98 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

98 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 super- ciliously. 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 décolletage. "Really, Fiona, you're hopelessly old-fashioned," she said, glan- cing 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 Eugénie 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?" THE THORN BIRDS / 99

as the Royal Mail, he carried groceries, gasoline in forty-four-gallon drums, kerosene in square five-gallon cans, hay, bags of corn, calico 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 ter- ritory that got mail only once every six months. Bluey's dray swung in a great zigzagging are 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 101

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 un- happy 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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 direc- tion. 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, ag- gressive 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 104 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 cigar- ettes 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. THE THORN BIRDS / 105

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 Bricas- sart," she said. "Why is it so many priests are beautiful? The Irish- ness? 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 love-sick 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; THE THORN BIRDS / 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 Bricassart!" 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 108 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 THE THORN BIRDS / 109

supervise correspondence lessons as well. It had been tacitly under- stood 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 protégés, 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 preferred 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 after- thought 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 110 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 unbear- ably, 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 ex- pressive; 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 pre- cisely 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 111

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 stock-yards, 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. 112 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 shard 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 be- cause 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 thoughs 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 113

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 per- fect chastity, 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, black 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. 114 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

5 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; 115

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 116 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 prox- imity 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, weel, 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 completely 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 live- stock competing for prizes, lay tents full of handicrafts and cooking. They gazed at stock, cakes, crocheted THE THORN BIRDS / 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 bob-tailed 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 ef- fortlessly. "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. How- ever, I shall win the Dressage, so if I don't win the Hunting I shan't repine." She spoke with beautifully rounded vowels, and with the oddly stilted phraseology of a young lady so carefully reared and educated there was not a trace of 118 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

warmth or idiom left to color her voice. As he spoke to her Father Ralph's own speech became more pear-shaped, 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 af- fected 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 ex- changes 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 lady—"but 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 im- prove her temper; on the far side of the puddle she left them ab- ruptly. "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 THE THORN BIRDS / 119

exquisite 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 ostenta- tiously 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 inex- pertly 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 tar- nished 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!" 120 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 suggested this was an every- day 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 eyeing THE THORN BIRDS / 121

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 gol 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 122 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 few blows 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 rage 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 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." 124 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 part, 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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 THE THORN BIRDS / 127

mouth as if to tear out the tongue which had uttered the unutterable. "I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it! I didn'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 submis- sion. 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 togeth- er. 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 Mendelian 128 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 THE THORN BIRDS / 129

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 inten- ded. "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 propor- tions of a furnace while the priest was putting Meggie to bed, in an excess of remorse and frantic 130 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 Ashbur- ton 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 had 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 131

—she 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 ab- used. 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 has 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. 132 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

6 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 fumbling 136

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-perpetu- ating 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 anim- ated. 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 disposi- tion 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 house- keeper, 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 137

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 determ- ination 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 holy- picture 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, for of 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 mahogany 138 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 for with 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, preferring THE THORN BIRDS / 139

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 Bar- coola 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 ma- jority; 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 140 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 con- tainers, 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 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 ador- ingly. 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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 THE THORN BIRDS / 143

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 weak- ness, 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 144 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 THE THORN BIRDS / 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 de- signed 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 146 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 ig- nited 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 con- vulsive. 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 be- cause 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 be- cause 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. THE THORN BIRDS / 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. 148 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 admin- istered, 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 be- hind, and sat on a wooden bench opposite Meggie to watch her. She had grown, put on seven-league boots which threatened THE THORN BIRDS / 149

to leave him behind, outstripped; he felt his inadequacy then more keenly, watching her, than ever he had in a life filled with a gnaw- ing, 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 conscious- ness 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. Silently 150 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 thumb- tacks. 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, wall- flowers 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 bar- racks 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; THE THORN BIRDS / 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 myster- ious, yet her very youth buried it beneath everyday events, and di- minished 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 sor- row. 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, 152 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 hand-feed 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 run- ning it. For its great size Drogheda was under-stocked, 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 in- capable 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 153

a paucity of manpower. Everything was geared to the perfect pro- duction 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 ver- min. 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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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." THE THORN BIRDS / 155

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 156 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

most, for the Overflow was their backyard, the traveling sheep a reality on the TSRs. 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 wel- come, and the bullockies a hated breed as they inched their mam- moth 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. Sometimes 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 enduring 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 fantastic 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 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 contribute 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 any- where 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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

her mortification, but in their second appearance they became un- mistakably 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 some- thing 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 tor- ment, 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 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 façade 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 pro- spect, the milky opaque skin which never tanned or freckled was growing 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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 pre-oc- cupation 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 mattered 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 161

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, I can. 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 162 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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, Fath- er!—a lot of blood runs out of my bottom!" His head reared back, something which had never happened in- side 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 humili- ation 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 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 immeas- urable 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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 men- struate. 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 attrac- tion 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. THE THORN BIRDS / 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 pear-shaped 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." "Why?" 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 166 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 embarrass- ment 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 for leaving matters where they stood. He could pity her, but he couldn't help her any further. Enough was enough. THE THORN BIRDS / 167

7 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 till 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 168

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 ob- jects 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 169

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 Ho- peton 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 170 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 Car- son 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 171

fail to see the unfolding rose. Even Ralph de Bricassart? Hah! Es- pecially Ralph de Bricassart! Nothing ever missed that man. Her hands were trembling; the pen sprinkled dark-blue 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 recep- tion 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 172 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 injunc- tion 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 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 back-sweeping 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 un- usually 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 hand- some, 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 remem- bering 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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 re- ceive 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 fash- ion 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 to 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 unsuitable—why 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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, beware! 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 twelve-year-old single-malt Scotch. If the 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 depreda- tions 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 discrim- inate. 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 177

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 meta- phorically 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 Carmichael, 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 in- grained. As the evening wore on the dancing grew more and 178 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 dan- cing—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. THE THORN BIRDS / 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 tired—which 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 façade, 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 180 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

as a power in the Church? Finished before he had begun. Oh, the dreams of youth! And the carelessness of youth's tongue, the hot- ness of youth's temper. He had not been strong enough to meet the test. But he would never make that mistake again. Never, nev- er... 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 perception..." "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 THE THORN BIRDS / 181

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 Hippoly- tos." "Oh! 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. 182 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 re- fuse? 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! Impotent 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 becom- ing 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 184 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 un- earthly; 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 wrought-iron 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 THORN BIRDS / 185

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?" "Do Bob and Jack know where you are?" "I told them I was going to bed." "What's the matter, Meggie?" "You didn't speak to me tonight!" "Ah! 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—but 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 shook her 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 always 186 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 affec- tion 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 Droghedas as he strolled THE THORN BIRDS / 187

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, no! 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, Father! 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 188 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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, disgust- ingly 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 her! 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 tomor- row'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 outlying THE THORN BIRDS / 189

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 dis- tance, 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 in- sisted 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 to- night 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 under- stand 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 190 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 mountain- top, 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 con- templation 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 burn 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 métier. 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 191

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 bal- ance. 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, I 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. 192 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

I, 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 previ- ously 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 respons- ible 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 es- tate. 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 sub- divided. 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 193

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 re- main 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 fine-strung particles so that it seemed the whole world had turned to gold and purple. Streaky clouds rimmed in 194 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 re- paid 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 Jove Drogheda as if it were his own, rightly as- suming 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 Bri- cassart 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 195

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 Carmichael 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 ven- geance; 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, cer- tainly 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, balloon- ing 196 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 carica- ture 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." THE THORN BIRDS / 197

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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 fu- ture adornments of Mary Carson's coffin it had not actually im- pinged 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 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 sensa- tion 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, Father! 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 ex- citement. 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 freshwa- ter 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 202 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 consola- tion. 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. THE THORN BIRDS / 203

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 any- thing 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 affection- ately. "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; 206 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 THE THORN BIRDS / 207

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 con- ventional 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 congreg- ation; 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, al- most 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 208 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

death Our Lord Jesus Christ is with us, within us, bearing the bur- den 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 be- cause 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 under- stood 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 be- come 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 good-hearted as ever, Paddy had wept for his sister, and Fee THE THORN BIRDS / 209

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 ba- bies 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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

of it for you. Contest the will, Paddy, please! I'll get you the best KCs 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 con- test, 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 chastise- ment 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?" THE THORN BIRDS / 211

THREE 1929–1932 PADDY 213

8 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 arti- facts, 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. 215

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 t him, eyes blazing. "Money, Paddy! Money at last, do you realize it? Oh, I don't care about Auntie Mary's thirteen million pounds—there'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 216 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 off—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 ad- mire, and yet comfortable enough to make every person who walks into it want to remain." Mary Carson' 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 & 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 217

produce a competent upholsterer and a team of painters capable of doing the meticulous work Fee demanded. Good for Mrs. Cleary! 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 dis- turbed 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 pains-takingly picked out in gilt, but the huge oval-shaped flat spaces in the pan- eling had been papered with faded black silk bearing the same bunches of roses as the three carpets, like stilted Japanese paintings in cream 218 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 ten- ancy of the house. Well, at least they're handy for packing." THE THORN BIRDS / 219

It was nice to see her mother 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 choker 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 opales- cent 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 The chook yard was huge, and held four roosters and upward of forty hens. At night they inhabited a tumble-down shed, its rig- orously 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!" 220 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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. THE THORN BIRDS / 221

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 address- ing the jury, 222 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 recom- mendation 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 viol- ently 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. "'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 every- one 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 ambi- tion, his determination to be someone important. Let him bear THE THORN BIRDS / 223

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 in- terest 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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 on 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 so- ciety (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 house- keeper. 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 225

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 confer- ence in the beautiful drawing room on a night when everyone was at home. He sat with his steel-rimmed reading half-glasses perched on his Roman nose, in a big cream chair, his feet comfortably dis- posed 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 226 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

ottoman she had chosen instead of a chair, and kept her eyes dog- gedly 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—will 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 227

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 bookkeep- er, 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 Meggi'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. 228 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 de- scription 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 230 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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, for with 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 creek. But when the Clearys 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 fore- head; the grass was mirror-silver, and little spiral whirlwinds sped busily among shimmering blue mirages, transferring 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 231

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, decept- ively 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 Queensland 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 scientifically 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 iron-bark and black box, an occasional wilga on its outskirts. She rode into its shade thankfully, and having 232 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 ap- proach. Burrowing so fast that its strong clawed feet were hidden in seconds, it began to disappear under a huge THE THORN BIRDS / 233

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 tomorrow, 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 wor- ship 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 234 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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, indiscrim- inate 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?" THE THORN BIRDS / 235

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, THE THORN BIRDS / 237

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 de- mands 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 your- self, on your parish, and especially on the Church you purport to love more than any human being? Your vow of chastity 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 Qantas 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. 238 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 cu- cumber 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 s'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 Archbish- op Cluny Dark but on Father 240 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 Bri- cassart's manner to his present master was perfect: light, easy, re- spectful 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 remark- ably abstemious, his only weakness being a good (and very fast) car. THE THORN BIRDS / 241

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 dis- ciplined, 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. THE THORN BIRDS / 243

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 af- fected your charge?" the Italian prelate asked smoothly. "So far we have nothing to worry about, Your Grace. Michar Limited isn't easily affected by fluctuations 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. 244 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

9 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 themselves down to the futility of looking for work when there was none. Left to fend alone, wives and chil- dren 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 weariness and the purposelessness of having no home, no 245

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 undesir- ables 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 les- sons 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 com- pletely 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 246 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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-rat-looking 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, demand- ing 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." THE THORN BIRDS / 247

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 mael- strom 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 shim- mering 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. 248 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 de- siccated 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. THE THORN BIRDS / 249

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!" 250 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 re- verse. 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 THORN BIRDS / 251

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 hero- ism; 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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 immin- ent 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 ar- rived 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 tinder-lush, 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 remain- ing to defend Drogheda. He was the senior THE THORN BIRDS / 253

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 side- board, 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. 254 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

In between trips to the cookhouse Meggie watches the fire, awed and terrified. In its way it had a beauty beyond the beauty of any- thing earthly, for it was thing of the skies, of suns so far away their light camp 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 burned-out 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 east- ward on Beel-Beel. Drogheda homestead was only three miles from the eastern boundary of the property, it being closest to Gilly. Beel-Beel ad- joined 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 en- dured, with Tom like a man possessed THE THORN BIRDS / 255

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 op- erations 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 dy- ing, 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 strangenes 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 rallying." For three days more the fire rampaged eastward on 256 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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. THE THORN BIRDS / 257

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, be- cause 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 259

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-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. 260 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 THE THORN BIRDS / 261

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 dif- ferent 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 any- thing. "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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 pos- sessed. Meggie stayed at the homestead and sat in front of the drawing room fire while Mrs. Smith tried to persuade her to eat, tears run- ning 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. THE THORN BIRDS / 263

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 THE THORN BIRDS / 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. Mor- tality pressed down on him, a great weight crushing his soul, liber- ating 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 mar- velous for bringing out a bruise; stops the soreness much better than kisses ever could, I daresay." "Is the phone working?" he managed to say. 266 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 winter-cold 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 suffoca- tion, but the priest kissed them with love and respect. For fifteen miles the rough sheet of iron had jarred 268 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 once—they'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 rust-free 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 Stuart. THE THORN BIRDS / 269

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, cut- ting into Mrs. Smith's meltingly light flaky pastry with evident en- joyment. 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 two-thirds 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 doot. 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 271

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 al- lotted 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 272 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 butter- flies. 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 collect- ive 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 win- dows, 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 white-railinged 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 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 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 sud- denly 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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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—too 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 pub- lican'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. THE THORN BIRDS / 275

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 suitcase 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 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." "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 278 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 homo- sexuals 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 pur- ported 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, THE THORN BIRDS / 279

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. 280 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

FOUR 1933–1938 LUKE 281

10 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 283

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 permanent 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, 284 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 pre-occupied, curt, to the point where they despaired of inter- esting 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 black-soil 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 AML&F 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 285

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 ac- cording to Jimmy. Been working out on the West Queensland plains around Longreach and Charleville. Was a drover, too. Good refer- ences 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 boggi 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 dis- traction. 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 relaxation 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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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' THE THORN BIRDS / 287

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 early-morning 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 Meggie 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. 288 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 ap- parent. 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 euphemist- ically 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 29

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 re- minded 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 Au- gusta, 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. 290 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

And yet he was no more like Father Ralph than—than—than 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 be- cause 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 dis- covered 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 ecstat- ically. "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 dis- respect 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 291

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 pro- nounce 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 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 back out?" Exasperated, she glared at him fiercely, but he only laughed at 292 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 loneliness, 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 herself 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, 294 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 THE THORN BIRDS / 295

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 sta- tions 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, gov- ernesses, 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 296 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 in- terfered 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 Cov- erleys, 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 oppor- tunity whatsoever, and Meggie herself seemed too dazed to under- stand 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 ex- traordinary sensation THE THORN BIRDS / 297

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 298 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 com- plaining 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 bush- man. THE THORN BIRDS / 299

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 splendor; 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 bouquet 300 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 al- ways lacking which wasn't lacking in Luke, though just what it was Luke possessed she didn't know. Aside from the fact that he re- minded 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 interest- ing 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 301

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, run- ning 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 transfer- ring them to bins ready for the attention of the classer, who was shed aristocrat: the man who like a wine-taster 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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 boggi 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 boggi 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; cob- blers, 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 303

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 everywhere. 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 pro- spect 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 ac- quiring what he hungered for; at about this stage in his life he dis- covered 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 304 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 AML&F 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 THE THORN BIRDS / 305

might eventually buy him; not the possession of land, nor its inher- ent power, but the prospect of stockpiling rows of neat figures in his bankbook, in his name. It had'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 breath- lessly. 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 construc- tion 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 permis- sion 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! 306 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 pres- sure! 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 ex- perience; he knew little of the mechanics beyond what he liked himself, and he knew nothing of the theory. The numerous THE THORN BIRDS / 307

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 per- sonal 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 slap-and-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." 308 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 THE THORN BIRDS / 309

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, half-opaque 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 sol- emnly 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 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

...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 THE THORN BIRDS / 311

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 im- pulse, 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. 312 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

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 hyster- ical 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, maintain- ing 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 Meg- gie'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