's right," It did not occur to her
to correct the voice, explain it was Father, not
Mister. "Miss O'neill, I very much
regret to say that it is my unfortunate duty
to give you some bad news."
  "Bad news? Bad news? What is it?
What's the matter? What's happened?" "I
regret to have to inform you that your brother, Mr. Dane
O'neill, was drowned yesterday in Crete, I
understand in heroic circumstances, performing a sea
rescue. However, you realize there is a revolution
in Greece, and what information we have is sketchy and
possibly not accurate."
  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
brotherl
  "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, yesl"
  "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 onetwo-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 638
  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?"
  "No, not in Rome. The Cardinal
probably doesn't know anything about it. In
Crete. The man said he was drowned, a sea
rescue. He was on holiday, Mum, he asked
me to go with him and I didn't, I wanted to play
Desdemona, I wanted to be with Rain. If
I'd only been with him! If I had, it mightn't
have happened. Oh, God, what can I do?"
  "Stop it, Justine," said Meggie sternly.
"No thinking like that, do you hear me? Dane would hate
it, you know he would. Things happen, why we don't
know. The important thing now is that you're all right,
I haven't lost both of you. You're all I've
got left now. Oh, Jussy, Jussy, it's so
far away! The world's big, too big. Come home
to Drogheda! I hate to think of you all alone."
  "No, I've got to work. Work is the only
answer for me. If I don't work, I'll go
mad. I don't want people, I don't want comfort.
Oh, Mum!" She began to sob bitterly. "How
are we going to live without him?" How indeed? Was that
living? God's thou wert, unto God return.
Dust to dust. Living's for those of us who failed.
Greedy God, gathering in the good ones, leaving the world
to the rest of us, to rot. "It isn't for any of us
to say how long we'll live," said
Meggie. "Jussy, thank you so much for telling me
yourself, for phoning."
  "I couldn't bear to think of a stranger breaking the
news, Mum. Not like that, from a stranger. What will you
do? What can you do?" With all her will Meggie tried
to pour warmth and comfort across the miles to her devastated
girl in London. Her son was dead, her daughter
still lived. She must be made whole. If it was
possible. In all her life Justine seemed only
to have loved Dane. No one else, even herself.
"Dear Justine, don't cry. Try not to grieve.
He wouldn't have wanted that, now would he? Come home,
and forget. We'll bring Dane home to Drogheda,
too.
  At law he's mine again, he doesn't belong
to the Church and they can't stop me. I'll phone
Australia House right away, and the embassy in
Athens if I can get through. He must come home!
I'd hate to think of him lying somewhere far from
Drogheda. Here is where he belongs, he'll have to come
home. Come with him, Justine."
  But Justine sat in a heap, shaking her head as
if her mother could see. Come home? She could never come
home again. If she had gone with Dane he wouldn't
be dead. Come home, and have to look at her
mother's face every day for the rest of her life? No, it
didn't bear thinking of. "No, Mum," she said, the
tears rolling down her skin, hot like molten
metal. Who on earth ever said people most moved don't
weep? They don't know anything about it. "I shall stay
here and work. I'll come home with Dane, but then
I'm going back. I can't live on Drogheda."
  For three days they waited in a purposeless
vacuum, Justine in London, Meggie and the
family on Drogheda, stretching the official
silence into tenuous hope. Oh, surely after so long
it would turn out to be a mistake, surely if it was
true they would have heard by now! Dane would come-in
Justine's front door smiling, and say it was all
a silly mistake. Greece was in revolt, all
sorts of silly mistakes must have been made.
Dane woud come in the door and laugh the idea of his
death to scorn, he'd stand there tall and strong and
alive, and he'd laugh. Hope began to grow, and
grew with every minute they waited. Treacherous,
horrible hope. He wasn't dead, no! Not
drowned, not Dane who was a good enough swimmer to brave
any kind of sea and live. So they waited, not
acknowledging what had happened in the hope it would
prove to be a mistake. Time later
to notify people, let Rome know. On the fourth
morning Justine got the message. Like
  an old woman she picked up the receiver once
more, and asked for Australia. "Mum?"
  "Justine?"
  "Oh, Mum, they've buried him already; we can't
bring him home! What are we going to do? All they
can say is that Crete is a big place, the name
of the village isn't known, by the time the cable arrived
he'd already been spirited away somewhere and disposed of.
He's lying in an unmarked grave somewhere! I can't
get a visa for Greece, no one wants to help,
it's chaos. What are we going to do, Mum?"
  "Meet me in Rome, Justine," said Meggie.
  Everyone save Anne Mueller was there around the
phone, still in shock. The men seemed to have aged twenty
years in three days, and Fee, shrunken
birdlike, white and crabbed, drifted about the house
saying over and over, "Why couldn't it have been me?
Why did they have to take him? I'm so old, so
old! I wouldn't have minded going, why did it have to be
him? Why couldn't it have been me? I'm so old!"
Anne had collapsed, and Mrs. Smith, Minnie
and Cat walked, slept tears.
  Meggie stared at them silently as she
put the phone down. This was Drogheda, all that was
left. A little cluster of old men and old women,
sterile and broken.
  "Dane's lost," she said. "No one can find
him; he's been buried somewhere on Crete. It's
so far away! How could he rest so far from Drogheda?
I'm going to Rome, to Ralph de Bricassart.
If anyone can help us, he can."
  Cardinal de Bricassart's secretary entered
his room. "Your Eminence, I'm sorry to disturb
you, but a lady wishes to see you. I explained that
there is a congress, that you are very busy and cannot see
anyone, but she says she will sit in the vestibule
until you have time for her."
  "Is she in trouble, Father?" 642
  "Great trouble, Your Eminence, that commuch is easy
to see. She said I was to tell you her name is
Meggie O'neill." He gave it a lilting
foreign pronunciation, so that it came out sounding like
Meghee Onill. " Cardinal Ralph came
to his feet, the color draining from his face to leave
it as white as his hair.
  "Your Eminence! Are you ill?"
  "No, Father, I'm perfectly all right, thank
you. Cancel my appointments until I
notify you otherwise, and bring Mrs. O'neill
to me at once. We are not to be disturbed unless it
is the Holy Father."
  The priest bowed, departed. O'neill. Of
course! It was young Dane's name, he should have
remembered. Save that in the Cardinal's palace
everyone just said Dane. Ah, he had made a
grave mistake, keeping her waiting. If Dane
was His Eminence's dearly loved nephew then Mrs.
O'neill was his dearly loved sister.
  When Meggie came into the room Cardinal
Ralph hardly knew her. It was thirteen years
since he had last seen her; she was fifty-three and
he was seventy-one. Both of them aged now, instead of
only him. Her face hadn't changed so much as
settled, and into a mold unlike the one he had
given her in his imagination. Substitute a
trenchant incisiveness for sweetness, a touch of
iron for softness; she resembled a vigorous, aging,
willful martyour rather than the resigned,
contemplative saint of his dreams. Her beauty was
as striking as ever, her eyes still that clear silvery
grey, but both had hardened, and the once vivid hair
had faded to a drab beige, like Dane's without the
life. Most disconcerting of all, she
wouldn't look at him for long enough to satisfy his eager
and loving curiosity. Unable to greet this Meggie
naturally, he stiffly indicated a chair.
"Please sit down."
  "Thank you," she said, equally stilted.
  It was only when she was seated and he could gaze
down upon her whole person that he noticed how
visibly swollen her feet and ankles were.
  "Meggie! Have you flown all the way through from
Australia without breaking your journey? What's the
matter?"
  "Yes, I did fly straight through," she said.
"For the past twenty-nine hours I've been sitting
in planes between Gilly and Rome, with nothing to do
except stare out the window at the clouds, and think."
Her voice was harsh, cold.
  "What's the matter?" he repeated
impatiently, anxious and fearful. She lifted her
gaze from her feet and looked at him steadily. There
was something awful in her eyes; something so dark and
chilling that the skin on the back of his neck crawled
and automatically he put his hand up to stroke it.
  "Dane is dead," said Meggie.
  His hand slipped, flopped like a rag doll's
into his scarlet lap as he sank into a
chair. "Dead?" he asked slowly. "Dane
dead?" "Yes. He was drowned six days ago in
Crete, rescuing some women from the sea."
  He leaned forward, put his hands over his face.
"Dead?" she heard him say indistinctly.
"Dane dead? My beautiful boy! He can't be
dead! Dane-he was the perfect priest-all that I
couldn't be. What I lacked he had." His voice
broke. "He always had it-that was what we all
recognized-all of us who aren't perfect priests.
Dead? Oh, dear Lord!"
  "Don't bother about your dear Lord, Ralph,"
said the stranger sitting opposite him. "You have more
important things to do. I came to ask for your
help-not to witness your grief. I've had all those
hours in the air to go over the way I'd tell you this,
all those hours just staring out the window at the clouds
knowing Dane is dead. After that, your grief has no
power to move me."
  Yet when he lifted his face from his hands her dead
cold heart bounded, twisted, leaped. It was
Dane's face, with a suffering written upon it that
Dane would never live to feel. Oh, thank God!
Thank God he's dead, can never now go through what this
man has, what I have. Better he's
dead than to suffer something like this.
  "How can I help, Meggie?" he asked
quietly, suppressing his own emotions to don the
soul-deep guise of her spiritual counselor.
"Greece is in chaos. They've buried Dane
somewhere on Crete, and I can't find out where, when,
why. Except I suppose that my instructions
directing that he be flown home were endlessly delayed
by the civil war, and Crete is hot like
Australia. When no one claimed him, I
suppose they thought he had no one, and buried him."
She leaned forward in her chair tensely. "I want
my boy back, Ralph, I want him found and
brought home to sleep where he belongs, on
Drogheda. I promised Jims I'd keep him
on Drogheda and I will, if I have to crawl on my
hands and knees through every graveyard on Crete. No
fancy Roman priest's tomb for him, Ralph,
not as long as I'm alive to put up a legal
battle. He's to come home."
  "No one is going to deny you that, Meggie," he
said gently. "It's consecrated Catholic ground,
which is all the Church asks. I too have requested
that I be buried on Drogheda."
  "I can't get through all the red tape,"
she went on, as if he hadn't spoken. "I can't
speak Greek, and I have no power or influence. So
I came to you, to use yours. Get me back my
son, Ralph!"
  "Don't worry, Meggie, we'll get him
back, though it may not be very quickly. The- Left are
in charge now, and they're very anti-Catholic.
However, I'm not without friends in Greece, so it will be
done. Let me start the wheels in motion immediately, and
don't worry. He is a priest of the Holy
Catholic Church, we'll get him back."
  His hand had gone to the bell cord, but Meggie's
coldly fierce gaze stilled it.
  "You don't understand, Ralph. I don't want
wheels set in motion. I want my son back-not
next week or next month, but now! You speak
Greek, you can get visas for yourself and me, you'll
get results. I want you to come to Greece with me
now, and help me get my son back."
  There was much in his eyes: tenderness, compassion,
shock, grief. But they had become the priest's
eyes too, sane, logical, reasonable.
"Meggie, I love your son as if he were my own,
but I can't leave Rome at the moment. I'm not a
free agent-you above all others should know
that. No matter how much I may feel for you, how
much I may feel on my own account, I can't
leave Rome in the midst of a vital congress. I
am the Holy Father's aide."
  She reared back, stunned and outraged, then shook
her head, half-smiling as if at the antics of some
inanimateobject beyond her power to influence; then she
trembled, licked her lips, seemed to come to a
decision and sat up straight and stiff. "Do you
really love my son as if he were your own,
Ralph?" she asked. "What would you do for a son of
yours? Could you sit back then and say to his mother,
No, I'm very sorry, I can't possibly take
the time off? Could you say that to the mother of your son?"
Dane's eyes, yet not Dane's eyes. Looking
at her; bewildered, full of pain, helpless.
  "I have no son," he said, "but among the many, many
things I learned from yours was that no matter how hard it
is, my first and only allegiance is to Almighty
God."
  "Dane was your son too," said Meggie.
  He stared at her blankly. "What?"
  "I said, Dane was your son too. When I
left Matlock Island I was pregnant. Dane
was yours, not Luke O'neill's."
  "It-isn't-true!"
  "I never intended you to know, even now," she said.
"Would I lie to you?" "To get Dane back?
Yes," he said faintly.
  She got up, came to stand over him in the red
brocade chair, took his thin, parchmentlike hand in
hers, bent and kissed the ring, the breath of her voice
misting its ruby to milky dullness. "By all that you
hold holy, Ralph, I swear that Dane was your
son. He was not and could not have been Luke's. By his
death I swear it."
  There was a wail, the sound of a soul passing between the
portals of Hell. Ralph de Bricassart
fell forward out of the chair and wept, huddled on the
crimson carpet in a scarlet pool like new
blood, his face hidden in his folded arms, his hands
clutching at his hair.
  "Yes, cry!" said Meggie. "Cry, now that you
know! It's right that one of his parents be able to shed tears
for him. Cry, Ralph! For twenty-six years I
had your son and you didn't even know it, you couldn't
even see it. Couldn't see that he was you all over
again! When my mother took him from me at birth she
knew, but you never did. Your hands, your. feet, your
face, your eyes, your body. Only the
color of his hair was his own; all the rest was you. Do
you understand now? When I sent him here to you, I said it
in my letter. "What I stole, I give back."
Remember? Only we both stole, Ralph. We
stole what you had vowed to God, and we've both had
to pay."
  She sat in her chair, implacable and unpitying,
and watched the scarlet form in its agony on the
floor. "I loved you, Ralph, but you were never
mine. What I had of you, I was driven to steal.
Dane was my part, all I could get from you. I vowed
you'd never know, I vowed you'd never have the chance to take
him away from me. And then he gave himself to you, of his
own free will. The image of the perfect priest, he
called you. What a laugh I had over that one! But
not for anything
  would I have given you a weapon like knowing he was yours.
Except for this. Except for this! For nothing less
would I have told you. Though I don't suppose it
matters now. He doesn't belong to either of us
anymore. He belongs to God."
  Cardinal de Bricassart chartered a private
plane in Athens; he, Meggie and Justine brought
Dane home to Drogheda, the living sitting
silently, the dead lying silently on a
bier, requiring nothing of this earth anymore. I have
to say this Mass, this Requiem for my son. Bone
of my bone, my son. Yes, Meggie, I
believe you. Once I had my breath back I would
even have believed you without that terrible oath you swore.
Vittorio knew the minute he set eyes on the
boy, and in my heart I, too, must have known. Your
laugh behind the roses from the boy-but my eyes looking
up at me, as they used to be in my innocence. Fee
knew. Anne Mueller knew. But not we men.
We weren't fit to be told. For so you women think,
and hug your mysteries, getting
  your backs on us for the slight God did you in not
creating you in His Image. Vittorio knew, but it
was the woman in him stilled his tongue. A masterly
revenge.
  Say it, Ralph de Bricassart, open your
mouth, move
  your hands in the blessing, begin to chant the Latin for the
soul of the departed. Who was your son. Whom you loved
more than you loved his mother. Yes, more! For he was yourself
all over again, in a more perfect mold. "In
Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus
Sancti . . ."
  The chapel was packed; they were all there
who could be there. The Kings, the O'Rourkes, the
Davieses, the Pughs, the MacQueens, the
Gordons, the Car- michaels, the Hopetons.
And the Clearys, the Drogheda people. Hope blighted,
light gone. At the front in a great lead-lined
casket, Father Dane O'neill, covered 648
  in roses. Why were the roses always out when he
came back to Drogheda? It was October, high
spring. Of course they were out. The time was right.
"Sanctus . . . Sanctus . . . Sanctus
. . ."
  Be warned that the Holy of Holies is upon you.
My Dane, my beautiful son. It is better
so. I wouldn't have wanted you to come to this, what I already
am. Why I say this for you, I don't know. You
don't need it, you never needed it. What I grope
for, you knew by instinct. It isn't you who is
unhappy, it's those of us here, left behind. Pity us,
and when our times come, help us. "7te, Missa
est . . . Requiescat in pace ...."
  Out across the lawn, down past the ghost gums, the
roses, the pepper trees, to the cemetery. Sleep
on, Dane, because only the good die young. Why do we
mourn? You're lucky, to have escaped this weary life
so soon. Perhaps that's what Hell is, a
long term in earth-bound bondage. Perhaps we suffer
our hells in living ....
  The day passed, the mourners departed, the Drogheda
people crept about the house and avoided each other;
Cardinal Ralph looked early at Meggie, and
could not bear to look again. Justine left with Jean and
Boy King to catch the afternoon plane for Sydney, the
night plane for London. He never remembered
hearing her husky bewitching voice, or seeing those
odd pale eyes. From the time when she had met him and
Meggie in Athens to the time when she went with Jean and
Boy King she had been like a ghost, her camouflage
pulled closely around her. Why hadn't she called
Rainer Hartheim, asked him to be with her? Surely
she knew how much he loved her, how much he would
want to be with her now? But the thought never stayed long
enough in Cardinal Ralph's tired mind to call
Rainer himself, though he had wondered about it off and on
since before leaving Rome. They were strange, the
Drogheda people. They didn't like company in grief;
they preferred to be alone with their pain.
  Only Fee and Meggie sat with Cardinal
Ralph in the drawing room after a dinner left
uneaten. No one said a word; the ormolu clock
on the marble mantel ticked thunderously, and
Mary Carson's painted eyes stared a mute
challenge across the room to Fee's grandmother. Fee and
Meggie sat together on a cream sofa, shoulders
lightly touching; Cardinal Ralph never remembered
their being so close in the old days. But they said
nothing, did not look at each other or at him.
  He tried to see what it was he had done wrong.
Too much wrong, that was the trouble. Pride,
ambition, a certain unscrupulousness. And love for
Meggie flowering among them. But the crowning glory of
that love he had never known. What difference would it have
made to know his son was his son? Was it possible
to love the boy more than he had? Would he have pursued
a different path if he had known about his son?
Yes! cried his heart. No, sneered his brain.
  He turned on himself bitterly. Fool! You ought
to have known Meggie was incapable of going back
to Luke. You ought to have known at once whose child Dane
was. She was so proud of him! All she could get from
you, that was what she said to you in Rome. Well,
Meggie. . . . In him you got the best of it.
Dear God, Ralph, how could you not have known he was
yours? You ought to have realized it when he came to you a
man grown, if not before. She was waiting for you to see
it, dying for you to see it; if only you had,
she would have gone on her knees to you. But you were blind.
You didn't want to see. Ralph Raoul,
Cardinal de Bricassart, that was what you wanted;
more than her, more than your son. More than your son!
  The room had become filled with tiny cries,
rustles, whispers; the clock was ticking in time with his
heart. And then it wasn't in time anymore. He
had got out of step with it. Meggie and Fee were
swimming to their feet, drifting with frightened faces in
a watery insub- 650
  stantial mist, saying things to him he couldn't
seem to hear. "Aaaaaaah!" he cried, understanding.
  He was hardly conscious of the pain, intent only
on Meggie's arms around him, the way his head sank
against her. But he managed to turn until he could
see her eyes, and looked at her. He tried
to say, Forgive me, and saw she had forgiven him
long ago. She knew she had got the best of it.
Then he wanted to say something so perfect she would be
eternally consoled, and realized that wasn't necessary, either.
Whatever she was, she could bear anything. Anything!
So he closed his eyes and let himself feel, that last
time, forgetfulness in Meggie.
  SEVEN
  1965-1969 justine
  Sitting at his Bonn desk with an early-morning
cup of coffee, Rainer learned of Cardinal de
Bricassart's death from his newspaper. The
political storm of the past few weeks was
diminishing at last, so he had settled to enjoy his
reading with the prospect of soon seeing Justine
to color his mood, and unperturbed by her recent
silence. That he deemed typical; she was far from
ready yet to admit the extent of her commitment to him.
But the news of the Cardinal's death drove all thought
of Justine away. Ten minutes later he was behind the
wheel of a Mercedes 280 SL, heading for the
autobahn. The poor old man Vittorio would be
so alone, and his burden was heavy at the best of times.
Quicker to drive; by the time he fiddled around waiting for a
flight, got to and from airports, he could be at the
Vatican. And it was something positive to do, something
he could control himself, always an important
consideration to a man like him. From Cardinal
Vittorio he learned the whole story, too
shocked at first to wonder why Justine hadn't thought
to contact him. "He came to me and asked me, did
I know Dane was his son?" the gentle voice said,
while the gentle hands smoothed the blue-grey back
of Natasha.
  "And you said?"
  "I said I had guessed. I could not tell him
more. But oh, his face! His face! I wept."
  "It killed him, of course. The last time I
saw him I thought he wasn't well, but he laughed
at my suggestion that he see a doctor."
  "It is as God wills. I think Ralph de
Bricassart was one of the most tormented men I have ever
known. In death he will find the peace he could not find
here in this life."
  "The boy, Vittorio! A tragedy."
  "Do you think so? I like rather to think of it as
beautiful. I cannot believe Dane found death
anything but welcome, and it is not surprising that Our
Dear Lord could not wait a moment longer to gather
Dane unto Himself. I mourn, yes, not for the boy.
For his mother, who must suffer so much! And for his sister, his
uncles, his grandmother. No, I do not mourn for him.
Father O'neill lived in almost total purity of
mind and spirit. What could death be for him but the entrance
into everlasting life? For the rest of us, the passage is
not so easy."
  From his hotel Rainer dispatched a cable to London
which he couldn't allow to convey his anger, hurt or
disappointment. It merely said: MUST
RETURN BONN BUT WILL BE IN LONDON
WEEKEND STOP WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL
ME QUERY ALL MY LOVE RAIN
  On his desk in the office at Bonn were an
express delivery letter from Justine, and a registered
packet which his secretary informed him had come from
Cardinal de Bricassart's lawyers in Rome.
He opened this first, to learn that under the terms of
Ralph de Bricassart's will he was to add another
company to his alreadv formidable list of
directorships. Michar Limited. And Drogheda.
Exasperated yet curiously touched, he understood
that this was the Cardinal's wav of telling him that in the
final weighing he had not been found wanting, that com^th
prayers during the war. years had
  borne fruit. Into Rainer's hands he had
delivered the future welfare of Meggie
O'neill and her people. Or so Rainer interpreted
it, for the wording of the Cardinal's will was quite impersonal.
It could not dare be otherwise. He threw the packet
into the basket for general nonsecret
correspondence, immediate reply, and opened the letter from
Justine. It began badly, without any kind of
salutation.
  Thank you for the cable. You've no idea
how glad I am that we haven't been in touch these
last couple of weeks, because I would have hated to have you
around. At the time all I could think when I thought of
you was, thank God you didn't know. You may find
this hard to understand, but I don't want you anywhere near
me. There is nothing pretty about grief, Rain,
nor any way your witnessing mine could alleviate
it. Indeed, you might say this has proved to me how
little I love you. If I did truly love you
I'd turn to you instinc- tively, wouldn't I? But
I find myself turning away. Therefore I would much rather
that we call it quits for good and all, Rain. I have
nothing to give you, and I want nothing from you. This has
taught me how much people mean if they're around for
twenty-six years. I couldn't bear ever to go through this
again, and you said it yourself, remember? Marriage or
nothing. Well, I elect nothing.
  My mother tells me the old Cardinal died a
few hours after I left Drogheda. Funny.
Mum was quite cut up about his dying. Not that she said
anything, but I know her. Beats me why she and
Dane and you liked him so much. I never could, I
thought he was too smarmy for words. An opinion
I'm not prepared to change just because he's dead.
  And that's it. All there is. Ido mean
what I say, Rain. Nothing is what I elect
to have from you. Look after yourself.
  She had signed it with the usual bold, black
"Justine," and it was written with the new felt-tipped
pen she had hailed so gleefully when he gave it
to her, as an instrument thick and dark and positive enough
to satisfy her. He didn't fold the note and
put it in his wallet, or burn it; he did what
he did with all mail not requiring an answer-ran
it through the electric shredder fixed to his
wastebasket the minute he had finished reading it.
Thinking to himself that Dane's death had effectively
put an end to Justine's emotional awakening, and
bitterly unhappy. It wasn't fair. He had
waited so long.
  At the weekend he flew to London anyway but
not to see her, though he did see her. On the
stage, as the Moor's beloved wife,
Desdemona. Formidable. There was nothing he could do
for her the stage couldn't, not for a while. That's my good
girl! Pour it all out on the stage.
  Only she couldn't pour it all out on the stage,
for she was too young to play Hecuba. The stage was
simply the one place offering peace and forgetfulness.
She could only tell herself: Time heals
all woundswhile not believing it. Asking herself why it
should go on hurting so. When Dane was alive she
hadn't really thought very much about him except when she was
with him, and after they were grown up their time together had been
limited, their vocations almost opposed. But his going
had created a gap so huge she despaired of ever
filling it.
  The shock of having to pull herself up in the midst
of a spontaneous reaction-I must remember to tell
Dane about this, he'll get such a kick out of it-that
was what hurt the most. And because it kept on occur-

  ring so often, it prolonged the grief. Had the
circumstances surrounding his death been less
horrifying she might have recovered more quickly, but the
nightmare events of those few days remained vivid.
She missed him unbearably; her mind would return
again and again to the incredible fact of Dane dead,
Dane who would never come back.
  Then there was the conviction that she hadn't helped him
enough. Everyone save her seemed to think he was
perfect, didn't experience the troubles other men
did, but Justine knew he had been plagued
by doubts, had tormented himself with his own unworthiness,
had wondered what people could see in him beyond the
face and the body. Poor Dane, who never seemed
to understand that people loved his goodness. Terrible to remember it
was too late to help him now.
  She also grieved for her mother. If his dying could do
this to her, what must it have done to Mum? The thought made
her want to run screaming and crying from memory,
consciousness. The picture of the Unks in Rome for
his ordination, puffing out their proud chests like pouter
pigeons. That was the worst of all, visualizing the
empty desolation of her mother and the other Drogheda people.
  Be honest, Justine. Was this honestly the worst?
Wasn't there something far more disturbing? She couldn't
push the thought of Rain away, or what she felt as
her betrayal of Dane. To gratify her own
desires she had sent Dane to Greece alone,
when to have gone with him might have meant life for him.
There was no other way to see it. Dane had died because
of her selfish absorption in Rain. Too late
now to bring her brother back, but if in never seeing
Rain again she could somehow atone, the hunger and the
loneliness would be well worth it.
  So the weeks went by, and then the months. A
year, two years. Desdemona, Ophelia,
Portia, Cleopatra. From the very beginning she
flattered herself she be-
  haved outwardly as if nothing had happened to ruin
her world; she took exquisite care in speaking,
laughing, relating to people quite normally. If there was a
change, it was in that she was kinder than of yore, for
people's griefs tended to affect her as if they were her
own. But, all told, she was the same outward
Justineflippant, exuberant, brash, detached,
acerbic. Twice she tried to go home to Drogheda
on a visit, the second time even going so far as
to pay for her plane ticket. Each time an
enormously important lastminute reason why she
couldn't go cropped up, but she knew the real reason
to be a combination of guilt and cowardice. She just
wasn't able to nerve herself to confront her mother; to do so
meant the whole sorry tale would come out, probably
in the midst of a noisy storm of grief she had so
far managed to avoid. The Drogheda people, especially
her mother, must continue to go about secure in their conviction
that Justine at any rate was all right, that Justine
had survived it relatively unscathed. So,
better to stay away from Drogheda. Much better.
  Meggie caught herself on a sigh, suppressed
it. If her bones didn't ache so much she might have
saddled a horse and ridden, but today the mere thought of it
was painful. Some other time, when her
arthritis didn't make its presence felt so
cruelly.
  She heard a car, the thump of the brass ram's
head on the front door, heard voices
murmuring, her mother's tones, footsteps. Not
Justine, so what did it matter?
  "Meggie," said Fee from the veranda entrance, "we
have a visitor. Could you come inside, please?"
  The visitor was a distinguished-looking fellow in
early middle age, though he might have been younger
than he appeared. Very different from any man she had
ever seen, except that he possessed the same sort
of power and self-confidence Ralph used to have. Used
to have. That most final of tenses, now truly final.
  "Meggie, this is Mr. Rainer Hartheim," said
Fee, standing beside her chair. "Oh!" exclaimed
Meggie involuntarily, very surprised at the look
of the Rain who had figured so largely in Justine's
letters from the old days. Then, remembering her
manners, "Do sit down, Mr. Hartheim."
  He too was staring, startled. "You're not a bit like
Justine!" he said rather blankly.
  "No, I'm not." She sat down facing him.
  "I'll leave you alone with Mr. Hartheim,
Meggie, as he says he wants to see
you privately. When you're ready for tea you might
ring," Fee commanded, and departed.
  "You're Justine's German friend, of course,"
said Meggie, at a loss. He pulled out his
cigarette case. "May I?"
  "Please do."
  "Would you care for one, Mrs. O'neill?"
  "Thank you, no. I don't smoke." She
smoothed her dress. "You're a long way from
home, Mr. Hartheim. Have you business in
Australia?" He smiled, wondering what she would
say if she knew that he was, in effect, the master
of Drogheda. But he had no intention of telling her,
for he preferred all the Drogheda people to think their
welfare lay in the completely impersonal hands of the
gentleman he employed to act as his go-between.
  "Please, Mrs. O'neill, my name is
Rainer," he said, giving it the same pronunciation
Justine did, while thinking wryly that this woman
wouldn't use it spontaneously for some time to come; she
was not one to relax with strangers. "No, I don't
have any official business in Australia, but I do
have a good reason for coming. I wanted to see you."
  "To see me?" she asked in surprise. As if
to cover sudden confusion, she went immediately
to a safer subject: "My brothers speak of you
often. You were very kind to them while they were in Rome for
Dane's
  ordination." She said Dane's name without distress,
as if she used it frequently. "I hope you can
stay a few days, and see them."
  "1 can, Mrs. O'neill;" he answered
easily.
  For Meggie the interview was proving
unexpectedly awkward; he was a stranger, he had
announced that he had come twelve thousand miles
simply to see her, and apparently he was in no
hurry to enlighten her as to why. She thought she would end
in liking him, but she found him slightly
intimidating. Perhaps his kind of man had never come within
her ken before, and this was why he threw her off-balance.
A very novel conception of Justine entered her mind
at that moment: her daughter could actually relate
easily to men like Rainer Moerling Hartheim! She
thought of Justine as a fellow woman at last.
Though aging and white-haired she was still very beautiful,
he was thinking while she sat gazing at him
politely; he was still surprised that she looked not
at all like Justine, as Dane had so strongly
resembled the Cardinal. How terribly
lonely she must be! Yet he couldn't feel sorry
for her in the way he did for Justine; clearly, she
had come to terms with herself. "How is Justine?" she
asked.
  He shrugged. "I'm afraid I don't know.
I haven't seen her since before Dane died."
  She didn't display astonishment. "I haven't
seen her myself since Dane's funeral," she said,
and sighed. "I'd hoped she would come home, but it
begins to look as if she never will."
  He made a soothing noise which she didn't
seem to hear, for she went on speaking, but in a
different voice, more to herself than to him. "Drogheda
is like a home for the aged these days," she said. "We
need young blood, and Justine's is the only young
blood left."
  Pity deserted him; he leaned forward quickly,
eyes glittering. "You speak of her as if she is a
chattel of
  Drogheda," he said, his voice now harsh. "I
serve you notice, Mrs. O'neill, she is
not!"
  "What right have you to judge what Justine is or
isn't?" she asked angrily. "After all, you said
yourself that you haven't seen her since before
Dane died, and that's two years ago!"
  "Yes, you're right. It's all of two years
ago." He spoke more gently, realizing afresh
what her life must be like. "You bear it very well,
Mrs. O'neill."
  "Do I?" she asked, tightly trying to smile,
her eyes never leaving his. Suddenly he began
to understand what the Cardinal must have seen in her to have
loved her so much. It wasn't in Justine, but then
he himself was no Cardinal Ralph; he looked for
different things. "Yes, you bear it very well," he
repeated.
  She caught the undertone at once, and flinched.
"How do you know about Dane and Ralph?" she asked
unsteadily.
  "I guessed. Don't worry, Mrs.
O'neill, nobody else did. I guessed because
I knew the Cardinal long before I met Dane.
In Rome everyone thought the Cardinal was your brother,
Dane's uncle, but Justine disillusioned me about that
the first time I ever met her."
  "Justine? Not Justine!" Meggie cried.
  He reached out to take her hand, beating frantically
against her knee. "No, no, no, Mrs.
O'neill! Justine has absolutely
no idea of it, and I pray she never will! Her
slip was quite unintentional, believe me."
  "You're sure?"
  "Yes, I swear it."
  "Then in God's Name why doesn't she come
home? Why won't she come to see me? Why can't
she bring herself to look at my face?" Not only her
words but the agony in her voice told him what had
tormented Justine's mother about her absence these last
two years. His own mission's impor-
  tance dwindled; now he had a new one, to allay
Meggie's fears. "For that 1 am to blame," he
said firmly.
  "You?" asked Meggie, bewildered.
  "Justine had planned to go to Greece with Dane,
and she's convinced that had she, he'd still be alive."
  "Nonsense!" said Meggie.
  "Q. But though we know it's nonsense, Justine
doesn't. It's up to you to make her see it."
  "Up to me? You don't understand, Mr. Hartheim.
Justine has never listened to me in all her life,
and at this stage any influence I might once have had
is completely gone. She doesn't even want
to see my face."
  Her tone was defeated but not abject.
"I fell into the same trap my mother did," she
went on matter-offactly. "Drogheda is my
life . . . the house, the books . . . . Here
I'm needed, there's still some purpose in living. Here
are people who rely on me. My children never did, you
know. Never did." "That's not true, Mrs.
O'neill. If it was, Justine could come home
to you without a qualm. You underestimate the quality of the
love she bears you. When I say I am to blame
for what Justine is going through, I mean that she
remained in London because of me, to be with me. But it
is for you she suffers, not for me."
  Meggie stiffened. "She has no right to suffer for
me! Let her suffer for herself if she must, but not for
me. Never for me!" "Then you believe me when I
say she has no idea of Dane and the Cardinal?"
Her manner changed, as if he had reminded her there
were other things at stake, and she was losing sight of
them. "Yes," she said, "I believe you." "I
came to see you because Justine needs your help and cannot
ask for it," he announced. "You must convince her she
needs to take up the threads of her life again-not a
Drogheda life, but her own life, which has nothing
to do with Drogheda."
  He leaned back in his chair, crossed
his legs and lit another cigarette. "Justine has
donned some kind of hair shirt, but for all the wrong
reasons. If anyone can make her see it, you can.
Yet I warn you that if you choose to do so she will never
come home, whereas if she goes on the way she is,
she may well end up returning here permanently.
  "The stage isn't enough for someone like Justine," he
went on, "and the day is coming when she's going to realize
that. Then she's going to opt for peopleeither her
family and Drogheda, or me." He smiled at
her with deep understanding. "But people are not enough for Justine
either, Mrs. O'neill. If Justine chooses
me, she can have the stage as well, and that bonus
Drogheda cannot offer her." Now he was gazing at her
sternly, as if at an adversary. "I came to ask
you to make sure she chooses me. It may seem
cruel to say this, but I need her more than you
possibly could."
  The starch was back in Meggie. "Drogheda isn't
such a bad choice," she countered. "You speak as if
it would be the end of her life, but it doesn't mean that
at all, you know. She could have the stage. This is a
true com- munity. Even if she married Boy
King, as his grandfather and I have hoped for years, her children
would be as well cared for in her absences as
they would be were she married to you. This is her home!
She knows and understands this kind of life. If she
chose it, she'd certainly be very well aware what was
involved. Can you say the same for the sort of life
you'd offer her?" "No," he said stolidly. "But
Justine thrives on surprises. On Drogheda
she'd stagnate."
  "What you mean is, she'd be unhappy here."
  "No, not exactly. I have no doubt that if she
elected to return here, married this Boy King-who
is this Boy King, by the way?" "The heir to a
neighboring property, Bugela, and an old
childhood friend who would like to be more than a friend. His
grandfather wants the marriage for dy-
  nastic reasons; I want it because I think it's
what Jus tice needs." . "I see. Well,
if she returned here and married Boy King, she'd
learn to be happy. But happiness is a relative
state. I don't think she would ever know the kind of
satisfaction she would find with me. Because, Mrs.
O'neill, Justine loves me, not Boy King."
  "Then she's got a very strange way of showing it,"
said Meggie, pulling the bell rope for tea.
"Besides, Mr. Hartheim, as I said earlier, I
think you overestimate my influence with her.
Justine has never taken a scrap of notice of
anything I say, let alone want."
  "You're nobody's fool," he answered. "You
know you can do it if you want to. I can ask no more
than that you think about what I've said. Take your
time, there's no hurry. I'm a patient man."
  Meggie smiled. "Then you're a rarity," she
said. He didn't broach the subject again, nor
did she. During the week of his stay he behaved like
any other guest, though Meggie had a feeling he was
trying to show her what kind of man he was. How much
her brothers liked him was clear; from the moment word
reached the paddocks of his arrival, they all came in
and stayed in until he left for Germany. Fee
liked him, too; her eyes had deteriorated to the
point where she could no longer keep the books, but she
was far from senile. Mrs. Smith had died in her
sleep the previous winter, not before her due time, and
rather than inflict a new housekeeper on Minnie and
Cat, both old but still hale, Fee had passed the
books completely to Meggie and more or less filled
Mrs. Smith's place herself. It was Fee who first
realized Rainer was a direct link with that part of
Dane's life no one on Drogheda had ever had
opportunity to share, so she asked him
to speak of it. He obliged gladly, having quickly
noticed that none of the Drogheda people were at all
reluctant to talk of Dane, and derived great
pleasure from listening to new tales about him.
  Behind her mask of politeness Meggie couldn't
get away from what Rain had told her, couldn't
stop dwelling on the choice he had offered her. She
had long since given up hope of Justine's
return, only to have him almost guarantee it, admit
too that Justine would be happy if she did
return. Also, for one other thing she had to be
intensely grateful to him: he had laid the ghost of
her fear that somehow Justine had discovered the link between
Dane and Ralph.
  As for marriage to Rain, Meggie didn't see
what she could do to push Justine where apparently she
had no desire to go. Or was it that she didn't
want to see? She had ended in liking Rain very much,
but his happiness couldn't possibly matter as much
to her as the welfare of her daughter, of the Drogheda
people, and of Drogheda itself. The crucial question was, how
vital to Justine's future happiness was Rain?
In spite of his contention that Justine loved him,
Meggie couldn't remember her daughter ever saying
anything which might indicate that Rain held
the same sort of importance for her as Ralph had
done for Meggie.
  "I presume you will see Justine sooner or
later," Meggie said to Rain when she drove him to the
airport. "When you do, I'd rather you didn't mention
this visit to Drogheda."
  "If you prefer," he said. "I would only ask
you to think about what I've said, and take your time."
But even as he made his request, he couldn't help
feeling that Meggie had reaped far more benefit from his
visit than he had.
  When the mid-April came that was two and a half
years after Dane's death, Justine experienced an
overwhelming desire to see something that wasn't rows of
houses, too many sullen disp. Suddenly on this
beautiful day of soft spring air and chilly sun,
urban London was intolerable. So she took a
District Line train to Kew Gardens, pleased that
it was a Tuesday and she
  would have the place almost to herself. Nor was she working that
night, so it didn't matter if she exhausted herself
tramping the byways.
  She knew the park well, of course. London
was a joy to any Drogheda person, with its masses
of formal flower beds, but Kew was in a
class all its own. In the old days she used
to haunt it from April to the end of October, for every
month had a different floral display to offer.
  Mid-April was her favorite time, the period
of daffodils and azaleas and flowering trees. There was
one spot she thought could lay some claim to being one of the
world's loveliest sights on a small, intimate
scale, so she sat down on the damp ground, an
audience of one, to drink it in. As far as the eye
could see stretched a sheet of daffodils; in
mid-distance the nodding yellow horde of bells flowed
around a great flowering almond, its branches so
heavy with white blooms they dipped downward in arching
falls as perfect and still as a Japanese painting.
Peace. It was so hard to come by. And then, her head
far back to memorize the absolute beauty of the
laden almond amid its rippling golden sea,
something far less beautiful intruded. Rainer
Moerling Hartheim, of all people, threading his careful
way through clumps of daffodils, his bulk shielded
from the chilly breeze by the inevitable German leather
coat, the sun glittering in his silvery hair.
  "You'll get a cold in your kidneys," he
said, taking off his coat and spreading it lining side
up on the ground so they could sit on it.
"How did you find me here?" she asked, wriggling
onto a brown satin corner. "Mrs. Kelly
told me you had gone to Kew. The rest was easy.
I just walked until I found you."
  "I suppose you think I ought to be falling all
over you in gladness, tra-la?"
  "Are you?"
  "Same old Rain, answering a question with a ques-

  tion. No, I'm not glad to see you. I thought
I'd managed to make you crawl up a hollow log
permanently."
  "It's hard to keep a good man up a hollow
log permanently. How are you?" "I'm all right."
  "Have you licked your wounds enough?"
  [*reg] [*macr]
  No.
  "Well, that's to be expected, I suppose.
But I began to realize that once you had dismissed me
you'd never again humble your pride to make the first move
toward reconciliation. Whereas I, Herzchen, am
wise enough to know that pride makes a very lonely
bedfellow."
  "Don't go getting any ideas about kicking it out
to make room for yourself, Rain, because I'm
warning you, I am not taking you on in that capacity."
"I don't want you in that capacity anymore."
  The promptness of his answer irritated her, but
she adopted a relieved air and said, "Honestly?"
  "If I did, do you think I could have borne
to keep away from you so long? You were a passing fancy
in that way, but I still think of you as a dear friend, and
miss you as a dear friend."
  "Oh, Rain, so do I!"
  "That's good. Am I admitted as a friend, then?"
"Of course."
  He lay back on the coat and put his arms behind
his head, smiling at her lazily. "How old are
you, thirty? In those disgraceful clothes you look more
like a scrubby schoolgirl. If you don't need me
in your life for any other reason, Justine, you
certainly do as your personal arbiter of elegance."
She laughed. "I admit when I thought you might
pop up out of the woodwork I did take more interest in
my appearance. If I'm thirty, though, you're no
spring chook yourself. You must be forty at least.
Doesn't seem like such a huge difference
anymore, does it? You've lost weight. Are you
all right, Rain?"
  "I was never fat, only big, so
sitting at a desk all the time has shrunk me, not
made me expand."
  Sliding down and turning onto her stomach, she
put her face close to his, smiling. "Oh,
Rain, it's so good to see you! No one else gives
me a run for my money."
  "Poor Justine! And you have so much of it these days,
don't you?" "Money?" She nodded. "Odd, that the
Cardinal should have left all of his to me. Well,
half to me and half to Dane, but of course I was
Dane's sole legatee." Her face twisted in
spite of herself. She ducked her head away and
pretended to look at one daffodil in a sea of them
until she could control her voice enough to say, "You
know, Rain, I'd give my eyeteeth to learn just
what the Cardinal was to my family. A friend, only
that? More than that, in some mysterious way. But just what,
I don't know. I wish I did." "No, you
don't." He got to his feet and extended his hand.
"Come, Herzchen, I'll buy you dinner anywhere you
think there will be eyes to see that the breach between the
carrot-topped Australian actress and the certain
member of the German cabinet is healed. My
reputation as a playboy has deteriorated since
you threw me out."
  "You'll have to watch it, my friend. They don't
call me a carrot-topped Australian actress
any more-these days I'm that lush, gorgeous,
titian-haired British actress, thanks to my
immortal interpretation of Cleopatra. Don't
tell me you didn't know the critics are calling
me the most exotic Cleo in years?" She cocked
her arms and hands into the pose of an Egyptian
hiero- glyph.
  His eyes twinkled. "Exotic?" he asked
doubtfully. "Yes, exotic," she said firmly.
  Cardinal Vittorio was dead, so Rain didn't
go to Rome very much anymore. He came to London
instead. At first Justine was so delighted she
didn't look
  any further than the friendship he offered, but as the
months passed and he failed by word or look to mention
their previous relationship, her mild indignation
became something more disturbing. Not that she wanted a
resumption of that other relationship, she told herself
constantly; she had finished completely with that sort of
thing, didn't need or desire it anymore. Nor
did she permit her mind to dwell on an image of
Rain so successfully buried she remembered it
only in traitorous dreams. Those first
few months after Dane died had been dreadful,
resisting the longing to go to Rain, feel him with her in
body and spirit, knowing full well he would be if she
let him. But she could not allow this with his face
overshadowed by Dane's. It was right to dismiss him, right
to battle to obliterate every last flicker of desire
for him. And as time went on and it seemed he was going
to stay out of her life permanently, her body
settled into unaroused torpor, and her mind disciplined
itself to forget. But now Rain was back it was growing much
harder. She itched to ask him whether he remembered
that other relationship-how could he have forgotten it?
Certainly for herself she had quite finished with such things, but
it would have been gratifying to learn he hadn't; that
is, provided of course such things for him spelled
Justine,, and only Justine. Pipe dreams.
Rain didn't have the mien of a man who was wasting
away of unrequited love, mental or
physical, and he never displayed the slightest wish
to reopen that phase of their lives. He wanted her
for a friend, enjoyed her as a friend. Excellent! It was
what she wanted, too. Only . . . could he have
forgotten? No, it wasn't possible-but God damn
him if he had! The night Justine's thought
processes reached so far, her season's
role of Lady Macbeth had an interesting
savagery quite alien to her usual interpretation. She
didn't sleep very well afterward, and the following
  THE THORN BIRDS
  morning brought a letter from her mother which filled her with
vague unease. Mum didn't write often
anymore, a symptom of the long separation which
affected them both, and what letters there were were stilted,
anemic. This was different, it contained a distant
mutter of old age, an underlying weariness which poked
up a word or two above the surface inanities like
an iceberg. Justine didn't like it. Old.
Mum, old! What was happening on Drogheda? Was
Mum trying to conceal some serious trouble? Was Nanna
ill? One of the Unks? God forbid, Mum herself?
It was three years since she had seen any of them,
and a lot could happen in three years, even if it
wasn't happening to Justine O'neill. Because her
own life was stagnant and dull, she ought not
to assume everyone else's was, too. That night was
Justine's "off" night, with only one more performance of
Macbeth to go. The daylight hours had dragged
unbearably, and even the thought of dinner with Rain
didn't carry its usual anticipatory
pleasure. Their friendship was useless,
futile, static, she told herself as she scrambled
into a dress exactly the orange he hated most.
Conservative old fuddy-duddy! If Rain
didn't like her the way she was, he could lump her.
Then, fluffing up the low bodice's frills around
her meager chest, she caught her own eyes in the
mirror and laughed ruefully. Oh, what a
tempest in a teacup! She was acting exactly like the
kind of female she most despised. It was
probably very simple. She was stale, she needed a
rest. Thank God for the end of Lady M! But
what was the matter with Mum? Lately Rain was
spending more and more time in London, and Justine
marveled at the ease with which he commuted- between Bonn
and England. No doubt having a private plane
helped, but it had to be exhausting. "Why do you come
to see me so often?" she asked out of the blue. "Every
gossip columnist in Europe 672
  thinks it's great, but I confess I sometimes
wonder if you don't simply use me as an
excuse to visit London."
  "It's true that I use you as a blind from time
to time," he admitted calmly. "As a matter of
fact, you've been dust in certain eyes quite a lot.
But it's no hardship being with you, because I like
being with you." His dark eyes dwelled on her face
thoughtfully. "You're very quiet tonight, Herzchen. Is
anything worrying you?"
  "No, not really." She toyed with her dessert and
pushed it aside uneaten. "At least, only a
silly little thing. Mum and I don't write every
week anymoreit's so long since we've seen
each other there's nothing much to say-but today I had such
a strange letter from her. Not typical at all."
,His heart sank; Meggie had indeed taken her
time thinking about it, but instinct told him this was the
commencement of her move, and that it was not in his favor.
She was beginning her play to get her daughter back
for Drogheda, perpetuate the dynasty.
  He reached across the table to take Justine's hand;
she was looking, he thought, more beautiful with maturity,
in spite of that ghastly dress. Tiny lines were
beginning to give her ragamuffin face dignity, which it
badly needed, and character, which the person behind had always
owned in huge quantities. But how deep did her
surface maturity go? That was the whole trouble with
Justine; she didn't even want to look.
"Herzchen, your mother is lonely," he said, burning his
boats. If this was what Meggie wanted, how could
he continue to think himself right and her wrong?
Justine was her daughter; she must know her far better
than he. "Yes, perhaps," said Justine diswitha frown,
"but I can't help feeling there's something more at base
of it. I mean, she must have been lonely for years, so
why this sudden whatever it is? I can't put my finger
on it, Rain, and maybe that's what worries me the
most."
  "She's growing older, which I think you tend
to forget. It's very possible things are beginning to prey
upon her which she found easier to contend with in the past."
His eyes looked suddenly remote, as if the brain
behind was concentrating very hard on something at variance with
what he was saying. "Justine, three years ago she
lost her only son. Do you think that pain grows
less as time passes? I think it must grow worse.
He is gone, and she must surely feel by now that you
are gone, too. After all, you haven't even been
home to visit her."
  She shut her eyes. "I will, Rain, I will! I
promise I will, and soon! You're right, of course,
but then you always are. I never thought I'd come to miss
Drogheda, but lately I seem to be developing quite
an affection for it. As if I am a part of it after
all."
  He looked suddenly at his watch,
smiled ruefully. "I'm very much afraid tonight is
one of those occasions when I've used you, Herzchen.
I hate to ask you to find your own way home, but in
less than an hour I have to meet some very
important gentlemen in a top-secret place,
to which I must go in my own car, driven by the
triple-A-security-clearanced Fritz."
  "Cloak and dagger!" she said gaily, concealing her
hurt. "Now I know why those sudden taxis! 1 am
to be entrusted to a cabby, but not the future of the
Common Market, eh? Well, just to show you how little
I need a taxi or your security-clearanced
Fritz, I'm going to catch the tube home. It's
quite early." His fingers lay rather limply around hers;
she lifted his hand and held it against her cheek, then
kissed it. "Oh, Rain, I don't know what
I'd do without you!"
  He put the hand in his pocket, got to his
feet, came round and pulled out her chair with his other
hand. "I'm your friend," he.sd. "That's what friends
are for, not to be done without."
  But once she parted from him, Justine went home in
a ,v thoughtful mood, which turned rapidly into a
depressed one. Tonight was the closest he had come to
  any kind of personal discussion, and the
gist of it had been that he felt her mother was terribly
lonely, growing old, and that she ought to go home.
Visit, he had said; but she couldn't help wondering
if he had actually meant stay. Which rather indicated that
whatever he felt for her in the past was well and
truly of the past, and he had no wish to resurrect
it. It had never occurred to her before to wonder if he
might regard her as a nuisance, a part of his past
he would like to see buried in decent obscurity on
some place like Drogheda; but maybe he did. In which
case, why had he re-entered her life nine months
ago? Bocause he felt sorry for her? Because he
felt he owed her some kind of debt? Because he felt
she needed some sort of push toward her mother, for
Dane's sake? He had been very fond of Dane,
and who knew what they had talked about during those long
visits to Rome when she hadn't been present?
Maybe Dane had asked him to keep an eye on
her, and he was doing just that. Waited a decent
interval to make sure she wouldn't show him the door,
then marched back into her life to fulfill some
promise made to Dane. Yes, that was very likely
the answer. Certainly he was no longer in love with
her. Whatever attraction she had once possessed
for him must have died long since; after all,
she had treated him abominably. She had only
herself to blame.
  Upon the heels of which thought she wept miserably,
succeeded in getting enough hold upon herself to tell herself not
to be so stupid, twisted about and thumped her pillow in
a fruitless quest after sleep, then lay defeated
trying to read a script. After a few pages the
words began traitorously to blur and swim together, and
try as she would to use her old trick of bulldozing
despair into some back corner of her mind, it ended
in overwhelming her. Finally as the slovenly light of a
late London dawn seeped through the windows she
sat down at her desk, feeling the cold, hearing the
distant
  growl of traffic, smelling the damp, tasting the
sourness. Suddenly the idea of Drogheda seemed
wonderful. Sweet pure air, a naturally
broken silence. Peace. She picked up one of her
black felt-tipped pens and began a letter to her mother,
her tears drying as she wrote.
  I just hope you understand why I haven't been home
since Dane died [she said], but no matter what
you think about that, I know you'll be pleased to hear that
I'm going to rectify my omission permanently.
Yes, that's right. I'm coming home for good,
Mum. You were right-the time has come when I long for
Drogheda. I've had my flutter, and I've
discovered it doesn't mean anything to me at all.
What's in it for me, trailing around a stage for the
rest of my life? And what else is there here for me
aside from the stage? I want something safe,
permanent, enduring, so I'm coming home to Drogheda,
which is all those things. No more empty dreams. Who
knows? Maybe I'll marry Boy King if he still
wants me, finally do something worthwhile with my
life, like having a tribe of little Northwest
plainsmen. I'm tired, Mum, so tired I
don't know what I'm saying, and I wish I had the
power to write what I'm feeling.
  Well, I'll struggle with it another time.
Lady Macbeth is over and I hadn't decided
what to do with the coming season yet, so I won't
inconvenience anyone by deciding to bow out of acting.
London is teeming with actresses. Clyde can
replace me adequately in two seconds, but you
can't, can you? I'm sorry it's taken me
thirty-one years to realize that. Had Rain not
helped me it might have taken even longer, but he's
a most perceptive bloke. He's never met you,
yet he seems to understand you 676
  better than I do. Still, they say the onlooker
sees the game best. That's certainly true of him.
I'm fed up with him, always supervising my life from
his Olympian heights. He seems to think he
owes Dane some sort of debt or promise, and
he's forever making a nuisance of himself popping over
to see me; only I've finally realized that I'm the
nuisance. If I'm safely on Drogheda the
debt or promise or whatever it was is canceled,
isn't it? He ought to be grateful for the plane
trips I'll save him, anyway. As soon as
I've got myself organized I'll write again,
tell you when to expect me. In the meantime,
remember that in my strange way I do love you.
  She signed her name without its usual flourish, more
like the "Justine" which used to appear on the bottom of
dutiful letters written from boarding school under the
eagle eye of a censoring nun. Then she folded the
sheets, put them in an airmail envelope and
addressed it. On the way to the theater for the final
performance of Macbeth she posted it. She went
straight ahead with her plans to quit England.
Clyde was upset to the extent of a screaming temper
tantrum which left her shaking, then overnight he
turned completely about and gave in with
huffy good grace. There was no difficulty at all
in disposing of the lease to the mews flat for it was in a
high-demand category; in fact, once the word
leaked out people rang every five minutes until she
took the phone off the hook. Mrs. Kelly, who
had "done" for her since those far-off days when she had
first come to London, plodded dolefully around amid
a jungle of wood shavings and crates, bemoaning
her fate and surreptitiously putting the phone
back on its cradle in the hope someone would ring with the
power to persuade Justine to change her mind.
  In the midst of the turmoil, someone with that power did
ring, only not to persuade her to change her mind;
Rain didn't even know she was going. He merely
asked her to act as his hostess for a dinner party he was
giving at his house on Park Lane.
  "What do you mean, house on Park Lane?"
Justine squeaked, astonished. "Well, with growing
British participation in the European Economic
Community, I'm spending so much time in England that
it's become more practical for me to have some sort of
local pied-d-terre, so I've leased a house
on Park Lane," he explained.
  "Ye gods, Rain, you flaming secretive
bastardl How long have you had it?" "About a
month."
  "And you let me go through that idiotic charade the
other night and said nothing? God damn youl" She was
so angry she couldn't speak properly. "I was going
to tell you, but I got such a kick out of your thinking
I was flying over all the time that I couldn't resist
pretending a bit longer," he said with a laugh in his
voice.
  "I could kill you!" she ground from between her teeth,
blinking away tears. "No, Herzchen, pleasel
Don't be angry! Come and be my hostess, then you
can inspect the premises to your heart's content."
  "Suitably chaperoned by five million other
guests, of course! What's the matter, Rain,
don't you trust yourself alone with me? Or is it me
you don't trust?"
  "You won't be a guest," he said, answering the
first part of her tirade. "You'll be my hostess, which
is quite different. Will you do it?" She wiped the tears
away with the back of her hand and said gruffly,
"Yes." It turned out to be more enjoyable than she
had dared hope, for Rain's house was truly
beautiful and he himself in such a good mood Justine
couldn't help
  but become infected by it. She arrived
properly though a little too flamboyantly gowned for
his taste, but after an involuntary grimace at first
sight of her shockingpink slipper satin, he tucked
her arm through his and conducted her around the premises before
the guests arrived. Then during the evening he behaved
perfectly, treating her in front of the others with an
offhand intimacy which made her feel both useful and
wanted. His guests were so politically important
her brain didn't want to think about the sort of
decisions they must have to make. Such ordinary people,
too. That made it worse.
  "I wouldn't have minded so much if even one of them
had displayed symptoms of the Chosen Few," she said
to him after they had gone, glad of the chance to be alone with
him and wondering how quickly he was going to send her
home. "You know, like Napoleon or Churchill.
There's a lot to be said for being convinced one is a
man of destiny, if one is a statesman. Do you
regard yourself as a man of destiny?"
  He winced. "You might choose your questions better
when you're quizzing a German, Justine. No, I
don't, and it isn't good for politicians to deem
themselves men of destiny. It might work for a very few,
though I doubt it, but the vast bulk of such men
cause themselves and their countries endless
trouble."
  She had no desire to argue the point. It had
served its purpose in getting a certain line of
conversation started; she could change the subject without
looking too obvious. "The wives were a pretty
mixed bunch, weren't they?" she asked artlessly.
"Most of them were far less presentable than I
was, even if you don't approve of hot pink.
Mrs. Whatsit wasn't too bad, and Mrs.
Hoojar simply disappeared into the matching
wallpaper, but Mrs. Gumfoozler was abominable.
How does her husband manage to put up with her?
Oh, men are such fools about choosing their wives!"
  "Justine! When will you learn to remember names?
It's as well you turned me down, a fine
politician's wife 679
  you would have made. I heard you er-umming when you
couldn't remember who they were. Many men with
abominable wives have succeeded very well, and just as many
with quite perfect wives haven't succeeded at all.
In the long run it doesn't matter, because it's the
caliber of the man which is put to the test. There are
few men who marry for reasons purely politic."
  That old ability to put her in her place could still
shock; she made him a mock salaam
to hide her face, then sat down on the rug.
"Oh, do get up, Justine!"
  Instead she defiantly curled her feet under her
and leaned against the wall to one side of the fireplace,
stroking Natasha. She had discovered on her
arrival that after Cardinal Vittorio's death Rain
had taken his cat; he seemed very fond of it, though
it was old and rather crotchety. "Did I tell you I
was going home to Drogheda for good?" she asked
suddenly. He was taking a cigarette out of his
case; the big hands didn't falter or tremble, but
proceeded, smoothly with their task. "You know very
well you didn't tell me," he said.
  "Then I'm telling you now."
  "When did you come to this decision?"
  "Five days ago. I'm leaving at the end of this
week, I hope. It can't come soon enough."
  "I see."
  "Is that all you've got to say about it?"
  "What else is there to say, except that I wish
you happiness in whatever you do?" He spoke with such
complete composure she winced. "Why, thank you!"
she said airily. "Aren't you glad I won't be in
your hair much longer?"
  "You're not in my hair, Justine,"
he answered. She abandoned Natasha, picked up
the poker and began rather savagely nudging the crumbling
logs, which had burned away to hollow shells; they
collapsed 680
  inward in a brief flurry of sparks, and the heat
of the fire abruptly decreased. "It must be the
demon of destructiveness in us, the impulse
to poke the guts out of a fire. It only hastens the
end. But what a beautiful end, isn't it, Rain?"
  Apparently he wasn't interested in what
happened to fires when they were poked, for he merely
asked, "By the end of the week, eh? You're not wasting
much time."
  "What's the point in delaying?"
  "And your career?"
  "I'm sick of my career. Anyway, after
Lady Macbeth what is there left to do?"
  "Oh, grow up, Justine! I could shake you when
you come out with such sophomoric rot! Why not simply
say you're not sure the theater has any challenge for
you anymore, and that you're homesick?" "All right,
all right, all right! Have it any way you bloody
well want! I was being my usual flippant
self. Sorry I offended!" She jumped to her
feet. "Dammit, where are my shoes?
What's happened to my coat?" Fritz appeared with
both articles of clothing, and drove her home.
Rain excused himself from accompanying her, saying he
had things to do, but as she left he was sitting by the
freshly built up fire, Natasha on his lap,
looking anything but busy.
  "Well," said Meggie to her mother, "I hope
we've done the right thing." Fee peered at her,
nodded. "Oh, yes, I'm sure of it. The trouble
with Justine is that she isn't capable of making a
decision like this, so we don't have any choice. We
must make it for her."
  "I'm not sure I like playing God. I think
I know what she really wants to do, but even if I
could tax her with it face to face, she'd
prevaricate." "The Cleary pride," said Fee,
smiling faintly. "It does crop up in the most
unexpected people."
  "Go on, it's not all Cleary pride! I've
always fancied there was a little dash of Armstrong in it as
well."
  But Fee shook her head. "No. Whyever I
did what I did, pride hardly entered into it.
That's the purpose of old age, Meggie. To give
us a breathing space before we die, in which
to see why we did what we did."
  "Provided senility doesn't render us incapable
first," said Meggie dryly. "Not that there's any
danger of that in you. Nor in me, I suppose."
"Maybe senility's a mercy shown to those who couldn't
face retrospection. Anyway, you're not old enough
yet to say you've avoided senility. Give it an-
other twenty years."
  "Another twenty years!" Meggie echoed,
dismayed. "Oh, it sounds so long!" "Well, you could
have made those twenty years less lonely, couldn't
you?" Fee asked, knitting industriously.
  "Yes, I could. But it wouldn't have been worth it,
Mum. Would it?" She tapped Justine's letter with the
knob of one ancient knitting needle, the slightest
trace of doubt in her tone. "I've dithered long
enough. Sitting here ever since Rainer came, hoping
I wouldn't need to do anything at all, hoping the
decision wouldn't rest with me. Yet he was right. In
the end, it's been for me to do."
  "Well, you might concede I did a bit too,"
Fee protested, injured. "That is, once you
surrendered enough of your pride to tell me all about
it." "Yes, you helped," said Meggie gently.
  The old clock ticked; both pairs
of hands continued to flash about the tortoise-shell
stems of their needles.
  "Tell me something, Mum," said Meggie
suddenly. "Why did you break over Dane when you
didn't over Daddy or Frank or Stu?"
"Break?" Fee's hands paused, laid down the
needles: she could still knit as well as in the days when
she could see perfectly. "How do you mean, break?"
"As though it killed you."
  "They all killed me, Meggie. But I was younger
for the first three, so I had the energy to conceal it
better. More reason, too. Just like you now. But
Ralph knew how I felt when Daddy and Stu
died. You were too young to have seen it." She smiled.
"I adored Ralph, you know. He was . . . someone
special. Awfully like Dane."
  "Yes, he was. I never realized you'd seen
that, Mum -I mean their natures. Funny.
You're a Darkest Africa to me. There are so many
things about you I don't know."
  "I should hope so!" said Fee with a snort of
laughter. Her hands remained quiet. "Getting
back to the original subject-if you can do this now for
Justine, Meggie, I'd say you've gained more from
your troubles than I did from mine. I
wasn't willing to do as Ralph asked and look out for
you. I wanted my memories . . . nothing but my
memories. Whereas you've no choice. Memories
are all you've got."
  "Well, they're a comfort, once the pain dies
down. Don't you think so? I had twenty-six
whole years of Dane, and I've learned to tell
myself that what happened must be for the best, that he must have
been spared some awful ordeal he might not have been
strong enough to endure. Like Frank, perhaps, only not the
same. There are worse things than dying, we both
know that." "Aren't you bitter at all?" asked
Fee.
  "Oh, at first I was, but for their sakes I've
taught myself not to be." Fee resumed her knitting.
"So when we go, there will be no one," she said softly.
"Drogheda will be no more. Oh, they'll give it a
line in the history books, and some earnest young man
will come to Gilly to interview anyone he can find who
remembers, for the book he's going to write about
Drogheda. Last of the mighty New South Wales
stations. But none of his readers will
  ever know what it was really like, because they couldn't.
They'd have to have been a part of it."
  "Yes," said Meggie, who hadn't
stopped knitting. "They'd have to have been a part of it."
  Saying goodbye to Rain in a letter, devastated
by grief and shock, had been easy; in fact
enjoyable in a cruel way, for she had lashed back
then-I'm in agony, so ought you to be. But this time
Rain hadn't put himself in a position where a Dear
John letter was possible. It had to be dinner at their
favorite restaurant. He hadn't suggested his
Park Lane house, which disap- pointed but didn't
surprise her. No doubt he intended saying even
his final goodbyes under the benign gaze of Fritz.
Certainly he wasn't taking any chances.
  For once in her life she took care that her
appearance should please him; the imp which usually prodded
her into orange frills seemed to have retired
cursing. Since Rain liked unadorned styles,
she put on a floorlength silk jersey dress of
dull burgundy red, high to the neck, long tight
sleeves. She added a big fiat collar of
tortuous gold studded with garnets and pearls, and
matching bracelets on each wrist. What
horrible, horrible hair. It was never disciplined enough
to suit him. More makeup than normal, to conceal the
evidence of her depression. There. She would do if
he didn't look too closely.
  He didn't seem to; at least he didn't
comment upon weariness or possible illness, even made
no reference to the exigencies of packing. Which
wasn't a bit like him. And after a while she began
to experience a sensation that the world must be ending, so
different was he from his usual self. He wouldn't
help her make the dinner a success, the sort of
affair they could refer to in letters with reminiscent
pleasure and amusement. If she could only have
persuaded herself that he was simply upset at her
going, it might have been all right. But she couldn't.
His mood
  just wasn't that sort. Rather, he was so distant she
felt as if she were sitting with a paper effigy,
one-dimensional and anxious to be off floating in the
breeze, far from her ken. As if he had said goodbye
to her already, and this meeting was a superfluity.
  "Have you had a letter from your mother yet?" he asked
politely. "No, but I don't honestly expect
one. She's probably bereft of words." "Would you
like Fritz to take you to the airport tomorrow?"
"Thanks, I can catch a cab," she answered
ungraciously. "I wouldn't want you to be
deprived of his services."
  "I have meetings all day, so I
assure you it won't inconvenience me in the
slightest."
  "I said I'd take a cab!"
  He raised his eyebrows. "There's no need
to shout, Justine. Whatever you want is all right with
me."
  He wasn't calling her Herzchen any more; of
late she had noticed its frequency declining, and
tonight he had not used the old endearment once. Oh,
what a dismal, depressing dinner this was! Let it
be over soon! She found she was looking at his hands
and trying to remember what they felt like, but she
couldn't. Why wasn't life neat and well
organized, why did things like Dane have to happen?
Perhaps because she thought of Dane, her mood suddenly
plummeted to a point where she couldn't bear to sit still
a moment longer, and put her hands on the arms of her
chair.
  "Do you mind if we go?" she asked. "I'm
developing a splitting headache." At the junction
of the High Road and Justine's little mews Rain
helped her from the car, told Fritz to drive around
the block, and put his hand beneath her elbow courteously
to guide her, his touch quite impersonal. In the
freezing damp of a London drizzle
they walked
  slowly across the cobbles, dripping echoes of their
footsteps all around them. Mournful, lonely
footsteps.
  "So, Justine, we say goodbye," he said.
  "Well, for the time being, at any rate," she
answered brightly, "but it's not forever, you know. I'll
be across from time to time, and I hope you'll find the time
to come down to Drogheda."
  He shook his head. "No. This is goodbye,
Justine. I don't think we have any further use
for each other."
  "You mean you haven't any further use for me,"
she said, and managed a fairly creditable laugh.
"It's all right, Rain! Don't spare me, I can
take it!"
  He took her hand, bent to kiss it, straightened,
smiled into her eyes and walked away.
  There was a letter from her mother on the mat. Justine
stooped to pick it up, dropped her bag and wrap
where it had lain, her shoes nearby, and went into the
living room. She sat down heavily on a packing
crate, chewing at her lip, her eyes resting for a
moment in wondering, bewildered pity on a
magnificent head-andshoulders study of
Dane taken to commemorate his ordination. Then she
caught her bare toes in the act of caressing the
rolled-up kangaroo-fur rug, grimaced in
distaste and got up quickly. A short walk to the
kitchen, that was what she needed. So she took a
short walk to the kitchen, where she opened the
refrigerator, reached for the cream jug, opened the
freezer door and withdrew a can of filter coffee.
With one hand on the cold-water tap to run water for
her coffee, she looked around wide-eyed, as if she
had never seen the room before. Looked at the flaws
in the wallpaper, at the smug philodendron in its
basket hung from the ceiling, at the, black
pussy-cat clock wagging its tail and rolling its
eyes at the spec tacle of time being so
frivolously frittered away. PACK
  HAIRBRUSH, said the blackboard in large
capitals. On the table lay a pencil sketch of
Rain she had done some weeks ago. And a packet
of cigarettes. She took one 686
  and lit it, put the kettle on the stove and
remembered her mother's letter, which was still screwed up in
one hand. May as well read it while the water
heated. She sat down at the kitchen table, flipped
the drawing of Rain onto the floor and
planted her feet on top of it. Up yours, too,
Rainer Moerling Hartheim! See if I care, you
great dogmatic leather-coated Kraut twit.
Got no further use for me, eh? Well, nor have
I for youl
  My dear Justine [said Meggie]
  No doubt you're proceeding with your usual
impulsive speed, so I hope this reaches you in
time. If anything I've said lately in my letters
has caused this sudden decision of yours, please
forgive me. I didn't mean to provoke such a
drastic reaction. I suppose I was simply
looking for a bit of sym- pathy, but I always forget
that under that tough skin of yours, you're pretty soft.
  Yes, I'm lonely, terribly so. Yet it
isn't anything your coming home could possibly
rectify. If you stop to think for a moment, you'll
see how true that is. What do you hope
to accomplish by coming home? It isn't within your power
to restore to me what I've lost, and you can't make
reparation either. Nor is it purely my loss.
It's your loss too, and Nanna's, and all the
rest. You seem to have an idea, and it's quite a
mistaken idea, that in some way you were responsible.
This present impulse looks to me
suspiciously like an act of contrition. That's
pride and presumption, Justine. Dane was a
grown man, not a helpless baby. 1 let him go,
didn't I? If I had let myself feel the way
you do, I'd be sitting here blaming myself into a mental
asylum because I had permitted him to live his own
life. But I'm not sitting here blaming myself.
We're none of us God, though I think I've had
more chance to learn that than you.
  In coming home, you're handing me your life like
  THE THORN BIRDS
  a sacrifice. 1 don't want it. I never have
wanted it. And I refuse it now. You don't
belong on Drogheda, you never did. If you still
haven't worked out where you do belong, I suggest you sit
down right this minute and start some serious thinking.
Sometimes you really are awfully dense. Rainer is a
very nice man, but I've never yet met a man who
could possibly be as altruistic as you seem to think
he is. For Dane's sake indeed! Do grow up,
Justine! My dearest one, a light has gone out.
For all of us, a light has gone out. And there's
absolutely nothing you can do about it, don't you
understand? I'm not insulting you by trying to pretend I'm
perfectly happy. Such isn't the
human condition. But if you think we here on
Drogheda spend our days weeping and wailing, you're
quite wrong. We enjoy our days, and one of the main
reasons why is that our lights for you still burn.
Dane's light is gone forever. Please, dear
Justine, try to . accept that. Come home
to Drogheda by all means, we'd love to see you. But
not for good. You'd never be happy settled here
permanently. It is not only a needless
sacrifice for you to make, but a useless one. In your
sort of career, even a year spent away from it would
cost you dearly. So stay where you belong, be a good
citizen of your world.
  The pain. It was like those first few days after Dane
died. The same sort of futile, wasted,
unavoidable pain. The same anguished impotence.
No, of course there was nothing she could do. No way
of making up, no way. Scream! The kettle was
whistling already. Hush, kettle, hush! Hush for
Mummy! How does it feel to be Mummy's
only child, kettle? Ask Justine, she knows.
Yes, Justine knows all about being the only child. But

  I'm not the child she wants, that poor fading old
woman back on the ranch. Oh, Mum!
Oh, Mum . . . Do you think if I humanly
could, I wouldn't? New lamps for old, my life
for his! It isn't fair, that Dane was the one
to die .... She's right. My going back
to Drogheda can't alter the fact that he never can.
Though he lies there forever, he never can. A light
has gone out, and I can't rekindle it. But I see
what she means. My light still burns in her.
Only not on Drogheda.
  Fritz answered the door, not clad in his smart
navy chauffeur's uniform, clad in his smart
butler's morning suit instead. But as he smiled,
bowed stiffly and clicked his heels in good
old-fashioned German manner, a thought occurred
to Justine; did he do double duty in Bonn, too?
"Are you simply Herr Hartheim's humble servant,
Fritz, or are you really his watchdog?" she
asked, handing him her coat. Fritz remained
impassive. "Herr Hartheim is in his study,
Miss O'neill." He was sitting looking at the
fire, leaning a little forward, Natasha curled
sleeping on the hearth. When the door opened he
looked up, but didn't speak, didn't seem
glad to see her.
  So Justine crossed the room,
knelt, and laid her forehead on his lap. "Rain,
I'm so sorry for all the years, and I can't
atone," she whispered. He didn't rise to his
feet, draw her up with him; he knelt beside her on
the floor.
  "A miracle," he said.
  She smiled at him. "You never did stop loving
me, did you?" "No, Herzchen, never." "I must have
hurt you very much." "Not in the way you think. I knew
you loved me, and I could wait. I've always
believed a patient man must win in the end."
  689 THE THORN BIRDS
  "So you decided to let me work it out for myself. You
weren't a bit worried when I announced I was
going home to Drogheda, were you?" "Oh, yes. Had
it been another man I would not have been perturbed, but
Drogheda? A formidable opponent. Yes, I
worried." "You knew I was going before I told you,
didn't you?" "Clyde let the cat out of the bag.
He rang Bonn to ask me if there was any way
I could stop you, so I told him to play along with you
for a week or two at any rate, and I'd see
what I could do. Not for his sake, Herzchen. For my
own. I'm no altruist." "That's what Mum said.
But this house! Did you have it a month
ago?" "No, nor is it mine. However, since we
will need a London house if you're to continue with your
career, I'd better see what I can do to acquire
it. That is, provided you like it. I'll even let you
have the redecorating of it, if you promise
faithfully not to deck it out in pink and orange."
"I've never realized quite how devious you are. Why
didn't you just say you still loved me? I wanted you
to!" "No. The evidence was there for you to see it for
yourself, and you had to see if for yourself." "I'm afraid
I'm chronically blind. I didn't really see for
myself, I had to have some help. My mother finally forced
me to open my eyes. I had a letter from her tonight,
telling me not to come home." "She's a marvelous
person, your mother." "I know you've met her,
Rain-when?" "I went to see her about a year ago.
Drogheda is magnificent, but it isn't you,
Herzchen. At the time I went to try to make your mother
see that. You've no idea how glad I am she
has, though I don't think anything I said was very
enlightening." She put her fingers up to touch his mouth.
"I doubted myself, Rain. I always have. Maybe I
always will."

  "Oh, Herzchen, I hope notl For
me there can never be anyone else. Only you. The
whole world has known it for years. But words of love
mean nothing. I could have screamed them at you a thousand
times a day without affecting your doubts in the
slightest. So I haven't spoken my love,
Justine, I've lived it. How could you doubt the
feelings of your most faithful gallant?" He
sighed. "Well, at least it hasn't come from me.
Perhaps you'll continue to find your mother's word good enough."
"Please don't say it like that! Poor Rain, I
think rve worn even your patience to a thread.
Don't be hurt that it came from Mum. It
doesn't matterl I've knelt in abasement at
your feetl" "Thank God the abasement will only
last for tonight," he said more cheerfully. "You'll bounce
back tomorrow." The tension began to leave her; the worst
of it was over. "What I like-no, love-about you the
most is that you give me such a good run for my money
I never do quite catch up." His shoulders shook.
"Then look at the future this way, Herzchen.
Living in the same house with me might afford you the
opportunity to see how it can be done." He kissed
her brows, her cheeks, her eyelids. "I would have
you no other way than the way you are, Justine, Not
a freckle of your face or a cell of
your brain." She slid her arms around his neck,
sank her fingers into that satisfying hair. "Oh, if
you knew how I've longed to do this!" she said.
"I've never been able to forget."
  The cable said: HAVE JUST BECOME MRS
RAWER MOERLING HARTHEIM STOP PRIVATE
CEREMONY THE VATICAN STOP PAPAL
BLESSINGS ALL OVER THE PLACE STOP
THAT IS DEFINITELY BEING MARRIED
EXCLAMATION WE WILL BE DOWN ON A
DELAYED HONEYMOON AS SOON AS
POSSIBLE BUT EUROPE IS GOING TO BE

  HOME STOP LOVE TO ALL AND FROM
RAIN TOO STOP JUSTINE Meggie put the
form down on the table and stared wide-eyed through the window
at the wealth of autumn roses in the garden.
Perfume of roses, bees of roses. And the
hibiscus, the bottlebrush, the ghost gums, the
bougainvillaea up above the world so high, the pepper
trees. How beautiful the garden was, how alive.
To see its small things grow big, change, and wither;
and new little things come again in the same endless, unceasing
cycle. Time for Drogheda to stop. Yes, more than
time. Let the cycle renew itself with
unknown people. I did it all to myself, I have no one
else to blame. And I cannot regret one single
moment of it. The bird with the thorn in its breast, it
follows an immutable law; it is driven by it knows
ndt what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very
instant the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the
dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is
not the life left to utter another note. But we,
when we put the thorns in our breasts, we know. We
understand. And still we do it. Still we do it.