The Thorn Birds Read online

  “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 live-in 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.”

  “Well! You’ve certainly arranged things to your satisfaction, haven’t you?”

  “I reckon. Oh, Meg, we’re going to be rich! 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 it! I don’t have a penny! 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 interest 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 fallow was a perfect contrast to the soil: long bright-green blades waving fifteen or twenty feet above claret-colored 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?”

  “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 wind-break, 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 having 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 y
ours.”

  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 husband, 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 model-T utility truck and headed for where the gang was cutting out by Goondi. The second-hand 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 could 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 conscious 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 best 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 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.