The Thorn Birds Page 35

  “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!”

  12

  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 he’s 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 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 cafés, 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 Mac-Queen? Was it that I didn’t know him, that I could 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 over—I 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, tissue-thin 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. B
efore 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, 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.”