The Thorn Birds Page 7

  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

  3

  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 long 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 Gillanbone 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 hand-hewn 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, wallflowers, 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 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 succeeded 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 pale-green 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 great 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 bed-spread. 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 things come between the priest and his state of mind—not 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. Chastity 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 Dibban-Dibban 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.”