25 at the Holy Cross Church, Gillanbone. Entered 9 o’clock evening,

25 at the Holy Cross Church, Gillanbone. Entered 9 o'clock evening, temperature 45 degrees, moon last quarter. 314 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

11 Luke bought Meggie a diamond engagement ring, modest but quite pretty, its twin quarter-carat stones set in a pair of platinum hearts. The banns were called for noon on Saturday, August 25th, in the Holy Cross Church. This would be followed by a family dinner at the Hotel Imperial, to which Mrs. Smith, Minnie and Cat were naturally invited, though Jims and Patsy had been left in Sydney after Meggie said firmly that she couldn't see the point in bringing them six hundred miles to witness a ceremony they didn't really understand. She had received their letters of congratulations; Jims's long, rambling and childlike, Patsy's consisting of three words, "Lots of luck." They knew Luke, of course, having ridden the Drogheda paddocks with him during their vacations. Mrs. Smith was grieved at Meggie's insistence on as small an af- fair as possible; she had hoped to see the only girl married on Drogheda with flags flying and cymbals clashing, days of celebra- tion. But Meggie was so against a fuss she even refused to wear bridal regalia; she would be married in a day dress and an ordinary hat, which could double afterwards as her traveling outfit. "Darling, I've decided where to take you for our honeymoon," Luke said, slipping into a chair opposite hers the Sunday after they had made their wedding plans. 315

but unmistakably sadder. He sensed it only; she had no tears there, her lids didn't droop, or the corners of her mouth. But he wasn't concerned with whatever sorrows Meggie owned, for he had no intention of letting her become so important to him she caused him worry on her behalf. Admittedly she was something of a bonus to a man who had tried to marry Dot MacPherson of Bingelly, but her physical desirability and tractable nature only increased Luke's guard over his own heart. No woman, even one as sweet and beautiful as Meggie Cleary, was ever going to gain sufficient power over him to tell him what to do. So, remaining true to himself, he plunged straight into the main thing on his mind. There were times when guile was necessary, but in this matter it wouldn't serve him as well as bluntness. "Meghann, I'm an old-fashioned man," he said. She stared at him, puzzled. "Are you?" she asked, her tone imply- ing: Does it matter? "Yes," he said. "I believe that when a man and woman marry, all the woman's property should become the man's. The way a dowry did in the old days. I know you've got a bit of money, and I'm telling you now that when we marry you're to sign it over to me. It's only fair you know what's in my mind while you're still single, and able to decide whether you want to do it." It had never occurred to Meggie that she would retain her money; she had simply assumed when she married it would become Luke's, not hers. All save the most educated and sophisticated Australian women were reared to think themselves more or less the chattels of their men, and this was especially true of Meggie. Daddy had always ruled Fee and his children, and since his death Fee had de- ferred to Bob as his successor. The man owned the money, the house, his wife and his children. Meggie had never questioned his right to do so. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "I didn't know signing anything THE THORN BIRDS / 317

was necessary, Luke. I thought that what was mine automatically became yours when we married." "It used to be like that, but those stupid drongos in Canberra stopped it when they gave women the vote. I want everything to be fair and square between us, Meghann, so I'm telling you now how things are going to be." She laughed, "It's all right, Luke, I don't mind." She took it like a good old-fashioned wife; Dot wouldn't have given in so readily. "How much have you got?" he asked. "At the moment, fourteen thousand pounds. Every year I get two thousand more." He whistled. "Fourteen thousand pounds! Phew! That's a lot of money, Meghann. Better to have me look after it for you. We can see the bank manager next week, and remind me to make sure everything coming in in the future gets put in my name, too. I'm not going to touch a penny of it, you know that. It's to buy our station later on. For the next few years we're both going to work hard, and save every penny we earn. All right?" She nodded. "Yes, Luke." A simple oversight on Luke's part nearly scotched the wedding in midplan. He was not a Catholic. When Father Watty found out he threw up his hands in horror. "Dear Lord, Luke, why didn't you tell me earlier? Indeed and to goodness, it will take all of our energies to have you converted and baptized before the wedding!" Luke stared at Father Watty, astonished. "Who said anything about converting, Father? I'm quite happy as I am being nothing, but if it worries you, write me down as a Calathumpian or a Holy Roller or whatever you like. But write me down a Catholic you will not." In vain they pleaded; Luke refused to entertain the 318 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

idea of conversion for a moment. "I've got nothing against Catholi- cism or Eire, and I think the Catholics in Ulster are hard done by. But I'm Orange, and I'm not a turncoat. If I was a Catholic and you wanted me to convert to Methodism, I'd react the same. It's being a turncoat I object to, not being a Catholic. So you'll have to do without me in the flock, Father, and that's that." "Then you can't get married!" "Why on earth not? If you don't want to marry us, I can't see why the Reverend up at the Church of England will object, or Harry Gough the J.P." Fee smiled sourly, remembering her contretemps with Paddy and a priest; she had won that encounter. "But, Luke, I have to be married in church!" Meggie protested fearfully. "If I'm not, I'll be living in sin!" "Well, as far as I'm concerned, living in sin is a lot better than turning my coat inside out," said Luke, who was sometimes a curious contradiction; much as he wanted Meggie's money, a blind streak of stubbornness in him wouldn't let him back down. "Oh, stop all this silliness!" said Fee, not to Luke but to the priest. "Do what Paddy and I did and have an end to argument! Father Thomas can marry you in the presbytery if he doesn't want to soil his church!" Everyone stared at her, amazed, but it did the trick; Father Watkin gave in and agreed to marry them in the presbytery, though he re- fused to bless the ring. Partial Church sanction left Meggie feeling she was sinning, but not badly enough to go to Hell, and ancient Annie the presbytery housekeeper did her best to make Father Watty's study as churchlike as possible, with great vases of flowers and many brass candlesticks. But it was an uncomfortable ceremony, the very displeased priest making everyone feel he only went through with it to save himself the embarrassment of a secular wedding elsewhere. No Nuptial Mass, no blessings. However, it was done. Meggie was Mrs. Luke THE THORN BIRDS / 319

O'Neill, on her way to North Queensland and a honeymoon somewhat delayed by the time it would take getting there. Luke refused to spend that Saturday night at the Imperial, for the branch- line train to Goondiwindi left only once a week, on Saturday night, to connect with the Goondiwindi—Brisbane mail train on Sunday. This would bring them to Bris on Monday in time to catch the Cairns express. The Goondiwindi train was crowded. They had no privacy and sat up all night because it carried no sleeping cars. Hour after hour it trundled its erratic, grumpy way northeast, stopping interminably every time the engine driver felt like brewing a billy of tea for him- self, or to let a mob of sheep wander along the rails, or to have a yarn with a drover. "I wonder why they pronounce Goondiwindi Gundiwindi if they don't want to spell it that way?" Meggie asked idly as they waited in the only place open in Goondiwindi on a Sunday, the awful in- stitutional-green station waiting room with its hard black wooden benches. Poor Meggie, she was nervous and ill at ease. "How do I know?" sighed Luke, who didn't feel like talking and was starving into the bargain. Since it was Sunday they couldn't even get a cup of tea; not until the Monday-morning breakfast stop on the Brisbane mail did they get an opportunity to fill their empty stomachs and slake their thirst. Then Brisbane, into South Bris station, the trek across the city to Roma Street Station and the Cairns train. Here Meggie discovered Luke had booked them two second-class upright seats. "Luke, we're not short of money!" she said, tired and exasperated. "If you forgot to go to the bank, I've got a hundred pounds Bob gave me here in my purse. Why didn't you get us a first-class sleeping compartment?" He stared down at her, astounded. "But it's only three nights and three days to Dungloe! Why spend money on a sleeper when we're both young, 320 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

healthy and strong? Sitting up on a train for a while won't kill you, Meghann! It's about time you realized you've married a plain old workingman, not a bloody squatter!" So Meggie slumped in the window seat Luke seized for her and rested her trembling chin on her hand to look out the window so Luke wouldn't notice her tears. He had spoken to her as one speaks to an irresponsible child, and she was beginning to wonder if indeed this was how he regarded her. Rebellion began to stir, but it was very small and her fierce pride forbade the indignity of quarreling. Instead she told herself she was this man's wife, but it was such a new thing he wasn't used to it. Give him time. They would live together, she would cook his meals, mend his clothes, look after him, have his babies, be a good wife to him. Look how much Daddy had appreciated Mum, how much he had adored her. Give Luke time. They were going to a town called Dungloe, only fifty miles short of Cairns, which was the far northern terminus of the line which ran all the way along the Queensland coast. Over a thousand miles of narrow three-foot-six-gauge rail, rocking and pitching back and forth, every seat in the compartment occupied, no chance to lie down or stretch out. Though it was far more densely settled coun- tryside than Gilly, and far more colorful, she couldn't summon up interest in it. Her head ached, she could keep no food down and the heat was much, much worse than anything Gilly had ever cooked up. The lovely pink silk wedding dress was filthy from soot blowing in the windows, her skin was clammy with a sweat which wouldn't evaporate, and what was more galling than any of her physical discomforts, she was close to hating Luke. Apparently not in the least tired or out of sorts because of the journey, he sat at his ease yarning with two men going to Cardwell. The only times he glanced in her direction he also got up, leaned across her so carelessly she shrank, and THE THORN BIRDS / 321

flung a rolled-up newspaper out the window to some event-hungry gang of tattered men beside the line with steel hammers in their hands, calling: "Paip! Paip!" "Fettlers looking after the rails," he explained as he sat down again the first time it happened. And he seemed to assume she was quite as happy and comfort- able as he was, that the coastal plain flying by was fascinating her. While she sat staring at it and not seeing it, hating it before she had so much as set foot on it. At Cardwell the two men got off, and Luke went to the fish-and- chip shop across the road from the station to bring back a newspa- per-wrapped bundle. "They say Cardwell fish has to be tasted to be believed, Meghann love. The best fish in the world. Here, try some. It's your first bit of genuine Bananaland food. I tell you, there's no place like Queensland." Meggie glanced at the greasy pieces of batter-dipped fish, put her handkerchief to her mouth and bolted for the toilet. He was waiting in the corridor when she came out some time later, white and shaking. "What's the matter? Aren't you feeling well?" "I haven't felt well since we left Goondiwindi." "Good Lord! Why didn't you tell me?" "Why didn't you notice?" "You looked all right to me." "How far is it now?" she asked, giving up. "Three to six hours, give or take a bit. They don't run to timetable up here too much. There's plenty of room now those blokes are gone; lie down and put your tootsies in my lap." "Oh, don't baby-talk me!" she snapped tartly. "It would have been a lot better if they'd got off two days ago in Bundaberg!" "Come on now, Meghann, be a good sport! Nearly there. Only Tully and Innisfail, then Dungloe." It was late afternoon when they stepped off the train, 322 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Meggie clinging desperately to Luke's arm, too proud to admit she wasn't able to walk properly. He asked the stationmaster for the name of a workingmen's hotel, picked up their cases and walked out onto the street, Meggie behind him weaving drunkenly. "Only to the end of the block on the other side of the street," he comforted. "The white two-storied joint." Though their room was small and filled to overflowing with great pieces of Victorian furniture, it looked like heaven to Meggie, col- lapsing on the edge of the double bed. "Lie down for a while before dinner, love. I'm going out to find my landmarks," he said, sauntering from the room looking as fresh and rested as he had on their wedding morning. That had been Saturday, and this was late Thursday afternoon; five days sitting up in crowded trains, choked by cigarette smoke and soot. The bed was rocking monotonously in time to the clickety-click of steel wheels passing over rail joins, but Meggie turned her head into the pillow gratefully, and slept, and slept. Someone had taken off her shoes and stockings, and covered her with a sheet; Meggie stirred, opened her eyes and looked around. Luke was sitting on the window ledge with one knee drawn up, smoking. Her movement made him turn to look at her, and he smiled. "A nice bride you are! Here I am looking forward to my honey- moon and my wife conks out for nearly two days! I was a bit worried when I couldn't wake you up, but the publican says it hits women like that, the trip up in the train and the humidity. He said just let you sleep it off. How do you feel now?" She sat up stiffly, stretched her arms and yawned, "I feel much better, thank you. Oh, Luke! I know I'm young and strong, but I'm a woman! I can't take the sort of physical punishment you can." He came to sit on the edge of the bed, rubbing her THE THORN BIRDS / 323

arm in a rather charming gesture of contrition. "I'm sorry, Meghann, I really am. I didn't think of your being a woman. Not used to having a wife with me, that's all. Are you hungry, darling?" "Starved. Do you realize it's almost a week since I've eaten?" "Then why don't you have a bath, put on a clean dress and come outside to look at Dungloe?" There was a Chinese café next door to the hotel, where Luke led Meggie for her first-ever taste of Oriental food. She was so hungry anything would have tasted good, but this was superb. Nor did she care if it was made of rats' tails and sharks' fins and fowls' bowels, as rumor had it in Gillanbone, which only possessed a café run by Greeks who served steak and chips. Luke had brown-bagged two quart bottles of beer from the hotel and insisted she drink a glass in spite of her dislike for beer. "Go easy on the water at first," he advised. "Beer won't give you the trots." Then he took her arm and walked her around Dungloe proudly, as if he owned it. But then, Luke was born a Queenslander. What a place Dungloe was! It had a look and a character far removed from western towns. In size it was probably the same as Gilly, but instead of rambling forever down one main street. Dungloe was built in ordered square blocks, and all its shops and houses were painted white, not brown. Windows were vertical wooden transoms, presumably to catch the breeze, and wherever possible roofs had been dispensed with, like the movie theater, which had a screen, transomed walls and rows of ship's canvas desk chairs, but no roof at all. All around the edge of the town encroached a genuine jungle. Vines and creepers sprawled everywhere—up posts, across roofs, along walls. Trees sprouted casually in the middle of the road, or had houses built around them, or perhaps had grown up through the 324 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

houses. It was impossible to tell which had come first, trees or hu- man habitations, for the overwhelming impression was one of un- controlled, hectic growth of vegetation. Coconut palms taller and straighter than the Drogheda ghost gums waved fronds against a deep, swimming blue sky; everywhere Meggie looked was a blaze of color. No brown-and-grey land, this. Every kind of tree seemed to be in flower—purple, orange, scarlet, pink, blue, white. There were many Chinese in black silk trousers, tiny black-and- white shoes with white socks, white Mandarin-collared shirts, pig- tails down their backs. Males and females looked so alike Meggie found it difficult to tell which were which. Almost the entire com- merce of the town seemed to be in the hands of Chinese; a large department store, far more opulent than anything Gilly possessed, bore a Chinese name: AH WONG'S, said the sign. All the houses were built on top of very high piles, like the old head stockman's residence on Drogheda. This was to achieve maximum air circulation, Luke explained, and keep the termites from causing them to fall down a year after they were built. At the top of each pile was a tin plate with turned-down edges; termites couldn't bend their bodies in the middle and thus couldn't crawl over the tin parapet into the wood of the house itself. Of course they feasted on the piles, but when a pile rotted it was removed and replaced by a new one. Much easier and less expensive than putting up a new house. Most of the gardens seemed to be jungle, bamboo and palms, as if the inhabitants had given up trying to keep floral order. The men and women shocked her. To go for dinner and a walk with Luke she had dressed as custom demanded in heeled shoes, silk stockings, satin slip, floating silk frock with belt and elbow sleeves. On her head was a big straw hat, on her hands were gloves. And what irritated her the most was an uncomfortable feeling THE THORN BIRDS / 325

from the way people stared that she was the one improperly dressed! The men were bare-footed, bare-legged and mostly bare-chested, wearing nothing but drab khaki shorts; the few who covered their chests did so with athletic singlets, not shirts. The women were worse. A few wore skimpy cotton dresses clearly minus anything in the way of underwear, no stockings, sloppy sandals. But the majority wore short shorts, went bare-footed and shielded their breasts with indecent little sleeveless vests. Dungloe was a civilized town, not a beach. But here were its native white inhabitants strolling around in brazen undress; the Chinese were better clad. There were bicycles everywhere, hundreds of them; a few cars, no horses at all. Yes, very different from Gilly. And it was hot, hot, hot. They passed a thermometer which incredibly said a mere ninety degrees; in Gilly at 115 degrees it seemed cooler than this. Meggie felt as if she moved through solid air which her body had to cut like wet, steamy butter, as if when she breathed her lungs filled with water. "Luke, I can't bear it! Please, can we go back?" she gasped after less than a mile. "If you want. You're feeling the humidity. It rarely gets below ninety percent, winter or summer, and the temperature rarely gets below eighty-five or above ninety-five. There's not much of a sea- sonal variation, but in summer the monsoons send the humidity up to a hundred percent all the flaming time." "Summer rain, not winter?" "All year round. The monsoons always come, and when they're not blowing, the southeast trades are. They carry a lot of rain, too. Dungloe has an annual rainfall of between one and three hundred inches." Three hundred inches of rain a year! Poor Gilly ecstatic if it got a princely fifteen, while here as much as three hundred fell, two thousand miles from Gilly. "Doesn't it cool off at night?" Meggie asked as they 326 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

reached the hotel; hot nights in Gilly were bearable compared to this steam bath. "Not very much. You'll get used to it." He opened the door to their room and stood back for her to enter. "I'm going down to the bar for a beer, but I'll be back in half an hour. That ought to give you enough time." Her eyes flew to his face, startled. "Yes, Luke." Dungloe was seventeen degrees south of the equator, so night fell like a thunderclap; one minute it seemed the sun was scarcely setting, and the next minute pitch-black darkness spread itself thick and warm like treacle. When Luke came back Meggie had switched off the light and was lying in the bed with the sheet pulled up to her chin. Laughing, he reached out and tugged it off her, threw it on the floor. "It's hot enough, love! We won't need a sheet." She could hear him walking about, see his faint shadow shedding its clothes. "I put your pajamas on the dressing table," she whispered. "Pajamas? In weather like this? I know in Gilly they'd have a stroke at the thought of a man not wearing pajamas, but this is Dungloe! Are you really wearing a nightie?" "Then take it off. The bloody thing will only be a nuisance any- way." Fumbling, Meggie managed to wriggle out of the lawn nightgown Mrs. Smith had embroidered so lovingly for her wedding night, thankful that it was too dark for him to see her. He was right; it was much cooler lying bare and letting the breeze from the wideopen transoms play over her thinly. But the thought of another hot body in the bed with her was depressing. The springs creaked; Meggie felt damp skin touch her arm and jumped. He turned on his side, pulled her into his arms and kissed her. At first she lay passively, trying not to think of that wide-open mouth and its probing, indecent tongue, but then she began to struggle THE THORN BIRDS / 327

to be free, not wanting to be close in the heat, not wanting to be kissed, not wanting Luke. It wasn't a bit like that night in the Rolls coming back from Rudna Hunish. She couldn't seem to feel any- thing in him which thought of her, and some part of him was pushing insistently at her thighs while one hand, its nails squarely sharp, dug into her buttocks. Her fear blossomed into terror, she was overwhelmed in more than a physical way by his strength and determination, his lack of awareness of her. Suddenly he let her go, sat up and seemed to fumble with himself, snapping and pulling at something. "Better be safe," he gasped. "Lie on your back, it's time. No, not like that! Open your legs, for God's sake! Don't you know any- thing?" No, no, Luke, I don't! she wanted to cry. This is horrible, ob- scene; whatever it is you're doing to me can't possibly be permitted by the laws of Church or men! He actually lay down on top of her, lifted his hips and poked at her with one hand, the other so firmly in her hair she didn't dare move. Twitching and jumping at the alien thing between her legs, she tried to do as he wanted, spread her legs wider, but he was much broader than she was, and her groin muscles went into crampy spasm from the weight of him and the unaccustomed posture. Even through the darkening mists of fright and exhaustion she could sense the gathering of some mighty power; as he entered her a long high scream left her lips. "Shut up!" he groaned, took his hand out of her hair and clamped it defensively over her mouth. "What do you want to do, make everyone in this bloody pub think I'm murdering you? Lie still and it won't hurt any more than it has to! Lie still, lie still!" She fought like one possessed to be rid of that ghastly, painful thing, but his weight pinned her down and his hand deadened her cries, the agony went on and on. Utterly dry because he hadn't roused her, the even 328 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

drier condom scraped and rasped her tissues as he worked himself in and out, faster and faster, the breath beginning to hiss between his teeth; then some change stilled him, made him shudder, swallow hard. The pain dulled to raw soreness and he mercifully rolled off her to lie on his back, gasping. "It'll be better for you the next time," he managed to say. "The first time always hurts the woman." Then why didn't you have the decency to tell me that before- hand? she wanted to snarl, but she hadn't the energy to utter the words, she was too busy wanting to die. Not only because of the pain, but also from the discovery that she had possessed no identity for him, only been an instrument. The second time hurt just as much, and the third; exasperated, expecting her discomfort (for so he deemed it) to disappear magic- ally after the first time and thus not understanding why she contin- ued to fight and cry out, Luke grew angry, turned his back on her and went to sleep. The tears slipped sideways from Meggie's eyes into her hair; she lay on her back wishing for death, or else for her old life on Drogheda. Was that what Father Ralph had meant years ago, when he had told her of the hidden passageway to do with having children? A nice way to find out what he meant. No wonder he had preferred not to explain it more clearly himself. Yet Luke had liked the activity well enough to do it three times in quick succession. Obvi- ously it didn't hurt him. And for that she found herself hating him, hating it. Exhausted, so sore moving was agony, Meggie inched herself over onto her side with her back to Luke, and wept into the pillow. Sleep eluded her, though Luke slept so soundly her small timid movements never caused so much as a change in the pattern of his breathing. He was an economical sleeper and a quiet one, he neither snored nor flopped about, and she thought while waiting for the late dawn that if it had just been a matter THE THORN BIRDS / 329

of lying down together, she might have found him nice to be with. And the dawn came as quickly and joylessly as darkness had; it seemed strange not to hear roosters crowing, the other sounds of a rousing Drogheda with its sheep and horses and pigs and dogs. Luke woke, and rolled over, she felt him kiss her on the shoulder and was so tired, so homesick that she forgot modesty, didn't care about covering herself. "Come on, Meghann, let's have a look at you," he commanded, his hand on her hip. "Turn over, like a good little girl." Nothing mattered this morning; Meggie turned over, wincing, and lay looking up at him dully. "I don't like Meghann," she said, the only form of protest she could manage. "I do wish you'd call me Meggie." "I don't like Meggie. But if you really dislike Meghann so much, I'll call you Meg." His gaze roved her body dreamily. "What a nice shape you've got." He touched one breast, pink nipple flat and unaroused. "Especially these." Bunching the pillows into a heap, he lay back on them and smiled "Come on, Meg, kiss me. It's your turn to make love to me, and maybe you'll like that better, eh?" I never want to kiss you again as long as I live, she thought, looking at the long, heavily muscled body, the mat of dark hair on the chest diving down the belly in a thin line and then flaring into a bush, out of which grew the deceptively small and innocent shoot which could cause so much pain. How hairy his legs were! Meggie had grown up with men who never removed a layer of their clothes in the presence of women, but open-necked shirts showed hairy chests in hot weather. They were all fair men, and not offensive to her; this dark man was alien, repulsive. Ralph had a head of hair just as dark, but well she remembered that smooth, hairless brown chest. "Do as you're told, Meg! Kiss me." Leaning over, she kissed him; he cupped her breasts 330 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

in his palms and made her go on kissing him, took one of her hands and pushed it down to his groin. Startled, she took her unwilling mouth away from his to look at what lay under her hand, changing and growing. "Oh, please, Luke, not again!" she cried. "Please, not again! Please, please!" The blue eyes scanned her speculatively. "Hurts that much? All right, we'll do something different, but for God's sake try to be enthusiastic!" Pulling her on top of him, he pushed her legs, apart, lifted her shoulders and attached himself to her breast, as he had done in the car the night she committed herself to marrying him. There only in body, Meggie endured it; at least he didn't put himself inside her, so it didn't hurt any more than simply moving did. What strange creatures men were, to go at this as if it was the most pleasurable thing in the world. It was disgusting, a mockery of love. Had it not been for her hope that it would culminate in a baby, Meggie would have refused flatly to have anything more to do with it. "I've got you a job," Luke said over breakfast in the hotel dining room. "What? Before I've had a chance to make our home nice, Luke? Before we've even got a home?" "There's no point in our renting a house, Meg. I'm going to cut cane; it's all arranged. The best gang of cutters in Queensland is a gang of Swedes, Poles and Irish led by a bloke called Arne Swenson, and while you were sleeping off the journey I went to see him. He's a man short and he's willing to give me a trial. That means I'll be living in barracks with them. We cut six days a week, sunrise to sunset. Not only that, but we move around up and down the coast, wherever the next job takes us. How much I earn depends on how much sugar I cut, and if I'm good enough to cut with Arne's gang I'll be pulling in more than twenty quid a week. Twenty quid a week! Can you imagine that?" THE THORN BIRDS / 331

spend anything there. I'll take care of the hotel bill. It's time you realized you've married a workingman, Meg, that you're not the pampered squatter's daughter with money to burn. Mueller will pay your wages straight into my bank account, where they'll stay along with mine. I'm not spending the money on myself, Meg, you know that. Neither of us is going to touch it, because it's for our future, our station." "Yes, I understand. You're very sensible, Luke. But what if I should have a baby?" For a moment he was tempted to tell her the truth, that there would be no baby until the station was a reality, but something in her face made him decide not to. "Well, let's cross that bridge when we come to it, eh? I'd rather we didn't have one until we've got our station, so let's just hope we don't." No home, no money, no babies. No husband, for that matter. Meggie started to laugh. Luke joined her, his teacup lifted in a toast. "Here's to French letters," he said. In the morning they went out to Himmelhoch on the local bus, an old Ford with no glass in its windows and room for twelve people. Meggie was feeling better, for Luke had left her alone when she offered him a breast, and seemed to like it quite as well as that other awful thing. Much and all as she wanted babies, her courage had failed her. The first Sunday that she wasn't sore at all, she told herself, she would be willing to try again. Perhaps there was a baby already on the way, and she needn't bother with it ever again unless she wanted more. Eyes brighter, she looked around her with interest as the bus chugged out along the red dirt road. It was breath-taking country, so different from Gilly; she had to admit there was a grandeur and beauty here Gilly quite lacked. Easy to see there was never a shortage of water. The soil was the color of freshly spilled blood, brilliant scarlet, and the cane in the fields not THE THORN BIRDS / 333

fallow was a perfect contrast to the soil: long bright-green blades waving fifteen or twenty feet above claret-colored stalks as thick as Luke's arm. Nowhere in the world, raved Luke, did cane grow as tall or as rich in sugar; its yield was the highest known. That bright- red soil was over a hundred feet deep, and so stuffed with exactly the right nutrients the cane couldn't help but be perfect, especially considering the rainfall. And nowhere else in the world was it cut by white men, at the white man's driving, money-hungry pace. "You look good on a soapbox, Luke," said Meggie ironically. He glanced sideways at her, suspiciously, but refrained from comment because the bus had stopped on the side of the road to let them off. Himmelhoch was a large white house on top of a hill, surrounded by coconut palms, banana palms and beautiful smaller palms whose leaves splayed outward in great fans like the tails of peacocks. A grove of bamboo forty feet high cut the house off from the worst of the northwest monsoonal winds; even with its hill elevation it was still mounted on top of fifteen-foot piles. Luke carried her case; Meggie toiled up the red road beside him, gasping, still in correct shoes and stockings, her hat wilting around her face. The cane baron himself wasn't in, but his wife came onto the veranda as they mounted the steps, balancing herself between two sticks. She was smiling; looking at her dear kind face, Meggie felt better at once. "Come in, come in!" she said in a strong Australian accent. Expecting a German voice, Meggie was immeasurably cheered. Luke put her case down, shook hands when the lady took her right one off its stick, then pounded away down the steps in a hurry to catch the bus on its return journey. Arne Swenson was picking him up outside the pub at ten o'clock. "What's your first name, Mrs. O'Neill?" 334 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

The minute they give us power we'll have an electric stove, electric lights and a refrigerator." "I'm used to doing without them." "Yes, but where you come from the heat is dry. This is far, far worse. I'm just frightened that your health will suffer. It often does in women who weren't born and brought up here; something to do with the blood. We're on the same latitude south as Bombay and Rangoon are north, you know; not fit country for man or beast unless born to it." She smiled. "Oh, it's nice having you already! You and I are going to have a wonderful time! Do you like reading? Luddie and I have a passion for it." Meggie's face lit up. "Oh, yes!" "Splendid! You'll be too content to miss that big handsome husband of yours." Meggie didn't answer. Miss Luke? Was he handsome? She thought that if she never saw him again she would be perfectly happy. Except that he was her husband, that the law said she had to make her life with him. She had gone into it with her eyes open; she had no one to blame save herself. And perhaps as the money came in and the station in Western Queensland became a reality, there would be time for Luke and her to live together, settle down, know each other, get along. He wasn't a bad man, or unlikable; it was just that he had been alone so long he didn't know how to share himself with someone else. And he was a simple man, ruthlessly single of purpose, untor- mented. What he desired was a concrete thing, even if a dream; it was a positive reward which would surely come as the result of unremitting work, grinding sacrifice. For that one had to respect him. Not for a moment did she think he would use the money to give himself luxuries; he had meant what he said. It would stay in the bank. The trouble was he didn't have the time or the inclination to understand a woman, he didn't seem to know a woman was differ- ent, needed things he didn't need, 336 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

as he needed things she didn't. Well, it could be worse. He might have put her to work for someone far colder and less considerate than Anne Mueller. On top of this hill she wouldn't come to any harm. But oh, it was so far from Drogheda! That last thought came again after they finished touring the house, and stood together on the living room veranda looking out across Himmelhoch. The great fields of cane (one couldn't call them paddocks, since they were small enough to encompass with the eyes) plumed lushly in the wind, a restlessly sparkling and polished-by-rain green, falling away in a long slope to the jungle- clad banks of a great river, wider by far than the Barwon. Beyond the river the cane lands rose again, squares of poisonous green in- terspersed with bloody fallow fields, until at the foot of a vast mountain the cultivation stopped, and the jungle took over. Behind the cone of mountain, farther away, other peaks reared and died purple into the distance. The sky was a richer, denser blue than Gilly skies, puffed with white billows of thick cloud, and the color of the whole was vivid, intense. "That's Mount Bartle Frere," said Anne, pointing to the isolated peak. "Six thousand feet straight up out of a sea-level plain. They say it's solid tin, but there's no hope of mining it for the jungle." On the heavy, idle wind came a strong, sickening stench Meggie hadn't stopped trying to get out of her nostrils since stepping off the train. Like decay, only not like decay; unbearably sweet, all- pervasive, a tangible presence which never seemed to diminish no matter how hard the breeze blew. "What you can smell is molasses," said Anne as she noticed Meggie's flaring nose; she lit a tailor-made Ardath cigarette. "It's disgusting." "I know. That's why I smoke. But to a certain extent you get used to it, though unlike most smells it never THE THORN BIRDS / 337

quite disappears. Day in and day out, the molasses is always there." "What are the buildings on the river with the black chimney?" "That's the mill. It processes the cane into raw sugar. What's left over, the dry remnants of the cane minus its sugar content, is called bagasse. Both raw sugar and bagasse are sent south to Sydney for further refining. Out of raw sugar they get molasses, treacle, golden syrup, brown sugar, white sugar and liquid glucose. The bagasse is made into fibrous building board like Masonite. Nothing is wasted, absolutely nothing. That's why even in this Depression growing cane is still a very profitable business." Arne Swenson was six feet two inches tall, exactly Luke's height, and just as handsome. His bare body was coated a dark golden brown by perpetual exposure to the sun, his thatch of bright yellow hair curled all over his head; the fine Swedish features were so like Luke's in type that it was easy to see how much Norse blood had percolated into the veins of the Scots and Irish. Luke had abandoned his moleskins and white shirt in favor of shorts. With Arne he climbed into an ancient, wheezing model-T utility truck and headed for where the gang was cutting out by Goondi. The second-hand bicycle he had bought lay in the utility's tray along with his case, and he was dying to begin work. The other men had been cutting since dawn and didn't lift their heads when Arne appeared from the direction of the barracks, Luke in tow. The cutting uniform consisted of shorts, boots with thick woolen socks, and canvas hats. Eyes narrowing, Luke stared at the toiling men, who were a peculiar sight. Coal-black dirt covered them from head to foot, with sweat making bright pink streaks down chests, arms, backs. "Soot and muck from the cane," Arne explained. "We have to burn it before we can cut it." 338 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

He bent down to pick up two instruments, gave one to Luke and kept one. "This is a cane knife," he said, hefting his. "With this you cut the cane. Very easy if you know how." He grinned, proceeding to demonstrate and making it look far easier than it probably was. Luke looked at the deadly thing he gripped, which was not at all like a West Indian machete. It widened into a large triangle instead of tapering to a point, and had a wicked hook like a rooster's spur at one of the two blade ends. "A machete is too small for North Queensland cane," Arne said, finished his demonstration. "This is the right toy, you'll find. Keep it sharp, and good luck." Off he went to his own section, leaving Luke standing undecided for a moment. Then, shrugging, he started work. Within minutes he understood why they left it to slaves and to races not sophistic- ated enough to know there were easier ways to make a living; like shearing, he thought with wry humor. Bend, hack, straighten, clutch the unwieldy topheavy bunch securely, slide its length through the hands, whack off the leaves, drop it in a tidy heap, go to the next cluster of stems, bend, hack, straighten, hack, add it to the heap... The cane was alive with vermin: rats, bandicoots, cockroaches, toads, spiders, snakes, wasps, flies and bees. Everything that could bite viciously or sting unbearably was well represented. For that reason the cutters burned the cane first, preferring the filth of working charred crops to the depredations of green, living cane. Even so they were stung, bitten and cut. If it hadn't been for the boots Luke's feet would have been worse off than his hands, but no cutter ever wore gloves. They slowed a man down, and time was money in this game. Besides, gloves were sissy. At sundown Arne called a halt, and came to see how Luke had fared. THE THORN BIRDS / 339

gang members. Then he settled down to becoming better than Arne. He wanted the biggest share of the money, maybe a partnership. But most of all he wanted to see that same look that came into every face for Arne directed at himself; Arne was something of a god, for he was the best cutter in Queensland, and that probably meant he was the best cutter in the world. When they went into a town on Saturday night the local men couldn't buy Arne enough rums and beers, and the local women whirred about him like hummingbirds. There were many similarities between Arne and Luke. They were both vain and enjoyed evoking intense female admiration, but admiration was as far as it went. They had nothing to give to women; they gave it all to the cane. For Luke the work had a beauty and a pain he seemed to have been waiting all his life to feel. To bend and straighten and bend in that ritual rhythm was to participate in some mystery beyond the scope of ordinary men. For, as watching Arne taught him, to do this superbly was to be a top member of the most elite band of workingmen in the world; he could bear himself with pride no matter where he was, knowing that almost every man he met would never last a day in a cane field. The King of England was no better than he, and the King of England would admire him if he knew him. He could look with pity and contempt on doctors, lawyers, pen-pushers, cockies. To cut sugar the money-hungry white man's way—that was the greatest achievement. He would sit on the edge of his cot feeling the ribbed, corded muscles of his arm swell, look at the horny, scarred palms of his hands, the tanned length of his beautifully structured legs, and smile. A man who could do this and not only survive but like it was a man. He wondered if the King of England could say as much. It was four weeks before Meggie saw Luke. Each Sunday she powdered her sticky nose, put on a pretty THE THORN BIRDS / 341

silk dress—though she gave up the purgatory of slips and stock- ings—and waited for her husband, who never came. Anne and Luddie Mueller said nothing, just watched her animation fade as each Sunday darkened dramatically, like a curtain falling on a brilliantly lit, empty stage. It wasn't that she wanted him, precisely; it was just that he was hers, or she was his, or however best it might be described. To imagine that he didn't even think of her while she passed her days and weeks waiting with him in her thoughts all the time, to imagine that was to be filled with rage, frustration, bitterness, humiliation, sorrow. Much as she had loathed those two nights at the Dunny pub, at least then she had come first with him; now she found herself actually wishing she had bitten off her tongue sooner than cried out in pain. That was it, of course. Her suffering had made him tire of her, ruined his own pleasure. From anger at him, at his indifference to her pain, she passed to remorse, and ended in blaming it all on herself. The fourth Sunday she didn't bother dressing up, just padded around the kitchen bare-footed in shorts and vest, getting a hot breakfast for Luddie and Anne, who enjoyed this incongruity once a week. At the sound of footsteps on the back stairs she turned from bacon sizzling in the pan; for a moment she simply stared at the big, hairy fellow in the doorway. Luke? Was this Luke? He seemed made of rock, inhuman. But the effigy crossed the kitchen, gave her a smacking kiss and sat down at the table. She broke eggs into the pan and put on more bacon. Anne Mueller came in, smiled civilly and inwardly fumed at him. Wretched man, what was he about, to leave his new wife neglected for so long? "I'm glad to see you've remembered you have a wife," she said. "Come out onto the veranda, sit with Luddie and me and we'll all have breakfast. Luke, help Meggie carry the bacon and eggs. I can manage the toast rack in my teeth." 342 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Ludwig Mueller was Australian-born, but his German heritage was clearly on him: the beefy red complexion not able to cope with beer and sun combined, the square grey head, the pale-blue Baltic eyes. He and his wife liked Meggie very much, and counted them- selves fortunate to have acquired her services. Especially was Luddie grateful, seeing how much happier Anne was since that goldy head had been glowing around the house. "How's the cutting, Luke?" he asked, shoveling eggs and bacon onto his plate. "If I said I liked it, would you believe me?" Luke laughed, heaping his own plate. Luddie's shrewd eyes rested on the handsome face, and he nod- ded. "Oh, yes. You've got the right sort of temperament and the right sort of body, I think. It makes you feel better than other men, superior to them." Caught in his heritage of cane fields, far from academia and with no chance of exchanging one for the other, Luddie was an ardent student of human nature; he read great fat tomes bound in Morocco leather with names on their spines like Freud and Jung, Huxley and Russell. "I was beginning to think you were never going to come and see Meggie," Anne said, spreading ghee on her toast with a brush; it was the only way they could have butter up here, but it was better than none. "Well, Arne and I decided to work on Sundays for a while. To- morrow we're off to Ingham." "Which means poor Meggie won't see you too often." "Meg understands. It won't be for more than a couple of years, and we do have the summer layoff. Arne says he can get me work at the CSR in Sydney then, and I might take Meg with me." "Why do you have to work so hard, Luke?" asked Anne. "Got to get the money together for my property out west, around Kynuna. Didn't Meg mention it?" THE THORN BIRDS / 343

to cut it, what a beaut life it was out in the open air, what a beaut lot of blokes they were in Arne's gang, how different it was from shearing, and how much better. They turned and walked up the hill again; Luke led her into the exquisitely cool cavern under the house, between the piles. Anne had made a conservatory out of it, stood pieces of terra-cotta pipe of differing lengths and girths upright, then filled them with soil and planted trailing, dangling things in them; orchids of every kind and color, ferns, exotic creepers and bushes. The ground was soft and redolent of wood chips; great wire baskets hung from the joists overhead, full of ferns or orchids or tuberoses; staghorns in bark nests grew on the piles; magnificent begonias in dozens of brilliant colors had been planted around the bases of the pipes. It was Meggie's favorite retreat, the one thing of Himmelhoch's she pre- ferred to anything of Drogheda's. For Drogheda could never hope to grow so much on one small spot; there just wasn't enough moisture in the air. "Isn't this lovely, Luke? Do you think perhaps after a couple of years up here we might be able to rent a house for me to live in? I'm dying to try something like this for myself." "What on earth do you want to live alone in a house for? This isn't Gilly, Meg; it's the sort of place where a woman on her own isn't safe. You're much better off here, believe me. Aren't you happy here?" "I'm as happy as one can be in someone else's home." "Look, Meg, you've just got to be content with what you have now until we move out west. We can't spend money renting houses and having you live a life of leisure and still save. Do you hear "Yes, Luke." He was so upset he didn't do what he had intended to do when he led her under the house, namely kiss her. Instead he gave her a casual smack on the bottom THE THORN BIRDS / 345

which hurt a little too much to be casual, and set off down the road to the spot where he had left his bike propped against a tree. He had pedaled twenty miles to see her rather than spend money on a rail motor and a bus, which meant he had to pedal twenty miles back. "The poor little soul!" said Anne to Luddie. "I could kill him!" January came and went, the slackest month of the year for cane cutters, but there was no sign of Luke. He had murmured about taking Meggie to Sydney, but instead he went to Sydney with Arne and without her. Arne was a bachelor and had an aunt with a house in Rozelle, within walking distance (no tram fares; save money) of the CSR, the Colonial Sugar Refineries. Within those gargantuan concrete walls like a fortress on a hill, a cutter with connections could get work. Luke and Arne kept in trim stacking sugar bags, and swimming or surfing in their spare time. Left in Dungloe with the Muellers, Meggie sweated her way through The Wet, as the monsoon season was called. The Dry lasted from March to November and in this part of the continent wasn't exactly dry, but compared to The Wet it was heavenly. During The Wet the skies just opened and vomited water, not all day but in fits and starts; in between deluges the land steamed, great clouds of white vapor rising from the cane, the soil, the jungle, the mountains. And as time went on Meggie longed for home more and more. North Queensland, she knew now, could never become home to her. For one thing, the climate didn't suit her, perhaps because she had spent most of her life in dryness. And she hated the loneliness, the unfriendliness, the feeling of remorseless lethargy. She hated the prolific insect and reptile life which made each night an ordeal of giant toads, tarantulas, cockroaches, rats; nothing seemed to keep them out of the house, and she was terrified of them. They were so 346 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

huge, so aggressive, so hungry. Most of all she hated the dunny, which was not only the local patois for toilet but the diminutive for Dungloe, much to the delight of the local populace, who punned on it perpetually. But a Dunny dunny left one's stomach churning in revolt, for in this seething climate holes in the ground were out of the question because of typhoid and other enteric fevers. Instead of being a hole in the ground, a Dunny dunny was a tarred tin can which stank, and as it filled came alive with noisome maggots and worms. Once a week the can was removed and replaced with an empty one, but once a week wasn't soon enough. Meggie's whole spirit rebelled against the casual local acceptance of such things as normal; a lifetime in North Queensland couldn't reconcile her to them. Yet dismally she reflected that it probably would be a whole lifetime, or at least until Luke was too old to cut the sugar. Much as she longed for and dreamed of Drogheda, she was far too proud to admit to her family that her husband neglected her; sooner than admit that, she'd take the lifetime sentence, she told herself fiercely. Months went by, then a year, and time crept toward the second year's end. Only the constant kindness of the Muellers kept Meggie in residence at Himmelhoch, trying to resolve her dilemma. Had she written to ask Bob for the fare home he would have sent it by return telegram, but poor Meggie couldn't face telling her family that Luke kept her without a penny in her purse. The day she did tell them was the day she would leave Luke, never to go back to him, and she hadn't made up her mind yet to take such a step. Everything in her up-bringing conspired to prevent her leaving Luke: the sacredness of her marriage vows, the hope she might have a baby one day, the position Luke occupied as husband and master of her destiny. Then there were the things which sprang from her own nature: that stubborn, stiff-necked pride, and the niggling conviction THE THORN BIRDS / 347

that the situation was as much her fault as Luke's. If there wasn't something wrong with her, Luke might have behaved far differently. She had seen him six times in the eighteen months of her exile, and often thought, quite unaware such a thing as homosexuality existed, that by rights Luke should have married Arne, because he certainly lived with Arne and much preferred his company. They had gone into full partnership and drifted up and down the thou- sand-mile coast following the sugar harvest, living, it seemed, only to work. When Luke did come to see her he didn't attempt any kind of intimacy, just sat around for an hour or two yarning to Luddie and Anne, took his wife for a walk, gave her a friendly kiss, and was off again. The three of them, Luddie, Anne and Meggie, spent all their spare time reading. Himmelhoch had a library far larger than Drogheda's few shelves, more erudite and more salacious by far, and Meggie learned a great deal while she read. One Sunday in June of 1936 Luke and Arne turned up together, very pleased with themselves. They had come, they said, to give Meggie a real treat, for they were taking her to a ceilidh. Unlike the general tendency of ethnic groups in Australia to scatter and become purely Australian, the various nationalities in the North Queensland peninsula tended to preserve their traditions fiercely: the Chinese, the Italians, the Germans and the Scots-Irish, these four groups making up the bulk of the population. And when the Scots threw a ceilidh every Scot for miles attended. To Meggie's astonishment, Luke and Arne were wearing kilts, looking, she thought when she got her breath back, absolutely magnificent. Nothing is more masculine on a masculine man than a kilt, for it swings with a long clean stride in a flurry of pleats be- hind and stays perfectly still in front, the sporran like a loin 348 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

guard, and below the mid-knee hem strong fine legs in diamond checkered hose, buckled shoes. It was far too hot to wear the plaid and the jacket; they had contented themselves with white shirts open halfway down their chests, sleeves rolled up above their el- bows. "What's a ceilidh anyway?" she asked as they set off. "It's Gaelic for a gathering, a shindig." "Why on earth are you wearing kilts?" "We won't be let in unless we are, and we're well known at all the ceilidhs between Bris and Cairns." "Are you now? I imagine you must indeed go to quite a few, otherwise I can't see Luke outlaying money for a kilt. Isn't that so, Arne?" "A man's got to have some relaxation," said Luke, a little defens- ively. The ceilidh was being held in a barnlike shack falling to rack and ruin down in the midst of the mangrove swamps festering about the mouth of the Dungloe River. Oh, what a country this was for smells! Meggie thought in despair, her nose twitching to yet another indescribably disgusting aroma. Molasses, mildew, dunnies, and now mangroves. All the rotting effluvia of the seashore rolled into one smell. Sure enough, every man arriving at the shed wore a kilt; as they went in and she looked around, Meggie understood how drab a peahen must feel when dazzled by the vivid gorgeousness of her mate. The women were overshadowed into near nonexistence, an impression which the later stages of the evening only sharpened. Two pipers in the complex, light-blue-based Anderson tartan were standing on a rickety dais at one end of the hall, piping a cheerful reel in perfect synchrony, sandy hair on end, sweat running down ruddy faces. A few couples were dancing, but most of the noisy activity seemed to be centered around a group of men who were passing out glasses of what was surely Scotch whiskey. Meggie found herself thrust into a corner with several other women, and was content to stay there THE THORN BIRDS / 349

watching, fascinated. Not one woman wore a clan tartan, for indeed no Scotswoman wears the kilt, only the plaid, and it was too hot to drape a great heavy piece of material around the shoulders. So the women wore their dowdy North Queensland cotton dresses; which stuttered into limp silence beside the men's kilts. There was the blazing red and white of Clan Menzies, the cheery black and yellow of Clan MacLeod of Lewis, the windowpane blue and red checks of Clan Skene, the vivid complexity of Clan Ogilvy, the lovely red, grey and black of Clan MacPherson. Luke in Clan MacNeil, Arne in the Sassenach's Jacobean tartan. Beautiful! Luke and Arne were obviously well known and well liked. How often did they come without her, then? And what had possessed them to bring her tonight? She sighed, leaned against the wall. The other women were eyeing her curiously, especially the rings on her wedding finger; Luke and Arne were the objects of much feminine admiration, herself the object of much feminine envy. I wonder what they'd say if I told them the big dark one, who is my husband, has seen me precisely twice in the last eight months, and never sees me with the idea of getting into a bed? Look at the pair of them, the conceited Highland fops! And neither of them Scottish at all, just playacting because they know they look sensational in kilts and they like to be the center of attention. You magnificent pair of frauds! You're too much in love with yourselves to want or need love from anyone else. At midnight the women were relegated to standing around the walls; the pipers skirled into "Caber Feidh" and the serious dancing began. For the rest of her life, whenever she heard the sound of a piper Meggie was back in that shed. Even the swirl of a kilt could do it; there was that dreamlike merging of sound and sight, of life and brilliant vitality, which means a memory so piercing, so spell- binding, that it will never be lost. Down went the crossed swords on the floor; two men 350 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

in Clan MacDonald of Sleat kilts raised their arms above their heads, hands flicked over like ballet dancers, and very gravely, as if at the end the swords would be plunged into their breasts, began to pick their delicate way through, between, among the blades. A high shrill scream ripped above the airy wavering of the pipes, the tune became "All the Blue Bonnets over the Border," the sabers were scooped up, and every man in the room swung into the dance, arms linking and dissolving, kilts flaring. Reels, strathspeys, flings; they danced them all, feet on the board floor sending echoes among the rafters, buckles on shoes flashing, and every time the pattern changed someone would throw back his head, emit that shrill, ululating whoop, set off trains of cries from other exuberant throats. While the women watched, forgotten. It was close to four in the morning when the ceilidh broke up; outside was not the astringent crispness of Blair Atholl or Skye but the torpor of a tropical night, a great heavy moon dragging itself along the spangled wastes of the heavens, and over it all the stinking miasma of mangroves. Yet as Arne drove them off in the wheezing old Ford, the last thing Meggie heard was the drifting dwindling lament "Flowers o' the Forest," bidding the revelers home. Home. Where was home? "Well, did you enjoy that?" asked Luke. "I would have enjoyed it more had I danced more," she answered. "What, at a ceilidh? Break it down, Meg! Only the men are supposed to dance, so we're actually pretty good to you women, letting you dance at all." "It seems to me only men do a lot of things, and especially if they're good things, enjoyable things." "Well, excuse me!" said Luke stiffly. "Here was I thinking you might like a bit of a change, which was why I brought you. I didn't have to, you know! And if you're not grateful I won't bring you again." "You probably don't have any intention of doing so, THE THORN BIRDS / 351

anyway," said Meggie. "It isn't good to admit me into your life. I learned a lot these past few hours, but I don't think it's what you intended to teach me. It's getting harder to fool me, Luke. In fact, I'm fed up with you, with the life I'm leading, with everything!" "Ssssh!" he hissed, scandalized. "We're not alone!" "Then come alone!" she snapped. "When do I ever get the chance to see you alone for more than a few minutes?" Arne pulled up at the bottom of the Himmelhoch hill, grinning at Luke sympathetically. "Go on, mate," he said. "Walk her up; I'll wait here for you. No hurry." "I mean it, Luke!" Meggie said as soon as they were out of Arne's hearing. "The worm's turning, do you hear me? I know I promised to obey you, but you promised to love and cherish me, so we're both liars! I want to go home to Drogheda!" He thought of her two thousand pounds a year and of its ceasing to be put in his name. "Oh, Meg!" he said helplessly. "Look, sweetheart, it won't be forever, I promise! And this summer I'm going to take you to Sydney with me, word of an O'Neill! Arne's aunt has a flat coming vacant in her house, and we can live there for three months, have a wonderful time! Bear with me another year or so in the cane, then we'll buy our property and settle down, eh?" The moon lit up his face; he looked sincere, upset, anxious, contrite. And very like Ralph de Bricassart. Meggie relented, because she still wanted his babies. "All right," she said. "Another year. But I'm holding you to that promise of Sydney, Luke, so remember!" 352 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

12 Once a month Meggie wrote a dutiful letter to Fee, Bob and the boys, full of descriptions of North Queensland, carefully humorous, never hinting of any differences between her and Luke. That pride again. As far as Drogheda knew, the Muellers were friends of Luke's with whom she boarded because Luke traveled so much. Her genuine affection for the couple came through in every word she wrote about them, so no one on Drogheda worried. Except that it grieved them she never came home. Yet how could she tell them that she didn't have the money to visit without also telling them how miserable her marriage to Luke O'Neill had become? Occasionally she would nerve herself to insert a casual question about Bishop Ralph, and even less often Bob would remember to pass on the little he learned from Fee about the Bishop. Then came a letter full of him. "He arrived out of the blue one day, Meggie," Bob's letter said, "looking a bit upset and down in the mouth. I must say he was floored not to find you here. He was spitting mad because we hadn't told him about you and Luke, but when Mum said you'd got a bee in your bonnet about it and didn't want us to tell him, he shut 353

up and never said another word. But I thought he missed you more than he would any of the rest of us, and I suppose that's quite natural because you spent more time with him than the rest of us, and I think he always thought of you as his little sister. He wandered around as if he couldn't believe you wouldn't pop up all of a sudden, poor chap. We didn't have any pictures to show him either, and I never thought until he asked to see them that it was funny you never had any wedding pictures taken. He asked if you had any kids, and I said I didn't think so. You don't, do you, Meggie? How long is it now since you were married? Getting on for two years? Must be, because this is July. Time flies, eh? I hope you have some kids soon, because I think the Bishop would be pleased to hear of it. I offered to give him your address, but he said no. Said it wouldn't be any use because he's going to Athens, Greece, for a while with the archbishop he works for. Some Dago name four yards long, I never can remember it. Can you imagine, Meggie, they're flying? 'Struth! Anyway, once he found out you weren't on Drogheda to go round with him he didn't stay long, just took a ride or two, said Mass for us every day, and went six days after he got here." Meggie laid the letter down. He knew, he knew! At last he knew. What had he thought, how much had it grieved him? And why had he pushed her to do this? It hadn't made things any better. She didn't love Luke, she never would love Luke. He was nothing more than a substitute, a man who would give her children similar in type to those she might have had with Ralph de Bricassart. Oh, God, what a mess! Archbishop di Contini-Verchese preferred to stay in a secular hotel than avail himself of the offered quarters in an Athens Orthodox palace. His mission was a very delicate one, of some moment; there were matters long overdue for discussion with the chief prelates of the 354 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Greek Orthodox Church, the Vatican having a fondness for Greek and Russian Orthodoxy that it couldn't have for Protestantism. After all, the Orthodoxies were schisms, not heresies; their bishops, like Rome's, extended back to Saint Peter in an unbroken line. The Archbishop knew his appointment for this mission was a diplomatic testing, a stepping stone to greater things in Rome. Again his gift for languages had been a boon, for it was his fluent Greek which had tipped the balance in his favor. They had sent for him all the way to Australia, flown him out. And it was unthinkable that he go without Bishop de Bricassart, for he had grown to rely upon that amazing man more and more with the passing of the years. A Mazarin, truly a Mazarin; His Grace admired Cardinal Mazarin far more than he did Cardinal Richelieu, so the comparison was high praise. Ralph was everything the Church liked in her high officials. His theology was conservative, so were his ethics; his brain was quick and subtle, his face gave away nothing of what went on behind it; and he had an exquisite knack of knowing just how to please those he was with, whether he liked them or loathed them, agreed with them or differed from them. A sycophant he was not, a diplomat he was. If he was re- peatedly brought to the attention of those in the Vatican hierarchy, his rise to prominence would be certain. And that would please His Grace di Contini-Verchese, for he didn't want to lose contact with His Lordship de Bricassart. It was very hot, but Bishop Ralph didn't mind the dry Athens air after Sydney's humidity. Walking rapidly, as usual in boots, breeches and soutane, he strode up the rocky ramp to the Acropolis, through the frowning Propylon, past the Erechtheum, on up the incline with its slippery rough stones to the Parthenon, and down to the wall beyond. There, with the wind ruffling his dark curls, a little grey about the ears now, he stood and looked across THE THORN BIRDS / 355

the white city to the bright hills and the clear, astonishing aquamar- ine of the Aegean Sea. Right below him was the Plaka with its rooftop cafés, its colonies of Bohemians, and to one side a great theater lapped up the rock. In the distance were Roman columns, Crusader forts and Venetian castles, but never a sign of the Turks. What amazing people, these Greeks. To hate the race who had ruled them for seven hundred years so much that once freed they hadn't left a mosque or a minaret standing. And so ancient, so full of rich heritage. His Normans had been fur-clad barbarians when Pericles clothed the top of the rock in marble, and Rome had been a rude village. Only now, eleven thousand miles away, was he able to think of Meggie without wanting to weep. Even so, the distant hills blurred for a moment before he brought his emotions under control. How could he possibly blame her, when he had told her to do it? He understood at once why she had been determined not to tell him; she didn't want him to meet her new husband, or be a part of her new life. Of course in his mind he had assumed she would bring whomever she married to Gillanbone if not to Drogheda itself, that she would continue to live where he knew her to be safe, free from care and danger. But once he thought about it, he could see this was the last thing she would want. No, she had been bound to go away, and so long as she and this Luke O'Neill were together, she wouldn't come back. Bob said they were saving to buy a property in Western Queensland, and that news had been the death knell. Meggie meant never to come back. As far as he was concerned, she intended to be dead. But are you happy, Meggie? Is he good to you? Do you love him, this Luke O'Neill? What kind of man is he, that you turned from me to him? What was it about him, an ordinary stockman, that you liked better than Enoch Davies or Liam O'Rourke or Alastair Mac-Queen? Was it that I didn't know him, that I could 356 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

make no comparisons? Did you do it to torture me, Meggie, to pay me back? But why are there no children? What's the matter with the man, that he roams up and down the state like a vagabond and puts you to live with friends? No wonder you have no child; he's not with you long enough. Meggie, why? Why did you marry this Luke O'Neill? Turning, he made his way down from the Acropolis, and walked the busy streets of Athens. In the open-air markets around Evripidou Street he lingered, fascinated by the people, the huge baskets of kalamari and fish reeking in the sun, the vegetables and tinsel slip- pers hung side by side; the women amused him, their unashamed and open cooing over him, a legacy of a culture basically very dif- ferent from his puritanical own. Had their unabashed admiration been lustful (he could not think of a better word) it would have embarrassed him acutely, but he accepted it in the spirit intended, as an accolade for extraordinary physical beauty. The hotel was on Omonia Square, very luxurious and expensive. Archbishop di Contini-Verchese was sitting in a chair by his balcony windows, quietly thinking; as Bishop Ralph came in he turned his head, smiling. "In good time, Ralph. I would like to pray." "I thought everything was settled? Are there sudden complica- tions, Your Grace?" "Not of that kind. I had a letter from Cardinal Monteverdi today, expressing the wishes of the Holy Father." Bishop Ralph felt his shoulders tighten, a curious prickling of the skin around his ears. "Tell me." "As soon as the talks are over—and they are over—I am to pro- ceed to Rome. There I am to be blessed with the biretta of a cardin- al, and continue my work in Rome under the direct supervision of His Holiness." "Whereas I?" "You will become Archbishop de Bricassart, and go back to Australia to fill my shoes as Papal Legate." THE THORN BIRDS / 357

The prickling skin around his ears flushed red hot; his head whirled, rocked. He, a non-Italian, to be honored with the Papal Legation! It was unheard of! Oh, depend on it, he would be Car- dinal de Bricassart yet! "Of course you will receive training and instruction in Rome first. That will take about six months, during which I will be with you to introduce you to those who are my friends. I want them to know you, because the time will come when I shall send for you, Ralph, to help me with my work in the Vatican." "Your Grace, I can't thank you enough! It's due to you, this great chance." "God grant I am sufficiently intelligent to see when a man is too able to leave in obscurity, Ralph! Now let us kneel and pray. God is very good." His rosary beads and missal were sitting on a table nearby; hand trembling, Bishop Ralph reached for the beads and knocked the missal to the floor. It fell open at the middle. The Archbishop, who was closer to it, picked it up and looked curiously at the brown, tissue-thin shape which had once been a rose. "How extraordinary! Why do you keep this? Is it a memory of your home, or perhaps of your mother?" The eyes which saw through guile and dissimulation were looking straight at him, and there was no time to disguise his emotion, or his apprehension. "No." He grimaced. "I want no memories of my mother." "But it must have great meaning for you, that you store it so lovingly within the pages of the book most dear to you. Of what does it speak?" "Of a love as pure as that I bear my God, Vittorio. It does the book nothing but honor." "That I deduced, because I know you. But the love, does it en- danger your love for the Church?" "No. It was for the Church I forsook her, that I always will forsake her. I've gone so far beyond her, and I can never go back again." 358 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

she wanted to be with him or not, now that the opportunity presented itself. Though the pain of her mind had taken a lot longer to heal than the pain of her body, the memory of her honeymoon ordeal in the Dunny pub had been pushed from thought so long it had lost the power to terrify her, and from her reading she under- stood better now that much of it had been due to ignorance, her own and Luke's. Oh, dear Lord, pray this holiday would mean a child! If she could only have a baby to love it would be so much easier. Anne wouldn't mind a baby around, she'd love it. So would Luddie. They had told her so a hundred times, hoping Luke would come once for long enough to rectify his wife's barren loveless ex- istence. When she told them what the letter said they were delighted, but privately skeptical. "Sure as eggs is eggs that wretch will find some excuse to be off without her," said Anne to Luddie. Luke had borrowed a car from somewhere, and picked Meggie up early in the morning. He looked thin, wrinkled and yellow, as if he had been pickled. Shocked, Meggie gave him her case and climbed in beside him. "What is Weil's disease, Luke? You said you weren't in any danger, but it looks to me as if you've been very sick indeed." "Oh, it's just some sort of jaundice most cutters get sooner or later. The cane rats carry it, we pick it up through a cut or sore. I'm in good health, so I wasn't too sick compared to some who get it. The quacks say I'll be fit as a fiddle in no time." Climbing up through a great gorge filled with jungle, the road led inland, a river in full spate roaring and tumbling below, and at one spot a magnificent waterfall spilling to join it from somewhere up above, right athwart the road. They drove between the cliff and the angling water in a wet, glittering archway of fantastic light and shadow. And as they climbed the air grew 360 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

cool, exquisitely fresh; Meggie had forgotten how good cool air made her feel. The jungle leaned across them, so impenetrable no one ever dared to enter it. The bulk of it was quite invisible under the weight of leafy vines lying sagging from treetop to treetop, continuous and endless, like a vast sheet of green velvet flung across the forest. Under the eaves Meggie caught glimpses of wonderful flowers and butterflies, cartwheeling webs with great elegant speckled spiders motionless at their hubs, fabulous fungi chewing at mossy trunks, birds with long trailing red or blond tails. Lake Eacham lay on top of the tableland, idyllic in its unspoiled setting. Before night fell they strolled out onto the veranda of their boardinghouse to look across the still water. Meggie wanted to watch the enormous fruit bats called flying foxes wheel like precurs- ors of doom in thousands down toward the places where they found their food. They were monstrous and repulsive, but singularly timid, entirely benign. To see them come across a molten sky in dark, pulsating sheets was awesome; Meggie never missed watching for them from the Himmelhoch veranda. And it was heaven to sink into a soft cool bed, not have to lie still until one spot was sweat-saturated and then move carefully to a new spot, knowing the old one wouldn't dry out anyway. Luke took a flat brown packet out of his case, picked a handful of small round objects out of it and laid them in a row on the bedside table. Meggie reached out to take one, inspect it. "What on earth is it?" she asked curiously. "A French letter." He had forgotten his decision of two years ago, not to tell her he practiced contraception. "I put it on myself before I go inside you. Otherwise I might start a baby, and we can't afford to do that until we get our place." He was sitting naked on the side of the bed, and he was thin, ribs and hips protruding. But his blue eyes shone, he reached out to clasp her hand as it held the French letter. "Nearly there, THE THORN BIRDS / 361

Meg, nearly there! I reckon another five thousand pounds will buy us the best property to be had west of Charters Towers." "Then you've got it," she said, her voice quite calm. "I can write to Bishop de Bricassart and ask him for a loan of the money. He won't charge us interest." "You most certainly won't!" he snapped. "Damn it, Meg, where's your pride? We'll work for what we have, not borrow! I've never owed anyone a penny in all my life, and I'm not going to start now." She scarcely heard him, glaring at him through a haze of brilliant red. In all her life she had never been so angry! Cheat, liar, egotist! How dared he do it to her, trick her out of a baby, try to make her believe he ever had any intention of becoming a grazier! He'd found his niche, with Arne Swenson and the sugar. Concealing her rage so well it surprised her, she turned her atten- tion back to the little rubber wheel in her hand. "Tell me about these French letter things. How do they stop me having a baby?" He came to stand behind her, and contact of their bodies made her shiver; from excitement he thought, from disgust she knew. "Don't you know anything, Meg?" "No," she lied. Which was true about French letters, at any rate; she could not remember ever seeing a mention of them. His hands played with her breasts, tickling. "Look, when I come I make this—I don't know—stuff, and if I'm up inside you with nothing on, it stays there. When it stays there long enough or often enough, it makes a baby." So that was it! He wore the thing, like a skin on a sausage! Cheat! Turning off the light, he drew her down onto the bed, and it wasn't long before he was groping for his antibaby device; she heard him making the same sounds he had made in the Dunny pub bedroom, knowing now 362 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

they meant he was pulling on the French letter. The cheat! But how to get around it? Trying not to let him see how much he hurt her, she endured him. Why did it have to hurt so, if this was a natural thing? "It's no good, is it, Meg?" he asked afterward. "You must be awfully small for it to keep on hurting so much after the first time. Well, I won't do it again. You don't mind if I do it on your breast, do you?" "Oh, what does it matter?" she asked wearily. "If you mean you're not going to hurt me, all right!" "You might be a bit more enthusiastic, Meg!" "What for?" But he was rising again; it was two years since he had had time or energy for this. Oh, it was nice to be with a woman, exciting and forbidden. He didn't feel at all married to Meg; it wasn't any different from getting a bit in the paddock behind the Kynuna pub, or having high-and-mighty Miss Carmichael against the shearing shed wall. Meggie had nice breasts, firm from all that riding, just the way he liked them, and he honestly preferred to get his pleasure at her breast, liking the sensation of unsheathed penis sandwiched between their bellies. French letters cut a man's sensitivity a lot, but not to don one when he put himself inside her was asking for trouble. Groping, he pulled at her buttocks and made her lie on top of him, then seized one nipple between his teeth, feeling the hidden point swell and harden on his tongue. A great contempt for him had taken possession of Meggie; what ridiculous creatures men were, grunting and sucking and straining for what they got out of it. He was becoming more excited, kneading her back and bottom, gulping away for all the world like a great overgrown kitten sneaked back to its mother. His hips began to move in a rhythmic, jerky fashion, and sprawled across him awkwardly because she was hating THE THORN BIRDS / 363

it too much to try helping him, she felt the tip of his unprotected penis slide between her legs. Since she was not a participant in the act, her thoughts were her own. And it was then the idea came. As slowly and unobtrusively as she could, she maneuvered him until he was right at the most painful part of her; with a great indrawn breath to keep her courage up, she forced the penis in, teeth clenched. But though it did hurt, it didn't hurt nearly as much. Minus its rubber sheath, his member was more slippery, easier to introduce and far easier to tolerate. Luke's eyes opened. He tried to push her away, but oh, God! It was unbelievable without the French letter; he had never been inside a woman bare, had never realized what a difference it made. He was so close, so excited he couldn't bring himself to push her away hard enough, and in the end he put his arms round her, unable to keep up his breast activity. Though it wasn't manly to cry out, he couldn't prevent the noise leaving him, and afterward kissed her softly. "Luke?" "Why can't we do that every time? Then you wouldn't have to put on a French letter." "We shouldn't have done it that time, Meg, let alone again. I was right in you when I came." She leaned over him, stroking his chest. "But don't you see? I'm sitting up! It doesn't stay there at all, it runs right out again! Oh, Luke, please! It's so much nicer, it doesn't hurt nearly as much. I'm sure it's all right, because I can feel it running out. Please!" What human being ever lived who could resist the repetition of perfect pleasure when offered so plausibly? Adam-like, Luke nodded, for at this stage he was far less informed than Meggie. "I suppose there's truth in what you say, and it's much nicer for me when you're not fighting it. All right, Meg, we'll do it that way from now on." 364 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

And in the darkness she smiled, content. For it had not all run out. The moment she felt him shrink out of her she had drawn up all the internal muscles into a knot, slid off him onto her back, stuck her crossed knees in the air casually and hung on to what she had with every ounce of determination in her. Oho, my fine gentleman, I'll fix you yet! You wait and see, Luke O'Neill! I'll get my baby if it kills me! Away from the heat and humidity of the coastal plain Luke mended rapidly. Eating well, he began to put the weight he needed back again, and his skin faded from the sickly yellow to its usual brown. With the lure of an eager, responsive Meggie in his bed it wasn't too difficult to persuade him to prolong the original two weeks into three, and then into four. But at the end of a month he rebelled. "There's no excuse, Meg. I'm as well as I've ever been. We're sitting up here on top of the world like a king and queen, spending money. Arne needs me." "Won't you reconsider, Luke? If you really wanted to, you could buy your station now." "Let's hang on a bit longer the way we are, Meg." He wouldn't admit it, of course, but the lure of the sugar was in his bones, the strange fascination some men have for utterly de- manding labor. As long as his young man's strength held up, Luke would remain faithful to the sugar. The only thing Meggie could hope for was to force him into changing his mind by giving him a child, an heir to the property out around Kynuna. So she went back to Himmelhoch to wait and hope. Please, please, let there be a baby! A baby would solve everything, so please let there be a baby. And there was. When she told Anne and Luddie, they were overjoyed. Luddie especially turned out to be a treasure. He did the most exquisite smocking and embroidery, two crafts Meggie had never had time to master, so while he pushed a tiny needle through delicate fabric THE THORN BIRDS / 365

with his horny, magical hands, Meggie helped Anne get the nursery together. The only trouble was the baby wasn't sitting well, whether be- cause of the heat or her unhappiness Meggie didn't know. The morning sickness was all day, and persisted long after it should have stopped; in spite of her very slight weight gain she began to suffer badly from too much fluid in the tissues of her body, and her blood pressure went up to a point at which Doc Smith became apprehensive. At first he talked of hospital in Cairns for the re- mainder of her pregnancy, but after a long think about her husband- less, friendless situation he decided she would be better off with Luddie and Anne, who did care for her. For the last three weeks of her term, however, she must definitely go to Cairns. "And try to get her husband to come and see her!" he roared to Luddie. Meggie had written right away to tell Luke she was pregnant, full of the usual feminine conviction that once the not-wanted was an irrefutable fact, Luke would become wildly enthusiastic. His answering letter scotched any such delusions. He was furious. As far as he was concerned, becoming a father simply meant he would have two nonworking mouths to feed, instead of none. It was a bitter pill for Meggie to swallow, but swallow it she did; she had no choice. Now the coming child bound her to him as tightly as her pride. But she felt ill, helpless, utterly unloved; even the baby didn't love her, didn't want to be conceived or born. She could feel it in- side her, the weakly tiny creature's feeble protests against growing into being. Had she been able to tolerate the two-thousand-mile rail journey home, she would have gone, but Doc Smith shook his head firmly. Get on a train for a week or more, even in broken stages, and that would be the end of the baby. Disappointed and unhappy though she was, Meggie wouldn't consciously do anything to harm the baby. Yet as time went on her enthusiasm and her 366 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

longing to have someone of her own to love withered in her; the incubus child hung heavier, more resentful. Doc Smith talked of an earlier transfer to Cairns; he wasn't sure Meggie could survive a birth in Dungloe, which had only a cottage infirmary. Her blood pressure was recalcitrant, the fluid kept mounting; he talked of toxemia and eclampsia, other long medical words which frightened Anne and Luddie into agreeing, much as they longed to see the baby born at Himmelhoch. By the end of May there were only four weeks left to go, four weeks until Meggie could rid herself of this intolerable burden, this ungrateful child. She was learning to hate it, the very being she had wanted so much before discovering what trouble it would cause. Why had she assumed Luke would look forward to the baby once its existence was a reality? Nothing in his attitude or conduct since their marriage indicated he would. Time she admitted it was a disaster, abandoned her silly pride and tried to salvage what she could from the ruins. They had mar- ried for all the wrong reasons: he for her money, she as an escape from Ralph de Bricassart while trying to retain Ralph de Bricassart. There had never been any pretense at love, and only love might have helped her and Luke to overcome the enormous difficulties their differing aims and desires created. Oddly enough, she never seemed able to hate Luke, where she found herself hating Ralph de Bricassart more and more frequently. Yet when all was said and done, Ralph had been far kinder and fairer to her than Luke. Not once had he encouraged her to dream of him in any roles save priest and friend, for even on the two oc- casions when he had kissed her, she had begun the move herself. Why be so angry with him, then? Why hate Ralph and not Luke? Blame her own fears and inadequacies, the huge, outraged resent- ment she felt because he had consistently rejected her when she loved and wanted THE THORN BIRDS / 367

him so much. And blame that stupid impulse which had led her to marry Luke O'Neill. A betrayal of her own self and Ralph. No matter if she could never have married him, slept with him, had his child. No matter if he didn't want her, and he didn't want her. The fact remained that he was who she wanted, and she ought never to have settled for less. But knowing the wrongs couldn't alter them. It was still Luke O'Neill she had married, Luke O'Neill's child she was carrying. How could she be happy at the thought of Luke O'Neill's child, when even he didn't want it? Poor little thing. At least when it was born it would be its own piece of humanity, and could be loved as that. Only...What wouldn't shé give, for Ralph de Bricassart's child? The impossible, the never-to-be. He served an institution which insisted on having all of him, even that part of him she had no use for, his manhood. That Mother Church required from him as a sacrifice to her power as an institution, and thus wasted him, stamped his being out of being, made sure that when he stopped he would be stopped forever. Only one day she would have to pay for her greed. One day there wouldn't be any more Ralph de Bri- cassarts, because they'd value their manhood enough to see that her demanding it of them was a useless sacrifice, having no meaning whatsoever... Suddenly she stood up and waddled through to the living room, where Anne was sitting reading an underground copy of Norman Lindsay's banned novel, Red-heap, very obviously enjoying every forbidden word. "Anne, I think you're going to get your wish." Anne looked up absently. "What, dear?" "Phone Doc Smith. I'm going to have this wretched baby here and now." "Oh, my God! Get into the bedroom and lie down—not your bedroom, ours!" Cursing the whims of fate and the determination of babies, Doc Smith hurried out from Dungloe in his battered 368 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

car with the local midwife in the back an as much equipment as he could carry from his little cottage hospital. No use taking her there; he could do as much for her at Himmelhoch. But Cairns was where she ought to be. "Have you let the husband know?" he asked as he pounded up the front steps, his midwife behind him. "I sent a telegram. She's in my room; I thought it would give you more space." Hobbling in their wake, Anne went into her bedroom. Meggie was lying on the bed, wide-eyed and giving no indication of pain except for an occasional spasm of her hands, a drawing-in of her body. She turned her head to smile at Anne, and Anne saw that the eyes were very frightened. "I'm glad I never got to Cairns" she said. "My mother never went to hospital to have hers, and Daddy said once she had a terrible time with Hal. But she survived, and so will I. We're hard to kill, we Cleary women." It was hours later when the doctor joined Anne on the veranda. "It's a long, hard business for the little woman. First babies are rarely easy, but this one's not lying well and she just drags on without getting anywhere. If she was in Cairns she could have a Caesarean, but that's out of the question here. She'll just have to push it out all by herself." "Is she conscious?" "Oh, yes. Gallant little soul, doesn't scream or complain. The best ones usually have the worst time of it in my opinion. Keeps asking me if Ralph's here yet, and I have to tell her some lie about the Johnstone in flood. I thought her husband's name was Luke?" "It is." "Hmmm! Well, maybe that's why she's asking for this Ralph, whoever he is. Luke's no comfort, is he?" "Luke's a bastard." THE THORN BIRDS / 369

Anne leaned forward, hands on the veranda railing. A taxi was coming from the Dunny road, and had turned off up the incline to Himmelhoch. Her excellent eyesight just discerned a black-haired man in the back, and she crowed with relief and joy. "I don't believe what I see, but I think Luke's finally remembered he's got a wife!" "I'd best go back to her and leave you to cope with him, Anne. I won't mention it to her, in case it isn't him. If it is him, give him a cup of tea and save the hard stuff for later. He's going to need The taxi drew up; to Anne's surprise the driver got out and went to the back door to open it for his passenger. Joe Castiglione, who ran Dunny's sole taxi, wasn't usually given to such courtesies. "Himmelhoch, Your Grace," he said, bowing deeply. A man in a long, flowing black soutane got out, a purple gros- grain sash about his waist. As he turned, Anne thought for a dazed moment that Luke O'Neill was playing some elaborate trick on her. Then she saw that this was a far different man, a good ten years older than Luke. My God! she thought as the graceful figure mounted her steps two at a time. He's the handsomest chap I've ever seen! An archbishop, no less! What does a Catholic archbishop want with a pair of old Lutherans like Luddie and me? "Mrs. Mueller?" he asked, smiling down at her with kind, aloof blue eyes. As if he had seen much he would give anything not to have seen, and had managed to stop feeling long ago. "Yes, I'm Anne Mueller." "I'm Archbishop Ralph de Bricassart, His Holiness's Legate in Australia. I understand you have a Mrs. Luke O'Neill staying with "Yes, sir." Ralph? Ralph? Was this Ralph? "I'm a very old friend of hers. I wonder if I might see her, please?" "Well, I'm sure she'd be delighted, Archbishop"— 370 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

no, that wasn't right, one didn't say Archbishop, one said Your Grace, like Joe Castiglione—"under more normal circumstances, but at the moment Meggie's in labor, and having a very hard time." Then she saw that he hadn't succeeded in stopping feeling at all, only disciplined it to a doglike abjection at the back of his thinking mind. His eyes were so blue she felt she drowned in them, and what she saw in them now made her wonder what Meggie was to him, and what he was to Meggie. "I knew something was wrong! I've felt that something was wrong for a long time, but of late my worry's become an obsession. I had to come and see for myself. Please, let me see her! If you wish for a reason, I am a priest." Anne had never intended to deny him. "Come along, Your Grace, through here, please." And as she shuffled slowly between her two sticks she kept thinking: Is the house clean and tidy? Have I dusted? Did we remember to throw out that smelly old leg of lamb, or is it all through the place? What a time for a man as important as this one to come calling! Luddie, will you never get your fat arse off that tractor and come in? The boy should have found you hours ago! He went past Doc Smith and the midwife as if they didn't exist to drop on his knees beside the bed, his hand reaching for hers. "Meggie!" She dragged herself out of the ghastly dream into which she had sunk, past caring, and saw the beloved face close to hers, the strong black hair with two white wings in its darkness now, the fine aris- tocratic features a little more lined, more patient if possible, and the blue eyes looking into hers with love and longing. How had she ever confused Luke with him? There was no one like him, there never would be for her, and she had betrayed what she felt for him. Luke was the dark side of THE THORN BIRDS / 371

the mirror; Ralph was as splendid as the sun, and as remote. Oh, how beautiful to see him! "Ralph, help me," she said. He kissed her hand passionately, then held it to his cheek. "Al- ways, my Meggie, you know that." "Pray for me, and the baby. If anyone can save us, you can. You're much closer to God than we are. No one wants us, no one has ever wanted us, even you." "Where's Luke?" "I don't know, and I don't care." She closed her eyes and rolled her head upon the plllow, but the fingers in his gripped strongly, wouldn't let him go. Then Doc Smith touched him on the shoulder. "Your Grace, I think you ought to step outside now." "If her life is in danger, you'll call me?" "In a second." Luddie had finally come in from the cane, frantic because there was no one to be seen and he didn't dare enter the bedroom. "Anne, is she all right?" he asked as his wife came out with the Archbishop. "So far. Doc won't commit himself, but I think he's got hope. Luddie, we have a visitor. This is Archbishop Ralph de Bricassart, an old friend of Meggie's." Better versed than his wife, Luddie dropped on one knee and kissed the ring on the hand held out to him. "Sit down, Your Grace, talk to Anne. I'll go and put a kettle on for some tea." "So you're Ralph," Anne said, propping her sticks against a bamboo table while the priest sat opposite her with the folds of his soutane falling about him, his glossy black riding boots clearly visible, for he had crossed his knees. It was an effeminate thing for a man to do, but he was a priest so it didn't matter; yet there was something intensely masculine about him, crossed legs or no. He was probably not as old as she had first thought; in his very early forties, perhaps. What a waste of a magnificent man! 372 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Christmas, but by then she needed so many things it was all spent in a day, and she'd never take more from us." "Don't feel sorry for Meggie," said Archbishop Ralph a little harshly. "I don't think she feels sorry for herself, certainly not over lack of money. It's brought little joy to her after all, has it? She knows where to go if she can't do without it. I'd say Luke's apparent indifference has hurt her far more than the lack of money. My poor Meggie!" Between them Anne and Luddie filled in the outline of Meggie's life, while Archbishop de Brioassart sat, his hands still steepled, his gaze on the lovely sweeping fan of a traveler's palm outside. Not once did a muscle in his face move, or a change come into those detachedly beautiful eyes. He had learned much since being in the service of Vittorio Scarbanza, Cardinal di Contini-Verchese. When the tale was done he sighed, and shifted his gaze to their anxious faces. "Well, it seems we must help her, since Luke will not. If Luke truly doesn't want her, she'd be better off back on Drogheda. I know you don't want to lose her, but for her sake try to persuade her to go home. I shall send you a check from Sydney for her, so she won't have the embarrassment of asking her brother for money. Then when she gets home she can tell them what she likes." He glanced toward the bedroom door and moved restlessly. "Dear God, let the child be born!" But the child wasn't born until nearly twenty-four hours later, and Meggie almost dead from exhaustion and pain. Doc Smith had given her copious doses of laudanum, that still being the best thing, in his old-fashioned opinion; she seemed to drift whirling through spiraling nightmares in which things from without and within ripped and tore, clawed and spat, howled and whined and roared. Sometimes Ralph's face would come into focus for a small moment, then go again on 374 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

a heaving tide of pain; but the memory of him persisted, and while he kept watch she knew neither she nor the baby would die. Pausing, while the midwife coped alone, to snatch food and a stiff tot of rum and check that none of his other patients were in- considerate enough to think of dying, Doc Smith listened to as much of the story as Anne and Luddie thought wise to tell him. "You're right, Anne," he said. "All that riding is probably one of the reasons for her trouble now. When the sidesaddle went out it was a bad thing for women who must ride a lot. Astride develops the wrong muscles." "I'd heard that was an old wives' tale," said the Archbishop mildly. Doc Smith looked at him maliciously. He wasn't fond of Catholic priests, deemed them a sanctimonious lot of driveling fools. "Think what you like," he said. "But tell me, Your Grace, if it came down to a choice between Meggie's life and the baby's, what would your conscience advise?" "The Church is adamant on that point, Doctor. No choice must ever be made. The child cannot be done to death to save the mother, nor the mother done to death to save the child." He smiled back at Doc Smith just as maliciously. "But if it should come to that, Doctor, I won't hesitiate to tell you to save Meggie, and the hell with the baby." Doc Smith gasped, laughed, and clapped him on the back. "Good for you! Rest easy, I won't broadcast what you said. But so far the child's alive, and I can't see what good killing it is going to do." But Anne was thinking to herself: I wonder what your answer would have been if the child was yours, Archbishop? About three hours later, as the afternoon sun was sliding sadly down the sky toward Mount Bartle Frere's misty bulk, Doc Smith came out of the bedroom. THE THORN BIRDS / 375

hand. "My dear good friends! Whatever would I have done without you? Have we heard from Luke?" "I got a telegram saying he was too busy to come, but wishing you good luck." "Big of him," said Meggie. Anne bent quickly to kiss her check. "We'll leave you to talk with the Archbishop, dear. I'm sure you've got a lot of catching up to do." Leaning on Luddie, she crooked her finger at the nurse, who was gaping at the priest as if she couldn't believe her eyes. "Come on, Nettie, have a cup of tea with us. His Grace will let you know if Meggie needs you." "What are you going to call your noisy daughter?" he asked as the door closed and they were alone. "Justine." "It's a very good name, but why did you choose it?" "I read it somewhere, and I liked it." "Don't you want her, Meggie?" Her face had shrunk, and seemed all eyes; they were soft and filled with a misty light, no hate but no love either. "I suppose I want her. Yes, I do want her. I schemed enough to get her. But while I was carrying her I couldn't feel anything for her, except that she didn't want me. I don't think Justine will ever be mine, or Luke's, or anyone's. I think she's always going to belong to herself." "I must go, Meggie," he said gently. Now the eyes grew harder, brighter: her mouth twisted into an unpleasant shape. "I expected that! Funny how the men in my life all scuttle off into the woodwork, isn't it?" He winced. "Don't be bitter, Meggie. I can't bear to leave thinking of you like this. No matter what's happened to you in the past, you've always retained your sweetness and it's the thing about you I find most endearing. Don't change, don't become hard because of this. I know it must be terrible to think that Luke didn't THE THORN BIRDS / 377

care enough to come, but don't change. You wouldn't be my Meggie anymore." But still she looked at him half as if she hated him. "Oh, come off it, Ralph! I'm not your Meggie, I never was! You didn't want me, you sent me to him, to Luke. What do you think I am, some sort of saint, or a nun? Well, I'm not! I'm an ordinary human be- ing, and you've spoiled my life! All the years I've loved you, and wanted to forget you, but then I married a man I thought looked a little bit like you, and he doesn't want me or need me either. Is it so much to ask of a man, to be needed and wanted by him?" She began to sob, mastered it; there were fine lines of pain on her face that he had never seen before, and he knew they weren't the kind that rest and returning health would smooth away. "Luke's not a bad man, or even an unlikable one," she went on. "Just a man. You're all the same, great big hairy moths bashing yourselves to pieces after a silly flame behind a glass so clear your eyes don't see it. And if you do manage to blunder your way inside the glass to fly into the flame, you fall down burned and dead. While all the time out there in the cool night there's food, and love, and baby moths to get. But do you see it, do you want it? No! It's back after the flame again, beating yourselves senseless until you burn yourselves dead!" He didn't know what to say to her, for this was a side of her he had never seen. Had it always been there, or had she grown it out of her terrible trouble and abandonment? Meggie, saying things like this? He hardly heard what she said, he was so upset that she should say it, and so didn't understand that it came from her loneliness, and her guilt. "Do you remember the rose you gave me the night I left Drogheda?" he asked tenderly. "Yes, I remember." The life had gone out of her voice, the hard light out of her eyes. They stared at 378 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

him now like a soul without hope, as expressionless and glassy as her mother's. "I have it still, in my missal. And every time I see a rose that color, I think of you. Meggie, I love you. You're my rose, the most beautiful human image and thought in my life." Down went the corners of her mouth again, up shone that tense, glittering fierceness with the tang of hate in it. "An image, a thought! A human image and thought! Yes, that's right, that's all I am to you! You're nothing but a romantic, dreaming fool, Ralph de Bri- cassart! You have no more idea of what life is all about than the moth I called you! No wonder you became a priest! You couldn't live with the ordinariness of life if you were an ordinary man any more than ordinary man Luke does! "You say you love me, but you have no idea what love is; you're just mouthing words you've memorized because you think they sound good! What floors me is why you men haven't managed to dispense with us women altogether, which is what you'd like to do, isn't it? You should work out a way of marrying each other; you'd be divinely happy!" "Meggie, don't! Please don't!" "Oh, go away! I don't want to look at you! And you've forgotten one thing about your precious roses, Ralph—they've got nasty, hooky thorns!" He left the room without looking back. Luke never bothered to answer the telegram informing him he was the proud father of a five-pound girl named Justine. Slowly Meggie got better, and the baby began to thrive. Perhaps if Meggie could have managed to feed her she might have developed more rapport with the scrawny, bad-tempered little thing, but she had absolutely no milk in the plenteous breasts Luke had so loved to suck. That's an ironic justice, she thought. She dutifully changed and bottle-fed the red-faced, redheaded THE THORN BIRDS / 379

morsel just as custom dictated she should, waiting for the commence- ment of some wonderful, surging emotion. But it never came; she felt no desire to smother the tiny face with kisses, or bite the wee fingers, or do any of the thousand silly things mothers loved to do with babies. It didn't feel like her baby, and it didn't want or need her any more than she did it. It, it! Her, her! She couldn't even remember to call it her. Luddie and Anne never dreamed Meggie did not adore Justine, that she felt less for Justine than she had for any of her mother's younger babies. Whenever Justine cried Meggie was right there to pick her up, croon to her, rock her, and never was a baby drier or more comfortable. The strange thing was that Justine didn't seem to want to be picked up or crooned over; she quieted much faster if she was left alone. As time went on she improved in looks. Her infant skin lost its redness, acquired that thin blue-veined transparency which goes so often with red hair, and her little arms and legs filled out to pleasing plumpness. The hair began to curl and thicken and to as- sume forever the same violent shade her grandfather Paddy had owned. Everyone waited anxiously to see what color her eyes would turn out to be, Luddie betting on her father's blue, Anne on her mother's grey, Meggie without an opinion. But Justine's eyes were very definitely her own, and unnerving to say the least. At six weeks they began to change, and by the ninth week had gained their final color and form. No one had even seen anything like them. Around the outer rim of the iris was a very dark grey ring, but the iris itself was so pale it couldn't be called either blue or grey; the closest description of the color was a sort of dark white. They were riveting, uncomfortable, inhuman eyes, rather blind-looking; but as time went on it was obvious Justine saw through them very well. Though he didn't mention it, Doc Smith had been worried by the size of her head when she was born, and 380 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

kept a close watch on it for the first six months of her life; he had wondered, especially after seeing those strange eyes, if she didn't perhaps have what he still called water on the brain, though the textbooks these days were calling it hydrocephalus. But it appeared Justine wasn't suffering from any kind of cerebral dysfunction or malformation; she just had a very big head, and as she grew the rest of her more or less caught up to it. Luke stayed away. Meggie had written to him repeatedly, but he neither answered nor came to see his child. In a way she was glad; she wouldn't have known what to say to him, and she didn't think he would be at all entranced with the odd little creature who was his daughter. Had Justine been a strapping big son he might have relented, but Meggie was fiercely glad she wasn't. She was living proof the great Luke O'Neill wasn't perfect, for if he was he would surely have sired nothing but sons. The baby thrived better than Meggie did, recovered faster from the birth ordeal. By the time she was four months old she ceased to cry so much and began to amuse herself as she lay in her bassinet, fiddling and pinching at the rows of brightly colored beads strung within her reach. But she never smiled at anyone, even in the guise of gas pains. The Wet came early, in October, and it was a very wet Wet. The humidity climbed to 100 percent and stayed there; every day for hours the rain roared and whipped about Himmelhoch, melting the scarlet soil, drenching the cane, filling the wide, deep Dungloe River but not overflowing it, for its course was so short the water got away into the sea quickly enough. While Justine lay in her bassinet contemplating her world through those strange eyes, Meggie sat dully watching Bartle Frere disappear behind a wall of dense rain, then reappear. The sun would come out, writhing veils of steam issue from the ground, the wet cane shimmer and THE THORN BIRDS / 381

sparkle diamond prisms, and the river seem like a great gold snake. Then hanging right across the vault of the sky a double rainbow would materialize, perfect throughout its length on both bows, so rich in its coloring against the sullen dark-blue clouds that all save a North Queensland landscape would have been paled and dimin- ished. Being North Queensland, nothing was washed out by its ethereal glow, and Meggie thought she knew why the Gillanbone countryside was so brown and grey; North Queensland had usurped its share of the palette as well. One day at the beginning of December. Anne came out onto the veranda and sat down beside her, watching her. Oh, she was so thin, so lifeless! Even the lovely goldy hair had dulled. "Meggie, I don't know whether I've done the wrong thing, but I've done it anyway, and I want you at least to listen to me before you say no." Meggie turned from the rainbows, smiling. "You sound so sol- emn, Anne! What is it I must listen to?" "Luddie and I are worried about you. You haven't picked up properly since Justine was born, and now The Wet's here you're looking even worse. You're not eating and you're losing weight. I've never thought the climate here agreed with you, but as long as nothing happened to drag you down you managed to cope with it. Now we think you're sick, and unless something's done you're going to get really ill." She drew a breath. "So a couple of weeks ago I wrote to a friend of mine in the tourist bureau, and booked you a holiday. And don't start protesting about the expense; it won't dent Luke's resources or ours. The Archbishop sent us a very big check for you, and your brother sent us another one for you and the baby—I think he was hinting go home for a while—from everyone on Drogheda. And after we talked it over, Luddie and I decided the best thing we could do was spend some of it on a holiday for you. I don't think going 382 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

home to Drogheda is the right sort of holiday, though. What Luddie and I feel you need most is a thinking time. No Justine, no us, no Luke, no Drogheda. Have you ever been on your own, Meggie? It's time you were. So we've booked you a cottage on Matlock Island for two months, from the beginning of January to the beginning of March. Luddie and I will look after Justine. You know she won't come to any harm, but if we're the slightest bit worried about her, you have our word we'll notify you right away, and the island's on the phone so it wouldn't take long to fetch you back." The rainbows had gone, so had the sun; it was getting ready to rain again. "Anne, if it hadn't been for you and Luddie these past three years, I would have gone mad. You know that. Sometimes in the night I wake up wondering what would have happened to me had Luke put me with people less kind. You've cared for me more than Luke has." "Twaddle! If Luke had put you with unsympathetic people you would have gone back to Drogheda, and who knows? Maybe that might have been the best course." "No. It hasn't been pleasant, this thing with Luke, but it was far better for me to stay and work it out." The rain was beginning to inch its way across the dimming cane blotting out everything behind its edge, like a grey cleaver. "You're right, I'm not well," Meggie said. "I haven't been well since Justine was conceived. I've tried to pull myself up, but I sup- pose one reaches a point where there isn't the energy to do it. Oh, Anne, I'm so tired and discouraged! I'm not even a good mother to Justine, and I owe her that. I'm the one caused her to be; she didn't ask for it. But mostly I'm discouraged because Luke won't even give me a chance to make him happy. He won't live with me or let me make a home for him; he doesn't want our children. I don't love him—I never did love him the way a woman ought to love THE THORN BIRDS / 383

the man she marries, and maybe he sensed it from the word go. Maybe if I had loved him, he would have acted differently. So how can I blame him? I've only myself to blame, I think." "It's the Archbishop you love, isn't it?" "Oh, ever since I was a little girl! I was hard on him when he came. Poor Ralph! I had no right to say what I did to him, because he never encouraged me, you know. I hope he's had time to under- stand that I was in pain, worn out, and terribly unhappy. All I could think was it ought by rights to be his child and it never would be, never could be. It isn't fair! Protestant clergy can marry, why can't Catholic? And don't try to tell me ministers don't care for their flocks the way priests do, because I won't believe you. I've met heartless priests and wonderful ministers. But because of the celibacy of priests I've had to go away from Ralph, make my home and my life with someone else, have someone else's baby. And do you know something, Anne? That's as disgusting a sin as Ralph breaking his vows, or more so. I resent the Church's implication that my loving Ralph or his loving me is wrong!" "Go away for a while, Meggie. Rest and eat and sleep and stop fretting. Then maybe when you come back you can somehow per- suade Luke to buy that station instead of talking about it. I know you don't love him, but I think if he gave you half a chance you might be happy with him." The grey eyes were the same color as the rain falling in sheets all around the house; their voices had risen to shouting pitch to be audible above the incredible din on the iron roof. "But that's just it, Anne! When Luke and I went up to Atherton I realized at last that he'll never leave the sugar while he's got the strength to cut it. He loves the life, he really does. He loves being with men as strong and independent as he is himself; he loves roaming from one place to the other. He's always been a wanderer, 384 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

now I come to think of it. As for needing a woman for pleasure if nothing else, he's too exhausted by the cane. And how can I put it? Luke is the kind of man who quite genuinely doesn't care if he eats his food off a packing crate and sleeps on the floor. Don't you see? One can't appeal to him as to one who likes nice things, be- cause he doesn't. Sometimes I think he despises nice things, pretty things. They're soft, they might make him soft. I have absolutely no enticements powerful enough to sway him from his present way of life." She glanced up impatiently at the veranda roof, as if tired of shouting. "I don't know if I'm strong enough to take the loneliness of having no home for the next ten or fifteen years, Anne, or how- ever long it's going to take Luke to wear himself out. It's lovely here with you; I don't want you to think I'm ungrateful. But I want a home! I want Justine to have brothers and sisters, I want to dust my own furniture, I want to make curtains for my own windows, cook on my own stove for my own man. Oh, Anne! I'm just an ordinary sort of a woman; I'm not ambitious or intelligent or well educated, you know that. All I want is a husband, children, my own home. And a bit of love from someone!" Anne got out her handkerchief, wiped her eyes and tried to laugh. "What a soppy pair we are! But I do understand, Meggie, really I do. I've been married to Luddie for ten years, the only truly happy ones of my life. I had infantile paralysis when I was five years old, and it left me like this. I was convinced no one would ever look at me. Nor did they, God knows. When I met Luddie I was thirty years old, teaching for a living. He was ten years younger than me, so I couldn't take him seriously when he said he loved me and wanted to marry me. How terrible, Meggie, to ruin a very young man's life! For five years I treated him to the worst display of downright nastiness you could imagine, but he always came back for more. So I married him, and I've THE THORN BIRDS / 385

been happy. Luddie says he is, but I'm not sure. He's had to give up a lot, including children, and he looks older than I do these days, poor chap." "It's the life, Anne, and the climate." The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun; the sun came out, the rainbows waxed to full glory in the steamy sky, Mount Bartle Frere loomed lilac out of the scudding clouds. Meggie spoke again. "I'll go. I'm very grateful to you for thinking of it; it's probably what I need. But are you sure Justine won't be too much trouble?" "Lord, no! Luddie's got it all worked out. Anna Maria, who used to work for me before you came, has a younger sister, Annunziata, who wants to go nursing in Townsville. But she won't be sixteen until March, and she finishes school in a few days. So while you're away she's going to come here. She's an expert foster mother, too. There are hordes of babies in the Tesoriero clan.' "Matlock Island. Where is it?" "Just near Whitsunday Passage on the Great Barrier Reef. It's very quiet and private, mostly a honeymoon resort, I suppose. You know the sort of thing—cottages instead of a central hotel. You won't have to go to dinner in a crowded dining room, or be civil to a whole heap of people you'd rather not talk to at all. And at this time of year it's just about deserted, because of the danger of summer cyclones. The Wet isn't a problem, but no one ever seems to want to go to the Reef in summer. Probably because most of the people who go to the Reef come from Sydney or Melbourne, and summer down there is lovely without going away. In June and July and August the southerners have it booked out for three years ahead." 386 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

13 On the last day of 1937 Meggie caught the train to Townsville. Though her holiday had scarcely begun, she already felt much better, for she had left the molasses reek of Dunny behind her. The biggest settlement in North Queensland, Townsville was a thriving town of several thousands living in white wooden houses atop stilts. A tight connection between train and boat left her with no time to explore, but in a way Meggie wasn't sorry she had to rush to the wharf without a chance to think; after that ghastly voyage across the Tasman sixteen years ago she wasn't looking forward to thirty-six hours in a ship much smaller than the Wahine. But it was quite different, a whispering slide in glassy waters, and she was twenty-six, not ten. The air was between cyclones, the sea was exhausted; though it was only midday Meggie put her head down and slept dreamlessly until the steward woke her at six the next morning with a cup of tea and a plate of plain sweet biscuits. Up on deck was a new Australia, different again. In a high clear sky, delicately colorless, a pink and pearly glow suffused slowly upward from the eastern rim of the ocean until the sun stood above the horizon and the light lost its neonatal redness, became day. The ship was slithering soundlessly through water which had no 387

taint, so translucent over the side that one could look fathoms down to grottoes of purple and see the forms of vivid fish flashing by. In distant vistas the sea was a greenish-hued aquamarine, splotched with wine-dark stains where weed or coral covered the floor, and on all sides it seemed islands with palmy shores of brilliant white sand just grew out of it spontaneously like crystals in silica—jungle- clad and mountainous islands or flat, bushy islands not much higher than the water. "The flat ones are the true coral islands," explained a crewman. "If they're ring-shaped and enclose a lagoon they're called atolls, but if they're just a lump of reef risen above the sea they're called cays. The hilly islands are the tops of mountains, but they're still surrounded by coral reefs, and they have lagoons." "Where's Matlock Island?" Meggie asked. He looked at her curiously; a lone woman going on holiday to a honeymoon island like Matlock was a contradiction in terms. "We're sailing down Whitsunday Passage now, then we head out to the Pacific edge of the reef. Matlock's ocean side is pounded by the big breakers that come in for a hundred miles off the deep Pacific like express trains, roaring so you can't hear yourself think. Can you imagine riding the same wave for a hundred miles?" He sighed wistfully. "We'll be at Matlock before sundown, madam." And an hour before sundown the little ship heaved its way through the backwash of the surf whose spume rose like a towering misty wall into the eastern sky. A jetty on spindling piles doddered literally half a mile out across the reef exposed by low tide, behind it a high, craggy coastline which didn't fit in with Meggie's expect- ations of tropical splendor. An elderly man stood waiting, helped her from ship to jetty, and took her cases from a crewman. "How d'you do, Mrs. O'Neill," he greeted her. "I'm Rob Walter. Hope your husband gets the chance to come after all. Not too much company on Matlock this time of year; it's really a winter resort." 388 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

They walked together down the uneasy planking, the exposed coral molten in the dying sun and the fearsome sea a reflected, tu- multuous glory of crimson foam. "Tide's out, or you'd have had a rougher trip. See the mist in the east? That's the edge of the Great Barrier Reef itself. Here on Matlock we hang onto it by the skin of our teeth; you'll feel the is- land shaking all the time from the pounding out there." He helped her into a car. "This is the windward side of Matlock—a bit wild and unwelcome looking, eh? But you wait until you see the leeward side, ah! Something like, it is." They hurtled with the careless speed natural to the only car on Matlock down a narrow road of crunchy coral bones, through palms and thick undergrowth with a tall hill rearing to one side, perhaps four miles across the island's spine. "Oh, how beautiful!" said Meggie. They had emerged on another road which ran all around the looping sandy shores of the lagoon side, crescent-shaped and hol- low. Far out was more white spray where the ocean broke in dazzling lace on the edges of the lagoon reef, but within the coral's embrace the water was still and calm, a polished silver mirror tinged with bronze. "Island's four miles wide and eight long," her guide explained. They drove past a straggling white building with a deep veranda and shoplike windows. "The general store," he said with a propri- etary flourish. "I live there with the Missus, and she's not too happy about a lone woman coming here, I can tell you. Thinks I'll be se- duced was how she put it. Just as well the bureau said you wanted complete peace and quiet, because it soothed the Missus a bit when I put you in the farthest-out place we have. There's not a soul in your direction; the only other couple here are on the other side. You can lark around without a stitch on—no one will see you. The Missus isn't going to let me out of her sight while you're here. When you need something, just pick up your phone and I'll bring it out. No sense walking THE THORN BIRDS / 389

all the way in. And Missus or no, I'll call in on you once a day at sunset, just to make sure you're all right. Best that you're in the house then—and wear a proper dress, in case the Missus comes along for the ride." A one-story structure with three rooms, the cottage had its own private curve of white beach between two prongs of the hill diving into the sea, and here the road ended. Inside it was very plain, but comfortable. The island generated its own power, so there was a little refrigerator, electric light, the promised phone, and even a wireless set. The toilet flushed, the bath had fresh water; more modern amenities than either Drogheda or Himmelhoch, Meggie thought in amusement. Easy to see most of the patrons were from Sydney or Melbourne, and so inured to civilization they couldn't do without it. Left alone while Rob sped back to his suspicious Missus, Meggie unpacked and surveyed her domain. The big double bed was a great deal more comfortable than her own nuptial couch had been. But then, this was a genuine honeymoon paradise and the one thing its clients would demand was a decent bed; the clients of the Dunny pub were usually too drunk to object to herniating springs. Both the refrigerator and the overhead cupboards were well stocked with food, and on the counter stood a great basket of bananas, passionfruit, pineapples and mangoes. No reason why she shouldn't sleep well, and eat well. For the first week Meggie seemed to do nothing but eat and sleep; she hadn't realized how tired she was, nor that Dungloe's climate was what had killed her appetite. In the beautiful bed she slept the moment she lay down, ten and twelve hours at a stretch, and food had an appeal it hadn't possessed since Drogheda. She seemed to eat every minute she was awake, even carrying mangoes into the water with her. Truth to tell, that was the most logical place to eat mangoes other than a bathtub; they just ran juice. Since her tiny beach lay 390 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

within the lagoon, the sea was mirror calm and quite free of cur- rents, very shallow. All of which she loved, because she couldn't swim a stroke. But in water so salty it seemed almost to hold her up, she began to experiment; when she could float for ten seconds at a time she was delighted. The sensation of being freed from the pull of the earth made her long to be able to move as easily as a fish. So if she mourned her lack of company, it was only because she would have liked to have someone to teach her to swim. Other than that, being on her own was wonderful. How right Anne had been! All her life there had been people in the house. To have no one was such a relief, so utterly peaceful. She wasn't lonely at all; she didn't miss Anne or Luddie or Justine or Luke, and for the first time in three years she didn't yearn for Drogheda. Old Rob never disturbed her solitude, just chugged far enough down the road each sunset to make sure her friendly wave from the veranda wasn't a signal of distress, turned the car and puttered off again, his surpris- ingly pretty Missus grimly riding shotgun. Once he phoned her to say he was taking the other couple in residence out in his glass- bottomed boat, and would she like to come along? It was like having a ticket of admission to a whole new planet, peering through the glass down into that teeming, exquisitely fragile world, where delicate forms were buoyed and bolstered by the loving intimacy of water. Live coral, she discovered, wasn't garishly hued from dyes the way it was in the souvenir counter of the store. It was soft pink or beige or blue-grey, and around every knob and branch wavered a marvelous rainbow of color, like a visible aura. Great anemones twelve inches wide fluttered fringes of blue or red or orange or purple tentacles; white fluted clams as big as rocks beckoned unwary explorers to take a look inside with tantalizing glimpses of colorful, restless things through feathery lips; red lace fans swayed in water winds; THE THORN BIRDS / 391

bright-green ribbons of weed danced loose and drifting. Not one of the four in the boat would have been in the least surprised to see a mermaid: a gleam of polished breast, a twisting glitter of tail, lazily spinning clouds of hair, an alluring smile taunting the siren's spell to sailors. But the fish! Like living jewels they darted in thou- sands upon thousands, round like Chinese lanterns, slender like bullets, raimented in colors which glowed with life and the light- splitting quality water imparts, some on fire with scales of gold and scarlet, some cool and silvery blue, some swimming rag bags gaudier than parrots. There were needle-nosed garfish pug-nosed toadfish, fanged barracuda, a cavernous-mawed grouper lurking half seen in a grotto, and once a sleek grey nurse shark which seemed to take forever to pass silently beneath them. "But don't worry," said Rob. "We're too far south here for sea wasps, so if anything on the Reef is going to kill you, it's most likely to be a stonefish. Never go walking on the coral without your shoes." Yes, Meggie was glad she went. But she didn't yearn to go again, or make friends with the couple Rob brought along. She immersed herself in the sea, and walked, and lay in the sun. Curiously enough, she didn't even miss having books to read, for there always seemed to be something interesting to watch. She had taken Rob's advice and stopped wearing clothes. At first she had tended to behave like a rabbit catching whiffs of dingo on the breeze, bolting for cover if a twig cracked or a coconut fell like a cannonball from a palm. But after several days of patent solitude she really began to feel no one would come near her, that indeed it was as Rob said, a completely private domain. Shyness was wasted. And walking the tracks, lying in the sand, paddling in that warm salty water, she began to feel like an animal born and brought up in a cage, suddenly let loose in a gentle, sunny, spacious and welcoming world. 392 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Away from Fee, her brothers, Luke, the unsparing, unthinking domination of her whole life, Meggie discovered pure leisure; a whole kaleidoscope of thought patterns wove and unwove novel designs in her mind. For the first time in her life she wasn't keeping her conscious self absorbed in work thoughts of one description or another. Surprised, she realized that keeping physically busy is the most effective blockade against totally mental activity human beings can erect. Years ago Father Ralph had asked her what she thought about, and she had answered: Daddy and Mum, Bob, Jack, Hughie, Stu, the little boys, Frank, Drogheda, the house, work, the rainfall. She hadn't said him, but he was at the top of the list, always. Now add to those Justine, Luke, Luddie and Anne, the cane, homesickness, the rainfall. And always, of course, the lifesaving release she found in books. But it had all come and gone in such tangled, unrelated clumps and chains; no opportunity, no training to enable her to sit down quietly and think out who exactly was Meggie Cleary, Meggie O'Neill? What did she want? What did she think she was put on this earth for? She mourned the lack of training, for that was an omission no amount of time on her own could ever rectify. However, here was the time, the peace, the laziness of idle physical well-being; she could lie on the sand and try. Well, there was Ralph. A wry, despairing laugh. Not a good place to start, but in a sense Ralph was like God; everything began and ended with him. Since the day he had knelt in the sunset dust of the Gilly station yard to take her between his hands, there had been Ralph, and though she never saw him again as long as she lived, it seemed likely that her last thought this side of the grave would be of him. How frightening, that one person could mean so much, so many things. What had she said to Anne? That her wants and needs were quite ordinary—a husband, children, a home of her own. Someone to love. It didn't seem much THE THORN BIRDS / 393

to ask; after all, most women had the lot. But how many of the women who had them were truly content? Meggie thought she would be, because for her they were so hard to come by. Accept it, Meggie Cleary. Meggie O'Neill. The someone you want is Ralph de Bricassart, and you just can't have him. Yet as a man he seems to have ruined you for anyone else. All right, then. Assume that a man and the someone to love can't occur. It will have to be children to love, and the love you receive will have to come from those children. Which in turn means Luke, and Luke's children. Oh, dear God, dear God! No, not dear God! What's God ever done for me, except deprive me of Ralph? We're not too fond of each other, God and I. And do You know something, God? You don't frighten me the way You used to. How much I feared You, Your punishment! All my life I've trodden the straight and narrow, from fear of You. And what's it got me? Not one scrap more than if I'd broken every rule in Your book. You're a fraud, God, a demon of fear. You treat us like children, dangling punishment. But You don't frighten me anymore. Because it isn't Ralph I ought to be hating, it's You. It's all Your fault, not poor Ralph's. He's just living in fear of You, the way I always have. That he could love You is something I can't understand. I don't see what there is about You to love. Yet how can I stop loving a man who loves God? No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to do it. He's the moon, and I'm crying for it. Well, you've just got to stop crying for it, Meggie O'Neill, that's all there is to it. You're going to have to content yourself with Luke, and Luke's children. By hook or by crook you're going to wean Luke from the wretched sugar, and live with him out where there aren't even any trees. You're going to tell the Gilly bank manager that your future income stays in your own name, and you're going to use it to have the comforts and conveniences in your treeless 394 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

home that Luke won't think to provide for you. You're going to use it to educate Luke's children properly, and make sure they never want. And that's all there is to be said about it, Meggie O'Neill. I'm Meggie O'Neill, not Meggie de Bricassart. It even sounds silly, Meggie de Bricassart. I'd have to be Meghann de Bricassart, and I've always hated Meghann. Oh, will I ever stop regretting that they're not Ralph's children? That's the question, isn't it? Say it to yourself, over and over again: Your life is your own, Meggie O'Neill, and you're not going to waste it dreaming of a man and children you can never have. There! That's telling yourself! No use thinking of what's past, what must be buried. The future's the thing, and the future belongs to Luke, to Luke's children. It doesn't belong to Ralph de Bricassart. He is the past. Meggie rolled over in the sand and wept as she hadn't wept since she was three years old: noisy wails, with only the crabs and the birds to hear her desolation. Anne Mueller had chosen Matlock Island deliberately, planning to send Luke there as soon as she could. The moment Meggie was on her way she sent Luke a telegram saying Meggie needed him des- perately, please to come. By nature she wasn't given to interfering in other people's lives, but she loved and pitied Meggie, and adored the difficult, capricious scrap Meggie had borne and Luke fathered. Justine must have a home, and both her parents. It would hurt to see her go away, but better that than the present situation. Luke arrived two days later. He was on his way to the CSR in Sydney, so it didn't cost him much time to go out of his way. Time he saw the baby; if it had been a boy he would have come when it was born, but news of a girl had disappointed him badly. If Meggie insisted on having children, let them at least be capable of carrying on the Kynuna station one day. Girls were no flaming use at all; they just ate a man out of house and THE THORN BIRDS / 395

home and when they were grown up they went and worked for someone else instead of staying put like boys to help their old father in his last years. "How's Meg?" he asked as he came up onto the front veranda. "Not sick, I hope?" "You hope. No, she's not sick. I'll tell you in a minute. But first come and see your beautiful daughter." He stared down at the baby, amused and interested but not emotionally moved, Anne thought. "She's got the queerest eyes I've ever seen," he said, "I wonder whose they are?" "Meggie says as far as she knows no one in her family." "Nor mine. She's a throwback, the funny little thing, Doesn't look too happy, does she?" "How could she look happy?" Anne snapped, hanging on to her temper grimly. "She's never seen her father, she has no real home and not much likelihood of one before she's grown up if you go on the way you are!" "I'm saving, Anne!" he protested. "Rubbish! I know how much money you've got. Friends of mine in Charters Towers send me the local paper from time to time, so I've seen the ads for western properties a lot closer in than Kynuna, and a lot more fertile. There's a Depression on, Luke! You could pick up a beauty of a place for a lot less by far than the amount you have in the bank, and you know it." "Now that's just it! There's a Depression on, and west of the ranges a bloody terrible drought from Junee to the Isa. It's in its second year and there's no rain at all, not a drop. Right now I'll bet Drogheda's hurting, so what do you think it's like out around Winton and Blackall? No, I reckon I ought to wait." "Wait until the price of land goes up in a good wet season? Come off it, Luke! Now's the time to buy! With Meggie's assured two thousand a year, you can wait out a ten-year drought! Just don't stock the place. Live 396 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

on Meggie's two thousand a year until the rains come, then put your stock on." "I'm not ready to leave the sugar yet," he said, stubbornly, still staring at his daughter's strange light eyes. "And that's the truth at last, isn't it? Why don't you admit it, Luke? You don't want to be married, you'd rather live the way you are at the moment, hard, among men, working your innards out, just like one out of every two Australian men I've ever known! What is it about this frigging country, that its men prefer being with other men to having a home life with their wives and children? If the bachelor's life is what they truly want, why on earth do they try marriage at all? Do you know how many deserted wives there are in Dunny alone, scraping an existence and trying to rear their children without fathers? Oh, he's just off in the sugar, he'll be back, you know, it's only for a little while. Hah! And every mail they're there hanging over the front gate waiting for the postie, hoping the bastard's sent them a little money. And mostly he hasn't, sometimes he has—not enough, but something to keep things go- ing!" She was trembling with rage, her gentle brown eyes sparking. "You know, I read in the Brisbane Mail that Australia has the highest percentage of deserted wives in the civilized world? It's the only thing we beat every other country at—isn't that a record to be proud of!" "Go easy, Anne! I haven't deserted Meg; she's safe and she's not starving. What's the matter with you?" "I'm sick of the way you treat your wife, that's what! For the love of God, Luke, grow up, shoulder your responsibilities for a while! You've got a wife and baby! You should be making a home for them—be a husband and a father, not a bloody stranger!" "I will, I will! But I can't yet; I've got to carry on in the sugar for a couple more years just to make sure. I don't want to say I'm living off Meg, which is what I'd be doing until things got better." Anne lifted her lip contemptuously. "Oh, bullshit! You married her for her money, didn't you?" THE THORN BIRDS / 397

A dark-red flush stained his brown face. He wouldn't look at her. "I admit the money helped, but I married her because I liked her better than anyone else." "You liked her! What about loving her?" "Love! What's love? Nothing but a figment of women's imagin- ation, that's all." He turned away from the crib and those unsettling eyes, not sure someone with eyes like that couldn't understand what was being said. "And if you've quite finished telling me off, where's Meg?" "She wasn't well. I sent her away for a while. Oh, don't panic! Not on your money. I was hoping I could persuade you to join her, but I see that's impossible." "Out of the question. Arne and I are on our way to Sydney to- night." "What shall I tell Meggie when she comes back?" He shrugged, dying to get away. "I don't care. Oh, tell her to hang on a while longer. Now that she's gone ahead with the family business, I wouldn't mind a son." Leaning against the wall for support, Anne bent over the wicker basket and lifted the baby up, then managed to shuffle to the bed and sit down. Luke made no move to help her, or take the baby; he looked rather frightened of his daughter. "Go away, Luke! You don't deserve what you've got. I'm sick of the sight of you. Go back to bloody Arne, and the flaming sugar, and the backbreak!" At the door he paused. "What did she call it? I've forgotten its name." "Justine, Justine, Justine!" "Bloody stupid name," he said, and went out. Anne put Justine on the bed and burst into tears. God damn all men but Luddie, God damn them! Was it the soft, sentimental, almost womanish streak in Luddie made him capable of loving? Was Luke right? Was it just a figment of women's imaginations? Or was it something only women were able to feel, or men with a little woman in them? No woman could ever hold Luke, 398 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

no woman ever had. What he wanted no woman could ever give But by the next day she had calmed down, no longer feeling she had tried for nothing. A postcard from Meggie had come that morning, waxing enthusiastic about Matlock Island and how well she was. Something good had come out of it. Meggie was feeling better. She would come back as the monsoons diminished and be able to face her life. But Anne resolved not to tell her about Luke. So Nancy, short for Annunziata, carried Justine out onto the front veranda, while Anne hobbled out with the baby's wants in a little basket between her teeth; clean diaper, tin of powder and toys. She settled in a cane chair, took the baby from Nancy and began to feed her from the bottle of Lactogen Nancy had warmed. It was very pleasant, life was very pleasant; she had done her best to make Luke see sense, and if she had failed, at least it meant Meggie and Justine would remain at Himmelhoch a while longer. She had no doubt that eventually Meggie would realize there was no hope of salvaging her relationship with Luke, and would then return to Drogheda. But Anne dreaded the day. A red English sports car roared off the Dunny road and up the long, hilly drive; it was new and expensive, its bonnet strapped down with leather, its silver exhausts and scarlet paintwork glitter- ing. For a while she didn't recognize the man who vaulted over the low door, for he wore the North Queensland uniform of a pair of shorts and nothing else. My word, what a beautiful bloke! she thought, watching him appreciatively and with a twinge of memory as he took the steps two at a time. I wish Luddie wouldn't eat so much; he could do with a bit of this chap's condition. Now, he's no chicken—look at those marvelous silver temples—but I've never seen a cane cutter in better nick. When the calm, aloof eyes looked into hers, she realized who he was. THE THORN BIRDS / 399

in while it lets the gas escape." As if to prove his point, Justine gave several huge eructations but held her gorge. He laughed, rubbed again, and when nothing further happened settled her in the crook of his arm comfortably. "What fabulously exotic eyes! Magnificent, aren't they? Trust Meggie to have an unusual baby." "Not to change the subject, but what a father you'd have made, Father." "I like babies and children, I always have. It's much easier for me to enjoy them, since I don't have any of the unpleasant duties fathers do." "No, it's because you're like Luddie. You've got a bit of woman in you." Apparently Justine, normally so isolationist, returned his liking; she had gone to sleep. Ralph settled her more snugly and pulled a packet of Capstans from his shorts pocket. "Here, give them to me. I'll light one for you." "Where's Meggie?" he asked, taking a lit cigarette from her. "Thank you. I'm sorry, please take one for yourself." "She's not here. She never really got over the bad time she had when Justine was born, and The Wet seemed to be the last straw. So Luddie and I sent her away for two months. She'll be back around the first of March; another seven weeks to go." The moment Anne spoke she was aware of the change in him; as if the whole of his purpose had suddenly evaporated, and the promise of some very special pleasure. He drew a long breath. "This is the second time I've come to say goodbye and not found her... Athens, and now again. I was away for a year then and it might have been a lot longer; I didn't know at the time. I had never visited Drogheda since Paddy and Stu died, yet when it came I found I couldn't leave Australia without seeing Meggie. And she'd married, gone away. I wanted to come after her, but I knew it wouldn't have THE THORN BIRDS / 401

been fair to her or to Luke. This time I came because I knew I couldn't harm what isn't there." "Where are you going?" "To Rome, to the Vatican. Cardinal di Contini-Verchese has taken over the duties of Cardinal Monteverdi, who died not long ago. And he's asked for me, as I knew he would. It's a great compliment, but more than that. I cannot refuse to go." "How long will you be away?" "Oh, a very long time, I think. There are war rumbles in Europe, though it seems so far away up here. The Church in Rome needs every diplomat she has, and thanks to Cardinal di Contini-Verchese I'm classified as a diplomat. Mussolini is closely allied to Hitler, birds of a feather, and somehow the Vatican has to reconcile two opposing ideologies, Catholicism and Fascism. It won't be easy. I speak German very well, learned Greek when I was in Athens and Italian when I was in Rome. I also speak French and Spanish flu- ently." He sighed. "I've always had a talent for languages, and I cultivated it deliberately. It was inevitable that I would be trans- ferred." "Well, Your Grace, unless you're sailing tomorrow you can still see Meggie." The words popped out before Anne let herself stop to think; why shouldn't Meggie see him once before he went away, especially if, as he seemed to think, he was going to be away a very long time? His head turned toward her. Those beautiful, distant blue eyes were very intelligent and very hard to fool. Oh, yes, he was a born diplomat! He knew exactly what she was saying, and every reason at the back of her mind. Anne found herself hanging breathlessly on his answer, but for a long time he said nothing, just sat staring out over the emerald cane toward the brimming river, with the baby forgotten in the crook of his arm. Fascinated, she stared at his profile—the curve of eyelid, the straight nose, the secretive mouth, the determined chin. What forces was he marshaling while he 402 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

contemplated the view? What complicated balances of love, desire, duty, expediency, will power, longing, did he weigh in his mind, and which against which? His hand lifted the cigarette to his lips; Anne saw the fingers tremble and soundlessly let go her breath. He was not indifferent, then. For perhaps ten minutes he said nothing; Anne lit him another Capstan, handed it to him in place of the burned-out stub. It, too, he smoked down steadiliy, not once lifting his gaze from the far mountains and the monsoon clouds lowering the sky. "Where is she?" he asked then in a perfectly normal voice, throwing the second stub over the veranda railing after the first. And on what she answered depended his decision; it was her turn to think. Was one right to push other human beings on a course which led one knew not where, or to what? Her loyalty was all to Meggie; she didn't honestly care an iota what happened to this man. In his way he was no better than Luke. Off after some male thing with never the time or the inclination to put a woman ahead of it, running and clutching at some dream which probably only existed in has addled head. No more substance than the smoke from the mill dissipating itself in the heavy, molasses-laden air. But it was what he wanted, and he would spend himself and his life in chasing it. He hadn't lost his good sense, no matter what Meggie meant to him. Not even for her—and Anne was beginning to believe he loved Meggie more than anything except that strange ideal—would he jeopardize the chance of grasping what he wanted in his hands one day. No, not even for her. So if she answered that Meggie was in some crowded resort hotel where he might be recognized, he wouldn't go. No one knew better than he that he wasn't the sort who could become anonymous in a crowd. She licked her lips, found her voice. "Meggie's in a cottage on Matlock Island." "On where?" THE THORN BIRDS / 403

walked down the road toward her, Ralph de Bricassart. He had decided he wanted her after all. There could be no other reason for his joining her in a place like this, calling himself Luke O'Neill. Nothing in her seemed to be functioning, not legs or mind or heart. This was Ralph come to claim her, why couldn't she feel? Why wasn't she running down the road to his arms, so utterly glad to see him nothing else mattered? This was Ralph, and he was all she had ever wanted out of living; hadn't she just spent more than a week trying to get that fact out of her mind? God damn him, God damn him! Why the hell did he have to come when she was finally beginning to get him out of her thoughts, if not out of her heart? Oh, it was all going to start again! Stunned, sweating, angry, she stood woodenly waiting, watching that graceful form grow larger. "Hello, Ralph," she said through clenched teeth, not looking at "Hello, Meggie." "Bring your case inside. Would you like a hot cup of tea?" As she spoke she led the way into the living room, still not looking at "That would be nice," he said, as stilted as she. He followed her into the kitchen and watched while she plugged in an electric jug, filled the teapot from a little hot-water geyser over the sink, and busied herself getting cups and saucers down from a cupboard. When she handed him the big five-pound tin of Arnotts biscuits he took a couple of handfuls of cookies out of it and put them on a plate. The jug boiled, she emptied the hot water out of the teapot, spooned loose tea into it and filled it with bubbling water. While she carried the cookie plate and the teapot, he fol- lowed with the cups and saucers, back into the living room. The three rooms had been built alongside each other, the bed- room opening off one side of the living room and the kitchen off the other, with the bathroom beyond it. This meant the house had two verandas, one THE THORN BIRDS / 405

facing the road and the other the beach. Which in turn meant they each had somewhere excusable to look without having to look at each other. Full darkness had fallen with tropical suddenness, but the air through the wide-open sliding doors was filled with the lapping of water, the distant surf on the reef, the coming and going of the warm soft wind. They drank the tea in silence, though neither could eat a biscuit, and the silence stretched on after the tea was finished, he shifting his gaze to her and she keeping hers steadfastly on the breezy antics of a baby palm outside the road-veranda doors. "What's the matter, Meggie?" he asked, so gently and tenderly her heart knocked frantically, and seemed to die from the pain of it, the old query of the grown man to the little girl. He hadn't come to Matlock to see the woman at all. He had come to see the child. It was the child he loved, not the woman. The woman he had hated from the moment she came into being. Round and up came her eyes to his, amazed, outraged, furious; even now, even now! Time suspended, she stared at him so, and he was forced to see, breath caught astounded, the grown woman in those glass-clear eyes. Meggie's eyes. Oh, God, Meggie's eyes! He had meant what he said to Anne Mueller; he just wanted to see her, nothing more. Though he loved her, he hadn't come to be her lover. Only to see her, talk to her, be her friend, sleep on the living room couch while he tried once more to unearth the taproot of that eternal fascination she possessed for him, thinking that if only he could see it fully exposed, he might gain the spiritual means to eradicate it. It had been hard to adjust to a Meggie with breasts, a waist, hips; but he had done it because when he looked into her eyes, there like the pool of light in a sanctuary lamp shone his Meggie. A mind and a spirit whose pulls he had never been free from since first meeting her, still unchanged inside that distressingly changed body; but while he could see proof of their continued 406 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

existence in her eyes, he could accept the altered body, discipline his attraction to it. And, visiting his own wishes and dreams upon her, he had never doubted she wanted to do the same until she had turned on him like a goaded cat, at Justine's birth. Even then, after the anger and hurt died in him, he had attributed her behavior to the pain she had gone through, spiritual more than physical. Now, seeing her at last as she was, he could pinpoint to a second the moment when she had shed the lenses of childhood, donned the lenses of a wo- man: that interlude in the Drogheda cemetery after Mary Carson's birthday party. When he had explained to her why he couldn't show her any special attention, because people might deem him interested in her as a man. She had looked at him with something in her eyes he had not understood, then looked away, and when she turned back the expression was gone. From that time, he saw now, she had thought of him in a different light; she hadn't kissed him in a passing weakness when she had kissed him, then gone back to thinking of him in the old way, as he had her. He had perpetuated his illusions, nurtured them, tucked them into his un- changing way of life as best he could, worn them like a hair shirt. While all the time she had furnished her love for him with woman's objects. Admit it, he had physically wanted her from the time of their first kiss, but the want had never plagued him the way his love for her had; seeing them as separate and distinct, not facets of the same thing. She, poor misunderstood creature, had never succumbed to this particular folly. At that moment, had there been any way he could have got off Matlock Island, he would have fled from her like Orestes from the Eumenides. But he couldn't quit the island, and he did have the courage to remain in her presence rather than senselessly walk the night. What can I do, how can I possibly make reparation? I do love her! And if I love her, it has to be because of the way she is now, not because of a juvenile way station THE THORN BIRDS / 407

along her road. It's womanly things I've always loved in her; the bearing of the burden. So, Ralph de Bricassart, take off your blinkers, see her as she really is, not as she was long ago. Sixteen years ago, sixteen long incredible years...I am forty-four and she is twenty-six; neither of us is a child, but I am by far the more im- mature. You took it for granted the minute I stepped out of Rob's car, isn't that so, Meggie? You assumed I had given in at last. And be- fore you even had time to get your breath back I had to show you how wrong you were. I ripped the fabric of your delusion apart as if it had been a dirty old rag. Oh, Meggie! What have I done to you? How could I have been so blind, so utterly self-centered? I've accomplished nothing in coming to see you, unless it is to cut you into little pieces. All these years we've been loving at cross-purposes. Still she was looking into his eyes, her own filling with shame, humiliation, but as the expressions flew across his face to the final one of despairing pity she seemed to realize the magnitude of her mistake, the horror of it. And more than that: the fact that he knew her mistake. Go, run! Run, Meggie, get out of here with the scrap of pride he's left you! The instant she thought it she acted on it, she was up out of her chair and fleeing. Before she could reach the veranda he caught her, the impetus of her flight spinning her round against him so hard he staggered. It didn't matter, any of it, the grueling battle to retain his soul's integrity, the long pressing down of will upon desire; in moments he had gone lifetimes. All that power held dormant, sleeping, only needing the detonation of a touch to trigger a chaos in which mind was subservient to passion, mind's will extinguished in body's will. Up slid her arms around his neck, his across her back, spasmed; he bent his head, groped with his mouth for hers, found it. Her mouth, no longer an unwanted, unwelcome memory but real; her arms about him as if 408 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

she couldn't bear to let him go; the way she seemed to lose even the feel of her bones; how dark she was like the night, tangled memory and desire, unwanted memory and unwelcome desire. The years he must have longed for this, longed for her and denied her power, kept himself even from the thought of her as a woman! Did he carry her to the bed, or did they walk? He thought he must have carried her, but he could not be sure; only that she was there upon it, he was there upon it, her skin under his hands, his skin under hers. Oh, God! My Meggie, my Meggie! How could they rear me from infancy to think you profanation? Time ceased to tick and began to flow, washed over him until it had no meaning, only a depth of dimension more real than real time. He could feel her yet he did not feel her, not as a separate entity; wanting to make her finally and forever a part of himself, a graft which was himself, not a symbiosis which acknowledged her as distinct. Never again would he not know the up-thrusts of breasts and belly and buttocks; the folds and crevices in between. Truly she was made for him, for he had made her; for sixteen years he had shaped and molded her without knowing that he did, let alone why he did. And he forgot that he had ever given her away, that another man had shown her the end of what he had begun for himself, had always intended for himself, for she was his downfall, his rose; his creation. It was a dream from which he would never again awaken, not as long as he was a man, with a man's body. Oh, dear God! I know, I know! I know why I kept her as an idea and a child within me for so long after she had grown beyond both, but why does it have to be learned like this? Because at last he understood that what he had aimed to be was not a man. Not a man, never a man; something far greater, some- thing beyond the fate of a mere man. Yet after all his fate was here under his hands, struck quivering and alight with him, her man. A man, forever a man. Dear Lord, couldst Thou not THE THORN BIRDS / 409

have kept this from me? I am a man, I can never be God; it was a delusion, that life in search of godhead. Are we all the same, we priests, yearning to be God? We abjure the one act which irrefutably proves us men. He wrapped his arms about her and looked down with eyes full of tears at the still, faintly lit face, watched its rosebud mouth drop open, gasp, become a helpless O of astonished pleasure. Her arms and legs were round him, living ropes which bound him to her, silkily, sleekly tormented him; he put his chin into her shoulder and his cheek against the softness of hers, gave himself over to the maddening, exasperating drive of a man grappling with fate. His mind reeled, slipped, became utterly dark and blindingly bright; for one moment he was within the sun, then the brilliance faded, grew grey, and went out. This was being a man. He could be no more. But that was not the source of the pain. The pain was in the final moment, the finite moment, the empty, desolate realization: ecstasy is fleeting. He couldn't bear to let her go, not now that he had her; he had made her for himself. So he clung to her like a drowning man to a spar in a lonely sea, and soon, buoyant, rising again on a tide grown quickly familiar, he succumbed to the inscrut- able fate which is a man's. What was sleep? Meggie wondered. A blessing, a respite from life, an echo of death, a demanding nuisance? Whatever it was, he had yielded himself to it, and lay with his arm over her and his head beside her shoulder, possessive even in it. She was tired, too, but she would not let herself sleep. Somehow she felt if she relaxed her grasp on consciousness he might not be there when she picked it up again. Later she could sleep, after he was awake and the secret- ive, beautiful mouth uttered its first words. What would he say to her? Would he regret it? Had she been a pleasure to him worth what he had abandoned? So many years he had fought it, made her fight it with him; she could hardly make herself believe he had lain down his arms at last, 410 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

but there had been things he had said in the night and in the midst of his pain which blotted out his long denial of her. She was supremely happy, happier than she could remember ever being. From the moment he had pulled her back from the door it had been a body poem, a thing of arms and hands and skin and utter pleasure. I was made for him, and only for him... That's why I felt so little with Luke! Borne out beyond the limits of endurance on her body's tide, all she could think was that to give him everything she could was more necessary to her than life itself. He must never regret it, never. Oh, his pain! There had been moments when she seemed actually to feel it as if it had been her own. Which only contributed to her happiness; there was some justice in his pain. He was awake. She looked down into his eyes and saw the same love in their blueness which had warmed her, given her purpose since childhood; and with it a great, shadowed fatigue. Not a weariness of the body, but a weariness of the soul. He was thinking that in all his life he had never woken in the same bed as another person; it was in a way more intimate than the sexual act preceding it, a deliberate indication of emotional ties, a cleaving to her. Light and empty as the air so alluringly full of marine tang and sun-soaked vegetation, he drifted for a while on the wings of a different kind of freedom: the relief of relinquishing his mandate to fight her, the peace of losing a long, incredibly bloody war and finding the surrender far sweeter than the battles. Ah, but I gave you a good fight, my Meggie! Yet in the end it isn't your fragments I must glue together, but the dismembered chunks of myself. You were put in my life to show me how false, how presumptu- ous is the pride of a priest of my kind; like Lucifer I aspired to that which is God's alone, and like Lucifer, I fell. I had the chastity, the obedience, even the poverty before Mary Carson. But until this morning THE THORN BIRDS / 411

I have never known humility. Dear Lord, if she meant nothing to me it would be easier to bear, but sometimes I think I love her far more than I do Thee, and that, too, is a part of Thy punishment. Her I do not doubt; Thou? A trick, a phantom, a jest. How can I love a jest? And yet, I do. "If I could get the energy together, I'd go for a swim and then make breakfast," he said, desperate for something to say, and felt her smile against his chest. "Go for the swim part, I'll make the breakfast. And there's no need to put anything on here. No one comes." "Truly paradise!" He swung his legs off the bed, sat up and stretched. "It's a beautiful morning. I wonder if that's an omen." Already the pain of parting; just because he had left the bed; she lay watching him as he walked to the sliding doors giving onto the beach, stepped outside and paused. He turned, held out his hand. "Come with me? We can get breakfast together." The tide was in, the reef covered, the early sun hot but the restless summer wind cool; coarse grass sent feelers down onto the crum- bling, unsandlike sand, where crabs and insects scuttled after pickings. "I feel as if I've never seen the world before," he said, staring. Meggie clutched at his hand; she felt visited, and found this sunny aftermath more incomprehensible than the night's dreamy reality. Her eyes rested on him, aching. It was time out of mind, a different world. So she said, "Not this world. How could you? This is our world, for as long as it lasts." "What's Luke like?" he asked, over breakfast. She put her head on one side, considering. "Not as much like you physically as I used to think, because in those days I missed you more, I hadn't got used to doing without you. I believe I mar- ried him because he reminded me of you. At any rate, I had made up my mind to marry someone, and he stood head and shoulders above the rest. I don't mean in worthiness, 412 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

or niceness, or any of the things women are supposed to find desir- able in a husband. Just in some way I can't put a finger on. Except perhaps that he is like you. He doesn't need women, either." His face twisted. "Is that how you see me, Meggie?" "Truthfully? I think so. I'll never understand why, but I think so. There's something in Luke and in you which believes that needing a woman is a weakness. I don't mean to sleep with; I mean to need, really need." "And accepting that, you can still want us?" She shrugged, smiled with a trace of pity. "Oh, Ralph! I don't say it isn't important, and it's certainly caused me a lot of unhappi- ness, but it is the way things are. I'd be a fool to waste myself trying to eradicate it, when it can't be eradicated. The best I can do is exploit the weakness, not ignore its existence. Because I want and need, too. And apparently I want and need people like you and Luke, or I wouldn't have spent myself over the pair of you the way I have. I'd have married a good, kind, simple man like my father, someone who did want and need me. But there's a streak of Samson in every man, I think. It's just that in men like you and Luke, it's more pronounced." He didn't seem at all insulted; he was smiling. "My wise Meggie!" "That's not wisdom, Ralph. Just common sense. I'm not a very wise person at all, you know that. But look at my brothers. I doubt the older ones at any rate will ever get married, or have girlfriends even. They're terribly shy, they're frightened of the power a woman might have over them, and they're quite wrapped up in Mum." Day followed day, and night followed night. Even the heavy sum- mer rains were beautiful, to be walked in naked and listened to on the iron roof, as warm and full of caresses as the sun. And when the sun was out they walked too, lazed on the beach, swam; for he was teaching her to swim. THE THORN BIRDS / 413

Sometimes when he didn't know he was being watched Meggie would look at him and try desperately to imprint his face upon her brain's core, remembering how in spite of the love she had borne Frank, with the passing of the years his image had dimmed, the look of him. There were the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the stunning silver wings in that black hair, the long hard body which had kept the slenderness and tautness of youth, yet had set a little, lost elasticity. And he would turn to find her watching him, a look in his eyes of haunted grief, a doomed look. She understood the im- plicit message, or thought she did; he must go, back to the Church and his duties. Never again with the same spirit, perhaps, but more able to serve. For only those who have slipped and fallen know the vicissitudes of the way. One day, when the sun had gone down far enough to bloody the sea and stain the coral sand a hazy yellow, he turned to her as they lay on the beach. "Meggie, I've never been so happy, or so unhappy." "I know, Ralph." "I believe you do. Is it why I love you? You're not much out of the ordinary way, Meggie, and yet you aren't ordinary at all. Did I sense it, all those years ago? I must have, I suppose. My passion for titian hair! Little did I know where it would lead me. I love you, Meggie." "Are you leaving?" "Tomorrow. I must. My ship sails for Genoa in less than a week." "Genoa?" "Rome, actually. For a long time, perhaps the rest of my life. I don't know." "Don't worry, Ralph, I'll let you go without any fuss. My time is almost up, too. I'm leaving Luke, I'm going home to Drogheda." "Oh, my dear! Not because of this, because of me?" "No, of course not," she lied. "I'd made up my mind before you arrived. Luke doesn't want me or need me, he won't miss me in the slightest. But I need a home, 414 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

somewhere of my own, and I think now that Drogheda is always going to be that place. It isn't right that poor Justine should grow up in a house where I'm the servant, though I know Anne and Luddie don't think of me like a servant. But it's how I think of myself, and how Justine will think of me when she's old enough to understand she hasn't a normal sort of home. In a way she never will enjoy that, but I must do as much for her as I can. So I'm going back to Drogheda." "I'll write to you, Meggie." "No, don't. Do you think I need letters, after this? I don't want anything between us which might endanger you, fall into the hands of unscrupulous people. So no letters. If you're ever in Australia it would be natural and normal of you to visit Drogheda, though I'm warning you, Ralph, to think before you do. There are only two places in the world where you belong to me ahead of God—here on Matlock, and on Drogheda." He pulled her into his arms and held her, stroking her bright hair. "Meggie, I wish with all my heart I could marry you, never be apart from you again. I don't want to leave you... And in a way I'll never be free of you again. I wish I hadn't come to Matlock. But we can't change what we are, and perhaps it's just as well. I know things about myself I would never have known or faced if I hadn't come. It's better to contend with the known than the un- known. I love you. I always have, and I always will. Remember The next day Rob appeared for the first time since he had dropped Ralph, and waited patiently while they said their farewells. Obviously not a couple of newly-weds, for he'd come later than she and was leaving first. Not illicit lovers, either. They were mar- ried; it was written all over them. But they were fond of each other, very fond indeed. Like him and his Missus; a big difference in age, and that made for a good marriage. "Goodbye, Meggie." "Goodbye, Ralph. Take care of yourself." "I will. And you." THE THORN BIRDS / 415

He bent to kiss her; in spite of her resolution she clung to him, but when he plucked her hands from around his neck she put them stiffly behind her and kept them there. He got into the car and sat while Rob reversed, then stared ahead through the windscreen without once looking back at her. It was a rare man who could do that, Rob reflected, without ever having heard of Orpheus. They drove in silence through the rain forest and came at last to the sea side of Matlock, and the long jetty. As they shook hands Rob looked into his face, wondering. He had never seen eyes so human, or so sad. The aloofness has passed from Archbishop Ralph's gaze forever. When Meggie came back to Himmelhoch Anne knew at once she would lose her. Yes, it was the same Meggie—but so much more, somehow. Whatever Archbishop Ralph might have told himself before he went to Matlock, on Matlock things had gone Meggie's way at last, not his. About time, too. She took Justine into her arms as if she only now understood what having Justine meant, and stood rocking the little thing while she looked around the room, smiling. Her eyes met Anne's, so alive, so shining with emotion that Anne felt her own eyes fill with reciprocal tears of that same joy. "I can't thank you enough, Anne." "Pish, for what?" "For sending Ralph. You must have known it would mean I'd leave Luke, so I thank you just that much more, dear. Oh, you have no idea what it did for me! I had made up my mind I was going to stay with Luke, you know. Now I'm going back to Drogheda, and I'm never going to leave it again." "I hate to see you go and especially I hate to see Justine go, but I'm glad for both of you, Meggie. Luke will never give you anything but unhappiness." "Do you know where he is?" "Back from the CSR. He's cutting near Ingham." 416 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

The grey eyes crinkled at the corners. "I'll try!" "I've picked up most of Luddie's tomes over the years, when I've run out of my own books. Especially the ones with the ancient Greek stories, because they fascinate me. They say the Greeks have a word for everything, and that there's no human situation the Greeks didn't describe." "I know. I've read some of Luddie's books, too." "Then don't you remember? The Greeks say it's a sin against the gods to love something beyond all reason. And do you remember that they say when someone is loved so, the Gods become jealous, and strike the object down in the very fullness of its flower? There's a lesson in it, Meggie. It's profane to love too much." "Profane, Anne, that's the key word! I shan't love Ralph's baby profanely, but with the purity of the Blessed Mother herself." Anne's brown eyes were very sad. "Ah, but did she love purely? The object of her love was struck down in the very fullness of His flower, wasn't He?" Meggie put Justine in her cot. "What must be, must be. Ralph I can't have, his baby I can. I feel...oh, as if there's a purpose to my life after all! That's been the worst thing about these three and a half years, Anne. I was beginning to think there was no purpose to my life." She smiled briskly, decisively. "I'm going to protect this child in every way I can, no matter what the cost to myself. And the first thing is that no one, including Luke, shall ever imply it has no right to the only name I'm at liberty to give it. The very thought of sleeping with Luke makes me ill, but I'll do it. I'd sleep with the Devil himself if it could help this baby's future. Then I'm going home to Drogheda, and I hope I never see Luke again." She turned from the cot. "Will you and Luddie come to see us? Drogheda al- ways has room for friends." "Once a year, for as many years as you'll have us. Luddie and I want to see Justine grow up." 418 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Only the thought of Ralph's baby kept Meggie's sagging courage up as the little rail motor rocked and jolted the long miles to Ing- ham. Had it not been for the new life she was sure was growing in her, getting into a bed with Luke ever again would have been the ultimate sin against herself; but for Ralph's baby she would indeed have entered into a contract with the Devil. From a practical viewpoint it wasn't going to be easy either, she knew that. But she had laid her plans with what foresight she could, and with Luddie's aid, oddly enough. It hadn't been possible to conceal much from him; he was too shrewd, and too deeply in Anne's confidence. He had looked at Meggie sadly, shaken his head, and then proceeded to give her some excellent advice. The actual aim of her mission hadn't been mentioned, of course, but Luddie was as adept at adding two and two as most people who read massive tomes. "You won't want to have to tell Luke you're leaving him when he's worn out after the cane," said Luddie delicately. "Much better if you catch him in a good mood, isn't it? Best thing is, see him on a Saturday night or a Sunday after it's been his week cooking. The grapevine says Luke's the best cook on the cutting circuit—learned to cook when he was low man on the shearing totem pole, and shearers are much fussier eaters than cutters. Means cooking doesn't upset him, you know. Probably finds it as easy as falling off a log. That's the speed, then, Meggie. You slap the news on him when he's feeling real good after a week in the barracks kitchen." It seemed to Meggie lately that she had gone a long way from blushing days; she looked at Luddie steadily without going the least bit pink. "Could you find out which week Luke cooks, Luddie? Or is there any way I could find out, if you can't?" "Oh, she's apples," he said cheerfully. "I've got my branches on the old grapevine. I'll find out." THE THORN BIRDS / 419

It was mid Saturday afternoon when Meggie checked into the Ingham pub that looked the most respectable. All North Queensland towns were famous for one thing: they had pubs on all four corners of every block. She put her small case in her room, then made her way back to the unlovely foyer to find a telephone. There was a Rugby League football team in town for a pre-season training match, and the corridors were full of half-naked, wholly drunk players who greeted her appearance with cheers and affectionate pats on the back and behind. By the time she got the use of the phone she was shaking with fright; everything about this venture seemed to be an ordeal. But through the din and the looming drunken faces she managed to call Braun's, the farm where Luke's gang was cutting, and ask that a message be relayed to him that his wife was in Ingham, wanting to see him. Seeing her fear, the publican walked back to her room with her, and waited until he heard her turn the key. Meggie leaned against the door, limp with relief; if it meant she didn't eat again until she was back in Dunny, she wasn't venturing to the dining room. Luckily the publican had put her right next to the women's bathroom, so she ought to be able to make that journey when necessary. The moment she thought her legs would hold her up she wobbled to the bed and sat on it, her head bowed, looking at her quivering hands. All the way down she had thought about the best way of going about it, and everything in her cried, Quickly, quickly! Until coming to live at Himmelhoch she had never read a description of a seduc- tion, and even now, armed with several such recountings, she wasn't confident of her ability to go about one herself. But that was what she had to do, for she knew once she started to talk to Luke it would be all over. Her tongue itched to tell him what she really thought of him. But more than that, the desire to be back on Drogheda with Ralph's baby made safe consumed her. Shivering in the sultry sugary air she took off her 420 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

clothes and lay down on the bed, eyes closed, willing herself not to think beyond the expediency of making Ralph's baby safe. The footballers didn't worry Luke at all when he entered the pub alone at nine o'clock; by then most of them were insensible, and the few still on their feet were too far gone to notice anything farther away than their beer glasses. Luddie had been exactly right; at the end of his week's stint as cook Luke was rested, eager for a change and oozing goodwill. When Braun's young son had brought Meggie's message down to the barracks he was just washing the last of the supper dishes and planning to cycle into Ingham, join Arne and the blokes on their customary Saturday-night binge. The prospect of Meggie was a very agreeable alternative; ever since that holiday on the Atherton he had found himself wanting her occasionally in spite of his physical exhaustion. Only his horror of starting her off on the let's-settle- down-in-our-own-home cry had kept him away from Himmelhoch whenever he was near Dunny. But now she had come to him, and he was not at all averse to a night in bed. So he finished the dishes in a hurry, and was lucky enough to be picked up by a truck after he had pedaled a scant half mile. But as he walked his bike the three blocks from where his ride had dropped him to the pub where Meggie was staying, some of his anticipation flattened. All the chemist shops were closed, and he didn't have any French letters. He stopped, stared in a window full of moth-eaten, heat-stippled chocolates and dead blowflies, then shrugged. Well, he'd just have to take his chances. It would only be tonight, and if there was a baby, with any luck it would be a boy this time. Meggie jumped nervously when she heard his knock, got off the bed and padded over to the door. "Who is it?" she called. "Luke," came his voice. She turned the key, opened the door a tiny way, and stepped behind it as Luke pushed it wider. The moment THE THORN BIRDS / 421

he was inside she slammed it shut, and stood looking at him. He looked at her; at the breasts which were bigger, rounder, more en- ticing than ever, the nipples no longer pale pink but a rich dark red from the baby. If he had been in need of stimuli they were more than adequate; he reached out to pick her up, and carried her to the bed. By daylight she still hadn't spoken a word, though her touch had welcomed him to a pitch of fevered want he had never before ex- perienced. Now she lay moved away from him, and curiously di- vorced from him. He stretched luxuriously, yawned, cleared his throat. "What brings you down to Ingham, Meg?" he asked. Her head turned; she regarded him with wide, contemptuous eyes. "Well, what brings you here?" he repeated, nettled. No reply, only the same steady, stinging gaze, as if she couldn't be bothered answering. Which was ridiculous, after the night. Her lips opened; she smiled. "I came to tell you I'm going home to Drogheda," she said. For a moment he didn't believe her, then he looked at her face more closely and saw she meant it, all right. "Why?" he asked. "I told you what would happen if you didn't take me to Sydney," she said. His astonishment was absolutely genuine. "But, Meg! That's flaming eighteen months ago! And I gave you a holiday! Four bloody expensive weeks on the Atherton! I couldn't afford to take you to Sydney on top of that!" "You've been to Sydney twice since then, both times without me," she said stubbornly. "I can understand the first time, since I was expecting Justine, but heaven knows I could have done with a holiday away from The Wet this last January." "Oh, Christ!" "What a skinflint you are, Luke," she went on gently. "Twenty thousand pounds you've had from me, money that's rightfully mine, and yet you begrudge the few 422 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

measly pounds it would have cost you to take me to Sydney. You and your money! You make me sick." "I haven't touched it," he said feebly. "It's there, every penny of it, and more besides." "Yes, that's right. Sitting in the bank, where it always will. You haven't any intention of spending it, have you? You want to adore it, like a golden calf. Admit it, Luke, you're a miser. And what an unforgivable idiot you are into the bargain! To treat your wife and daughter the way you wouldn't dream of treating a pair of dogs, to ignore their existences, let alone their needs! You complacent, conceited, self-centered bastard!" White-faced, trembling, he searched for speech; to have Meg turn on him, especially after the night, was like being bitten to death by a butterfly. The injustice of her accusations appalled him, but there didn't seem to be any way he could make her understand the purity of his motives. Womanlike, she saw only the obvious; she just couldn't appreciate the grand design at back of it all. So he said, "Oh, Meg!" in tones of bewilderment, despair, resig- nation. "I've never ill-treated you," he added. "No, I definitely haven't! There's no one could say I was cruel to you. No one! You've had enough to eat, a roof over your head, you've been warm—" "Oh, yes," she interrupted. "That's one thing I'll grant you. I've never been warmer in my life." She shook her head, laughed. "What's the use? It's like talking to a brick wall." "I might say the same!" "By all means do," said Meggie icily, getting off the bed and slipping on her panties. "I'm not going to divorce you," she said. "I don't want to marry again. If you want a divorce, you know where to find me. Technically speaking, I'm the one at fault, aren't I? I'm deserting you—or at least that's the way the courts in this country will see it. You and the judge can cry on each other's shoulders about the perfidies and ingratitude of women." THE THORN BIRDS / 423

FIVE 1938–1953 FEE 425

14 Not wanting anyone to know of her return, Meggie rode out to Drogheda on the mail truck with old Bluey Williams, Justine in a basket on the seat beside her. Bluey was delighted to see her and eager to know what she had been doing for the last four years, but as they neared the homestead he fell silent, divining her wish to come home in peace. Back to brown and silver, back to dust, back to that wonderful purity and spareness North Queensland so lacked. No profligate growth here, no hastening of decay to make room for more; only a slow, wheeling inevitability like the constellations. Kangaroos, more than ever. Lovely little symmetrical wilgas, round and mat- ronly, almost coy. Galahs, soaring in pink waves of undersides above the truck. Emus at full run. Rabbits, hopping out of the road with white powder puffs flashing cheekily. Bleached skeletons of dead trees in the grass. Mirages of timber stands on the far curving horizon as they came across the Dibban-Dibban plain, only the unsteady blue lines across their bases to indicate that the trees weren't real. The sound she had so missed but never thought to miss, crows carking desolately. Misty brown veils of dust whipped along by the dry autumn wind like dirty rain. And the grass, the silver- 427

beige grass of the Great Northwest, stretching to the sky like a be- nediction. Drogheda, Drogheda! Ghost gums and sleepy giant pepper trees a-hum with bees. Stockyards and buttery yellow sandstone build- ings, alien green lawn around the big house, autumn flowers in the garden, wallflowers and zinnias, asters and dahlias, marigolds and calendulas, chrysanthemums, roses, roses. The gravel of the back- yard, Mrs. Smith standing gaping, then laughing, crying, Minnie and Cat running, old stringy arms like chains around her heart. For Drogheda was home, and here was her heart, for always. Fee came out to see what all the fuss was about. "Hello Mum. I've come home." The grey eyes didn't change, but in the new growth of her soul Meggie understood. Mum was glad; she just didn't know how to show it. "Have you left Luke?" Fee asked, taking it for granted that Mrs. Smith and the maids were as entitled to know as she was herself. "Yes. I shall never go back to him. He didn't want a home, or his children, or me." "Children?" "Yes. I'm going to have another baby." Oohs and aahs from the servants, and Fee speaking her judgment in that measured voice, gladness underneath. "If he doesn't want you, then you were right to come home. We can look after you here." Her old room, looking out across the Home Paddock, the gar- dens. And a room next door for Justine, the new baby when it came. Oh, it was so good to be home! Bob was glad to see her, too. More and more like Paddy, he was becoming a little bent and sinewy as the sun baked his skin and his bones to dryness. He had the same gentle strength of character, but perhaps because he had never been the progenitor of a large family, he lacked Paddy's fatherly mien. And he was like Fee, 428 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

also. Quiet, self-contained, not one to air his feelings or opinions. He had to be into his middle thirties, Meggie thought in sudden surprise, and still he wasn't married. Then Jack and Hughie came in, two duplicate Bobs without his authority, their shy smiles wel- coming her home. That must be it, she reflected; they are so shy, it is the land, for the land doesn't need articulateness or social graces. It needs only what they bring to it, voiceless love and wholehearted fealty. The Cleary men were all home that night, to unload a truck of corn Jims and Patsy had picked up from the AML&F. in Gilly. "I've never seen it so dry, Meggie," Bob said. "No rain in two years, not a drop. And the bunnies are a bigger curse than the kangas; they're eating more grass than sheep and kangas combined. We're going to try to hand-feed, but you know what sheep are." Only too well did Meggie know what sheep were. Idiots, incap- able of understanding even the rudiments of survival. What little brain the original animal had ever possessed was entirely bred out of these woolly aristocrats. Sheep wouldn't eat anything but grass, or scrub cut from their natural environment. But there just weren't enough hands to cut scrub to satisfy over a hundred thousand sheep. "I take it you can use me?" she asked. "Can we! You'll free up a man's hands for scrubcutting, Meggie, if you'll ride the inside paddocks the way you used to." True as their word, the twins were home for good. At fourteen they quit Riverview forever, couldn't head back to the black-oil plains quickly enough. Already they looked like juvenile Bobs, Jacks and Hughies, in what was gradually replacing the old-fashioned grey twill and flannel as the uniform of the Great Northwest grazier: white moleskin breeches, white shirt, a flat-crowned grey felt hat with a broad brim, and ankle-high elastic-sided riding boots with flat heels. Only the handful of half-caste aborigines who lived in Gilly's THE THORN BIRDS / 429

shanty section aped the cowboys of the American West, in high- heeled fancy boots and ten-gallon Stetsons. To a black-soil plains- man such gear was a useless affectation, a part of a different culture. A man couldn't walk through the scrub in high-heeled boots, and a man often had to walk through the scrub. And a ten-gallon Stetson was far too hot and heavy. The chestnut mare and the black gelding were both dead; the stables were empty. Meggie insisted she was happy with a stock horse, but Bob went over to Martin King's to buy her two of his part-thoroughbred hacks—a creamy mare with a black mane and tail, and a leggy chestnut gelding. For some reason the loss of the old chestnut mare hit Meggie harder than her actual parting from Ralph, a delayed reaction; as if in this the fact of his going was more clearly stated. But it was so good to be out in the paddocks again, to ride with the dogs, eat the dust of a bleating mob of sheep, watch the birds, the sky, the land. It was terribly dry. Drogheda's grass had always managed to outlast the droughts Meggie remembered, but this was different. The grass was patchy now; in between its tussocks the dark ground showed, cracked into a fine network of fissures gaping like parched mouths. For which mostly thank the rabbits. In the four years of her absence they had suddenly multiplied out of all reason, though she supposed they had been bad for many years before that. It was just that almost overnight their numbers had reached far beyond saturation point. They were everywhere, and they, too, ate the precious grass. She learned to set rabbit traps, hating in a way to see the sweet little things mangled in steel teeth, but too much of a land person herself to flinch from doing what had to be done. To kill in the name of survival wasn't cruelty. "God rot the homesick Pommy who shipped the first rabbits out from England," said Bob bitterly. They were not native to Australia, and their sentimental import- ation had completely upset the ecological 430 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

balance of the continent where sheep and cattle had not, these being scientifically grazed from the moment of their introduction. There was no natural Australian predator to control the rabbit numbers, and imported foxes didn't thrive. Man must be an unnatural pred- ator, but there were too few men, too many rabbits. After Meggie grew too big to sit a horse, she spent her days in the homestead with Mrs. Smith, Minnie and Cat, sewing or knitting for the little thing squirming inside her. He (she always thought of it as he) was a part of her as Justine never had been; she suffered no sickness or depression, and looked forward eagerly to bearing him. Perhaps Justine was inadvertently responsible for some of this; now that the little pale-eyed thing was changing from a mindless baby to an extremely intelligent girl child, Meggie found herself fascinated with the process and the child. It was a long time since she had been indifferent to Justine, and she yearned to lavish love upon her daughter, hug her, kiss her, laugh with her. To be politely rebuffed was a shock, but that was what Justine did at every affec- tionate overture. When Jims and Patsy left Riverview, Mrs. Smith had thought to get them back under her wing again, then came the disappointment of discovering they were away in the paddocks most of the time. So Mrs. Smith turned to little Justine, and found herself as firmly shut out as Meggie was. It seemed that Justine didn't want to be hugged, kissed or made to laugh. She walked and talked early, at nine months. Once upon her feet and in command of a very articulate tongue, she proceeded to go her own way and do precisely whatever she wanted. Not that she was either noisy or defiant; simply that she was made of very hard metal indeed. Meggie knew nothing about genes, but if she had she might have pondered upon the result of an intermingling of Cleary, Armstrong and O'Neill. It couldn't fail to be powerful hu- man soup. But the most dismaying thing was Justine's dogged THE THORN BIRDS / 431

refusal to smile or laugh. Every soul on Drogheda turned inside out performing antics to make her germinate a grin, without success. When it came to innate solemnity she outdid her grandmother. On the first of October, when Justine was exactly sixteen months old, Meggie's son was born on Drogheda. He was almost four weeks early and not expected; there were two or three sharp con- tractions, the water broke, and he was delivered by Mrs. Smith and Fee a few minutes after they rang for the doctor. Meggie had scarcely had time to dilate. The pain was minimal, the ordeal so quickly over it might hardly have been; in spite of the stitches she had to have because his entry into the world had been so precipitate, Meggie felt wonderful. Totally dry for Justine, her breasts were full to overflowing. No need for bottles or tins of Lactogen this time. And he was so beautiful! Long and slender, with a quiff of flaxen hair atop his perfect little skull, and vivid blue eyes which gave no hint of changing later to some other color. How could they change? They were Ralph's eyes, as he had Ralph's hands, Ralph's nose and mouth, even Ralph's feet. Meggie was unprincipled enough to be very thankful Luke had been much the same build and coloring as Ralph, much the same in features. But the hands, the way the brows grew in, the downy widow's peak, the shape of the fingers and toes; they were so much Ralph, so little Luke. Better hope no one remembered which man owned what. "Have you decided on his name?" asked Fee; he seemed to fas- cinate her. Meggie watched her as she stood holding him, and was grateful. Mum was going to love again; oh, maybe not the way she had loved Frank, but at least she would feel something. "I'm going to call him Dane." "What a queer name! Why? Is it an O'Neill family name? I thought you were finished with the O'Neills?" "It's got nothing to do with Luke. This is his name, no one else's. I hate family names; it's like wishing a 432 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

piece of someone different onto a new person. I called Justine Justine simply because I liked the name, and I'm calling Dane Dane for the same reason. "Well, it does have a nice ring to it," Fee admitted. Meggie winced; her breasts were too full. "Better give him to me, Mum. Oh, I hope he's hungry! And I hope old Blue remembers to bring that breast pump. Otherwise you're going to have to drive into Gilly for it." He was hungry; he tugged at her so hard his gummy little mouth hurt. Looking down on him, the closed eyes with their dark, gold- tipped lashes, the feathery brows, the tiny working cheeks, Meggie loved him so much the love hurt her more than his sucking ever could. He is enough; he has to be enough, I'll not get any more. But by God, Ralph de Bricassart, by that God you love more than me, you'll never know what I stole from you—and from Him. I'm never going to tell you about Dane. Oh, my baby! Shifting on the pillows to settle him more comfortably into the crook of her arm, to see more easily that perfect little face. My baby! You're mine, and I'm never going to give you up to anyone else. Least of all to your father, who is a priest and can't acknowledge you. Isn't that wonderful? The boat docked in Genoa at the beginning of April. Archbishop Ralph landed in an Italy bursting into full, Mediterranean spring, and caught a train to Rome. Had he requested it he could have been met, chauffeured in a Vatican car to Rome, but he dreaded to feel the Church close around him again; he wanted to put the moment off as long as he could. The Eternal City. It was truly that, he thought, staring out of the taxi windows at the campaniles and domes, and pigeon-strewn plazas, the ambitious fountains, the Roman columns with their bases buried deep in the centuries. Well, to him they were all superfluities. What mattered to him was the part of Rome called the Vatican, its sumptuous public rooms, its anything but sumptuous private rooms. THE THORN BIRDS / 433

A black-and-cream-robed Dominican monk led him through high marble corridors, amid bronze and stone figures worthy of a mu- seum, past great paintings in the styles of Giotto, Raphael, Botticelli, Fra Angelico. He was in the public rooms of a great cardinal, and no doubt the wealthy Contini-Verchese family had given much to enhance their august scion's surroundings. In a room of ivory and gold, rich with color from tapestries and pictures, French carpeted and furnished, everywhere touches of crimson, sat Vittorio Scarbanza, Cardinal di Contini-Verchese. The small smooth hand, its ruby ring glowing, was extended to him in welcome; glad to fix his eyes downward, Archbishop Ralph crossed the room, knelt, took the hand to kiss the ring. And laid his cheek against the hand, knowing he couldn't lie, though he had meant to right up until the moment his lips touched that symbol of spir- itual power, temporal authority. Cardinal Vittorio put his other hand on the bent shoulder, nod- ding a dismissal to the monk, then as the door closed softly his hand went from shoulder to hair, rested in its dark thickness, smoothed it back tenderly from the half-averted forehead. It had changed; soon it would be no longer black, but the color of iron. The bent spine stiffened, the shoulders went back, and Archbishop Ralph looked directly up into his master's face. Ah, there had been a change! The mouth had drawn in, knew pain and was more vulnerable; the eyes, so beautiful in color and shape and setting, were yet completely different from the eyes he still remembered as if bodily they had never left him. Cardinal Vittorio had always had a fancy that the eyes of Jesus were blue, and like Ralph's: calm, removed from what He saw and therefore able to encompass all, understand all. But perhaps it had been a mistaken fancy. How could one feel for humanity and suffer oneself without its showing in the eyes? "Come, Ralph, sit down." 434 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

and it is the very quality which makes a great saint—or a great man. Until you can leave the matter of forgiveness to God, you will not have acquired true humility." The strong face twisted. "Yes, I know you're right. I must accept what I am without question, only strive to be better without having pride in what I am. I repent, therefore I shall confess and await forgiveness. I do repent, bitterly." He sighed; his eyes betrayed the conflict his measured words couldn't, not in this room. "And yet, Vittorio, in a way there was nothing else I could do. Either I ruined her, or I took the ruin upon myself. At the time there didn't seem to be a choice, because I do love her. It wasn't her fault that I've never wanted the love to extend to a physical plane. Her fate became more important than my own, you see. Until that moment I had always considered myself first, as more important than she, because I was a priest, and she was a lesser being. But I saw that I was responsible for what she is... I should have let her go when she was a child, but I didn't. I kept her in my heart and she knew it. If I had truly plucked her out she would have known that, too, and she would have become someone I couldn't influ- ence." He smiled. "You see that I have much to repent. I tried a little creating of my own." "It was the Rose?" The head went back; Archbishop Ralph looked at the elaborate ceiling with its gilded moldings and baroque Murano chandelier. "Could it have been anyone else? She's my only attempt at creation." "And will she be all right, the Rose? Did you do her more harm by this than in denying her?" "I don't know, Vittorio. I wish I did! At the time it just seemed the only thing to do. I'm not gifted with Promethean foresight, and emotional involvement makes one a poor judge. Besides, it simply...happened! But I think perhaps she needed most what I gave her, the recognition of her identity as a woman. I don't mean that she didn't know she was a woman. I THE THORN BIRDS / 437

mean I didn't know. If I had first met her as a woman it might have been different, but I knew her as a child for many years." "You sound rather priggish, Ralph, and not yet ready for forgive- ness. It hurts, does it not? That you could have been human enough to yield to human weakness. Was it really done in such a spirit of noble self-sacrifice?" Startled, he looked into the liquid dark eyes, saw himself reflected in them as two tiny manikins of insignificant proportion. "No," he said. "I'm a man, and as a man I found a pleasure in her I didn't dream existed. I didn't know a woman felt like that, or could be the source of such profound joy. I wanted never to leave her, not only because of her body, but because I just loved to be with her—talk to her, not talk to her, eat the meals she cooked, smile at her, share her thoughts. I shall miss her as long as I live." There was something in the sallow ascetic visage which unac- countably reminded him of Meggie's face in that moment of parting; the sight of a spiritual burden being taken up, the resoluteness of a character well able to go forward in spite of its loads, its griefs, its pain. What had he known, the red silk cardinal whose only human addiction seemed to be his languid Abyssinian cat? "I can't repent of what I had with her in that way," Ralph went on when His Eminence didn't speak. "I repent the breaking of vows as solemn and binding as my life. I can never again approach my priestly duties in the same light, with the same zeal. I repent that bitterly. But Meggie?" The look on his face when he uttered her name made Cardinal Vittorio turn away to do battle with his own thoughts. "To repent of Meggie would be to murder her." He passed his hand tiredly across his eyes. "I don't know if that's very clear, or even if it gets close to saying what I mean. I can't for the life of me ever seem to express what I feel for Meggie adequately." He leaned 438 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

forward in his chair as the Cardinal turned back, and watched his twin images grow a little larger. Vittorio's eyes were like mirrors; they threw back what they saw and didn't permit one a glimpse of what went on behind them. Meggie's eyes were exactly the opposite; they went down and down and down, all the way to her soul. "Meggie is a benediction," he said. "She's a holy thing to me, a different kind of sacrament." "Yes, I understand," sighed the Cardinal. "It is well you feel so. In Our Lord's eyes I think it will mitigate the great sin. For your own sake you had better confess to Father Giorgio, not to Father Guillermo. Father Giorgio will not misinterpret your feelings and your reasoning. He will see the truth. Father Guillermo is less per- ceptive, and might deem your true repentance debatable." A faint smile crossed his thin mouth like a wispy shadow. "They, too, are men, my Ralph, those who hear the confessions of the great. Never forget it as long as you live. Only in their priesthood do they act as vessels containing God. In all else they are men. And the forgive- ness they mete out comes from God, but the ears which listen and judge belong to men." There was a discreet knock on the door; Cardinal Vittorio sat silently and watched the tea tray being carried to a buhl table. "You see, Ralph? Since my days in Australia I have become ad- dicted to the afternoon tea habit. They make it quite well in my kitchen, though they used not to at first." He held up his hand as Archbishop Ralph started to move toward the teapot. "Ah, no! I shall pour it myself. It amuses me to be 'mother.'" "I saw a great many black shirts in the streets of Genoa and Rome," said Archbishop Ralph, watching Cardinal Vittorio pour. "The special cohorts of Il Duce. We have a very difficult time ahead of us, my Ralph. The Holy Father is adamant that there be no fracture between the Church and the secular government of Italy, and he is right in this as in all things. No matter what hap- pens, we THE THORN BIRDS / 439

must remain free to minister to all our children, even should a war mean our children will be divided, fighting each other in the name of a Catholic God. Wherever our hearts and our emotions might lie, we must endeavor always to keep the Church removed from political ideologies and international squabbles. I wanted you to come to me because I can trust your face not to give away what your brain is thinking no matter what your eyes might be seeing, and because you have the best diplomatic turn of mind I have ever encountered." Archbishop Ralph smiled ruefully. "You'll further my career in spite of me, won't you! I wonder what would have happened to me if I hadn't met you?" "Oh, you would have become Archbishop of Sydney, a nice post and an important one," said His Eminence with a golden smile. "But the ways of our lives lie not in our hands. We met because it was meant to be, just as it is meant that we work together now for the Holy Father." "I can't see success at the end of the road," said Archbishop Ralph. "I think the result will be what the result of impartiality al- ways is. No one will like us, and everyone will condemn us." "I know that, so does His Holiness. But we can do nothing else. And there is nothing to prevent our praying in private for the speedy downfall of Il Duce and Der Führer, is there?" "Do you really think there will be war?" "I cannot see any possibility of avoiding it." His Eminence's cat stalked out of the sunny corner where it had been sleeping, and jumped upon the scarlet shimmering lap a little awkwardly, for it was old. "Ah, Sheba! Say hello to your old friend Ralph, whom you used to prefer to me." The satanic yellow eyes regarded Archbishop Ralph haughtily, and closed. Both men laughed. 440 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

15 Drogheda had a wireless set. Progress had finally come to Gillan- bone in the shape of an Australian Broadcasting Commission radio station, and at long last there was something to rival the party line for mass entertainment. The wireless itself was a rather ugly object in a walnut case which sat on a small exquisite cabinet in the drawing room, its car-battery power source hidden in the cupboard underneath. Every morning Mrs. Smith, Fee and Meggie turned it on to listen to the Gillanbone district news and weather, and every evening Fee and Meggie turned it on to listen to the ABC national news. How strange it was to be instantaneously connected with Outside; to hear of floods, fires, rainfall in every part of the nation, an uneasy Europe, Australian politics, without benefit of Bluey Williams and his aged newspapers. When the national news on Friday, September 1st, announced that Hitler had invaded Poland, only Fee and Meggie were home to hear it, and neither of them paid any attention. There had been speculation for months; besides, Europe was half a world away. Nothing to do with Drogheda, which was the center of the universe. But on Sunday, September 3rd all the men were in from the pad- docks to hear Father Watty 441

Thomas say Mass, and the men were interested in Europe. Neither Fee nor Meggie thought to tell them of Friday's news, and Father Watty, who might have, left in a hurry for Narrengang. As usual, the wireless set was switched on that evening for the national news. But instead of the crisp, absolutely Oxford tones of the announcer, there came the genteel, unmistakably Australian voice of the Prime Minister, Robert Gordon Menzies. "Fellow Australians. It is my melancholy duty to inform you offi- cially that in consequence of the persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her, and that, as a result, Australia is also at war... "It may be taken that Hitler's ambition is not to unite all the German people under one rule, but to bring under that rule as many countries as can be subdued by force. If this is to go on, there can be no security in Europe and no peace in the world... There can be no doubt that where Great Britain stands, there stand the people of the entire British world... "Our staying power, and that of the Mother Country, will be best assisted by keeping our production going, continuing our avocations and business, maintaining employment, and with it, our strength. I know that in spite of the emotions we are feeling, Australia is ready to see it through. "May God, in His mercy and compassion, grant that the world may soon be delivered from this agony." There was a long silence in the drawing room, broken by the megaphonal tones of a short-wave Neville Chamberlain speaking to the British people; Fee and Meggie looked at their men. "If we count Frank, there are six of us," said Bob into the silence. "All of us except Frank are on the land, which means they won't want to let us serve. Of our present stockmen, I reckon six will want to go and two will want to stay." 442 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

to be Ingleburn, outside Sydney, so everyone saw them off on the night mail. Cormac Carmichael, Eden's youngest son, was on the same train for the same reason, going to the same camp as it turned out. So the two families packed their boys comfortably into a first- class compartment and stood around awkwardly, aching to weep and kiss and have something warming to remember, but stifled by their peculiar British mistrust of demonstrativeness. The big C-36 steam locomotive howled mournfully, the stationmaster began blowing his whistle. Meggie leaned over to peck her brothers on their cheeks self- consciously, then did the same to Cormac, who looked just like his oldest brother, Connor; Bob, Jack and Hughie wrung three different young hands; Mrs. Smith, weeping, was the only one who did the kissing and cuddling everyone was dying to do. Eden Carmichael, his wife and aging but still handsome daughter with him, went through the same formalities. Then everyone was outside on the Gilly platform, the train was jerking against its buffers and creeping forward. "Goodbye, goodbye!" everyone called, and waved big white handkerchiefs until the train was a smoky streak in the shimmering sunset distance. Together as they had requested, Jims and Patsy were gazetted to the raw, half-trained Ninth Australian Division and shipped to Egypt at the beginning of 1941, just in time to become a part of the rout at Benghazi. The newly arrived General Erwin Rommel had put his formidable weight on the Axis end of the seesaw and begun the first reversal of direction in the great cycling rushes back and forth across North Africa. And, while the rest of the British forces retreated ignominiously ahead of the new Afrika Korps back to Egypt, the Ninth Australian Division was detailed to occupy and hold Tobruk, an outpost in Axis-held territory. The only thing which made the plan feasible was that it was THE THORN BIRDS / 445

still accessible by sea and could be supplied as long as British ships could move in the Mediterranean. The Rats of Tobruk holed up for eight months, and saw action after action as Rommel threw everything he had at them from time to time, without managing to dislodge them. "Do youse know why youse is here?" asked Private Col Stuart, licking the paper on his cigarette and rolling it shut lazily. Sergeant Bob Malloy shifted his Digger hat far enough upward to see his questioner from under its brim. "Shit, no," he said, grin- ning; it was an oft-asked query. "Well, it's better than whiting gaiters in the bloody glasshouse," said Private Jims Cleary, pulling his twin brother's shorts down a little so he could rest his head comfortably on soft warm belly. "Yair, but in the glasshouse youse don't keep getting shot at," objected Col, flicking his dead match at a sunbathing lizard. "I know this much, mate," said Bob, rearranging his hat to shade his eyes. "I'd rather get shot at than die of fuckin' boredom." They were comfortably disposed in a dry, gravelly dugout just opposite the mines and barbed wire which cut off the southwest corner of the perimeter; on the other side Rommel hung doggedly on to his single piece of the Tobruk territory. A big .50-caliber Browning machine gun shared the hole with them, cases of ammuni- tion neatly beside it, but no one seemed very energetic or interested in the possibility of attack. Their rifles were propped against one wall, bayonets glittering in the brilliant Tobruk sun. Flies buzzed everywhere, but all four were Australian bushmen, so Tobruk and North Africa held no surprises in the way of heat, dust or flies. "Just as well youse is twins, Jims," said Col, throwing pebbles at the lizard, which didn't seem disposed to 446 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

move. "Youse look like a pair of poofters, all tied up together." "You're just jealous." Jims grinned, stroking Patsy's belly. "Patsy's the best pillow in Tobruk." "Yair, all right for you, but what about poor Patsy? Go on, Harpo, say something!" Bob teased. Patsy's white teeth appeared in a smile, but as usual he remained silent. Everyone had tried to get him to talk, but no one had ever succeeded beyond an essential yes or no; in consequence nearly everyone called him Harpo, after the voiceless Marx brother. "Hear the news?" asked Col suddenly. "The Seventh's Matildas got plastered by the eighty-eights at Halfaya. Only gun in the desert big enough to wipe out a Matilda. Went through them big buggers of tanks like a dose of salts." "Oh, yeah, tell me another!" said Bob skeptically. "I'm a sergeant and I never heard a whisper, you're a private and you know all about it. Well, mate, there's just nothing Jerry's got capable of wiping out a brigade of Matildas." "I was in Morshead's tent on a message from the CO when I heard it come through on the wireless, and it is true," Col main- tained. For a while no one spoke; it was necessary to every inhabitant of a beleaguered outpost like Tobruk that he believe implicitly his own side had sufficient military thrust to get him out. Col's news wasn't very welcome, more so because not one soldier in Tobruk held Rommel lightly. They had resisted his efforts to blow them out because they genuinely believed the Australian fighting man had no peer save a Gurkha, and if faith is nine-tenths of power, they had certainly proved themselves formidable. "Bloody Poms," said Jims. "What we need in North Africa is more Aussies." The chorus of agreement was interrupted by an explosion THE THORN BIRDS / 447

on the rim of the dugout which blew the lizard into nothing and sent the four soldiers diving for the machine gun and their rifles. "Fuckin' Dago grenade, all splinters and no punch," Bob said with a sigh of relief. "If that was a Hitler special we'd be playing our harps for sure, and wouldn't you like that, eh, Patsy?" At the beginning of Operation Crusader the Ninth Australian Division was evacuated by sea to Cairo, after a weary, bloody siege which seemed to have accomplished nothing. However, while the Ninth had been holed up inside Tobruk, the steadily swelling ranks of British troops in North Africa had become the British Eighth Army, its new commander General Bernard Law Montgomery. Fee wore a little silver brooch formed into the rising sun emblem of the AIF; suspended on two chains below it was a silver bar, on which she had two gold stars, one for each son under arms. It as- sured everyone she met that she, too, was Doing Her Bit for the Country. Because her husband was not a soldier, nor her son, Meggie wasn't entitled to wear a brooch. A letter had come from Luke informing her that he would keep on cutting the sugar; he thought she would like to know in case she had been worried he might join up. There was no indication that he remembered a word of what she had said that morning in the Ingham pub. Laughing wearily and shaking her head, she had dropped the letter in Fee's wastepaper basket, wondering as she did so if Fee worried about her sons under arms. What did she really think of the war? But Fee never said a word, though she wore her brooch every single day, all day. Sometimes a letter would come from Egypt, falling into tatters when it was spread open because the censor's scissors had filled it with neat rectangular holes, once the names of places or regiments. Reading these letters was largely a matter of piecing together much 448 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

out of virtually nothing, but they served one purpose which cast all others into the shade: while ever they came, the boys were still alive. There had been no rain. It was as if even the divine elements conspired to blight hope, for 1941 was the fifth year of a disastrous drought. Meggie, Bob, Jack, Hughie and Fee were desperate. The Drogheda bank account was rich enough to buy all the feed neces- sary to keep the sheep alive, but most of the sheep wouldn't eat. Each mob had a natural leader, the Judas; only if they could per- suade the Judas to eat did they stand a hope with the rest, but sometimes even the sight of a chewing Judas couldn't impress the rest of the mob into emulating it. So Drogheda, too, was seeing its share of bloodletting, and hating it. The grass was all gone, the ground a dark cracked waste lightened only by grey and dun-brown timber stands. They armed themselves with knives as well as rifles; when they saw an animal down someone would cut its throat to spare it a lingering death, eyeless from the crows. Bob put on more cattle and hand-fed them to keep up Drogheda's war effort. There was no profit to be had in it with the price of feed, for the agrarian regions closer in were just as hard hit by lack of rain as the pastoral regions farther out. Crop returns were abysmally low. However, word had come from Rome that they were to do what they could regardless of the cost. What Meggie hated most of all was the time she had to put in working the paddocks. Drogheda had managed to retain only one of its stockmen, and so far there were no replacements; Australia's greatest shortage had always been manpower. So unless Bob noticed her irritability and fatigue, and gave her Sunday off, Meggie worked the paddocks seven days a week. However, if Bob gave her time off it meant he himself worked harder, so she tried not to let her distress show. It never occurred to her that she could simply refuse to THE THORN BIRDS / 449

ride as a stockman, plead her babies as an excuse. They were well cared for, and Bob needed her so much more than they did. She didn't have the insight to understand her babies needed her, too; thinking of her longing to be with them as selfishness when they were so well cared for by loving and familiar hands. It was selfish, she told herself. Nor did she have the kind of confidence that might have told her that in her children's eyes she was just as special as they were to her. So she rode the paddocks, and for weeks on end got to see her children only after they were in bed for the night. Whenever Meggie looked at Dane her heart turned over. He was a beautiful child; even strangers on the streets of Gilly remarked on it when Fee took him into town. His habitual expression was a smiling one, his nature a curious combination of quietness and deep, sure happiness; he seemed to have grown into his identity and acquired his self-knowledge with none of the pain children usually experience, for he rarely made mistakes about people or things, and nothing ever exasperated or bewildered him. To his mother his likeness to Ralph was sometimes very frightening, but apparently no one else ever noticed. Ralph had been gone from Gilly for a long time, and though Dane had the same features, the same build, he had one great difference, which tended to cloud the issue. His hair wasn't black like Ralph's, it was a pale gold; not the color of wheat or sunset but the color of Drogheda grass, gold with silver and beige in it. From the moment she set eyes on him, Justine adored her baby brother. Nothing was too good for Dane, nothing too much trouble to fetch or present in his honor. Once he began to walk she never left his side, for which Meggie was very grateful, worrying that Mrs. Smith and the maids were getting too old to keep a satisfactorily sharp eye on a small boy. On one of her rare Sundays off Meggie took her daughter onto her lap and spoke to her seriously about looking after Dane. 450 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

what they could out of the drought which would come to be called the Great Drought. Over a million square miles of crop- and stock- bearing land was affected, from southern Victoria to the waist-high Mitchell grasslands of the Northern Territory. But the war rivaled the drought for attention. With the twins in North Africa, the homestead people followed that campaign with painful eagerness as it pushed and pulled back and forth across Libya. Their heritage was working class, so they were ardent Labor supporters and loathed the present government, Liberal by name but conservative by nature. When in August of 1941 Robert Gor- don Menzies stepped down, admitting he couldn't govern, they were jubilant, and when on October 3rd the Labor leader John Curtin was asked to form a government, it was the best news Drogheda had heard in years. All through 1940 and 1941 unease about Japan had been growing, especially after Roosevelt and Churchill cut off her petro- leum supplies. Europe was a long way away and Hitler would have to march his armies twelve thousand miles in order to invade Australia, but Japan was Asia, part of the Yellow Peril poised like a descending pendulum above Australia's rich, empty, underpopu- lated pit. So no one in Australia was at all surprised when the Ja- panese attacked Pearl Harbor; they had simply been waiting for it to come, somewhere. Suddenly the war was very close, and might even become their own backyard. There were no great oceans separating Australia from Japan, only big islands and little seas. On Christmas Day 1941, Hong Kong fell; but the Japs would never succeed in taking Singapore, everyone said, relieved. Then news came of Japanese landings in Malay and in the Philippines; the great naval base at the toe of the Malayan peninsula kept its huge, flat-trajectoried guns trained on the sea, its fleet at the ready. But on February 8th, 1942, the Japanese crossed the narrow 452 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Strait of Johore, landed on the north side of Singapore Island and came across to the city behind its impotent guns. Singapore fell without even a struggle. And then great news! All the Australian troops in North Africa were to come home. Prime Minister Curtin rode the swells of Churchillian wrath undismayed, insisting that Australia had first call on Australian men. The Sixth and Seventh Australian Divisions embarked in Alexandria quickly; the Ninth, still recovering in Cairo from its battering at Tobruk, was to follow as soon as more ships could be provided. Fee smiled, Meggie was delirious with joy. Jims and Patsy were coming home. Only they didn't. While the North waited for its troopships the seesaw tipped again; the Eighth Army was in full retreat back from Benghazi. Prime Minister Churchill struck a bargain with Prime Minister Curtin. The Ninth Australian Division would remain in North Africa, in exchange for the shipment of an American division to defend Australia. Poor soldiers, shuttled around by decisions made in offices not even belonging to their own countries. Give a little here, take a little there. But it was a hard jolt for Australia, to discover that the Mother Country was booting all her Far Eastern chicks out of the nest, even a poult as fat and promising as Australia. On the night of October 23rd, 1942, it was very quiet in the desert. Patsy shifted slightly, found his brother in the darkness, and leaned like a small child right into the curve of his shoulder. Jims's arm went around him and they sat together in companionable silence. Sergeant Bob Malloy nudged Private Col Stuart, grinned. "Pair of poofs," he said. "Fuck you, too," said Jims. "Come on, Harpo, say something," Col murmured. Patsy gave him an angelic smile only half seen in the THE THORN BIRDS / 453

darkness, opened his mouth and hooted an excellent imitation of Harpo Marx's horn. Everyone for several yards hissed at Patsy to shut up; there was an all-quiet alert on. "Christ, this waiting's killing me," Bob sighed. Patsy spoken in a shout: "It's the silence that's killing me!" "You fuckin' side-show fraud, I'll do the killing!" Col croaked hoarsely, reaching for his bayonet. "For Crissake pipe down!" came the captain's whisper. "Who's the bloody idiot yelling?" "Patsy," chorused half a dozen voices. The roar of laughter floated reassuringly across the minefields, died down in a stream of low-toned profanity from the captain. Sergeant Malloy glanced at his watch; the second hand was just sweeping up to 9:40 pip-emma. Eight hundred and eighty-two British guns and howitzers spoke together. The heavens reeled, the ground lifted, expanded, could not settle, for the barrage went on and on without a second's di- minution in the mind-shattering volume of noise. It was no use plugging fingers in ears; the gargantuan booming came up through the earth and traveled inward to the brain via the bones. What the effect must have been on Rommel's front the troops of the Ninth in their trenches could only imagine. Usually it was possible to pick out this type and size of artillery from that, but tonight their iron throats chorused in perfect harmony, and thundered on as the minutes passed. The desert lit not with the light of day but with the fire of the sun itself; a vast billowing cloud of dust rose like coiling smoke thousands of feet, glowing with the flashes of exploding shells and mines, the leaping flames of massive concentrations of detonating casings, igniting payloads. Everything Montgomery had was aimed at the minefields—guns, howitzers, mortars. And everything Montgomery had was thrown as fast as the sweating 454 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

artillery crews could throw it, slaves feeding the maws of their weapons like small frantic birds a huge cuckoo; gun casings grew hot, the time between recoil and reload shorter and shorter as the artillerymen got carried away on their own impetus. Madmen, maddened, they danced a stereotyped pattern of attendance on their fieldpieces. It was beautiful, wonderful—the high point of an artilleryman's life, which he lived and relived in his dreams, waking and sleeping, for the rest of his anti-climactic days. And yearned to have back again, those fifteen minutes with Montgomery's guns. Silence. Stilled, absolute silence, breaking like waves on distended eardrums; unbearable silence. Five minutes before ten, exactly. The Ninth got up and moved forward out of its trenches into no man's land, fixing bayonets, feeling for ammunition clips, releasing safety catches, checking water bottles, iron rations, watches, tin hats, whether bootlaces were well tied, the location of those carrying the machine guns. It was easy to see, in the unholy glow of fires and red-hot sand melted into glass; but the dust pall hung between the Enemy and them, they were safe. For the moment. On the very edge of the minefields they halted, waited. Ten pip-emma, on the dot. Sergeant Malloy put his whistle to his lips and blew a shrill blast up and down the company lines; the captain shouted his forward command. On a two-mile front the Ninth stepped off into the minefields and the guns began again behind them, bellowing. They could see where they were going as if it had been day, the howitzers trained on shortest range bursting shells not yards in front of them. Every three minutes the range lifted another hundred yards; advance those hundred yards praying it was only through antitank mines, or that the S-mines, the man mines, had been shelled out of existence by Montgomery's guns. There were still Germans and Italians in the field, outposts of ma- chine guns, 50-mm small artillery, THE THORN BIRDS / 455

mortars. Sometimes a man would step on an unexploded S-mine, have time to see it leap upward out of the sand before it blew him in half. No time to think, no time to do anything save crab-scuttle in time to the guns, a hundred yards forward every three minutes, praying. Noise, light, dust, smoke, gut-watering terror. Minefields which had no end, two or three miles of them to the other side, and no going back. Sometimes in the tiny pauses between barrages came the distant, eerie skirl of a bagpipe on the roasting gritty air; on the left of the Ninth Australian, the Fifty-first Highlanders were trekking through the minefields with a piper to lead every company com- mander. To a Scot the sound of his piper drawing him into battle was the sweetest lure in the world, and to an Australian very friendly, comforting. But to a German or an Italian it was hackle- raising. The battle went on for twelve days, and twelve days is a very long battle. The Ninth was lucky at first; its casualties were relatively light through the minefields and through those first days of contin- ued advance into Rommel's territory. "You know, I'd rather be me and get shot at than be a sapper," said Col Stuart, leaning on his shovel. "I dunno, mate; I think they've got the best of it," growled his sergeant. "Waiting behind the fuckin' lines until we've done all the work, then out they toddle with their bloody minesweepers to clear nice little paths for the fuckin' tanks." "It isn't the tanks at fault, Bob; it's the brass who deploy them," Jims said, patting the earth down around the top of his section of their new trench with the flat of his spade. "Christ, though, I wish they'd decide to keep us in one place for a while! I've dug more dirt in the last five days than a bloody anteater." "Keep digging, mate," said Bob unsympathetically. "Hey, look!" cried Col, pointing skyward. Eighteen RAF light bombers came down the valley 456 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

in perfect flying-school formation, dropping their sticks of bombs among the Germans and Italians with deadly accuracy. "Bloody beautiful," said Sergeant Bob Malloy, his long neck tilting his head at the sky. Three days later he was dead; a huge piece of shrapnel took off his arm and half his side in a fresh advance, but no one had time to stop except to pluck his whistle from what was left of his mouth. Men were going down now like flies, too tired to maintain the initial pitch of vigilance and swiftness; but what miserable barren ground they took they held on to, in the face of a bitter defense by the cream of a magnificent army. It had become to them all no more than a dumb, stubborn refusal to be defeated. The Ninth held off Graf von Sponeck and Lungerhausen while the tanks broke out to the south, and finally Rommel was beaten. By November 8 he was trying to rally beyond the Egyptian border, and Montgomery was left in command of the entire field. A very important tactical victory, Second Alamein; Rommel had been forced to leave behind many of his tanks, guns and equipment. Operation Torch could commence its push eastward from Morocco and Algeria with more security. There was still plenty of fight in the Desert Fox, but a large part of his brush was on the ground at El Alamein. The biggest and most decisive battle of the North African theater had been fought, and Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein was its victor. Second Alamein was the swan song of the Ninth Australian Di- vision in North Africa. They were finally going home to contend with the Japanese, on the mainland of New Guinea. Since March of 1941 they had been more or less permanently in the front line, arriving poorly trained and equipped, but going home now with a reputation exceeded only by the Fourth Indian THE THORN BIRDS / 457

Division. And with the Ninth went Jims and Patsy, safe and whole. Of course they were granted leave to go home to Drogheda. Bob drove into Gilly to collect them from the Goondiwindi train, for the Ninth was based in Brisbane and would depart after jungle training for New Guinea. When the Rolls swept round the drive all the women were out on the lawn waiting, Jack and Hughie hanging back a little but just as eager to see their young brothers. Every sheep left alive on Drogheda could drop dead if it so desired, but this was a holiday. Even after the car stopped and they got out, no one moved. They looked so different. Two years in the desert had ruined their original uniforms; they were dressed in a new issue of jungle green, and looked like strangers. For one thing, they seemed to have grown inches, which indeed they had; the last two years of their develop- ment had occurred far from Drogheda, and had pushed them way above their older brothers. Not boys any more but men, though not men in the Bob-Jack-Hughie mold; hardship, battle euphoria and violent death had made something out of them Drogheda never could. The North African sun had dried and darkened them to rosy mahogany, peeled away every layer of childhood. Yes, it was possible to believe these two men in their simple uniforms, slouch hats pinned above their left ears with the badge of the AIF rising sun, had killed fellow men. It was in their eyes, blue as Paddy's but sadder, without his gentleness. "My boys, my boys!" cried Mrs. Smith, running to them, tears streaming down her face. No, it didn't matter what they had done, how much they had changed; they were still her little babies she had changed; they were still her little babies she had washed, di- apered, fed, whose tears she had dried, whose wounds she had kissed better. Only the wounds they harbored now were beyond her power to heal. Then everyone was around them, British reserve 458 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

broken down, laughing, crying, even poor Fee patting them on their backs, trying to smile. After Mrs. Smith there was Meggie to kiss, Minnie to kiss, Cat to kiss, Mum to hug bashfully, Jack and Hughie to wring by the hand speechlessly. The Drogheda people would never know what it was like to be home, they could never know how much this moment had been longed for, feared for. And how the twins ate! Army tucker was never like this, they said, laughing. Pink and white fairy cakes, chocolate-soaked lam- ingtons rolled in coconut, steamed spotted dog pudding, pavlova dripping passionfruit and cream from Drogheda cows. Remember- ing their stomachs from earlier days, Mrs. Smith was convinced they'd be ill for a week, but as long as there was unlimited tea to wash it down, they didn't seem to have any trouble with their di- gestions. "A bit different from Wog bread, eh, Patsy?" "Yair." "What's Wog mean?" asked Mrs. Smith. "A Wog's an Arab, but a Wop's an Italian, right, Patsy?" "Yair." It was peculiar. They would talk, or at least Jims would talk, for hours about North Africa: the towns, the people, the food, the museum in Cairo, life on board a troopship, in rest camp. But no amount of questioning could elicit anything but vague, change-the- subject answers as to what the actual fighting had been like, what Gazala, Benghazi, Tobruk, El Alamein had been like. Later on after the war was over the women were to find this constantly; the men who had actually been in the thick of battle never opened their mouths about it, refused to join the ex-soldiers' clubs and leagues, wanted nothing to do with institutions perpetuating the memory of war. Drogheda held a party for them. Alastair MacQueen was in the Ninth as well and was home, so of course THE THORN BIRDS / 459

Rudna Hunish held a party. Dominic O'Rourke's two youngest sons were in the Sixth in New Guinea, so even though they couldn't be present, Dibban-Dibban held a party. Every property in the district with a son in uniform wanted to celebrate the safe return of the three Ninth boys. Women and girls flocked around them, but the Cleary returned heroes tried to escape at every opportunity, more scared than they had been on any field of war. In fact, Jims and Patsy didn't seem to want to have anything to do with women; it was to Bob, Jack and Hughie they clung. Late into the night after the women had gone to bed they sat talking to the brothers who had been forced to remain behind, opening their sore, scarred hearts. And they rode the paddocks of parched Drogheda, in its seventh year of the drought, glad to be in civvies. Even so racked and tortured, to Jims and Patsy the land was in- effably lovely, the sheep comforting, the late roses in the garden a perfume of some heaven. And somehow they had to drink of it all so deeply they'd never again forget, for that first going away had been a careless one; they had had no idea what it would be like. When they left this time it would be with every moment hoarded to remember and treasure, and with Drogheda roses pressed into their wallets along with a few blades of scarce Drogheda grass. To Fee they were kind and pitying, but to Meggie, Mrs. Smith, Minnie and Cat they were loving, very tender. They had been the real mothers. What delighted Meggie most was the way they loved Dane, played with him for hours, took him with them for rides, laughed with him, rolled him over and over on the lawn. Justine seemed to frighten them; but then, they were awkward with anyone female whom they didn't know as well as they knew the older women. Besides which, poor Justine was furiously jealous of the 460 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

way they monopolized Dane's company, for it meant she had no one to play with. "He's a bonzer little bloke, Meggie," said Jims to Meggie when she came out onto the veranda one day; he was sitting in a cane chair watching Patsy and Dane playing on the lawn. "Yes, he is a little beauty, isn't he?" She smiled, sitting where she could see her youngest brother. Her eyes were soft with pity; they had been her babies, too. "What's the matter, Jims? Can't you tell His eyes lifted to hers, wretched with some deep pain, but he shook his head as if not even tempted. "No, Meggie. It isn't anything I could ever tell a woman." "What about when all this is over and you marry? Won't you want to tell your wife?" "Us marry? I don't think so. War takes all that out of a man. We were itching to go, but we're wiser now. If we married we'd have sons, and for what? See them grow up, get pushed off to do what we've done, see what we've seen?" "Don't, Jims, don't!" His gaze followed hers, to Dane chuckling in glee because Patsy was holding him upside down. "Don't ever let him leave Drogheda, Meggie. On Drogheda he can't come to any harm," said Jims. Archbishop de Bricassart ran down the beautiful high corridor, heedless of the surprised faces turning to watch him; he burst into the Cardinal's room and stopped short. His Eminence was enter- taining Monsieur Papée, the Polish government-in-exile's ambassad- or to the Holy See. "Why, Ralph! What is it?" "It's happened, Vittorio. Mussolini has been overthrown." "Dear Jesus! The Holy Father, does he know?" "I telephoned Castel Gandolfo myself, though the THE THORN BIRDS / 461

radio should have it any minute. A friend at German headquarters phoned me." "I do hope the Holy Father has his bags packed," said Monsieur Papée with a faint, a very faint relish. "If we disguised him as a Franciscan mendicant he might get out, not otherwise," Archbishop Ralph snapped. "Kesselring has the city sealed tighter than a drum." "He wouldn't go anyway," said Cardinal Vittorio. Monsieur Papée got up. "I must leave you, Your Eminence. I am the representative of a government which is Germany's enemy. If His Holiness is not safe, nor am I. There are papers in my rooms I must attend to." Prim and precise, diplomat to his fingertips, he left the two priests alone. "He was here to intercede for his persecuted people?" "Yes. Poor man, he cares so much for them." "And don't we?" "Of course we do, Ralph! But the situation is more difficult than he knows." "The truth of the matter is he's not believed." "Ralph!" "Well, isn't it the truth? The Holy Father spent his early years in Munich, he fell in love with the Germans and he still loves them, in spite of everything. If proof in the form of those poor wasted bodies was laid out in front of his eyes, he'd say it must be the Russians did it. Not his so-dear Germans, never a people as cultured and civilized as they are!" "Ralph, you are not a member of the Society of Jesus, but you are here only because you have taken a personal oath of allegiance to the Holy Father. You have the hot blood of your Irish and Norman forebears, but I beg of you, be sensible! Since last September we have been only waiting for the axe to fall, praying Il Duce would remain to shelter us from German reprisal. 462 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Adolf Hitler has a curious streak of contradiction in his personality, for there are two things he knows to be his enemies yet wishes if at all possible to preserve: the British Empire and the Holy Catholic Church of Rome. But when pushed to it, he has done his level best to crush the British Empire. Do you think he would not crush us, too, if we push him to it? One word of denunciation from us as to what is happening in Poland and he will certainly crush us. And what earthly good do you think our denouncing that would achieve, my friend? We have no armies, no soldiers. Reprisal would be immediate, and the Holy Father would be sent to Berlin, which is what he fears. Do you not remember the puppet pope in Avignon all those centuries ago? Do you want our Pope a puppet in Berlin?" "I'm sorry, Vittorio, I can't see it that way. I say we must de- nounce Hitler, shout his barbarity from the rooftops! If he has us shot we'll die martyrs, and that would be more effective still." "You are not usually obtuse, Ralph! He would not have us shot at all. He understands the impact of martyrdom just as well as we do. The Holy Father would be shipped to Berlin, and we would be shipped quietly to Poland. Poland, Ralph, Poland! Do you want to die in Poland of less use than you are now?" Archbishop Ralph sat down, clenched his hands between his knees, stared rebelliously out the window at the doves soaring, golden in the setting sun, toward their cote. At forty-nine he was thinner than of yore, and was aging as splendidly as he did most things. "Ralph, we are what we are. Men, but only as a secondary con- sideration. First we are priests." "That wasn't how you listed our priorities when I came back from Australia, Vittorio." "I meant a different thing then, and you know it. You are being difficult. I mean now that we cannot think as men. We must think as priests, because that is the most important aspect of our lives. Whatever we THE THORN BIRDS / 463

may think or want to do as men, our allegiance is to the Church, and to no temporal power! Our loyalty lies only with the Holy Father! You vowed obedience, Ralph. Do you wish to break it again? The Holy Father is infallible in all matters affecting the welfare of God's Church." "He's wrong! His judgment's biased. All of his energies are dir- ected toward fighting Communism. He sees Germany as its greatest enemy, the only real factor preventing the westward spread of Communism. He wants Hitler to remain firmly in the German saddle, just as he was content to see Mussolini rule Italy." "Believe me, Ralph, there are things you do not know. He is the Pope, he is infallible! If you deny that, you deny your very faith." The door opened discreetly, but hastily. "Your Eminence, Herr General Kesselring." Both prelates rose, their late differences smoothed from their faces, smiling. "This is a great pleasure, Your Excellency. Won't you sit down? Would you like tea?" The conversation was conducted in German, since many of the senior members of the Vatican spoke it. The Holy Father was fond of speaking and listening to German. "Thank you, Your Eminence, I would. Nowhere else in Rome does one get such superbly English tea." Cardinal Vittorio smiled guilelessly. "It is a habit I acquired while I was the Papal Legate in Australia, and which, for all my innate Italianness, I have not been able to break." "And you, Your Grace?" "I'm an Irishman, Herr General. The Irish, too, are brought up on tea." General Albert Kesselring always responded to Archbishop de Bricassart as one man to another; after these slight, oily Italian prelates he was so refreshing, a man without subtlety or cunning, straightforward. 464 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

I was in Athens some years ago," said Archbishop Ralph quickly, leaning forward, his eyes charmingly wide, a lock of white-sprinkled hair falling across his brow; he was well aware of his effect on the general, and used it without compunction. "Have you been in Athens, sir?" "Yes, I have," said the general dryly. "Then I'm sure you know the story. How it took men of relatively modern times to destroy the buildings atop the Acropolis? Herr General, Rome stands as she always was, a monument to two thousand years of care, attention, love. Please, I beg of you! Don't endanger Rome." The general stared at him in startled admiration; his uniform became him very well, but no better than the soutane with its touch of imperial purple became Archbishop Ralph. He, too, had the look of a soldier, a soldier's sparely beautiful body, and the face of an angel. So must the Archangel Michael look; not a smooth young Renaissance boy but an aging perfect man, who had loved Lucifer, fought him, banished Adam and Eve, slain the serpent, stood at God's right hand. Did he know how he looked? He was indeed a man to remember. "I shall do my best, Your Grace, I promise you. To a certain ex- tent the decision is mine, I admit it. I am, as you know, a civilized man. But you're asking a lot. If I declare Rome an open city, it means I cannot blow up her bridges or convert her buildings into fortresses, and that might well be to Germany's eventual disadvant- age. What assurances do I have that Rome won't repay me with treachery if I'm kind to her?" Cardinal Vittorio pursed his lips and made kissing noises at his cat, an elegant Siamese nowadays; he smiled gently, and looked at the Archbishop. "Rome would never repay kindness with treachery, Herr General. I am sure when you do find the time to visit those summering at Castel Gandolfo that you will receive the 466 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

same assurances. Here, Kheng-see, my sweetheart! Ah, what a lovely girl you are!" His hands pressed it down on his scarlet lap, caressed it. "An unusual animal, Your Eminence." "An aristocrat, Herr General. Both the Archbishop and myself bear old and venerable names, but beside her lineage, ours are as nothing. Do you like her name? It is Chinese for silken flower. Apt, is it not?" The tea had arrived, was being arranged; they were all quiet until the lay sister left the room. "You won't regret a decision to declare Rome an open city, Your Excellency," said Archbishop Ralph to the new master of Italy with a melting smile. He turned to the Cardinal, charm falling away like a dropped cloak, not needed with this beloved man. "Your Emin- ence, do you intend to be 'mother,' or shall I do the honors?" " 'Mother'?" asked General Kesselring blankly. Cardinal di Contini-Verchese laughed. "It is our little joke, we celibate men. Whoever pours the tea is called 'mother.' An English saying, Herr General." That night Archbishop Ralph was tired, restless, on edge. He seemed to be doing nothing to help end this war, only dicker about the preservation of antiquities, and he had grown to loathe Vatican inertia passionately. Though he was conservative by nature, sometimes the snaillike caution of those occupying the highest Church positions irked him intolerably. Aside from the humble nuns and priests who acted as servants, it was weeks since he had spoken to an ordinary man, someone without a political, spiritual or military axe to grind. Even prayer seemed to come less easily to him these days, and God seemed light-years away, as if He had withdrawn to allow His human creatures full rein in destroying the world He had made for them. What he needed, he thought, was a stiff dose of Meggie and Fee, or a stiff dose of someone who wasn't interested in the fate of the Vatican or of Rome. THE THORN BIRDS / 467

His Grace walked down the private stairs into the great basilica of Saint Peter's, whence his aimless progress had led him. Its doors were locked these days the moment darkness fell, a sign of the un- easy peace which lay over Rome more telling than the companies of grey-clad Germans moving through Roman streets. A faint, ghostly glow illuminated the yawning empty apse; his footsteps echoed hollowly on the stone floor as he walked, stopped and merged with the silence as he genuflected in front of the High Altar, began again. Then, between one foot's noise of impact and the next, he heard a gasp. The flashlight in his hand sprang into life; he leveled his beam in the direction of the sound, not frightened so much as curious. This was his world; he could defend it secure from fear. The beam played upon what had become in his eyes the most beautiful piece of sculpture in all creation: the Pietà of Michelangelo. Below the stilled stunned figures was another face, made not of marble but of flesh, all shadowed hollows and deathlike. "Ciao," said His Grace, smiling. There was no answer, but he saw that the clothes were those of a German infantryman of lowest rank; his ordinary man! That he was a German didn't matter. "Wie geht's?" he asked, still smiling. A movement caused sweat on a wide, intellectual brow to flash suddenly out of the dimness. "Du bist krank?" he asked then, wondering if the lad, for he was no more, was ill. Came the voice, at last: "Nein." Archbishop Ralph laid his flashlight down on the floor and went forward, put his hand under the soldier's chin and lifted it to look into the dark eyes, darker in the darkness. "What's the matter?" he asked in German, and laughed. "There!" he continued, still in German. "You don't know it, but that's been my main function in life—to ask people what's the matter. And, let me tell you, 468 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

it's a question which has got me into a lot of trouble in my time." "I came to pray," said the lad in a voice too deep for his age, with a heavy Bavarian accent. "What happened, did you get locked in?" "Yes, but that isn't what the matter is." His grace picked up the flashlight. "Well, you can't stay here all night, and I haven't got a key to the doors. Come with me." He began walking back toward the private stairs leading up to the papal palace, talking in a slow, soft voice. "I came to pray myself, as a matter of fact. Thanks to your High Command, it's been a rather nasty day. That's it, up here... We'll have to hope that the Holy Father's staff don't assume I've been arrested, but can see I'm doing the escorting, not you." After that they walked for ten more minutes in silence, through corridors, out into open courts and gardens, inside hallways, up steps; the young German did not seem anxious to leave his protect- or's side, for he kept close. At last His Grace opened a door and led his waif into a small sitting room, sparsely and humbly fur- nished, switched on a lamp and closed the door. They stood staring at each other, able to see. The German soldier saw a very tall man with a fine face and blue, discerning eyes; Archbishop Ralph saw a child tricked out in the garb which all of Europe found fearsome and awe-inspiring. A child; no more than sixteen years old, certainly. Of average height and youthfully thin, he had a frame promising later bulk and strength, and very long arms. His face had rather an Italianate cast, dark and patrician, extremely attractive; wide, dark brown eyes with long black lashes, a magnificent head of wavy black hair. There was nothing usual or ordinary about him after all, even if his role was an ordinary one; in spite of the fact that he had longed to talk to an average, ordinary man, His Grace was interested. "Sit down," he said to the boy, crossing to a chest THE THORN BIRDS / 469

and unearthing a bottle of Marsala wine. He poured some into two glasses, gave the boy one and took his own to a chair from which he could watch the fascinating countenance comfortably. "Are they reduced to drafting children to do their fighting?" he asked, crossing his legs. "I don't know," said the boy. "I was in a children's home, so I'd be taken early anyway." "What's your name, lad?" "Rainer Moerling Hartheim," said the boy, rolling it out with great pride. "A magnificent name," said the priest gravely. "It is, isn't it? I chose it myself. They called me Rainer Schmidt at the home, but when I went into the army I changed it to the name I've always wanted." "You were an orphan?" "The Sisters called me a love child." Archbishop Ralph tried not to smile; the boy had such dignity and self-possession, now he had lost his fear. Only what had frightened him? Not being found, or being locked in the basilica. "Why were you so frightened, Rainer?" The boy sipped his wine gingerly, looked up with a pleased ex- pression. "Good, it's sweet." He made himself more comfortable. "I wanted to see Saint Peter's because the Sisters always used to talk about it and show us pictures. So when they posted us to Rome I was glad. We got here this morning. The minute I could, I came." He frowned. "But it wasn't as I had expected. I thought I'd feel closer to Our Lord, being in His own Church. Instead it was only enormous and cold. I couldn't feel Him." Archbishop Ralph smiled. "I know what you mean. But Saint Peter's isn't really a church, you know. Not in the sense most churches are. Saint Peter's is the Church. It took me a long time to get used to it, I remember." "I wanted to pray for two things," the boy said, nodding 470 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

his head to indicate he had heard but that it wasn't what he wished to hear. "For the things which frighten you?" "Yes. I thought being in Saint Peter's might help." "What are the things which frighten you, Rainer?" "That they'll decide I'm a Jew, and that my regiment will be sent to Russia after all." "I see. No wonder you're frightened. Is there indeed a possibility they'll decide you're a Jew?" "Well, look at me!" said the boy simply. "When they were writing down my particulars they said they'd have to check. I don't know if they can or not, but I suppose the Sisters might know more than they ever told me." "If they do, they'll not pass it on," said His Grace comfortingly. "They'll know why they're being asked." "Do you really think so? Oh, I hope so!" "Does the thought of having Jewish blood disturb you?" "What my blood is doesn't matter," said Rainer. "I was born a German, that's the only important thing." "Only they don't look at it like that, do they?" "And Russia? There's no need to worry about Russia now, surely. You're in Rome, the opposite direction." "This morning I heard our commander saying we might be sent to Russia after all. It isn't going well there." "You're a child," said Archbishop Ralph abruptly. "You ought to be in school." "I wouldn't be now anyway." The boy smiled. "I'm sixteen, so I'd be working." He sighed. "I would have liked to keep going to school. Learning is important." Archbishop Ralph started to laugh, then got up and refilled the glasses. "Don't take any notice of me, Rainer. I'm not making any sense. Just thoughts, one after the other. It's my hour for them, thoughts. I'm not a very good host, am I?" "You're all right," said the boy. THE THORN BIRDS / 471

the most elite division in Australian military history could only hope there might be further glory to amass somewhere else, chasing the Japanese back up through Indonesia. Guadalcanal had defeated all Japanese hopes in the drive for Australia. And yet, like the Ger- mans, they yielded bitterly, grudgingly. Though their resources were pitifully stretched, their armies foundering from lack of supplies and reinforcements, they made the Americans and the Australians pay for every inch they gained back. In retreat, the Japanese aban- doned Buna, Gona, Salamaua, and slipped back up the north coast, to Lae and Finschafen. On the fifth of September 1943 the Ninth Division was landed from the sea just east of Lae. It was hot, the humidity was 100 percent, and it rained every afternoon though The Wet wasn't due for another two full months. The threat of malaria meant everyone was taking Atabrine, and the little yellow tablets made everyone feel as sick as if they had the actual malaria. Already the constant moisture meant permanently damp boots and socks; feet were be- coming spongy, the flesh between the toes raw and bloody. Mocka and mosquito bites turned angry, ulcerated. In Port Moresby they had seen the wretched state of the New Guinea natives, and if they couldn't stand the climate without de- veloping yaws, beriberi, malaria, pneumonia, chronic skin diseases, enlarged livers and spleens, there wasn't much hope for the white man. There were survivors of Kokoda in Port Moresby as well, victims not so much of the Japanese but of New Guinea, emaciated, masses of sores, delirious with fever. Ten times as many had died from pneumonia nine thousand feet up in freezing cold wearing thin tropical kit as died from the Japanese. Greasy dank mud, un- earthly forests which glowed with cold pale spectral light after dark from phosphorescent fungi, precipitous climbs over a gnarled tangle of exposed roots which meant a man couldn't look up for a second THE THORN BIRDS / 473

and was a sitting duck for a sniper. It was about as different from North Africa as any place could get, and the Ninth wasn't a bit sorry it had stayed to fight the two Alameins instead of Kokoda Trail. Lae was a coastal town amid heavily forested grasslands, far from the eleven-thousand-foot elevations of the deep interior, and far more salubrious as a battle-ground than Kokoda. Just a few European houses, a petrol pump, and a collection of native huts. The Japanese were as ever game, but few in number and impover- ished, as worn out from New Guinea as the Australians they had been fighting, as disease ridden. After the massive ordnance and extreme mechanization of North Africa it was strange never to see a mortar or a fieldpiece; just Owen guns and rifles, with bayonets in place all the time. Jims and Patsy liked hand-to-hand fighting, they liked to go in close together, guard each other. It was a terrible comedown after the Afrika Korps, though, there was no doubt about it. Pint-size yellow men who all seemed to wear glasses and have buck teeth. They had absolutely no martial panache. Two weeks after the Ninth landed at Lae, there were no more Japanese. It was, for spring in New Guinea, a very beautiful day. The humidity had dropped twenty points, the sun shone out of a sky suddenly blue instead of steamily white, the watershed reared green, purple and lilac beyond the town. Discipline had relaxed, everyone seemed to be taking the day off to play cricket, walk around, tease the natives to make them laugh and display their blood-red, toothless gums, the result of chewing betel nut. Jims and Patsy were strolling through the tall grass beyond the town, for it reminded them of Drogheda; it was the same bleached, tawny color, and long the way Drogheda grass was after a season of heavy rain. "Won't be long now until we're back, Patsy," said Jims. "We've got the Nips on the run, and Jerry, too. Home, Patsy, home to Drogheda! I can hardly wait." 474 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

say is that he might never have much sensation in the genital re- gion." Jims dropped his head, looked at the ground through a crystal wall of tears. "At least he's alive," he said. He was granted leave to fly to Port Moresby with his brother, and to stay until Patsy was pronounced out of danger. The injuries were little short of miraculous. Bullets had scattered all around the lower abdomen without penetrating it. But the Ninth medic had been right; lower pelvic sensation was badly impaired. How much he might regain later on no one was prepared to say. "It doesn't much matter," said Patsy from the stretcher on which he was to be flown to Sydney. "I was never too keen on marrying, anyway. Now, you look after yourself, Jims, do you hear? I hate leaving you." "I'll look after myself, Patsy. Christ!" Jims grinned, holding hard onto his brother's hand. "Fancy having to spend the rest of the war without my best mate. I'll write and tell you what it's like. Say hello to Mrs. Smith and Meggie and Mum and the brothers for me, eh? Half your luck, going home to Drogheda." Fee and Mrs. Smith flew down to Sydney to meet the American plane which brought Patsy from Townsville; Fee remained only a few days, but Mrs. Smith stayed on in a Randwick hotel close to the Prince of Wales military hospital. Patsy remained there for three months. His part in the war was over. Many tears had Mrs. Smith shed; but there was much to be thankful for, too. In one way he would never be able to lead a full life, but he could do everything else: ride, walk, run. Mating didn't seem to be in the Cleary line, anyway. When he was discharged from hospital Meggie drove down from Gilly in the Rolls, and the two women tucked him up on the back seat amid blankets and magazines, praying for one more boon: that Jims would come home, too. THE THORN BIRDS / 477

16 Not until the Emperor Hirohito's delegate signed Japan's official surrender did Gillanbone believe the war was finally over. The news came on Sunday, September 2, 1945, which was exactly six years after the start. Six agonizing years. So many places empty, never to be filled again: Dominic O'Rourke's son Rory, Horry Hopeton's son John, Eden Carmichael's son Cormac. Ross Mac- Queen's youngest son, Angus, would never walk again, Anthony King's son David would walk but never see where he was going, Paddy Cleary's son Patsy would never have children. And there were those whose wounds weren't visible, but whose scars went just as deep; who had gone off gaily, eager and laughing, but came home quietly, said little, and laughed only rarely. Who could have dreamed when it began that it would go on so long, or take such a toll? Gillanbone was not a particularly superstitious community, but even the most cynical resident shivered that Sunday, September 2nd. For on the same day that the war ended, so did the longest drought in the history of Australia. For nearly ten years no useful rain had fallen, but that day the clouds filled the sky thousands of feet deep, blackly, cracked themselves open and poured twelve inches of rain on the thirsty earth. An 478

inch of rain may not mean the breaking of a drought, it might not be followed by anything more, but twelve inches of rain means grass. Meggie, Fee, Bob, Jack, Hughie and Patsy stood on the veranda watching it through the darkness, sniffing the unbearably sweet perfume of rain on parched and crumbling soil. Horses, sheep, cattle and pigs spraddled their legs against the shifting of the melting ground and let the water pour over their twitching bodies; most of them had been born since rain like this had last passed across their world. In the cemetery the rain washed the dust away, whitened everything, washed the dust off the outstretched wings of the bland Botticelli angel. The creek produced a tidal wave, its roaring flood mingling with the drumming of the soaking rain. Rain, rain! Rain. Like a benediction from some vast inscrutable hand, long withheld, finally given. The blessed, wonderful rain. For rain meant grass, and grass was life. A pale-green fuzz appeared, poked its little blades skyward, ramified, burgeoned, grew a darker green as it lengthened, then faded and waxed fat, became the silver-beige, knee-high grass of Drogheda. The Home Paddock looked like a field of wheat, rippling with every mischievous puff of wind, and the homestead gardens exploded into color, great buds unfurling, the ghost gums suddenly white and lime-green again after nine years of griming dust. For though Michael Carson's insane proliferation of water tanks still held enough to keep the homestead gardens alive, dust had long settled on every leaf and petal, dimmed and drabbed. And an old legend had been proven fact: Drogheda did indeed have sufficient water to survive ten years of drought, but only for the homestead. Bob, Jack, Hughie and Patsy went back to the paddocks, began seeing how best to restock; Fee opened a brand-new bottle of black ink and savagely screwed the lid down on her bottle of red ink; Meggie saw an end coming to her life in the saddle, for it would not be THE THORN BIRDS / 479

long before Jims was home and men turned up looking for jobs. After nine years there were very few sheep or cattle left, only the prize breeders which were always penned and hand-fed in any time, the nucleus of champion stock, rams and bulls. Bob went east to the top of the Western slopes to buy ewes of good blood line from properties not so hard hit by the drought. Jims came home. Eight stockmen were added to the Drogheda payroll. Meggie hung up her saddle. It was not long after this that Meggie got a letter from Luke, the second since she had left him. "Not long now, I reckon," he said. "A few more years in the sugar should see me through. The old back's a bit sore these days, but I can still cut with the best of them, eight or nine tons a day. Arne and I have twelve other gangs cutting for us, all good blokes. Money's getting very loose, Europe wants sugar as fast as we can produce it. I'm making over five thousand quid a year, saving al- most all of it. Won't be long now, Meg, before I'm out around Kynuna. Maybe when I get things together you might want to come back to me. Did I give you the kid you wanted? Funny, how women get their hearts set on kids. I reckon that's what really broke us up, eh? Let me know how you're getting on, and how Drogheda weathered the drought. Yours, Luke." Fee came out onto the veranda, where Meggie sat with the letter in her hand, staring absently out across the brilliant green of the homestead lawns. "How's Luke?" "The same as ever, Mum. Not a bit changed. Still on about a little while longer in the damned sugar, the place he's going to have one day out around Kynuna." "Do you think he'll ever actually do it?" "I suppose so, one day." "Would you go to join him, Meggie?" "Not in a million years." 480 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Fee sat down in a cane chair beside her daughter, pulling it round so she could see Meggie properly. In the distance men were shouting, hammers pounded; at long last the verandas and the upper-story windows of the homestead were being enclosed by fine wire mesh to screen out the flies. For years Fee had held out, ob- durate. No matter how many flies there were, the lines of the house would never be spoiled by ugly netting. But the longer the drought dragged on the worse the flies became, until two weeks before it ended Fee had given in and hired a contractor to enclose every building on the station, not only the homestead itself but all the staff houses and barracks as well. But electrify she would not, though since 1915 there had been a "donk," as the shearers called it, to supply power to the shearing shed. Drogheda without the gentle diffusion of lamps? It wasn't to be thought of. However, there was one of the new gas stoves which burned off cylindered gas on order, and a dozen of the new kerosene refrigerators; Australian industry wasn't yet on a peacetime footing, but eventually the new appliances would come. "Meggie, why don't you divorce Luke, marry again?" Fee asked suddenly. "Enoch Davies would have you in a second; he's never looked at anyone else." Meggie's lovely eyes surveyed her mother in wonder. "Good Lord, Mum, I do believe you're actually talking to me as one woman to another!" Fee didn't smile; Fee still rarely smiled. "Well, if you aren't a woman by now, you'll never be one. I'd say you qualified. I must be getting old; I feel garrulous." Meggie laughed, delighted at her mother's overture, and anxious not to destroy this new mood. "It's the rain, Mum. It must be. Oh, isn't it wonderful to see grass on Drogheda again, and green lawns around the homestead?" "Yes, it is. But you're side-stepping my question. Why not divorce Luke, marry again?" THE THORN BIRDS / 481

and her mother. It had been a rude shock to Justine when Meggie hung up her saddle and got back to being a mother. For one thing, Justine didn't seem to need a mother, since she was convinced she was right about everything. Nor was she the sort of little girl who required a confidante, or warm approval. As far as she was con- cerned, Meggie was mostly someone who interfered with her pleasure in Dane. She got on a lot better with her grandmother, who was just the sort of person Justine heartily approved of; she kept her distance and assumed one had a little sense. "I told him not to eat dirt," Justine said. "Well, it won't kill him, Justine, but it isn't good for him, either." Meggie turned to her son. "Dane, why?" He considered the question gravely. "It was there, so I ate it. If it was bad for me, wouldn't it taste bad, too? It tastes good." "Not necessarily," Justine interrupted loftily. "I give up on you, Dane, I really do. Some of the best-tasting things are the most poisonous." "Name one!" he challenged. "Treacle!" she said triumphantly. Dane had been very ill after finding a tin of treacle in Mrs. Smith's pantry and eating the lot. He admitted the thrust, but countered. "I'm still here, so it can't be all that poisonous." "That's only because you vomited. If you hadn't vomited, you'd be dead." This was inarguable. He and his sister were much of a height, so he tucked his arm companionably through hers and they sauntered away across the lawn toward their cubbyhouse, which their uncles had erected as instructed amid the down-drooping branches of a pepper tree. Danger from bees had led to much adult opposition to this site, but the children were proven right. The bees dwelled with them amicably. For, said the children, pepper trees were the nicest of all trees, very private. They had such a dry, fra- grant smell, and the THE THORN BIRDS / 483

grapelike clusters of tiny pink globules they bore crumbled into crisp, pungent pink flakes when crushed in the hand. "They're so different from each other, Dane and Justine, yet they get along so well together," said Meggie. "It never ceases to amaze me. I don't think I've ever seen them quarrel, though how Dane avoids quarreling with some one as determined and stubborn as Justine, I don't understand." But Fee had something else on her mind. "Lord, he's the living image of his father," she said, watching Dane duck under the lowest fronds of the pepper tree and disappear from sight. Meggie felt herself go cold, a reflex response which years of hearing people say this had not scotched. It was just her own guilt, of course. People always meant Luke. Why not? There were basic similarities between Luke O'Neill and Ralph de Bricassart. But try as she would, she could never be quite natural when Dane's likeness to his father was commented upon. She drew a carefully casual breath. "Do you think so, Mum?" she asked, nonchalantly swinging her foot. "I can never see it myself. Dane is nothing like Luke in nature or attitude to life." Fee laughed. It came out as a snort, but it was a genuine laugh. Grown pallid with age and encroaching cataracts, her eyes rested on Meggie's startled face, grim and ironic. "Do you take me for a fool, Meggie? I don't mean Luke O'Neill. I mean Dane is the living image of Ralph de Bricassart." Lead. Her foot was made of lead. It dropped to the Spanish tiles, her leaden body sagged, the lead heart within her breast struggled against its vast weight to beat. Beat, damn you, beat! You've got to go on beating for my son! "Why, Mum!" Her voice was leaden, too. "Why, Mum, what an extraordinary thing to say! Father Ralph de Bricassart?" 484 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

little finger and you'd have gone running, so a fig for your 'it's against the laws of the Church' when it comes to divorce. You were panting to break a far more serious law of the Church than the one about divorce. Shameless, Meggie, that's what you were. Shame- less!" A hint of hardness crept into her voice. "But he was a stubborn man. His heart was set on being a perfect priest; you came a very bad second. Oh, idiocy! It didn't do him any good, did it? It was only a matter of time before something happened." Around the corner of the veranda someone dropped a hammer, and let fly with a string of curses; Fee winced, shuddered. "Dear heaven, I'll be glad when they're done with the screening!" She got back to the subject. "Did you think you fooled me when you wouldn't have Ralph de Bricassart to marry you to Luke? I knew. You wanted him as the bridegroom, not as the officiating cleric. Then when he came to Drogheda before he left for Athens and you weren't here, I knew sooner or later he'd have to go and find you. He wandered around the place as lost as a little boy at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. Marrying Luke was the smartest move you made, Meggie. As long as he knew you were pining for him Ralph didn't want you, but the minute you became somebody else's he exhibited all the classical signs of the dog in the manger. Of course he'd convinced himself that his attachment to you was as pure as the driven snow, but the fact remained that he needed you. You were necessary to him in a way no other woman ever had been, or I suspect ever will be. Strange," said Fee with real puzzlement. "I always wondered what on earth he saw in you, but I suppose mothers are always a little blind about their daughters until they're too old to be jealous of youth. You are about Justine, the same as I was about you." She leaned back in her chair, rocking slightly, her eyes half closed, but she watched Meggie like a scientist his specimen. 486 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

at the garden. "I have a lot to answer for, Meggie, believe me." "So that's why you loved Frank more than the rest of us," Meggie said. "I thought I did, because he was Pakeha's son and the rest be- longed to Paddy," She sat down, made a queer, mournful noise. "So history does repeat itself. I had a quiet laugh when I saw Dane, I tell you." "Mum, you're an extraordinary woman!" "Am I?" The chair creaked; she leaned forward. "Let me whisper you a little secret, Meggie. Extraordinary or merely ordinary, I'm a very unhappy woman. For one reason or another I've been un- happy since the day I met Pakeha. Mostly my own fault. I loved him, but what he did to me shouldn't happen to any woman. And there was Frank... I kept hanging on to Frank, and ignoring the rest of you. Ignoring Paddy, who was the best thing ever happened to me. Only I didn't see it. I was too busy comparing him with Pakeha. Oh, I was grateful to him, and I couldn't help but see what a fine man he was..." She shrugged. "Well, all that's past. What I wanted to say was that it's wrong, Meggie. You know that, don't "No, I don't. The way I see it, the Church is wrong, expecting to take that from her priests as well." "Funny, how we always infer the Church is feminine. You stole a woman's man, Meggie, just as I did." "Ralph had absolutely no allegiance to any woman, except to me. The Church isn't a woman, Mum. It's a thing, an institution." "Don't bother trying to justify yourself to me. I know all the an- swers. I thought as you do myself, at the time. Divorce was out of the question for him. He was one of the first people of his race to attain political greatness; he had to choose between me and his people. What man could resist a chance like that to be noble? Just as your Ralph chose the Church, didn't he? So I thought, 488 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

I don't care. I'll take what I can get of him, I'll have his child to love at least." But suddenly Meggie was too busy hating her mother to be able to pity her, too busy resenting the inference that she herself had made just as big a mess of things. So she said, "Except that I far outdid you in subtlety, Mum. My son has a name no one can take from him, even including Luke." Fee's breath hissed between her teeth. "Nasty! Oh, you're decept- ive, Meggie! Butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, would it? Well, my father bought my husband to give Frank a name and get rid of me: I'll bet you never knew that! How did you know?" "That's my business." "You're going to pay, Meggie. Believe me, you're going to pay. You won't get away with it any more than I did. I lost Frank in the worst way a mother could; I can't even see him and I long to... You wait! You'll lose Dane, too." "Not if I can help it. You lost Frank because he couldn't pull in tandem with Daddy. I made sure Dane had no daddy to harness him. I'll harness him instead, to Drogheda. Why do you think I'm making a stockman out of him already? He'll be safe on Drogheda." "Was Daddy? Was Stuart? Nowhere is safe. And you won't keep Dane here if he wants to go. Daddy didn't harness Frank. That was it. Frank couldn't be harnessed. And if you think you, a woman, can harness Ralph de Bricassart's son, you've got another think coming. It stands to reason, doesn't it? If neither of us could hold the father, how can we hope to hold the son?" "The only way I can lose Dane is if you open your mouth, Mum. And I'm warning you, I'd kill you first." "Don't bother, I'm not worth swinging for. Your secret's safe with me; I'm just an interested onlooker. Yes indeed, that's all I am. An onlooker." "Oh, Mum! What could possibly have made you like this? Why like this, so unwilling to give?" THE THORN BIRDS / 489

Fee sighed. "Events which took place years before you were even born," she said pathetically. But Meggie shook her fist vehemently. "Oh, no, you don't! After what you've just told me? You're not going to get away with flog- ging that dead horse to me ever again! Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish! Do you hear me, Mum? You've wallowed in it for most of your life, like a fly in syrup!" Fee smiled broadly, genuinely pleased. "I used to think having a daughter wasn't nearly as important as having sons, but I was wrong. I enjoy you, Meggie, in a way I can never enjoy my sons. A daughter's an equal. Sons aren't, you know. They're just defense- less dolls we set up to knock down at our leisure." Meggie stared. "You're remorseless. Tell me, then, where do we go wrong?" "In being born," said Fee. Men were returning home in thousands upon thousands, shedding their khaki uniforms and slouch hats for civvies. And the Labor government, still in office, took a long, hard look at the great properties of the western plains, some of the bigger stations closer in. It wasn't right that so much land should belong to one family, when men who had done their bit for Australia needed room for their belongings and the country needed more intensive working of its land. Six million people to fill an area as big as the United States of America, but a mere handful of those six million holding vast tracts in a handful of names. The biggest properties would have to be subdivided, yield up some of their acreages to the war veterans. Bugela went from 150,000 acres to 70,000; two returned soldiers got 40,000 acres each off Martin King. Rudna Hunish had 120,000 acres, therefore Ross MacQueen lost 60,000 acres and two more returned soldiers were endowed. So it went. Of course the govern- ment compensated the graziers, though at lower figures than 490 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

the open market would have given. And it hurt. Oh, it hurt. No amount of argument prevailed with Canberra; properties as large as Bugela and Rudna Hunish would be partitioned. It was self- evident no man needed so much, since the Gilly district had many thriving stations of less than 50,000 acres. What hurt the most was the knowledge that this time it seemed the returned soldiers would persevere. After the First World War most of the big stations had gone through the same partial resump- tion, but it had been poorly done, the fledgling graziers without training or experience; gradually the squatters bought their filched acres back at rock-bottom prices from discouraged veterans. This time the government was prepared to train and educate the new settlers at its own expense. Almost all the squatters were avid members of the Country Party, and on principle loathed a Labor government, identifying it with blue-collar workers in industrial cities, trade unions and feckless Marxist intellectuals. The unkindest cut of all was to find that the Clearys, who were known Labor voters, were not to see a single acre pared from the formidable bulk of Drogheda. Since the Cath- olic Church owned it, naturally it was subdivision-exempt. The howl was heard in Canberra, but ignored. It came very hard to the squatters, who always thought of themselves as the most powerful lobby group in the nation, to find that he who wields the Canberra whip does pretty much as he likes. Australia was heavily federal, its state governments virtually powerless. Thus, like a giant in a Lilliputian world, Drogheda carried on, all quarter of a million acres of it. The rain came and went, sometimes adequate, sometimes too much, sometimes too little, but not, thank God, ever another drought like the great one. Gradually the number of sheep built up and the quality of the wool improved over pre-drought times, no mean feat. THE THORN BIRDS / 491

Breeding was the "in" thing. People talked of Haddon Rig near Warren, started actively competing with its owner, Max Falkiner, for the top ram and ewe prizes at the Royal Easter Show in Sydney. And the price of wool began to creep up, then skyrocketed. Europe, the United States and Japan were hungry for every bit of fine wool Australia could produce. Other countries yielded coarser wools for heavy fabrics, carpets, felts; but only the long, silky fibers from Australian merinos could make a woolen textile so fine it slipped through the fingers like softest lawn. And that sort of wool reached its peak out on the black-soil plains of northwest New South Wales and southwest Queensland. It was as if after all the years of tribulation, a just reward had arrived. Drogheda's profits soared out of all imagination. Millions of pounds every year. Fee sat at her desk radiating contentment, Bob put another two stockmen on the books. If it hadn't been for the rabbits, pastoral conditions would have been ideal, but the rabbits were as much of a blight as ever. On the homestead life was suddenly very pleasant. The wire screening had excluded flies from all Drogheda interiors; now that it was up and everyone had grown used to its appearance, they wondered how they had ever survived without it. For there were multiple compensations for the look of it, like being able to eat al fresco on the veranda when it was very hot, under the tapping leaves of the wistaria vine. The frogs loved the screening, too. Little fellows they were, green with a delicate overlay of glossy gold. On suckered feet they crept up the outside of the mesh to stare motionless at the diners, very solemn and dignified. Suddenly one would leap, grab at a moth almost bigger than itself, and settle back into inertia with two-thirds of the moth flapping madly out of its overladen mouth. It amused Dane and Justine to time how long it took a frog to swallow a big moth completely, staring gravely through the wire and every ten minutes getting 492 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

a little more moth down. The insect lasted a long time, and would often still be kicking when the final piece of wingtip was engulfed. "Erckle! What a fate!" chuckled Dane. "Fancy half of you still being alive while the other half of you is busy being digested." Avid reading—that Drogheda passion—had given the two O'Neill children excellent vocabularies at an early age. They were intelligent, alert and interested in everything. Life was particularly pleasant for them. They had their thoroughbred ponies, increasing in size as they did; they endured their correspondence lessons at Mrs. Smith's green kitchen table; they played in the pepper tree cubbyhouse; they had pet cats, pet dogs, even a pet goanna, which walked beautifully on a leash and answered to its name. Their favorite pet was a miniature pink pig, as intelligent as any dog, called Iggle- Piggle. So far from urban congestion, they caught few diseases and never had colds or influenza. Meggie was terrified of infantile paralysis, diphtheria, anything which might swoop out of nowhere to carry them off, so whatever vaccines became available they re- ceived. It was an ideal existence, full of physical activity and mental stimulation. When Dane was ten and Justine eleven they were sent to boarding school in Sydney, Dane to Riverview as tradition deman- ded, and Justine to Kincoppal. When she put them on the plane the first time, Meggie watched as their white, valiantly composed little faces stared out of a window, handkerchiefs waving; they had never been away from home before. She had wanted badly to go with them, see them settled in for herself, but opinion was so strongly against her she yielded. From Fee down to Jims and Patsy, everyone felt they would do a great deal better on their own. "Don't mollycoddle them," said Fee sternly. But indeed she felt like two different people as the THE THORN BIRDS / 493

DC-3 took off in a cloud of dust and staggered into the shimmering air. Her heart was breaking at losing Dane, and light at the thought of losing Justine. There was no ambivalence in her feelings about Dane; his gay, even-tempered nature gave and accepted love as naturally as breathing. But Justine was a lovable, horrible monster. One had to love her, because there was much to love: her strength, her integrity, her self-reliance—lots of things. The trouble was that she didn't permit love the way Dane did, nor did she ever give Meggie the wonderful feeling of being needed. She wasn't matey or full of pranks, and she had a disastrous habit of putting people down, chiefly, it seemed, her mother. Meggie found much in her that had been exasperating in Luke, but at least Justine wasn't a miser. For that much be thankful. A thriving airline meant that all the children's vacations, even the shortest ones, could be spent on Drogheda. However, after an initial period of adjustment both children enjoyed their schooling. Dane was always homesick after a visit to Drogheda, but Justine took to Sydney as if she had always lived there, and spent her Drogheda time longing to be back in the city. The Riverview Jesuits were delighted; Dane was a marvelous student, in the classroom and on the playing field. The Kincoppal nuns, on the other hand, were definitely not delighted; no one with eyes and a tongue as sharp as Justine's could hope to be popular. A class ahead of Dane, she was perhaps the better student of the two, but only in the classroom. The Sydney Morning Herald of August 4th, 1952, was very inter- esting. Its big front page rarely bore more than one photograph, usually middle and high up, the interest story of the day. And that day the picture was a handsome portrait of Ralph de Bricassart. His Grace Archbishop Ralph de Bricassart, at 494 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

the present time aide to the Secretary of State of the Holy See of Rome, was today created Cardinal de Bricassart by His Holiness Pope Pius XII. Ralph Raoul, Cardinal de Bricassart has had a long and illustrious association with the Roman Catholic Church in Australia, extending from his arrival as a newly ordained priest in July 1919 to his departure for the Vatican in March 1938. Born on September 23, 1893, in the Republic of Ireland, Cardinal de Bricassart was the second son of a family which can trace its descent from Baron Ranulf de Bricassart, who came to England in the train of William the Conqueror. By tradition, Cardinal de Bricassart espoused the Church. He entered the seminary at the age of seventeen, and upon his ordination was sent to Australia. His first months were spent in the service of the late Bishop Michael Clabby, in the Dio- cese of Winnemurra. In June 1920 he was transferred to serve as pastor of Gil- lanbone, in northwestern New South Wales. He was made Monsignor, and continued at Gillanbone until December 1928. From there he became private secretary to His Grace Archbishop Cluny Dark, and finally private secretary to the then Archbishop Papal Legate, His Eminence Cardinal di Contini-Verchese. During this time he was created Bishop. When Cardinal di Contini-Verchese was transferred to Rome to commence his remarkable career at the Vatican, Bishop de Bricassart was created Archbishop, and returned to Australia from Athens as the Papal Legate himself. He held this import- ant Vatican appointment until his transfer to Rome in 1938; since that time his rise within the central hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has been spectacular. Now 58 years of age, he is rumored to be one of the few men actively con- cerned in the determination of papal policy. THE THORN BIRDS / 495

A Sydney Morning Herald representative talked to some of Cardinal de Bricassart's ex-parishioners in the Gillanbone area yesterday. He is well remembered, and with much affec- tion. This rich sheep district is predominantly Roman Catholic in its religious adherence. "Father de Bricassart founded the Holy Cross Bush Biblio- philic Society," said Mr. Harry Gough, Mayor of Gillanbone. "It was—for the time especially—a remarkable service, splen- didly endowed first by the late Mrs. Mary Carson, and after her death by the Cardinal himself, who has never forgotten us or our needs." "Father de Bricassart was the finest-looking man I've ever seen," said Mrs. Fiona Cleary, present doyenne of Drogheda, one of the largest and most prosperous stations in New South Wales. "During his time in Gilly he was a great spiritual support to his parishioners, and particularly to those of us on Drogheda, which as you know now belongs to the Catholic Church. During floods he helped us move our stock, during fires he came to our aid, even if it was only to bury our dead. He was, in fact, an extraordinary man in every way, and he had more charm than any man I've ever met. One could see he was meant for great things. Indeed we remember him, though it's over twenty years since he left us. Yes, I think it's quite truthful to say that there are some around Gilly who still miss him very much." During the war the then Archbishop de Bricassart served His Holiness loyally and unswervingly, and is credited with having influenced Field Marshal Albert Kesselring in deciding to maintain Rome as an open city after Italy became a German enemy. Florence, which had asked in vain for the same priv- ilege, lost many of its treasures, only restored later because Germany lost the war. In the 496 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

immediate postwar period, Cardinal de Bricassart helped thousands of displaced persons seek asylum in new countries, and was especially vigorous in aiding the Australian immigra- tion program. Though by birth he is an Irishman, and though it seems he will not exert his influence as Cardinal de Bricassart in Aus- tralia, we still feel that to a large extent Australia may rightly claim this remarkable man as her own. Meggie handed the paper back to Fee, and smiled at her mother ruefully. "One must congratulate him, as I said to the Herald reporter. They didn't print that, did they? Though they printed your little eulogy almost verbatim, I see. What a barbed tongue you've got! At least I know where Justine gets it from. I wonder how many people will be smart enough to read between the lines of what you said?" "He will, anyway, if he ever sees it." "I wonder does he remember us?" Meggie sighed. "Undoubtedly. After all, he still finds time to administer Drogheda himself. Of course he remembers us, Meggie. How could he forget?" "True, I had forgotten Drogheda. We're right up there on top of the earnings, aren't we? He must be very pleased. With our wool at a pound per pound in the auctions, the Drogheda wool check this year must have made even the gold mines look sick. Talk about Golden Fleece. Over four million pounds, just from shaving our baa-lambs." "Don't be cynical, Meggie, it doesn't suit you," said Fee; her manner toward Meggie these days, though often mildly withering, was tempered with respect and affection. "We've done well enough, haven't we? Don't forget we get our money every year, good or bad. Didn't he pay Bob a hundred thousand as a bonus, the rest of us fifty thousand each? If he threw us off Drogheda THE THORN BIRDS / 497

tomorrow we could afford to buy Bugela, even at today's inflated land prices. And how much has he given your children? Thousands upon thousands. Be fair to him." "But my children don't know it, and they're not going to find out. Dane and Justine will grow up to think they must make their own ways in the world, without benefit of dear Ralph Raoul, Car- dinal de Bricassart. Fancy his second name being Raoul! Very Norman, isn't it?" Fee got up, walked over to the fire and threw the front page of the Herald onto the flames. Ralph Raoul, Cardinal de Bricassart shuddered, winked at her, and then shriveled up. "What will you do if he comes back, Meggie?" Meggie sniffed. "Fat chance!" "He might," said Fee enigmatically. He did, in December. Very quietly, without anyone knowing, driving an Aston Martin sports car all the way from Sydney himself. Not a word about his presence in Australia had reached the press, so no one on Drogheda had the remotest suspicion he was coming. When the car pulled in to the gravelly area at one side of the house there was no one about, and apparently no one had heard him ar- rive, for no one came out onto the veranda. He had felt the miles from Gilly in every cell of his body, inhaled the odors of the bush, the sheep, the dry grass sparkling restlessly in the sun. Kangaroos and emus, galahs and goannas, millions of insects buzzing and flipping, ants marching across the road in treacly columns, fat pudgy sheep everywhere. He loved it so, for in one curious aspect it conformed to what he loved in all things; the passing years scarcely seemed to brush it. Only the fly screening was different, but he noted with amuse- ment that Fee hadn't permitted the big house veranda facing the Gilly road to be enclosed like the rest, only the windows opening onto it. She was right, 498 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

of course; a great expanse of mesh would have ruined the lines of that lovely Georgian facade. How long did ghost gums live? These must have been transplanted from the Dead Heart interior eighty years ago. The bougainvillaea in their high branches was one sliding mass of copper and purple. It was already summer, two weeks left before Christmas, and the Drogheda roses were at their height. There were roses everywhere, pink and white and yellow, crimson like heart's blood, scarlet like a cardinal's soutane. In among the wistaria, green now, rambling roses drowsed pink and white, fell off the veranda roof, down the wire mesh, clung lovingly to the black shutters of the second story, stretched tendrils past them to the sky. The tank stands were quite smothered from sight now, so were the tanks themselves. And one color was everywhere among the roses, a pale pinkish-grey. Ashes of roses? Yes, that was the name of the color. Meggie must have planted them, it had to be Meggie. He heard Meggie's laugh, and stood motionless, quite terrified, then made his feet go in the direction of the sound, gone down to delicious giggling trills. Just the way she used to laugh when she was a little girl. There it was! Over there, behind a great clump of pinkishgrey roses near a pepper tree. He pushed the clusters of blossoms aside with his hand, his mind reeling from their perfume, and that laugh. But Meggie wasn't there, only a boy squatting in the lush lawn, teasing a little pink pig which ran in idiotic rushes up to him, gal- loped off, sidled back. Unconscious of his audience, the boy threw his gleaming head back and laughed. Meggie's laugh, from that unfamiliar throat. Without meaning to, Cardinal Ralph let the roses fall into place and stepped through them, heedless of the thorns. The boy, about twelve or fourteen years of age, just prepubescent, looked up, startled; the pig squealed, curled up its tail tightly and ran off. Clad in an old pair of khaki shorts and nothing else, THE THORN BIRDS / 499

bare-footed, he was golden brown and silky-skinned, his slender, boyish body already hinting at later power in the breadth of the young square shoulders, the well-developed calf and thigh muscles, the flat belly and narrow hips. His hair was a little long and loosely curly, just the bleached color of Drogheda grass, his eyes through absurdly thick black lashes intensely blue. He looked like a very youthful escaped angel. "Hello," said the boy, smiling. "Hello," said Cardinal Ralph, finding it impossible to resist the charm of that smile. "Who are you?" "I'm Dane O'Neill," answered the boy. "Who are you?" "My name is Ralph de Bricassart." Dane O'Neill. He was Meggie's boy, then. She had not left Luke O'Neill after all, she had gone back to him, borne this beautiful lad who might have been his, had he not married the Church first. How old had he been when he married the Church? Not much older than this, not very much more mature. Had he waited, the boy might well have been his. What nonsense, Cardinal de Bricas- sart! If you hadn't married the Church you would have remained in Ireland to breed horses and never known your fate at all, never known Drogheda or Meggie Cleary. "May I help you?" asked the boy politely, getting to his feet with a supple grace Cardinal Ralph recognized, and thought of as Meggie's. "Is your father here, Dane?" "My father?" The dark, finely etched brows knitted. "No, he's not here. He's never been here." "Oh, I see. Is your mother here, then?" "She's in Gilly, but she'll be back soon. My Nanna is in the house, though. Would you like to see her? I can take you." Eyes as blue as cornflowers stared at him, widened, narrowed. "Ralph de Bricas- sart. I've heard of you. Oh! Cardinal de Bricassart! Your Eminence, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to be rude." 500 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Though he had abandoned his clerical regalia in favor of boots, breeches and a white shirt, the ruby ring was still on his finger, must never be withdrawn as long as he lived. Dane O'Neill knelt, took Cardinal Ralph's slender hand in his own slender ones, and kissed the ring reverently. "It's all right, Dane. I'm not here as Cardinal de Bricassart. I'm here as a friend of your mother's and your grandmother's." "I'm sorry, Your Eminence, I ought to have recognized your name the minute I heard it. We say it often enough round here. Only you pronounce it a bit differently, and your Christian name threw me off. My mother will be very glad to see you, I know." "Dane, Dane, where are you?" called an impatient voice, very deep and entrancingly husky. The hanging fronds of the pepper tree parted and a girl of about fifteen ducked out, straightened. He knew who she was immediately, from those astonishing eyes. Meggie's daughter. Covered in freckles, sharp-faced, small-featured, disappointingly unlike Meggie. "Oh, hello. I'm sorry, I didn't realize we had a visitor. I'm Justine "Jussy, this is Cardinal de Bricassart!" Dane said in a loud whis- per. "Kiss his ring, quickly!" The blind-looking eyes flashed scorn. "You're a real prawn about religion, Dane," she said without bothering to lower her voice. "Kissing a ring is unhygienic; I won't do it. Besides, how do we know this is Cardinal de Bricassart? He looks like an old-fashioned grazier to me. You know, like Mr. Gordon." "He is, he is!" insisted Dane. "Please, Jussy, be good! Be good for me!" "I'll be good, but only for you. But I won't kiss his ring, even for you. Disgusting. How do I know who kissed it last? They might have had a cold." "You don't have to kiss my ring, Justine. I'm here on a holiday; I'm not being a cardinal at the moment." THE THORN BIRDS / 501

happy. It made him hungry to see Meggie, see if she was happy. But when he left the cookhouse Meggie wasn't back, so to fill in time he strolled through the grounds toward the creek. How peaceful the cemetery was; there were six bronze plaques on the mausoleum wall, just as there had been last time. He must see that he himself was buried here; he must remember to instruct them, when he returned to Rome. Near the mausoleum he noticed two new graves, old Tom, the garden rouseabout, and the wife of one of the stockmen, who had been on the payroll since 1946. Must be some sort of record. Mrs. Smith thought he was still with them because his wife lay here. The Chinese cook's ancestral umbrella was quite faded from all the years of fierce sun, had dwindled from its original imperial red through the various shades he remembered to its present whitish-pink, almost ashes of roses. Meggie, Meggie. You went back to him after me, you bore him a son. It was very hot; a little wind came, stirred the weeping willows along the creek, made the bells on the Chinese cook's umbrella chime their mournful tinny tune: Hee Sing, Hee Sing, Hee Sing. Tankstand Charlie he was a good bloke. That had faded, too, was practically indecipherable. Well, it was fitting. Graveyards ought to sink back into the bosom of Mother Earth, lose their human cargo under a wash of time, until it all was gone and only the air remembered, sighing. He didn't want to be buried in a Vatican crypt, among men like himself. Here, among people who had really lived. Turning, his eyes caught the glaucous glance of the marble angel. He raised his hand, saluted it, looked across the grass toward the big house. And she was coming, Meggie. Slim, golden, in a pair of breeches and a white man's shirt exactly like his own, a man's grey felt hat on the back of her head, tan boots on her feet. Like a boy, like her son, who should have been his son. THE THORN BIRDS / 505

He was a man, but when he too lay here there would be nothing left living to mark the fact. She came on, stepped over the white fence, came so close all he could see were her eyes, those grey, light-filled eyes which hadn't lost their beauty or their hold over his heart. Her arms were around his neck, his fate again within his touch, it was as if he had never been away from her, that mouth alive under his, not a dream; so long wanted, so long. A different kind of sacrament, dark like the earth, having nothing to do with the sky. "Meggie, Meggie," he said, his face in her hair, her hat on the grass, his arms around her. "It doesn't seem to matter, does it? Nothing ever changes," she said, eyes closed. "No, nothing changes," he said, believing it. "This is Drogheda, Ralph. I warned you, on Drogheda you're mine, not God's." "I know. I admit it. But I came." He drew her down onto the grass. "Why, Meggie?" "Why what?" Her hand was stroking his hair, whiter than Fee's now, still thick, still beautiful. "Why did you go back to Luke? Have his son?" he asked jeal- ously. Her soul looked out from behind its lucent grey windows and veiled its thoughts from him. "He forced me to," she said blandly. "It was only once. But I had Dane, so I'm not sorry. Dane was worth everything I went through to get him." "I'm sorry, I had no right to ask. I gave you to Luke in the first place, didn't I?" "That's true, you did." "He's a wonderful boy. Does he look like Luke?" She smiled secretly, plucked at the grass, laid her hand inside his shirt, against his chest. "Not really. Neither of my children looks very much like Luke, or me." "I love them because they're yours." "You're as sentimental as ever. Age suits you, Ralph. 506 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

I knew it would, I hoped I'd have the chance to see it. Thirty years I've known you! It seems like thirty days." "Thirty years? As many as that?" "I'm forty-one, my dear, so it must be." She got to her feet. "I was officially sent to summon you inside. Mrs. Smith is laying on a splendid tea in your honor, and later on when it's a bit cooler there's to be roast leg of pork, with lots of crackling." He began to walk with her, slowly. "Your son laughs just like you, Meggie. His laugh was the first human noise I heard on Drogheda. I thought he was you; I went to find you and I dis- covered him instead." "So he was the first person you saw on Drogheda." "Why, yes, I suppose he was." "What did you think of him, Ralph?" she asked eagerly. "I liked him. How could I not, when he's your son? But I was attracted to him very strongly, far more so than to your daughter. She doesn't like me, either." "Justine might be my child, but she's a prize bitch. I've learned to swear in my old age, mostly thanks to Justine. And you, a little. And Luke, a little. And the war, a little. Funny how they all mount up." "You've changed a lot, Meggie." "Have I?" The soft, full mouth curved into a smile. "I don't think so, really. It's just the Great Northwest, wearing me down, stripping off the layers like Salome's seven veils. Or like an onion, which is how Justine would rather put it. No poetry, that child. I'm the same old Meggie, Ralph, only more naked." "Perhaps so." "Ah, but you've changed, Ralph." "In what way, my Meggie?" "As if the pedestal rocks with every passing breeze, and as if the view from up there is a disappointment." "It is." He laughed soundlessly. "And to think I once had the temerity to say you weren't anything out of the THE THORN BIRDS / 507

ordinary! I take it back. You're the one woman, Meggie. The one!" "What happened?" "I don't know. Did I discover even Church idols have feet of clay? Did I sell myself for a mess of pottage? Am I grasping at nothing?" His brows drew togther, as if in pain. "And that's it, perhaps, in a nutshell. I'm a mass of clichés. It's an old, sour, pet- rified world, the Vatican world." "I was more real, but you could never see it." "There was nothing else I could do, truly! I knew where I should have gone, but I couldn't. With you I might have been a better man, if less august. But I just couldn't, Meggie. Oh, I wish I could make you see that!" Her hand stole along his bare arm, tenderly. "Dear Ralph, I do see it. I know, I know... Each of us has something within us which won't be denied, even if it makes us scream aloud to die. We are what we are, that's all. Like the old Celtic legend of the bird with the thorn in its breast, singing its heart out and dying. Because it has to, it's driven to. We can know what we do wrong even before we do it, but self-knowledge can't affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it's the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don't you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it." "That's what I don't understand. The pain." He glanced down at her hand, so gently on his arm, hurting him so unbearably. "Why the pain, Meggie?" "Ask God, Ralph," said Meggie. "He's the authority on pain, isn't He? He made us what we are, He made the whole world. Therefore He made the pain, too." Bob, Jack, Hughie, Jims and Patsy were in for dinner, since it was Saturday night. Tomorrow Father 508 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Watty was due out to say Mass, but Bob called him and said no one would be there. A white lie, to preserve Cardinal Ralph's an- onymity. The five Cleary boys were more like Paddy than ever, older, slower in speech, as steadfast and enduring as the land. And how they loved Dane! Their eyes never seemed to leave him, even followed him from the room when he went to bed. It wasn't hard to see they lived for the day when he would be old enough to join them in running Drogheda. Cardinal Ralph had also discovered the reason for Justine's enmity. Dane had taken a fancy to him, hung on his words, lingered near him; she was plain jealous. After the children had gone upstairs, he looked at those who were left: the brothers, Meggie, Fee. "Fee, leave your desk for a moment," he said. "Come and sit here with us. I want to talk to all of you." She still carried herself well and hadn't lost her figure, only slackened in the breasts, thickened very slightly in the waist; more a shaping due to old age than to an actual weight gain. Silently she seated herself in one of the big cream chairs opposite the Cardinal, with Meggie to one side, and the brothers on stone benches close by. "It's about Frank," he said. The name hung between them, resounding distantly. "What about Frank?" asked Fee composedly. Meggie laid her knitting down, looked at her mother, then at Cardinal Ralph. "Tell us, Ralph," she said quickly, unable to bear her mother's composure a moment longer. "Frank has served almost thirty years in jail, do you realize that?" asked the Cardinal. "I know my people kept you informed as we arranged, but I had asked them not to distress you unduly. I hon- estly couldn't see what good it could do Frank or yourselves to hear the harrowing details of his loneliness and despair, because there was nothing any of us might have done. I think Frank would have been released some years ago had he THE THORN BIRDS / 509

not gained a reputation for violence and instability during his early years in Goulburn Gaol. Even as late as the war, when some other prisoners were released into armed service, poor Frank was refused." Fee glanced up from her hands. "It's his temper," she said without emotion. The Cardinal seemed to be having some difficulty in finding the right words; while he sought for them, the family watched him in mingled dread and hope, though it wasn't Frank's welfare they cared about. "It must be puzzling you greatly why I came back to Australia after all these years," Cardinal Ralph said finally, not looking at Meggie. "I haven't always been mindful of your lives, and I know it. From the day I met you, I've thought of myself first, put myself first. And when the Holy Father rewarded my labors on behalf of the Church with a cardinal's mantle, I asked myself if there was any service I could do the Cleary family which in some way would tell them how deeply I care." He drew a breath, focused his gaze on Fee, not on Meggie. "I came back to Australia to see what I could do about Frank. Do you remember, Fee, that time I spoke to you after Paddy and Stu died? Twenty years ago, and I've never been able to forget the look in your eyes. So much energy and vi- tality, crushed." "Yes," said Bob abruptly, his eyes riveted on his mother. "Yes, that's it." "Frank is being paroled," said the Cardinal. "It was the only thing I could do to show you that I do care." If he had expected a sudden, dazzling blaze of light from out of Fee's long darkness, he would have been very disappointed; at first it was no more than a small flicker, and perhaps the toll of age would never really permit it to shine at full brightness. But in the eyes of Fee's sons he saw its true magnitude, and knew a sense of his own purpose he hadn't felt since that time during the war when he had talked to the young German soldier with the imposing name. 510 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

went out of the room, then turned to Fee's hunched back. "Good night, Fee." "I beg your pardon? Did you say something?" "I said good night." "Oh! Good night, Ralph." He didn't want to go upstairs so soon after Meggie. "I'm going for a walk before I turn in, I think. Do you know something, Fee?" "No." Her voice was absent. "You don't fool me for a minute." She snorted with laughter, an eerie sound. "Don't I? I wonder about that." Late, and the stars. The southern stars, wheeling across the heavens. He had lost his hold upon them forever, though they were still there, too distant to warm, too remote to comfort. Closer to God, Who was a wisp between them. For a long time he stood looking up, listening to the wind in the trees, smiling. Reluctant to be near Fee, he used the flight of stairs at the far end of the house; the lamp over her desk still burned and he could see her bent silhouette there, working. Poor Fee. How much she must dread going to bed, though perhaps when Frank came home it would be easier. Perhaps. At the top of the stairs silence met him thickly; a crystal lamp on a narrow hall table shed a dim pool of light for the comfort of nocturnal wanderers, flickering as the night breeze billowed the curtains inward around the window next to it. He passed it by, his feet on the heavy carpeting making no sound. Meggie's door was wide open, more light welling through it; blocking the rays for a moment, he shut her door behind him and locked it. She had donned a loose wrapper and was sitting in a chair by the window looking out across the invisible Home Pad- dock, but her head turned to watch him walk to the bed, sit on its edge. Slowly she got up and came to him. 512 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

recognize it, only felt its familiarity. No man sees himself in a mirror as he really is, nor any woman. Luddie and Anne Mueller were due in for Christmas, as indeed they were every year. The big house was full of light-hearted people, looking forward to the best Christmas in years; Minnie and Cat sang tunelessly as they worked, Mrs. Smith's plump face was wreathed in smiles, Meggie relinquished Dane to Cardinal Ralph without comment, and Fee seemed much happier, less glued to her desk. The men seized upon any excuse to make it back in each night, for after a late dinner the drawing room buzzed with conver- sation, and Mrs. Smith had taken to preparing a bedtime supper snack of melted cheese on toast, hot buttered crumpets and raisin scones. Cardinal Ralph protested that so much good food would make him fat, but after three days of Drogheda air, Drogheda people and Drogheda food, he seemed to be shedding the rather gaunt, haggard look he had worn when he arrived. The fourth day came in very hot. Cardinal Ralph had gone with Dane to bring in a mob of sheep, Justine sulked alone in the pepper tree, and Meggie lounged on a cushioned cane settee on the ver- anda. Her bones felt limp, glutted, and she was very happy. A woman can live without it quite well for years at a stretch, but it was nice, when it was the one man. When she was with Ralph every part of her came alive except that part which belonged to Dane; the trouble was, when she was with Dane every part of her came alive except that which belonged to Ralph. Only when both of them were present in her world simultaneously, as now, did she feel utterly complete. Well, it stood to reason. Dane was her son, but Ralph was her man. Yet one thing marred her happiness; Ralph hadn't seen. So her mouth remained closed upon her secret. If he couldn't see it for himself, why should she tell him? What had he ever done, to earn the telling? That he 514 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

could think for a moment she had gone back to Luke willingly was the last straw. He didn't deserve to be told, if he could think that of her. Sometimes she felt Fee's pale, ironic eyes upon her, and she would stare back, unperturbed. Fee understood, she really did. Understood the half-hate, the resentment, the desire to pay back the lonely years. Off chasing rainbows, that was Ralph de Bricassart; and why should she gift him with the most exquisite rainbow of all, his son? Let him be deprived. Let him suffer, never knowing he suffered. The phone rang its Drogheda code; Meggie listened idly, then realizing her mother must be elsewhere, she got up reluctantly and went to answer it. "Mrs. Fiona Cleary, please," said a man's voice. When Meggie called her name, Fee returned to take the receiver. "Fiona Cleary speaking," she said, and as she stood listening the color faded gradually from her face, making it look as it had looked in the days after Paddy and Stu died; tiny and vulnerable. "Thank you," she said, and hung up. "What is it, Mum?" "Frank's been released. He's coming up on the night mail this afternoon." She looked at her watch. "I must leave soon; it's after two." "Let me come with you," Meggie offered, so filled with her own happiness she couldn't bear to see her mother disappointed; she sensed that this meeting couldn't be pure joy for Fee. "No, Meggie, I'll be all right. You take care of things here, and hold dinner until I get back." "Isn't it wonderful, Mum? Frank's coming home in time for Christmas!" "Yes," said Fee, "it is wonderful." No one traveled on the night mail these days if they could fly, so by the time it had huffed the six hundred miles from Sydney, dropping its mostly second-class THE THORN BIRDS / 515

passengers at this small town or that, few people were left to be disgorged in Gilly. The stationmaster had a nodding acquaintance with Mrs. Cleary but would never have dreamed of engaging her in conversation, so he just watched her descend the wooden steps from the overhead footbridge, and left her alone to stand stiffly on the high platform. She was a stylish old girl, he thought; up-to-date dress and hat, high-heeled shoes, too. Good figure, not many lines on her face really for an old girl; just went to show what the easy life of a gra- zier could do for a woman. So that on the surface Frank recognized his mother more quickly than she did him, though her heart knew him at once. He was fifty- two years old, and the years of his absence were those which had carried him from youth to middle age. The man who stood in the Gilly sunset was too thin, gaunt almost, very pale; his hair was cropped halfway up his head, he wore shapeless clothes which hung on a frame still hinting at power for all its small size, and his well-shaped hands were clamped on the brim of a grey felt hat. He wasn't stooped or ill-looking, but he stood helplessly twisting that hat between his hands and seemed not to expect anyone to meet him, nor to know what next he ought to do. Fee, controlled, walked briskly down the platform. "Hello, Frank," she said. He lifted the eyes which used to flash and sparkle so, set now in the face of an aging man. Not Frank's eyes at all. Exhausted, patient, intensely weary. But as they absorbed the sight of Fee an extraordin- ary expression came into them, wounded, utterly defenseless, filled with the appeal of a dying man. "Oh, Frank!" she said, and took him in her arms, rocking his head on her shoulder. "It's all right, it's all right," she crooned, and softer still, "It's all right!" He sat slumped and silent in the car at first, but as 516 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

the Rolls picked up speed and headed out of town he began to take an interest in his surroundings, and glanced out of the window. "It looks exactly the same," he whispered. "I imagine it does. Time moves slowly out here." They crossed the rumbling wooden-planked bridge over the thin, muddy river lined with weeping willows, most of its bed exposed in a tangle of roots and gravel, pools lying in still brown patches, gum trees growing everywhere in the stony wastes. "The Barwon," he said. "I never thought I'd see it again." Behind them rose an enormous cloud of dust, in front of them the road sped straight as a perspective exercise across a great grassy plain devoid of trees. "The road's new, Mum?" He seemed desperate to find conversa- tion, make the situation appear normal. "Yes, they put it through from Gilly to Milparinka just after the war ended." "They might have sealed it with a bit of tar instead of leaving it the same old dirt." "What for? We're used to eating dust out here, and think of the expense of making a bed strong enough to resist the mud. The new road is straight, they keep it well graded and it cut out thirteen of our twenty-seven gates. Only fourteen left between Gilly and the homestead, and just you wait and see what we've done to them, Frank. No more opening and closing gates." The Rolls ran up a ramp toward a steel gate which lifted lazily; the moment the car passed under it and got a few yards down the track, the gate lowered itself closed. "Wonders never cease!" said Frank. "We were the first station around here to install the automatic ramp gates—only between the Milparinka road and the homestead, of course. The paddock gates still have to be opened and closed by hand." "Well, I reckon the bloke that invented these gates THE THORN BIRDS / 517

must have opened and closed a lot in his time, eh?" Frank grinned; it was the first sign of amusement he had shown. But then he fell silent, so his mother concentrated on her driving, unwilling to push him too quickly. When they passed under the last gate and entered the Home Paddock, he gasped. "I'd forgotten how lovely it is," he said. "It's home," said Fee. "We've looked after it." She drove the Rolls down to the garages and then walked with him back to the big house, only this time he carried his case himself. "Would you rather have a room in the big house, Frank, or a guesthouse all to yourself?" his mother asked. "I'll take a guesthouse, thanks." The exhausted eyes rested on her face. "It will be nice to be able to get away from people," he ex- plained. That was the only reference he ever made to conditions in jail. "I think it will be better for you," she said, leading the way into her drawing room. "The big house is pretty full at the moment, what with the Cardinal here, Dane and Justine home, and Luddie and Anne Mueller arriving the day after tomorrow for Christmas." She pulled the bell cord for tea and went quickly round the room lighting the kerosene lamps. "Luddie and Anne Mueller?" he asked. She stopped in the act of turning up a wick, looked at him. "It's been a long time, Frank. The Muellers are friends of Meggie's." The lamp trimmed to her satisfaction, she sat down in her wing chair. "We'll have dinner in an hour, but first we'll have a cup of tea. I have to wash the dust of the road out of my mouth." Frank seated himself awkwardly on the edge of one of the cream silk ottomans, gazing at the room in awe. "It looks so different from the days of Auntie Mary." Fee smiled. "Well, I think so," she said. Then Meggie came in, and it was harder to assimilate 518 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

the fact of Meggie grown into a mature woman than to see his mother old. As his sister hugged and kissed him he turned his face away, shrank inside his baggy coat and searched beyond her to his mother, who sat looking at him as if to say: It doesn't matter, it will all seem normal soon, just give it time. A minute later, while he was still searching for something to say to this stranger, Meggie's daughter came in; a tall, skinny young girl who sat down stiffly, her big hands pleating folds in her dress, her light eyes fixed first on one face, then on another. Meggie's son entered with the Car- dinal and went to sit on the floor beside his sister, a beautiful, calmly aloof boy. "Frank, this is marvelous," said Cardinal Ralph, shaking him by the hand, then turning to Fee with his left brow raised. "A cup of tea? Very good idea." The Cleary men came into the room together, and that was very hard, for they hadn't forgiven him at all. Frank knew why; it was the way he had hurt their mother. But he didn't know of anything to say which would make them understand any of it, nor could he tell them of the pain, the loneliness, or beg forgiveness. The only one who really mattered was his mother, and she had never thought there was anything to forgive. It was the Cardinal who tried to hold the evening together, who led the conversation round the dinner table and then afterward back in the drawing room, chatting with diplomatic ease and making a special point of including Frank in the gathering. "Bob, I've meant to ask you ever since I arrived—where are the rabbits?" the Cardinal asked. "I've seen millions of burrows, but nary a rabbit." "The rabbits are all dead," Bob answered. "Dead?" "That's right, from something called myxomatosis. Between the rabbits and the drought years, Australia was just about finished as a primary producing nation by nineteen forty-seven. We were des- perate," said Bob, THE THORN BIRDS / 519

warming to his theme and grateful to have something to discuss which would exclude Frank. At which point Frank unwittingly antagonized his next brother by saying, "I knew it was bad, but not as bad as all that." He sat back, hoping he had pleased the Cardinal by contributing his mite to the discussion. "Well, I'm not exaggerating, believe me!" said Bob tartly; how would Frank know? "What happened?" the Cardinal asked quickly. "The year before last the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization started an experimental program in Victoria, infecting rabbits with this virus thing they'd bred. I'm not sure what a virus is, except I think it's a sort of germ. Anyway, they called theirs the myxomatosis virus. At first it didn't seem to spread too well, though what bunnies caught it all died. But about a year after the experimental infection it began to spread like wildfire, they think mosquito-borne, but something to do with saffron thistle as well. And the bunnies have died in millions and millions ever since, it's just wiped them out. You'll sometimes see a few sickies around with huge lumps all over their faces, very ugly-looking things. But it's a marvelous piece of work, Ralph, it really is. Nothing else can catch myxomatosis, even close relatives. So thanks to the blokes at the CSIRO, the rabbit plague is no more." Cardinal Ralph stared at Frank. "Do you realize what it is, Frank? Do you?" Poor Frank shook his head, wishing everyone would let him re- treat into anonymity. "Mass-scale biological warfare. I wonder does the rest of the world know that right here in Australia between 1949 and 1952 a virus war was waged against a population of trillions upon tril- lions, and succeeded in obliterating it? Well! It's feasible, isn't it? Not simply yellow journalism at all, but scientific fact. They may as well bury their atom bombs and hydrogen bombs. I know it had to be done, it was absolutely necessary, 520 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

and it's probably the world's most unsung major scientific achievement. But it's terrifying, too." Dane had been following the conversation closely. "Biological warfare? I've never heard of it. What is it exactly, Ralph?" "The words are new, Dane, but I'm a papal diplomat and the pity of it is that I must keep abreast of words like 'biological war- fare.' In a nutshell, the term means myxomatosis. Breeding a germ capable of specifically killing and maiming only one kind of living being." Quite unself-consciously Dane made the Sign of the Cross, and leaned back against Ralph de Bricassart's knees. "We had better pray, hadn't we?" The Cardinal looked down on his fair head, smiling. That eventually Frank managed to fit into Drogheda life at all was thanks to Fee, who in the face of stiff male Cleary opposition con- tinued to act as if her oldest son had been gone but a short while, and had never brought disgrace on his family or bitterly hurt his mother. Quietly and inconspicuously she slipped him into the niche he seemed to want to occupy, removed from her other sons; nor did she encourage him to regain some of the vitality of other days. For it had all gone; she had known it the moment he looked at her on the Gilly station platform. Swallowed up by an existence the nature of which he refused to discuss with her. The most she could do for him was to make him as happy as possible, and surely the way to do that was to accept the now Frank as the always Frank. There was no question of his working the paddocks, for his brothers didn't want him, nor did he want a kind of life he had al- ways hated. The sight of growing things pleased him, so Fee put him to potter in the homestead gardens, left him in peace. And gradually the Cleary men grew used to having Frank back in the family bosom, began to understand that the threat Frank used to represent to their own welfare was quite empty, THE THORN BIRDS / 521

Nothing would ever change what their mother felt for him, it didn't matter whether he was in jail or on Drogheda, she would still feel it. The important thing was that to have him on Drogheda made her happy. He didn't intrude upon their lives, he was no more or no less than always. Yet for Fee it wasn't a joy to have Frank home again; how could it be? Seeing him every day was simply a different kind of sorrow from not being able to see him at all. The terrible grief of having to witness a ruined life, a ruined man. Who was her most beloved son, and must have endured agonies beyond her imagination. One day after Frank had been home about six months, Meggie came into the drawing room to find her mother sitting looking through the big windows to where Frank was clipping the great bank of roses alongside the drive. She turned away, and something in her calmly arranged face sent Meggie's hands up to her heart. "Oh, Mum!" she said helplessly. Fee looked at her, shook her head and smiled. "It doesn't matter, Meggie," she said. "If only there was something I could do!" "There is. Just carry on the way you have been. I'm very grateful. You've become an ally." 522 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

SIX 1954–1965 DANE 523

17 "Well," said Justine to her mother, "I've decided what I'm going to do." "I thought it was already decided. Arts at Sydney University, isn't that right?" "Oh, that was just a red herring to lull you into a false sense of security while I made my plans. But now it's all set, so I can tell you." Meggie's head came up from her task, cutting fir-tree shapes in cookie dough; Mrs. Smith was ill and they were helping out in the cookhouse. She regarded her daughter wearily, impatiently, help- lessly. What could one do with someone like Justine? If she an- nounced she was going off to train as a whore in a Sydney bordello, Meggie very much doubted whether she could be turned aside. Dear, horrible Justine, queen among juggernauts. "Go on, I'm all agog," she said, and went back to producing cookies. "I'm going to be an actress." "A what?" "An actress." "Good Lord!" The fir trees were abandoned again. "Look, Justine, I hate to be a spoilsport and truly I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but do you think 525

you're—well, quite physically equipped to be an actress?" "Oh, Mum!" said Justine, disgusted. "Not a film star; an actress! I don't want to wiggle my hips and stick out my breasts and pout my wet lips! I want to act." She was pushing chunks of defatted beef into the corning barrel. "I have enough money to support myself during whatever sort of training I choose, isn't that right?" "Yes, thanks to Cardinal de Bricassart." "Then it's all settled. I'm going to study acting with Albert Jones at the Culloden Theater, and I've written to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, asking that I be put on their waiting list." "Are you quite sure, Jussy?" "Quite sure. I've known for a long time." The last piece of bloody beef was tucked down under the surface of the corning solution; Justine put the lid on the barrel with a thump. "There! I hope I never see another bit of corned beef as long as I live." Meggie handed her a completed tray of cookies. "Put these in the oven, would you? Four hundred degrees. I must say this comes as something of a surprise. I thought little girls who wanted to be actresses role-played constantly, but the only person I've ever seen you play has been yourself." "Oh, Mum! There you go again, confusing film stars with act- resses. Honestly, you're hopeless." "Well, aren't film stars actresses?" "Of a very inferior sort. Unless they've been on the stage first, that is. I mean, even Laurence Olivier does an occasional film." There was an autographed picture of Laurence Olivier on Justine's dressing table; Meggie had simply deemed it juvenile crush stuff, though at the time she remembered thinking at least Justine had taste. The friends she sometimes brought home with her to stay 526 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

a few days usually treasured pictures of Tab Hunter and Rory Calhoun. "I still don't understand," said Meggie, shaking her head. "An actress!" Justine shrugged. "Well, where else can I scream and yell and howl but on a stage? I'm not allowed to do any of those here, or at school, or anywhere! I like screaming and yelling and howling, dammit!" "But you're so good at art, Jussy! Why not be an artist?" Meggie persevered. Justine turned from the huge gas stove, flicked her finger against a cylinder gauge. "I must tell the kitchen rouseabout to change bottles; we're low. It'll do for today, though." The light eyes sur- veyed Meggie with pity. "You're so impractical, Mum, really. I thought it was supposed to be the children who didn't stop to consider a career's practical aspects. Let me tell you, I don't want to starve to death in a garret and be famous after I'm dead. I want to enjoy a bit of fame while I'm still alive, and be very comfortable financially. So I'll paint as a hobby and act for a living. How's that?" "You've got an income from Drogheda, Jussy," Meggie said des- perately, breaking her vow to remain silent no matter what. "It would never come to starving in a garret. If you'd rather paint, it's all right. You can." Justine looked alert, interested. "How much have I got, Mum?" "Enough that if you preferred, you need never work at anything." "What a bore! I'd end up talking on the telephone and playing bridge; at least that's what the mothers of most of my school friends do. Because I'd be living in Sydney, not on Drogheda. I like Sydney much better than Drogheda." A gleam of hope entered her eye. "Do I have enough to pay to have my freckles removed with this new electrical treatment?" "I should think so. But why?" THE THORN BIRDS / 527

When asked why the vest, He replied, "Id est Bonum sanguinem praesidium." Meggie's lips twitched. "I'm going to hate myself for asking, but what did the Roman say?" " 'It's a bloody good protection.' " "Is that all? I thought it was going to be a lot worse. You surprise me. But getting back to what we were saying, dear girl, in spite of your neat effort to change the subject, what's wrong with marriage?" Justine imitated her grandmother's rare snort of ironic laughter. "Mum! Really! You're a fine one to ask that, I must say." Meggie felt the blood well up under her skin, and looked down at the tray of bright-green trees. "Don't be impertinent, even if you are a ripe old seventeen." "Isn't it odd?" Justine asked the mixing bowl. "The minute one ventures onto strictly parental territory, one becomes impertinent. I just said: You're a fine one to ask. Perfectly true, dammit! I'm not necessarily implying you're a failure, or a sinner, or worse. Actually I think you've shown remarkable good sense, dispensing with your husband. What have you needed one for? There's been tons of male influence for your children with the Unks around, you've got enough money to live on. I agree with you! Marriage is for the birds." "You're just like your father!" "Another evasion. Whenever I displease you, I become just like my father. Well, I'll have to take your word for that, since I've never laid eyes on the gentleman." "When are you leaving?" Meggie asked desperately. Justine grinned. "Can't wait to get rid of me, eh? It's all right, Mum, I don't blame you in the least. But I can't help it, I just love shocking people, especially you. How about taking me into the 'drome tomorrow?" "Make it the day after. Tomorrow I'll take you to THE THORN BIRDS / 529

the bank. You'd better know how much you've got. And, Justine..." Justine was adding flour and folding expertly, but she looked up at the change in her mother's voice. "Yes?" "If ever you're in trouble, come home, please. We've always got room for you on Drogheda, I want you to remember that. Nothing you could ever do would be so bad you couldn't come home." Justine's gaze softened. "Thanks, Mum. You're not a bad old stick underneath, are you?" "Old?" gasped Meggie. "I am not old! I'm only forty-three!" "Good Lord, as much as that?" Meggie hurled a cookie and hit Justine on the nose. "Oh, you wretch!" she laughed. "What a monster you are! Now I feel like a hundred." Her daughter grinned. At which moment Fee walked in to see how things in the cook- house were going; Meggie hailed her arrival with relief. "Mum, do you know what Justine just told me?" Fee's eyes were no longer up to anything beyond the uttermost effort of keeping the books, but the mind at back of those smudged pupils was as acute as ever. "How could I possibly know what Justine just told you?" she inquired mildly, regarding the green cookies with a slight shudder. "Because sometimes it strikes me that you and Jussy have little secrets from me, and now, the moment my daughter finishes telling me her news, in you walk when you never do." "Mmmmmm, at least they taste better than they look," commented Fee, nibbling. "I assure you, Meggie, I don't encourage your daughter to conspire with me behind your back. What have you done to upset the applecart now, Justine?" she asked, turning to 530 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

where Justine was pouring her sponge mixture into greased and floured tins. "I told Mum I was going to be an actress, Nanna, that's all." "That's all, eh? Is it true, or only one of your dubious jokes?" "Oh, it's true. I'm starting at the Culloden." "Well, well, well!" said Fee, leaning against the table and survey- ing her own daughter ironically. "Isn't it amazing how chidren have minds of their own, Meggie?" Meggie didn't answer. "Do you disapprove, Nanna?" Justine growled, ready to do battle. "I? Disapprove? It's none of my business what you do with your life, Justine. Besides, I think you'll make a good actress." "You do?" gasped Meggie. "Of course she will," said Fee. "Justine's not the sort to choose unwisely, are you, my girl?" "No." Justine grinned, pushing a damp curl out of her eye. Meggie watched her regarding her grandmother with an affection she never seemed to extend to her mother. "You're a good girl, Justine," Fee pronounced, and finished the cookie she had started so unenthusiastically. "Not bad at all, but I wish you'd iced them in white." "You can't ice trees in white," Meggie contradicted. "Of course you can when they're firs; it might be snow," her mother said. "Too late now, they're vomit green," laughed Justine. "Justine!" "Ooops! Sorry, Mum, didn't mean to offend you. I always forget you've got a weak stomach." "I haven't got a weak stomach," said Meggie, exasperated. "I came to see if there was any chance of a cuppa," THE THORN BIRDS / 531

Fee broke in, pulling out a chair and sitting down. "Put on the kettle, Justine, like a good girl." Meggie sat down, too. "Do you really think this will work out for Justine, Mum?" she asked anxiously. "Why shouldn't it?" Fee answered, watching her granddaughter attending to the tea ritual. "It might be a passing phase." "Is it a passing phase, Justine?" Fee asked. "No," Justine said tersely, putting cups and saucers on the old green kitchen table. "Use a plate for the biscuits, Justine, don't put them out in their barrel," said Meggie automatically, "and for pity's sake don't dump the whole milk can on the table, put some in a proper afternoon tea jug." "Yes, Mum, sorry, Mum," Justine responded, equally mechanic- ally. "Can't see the point of frills in the kitchen. All I've got to do is put whatever isn't eaten back where it came from, and wash up a couple of extra dishes." "Just do as you're told; it's so much nicer." "Getting back to the subject," Fee pursued, "I don't think there's anything to discuss. It's my opinion that Justine ought to be allowed to try, and will probably do very well." "I wish I could be so sure," said Meggie glumly. "Have you been on about fame and glory, Justine?" her grand- mother demanded. "They enter the picture," said Justine, putting the old brown kit- chen teapot on the table defiantly and sitting down in a hurry. "Now don't complain, Mum; I'm not making tea in a silver pot for the kitchen and that's final." "The teapot is perfectly appropriate." Meggie smiled. "Oh, that's good! There's nothing like a nice cup of tea," sighed Fee, sipping. "Justine, why do you persist in putting things to your mother so badly? You know it isn't a question of fame and fortune. It's a question of self, isn't it?" 532 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

would take about twelve months, and then she would have to stay out of the sun for the rest of her life, or they would come back. The second thing she did was to find herself an apartment, no mean feat in Sydney at that time, when people built, private homes and regarded living en masse in buildings as anathema. But eventually she found a two-room flat in Neutral Bay, in one of the huge old waterside Victorian mansions which had fallen on hard times and been made over into dingy semi-apartments. The rent was five pounds ten shillings a week, outrageous considering that the bath- room and kitchen were communal, shared by all the tenants. However, Justine was quite satisfied. Though she had been well trained domestically, she had few homemaker instincts. Living in Bothwell Gardens was more fascinating than her acting apprenticeship at the Culloden, where life seemed to consist in skulking behind scenery and watching other people rehearse, getting an occasional walk-on, memorizing masses of Shakespeare, Shaw and Sheridan. Including Justine's, Bothwell Gardens had six flats, plus Mrs. Devine the landlady. Mrs. Devine was a sixty-five-year-old Londoner with a doleful sniff, protruding eyes and a great contempt for Aus- tralia and Australians, though she wasn't above robbing them. Her chief concern in life seemed to be how much gas and electricty cost, and her chief weakness was Justine's next-door neighbor, a young Englishman who exploited his nationality cheerfully. "I don't mind giving the old duck an occasional tickle while we reminisce," he told Justine. "Keeps her off my back, you know. You girls aren't allowed to run electric radiators even in winter, but I was given one and I'm allowed to run it all summer as well if I feel like it." "Pig," said Justine dispassionately. His name was Peter Wilkins, and he was a traveling 534 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

salesman. "Come in and I'll make you a nice cuppa sometime," he called after her, rather taken with those pale, intriguing eyes. Justine did, careful not to choose a time when Mrs. Devine was lurking jealously about, and got quite used to fighting Peter off. The years of riding and working on Drogheda had endowed her with considerable strength, and she was untroubled by shibboleths like hitting below the belt. "God damn you, Justine!" gasped Peter, wiping the tears of pain from his eyes. "Give in, girl! You've got to lose it sometime, you know! This isn't Victorian England, you aren't expected to save it for marriage." "I have no intention of saving it for marriage," she answered, adjusting her dress. "I'm just not sure who's going to get the honor, that's all." "You're nothing to write home about!" he snapped nastily; she had really hurt. "No, that I'm not. Sticks and stones, Pete. You can't hurt me with words. And there are plenty of men who will shag anything if it's a virgin." "Plenty of women, too! Watch the front flat." "Oh, I do, I do," said Justine. The two girls in the front flat were lesbians, and had hailed Justine's advent gleefully until they realized she not only wasn't interested, she wasn't even intrigued. At first she wasn't quite sure what they were hinting at, but after they spelled it out baldly she shrugged her shoulders, unimpressed. Thus after a period of adjust- ment she became their sounding board, their neutral confidante, their port in all storms; she bailed Billie out of jail, took Bobbie to the Mater hospital to have her stomach pumped out after a partic- ularly bad quarrel with Billie, refused to take sides with either of them when Pat, Al, Georgie and Ronnie hove in turns on the hori- zon. It did seem a very insecure kind of emotional life, she thought. Men were bad enough, but at least they had the spice of intrinsic difference. THE THORN BIRDS / 535

So between the Culloden and Bothwell Gardens and girls she had known from Kincoppal days, Justine had quite a lot of friends, and was a good friend herself. She never told them all her troubles as they did her; she had Dane for that, though what few troubles she admitted to having didn't appear to prey upon her. The thing which fascinated her friends the most about her was her extraordin- ary self-discipline; as if she had trained herself from infancy not to let circumstances affect her well-being. Of chief interest to everyone called a friend was how, when and with whom Justine would finally decide to become a fulfilled wo- man, but she took her time. Arthur Lestrange was Albert Jones's most durable juvenile lead, though he had wistfully waved goodbye to his fortieth birthday the year before Justine arrived at the Culloden. He had a good body, was a steady, reliable actor and his clean-cut, manly face with its surround of yellow curls was always sure to evoke audience ap- plause. For the first year he didn't notice Justine, who was very quiet and did exactly as she was told. But at the end of the year her freckle treatments were finished, and she began to stand out against the scenery instead of blending into it. Minus the freckles and plus makeup to darken her brows and lashes, she was a good-looking girl in an elfin, understated way. She had none of Luke O'Neill's arresting beauty, or her mother's exquisiteness. Her figure was passable though not spectacular, a trifle on the thin side. Only the vivid red hair ever stood out. But on a stage she was quite different; she could make people think she was as beautiful as Helen of Troy or as ugly as a witch. Arthur first noticed her during a teaching period, when she was required to recite a passage from Conrad's Lord Jim using various accents. She was extraordinary, really; he could feel the excitement in Albert Jones, and finally understood why Al devoted so much time 536 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

to her. A born mimic, but far more than that; she gave character to every word she said. And there was the voice, a wonderful nat- ural endowment for any actress, deep, husky, penetrating. So when he saw her with a cup of tea in her hand, sitting with a book open on her knees, he came to sit beside her. "What are you reading?" She looked up, smiled. "Proust." "Don't you find him a little dull?" "Proust dull? Not unless one doesn't care for gossip, surely. That's what he is, you know. A terrible old gossip." He had an uncomfortable conviction that she was intellectually patronizing him, but he forgave her. No more than extreme youth. "I heard you doing the Conrad. Splendid." "Thank you." "Perhaps we could have coffee together sometime and discuss your plans" "If you like," she said, returning to Proust. He was glad he had stipulated coffee, rather than dinner; his wife kept him on short commons, and dinner demanded a degree of gratitude he couldn't be sure Justine was ready to manifest. How- ever, he followed his casual invitation up, and bore her off to a dark little place in lower Elizabeth Street, where he was reasonably sure his wife wouldn't think of looking for him. In self-defense Justine had learned to smoke, tired of always ap- pearing goody-goody in refusing offered cigarettes. After they were seated she took her own cigarettes out of her bag, a new pack, and peeled the top cellophane from the flip-top box carefully, making sure the larger piece of cellophane still sheathed the bulk of the packet. Arthur watched her deliberateness, amused and interested. THE THORN BIRDS / 537

put a delicate deepness into the word. "How can you play Juliet without knowing what love is?" "A good point. I agree with you." "Have you ever been in love?" "Do you know anything about love?" This time he put the vocal force on "anything," rather than "love." "Nothing at all." "Ah! Then Freud would have been right, eh?" She picked up her cigarettes and looked at their sheathed box, smiling. "In some things, perhaps." Quickly he grasped the bottom of the cellophane, pulled it off and held it in his hand, dramatically crushed it and dropped it in the ashtray, where it squeaked and writhed, expanded. "I'd like to teach you what being a woman is, if I may." For a moment she said nothing, intent on the antics of the cello- phane in the ashtray, then she struck a match and carefully set fire to it. "Why not?" she asked the brief flare. "Yes, why not?" "Shall it be a divine thing of moonlight and roses, passionate wooing, or shall it be short and sharp, like an arrow?" he declaimed, hand on heart. She laughed. "Really, Arthur! I hope it's long and sharp, myself. But no moonlight and roses, please. My stomach's not built for passionate wooing." He stared at her a little sadly, shook his head. "Oh, Justine! Everyone's stomach is built for passionate wooing—even yours, you cold-blooded young vestal. One day, you wait and see. You'll long for it." "Pooh!" She got up. "Come on, Arthur, let's get the deed over and done with before I change my mind." "Now? Tonight?" "Why on earth not? I've got plenty of money for a hotel room, if you're short." The Hotel Metropole wasn't far away; they walked through the drowsing streets with her arm tucked cozily in his, laughing. It was too late for diners and too early THE THORN BIRDS / 539

for the theaters to be out, so there were few people around, just knots of American sailors off a visiting task force, and groups of young girls window-shopping with an eye to sailors. No one took any notice of them, which suited Arthur fine. He popped into a chemist shop while Justine waited outside, emerged beaming hap- pily. "Now we're all set, my love." "What did you buy? French letters?" He grimaced. "I should hope not. A French letter is like coming wrapped in a page of the Reader's Digest—condensed tackiness. No, I got you some jelly. How do you know about French letters, anyway?" "After seven years in a Catholic boarding school? What do you think we did? Prayed?" She grinned. "I admit we didn't do much, but we talked about everything." Mr. and Mrs. Smith surveyed their kingdom, which wasn't bad for a Sydney hotel room of that era. The days of the Hilton were still to come. It was very large, and had superb views of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. There was no bathroom, of course, but there was a basin and ewer on a marble-topped stand, a fitting accompaniment to the enormous Victorian relics of furniture. "Well, what do I do now?" she asked, pulling the curtains back. "It's a beautiful view, isn't it?" "Yes. As to what you do now, you take your pants off, of course." "Anything else?" she asked mischievously. He sighed. "Take it all off, Justine! If you don't feel skin with skin it isn't nearly so good." Neatly and briskly she got out of her clothes, not a scrap coyly, clambered up on the bed and spread her legs apart. "Is this right, Arthur?" "Good Lord!" he said, folding his trousers carefully; his wife al- ways looked to see if they were crushed. "What? What's the matter?" 540 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Suddenly her head went back, her mouth opened in a long, ag- onized wail, and became peal after peal of uproarious laughter. And the more limply furious he got, the harder she laughed, pointing her finger helplessly toward the foot of the bed, tears streaming down her face. Her whole body was convulsed, but not quite in the manner poor Arthur had envisioned. In many ways Justine was a lot closer to Dane than their mother was, and what they felt for Mum belonged to Mum. It didn't im- pinge upon or clash with what they felt for each other. That had been forged very early, and had grown rather than diminished. By the time Mum was freed from her Drogheda bondage they were old enough to be at Mrs. Smith's kitchen table, doing their corres- pondence lessons; the habit of finding solace in each other had been established for all time. Though they were very dissimilar in character, they also shared many tastes and appetites, and those they didn't share they tolerated in each other with instinctive respect, as a necessary spice of differ- ence. They knew each other very well indeed. Her natural tendency was to deplore human failings in others and ignore them in herself; his natural tendency was to understand and forgive human failings in others, and be merciless upon them in himself. She felt herself invincibly strong; he knew himself perilously weak. And somehow it all came together as a nearly perfect friendship, in the name of which nothing was impossible. However, since Justine was by far the more talkative, Dane always got to hear a lot more about her and what she was feeling than the other way around. In some respects she was a little bit of a moral imbecile, in that nothing was sacred, and he understood that his function was to provide her with the scruples she lacked within herself. Thus he accepted his role of passive listener with a tenderness and com- passion which would have irked Justine enormously had she sus- pected them. 542 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Not that she ever did; she had been bending his ear about absolutely anything and everything since he was old enough to pay attention. "Guess what I did last night?" she asked, carefully adjusting her big straw hat so her face and neck were well shaded. "Acted in your first starring role," Dane said. "Prawn! As if I wouldn't tell you so you could be there to see me. Guess again." "Finally copped a punch Bobbie meant for Billie." "Cold as a stepmother's breast." He shrugged his shoulders, bored. "Haven't a clue." They were sitting in the Domain on the grass, just below the Gothic bulk of Saint Mary's Cathedral. Dane had phoned to let Justine know he was coming in for a special ceremony in the cathedral, and could she meet him for a while first in the Dom? Of course she could; she was dying to tell him the latest episode. Almost finished his last year at Riverview, Dane was captain of the school, captain of the cricket team, the Rugby, handball and tennis teams. And dux of his class into the bargain. At seventeen he was two inches over six feet, his voice had settled into its final baritone, and he had miraculously escaped such afflictions as pimples, clumsiness and a bobbing Adam's apple. Because he was so fair he wasn't really shaving yet, but in every other way he looked more like a young man than a schoolboy. Only the Riverview uni- form categorized him. It was a warm, sunny day. Dane removed his straw boater school hat and stretched out on the grass, Justine sitting hunched beside him, her arms about her knees to make sure all exposed skin was shaded. He opened one lazy blue eye in her direction. "What did you do last night, Jus?" "I lost my virginity. At least I think I did." Both his eyes opened. "You're a prawn." "Pooh! High time, I say. How can I hope to be a THE THORN BIRDS / 543

good actress if I don't have a clue what goes on between men and women?" "You ought to save yourself for the man you marry." Her face twisted in exasperation. "Honestly, Dane, sometimes you're so archaic I'm embarrassed! Suppose I don't meet the man I marry until I'm forty? What do you expect me to do? Sit on it all those years? Is that what you're going to do, save it for mar- riage?" "I don't think I'm going to get married." "Well, nor am I. In which case, why tie a blue ribbon around it and stick it in my nonexistent hope chest? I don't want to die wondering." He grinned. "You can't, now." Rolling over onto his stomach, he propped his chin on his hand and looked at her steadily, his face soft, concerned. "Was it all right? I mean, was it awful? Did you hate it?" Her lips twitched, remembering. "I didn't hate it, at any rate. It wasn't awful, either. On the other hand, I'm afraid I don't see what everyone raves about. Pleasant is as far as I'm prepared to go. And it isn't as if I chose just anyone; I selected someone very attractive and old enough to know what he was doing." He sighed. "You are a prawn, Justine. I'd have been a lot happier to hear you say, 'He's not much to look at, but we met and I couldn't help myself.' I can accept that you don't want to wait until you're married, but it's still something you've got to want because of the person. Never because of the act, Jus. I'm not surprised you weren't ecstatic." All the gleeful triumph faded from her face. "Oh, damn you, now you've made me feel awful! If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were trying to put me down—or my motives, at any rate." "But you do know me better, don't you? I'd never put you down, but sometimes your motives are plain thoughtlessly silly." He adop- ted a tolling, monotonous voice. "I am the voice of your conscience, Justine O'Neill." 544 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

From the organ gallery came the shuffling of feet, a preparatory wheeze, a breathy expulsion of air from pipes. The Saint Mary's Cathedral Boys' School choir was coming in early to sandwich a little practice between now and the coming ritual. It was only a Friday midday Benediction, but one of Dane's friends and teachers from Riverview was celebrating it, and he had wanted to come. The organ gave off a few chords, quietened into a rippling accom- paniment, and into the dim stone-lace arches one unearthly boy's voice soared, thin and high and sweet, so filled with innocent purity the few people in the great empty church closed their eyes, mourned for that which could never come to them again. Panis angelicus Fit panis hominum, Dat panis coelicus Figuris terminum, O res mirabilis, Manducat Dominus, Pauper, pauper, Servus et humilis... Bread of angels, heavenly bread, O thing of wonder. Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice! Let Thine ear be attuned to the sounds of my supplication. Turn not away, O Lord, turn not away. For Thou art my Sovereign, my Master, my God, and I am Thy humble servant. In Thine eyes only one thing counts, goodness. Thou carest not if Thy servants be beautiful or ugly. To Thee only the heart matters; in Thee all is healed, in Thee I know peace. Lord, it is lonely. I pray it be over soon, the pain of life. They do not understand that I, so gifted, find so much pain in living. But Thou dost, and Thy comfort is all which sustains me. No matter what Thou requirest of me, O Lord, shall be give, for I love THE THORN BIRDS / 547

Thee. And if I might presume to ask anything of Thee, it is that in Thee all else shall be forever forgotten... "You're very quiet, Mum," said Dane. "Thinking of what? Of Drogheda?" "No," said Meggie drowsily. "I'm thinking that I'm getting old. I found half a dozen grey hairs this morning, and my bones ache." "You'll never be old, Mum," he said comfortably. "I wish that were true, love, but unfortunately it isn't. I'm begin- ning to need the borehead, which is a sure sign of old age." They were lying in the warm winter sun on towels spread over the Drogheda grass, by the borehead. At the far end of the great pool boiling water thundered and splashed, the reek of sulphur drifted and floated into nothing. It was one of the great winter pleasures, to swim in the borehead. All the aches and pains of en- croaching age were soothed away, Meggie thought, and turned to lie on her back, her head in the shade of the log on which she and Father Ralph had sat so long ago. A very long time ago; she was unable to conjure up even a faint echo of what she must have felt when Ralph had kissed her. Then she heard Dane get up, and opened her eyes. He had always been her baby, her lovely little boy; though she had watched him change and grow with proprietary pride, she had done so with an image of the laughing baby superimposed on his maturing face. It had not yet occurred to her that actually he was no longer in any way a child. However, the moment of realization came to Meggie at that in- stant, watching him stand outlined against the crisp sky in his brief cotton swimsuit. My God, it's all over! The babyhood, the boyhood. He's a man. Pride, resentment, a female melting at the quick, a terrific conscious- ness of some impending tragedy, anger, adoration, sadness; all these and more Meggie 548 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

felt, looking up at her son. It is a terrible thing to create a man, and more terrible to create a man like this. So amazingly male, so amazingly beautiful. Ralph de Bricassart, plus a little of herself. How could she not be moved at seeing in its extreme youth the body of the man who had joined in love with her? She closed her eyes, embarrassed, hating having to think of her son as a man. Did he look at her and see a woman these days, or was she still that wonderful cipher, Mum? God damn him, God damn him! How dared he grow up? "Do you know anything about women, Dane?" she asked sud- denly, opening her eyes again. He smiled. "The birds and the bees, you mean?" "That you know, with Justine for a sister. When she discovered what lay between the covers of physiology textbooks she blurted it all out to everyone. No, I mean have you ever put any of Justine's clinical treatises into practice?" His head moved in a quick negative shake, he slid down onto the grass beside her and looked into her face. "Funny you should ask that, Mum. I've been wanting to talk to you about it for a long time, but I didn't know how to start." "You're only eighteen, love. Isn't it a bit soon to be thinking of putting theory into practice?" Only eighteen. Only. He was a man, wasn't he? "That's it, what I wanted to talk to you about. Not putting it into practice at all." How cold the wind was, blowing down from the Great Divide. Peculiar, she hadn't noticed until now. Where was her robe? "Not putting it into practice at all," she said dully, and it was not a question. "That's right. I don't want to, ever. Not that I haven't thought about it, or wanted a wife and children. I have. But I can't. Because there isn't enough room to love them and God as well, not the way I want to love God. I've known that for a long time. I don't seem to THE THORN BIRDS / 549

remember a time when I didn't, and the older I become the greater my love for God grows. It's a great mystery, loving God." Meggie lay looking into those calm, distant blue eyes. Ralph's eyes, as they used to be. But ablaze with something quite alien to Ralph's. Had he had it, at eighteen? Had he? Was it perhaps something one could only experience at eighteen? By the time she entered Ralph's life, he was ten years beyond that. Yet her son was a mystic, she had always known it. And she didn't think that at any stage of his life Ralph had been mystically inclined. She swal- lowed, wrapped the robe closer about her lonely bones. "So I asked myself," Dane went on, "what I could do to show Him how much I loved Him. I fought the answer for a long time, I didn't want to see it. Because I wanted a life as a man, too, very much. Yet I knew what the offering had to be, I knew... There's only one thing I can offer Him, to show Him nothing else will ever exist in my heart before Him. I must offer up His only rival; that's the sacrifice He demands of me. I am His servant, and He will have no rivals. I have had to choose. All things He'll let me have and enjoy, save that." He sighed, plucked at a blade of Drogheda grass. "I must show Him that I understand why He gave me so much at my birth. I must show Him that I realize how unimportant my life as a man is." "You can't do it, I won't let you!" Meggie cried, her hand reaching for his arm, clutching it. How smooth it felt, the hint of great power under the skin, just like Ralph's. Just like Ralph's! Not to have some glossy girl put her hand there, as a right? "I'm going to be a priest," said Dane. "I'm going to enter His service completely, offer everything I have and am to Him, as His priest. Poverty, chastity and obedience. He demands no less than all from His chosen servants. It won't be easy, but I'm going to do 550 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

The look in her eyes! As if he had killed her, ground her into the dust beneath his foot. That he should have to suffer this he hadn't known, dreaming only of her pride in him, her pleasure at giving her son to God. They said she'd be thrilled, uplifted, completely in accord. Instead she was staring at him as if the prospect of his priesthood was her death sentence. "It's all I've ever wanted to be," he said in despair, meeting those dying eyes. "Oh, Mum, can't you understand? I've never, never wanted to be anything but a priest! I can't be anything but a priest!" Her hand fell from his arm; he glanced down and saw the white marks of her fingers, the little arcs in his skin where her nails had bitten deeply. Her head went up, she laughed on and on and on, huge hysterical peals of bitter, derisive laughter. "Oh, it's too good to be true!" she gasped when she could speak again, wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes with a trembling hand. "The incredible irony! Ashes of roses, he said that night riding to the borehead. And I didn't understand what he meant. Ashes thou wert, unto ashes return. To the Church thou belongest, to the Church thou shalt be given. Oh, it's beautiful, beautiful! God rot God, I say! God the sod! The utmost Enemy of women, that's what God is! Everything we seek to do, He seeks to undo!" "Oh, don't! Oh, don't Mum, don't!" He wept for her, for her pain, not understanding her pain or the words she was saying. His tears fell, twisted in his heart; already the sacrifice had begun, and in a way he hadn't dreamed. But though he wept for her, not even for her could he put it aside, the sacrifice. The offering must be made, and the harder it was to make, the more valuable it must be in His eyes. She had made him weep, and never in all his life until now had she made him weep. Her own rage and grief were put away resol- utely. No, it wasn't fair to visit herself upon him. What he was his genes had made THE THORN BIRDS / 551

him. Or his God. Or Ralph's God. He was the light of her life, her son. He should not be made to suffer because of her, ever. "Dane, don't cry," she whispered, stroking the angry marks on his arm. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. You gave me a shock, that's all. Of course I'm glad for you, truly I am! How could I not be? I was shocked; I just didn't expect it, that's all." She chuckled, a little shakily. "You did rather drop it on me like a rock." His eyes cleared, regarded her doubtfully. Why had he imagined he killed her? Those were Mum's eyes as he had always known them; full of love, very much alive. The strong young arms gathered her close, hugged her. "You're sure you don't mind?" "Mind? A good Catholic mother mind her son becoming a priest? Impossible!" She jumped to her feet. "Brr! How cold it's got! Let's be getting back." They hadn't taken the horses, but a jeeplike Land-Rover; Dane climbed behind the wheel, his mother sat beside him. "Do you know where you're going?" asked Meggie, drawing in a sobbing breath, pushing the tumbled hair out of her eyes. "Saint Patrick's College, I suppose. At least until I find my feet. Perhaps then I'll espouse an order. I'd rather like to be a Jesuit, but I'm not quite sure enough of that to go straight into the Society of Jesus." Meggie stared at the tawny grass bouncing up and down through the insect-spattered windscreen. "I have a much better idea, Dane." "Oh?" He had to concentrate on driving; the track dwindled a bit and there were always new logs across it. "I shall send you to Rome, to Cardinal de Bricassart. You remem- ber him, don't you?" "Do I remember him? What a question, Mum! I don't think I could forget him in a million years. He's 552 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

my example of the perfect priest. If I could be the priest he is, I'd be very happy." "Perfection is as perfection does!" said Meggie tartly. "But I shall give you into his charge, because I know he'll look after you for my sake. You can enter a seminary in Rome." "Do you really mean it, Mum? Really?" Anxiety pushed the joy out of his face. "Is there enough money? It would be much cheaper if I stayed in Australia." "Thanks to the selfsame Cardinal de Bricassart, my dear, you'll never lack money." At the cookhouse door she pushed him inside. "Go and tell the girls and Mrs. Smith," she said. "They'll be absolutely thrilled." One after the other she put her feet down, made them plod up the ramp to the big house, to the drawing room where Fee sat, miraculously not working but talking to Anne Mueller instead, over an afternoon tea tray. As Meggie came in they looked up, saw from her face that something serious had happened. For eighteen years the Muellers had been visiting Drogheda, ex- pecting that was how it always would be. But Luddie Mueller had died suddenly the preceding autumn, and Meggie had written im- mediately to Anne to ask her if she would like to live permanently on Drogheda. There was plenty of room, a guest cottage for privacy; she could pay board if she was too proud not to, though heaven knew there was enough money to keep a thousand permanent houseguests. Meggie saw it as a chance to reciprocate for those lonely Queensland years, and Anne saw it as salvation. Himmelhoch without Luddie was horribly lonely. Though she had put on a manager, not sold the place; when she died it would go to Justine. "What is it, Meggie?" Anne asked. Meggie sat down. "I think I've been struck by a retributory bolt of lightning." THE THORN BIRDS / 553

for the last three or four years she had had a sneaking suspicion it was coming. On Meggie it burst like a clap of thunder, but on Justine it descended like an expected shower of icy water. First of all, because Justine had been at school in Sydney with him, and as his confidante had listened to him talk of the things he didn't mention to his mother. Justine knew how vitally important his religion was to Dane; not only God, but the mystical significance of Catholic rituals. Had he been born and brought up a Protestant, she thought, he was the type to have eventually turned to Catholi- cism to satisfy something in his soul. Not for Dane an austere, calvinistic God. His God was limned in stained glass, wreathed in incense, wrapped in lace and gold embroidery, hymned in musical complexity, and worshipped in lovely Latin cadences. Too, it was a kind of ironic perversity that someone so wonder- fully endowed with beauty should deem it a crippling handicap, and deplore its existence. For Dane did. He shrank from any refer- ence to his looks; Justine fancied he would far rather have been born ugly, totally unprepossessing. She understood in part why he felt so, and perhaps because her own career lay in a notoriously narcissistic profession, she rather approved of his attitude toward his appearance. What she couldn't begin to understand was why he positively loathed his looks, instead of simply ignoring them. Nor was he highly sexed, for what reason she wasn't sure: whether he had taught himself to sublimate his passions almost perfectly, or whether in spite of his bodily endowments some ne- cessary cerebral essence was in short supply. Probably the former, since he played some sort of vigorous sport every day of his life to make sure he went to bed exhausted. She knew very well that his inclinations were "normal," that is, heterosexual, and she knew what type of girl appealed to him—tall, dark and voluptuous. But he just wasn't sensually THE THORN BIRDS / 555

aware; he didn't notice the feel of things when he held them, or the odors in the air around him, or understand the special satisfac- tion of shape and color. Before he experienced a sexual pull the provocative object's impact had to be irresistible, and only at such rare moments did he seem to realize there was an earthly plane most men trod, of choice, for as long as they possibly could. He told her backstage at the Culloden, after a performance. It had been settled with Rome that day; he was dying to tell her and yet he knew she wasn't going to like it. His religious ambitions were something he had never discussed with her as much as he wanted to, for she became angry. But when he came backstage that night it was too difficult to contain his joy any longer. "You're a prawn," she said in disgust. "It's what I want." "Idiot." "Calling me names won't change a thing, Jus." "Do you think I don't know that? It affords me a little much- needed emotional release, that's all." "I should think you'd get enough on the stage, playing Electra. You're really good, Jus." "After this news I'll be better," she said grimly. "Are you going to Saint Pat's?" "No. I'm going to Rome, to Cardinal de Bricassart. Mum ar- ranged it." "Dane, no! It's so far away!" "Well, why don't you come, too, at least to England? With your background and ability you ought to be able to get a place some- where without too much trouble." She was sitting at a mirror wiping off Electra's paint, still in Electra's robes; ringed with heavy black arabesques, her strange eyes seemed even stranger. She nodded slowly. "Yes, I could, couldn't I?" she asked thoughtfully. "It's more than time I did... Australia's getting a bit too small... Right, mate! You're on! Eng- land it is!" 556 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

at a savior. "Lord, I've only got a minute left on my meter! How much longer are you going to be, Jus?" "About ten minutes." "I'll wait for you outside, all right?" "Chicken!" she mocked. Martha's dusky eyes followed him. "He is absolutely gorgeous. Why won't he look at me?" Justine grinned sourly, scrubbed her face clean at last. The freckles were coming back. Maybe London would help; no sun. "Oh, don't worry, he looks. He'd like, too. But will he? Not Dane." "Why? What's the matter with him? Never tell me he's a poof! Shit, why is it every gorgeous man I meet is a poof? I never thought Dane was, though; he doesn't strike me that way at all." "Watch your language, you dumb wart! He most certainly isn't a poof. In fact, the day he looks at Sweet William, our screaming juvenile, I'll cut his throat and Sweet William's, too." "Well, if he isn't a pansy and he likes, why doesn't he take? Doesn't he get my message? Does he think I'm too old for him?" "Sweetie, at a hundred you won't be too old for the average man, don't worry about it. No, Dane's sworn off sex for life, the fool. He's going to be a priest." Martha's lush mouth dropped open, she swung back her mane of inky hair. "Go on!" "True, true." "You mean to say all that's going to be wasted?" "Afraid so. He's offering it to God." "Then God's a bigger poofter than Sweet Willie." "You might be right," said Justine. "He certainly isn't too fond of women, anyway. Second-class, that's us, way back in the Upper Circle. Front Stalls and the Mezzanine, strictly male." "Oh." Justine wriggled out of Electra's robe, flung a thin cotton dress over her head, remembered it was chilly THE THORN BIRDS / 559

outside, added a cardigan, and patted Martha kindly on the head. "Don't worry about it, sweetie. God was very good to you; he didn't give you any brains. Believe me, it's far more comfortable that way. You'll never offer the Lords of Creation any competition." "I don't know, I wouldn't mind competing with God for your brother." "Forget it. You're fighting the Establishment, and it just can't be done. You'd seduce Sweet Willie far quicker, take my word for it." A Vatican car met Dane at the airport, whisked him through sunny faded streets full of handsome, smiling people; he glued his nose to the window and drank it all in, unbearably excited at seeing for himself the things he had seen only in pictures—the Roman columns, the rococo palaces, the Renaissance glory of Saint Peter's. And waiting for him, clad this time in scarlet from head to foot, was Ralph Raoul, Cardinal de Bricassart. The hand was out- stretched, its ring glowing; Dane sank on both knees to kiss it. "Stand up, Dane, let me look at you." He stood, smiling at the tall man who was almost exactly his own height; they could look each other in the eye. To Dane the Cardinal had an immense aura of spiritual power which made him think of a pope rather than a saint, yet those intensely sad eyes were not the eyes of a pope. How much he must have suffered to appear so, but how nobly he must have risen above his suffering to become this most perfect of priests. And Cardinal Ralph gazed at the son he did not know was his son, loving him, he thought, because he was dear Meggie's boy. Just so would he have wanted to see a son of his own body; as tall, as strikingly good-looking, as graceful. In all his life he had never seen a man move so well. But far more satisfying than any 560 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

physical beauty was the simple beauty of his soul. He had the strength of the angels, and something of their unearthliness. Had he been so himself, at eighteen? He tried to remember, span the crowded events of threefifths of a lifetime; no, he had never been so. Was it because this one came truly of his own choice? For he himself had not, though he had had the vocation, of that much he still was sure. "Sit down, Dane. Did you do as I asked, start to learn Italian?" "At this stage I speak it fluently but without idiom, and I read it very well. Probably the fact that it's my fourth language makes it easier. I seem to have a talent for languages. A couple of weeks here and I ought to pick up the vernacular." "Yes, you will. I, too, have a talent for languages." "Well, they're handy," said Dane lamely. The awesome scarlet figure was a little daunting; it was suddenly hard to remember the man on the chestnut gelding at Drogheda. Cardinal Ralph leaned forward, watching him. "I pass the responsibility for him to you, Ralph," Meggie's letter had said. "I charge you with his well-being, his happiness. What I stole, I give back. It is demanded of me. Only promise me two things, and I'll rest in the knowledge you've acted in his best in- terests. First, promise me you'll make sure before you accept him that this is what he truly, absolutely wants. Secondly, that if this is what he wants, you'll keep your eye on him, make sure it remains what he wants. If he should lose heart for it, I want him back. For he belonged to me first. It is I who gives him to you." "Dane, are you sure?" asked the Cardinal. "Absolutely." "Why?" His eyes were curiously aloof, uncomfortably familiar, but famil- iar in a way which was of the past. THE THORN BIRDS / 561

there is a decision to be made, I will have come to it before then." Cardinal Ralph leaned back in his chair, sighed. Had he ever been that sure? Had he ever been that strong? "Why to me, Dane? Why did you want to come to Rome? Why not have remained in Australia?" "Mum suggested Rome, but it had been in my mind as a dream for a long time. I never thought there was enough money." "Your mother is very wise. Didn't she tell you?" "Tell me what, Your Eminence?" "That you have an income of five thousand pounds a year and many thousands of pounds already in the bank in your own name?" Dane stiffened. "No. She never told me." "Very wise. But it's there, and Rome is yours if you want. Do you want Rome?" "Why do you want me, Dane?" "Because you're my conception of the perfect priest, Your Emin- ence." Cardinal Ralph's face twisted. "No, Dane, you can't look up to me as that. I'm far from a perfect priest. I have broken all my vows, do you understand? I had to learn what you already seem to know in the most painful way a priest can, through the breaking of my vows. For I refused to admit that I was first a mortal man, and only after that a priest." "Your Eminence, it doesn't matter," said Dane softly. "What you say doesn't make you any less my conception of the perfect priest. I think you don't understand what I mean, that's all. I don't mean an inhuman automaton, above the weaknesses of the flesh. I mean that you've suffered, and grown. Do I sound presumptuous? I don't intend to, truly. If I've offended you, I beg your pardon. It's just that it's so hard to express my thoughts! What I mean is that be- coming a perfect THE THORN BIRDS / 563

priest must take years, terrible pain, and all the time keeping before you an ideal, and Our Lord." The telephone rang; Cardinal Ralph picked it up in a slightly unsteady hand, spoke in Italian. "Yes, thank you, we'll come at once." He got to his feet. "It's time for afternoon tea, and we're to have it with an old, old friend of mine. Next to the Holy Father he's probably the most important priest in the Church. I told him you were coming, and he expressed a wish to meet you." "Thank you, Your Eminence." They walked through corridors, then through pleasant gardens quite unlike Drogheda's, with tall cypresses and poplars, neat rectangles of grass surrounded by pillared walkways, mossy flag- stones; past Gothic arches, under Renaissance bridges. Dane drank it in, loving it. Such a different world from Australia, so old, per- petual. It took them fifteen minutes at a brisk pace to reach the palace; they entered, and passed up a great marble staircase hung with priceless tapestries. Vittorio Scarbanza, Cardinal di Contini-Verchese was sixty-six now, his body partially crippled by a rheumatic complaint, but his mind as intelligent and alert as it had always been. His present cat, a Russian blue named Natasha, was curled purring in his lap. Since he couldn't rise to greet his visitors he contented himself with a wide smile, and beckoned them. His eyes passed from Ralph's be- loved face to Dane O'Neill and widened, narrowed, fixed on him stilly. Within his chest he felt his heart falter, put the welcoming hand to it in an instinctive gesture of protection, and sat staring stupidly up at the younger edition of Ralph de Bricassart. "Vittorio, are you all right?" Cardinal Ralph asked anxiously, taking the frail wrist between his fingers, feeling for a pulse. "Of course. A little passing pain, no more. Sit down, sit down!" 564 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

and Ralph in private. His Eminence won't mind, will you, Vittorio?" "No. I am fond of Christian names. But returning to what I was saying about having friends in high places, my son. It could be a trifle uncomfortable for you when you enter whichever seminary is decided upon, this long friendship with our Ralph. To have to keep going into involved explanations every time the connection between you is remarked upon would be very tedious. Sometimes Our Lord permits of a little white lie"—he smiled, the gold in his teeth flashing—"and for everyone's comfort I would prefer that we resort to one such tiny fib. For it is difficult to explain satisfactorily the tenuous connections of friendship, but very easy to explain the crimson cord of blood. So we will say to all and sundry that Car- dinal de Bricassart is your uncle, my Dane, and leave it at that," ended Cardinal Vittorio suavely. Dane looked shocked, Cardinal Ralph resigned. "Do not be disappointed in the great, my son," said Cardinal Vittorio gently. "They, too, have feet of clay, and resort to comfort via little white lies. It is a very useful lesson you have just learned, but looking at you, I doubt you will take advantage of it. However, you must understand that we scarlet gentlemen are diplomats to our fingertips. Truly I think only of you, my son. Jealousy and re- sentment are not strangers to seminaries any more than they are to secular institutions. You will suffer a little because they think Ralph is your uncle, your mother's brother, but you would suffer far more if they thought no blood bond linked you together. We are first men, and it is with men you will deal in this world as in others." Dane bowed his head, then leaned forward to stroke the cat, pausing with his hand extended. "May I? I love cats, Your Emin- ence." No quicker pathway to that old but constant heart could he have found. "You may. I confess she grows 566 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

too heavy for me. She is a glutton, are you not, Natasha? Go to Dane; he is the new generation." There was no possibility of Justine transferring herself and her be- longings from the southern to the northern hemisphere as quickly as Dane had; by the time she worked out the season at the Culloden and bade a not unregretful farewell to Bothwell Gardens, her brother had been in Rome two months. "How on earth did I manage to accumulate so much junk?" she asked, surrounded by clothes, papers, boxes. Meggie looked up from where she was crouched, a box of steel wool soap pads in her hand. "What were these doing under your bed?" A look of profound relief swept across her daughter's flushed face. "Oh, thank God! Is that where they were? I thought Mrs. D's precious poodle ate them; he's been off color for a week and I wasn't game to mention my missing soap pads. But I knew the wretched animal ate them; he'll eat anything that doesn't eat him first. Not," continued Justine thoughtfully, "that I wouldn't be glad to see the last of him." Meggie sat back on her heels, laughing. "Oh, Jus! Do you know how funny you are?" She threw the box onto the bed among a mountain of things already there. "You're no credit to Drogheda, are you? After all the care we took pushing neatness and tidiness into your head, too." "I could have told you it was a lost cause. Do you want to take the soap pads back to Drogheda? I know I'm sailing and my lug- gage is unlimited, but I daresay there are tons of soap pads in London." Meggie transferred the box into a large carton marked MRS. D. "I think we'd better donate them to Mrs. Devine; she has to render this flat habitable for the next tenant." An unsteady tower of un- washed dishes stood on the end of the table, sprouting gruesome whiskers of mold. "Do you ever wash your dishes?" THE THORN BIRDS / 567

Justine chuckled unrepentantly. "Dane says I don't wash them at all, I shave them instead." "You'd have to give this lot a haircut first. Why don't you wash them as you use them?" "Because it would mean trekking down to the kitchen again, and since I usually eat after midnight, no one appreciates the patter of my little feet." "Give me one of the empty boxes. I'll take them down and dis- pose of them now," said her mother, resigned; she had known be- fore volunteering to come what was bound to be in store for her, and had been rather looking forward to it. It wasn't very often anyone had the chance to help Justine do anything; whenever Meggie had tried to help her she had ended feeling an utter fool. But in domestic matters the situation was reversed for once; she could help to her heart's content without feeling a fool. Somehow it got done, and Justine and Meggie set out in the station wagon Meggie had driven down from Gilly, bound for the Hotel Australia, where Meggie had a suite. "I wish you Drogheda people would buy a house at Palm Beach or Avalon," Justine said, depositing her case in the suite's second bedroom. "This is terrible, right above Martin Place. Just imagine being a hop, skip and jump from the surf! Wouldn't that induce you to hustle yourselves on a plane from Gilly more often?" "Why should I come to Sydney? I've been down twice in the last seven years—to see Dane off, and now to see you off. If we had a house it would never be used." "Codswallop." "Why?" "Why? Because there's more to the world than bloody Drogheda, dammit! That place, it drives me batty!" Meggie sighed. "Believe me, Justine, there'll come a time when you'll yearn to come home to Drogheda." 568 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

lovely footie team in first class, so it won't be as dull as I thought. Some of them are gorgeous." "Now aren't you glad I insisted on first class?" "I suppose so." "Justine, you bring out the worst in me, you always have," Meggie snapped, losing her temper at what she took for ingratitude. Just this once couldn't the little wretch at least pretend she was sorry to be going? "Stubborn, pig-headed, self-willed! You exasperate me." For a moment Justine didn't answer, but turned her head away as if she was more interested in the fact that the all-ashore gong was ringing than in what her mother was saying. She bit the tremor from her lips, put a bright smile on them. "I know I exasperate you," she said cheerfully as she faced her mother. "Never mind, we are what we are. As you always say, I take after my dad." They embraced self-consciously before Meggie slipped thankfully into the crowds converging on gangways and was lost to sight. Justine made her way up to the sun deck and stood by the rail with rolls of colored streamers in her hands. Far below on the wharf she saw the figure in the pinkish-grey dress and hat walk to the appoin- ted spot, stand shading her eyes. Funny, at this distance one could see Mum was getting up toward fifty. Some way to go yet, but it was there in her stance. They waved in the same moment, then Justine threw the first of her streamers and Meggie caught its end deftly. A red, a blue, a yellow, a pink, a green, an orange; spiraling round and round, tugging in the breeze. A pipe band had come to bid the football team farewell and stood with pennons flying, plaids billowing, skirling a quaint version of "Now Is the Hour." The ship's rails were thick with people hanging over, holding desperately to their ends of the thin paper streamers; on the wharf hundreds of people craned their necks up- ward, lingering hungrily on the faces going so far 570 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

away, young faces mostly, off to see what the hub of civilization on the other side of the world was really like. They would live there, work there, perhaps come back in two years, perhaps not come back at all. And everyone knew it, wondered. The blue sky was plumped with silver-white clouds and there was a tearing Sydney wind. Sun warmed the upturned heads and the shoulder blades of those leaning down; a great multicolored swath of vibrating ribbons joined ship and shore. Then suddenly a gap appeared between the old boat's side and the wooden struts of the wharf; the air filled with cries and sobs; and one by one in their thousands the streamers broke, fluttered wildly, sagged limply and crisscrossed the surface of the water like a mangled loom, joined the orange peels and the jellyfish to float away. Justine kept doggedly to her place at the rail until the wharf was a few hard lines and little pink pinheads in the distance; the Him- alaya's tugs turned her, towed her helplessly under the booming decks of the Sydney Harbor Bridge, out into the mainstream of that exquisite stretch of sunny water. It wasn't like going to Manly on the ferry at all, though they fol- lowed the same path past Neutral Bay and Rose Bay and Cremorne and Vaucluse; no. For this time it was out through the Heads, beyond the cruel cliffs and the high lace fans of foam, into the ocean. Twelve thousand miles of it, to the other side of the world. And whether they came home again or not, they would belong neither here nor there, for they would have lived on two continents and sampled two different ways of life. Money, Justine discovered, made London a most alluring place. Not for her a penniless existence clinging to the fringes of Earl's Court— "Kangaroo Valley" they called it because so many Australi- ans made it their headquarters. Not for her the typical fate of Aus- tralians in England, youth-hosteling on a shoestring, THE THORN BIRDS / 571

working for a pittance in some office or school or hospital, shivering thin-blooded over a tiny radiator in a cold, damp room. Instead, for Justine a mews flat in Kensington close to Knightsbridge, cent- rally heated; and a place in the company of Clyde Daltinham- Roberts, The Elizabethan Group. When the summer came she caught a train to Rome. In afteryears she would smile, remembering how little she saw of that long journey across France, down Italy; her whole mind was occupied with the things she had to tell Dane, memorizing those she simply mustn't forget. There were so many she was bound to leave some out. Was that Dane? The tall, fair man on the platform, was that Dane? He didn't look any different, and yet he was a stranger. Not of her world anymore. The cry she was going to give to attract his attention died unuttered; she drew back a little in her seat to watch him, for the train had halted only a few feet beyond where he stood, blue eyes scanning the windows without anxiety. It was going to be a pretty one-sided conversation when she told him about life since he had gone away, for she knew now there was no thirst in him to share what he experienced with her. Damn him! He wasn't her baby brother anymore; the life he was living had as little to do with her as it did with Drogheda. Oh, Dane! What's it like to live something twenty-four hours of every day? "Hah! Thought I'd dragged you down here on a wild-goose chase, didn't you?" she said, creeping up behind him unseen. He turned, squeezed her hands and stared down at her, smiling. "Prawn," he said lovingly, taking her bigger suitcase and tucking her free arm in his. "It's good to see you," he added as he handed her into the red Lagonda he drove everywhere; Dane had always been a sports car fanatic, and had owned one since he was old enough to hold a license. 572 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

The room, the red men! Never in all her life had Justine been so conscious of the redundancy of women in the lives of some men as at that moment, walking into a world where women simply had no place except as humble nun servants. She was still in the olive- green linen suit she had put on outside Turin, rather crumpled from the train, and she advanced across the soft crimson carpet cursing Dane's eagerness to be there, wishing she had insisted on donning something less travel-marked. Cardinal de Bricassart was on his feet, smiling; what a handsome old man he was. "My dear Justine," he said, extending his ring with a wicked look which indicated he well remembered the last time, and searching her face for something she didn't understand. "You don't look at all like your mother." Down on one knee, kiss the ring, smile humbly, get up, smile less humbly. "No, I don't, do I? I could have done with her beauty in my chosen profession, but on a stage I manage. Because it has nothing to do with what the face actually is, you know. It's what you and your art can convince people the face is." A dry chuckle came from a chair; once more she trod to salute a ring on an aging wormy hand, but this time she looked up into dark eyes, and strangely in them saw love. Love for her, for someone he had never seen, could scarcely have heard mentioned. But it was there. She didn't like Cardinal de Bricassart any more now than she had at fifteen, but she warmed to this old man. "Sit down, my dear," said Cardinal Vittorio, his hand indicating the chair next to him. "Hello, pusskins," said Justine, tickling the blue-grey cat in his scarlet lap. "She's nice, isn't she?" "Indeed she is." "What's her name?" THE THORN BIRDS / 575

tickled the cat again, aware that Cardinal Vittorio sensed and was amused by her reactions. "Is she spayed?" asked Justine. "Of course." "Of course! Though why you needed to bother I don't know. Just being a permanent inhabitant of this place would be enough to neuter anyone's ovaries." "On the contrary, my dear," said Cardinal Vittorio, enjoying her hugely. "It is we men who have psychologically neutered ourselves." "I beg to differ, Your Eminence." "So our little world antagonizes you?" "Well, let's just say I feel a bit superfluous, Your Eminence. A nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here." "I cannot blame you. I also doubt that you like to visit. But you will get used to us, for you must visit us often, please." Justine grinned. "I hate being on my best behavior," she confided. "It brings out the absolute worst in me—I can feel Dane's horrors from here without even looking at him." "I was wondering how long it was going to last," said Dane, not at all put out. "Scratch Justine's surface and you find a rebel. That's why she's such a nice sister for me to have. I'm not a rebel, but I do admire them." Herr Hartheim shifted his chair so that he could continue to keep her in his line of vision even when she straightened, stopped playing with the cat. At that moment the beautiful animal grew tired of the hand with an alien female scent, and without getting to its feet crawled delicately from red lap to grey, curling itself under Herr Hartheim's strong square stroking hands, purring so loudly that everyone laughed. "Excuse me for living," said Justine, not proof against a good joke even when she was its victim. "Her motor is as good as ever," said Herr Hartheim, the amuse- ment working fascinating changes in his face. THE THORN BIRDS / 577

His English was so good he hardly had an accent, but it had an American inflection; he rolled his r's. The tea came before everyone settled down again, and oddly enough it was Herr Hartheim who poured, handing Justine her cup with a much friendlier look than he had given her at introduc- tion. "In a British community," he said to her, "afternoon tea is the most important refreshment of the day. Things happen over teacups, don't they? I suppose because by its very nature it can be demanded and taken at almost any time between two and five-thirty, and talking is thirsty work." The next half hour seemed to prove his point, though Justine took no part in the congress. Talk veered from the Holy Father's precarious health to the cold war and then the economic recession, all four men speaking and listening with an alertness Justine found absorbing, beginning to grope for the qualities they shared, even Dane, who was so strange, so much an unknown. He contributed actively, and it wasn't lost upon her that the three older men listened to him with a curious humility, almost as if he awed them. His comments were neither uninformed nor naïve, but they were differ- ent, original, holy. Was it for his holiness they paid such serious attention to him? That he possessed it, and they didn't? Was it truly a virtue they admired, yearned for themselves? Was it so rare? Three men so vastly different one from the other, yet far closer bound together than any of them were to Dane. How difficult it was to take Dane as seriously as they did! Not that in many ways he hadn't acted as an older brother rather than a younger; not that she wasn't aware of his wisdom, his intellect or his holiness. But until now he had been a part of her world. She had to get used to the fact that he wasn't anymore. "If you wish to go straight to your devotions, Dane, I'll see your sister back to her hotel," commanded Herr 578 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Rainer Moerling Hartheim without consulting anyone's wishes on the subject. And so she found herself walking tongue-tied down the marble stairs in the company of that squat, powerful man. Outside in the yellow sheen of a Roman sunset he took her elbow and guided her into a black Mercedes limousine, its chauffeur standing to attention. "Come, you don't want to spend your first evening in Rome alone, and Dane is otherwise occupied," he said, following her into the car. "You're tired and bewildered, so it's better you have com- pany." "You don't seem to be leaving me any choice, Herr Hartheim." "I would rather you called me Rainer." "You must be important, having a posh car and your own chauffeur." "I'll be more important still when I'm chancellor of West Ger- many." Justine snorted. "I'm surprised you're not already." "Impudent! I'm too young." "Are you?" She turned sideways to look at him more closely, discovering that his dark skin was unlined, youthful, that the deeply set eyes weren't embedded in the fleshy surrounds of age. "I'm heavy and I'm grey, but I've been grey since I was sixteen and heavy since I've had enough to eat. At the present moment I'm a mere thirty-one." "I'll take your word for it," she said, kicking her shoes off. "That's still old to me—I'm sweet twenty-one." "You're a monster," he said, smiling. "I suppose I must be. My mother says the same thing. Only I'm not sure what either of you means by monster, so you can give me your version, please." "Have you already got your mother's version?" "I'd embarrass the hell out of her if I asked." "Don't you think you embarrass me?" THE THORN BIRDS / 579

saltimbocca, and after that I'll have a cassata and a cappuccino coffee. Fiddle around with that if you can." "I ought to slap you," he said, his good humor quite unruffled. He gave her order to the waiter exactly as she had stipulated it, but in rapid Italian. "You said I don't look a bit like Dane. Aren't I like him in any way at all?" she asked a little pathetically over coffee, too hungry to have wasted time talking while there was food on the table. He lit her cigarette, then his own, and leaned into the shadows to watch her quietly, thinking back to his first meeting with the boy months ago. Cardinal de Bricassart minus forty years of life; he had seen it immediately, and then had learned they were uncle and nephew, that the mother of the boy and the girl was Ralph de Bri- cassart's sister. "There is a likeness, yes," he said. "Sometimes even of the face. Expressions far more than features. Around the eyes and the mouth, in the way you hold your eyes open and your mouths closed. Oddly enough, not likenesses you share with your uncle the Cardinal." "Uncle the Cardinal?" she repeated blankly. "Cardinal de Bricassart. Isn't he your uncle? Now, I'm sure I was told he was." "That old vulture? He's no relation of ours, thank heavens. He used to be our parish priest years ago, a long time before I was born." She was very intelligent; but she was also very tired. Poor little girl—for that was what she was, a little girl. The ten years between them yawned like a hundred. To suspect would bring her world to ruins, and she was so valiant in defense of it. Probably she would refuse to see it, even if she were told outright. How to make it seem unimportant? Not labor the point, definitely not, but not drop it immediately, either. "That accounts for it, then," he said lightly. "Accounts for what?" THE THORN BIRDS / 581

kindled. "I've always wanted her to talk to me the way she does to Dane, and wanted to get along with her the way Dane does. But either there's something lacking in her, or something lacking in me. Me, I'd reckon. She's a much finer person than I am." "I haven't met her, so I can't agree or disagree with your judg- ment. If it's of any conceivable comfort to you, Herzchen, I like you exactly the way you are. No, I wouldn't change a thing about you, even your ridiculous pugnacity." "Isn't that nice of you? And after I insulted you, too. I'm not really like Dane, am I?" "Dane isn't like anyone else in the world." "You mean because he's so not of this world?" "I suppose so." He leaned forward, out of the shadows into the weak light of the little candle in its Chianti bottle. "I am a Catholic, and my religion has been the one thing in my life which has never failed me, though I have failed it many times. I dislike speaking of Dane, because my heart tells me some things are better left undis- cussed. Certainly you aren't like him in your attitude to life, or God. Let's leave it, all right?" She looked at him curiously. "All right, Rainer, if you want. I'll make a pact with you—no matter what we discuss, it won't be the nature of Dane, or religion." Much had happened to Rainer Moerling Hartheim since that meeting with Ralph de Bricassart in July 1943. A week afterward his regiment had been dispatched to the Eastern Front, where he spent the remainder of the war. Torn and rudderless, too young to have been indoctrinated into the Hitler Youth in its leisurely prewar days, he had faced the consequences of Hitler in feet of snow, without ammunition, the front line stretched so thin there was only one soldier for every hundred yards of it. And out of the war he carried two memories: that bitter campaign in bitter cold, and the face of Ralph de Bricassart. Horror and beauty, THE THORN BIRDS / 583

the Devil and God. Half crazed, half frozen, waiting defenseless for Khrushchev's guerrillas to drop from low-flying planes para- chuteless into the snowdrifts, he beat his breast and muttered prayers. But he didn't know what he prayed for: bullets for his gun, escape from the Russians, his immortal soul, the man in the basilica, Germany, a lessening of grief. In the spring of 1945 he had retreated back across Poland before the Russians, like his fellow soldiers with only one objective—to make it into British- dor American-occupied Germany. For if the Russians caught him, he would be shot. He tore his papers into shreds and burned them, buried his two Iron Crosses, stole some clothes and presented himself to the British authorities on the Danish border. They shipped him to a camp for displaced persons in Belgium. There for a year he lived on the bread and gruel which was all the exhausted British could afford to feed the thousands upon thousands of people in their charge, waiting until the British realized their only course was release. Twice officials of the camp had summoned him to present him with an ultimatum. There was a boat waiting in Ostend harbor loading immigrants for Australia. He would be given new papers and shipped to his new land free of charge, in return for which he would work for the Australian government for two years in whatever capacity they chose, after which his life would become entirely his own. Not slave labor; he would be paid the standard wage, of course. But on both occasions he managed to talk himself out of summary emigration. He had hated Hitler, not Germany, and he was not ashamed of being a German. Home meant Germany; it had occupied his dreams for over three years. The very thought of yet again being stranded in a country where no one spoke his lan- guage nor he theirs was anathema. So at the beginning of 1947 he found himself penniless on the streets of Aachen, ready to 584 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

pick up the pieces of an existence he knew he wanted very badly. He and his soul had survived, but not to go back to poverty and obscurity. For Rainer was more than a very ambitious man; he was also something of a genius. He went to work for Grundig, and studied the field which had fascinated him since he first got acquain- ted with radar: electronics. Ideas teemed in his brain, but he refused to sell them to Grundig for a millionth part of their value. Instead he gauged the market carefully, then married the widow of a man who had managed to keep a couple of small radio factories, and went into business for himself. That he was barely into his twenties didn't matter. His mind was characteristic of a far older man, and the chaos of postwar Germany created opportunities for young men. Since his wedding had been a civil one, the Church permitted him to divorce his wife; in 1951 he paid Annelise Hartheim exactly twice the current value of her first husband's two factories, and did just that, divorced her. However, he didn't remarry. What had happened to the boy in the frozen terror of Russia did not produce a soulless caricature of a man; rather it arrested the growth of softness and sweetness in him, and threw into high relief other qualities he possessed—intelligence, ruthlessness, determina- tion. A man who has nothing to lose has everything to gain, and a man without feelings cannot be hurt. Or so he told himself. In actual fact, he was curiously similar to the man he had met in Rome in 1943; like Ralph de Bricassart he understood he did wrong even as he did it. Not that his awareness of the evil in him stopped him for a second; only that he paid for his material advancement in pain and self-torment. To many people it might not have seemed worth the price he paid, but to him it was worth twice the suffering. One day he was going to run Germany and make it what he had dreamed, he was going to scotch the THE THORN BIRDS / 585

Aryan Lutheran ethic, shape a broader one. Because he couldn't promise to cease sinning he had been refused absolution in the confessional several times, but somehow he and his religion muddled through in one piece, until accumulated money and power removed him so many layers beyond guilt he could present himself repentant, and be shriven. In 1955, one of the richest and most powerful men in the new West Germany and a fresh face in its Bonn parliament, he went back to Rome. To seek out Cardinal de Bricassart, and show him the end result of his prayers. What he had imagined that meeting might be he could not afterward remember, for from beginning to end of it he was conscious of only one thing: that Ralph de Bricas- sart was disappointed in him. He had known why, he hadn't needed to ask. But he hadn't expected the Cardinal's parting remark: "I had prayed you would do better than I, for you were so young. No end is worth any means. But I suppose the seeds of our ruin are sown before our births." Back in his hotel room he had wept, but calmed after a while and thought: What's past is done with; for the future I will be as he hoped. And sometimes he succeeded, sometimes he failed. But he tried. His friendship with the men in the Vatican became the most precious earthly thing in his life, and Rome became the place to which he fled when only their comfort seemed to stand between himself and despair. Comfort. Theirs was a strange kind. Not the laying on of hands, or soft words. Rather a balm from the soul, as if they understood his pain. And he thought, as he walked the warm Roman night after de- positing Justine in her pension, that he would never cease to be grateful to her. For as he had watched her cope with the ordeal of that afternoon interview, he had felt a stirring of tenderness. Bloody but unbowed, the little monster. She could match them every inch of the way; did they realize it? He felt, he 586 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

decided, what he might have felt on behalf of a daughter he was proud of, only he had no daughter. So he had stolen her from Dane, carried her off to watch her aftermath reaction to that over- powering ecclesiasticism, and to the Dane she had never seen be- fore; the Dane who was not and could not ever be a full-hearted part of her life. The nicest thing about his personal God, he went on, was that He could forgive anything; He could forgive Justine her innate godlessness and himself the shutting down of his emotional powerhouse until such time as it was convenient to reopen it. Only for a while he had panicked, thinking he had lost the key forever. He smiled, threw away her cigarette. The key... Well, sometimes keys had strange shapes. Perhaps it needed every kink in every curl of that red head to trip the tumblers; perhaps in a room of scarlet his God had handed him a scarlet key. A fleeting day, over in a second. But on looking at his watch he saw it was still early, and knew the man who had so much power now that His Holiness lay near death would still be wakeful, sharing the nocturnal habits of his cat. Those dreadful hiccups filling the small room at Castel Gandolfo, twisting the thin, pale, ascetic face which had watched beneath the white crown for so many years; he was dying, and he was a great Pope. No matter what they said, he was a great Pope. If he had loved his Germans, if he still liked to hear German spoken around him, did it alter anything? Not for Rainer to judge that. But for what Rainer needed to know at the moment, Castel Gandolfo was not the source. Up the marble stairs to the scarlet- and-crimson room, to talk to Vittorio Scarbanza, Cardinal di Con- tini-Verchese. Who might be the next Pope, or might not. For al- most three years now he had watched those wise, loving dark eyes rest where they most liked to rest; yes, better to seek the answers from him than from Cardinal de Bricassart. THE THORN BIRDS / 587

words, she slipped her hand into his, squeezed. "It's something much nicer." "What could be nicer than falling in love?" "Almost anything, I think. I don't want to need anyone like that, ever." "Perhaps you're right. It's certainly a crippling handicap, taken on too early. So what is much nicer?" "Finding a friend." Her hand rubbed his. "You are my friend, aren't you?" "Yes." Smiling, he threw a coin in the fountain. "There! I must have given it a thousand D-marks over the years, just for reassurance that I would continue to feel the warmth of the south. Sometimes in my nightmares I'm cold again." "You ought to feel the warmth of the real south," said Justine. "A hundred and fifteen in the shade, if you can find any." "No wonder you don't feel the heat." He laughed the soundless laugh, as always; a hangover from the old days, when to laugh aloud might have tempted fate. "And the heat would account for the fact that you're hard-boiled." "Your English is colloquial, but American. I would have thought you'd have learned English in some posh British university." "No. I began to learn it from Cockney or Scottish or Midlands tommies in a Belgian camp, and didn't understand a word of it except when I spoke to the man who had taught it to me. One said 'abaht,' one said 'aboot,' one said 'about,' but they all meant 'about.' So when I got back to Germany I saw every motion picture I could, and bought the only records available in English, records made by American comedians. But I played them over and over again at home, until I spoke enough English to learn more." Her shoes were off, as usual; awed, he had watched her walk barefooted on pavements hot enough to fry an egg, and over stony places. THE THORN BIRDS / 589

in the end. You got rid of her. She's far better off without you, though she probably doesn't think so. Whereas I can keep you, because I'll never let you get under my skin." "Hard-boiled. You really are, Justine. And how did you find out these things about me?" "I asked Dane. Naturally, being Dane he just gave me the bare facts, but I deduced the rest." "From your enormous store of past experience, no doubt. What a fraud you are! They say you're a very good actress, but I find that incredible. How do you manage to counterfeit emotions you can never have experienced? As a person you're more emotionally backward than most fifteen-year-olds." She jumped down, sat on the wall and leaned to put her shoes on, wriggling her toes ruefully. "My feet are swollen, dammit." There was no indication by a reaction of rage or indignation that she had even heard the last part of what he said. As if when asper- sions or criticisms were leveled at her she simply switched off an internal hearing aid. How many there must have been. The miracle was that she didn't hate Dane. "That's a hard question to answer," she said. "I must be able to do it or I wouldn't be so good, isn't that right? But it's like...a waiting. My life off the stage, I mean. I conserve myself, I can't spend it offstage. We only have so much to give, don't we? And up there I'm not myself, or perhaps more correctly I'm a succession of selves. We must all be a profound mixture of selves, don't you think? To me, acting is first and foremost intellect, and only after that, emotion. The one liberates the other, and polishes it. There's so much more to it than simply crying or screaming or producing a convincing laugh. It's wonderful, you know. Thinking myself into another self, someone I might have been, had the circumstances been there. That's the secret. Not becoming someone else, but in- corporating the role into me as if she was myself. And so she be- comes me." As THE THORN BIRDS / 591

though her excitement was too great to bear in stillness, she jumped to her feet. "Imagine, Rain! In twenty years' time I'll be able to say to myself, I've committed murders, I've suicided, I've gone mad, I've saved men or ruined them. Oh! The possibilities are endless!" "And they will all be you." He rose, took her hand again. "Yes, you're quite right, Justine. You can't spend it offstage. In anyone else, I'd say you would in spite of that, but being you, I'm not so sure." 592 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

18 If they applied themselves to it, the Drogheda people could imagine that Rome and London were no farther away than Sydney, and that the grown-up Dane and Justine were still children going to boarding school. Admittedly they couldn't come home for all the shorter vacations of other days, but once a year they turned up for a month at least. Usually in August or September, and looking much as always. Very young. Did it matter whether they were fifteen and sixteen or twenty-two and twenty-three? And if the Drogheda people lived for that month in early spring, they most definitely never went round saying things like, Well, only a few weeks to go! or, Dear heaven, it's not a month since they left! But around July everyone's step became brisker, and permanent smiles settled on every face. From the cookhouse to the paddocks to the drawing room, treats and gifts were planned. In the meantime there were letters. Mostly these reflected the personalities of their authors, but sometimes they contradicted. One would have thought, for instance, that Dane would be a me- ticulously regular correspondent and Justine a scrappy one. That Fee would never write at all. That the Cleary men would write twice a year. That Meggie would enrich the postal 593

service with letters every day, at least to Dane. That Mrs. Smith, Minnie and Cat would send birthday and Christmas cards. That Anne Mueller would write often to Justine, never to Dane. Dane's intentions were good, and he did indeed write regularly. The only trouble was he forgot to post his efforts, with the result that two or three months would go by without a word, and then Drogheda would receive dozens on the same mail run. The loqua- cious Justine wrote lengthy missives which were pure stream-of- consciousness, rude enough to evoke blushes and clucks of alarm, and entirely fascinating. Meggie wrote once every two weeks only, to both her children. Though Justine never received letters from her grandmother, Dane did quite often. He also got word regularly from all his uncles, about the land and the sheep and the health of the Drogheda women, for they seemed to think it was their duty to assure him all was truly well at home. However, they didn't ex- tend this to Justine, who would have been flabbergasted by it any- way. For the rest, Mrs. Smith, Minnie, Cat and Anne Mueller, cor- respondence went as might be expected. It was lovely reading letters, and a burden writing them. That is, for all save Justine, who experienced twinges of exasperation be- cause no one ever sent her the kind she desired—fat, wordy and frank. It was from Justine the Drogheda people got most of their information about Dane, for his letters never plunged his readers right into the middle of a scene. Whereas Justine's did. Rain flew into London today [she wrote once], and he was telling me he saw Dane in Rome last week. Well, he sees a lot more of Dane than of me, since Rome is at the top of his travel agenda and London is rock bottom. So I must confess Rain is one of the prime reasons why I meet Dane in Rome every year before we come home. Dane 594 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

likes coming to London, only I won't let him if Rain is in Rome. Selfish. But you've no idea how I enjoy Rain. He's one of the few people I know who gives me a run for my money, and I wish we met more often. In one respect Rain's luckier than I am. He gets to meet Dane's fellow students where I don't. I think Dane thinks I'm going to rape them on the spot. Or maybe he thinks they'll rape me. Hah. Only happen if they saw me in my Charmian costume. It's a stunner, people, it really is. Sort of up-to-date Theda Bara. Two little round bronze shields for the old tits, lots and lots of chains and what I reckon is a chastity belt—you'd need a pair of tin-cutters to get inside it, anyway. In a long black wig, tan body paint and my few scraps of metal I look a smasher. ...Where was I??? Oh, yes, Rain in Rome last week meet- ing Dane and his pals. They all went out on the tiles. Rain insists on paying, saves Dane embarrassment. It was some night. No women, natch, but everything else. Can you imagine Dane down on his knees in some seedy Roman bar saying "Fair daffodils, we haste to see thee weep so soon away" to a vase of daffodils? He tried for ten minutes to get the words of the quotation in their right order and couldn't, then he gave up, put one of the daffodils between his teeth instead and did a dance. Can you ever imagine Dane doing that? Rain says it's harmless and necessary, all work and no play, etc. Women being out, the next best thing is a skinful of grog. Or so Rain insists. Don't get the idea it happens often, it doesn't, and I gather when it does Rain is the ringleader, so he's along to watch out for them, the naive lot of raw prawns. But I did laugh to think of Dane's halo slipping during the course of a flamenco dance with a daffodil. THE THORN BIRDS / 595

It took Dane eight years in Rome to attain his priesthood, and at their beginning no one thought they could ever end. Yet those eight years used themselves up faster than any of the Drogheda people had imagined. Just what they thought he was going to do after he was ordained they didn't know, except that they did assume he would return to Australia. Only Meggie and Justine suspected he would want to remain in Italy, and Meggie at any rate could lull her doubts with memories of his content when he came back each year to his home. He was an Australian, he would want to come home. With Justine it was different. No one dreamed she would come home for good. She was an actress; her career would founder in Australia. Where Dane's career could be pursued with equal zeal anywhere at all. Thus in the eighth year there were no plans as to what the chil- dren would do when they came for their annual holiday; instead the Drogheda people were planning their trip to Rome, to see Dane ordained a priest. "We fizzled out," said Meggie. "I beg your pardon, dear?" asked Anne. They were sitting in a warm corner of the veranda reading, but Meggie's book had fallen neglected into her lap, and she was ab- sently watching the antics of two willy-wagtails on the lawn. It had been a wet year; there were worms everywhere and the fattest, happiest birds anyone ever remembered. Bird songs filled the air from dawn to the last of dusk. "I said we fizzled out," repeated Meggie, crowlike. "A damp squib. All that promise! Whoever would have guessed it in 1921, when we arrived on Drogheda?" "How do you mean?" "A total of six sons, plus me. And a year later, two more sons. What would you think? Dozens of children, half a hundred grandchildren? So look at us now. Hal and Stu are dead, none of the ones left alive seem to 596 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

have any intention of ever getting married, and I, the only one not entitled to pass on the name, have been the only one to give Drogheda its heirs. And even then the gods weren't happy, were they? A son and a daughter. Several grandchildren at least, you might think. But what happens? My son embraces the priesthood and my daughter's an old maid career woman. Another dead end for Drogheda." "I don't see what's so strange about it," said Anne. "After all, what could you expect from the men? Stuck out here as shy as kangas, never meeting the girls they might have married. And with Jims and Patsy, the war to boot. Could you see Jims marrying when he knows Patsy can't? They're far too fond of each other for that. And besides, the land's demanding in a neutered way. It takes just about all they've got to give, because I don't think they have a great deal. In a physical sense, I mean. Hasn't it ever struck you, Meggie? Yours isn't a very highly sexed family, to put it bluntly. And that goes for Dane and Justine, too. I mean, there are some people who compulsively hunt it like tomcats, but not your lot. Though perhaps Justine will marry. There's this German chap Rainer; she seems terribly fond of him." "You've hit the nail on the head," said Meggie, in no mood to be comforted. "She seems terribly fond of him. Just that. After all, she's known him for seven years. If she wanted to marry him, it would have happened ages ago." "Would it? I know Justine pretty well," answered Anne truthfully, for she did; better than anyone else on Drogheda, including Meggie and Fee. "I think she's terrified of committing herself to the kind of love marriage would entail, and I must say I admire Rainer. He seems to understand her very well. Oh, I don't say he's in love with her for sure, but if he is, at least he's got the sense to wait until she's ready to take the plunge." She leaned forward, her book falling forgotten to the THE THORN BIRDS / 597

tiles. "Oh, will you listen to that bird? I'm sure even a nightingale couldn't match it." Then she said what she had been wanting to say for weeks. "Meggie, why won't you go to Rome to see Dane ordained? Isn't that peculiar? Dane—ordain." "I'm not going to Rome!" said Meggie between clenched teeth. "I shall never leave Drogheda again." "Meggie, don't! You can't disappoint him so! Go, please! If you don't, Drogheda won't have a single woman there, because you're the only woman young enough to take the flight. But I tell you, if I thought for one minute my body would survive I'd be right on that plane." "Go to Rome and see Ralph de Bricassart smirking? I'd rather be dead!" "Oh, Meggie, Meggie! Why must you take out your frustrations on him, and on your son? You said it once yourself—it's your own fault. So beggar your pride, and go to Rome. Please!" "It isn't a question of pride." She shivered. "Oh, Anne, I'm frightened to go! Because I don't believe it, I just don't! My flesh creeps when I think about it." "And what about the fact he mightn't come home after he's a priest? Did that ever occur to you? He won't be given huge chunks of leave the way he was in the seminary, so if he decides to remain in Rome you may well have to take yourself there if you ever want to see him at all. Go to Rome, Meggie!" "I can't. If you knew how frightened I am! It's not pride, or Ralph scoring one over on me, or any of the things I say it is to stop people asking me questions. Lord knows, I miss both my men so much I'd crawl on my knees to see them if I thought for a minute they wanted me. Oh, Dane would be glad to see me, but Ralph? He's forgotten I ever existed. I'm frightened, I tell you. I know in my bones that if I go to Rome something will happen. So I'm not going." "What could happen, for pity's sake?" 598 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

ashamed. "Heavens, I've thought of it often enough, and never disparagingly." For some reason she added hastily, "I mean, about things like the way you look in a suit." He didn't answer, but he was smiling, as at a very pleasant thought. That ride with Rainer seemed to be the last quiet thing to happen for days. Shortly after they returned from visiting Cardinal de Bri- cassart and Cardinal di Contini-Verchese, the limousine Rainer had hired deposited the Drogheda contingent at their hotel. Out of the corner of her eye Justine watched Rain's reaction to her family, entirely uncles. Right until the moment her eyes didn't find her mother's face, Justine had been convinced she would change her mind, come to Rome. That she hadn't was a cruel blow; Justine didn't know whether she ached more on Dane's behalf or on her own. But in the meantime here were the Unks, and she was un- doubtedly their hostess. Oh, they were so shy! Which one of them was which? The older they got, the more alike they looked. And in Rome they stuck out like—well, like Australian graziers on holiday in Rome. Each one was clad in the city-going uniform of affluent squatters: tan elastic- sided riding boots, neutral trousers, tan sports jackets of very heavy, fuzzy wool with side vents and plenty of leather patches, white shirts, knitted wool ties, flat-crowned grey hats with broad brims. No novelty on the streets of Sydney during Royal Easter Show time, but in a late Roman summer, extraordinary. And I can say with double sincerity, thank God for Rain! How good he is with them. I wouldn't have believed anyone could stimulate Patsy into speech, but he's doing it, bless him. They're talking away like old hens, and where did he get Australian beer for them? He likes them, and he's interested, I suppose. Everything is grist to the mill of a German industrialist-politician, isn't it? How can he stick to his faith, being what 602 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

he is? An enigma, that's what you are, Rainer Moerling Hartheim. Friend of popes and cardinals, friend of Justine O'Neill. Oh, if you weren't so ugly I'd kiss you, I'm so terribly grateful. Lord, fancy being stuck in Rome with the Unks and no Rain! You are well named. He was sitting back in his chair, listening while Bob told him about shearing, and having nothing better to do because he had so completely taken charge, Justine watched him curiously. Mostly she noticed everything physical about people immediately, but just occasionally that vigilance slipped and people stole up on her, carved a niche in her life without her having made that vital initial assessment. For if it wasn't made, sometimes years would go by before they intruded into her thoughts again as strangers. Like now, watching Rain. That first meeting had been responsible, of course; surrounded by churchmen, awed, frightened, brazening it out. She had noticed only the obvious things: his powerful build, his hair, how dark he was. Then when he had taken her off to dinner the chance to rectify things had been lost, for he had forced an aware- ness of himself on her far beyond his physical attributes; she had been too interested in what the mouth was saying to look at the mouth. He wasn't really ugly at all, she decided now. He looked what he was, perhaps, a mixture of the best and the worst. Like a Roman emperor. No wonder he loved the city. It was his spiritual home. A broad face with high, wide cheekbones and a small yet aquiline nose. Thick black brows, straight instead of following the curve of the orbits. Very long, feminine black lashes and quite lovely dark eyes, mostly hooded to hide his thoughts. By far his most beautiful possession was his mouth, neither full nor thin-lipped, neither small nor large, but very well shaped, with a distinct cut to the boundaries of its lips and a peculiar firmness in the way he held it; as if perhaps were he to relax his hold upon it, it might give away secrets about what he was THE THORN BIRDS / 603

really like. Interesting, to take a face apart which was already so well known, yet not known at all. She came out of her reverie to find him watching her watch him, which was like being stripped naked in front of a crowd armed with stones. For a moment his eyes held hers, wide open and alert, not exactly startled, rather arrested. Then he transferred his gaze calmly to Bob, and asked a pertinent question about boggis. Justine gave herself a mental shake, told herself not to go imagining things. But it was fascinating, suddenly to see a man who had been a friend for years as a possible lover. And not finding the thought at all re- pulsive. There had been a number of successors to Arthur Lestrange, and she hadn't wanted to laugh. Oh, I've come a long way since that memorable night. But I wonder have I actually progressed at all? It's very nice to have a man, and the hell with what Dane said about it being the one man. I'm not going to make it one man, so I'm not going to sleep with Rain; oh, no. It would change too many things, and I'd lose my friend. I need my friend, I can't afford to be without my friend. I shall keep him as I keep Dane, a male hu- man being without any physical significance for me. The church could hold twenty thousand people, so it wasn't crowded. Nowhere in the world had so much time and thought and genius been put into the creation of a temple of God; it paled the pagan works of antiquity to insignificance. It did. So much love, so much sweat. Bramante's basilica, Michelangelo's dome, Bernini's colonnade. A monument not only to God, but to Man. Deep under the confessio in a little stone room Saint Peter himself was buried; here the Emperor Charlemagne had been crowned. The echoes of old voices seemed to whisper among the pouring slivers of light, dead fingers polished the bronze rays behind the high altar and caressed the twisted bronze columns of the baldacchino. 604 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

He was lying on the steps, face down, as though dead. What was he thinking? Was there a pain in him that had no right to be there, because his mother had not come? Cardinal Ralph looked through his tears, and knew there was no pain. Beforehand, yes; afterward, certainly. But now, no pain. Everything in him was projected into the moment, the miracle. No room in him for any- thing which was not God. It was his day of days, and nothing mattered save the task at hand, the vowing of his life and soul to God. He could probably do it, but how many others actually had? Not Cardinal Ralph, though he still remembered his own ordination as filled with holy wonder. With every part of him he had tried, yet something he had withheld. Not so august as this, my ordination, but I live it again through him. And wonder what he truly is, that in spite of our fears for him he could have passed among us so many years and not made an unfriend, let alone a real enemy. He is loved by all, and he loves all. It never crosses his mind for an instant that this state of affairs is extraordinary. And yet, when he came to us first he was not so sure of himself; we have given him that, for which perhaps our ex- istences are vindicated. There have been many priests made here, thousands upon thousands, yet for him there is something special. Oh, Meggie! Why wouldn't you come to see the gift you've given Our Lord—the gift I could not, having given Him myself? And I suppose that's it, how he can be here today free of pain. Because for today I've been empowered to take his pain to myself, free him from it. I weep his tears, I mourn in his place. And that is how it should be. Later he turned his head, looked at the row of Drogheda people in alien dark suits. Bob, Jack, Hughie, Jims, Patsy. A vacant chair for Meggie, then Frank. Justine's fiery hair dimmed under a black lace veil, the only female Cleary present. Rainer next to her. And then a lot of people he didn't know, but who shared in today as THE THORN BIRDS / 605

fully as the Drogheda people did. Only today it was different, today it was special for him. Today he felt almost as if he, too, had had a son to give. He smiled, and sighed. How must Vittorio feel, be- stowing Dane's priesthood upon him? Perhaps because he missed his mother's presence so acutely, Justine was the first person Dane managed to take aside at the reception Cardinal Vittorio and Cardinal Ralph gave for him. In his black soutane with the high white collar he looked magnificent, she thought; only not like a priest at all. Like an actor playing a priest, until one looked into the eyes. And there it was, the inner light, that something which transformed him from a very good-looking man into one unique. "Father O'Neill," she said. "I haven't assimilated it yet, Jus." "That isn't hard to understand. I've never felt quite the way I did in Saint Peter's, so what it must have been like for you I can't imagine." "Oh, I think you can, somewhere inside. If you truly couldn't, you wouldn't be such a fine actress. But with you, Jus, it comes from the unconscious; it doesn't erupt into thought until you need to use it." They were sitting on a small couch in a far corner of the room, and no one came to disturb them. After a while he said, "I'm so pleased Frank came," looking to where Frank was talking with Rainer, more animation in his face than his niece and nephew had ever seen. "There's an old Rumanian refugee priest I know," Dane went on, "who has a way of saying, 'Oh, the poor one!' with such compassion in his voice... I don't know, somehow that's what I always find myself saying about our Frank. And yet, Jus, why?" But Justine ignored the gambit, went straight to the crux. "I could kill Mum!" she said through her teeth. "She had no right to do this to you!" "Oh, Jus! I understand. You've got to try, too. If it 606 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

had been done in malice or to get back at me I might be hurt, but you know her as well as I do, you know it's neither of those. I'm going down to Drogheda soon. I'll talk to her then, find out what's the matter." "I suppose daughters are never as patient with their mothers as sons are." She drew down the corners of her mouth ruefully, shrugged. "Maybe it's just as well I'm too much of a loner ever to inflict myself on anyone in the mother role." The blue eyes were very kind, tender; Justine felt her hackles rising, thinking Dane pitied her. "Why don't you marry Rainer?" he asked suddenly. Her jaw dropped, she gasped. "He's never asked me," she said feebly. "Only because he thinks you'd say no. But it might be arranged." Without thinking, she grabbed him by the ear, as she used to do when they were children. "Don't you dare, you dog-collared prawn! Not one word, do you hear? I don't love Rain! He's just a friend, and I want to keep it that way. If you so much as light a candle for it, I swear I'll sit down, cross my eyes and put a curse on you, and you remember how that used to scare the living daylights out of you, don't you?" He threw back his head and laughed. "It wouldn't work, Justine! My magic is stronger than yours these days. But there's no need to get so worked up about it, you twit. I was wrong, that's all. I as- sumed there was a case between you and Rain." "No, there isn't. After seven years? Break it down, pigs might fly." Pausing, she seemed to seek for words, then looked at him almost shyly. "Dane, I'm so happy for you. I think if Mum was here she'd feel the same. That's all it needs, for her to see you now, like this. You wait, she'll come around." Very gently he took her pointed face between his hands, smiling down at her with so much love that her own hands came up to clutch at his wrists, soak it in THE THORN BIRDS / 607

through every pore. As if all those childhood years were re- membered, treasured. Yet behind what she saw in his eyes on her behalf she sensed a shadowy doubt, only perhaps doubt was too strong a word; more like anxiety. Mostly he was sure Mum would understand eventually, but he was human, though all save he tended to forget the fact. "Jus, will you do something for me?" he asked as he let her go. "Anything," she said, meaning it. "I've got a sort of respite, to think about what I'm going to do. Two months. And I'm going to do the heavy thinking on a Drogheda horse after I've talked to Mum—somehow I feel I can't sort anything out until after I've talked to her. But first, well...I've got to get up my courage to go home. So if you could manage it, come down to the Peloponnese with me for a couple of weeks, tick me off good and proper about being a coward until I get so sick of your voice I put myself on a plane to get away from it." He smiled at her. "Besides, Jussy, I don't want you to think I'm going to ex- clude you from my life absolutely, any more than I will Mum. You need your old conscience around occasionally." "Oh, Dane, of course I'll go!" "Good," he said, then grinned, eyed her mischievously. "I really do need you, Jus. Having you bitching in my ear will be just like old times." "Uh-uh-uh! No obscenities, Father O'Neill!" His arms went behind his head, he leaned back on the couch contentedly. "I am! Isn't it marvelous? And maybe after I've seen Mum, I can concentrate on Our Lord. I think that's where my in- clinations lie, you know. Simply thinking about Our Lord." "You ought to have espoused an order, Dane." "I still can, and I probably will. I have a whole lifetime; there's no hurry." 608 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Justine left the party with Rainer, and after she talked of going to Greece with Dane, he talked of going to his office in Bonn. "About bloody time," she said. "For a cabinet minister you don't seem to do much work, do you? All the papers call you a playboy, fooling around with carrot-topped Australian actresses, you old dog, you." He shook his big fist at her. "I pay for my few pleasures in more ways than you'll ever know." "Do you mind if we walk, Rain?" "Not if you keep your shoes on." "I have to these days. Miniskirts have their disadvantages; the days of stockings one could peel off easily are over. They've inven- ted a sheer version of theatrical tights, and one can't shed those in public without causing the biggest furor since Lady Godiva. So unless I want to ruin a five-guinea pair of tights, I'm imprisoned in my shoes." "At least you improve my education in feminine garb, under as well as over," he said mildly. "Go on! I'll bet you've got a dozen mistresses, and undress them all." "Only one, and like all good mistresses she waits for me in her negligee." "Do you know, I believe we've never discussed your sex life be- fore? Fascinating! What's she like?" "Fair, fat, forty and flatulent." She stopped dead. "Oh, you're kidding me," she said slowly. "I can't see you with a woman like that." "Why not?" "You've got too much taste." "Chacun à son goût, my dear. I'm nothing much to look at, my- self—why should you assume I could charm a young and beautiful woman into being my mistress?" "Because you could!" she said indignantly. "Oh, of course you could!" "My money, you mean?" "Not, not your money! You're teasing me, you always THE THORN BIRDS / 609

do! Rainer Moerling Hartheim, you're very well aware how attract- ive you are, otherwise you wouldn't wear gold medallions and netting shirts. Looks aren't everything—if they were, I'd still be wondering." "Your concern for me is touching, Herzchen." "Why is it that when I'm with you I feel as if I'm forever running to catch up with you, and I never do?" Her spurt of temper died; she stood looking at him uncertainly. "You're not serious, are you?" "Do you think I am?" "No! You're not conceited, but you do know how very attractive you are." "Whether I do or not isn't important. The important thing is that you think I'm attractive." She was going to say: Of course I do; I was mentally trying you on as a lover not long ago, but then I decided it wouldn't work, I'd rather keep on having you for my friend. Had he let her say it, he might have concluded his time hadn't come, and acted differ- ently. As it was, before she could shape the words he had her in his arms, and was kissing her. For at least sixty seconds she stood, dying, split open, smashed, the power in her screaming in wild elation to find a matching power. His mouth—it was beautiful! And his hair, incredibly thick, vital, something to seize in her fingers fiercely. Then he took her face between his hands and looked at her, smiling. "I love you," he said. Her hands had gone up to his wrists, but not to enclose them gently, as with Dane; the nails bit in, scored down to meat savagely. She stepped back two paces and stood rubbing her arm across her mouth, eyes huge with fright, breasts heaving. "It couldn't work," she panted. "It could never work, Rain!" Off came the shoes; she bent to pick them up, then turned and ran, and within three seconds the soft quick pad of her feet had vanished. 610 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Not that he had any intention of following her, though apparently she had thought he might. Both his wrists were bleeding, and they hurt. He pressed his handkerchief first to one and then to the other, shrugged, put the stained cloth away, and stood concentrating on the pain. After a while he unearthed his cigarette case, took out a cigarette, lit it, and began to walk slowly. No one passing by could have told from his face what he felt. Everything he wanted within his grasp, reached for, lost. Idiot girl. When would she grow up? To feel it, respond to it, and deny it. But he was a gambler, of the win-a-few, lose-a-few kind. He had waited seven long years before trying his luck, feeling the change in her at this ordination time. Yet apparently he had moved too soon. Ah, well. There was always tomorrow—or knowing Justine, next year, the year after that. Certainly he wasn't about to give up. If he watched her carefully, one day he'd get lucky. The soundless laugh quivered in him; fair, fat, forty and flatulent. What had brought it to his lips he didn't know, except that a long time ago his ex-wife had said it to him. The four F's, describing the typical victim of gallstones. She had been a martyr to them, poor Annelise, even though she was dark, skinny, fifty and as well corked as a genie in a bottle. What am I thinking of Annelise for, now? My patient campaign of years turned into a rout, and I can do no better than poor Annelise. So, Fräulein Justine O'Neill! We shall see. There were lights in the palace windows; he would go up for a few minutes, talk to Cardinal Ralph, who was looking old. Not well. Perhaps he ought to be persuaded into a medical examination. Rainer ached, but not for Justine; she was young, there was time. For Cardinal Ralph, who had seen his own son ordained, and not known it. It was still early, so the hotel foyer was crowded. Shoes on, Justine crossed quickly to the stairs and ran THE THORN BIRDS / 611

up them, head bent. Then for some time her trembling hands couldn't find the room key in her bag and she thought she would have to go down again, brave the throng about the desk. But it was there; she must have passed her fingers over it a dozen times. Inside at last, she groped her way to the bed, sat down on its edge and let coherent thought gradually return. Telling herself she was revolted, horrified, disillusioned; all the while staring drearily at the wide rectangle of pale light which was the night sky through the window, wanting to curse, wanting to weep. It could never be the same again, and that was a tragedy. The loss of the dearest friend. Betrayal. Empty words, untrue; suddenly she knew very well what had frightened her so, made her flee from Rain as if he had attempted murder, not a kiss. The rightness of it! The feeling of coming home, when she didn't want to come home any more than she wanted the liability of love. Home was frustration, so was love. Not only that, even if the admission was humiliating; she wasn't sure she could love. If she was capable of it, surely once or twice her guard would have slipped; surely once or twice she would have experi- enced a pang of something more than tolerant affection for her in- frequent lovers. It didn't occur to her that she deliberately chose lovers who would never threaten her self-imposed detachment, so much a part of herself by now that she regarded it as completely natural. For the first time in her life she had no reference point to assist her. There was no time in the past she could take comfort from, no once-deep involvement, either for herself or for those shadowy lovers. Nor could the Drogheda people help, because she had always withheld herself from them, too. She had had to run from Rain. To say yes, commit herself to him, and then have to watch him recoil when he found out the extent of her inadequacy? Unbearable! He would learn what she was really like, and the knowledge would kill his love for her. Un- bearable to say yes, 612 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

and end in being rebuffed for all time. Far better to do any rebuffing herself. That way at least pride would be satisfied, and Justine owned all her mother's pride. Rain must never discover what she was like beneath all that brick flippancy. He had fallen in love with the Justine he saw; she had not allowed him any opportunity to suspect the sea of doubts beneath. Those only Dane suspected—no, knew. She bent forward to put her forehead against the cool bedside table, tears running down her face. That was why she loved Dane so, of course. Knowing what the real Justine was like, and still loving her. Blood helped, so did a lifetime of shared memories, problems, pains, joys. Whereas Rain was a stranger, not committed to her the way Dane was, or even the other members of her family. Nothing obliged him to love her. She sniffled, wiped her palm around her face, shrugged her shoulders and began the difficult business of pushing her trouble back into some corner of her mind where it could lie peacefully, unremembered. She knew she could do it; she had spent all her life perfecting the technique. Only it meant ceaseless activity, continuous absorption in things outside herself. She reached over and switched on the bedside lamp. One of the Unks must have delivered the letter to her room, for it was lying on the bedside table, a pale-blue air letter with Queen Elizabeth in its upper corner. "Darling Justine," wrote Clyde Daltinham-Roberts, "Come back to the fold, you're needed! At once! There's a part going begging in the new season's repertoire, and a tiny little dicky-bird told me you just might want it. Desdemona, darling? With Marc Simpson as your Othello? Rehearsals for the principals start next week, if you're interested." If she was interested! Desdemona! Desdemona in London! And with Marc Simpson as Othello! The opportunity of a lifetime. Her mood skyrocketed to a point where the scene with Rain lost signi- ficance, or THE THORN BIRDS / 613

rather assumed a different significance. Perhaps if she was very, very careful she might be able to keep Rain's love; a highly ac- claimed, successful actress was too busy to share much of her life with her lovers. It was worth a try. If he looked as if he were getting too close to the truth, she could always back off again. To keep Rain in her life, but especially this new Rain, she would be prepared to do anything save strip off the mask. In the meantime, news like this deserved some sort of celebration. She didn't feel up to facing Rain yet, but there were other people on hand to share her triumph. So she put on her shoes, walked down the corridor to the Unks' communal sitting room, and when Patsy let her in she stood with arms spread wide, beaming. "Break out the beer, I'm going to be Desdemona!" she announced in ringing tones. For a moment no one answered, then Bob said warmly, "That's nice, Justine." Her pleasure didn't evaporate; instead it built up to an uncontrol- lable elation. Laughing, she flopped into a chair and stared at her uncles. What truly lovely men they were! Of course her news meant nothing to them! They didn't have a clue who Desdemona was. If she had come to tell them she was getting married, Bob's answer would have been much the same. Since the beginning of memory they had been a part of her life, and sadly she had dismissed them as contemptuously as she did everything about Drogheda. The Unks, a plurality having nothing to do with Justine O'Neill. Simply members of a conglomerate who drifted in and out of the homestead, smiled at her shyly, avoided her if it meant conversation. Not that they didn't like her, she realized now; only that they sensed how foreign she was, and it made them uncomfortable. But in this Roman world which was alien to them and familiar to her, she was beginning to understand them better. Feeling a glow of something for them which might 614 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

have been called love, Justine stared from one creased, smiling face to the next. Bob, who was the life force of the unit, the Boss of Drogheda, but in such an unobtrusive way; Jack, who merely seemed to follow Bob around, or maybe it was just that they got along so well together; Hughie, who had a streak of mischief the other two did not, and yet so very like them; Jims and Patsy, the positive and negative sides of a self-sufficient whole; and poor quenched Frank, the only one who seemed plagued by fear and insecurity. All of them save Jims and Patsy were grizzled now, in- deed Bob and Frank were white-haired, but they didn't really look very different from the way she remembered them as a little girl. "I don't know whether I ought to give you a beer," Bob said doubtfully, standing with a cold bottle of Swan in his hand. The remark would have annoyed her intensely even half a day ago, but at the moment she was too happy to take offense. "Look, love, I know it's never occurred to you to offer me one through the course of our sessions with Rain, but honestly I'm a big girl now, and I can handle a beer. I promise it isn't a sin." She smiled. "Where's Rainer?" Jims asked, taking a full glass from Bob and handing it to her. "I had a fight with him." "With Rainer?" "Well, yes. But it was all my fault. I'm going to see him later and tell him I'm sorry." None of the Unks smoked. Though she had never asked for a beer before, on earlier occasions she had sat smoking defiantly while they talked with Rain; now it took more courage than she could command to produce her cigarettes, so she contented herself with the minor victory of the beer, dying to gulp it down thirstily but mindful of their dubious regard. Ladylike sips, Justine, even if you are dryer than a secondhand sermon. THE THORN BIRDS / 615

see him, anyway. A contrite apology via the mail, and an invitation to dinner next time he was in England. There were many things she didn't know about Rain, but of one characteristic she had no doubt at all; he would come, because he hadn't a grudging bone in his body. Since foreign affairs had become his forte, England was one of his most regular ports of call. "You wait and see, my lad," she said, staring into her mirror and seeing his face instead of her own. "I'm going to make England your most important foreign affair, or my name isn't Justine It had not occurred to her that perhaps as far as Rain was con- cerned, her name was indeed the crux of the matter. Her patterns of behavior were set, and marriage was no part of them. That Rain might want to make her over into Justine Hartheim never even crossed her mind. She was too busy remembering the quality of his kiss, and dreaming of more. There remained only the task of telling Dane she couldn't go to Greece with him, but about this she was untroubled. Dane would understand, he always did. Only somehow she didn't think she'd tell him all the reasons why she wasn't able to go. Much as she loved her brother, she didn't feel like listening to what would be one of his sternest homilies ever. He wanted her to marry Rain, so if she told him what her plans for Rain were, he'd cart her off to Greece with him if it meant forcible abduction. What Dane's ears didn't hear, his heart couldn't grieve about. "Dear Rain," the note said. "Sorry I ran like a hairy goat the other night, can't think what got into me. The hectic day and everything, I suppose. Please forgive me for behaving like an utter prawn. I'm ashamed of myself for making so much fuss about a trifle. And I dare-say the day had got to you, too, words of love and all, I mean. So I tell you what—you forgive me, and I'll forgive you. Let's be friends, please. I can't bear to be at THE THORN BIRDS / 617

outs with you. Next time you're in London, come to dinner at my place and we'll formally draft out a peace treaty." As usual it was signed plain "Justine." No words even of affection; she never used them. Frowning, he studied the artlessly casual phrases as if he could see through them to what was really in her mind as she wrote. It was certainly an overture of friendship, but what else? Sighing, he was forced to admit probably very little. He had frightened her badly; that she wanted to retain his friendship spoke of how much he meant to her, but he very much doubted whether she understood exactly what she felt for him. After all, now she knew he loved her; if she had sorted herself out sufficiently to realize she loved him too, she would have come straight out with it in her letter. Yet why had she returned to London instead of going to Greece with Dane? He knew he shouldn't hope it was because of him, but despite his misgivings, hope began to color his thoughts so cheerfully he buzzed his secretary. It was 10 A.M. Greenwich Mean Time, the best hour to find her at home. "Get me Miss O'Neill's London flat," he instructed, and waited the intervening seconds with a frown pulling at the inner corners of his brows. "Rain!" Justine said, apparently delighted. "Did you get my let- ter?" "This minute." After a delicate pause she said. "And will you come to dinner soon?" "I'm going to be in England this coming Friday and Saturday. Is the notice too short?" "Not if Saturday evening is all right with you. I'm in rehearsal for Desdemona, so Friday's out." "Desdemona?" "That's right, you don't know! Clyde wrote to me in Rome and offered me the part. Marc Simpson as 618 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Othello, Clyde directing personally. Isn't it wonderful? I came back to London on the first plane." He shielded his eyes with his hand, thankful his secretary was safely in her outer office, not sitting where she could see his face. "Justine, Herzchen, that's marvelous news!" he managed to say en- thusiastically. "I was wondering what brought you back to London." "Oh, Dane understood," she said lightly, "and in a way I think he was quite glad to be alone. He had concocted a story about needing me to bitch at him to go home, but I think it was all more for his second reason, that he doesn't want me to feel excluded from his life now he's a priest." "Probably," he agreed politely. "Saturday evening, then," she said. "Around six, then we can have a leisurely peace treaty session with the aid of a bottle or two, and I'll feed you after we've reached a satisfactory compromise. All right?" "Yes, of course. Goodbye, Herzchen." Contact was cut off abruptly by the sound of her receiver going down; he sat for a moment with his still in his hand, then shrugged and replaced it on its cradle. Damn Justine! She was beginning to come between him and his work. She continued to come between him and his work during the succeeding days, though it was doubtful if anyone suspected. And on Saturday evening a little after six he presented himself at her apartment, empty-handed as usual because she was a difficult person to bring gifts. She was indifferent to flowers, never ate candy and would have thrown a more expensive offering carelessly in some corner, then forgotten it. The only gifts Justine seemed to prize were those Dane had given her. "Champagne before dinner?" he asked, looking at her in surprise. "Well, I think the occasion calls for it, don't you? It was our first- ever breaking of relations, and this is our THE THORN BIRDS / 619

first-ever reconciliation," she answered plausibly, indicating a comfortable chair for him and settling herself on the tawny kangaroo-fur rug, lips parted as if she had already rehearsed replies to anything he might say next. But conversation was beyond him, at least until he was better able to assess her mood, so he watched her in silence. Until he had kissed her it had been easy to keep himself partially aloof, but now, seeing her again for the first time since, he admitted that it was going to be a great deal harder in the future. Probably even when she was a very old woman she would still retain something not quite fully mature about face and bearing; as though essential womanliness would always pass her by. That cool, self-centered, logical brain seemed to dominate her completely, yet for him she owned a fascination so potent he doubted if he would ever be able to replace her with any other woman. Never once had he questioned whether she was worth the long struggle. Possibly from a philosophical standpoint she wasn't. Did it matter? She was a goal, an aspiration. "You're looking very nice tonight, Herzchen," he said at last, tipping his champagne glass to her in a gesture half toast, half ac- knowledgment of an adversary. A coal fire simmered unshielded in the small Victorian grate, but Justine didn't seem to mind the heat, huddled close to it with her eyes fixed on him. Then she put her glass on the hearth with a ringing snap and sat forward, her arms linked about her knees, bare feet hidden by folds of densely black gown. "I can't stand beating around the bush," she said. "Did you mean it, Rain?" Suddenly relaxing deeply, he lay back in his chair. "Mean what?" "What you said in Rome...That you loved me." "Is that what this is all about, Herzchen?" 620 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

She looked away, shrugged, looked back at him and nodded. "Well, of course." "But why bring it up again? You told me what you thought, and I had gathered tonight's invitation wasn't extended to bring up the past, only plan a future." "Oh, Rain! You're acting as if I'm making a fuss! Even if I was, surely you can see why." "No, I can't." He put his glass down and bent forward to watch her more closely. "You gave me to understand most emphatically that you wanted no part of my love, and I had hoped you'd at least have the decency to refrain from discussing it." It had not occurred to her that this meeting, no matter what its outcome, would be so uncomfortable; after all, he had put himself in the position of a suppliant, and ought to be waiting humbly for her to reverse her decision. Instead he seemed to have turned the tables neatly. Here she was feeling like a naughty schoolgirl called upon to answer for some idiotic prank. "Look, sport, you're the one who changed the status quo, not me! I didn't ask you to come tonight so I could beg forgiveness for having wounded the great Hartheim ego!" "On the defensive, Justine?" She wriggled impatiently. "Yes, dammit! How do you manage to do that to me, Rain? Oh, I wish just once you'd let me enjoy having the upper hand!" "If I did, you'd throw me out like a smelly old rag," he said, smiling. "I can do that yet, mate!" "Nonsense! If you haven't done it by now you never will. You'll go on seeing me because I keep you on the hop—you never know what to expect from me." "Is that why you said you loved me?" she asked painfully. "Was it only a ploy to keep me on the hop?" "What do you think?" "I think you're a prize bastard!" she said through her teeth, and marched across the rug on her knees until she THE THORN BIRDS / 621

was close enough to give him the full benefit of her anger. "Say you love me again, you big Kraut prawn, and watch me spit in your eye!" He was angry, too. "No, I'm not going to say it again! That isn't why you asked me to come, is it? My feelings don't concern you one bit, Justine. You asked me to come so you could experiment with your own feelings, and it didn't enter your mind to consider whether that was being fair to me." Before she could move away he leaned forward, gripped her arms near the shoulders and clamped her body between his legs, holding her firmly. Her rage vanished at once; she flattened her palms on his thighs and lifted her face. But he didn't kiss her. He let go of her arms and twisted to switch off the lamp behind him, then re- laxed his hold on her and laid his head back against the chair, so that she wasn't sure if he had dimmed the room down to glowing coals as the first move in his love-making, or simply to conceal his expression. Uncertain, afraid of outright rejection, she waited to be told what to do. She should have realized earlier that one didn't tamper with people like Rain. They were as invincible as death. Why couldn't she put her head on his lap and say: Rain, love me, I need you so much and I'm so sorry? Oh, surely if she could get him to make love to her some emotional key would turn and it would all come tumbling out, released... Still withdrawn, remote, he let her take off his jacket and tie, but by the time she began to unbutton his shirt she knew it wasn't going to work. The kind of instinctive erotic skills which could make the most mundane operation exciting were not in her repertoire. This was so important, and she was making an absolute mess of it. Her fingers faltered, her mouth puckered. She burst into tears. "Oh, no! Herzchen, liebchen, don't cry!" He pulled her onto his lap and turned her head into his shoulder, 622 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

his arms around her. "I'm sorry, Herzchen, I didn't mean to make you cry." "Now you know," she said between sobs. "I'm a miserable failure; I told you it wouldn't work! Rain, I wanted so badly to keep you, but I knew it wouldn't work if I let you see how awful I am!" "No, of course it wouldn't work. How could it? I wasn't helping you, Herzchen." He tugged at her hair to bring her face up to his, kissed her eyelids, her wet cheeks, the corners of her mouth. "It's my fault, Herzchen, not yours. I was paying you back; I wanted to see how far you could go without encouragement. But I think I have mistaken your motives, nicht wahr?" His voice had grown thicker, more German. "And I say, if this is what you want you shall have it, but it shall be together." "Please, Rain, let's call it off! I haven't got what it takes. I'll only disappoint you!" "Oh, you've got it, Herzchen, I've seen it on the stage. How can you doubt yourself when you're with me?" Which was so right her tears dried. "Kiss me the way you did in Rome," she whispered. Only it wasn't like the kiss in Rome at all. That had been something raw, startled, explosive; this was very languorous and deep, an oppor- tunity to taste and smell and feel, settle by layers into voluptuous ease. Her fingers returned to the buttons, his went to the zipper of her dress, then he covered her hand with his and thrust it inside his shirt, across skin matted with fine soft hair. The sudden hardening of his mouth against her throat brought a helpless re- sponse so acute she felt faint, thought she was falling and found she had, flat on the silky rug with Rain looming above her. His shirt had come off, perhaps more, she couldn't see, only the fire glancing off his shoulders spread over her, and the beautiful stern mouth. Determined to destroy its discipline for all time, she locked her fingers in his hair and made him kiss her again, harder, harder! THE THORN BIRDS / 623

And the feel of him! Like coming home, recognizing every part of him with her lips and hands and body, yet fabulous and strange. While the world sank down to the minute width of the firelight lapping against darkness, she opened herself to what he wanted, and learned something he had kept entirely concealed for as long as she had known him; that he must have made love to her in imagination a thousand times. Her own experience and newborn intuition told her so. She was completely disarmed. With any other man the intimacy and astonishing sensuality would have appalled her, but he forced her to see that these were things only she had the right to command. And command them she did. Until finally she cried for him to finish it, her arms about him so strongly she could feel the contours of his very bones. The minutes wore away, wrapped in a sated peace. They had fallen into an identical rhythm of breathing, slow and easy, his head against her shoulder, her leg thrown across him. Gradually her rigid clasp on his back relaxed, became a dreamy, circular caress. He sighed, turned over and reversed the way they were lying, quite unconsciously inviting her to slide still deeper into the pleasure of being with him. She put her palm on his flank to feel the texture of his skin, slid her hand across warm muscle and cupped it around the soft, heavy mass in his groin. To feel the curiously alive, inde- pendent movements within it was a sensation quite new to her; her past lovers had never interested her sufficiently to want to prolong her sexual curiosity to this languid and undemanding aftermath. Yet suddenly it wasn't languid and undemanding at all, but so enormously exciting she wanted him all over again. Still she was taken unaware, knew a suffocated surprise when he slipped his arms across her back, took her head in his hands and held her close enough to see there was nothing controlled about his mouth, shaped now solely because of her, and for her. Tender- ness and 624 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

humility were literally born in her in that moment. It must have shown in her face, for he was gazing at her with eyes grown so bright she couldn't bear them, and bent over to take his upper lip between her own. Thoughts and senses merged at last, but her cry was smothered soundless, an unuttered wail of gladness which shook her so deeply she lost awareness of everything beyond im- pulse, the mindless guidance of each urgent minute. The world achieved its ultimate contraction, turned in upon itself, and totally disappeared. Rainer must have kept the fire going, for when gentle London daylight soaked through the folds of the curtains the room was still warm. This time when he moved Justine became conscious of it, and clutched his arm fearfully. "Don't go!" "I'm not, Herzchen." He twitched another pillow from the sofa, pushed it behind his head and shifted her closer in to his side, sighing softly. "All right?" "Are you cold?" "No, but if you are we could go to bed." "After making love to you for hours on a fur rug? What a comedown! Even if your sheets are black silk." "They're ordinary old white ones, cotton. This bit of Drogheda is all right, isn't it?" "Bit of Drogheda?" "The rug! It's made of Drogheda kangaroos," she explained. "Not nearly exotic or erotic enough. I'll order you a tiger skin from India." "Reminds me of a poem I heard once: Would you like to sin With Elinor Glyn On a tiger skin? Or would you prefer THE THORN BIRDS / 625

To err with her On some other fur? "Well, Herzchen, I must say it's high time you bounced back! Between the demands of Eros and Morpheus, you haven't been flippant in half a day." He smiled. "I don't feel the need at the moment," she said with an answering smile, settling his hand comfortably between her legs. "The tiger skin doggerel just popped out because it was too good to resist, but I haven't got a single skeleton left to hide from you, so there's not much point in flippancy, is there?" She sniffed, suddenly aware of a faint odor of stale fish drifting on the air. "Heavens, you didn't get any dinner and now it's time for breakfast! I can't expect you to live on love!" "Not if you expect such strenuous demonstrations of it, anyway." "Go on, you enjoyed every moment of it." "Indeed I did." He sighed, stretched, yawned. "I wonder if you have any idea how happy I am." "Oh, I think so," she said quietly. He raised himself on one elbow to look at her. "Tell me, was Desdemona the only reason you came back to London?" Grabbing his ear, she tweaked it painfully. "Now it's my turn to pay you back for all those headmasterish questions! What do you think?" He prized her fingers away easily, grinning. "If you don't answer me, Herzchen, I'll strangle you far more permanently than Marc does." "I came back to London to do Desdemona, but because of you. I haven't been able to call my life my own since you kissed me in Rome, and well you know it. You're a very intelligent man, Rainer Moerling Hartheim." "Intelligent enough to have known I wanted you for my wife al- most the first moment I saw you," he said. 626 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

She sat up quickly. "Wife?" "Wife. If I'd wanted you for my mistress I'd have taken you years ago, and I could have. I know how your mind works; it would have been relatively easy. The only reason I didn't was because I wanted you for my wife and I knew you weren't ready to accept the idea of a husband." "I don't know that I am now," she said, digesting it. He got to his feet, pulling her up to stand against him. "Well, you can put in a little practice by getting me some breakfast. If this was my house I'd do the honors, but in your kitchen you're the cook." "I don't mind getting your breakfast this morning, but theoretic- ally to commit myself until the day I die?" She shook her head. "I don't think that's my cup of tea, Rain." It was the same Roman emperor's face, and imperially unper- turbed by threats of insurrection. "Justine, this is not something to play with, nor am I someone to play with. There's plenty of time. You have every reason to know I can be patient. But get it out of your head entirely that this can be settled in any way but marriage. I have no wish to be known as anyone less important to you than a husband." "I'm not giving up acting!" she said aggressively. "Verfluchte Kiste, did I ask you to? Grow up, Justine! Anyone would think I was condemning you to a life sentence over a sink and stove! We're not exactly on the breadline, you know. You can have as many servants as you want, nannies for the children, whatever else is necessary." "Erk!" said Justine, who hadn't thought of children. He threw back his head and laughed. "Oh, Herzchen, this is what's known as the morning after with a vengeance! I'm a fool to bring up realities so soon, I know, but all you have to do at this stage is think about them. Though I give you fair warning—while you're making THE THORN BIRDS / 627

your decision, remember that if I can't have you for my wife, I don't want you at all." She threw her arms around him, clinging fiercely. "Oh, Rain, don't make it so hard!" she cried. Alone, Dane drove his Lagonda up the Italian boot, past Perugia, Firenze, Bologna, Ferrara, Padova, better by-pass Venezia, spend the night in Trieste. It was one of his favorite cities, so he stayed on the Adriatic coast a further two days before heading up the mountain road to Ljubljana, another night in Zagreb. Down the great Sava River valley amid fields blue with chicory flowers to Beograd, thence to Nis, another night. Macedonia and Skopje, still in crumbling ruins from the earthquake two years before; and Tito- Veles the vacation city, quaintly Turkish with its mosques and minarets. All the way down Yugoslavia he had eaten frugally, too ashamed to sit with a great plate of meat in front of him when the people of the country contented themselves with bread. The Greek border at Evzone, beyond it Thessalonika. The Italian papers had been full of the revolution brewing in Greece; standing in his hotel bedroom window watching the bobbing thousands of flaming torches moving restlessly in the darkness of a Thessalonika night, he was glad Justine had not come. "Pap-an-dre-ou! Pap-an-dre-ou! Pap-an-dre-ou!" the crowds roared, chanting, milling among the torches until after midnight. But revolution was a phenomenon of cities, of dense concentra- tions of people and poverty; the scarred countryside of Thessaly must still look as it had looked to Caesar's legions, marching across the stubble-burned fields to Pompey at Pharsala. Shepherds slept in the shade of skin tents, storks stood one-legged in nests atop little old white buildings, and everywhere was a terrifying aridity. It reminded him, with its high clear sky, its brown treeless wastes, of Australia. And he 628 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

breathed of it deeply, began to smile at the thought of going home. Mum would understand, when he talked to her. Above Larisa he came onto the sea, stopped the car and got out. Homer's wine-dark sea, a delicate clear aquamarine near the beaches, purple-stained like grapes as it stretched to the curving horizon. On a greensward far below him stood a tiny round pillared temple, very white in the sun, and on the rise of the hill behind him a frowning Crusader fortress endured. Greece, you are very beautiful, more beautiful than Italy, for all that I love Italy. But here is the cradle, forever. Panting to be in Athens, he pushed on, gunned the red sports car up the switchbacks of the Domokos Pass and descended its other side into Boeotia, a stunning panorama of olive groves, rusty hillsides, mountains. Yet in spite of his haste he stopped to look at the oddly Hollywoodish monument to Leonidas and his Spartans at Thermopylae. The stone said: "Stranger, go tell the Spartans that here we lie, in obedience to their command." It struck a chord in him, almost seemed to be words he might have heard in a different context; he shivered and went on quickly. In melted sun he paused for a while above Kamena Voura, swam in the clear water looking across the narrow strait to Euboea; there must the thousand ships have sailed from Aulis, on their way to Troy. It was a strong current, swirling seaward; they must not have had to ply their oars very hard. The ecstatic cooings and strokings of the ancient black-garbed crone in the bathhouse embarrassed him; he couldn't get away from her fast enough. People never re- ferred to his beauty to his face anymore, so most of the time he was able to forget it. Delaying only to buy a couple of huge, custard- filled cakes in the shop, he went on down the Attic coast and finally came to Athens as the sun was setting, gilding the great rock and its precious crown of pillars. THE THORN BIRDS / 629

But Athens was tense and vicious, and the open admiration of the women mortified him; Roman women were more sophisticated, subtle. There was a feeling in the crowds, pockets of rioting, grim determination on the part of the people to have Papandreou. No, Athens wasn't herself; better to be elsewhere. He put the Lagonda in a garage and took the ferry to Crete. And there at last, amid the olive groves, the wild thyme and the mountains, he found his peace. After a long bus ride with trussed chickens screeching and the all-pervasive reek of garlic in his nostrils, he found a tiny white-painted inn with an arched colonnade and three umbrellaed tables outside on the flagstones, gay Greek bags hanging festooned like lanterns. Pepper trees and Australian gum trees, planted from the new South Land in soil too arid for European trees. The gut roar of cicadas. Dust, swirling in red clouds. At night he slept in a tiny cell-like room with shutters wide open, in the hush of dawn he celebrated a solitary Mass, during the day he walked. No one bothered him, he bothered no one. But as he passed the dark eyes of the peasants would follow him in slow amazement, and every face would crease deeper in a smile. It was hot, and so quiet, and very sleepy. Perfect peace. Day followed day, like beads slipping through a leathery Cretan hand. Voicelessly he prayed, a feeling, an extension of what lay all through him, thoughts like beads, days like beads. Lord, I am truly Thine. For Thy many blessings I thank Thee. For the great Cardinal, his help, his deep friendship, his unfailing love. For Rome and the chance to be at Thy heart, to have lain prostrate before Thee in Thine own basilica, to have felt the rock of Thy Church within me. Thou hast blessed me above my worth; what can I do for Thee, to show my appreciation? I have not suffered enough. My life has been one long, absolute joy since I began in Thy service. I must suffer, and Thou Who suffered will know that. It is only through 630 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

suffering that I may rise above myself, understand Thee better. For that is what this life is: the passage toward understanding Thy mystery. Plunge Thy spear into my breast, bury it there so deeply I am never able to withdraw it! Make me suffer... For Thee I forsake all others, even my mother and my sister and the Cardinal. Thou alone art my pain, my joy. Abase me and I shall sing Thy beloved Name. Destroy me, and I shall rejoice. I love Thee. Only Thee... He had come to the little beach where he liked to swim, a yellow crescent between beetling cliffs, and stood for a moment looking across the Mediterranean to what must be Libya, far below the dark horizon. Then he leaped lightly down the steps to the sand, kicked off his sneakers, picked them up, and trod through the softly yielding contours to the spot where he usually dropped shoes, shirt, outer shorts. Two young Englishmen talking in drawling Oxford accents lay like broiling lobsters not far away, and beyond them two women drowsily speaking in German. Dane glanced at the women and self-consciously hitched his swimsuit, aware they had stopped conversing and had sat up to pat their hair, smile at him. "How goes it?" he asked the Englishmen, though in his mind he called them what all Australians call the English, Pommies. They seemed to be fixtures, since they were on the beach every day. "Splendidly, old boy. Watch the current—it's too strong for us. Storm out there somewhere." "Thanks." Dane grinned, ran down to the innocently curling wavelets and dived cleanly into shallow water like the expert surfer he was. Amazing, how deceptive calm water could be. The current was vicious, he could feel it tugging at his legs to draw him under, but he was too strong a swimmer to be worried by it. Head down, he slid smoothly through the water, reveling in the coolness, the free- dom. When he paused and scanned the beach he saw the THE THORN BIRDS / 631

two German women pulling on their caps, running down laughing to the waves. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he called to them in Ger- man to stay in shallow water because of the current. Laughing, they waved acknowledgment. He put his head down then, swam again, and thought he heard a cry. But he swam a little farther, then stopped to tread water in a spot where the undertow wasn't so bad. There were cries; as he turned he saw the women struggling, their twisted faces screaming, one with her hands up, sinking. On the beach the two Englishmen had risen to their feet and were re- luctantly approaching the water. He flipped over onto his belly and flashed through the water, closer and closer. Panicked arms reached for him, clung to him, dragged him under; he managed to grip one woman around the waist long enough to stun her with a swift clip on the chin, then grabbed the other by the strap of her swimsuit, shoved his knee hard into her spine and winded her. Coughing, for he had swal- lowed water when he went under, he turned on his back and began towing his helpless burdens in. The two Pommies were standing shoulder-deep, too frightened to venture any farther, for which Dane didn't blame them in the least. His toes just touched the sand; he sighed in relief. Exhausted, he exerted a last superhuman effort and thrust the women to safety. Fast regaining their senses, they began screaming again, thrashing about wildly. Gasping, Dane managed a grin. He had done his bit; the Poms could take over now. While he rested, chest heaving, the current had sucked him out again, his feet no longer brushed the bottom even when he stretched them downward. It had been a close call. If he hadn't been present they would certainly have drowned; the Poms hadn't the strength or skill to save them. But, said a voice, they only wanted to swim so they could be near you; until they saw you they 632 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

hadn't any intention of going in. It was your fault they were in danger, your fault. And as he floated easily a terrible pain blossomed in his chest, surely as a spear would feel, one long and red-hot shaft of screaming agony. He cried out, threw his arms up above his head, stiffening, muscles convulsed; but the pain grew worse, forced his arms down again, thrust his fists into his armpits, brought up his knees. My heart! I'm having a heart attack, I'm dying! My heart! I don't want to die! Not yet, not before I've begun my work, not before I've had a chance to prove myself! Dear Lord, help me! I don't want to die, I don't want to die! The spasmed body stilled, relaxed; Dane turned onto his back, let his arms float wide and limp in spite of the pain. Wet-lashed, he stared up at the soaring vault of the sky. This is it; this is Thy spear, that I in my pride begged for not an hour ago. Give me the chance to suffer, I said, make me suffer. Now when it comes I resist, not capable of perfect love. Dearest Lord, Thy pain! I must accept it, I must not fight it, I must not fight Thy will. Thy hand is mighty and this is Thy pain, as Thou must have felt it on the Cross. My God, my God, I am Thine! If this is Thy will, so be it. Like a child I put myself into Thy infinite hand. Thou art too good to me. What have I done to deserve so much from Thee, and from the people who love me better than they love anyone else? Why hast Thou given me so much, when I am not worthy? The pain, the pain! Thou art so good to me. Let it not be long, I asked, and it has not been long. My suffering will be short, quickly over. Soon I shall see Thy face, but now, still in this life, I thank Thee. The pain! My dearest Lord, Thou art too good to me. I love Thee! A huge tremor passed through the still, waiting body. His lips moved, murmured a Name, tried to smile. Then the pupils dilated, drove all the blue from his eyes forever. Safe on the beach at last, the two Englishmen THE THORN BIRDS / 633

dumped their weeping charges on the sand and stood looking for him. But the placid deep blue sea was empty, vast; the wavelets ran up rushing and retreated. Dane was gone. Someone thought of the United States Air Force station nearby, and ran for help. Not thirty minutes after Dane had disappeared a helicopter took off, beat the air frantically and swooped in ever-in- creasing circles outward from the beach, searching. No one expected to see anything. Drowned men sank to the bottom and didn't come up for days. An hour passed; then fifteen miles out to sea they sighted Dane floating peacefully on the bosom of the deep, arms outstretched, face turned up to the sky. For a moment they thought he was alive and cheered, but as the craft came low enough to throw the water into hissing foam, it was plain he was dead. The coordinates were given over the helicopter's radio, a launch sped out, and three hours later returned. Word had spread. The Cretans had loved to see him pass, loved to exchange a few shy words. Loved him, though they didn't know him. They flocked down to the sea, women all in black like dowdy birds, men in old-fashioned baggy trousers, white shirts open at the collar and sleeves rolled up. And stood in silent groups, waiting. When the launch came in a burly master sergeant sprang out onto the sand, turned back to receive a blanket-draped form into his arms. He marched a few feet up the beach beyond the water line, and with the help of another man laid his burden down. The blanket fell apart; there was a high, rustling whisper from the Cretans. They came crowding around, pressing crucifixes to weather-beaten lips, the women softly keening, a wordless ohhhh- hhhh! that had almost a melody in it, mournful, patient, earth- bound, female. It was about five in the afternoon; the barred sun was sliding westward behind the frowning cliff, but was 634 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

still high enough to light up the little dark cluster on the beach, the long, still form on the sand with its golden skin, its closed eyes whose lashes were spiky from drying salt, the faint smile on the blued lips. A stretcher was brought forward, then all together Cretans and American servicemen bore Dane away. Athens was in turmoil, rioting crowds overturning all order, but the USAF colonel got through to his superiors on a special fre- quency band, Dane's blue Australian passport in his hand. It said, as such documents do, nothing about him. His profession was simply marked "Student," and in the back under next of kin Justine's name was listed, with her London address. Unconcerned by the legal meaning of the term, he had put her name because London was far closer to Rome than Drogheda. In his little room at the inn, the square black case which housed his priestly implements had not been opened; it waited with his suitcase for directions as to where it should be sent. When the phone rang at nine in the morning Justine rolled over, opened a bleary eye and lay cursing it, vowing she would have the bloody thing disconnected. Because the rest of the world thought it only right and proper to commence whatever they did at nine in the morning, why did they assume the same of her? But it rang, and rang, and rang. Maybe it was Rain; that thought tipped the balance toward consciousness, and Justine got up, slopped reeling out to the living room. The German parliament was in urgent session; she hadn't seen Rain in a week and hadn't been optimistic about her chances of seeing him for at least another week. But perhaps the crisis had resolved, and he was calling to tell her he was on his way over. "Hello?" "Miss Justine O'Neill?" "Yes, speaking." "This is Australia House, in the Aldwych, you THE THORN BIRDS / 635

know?" The voice had an English inflection, gave a name she was too tired to hear because she was still assimilating the fact that the voice was not Rain's. "Okay, Australia House." Yawning, she stood on one foot and scratched its top with the sole of the other. "Do you have a brother, a Mr. Dane O'Neill?" Justine's eyes opened. "Yes, I do." "Is he at present in Greece, Miss O'Neill?" Both feet settled into the rug, stood braced. "Yes, that's right," It did not occur to her to correct the voice, explain it was Father, not Mister. "Miss O'Neill, I very much regret to say that it is my unfortunate duty to give you some bad news." "Bad news? Bad news? What is it? What's the matter? What's happened?" "I regret to have to inform you that your brother, Mr. Dane O'Neill, was drowned yesterday in Crete, I understand in heroic circumstances, performing a sea rescue. However, you realize there is a revolution in Greece, and what information we have is sketchy and possibly not accurate." The phone stood on a table near the wall and Justine leaned against the solid support the wall offered. Her knees buckled, she began to slide very slowly downward, wound up in a curled heap on the floor. Not laughing and not crying, she made noises some- where in between, audible gasps. Dane drowned. Gasp. Dane dead. Gasp. Crete, Dane, drowned. Gasp. Dead, dead. "Miss O'Neill? Are you there, Miss O'Neill?" asked the voice insistently. Dead. Drowned. My brother! "Miss O'Neill, answer me!" "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Oh, God, I'm here!" "I understand you are his next of kin, therefore we must have your instructions as to what to do with the body. Miss O'Neill, are you there?" "Yes, yes!" 636 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

the dial tone. Justine sat on the floor and let it slip into her lap. There was a mistake, it would all sort itself out. Dane drowned, when he swam like a champion? No, it wasn't true. But it is, Justine, you know it is, you didn't go with him to protect him and he drowned. You were his protector from the time he was a baby and you should have been there. If you couldn't save him, you should have been there to drown with him. And the only reason you didn't go with him was because you wanted to be in London so you could get Rain to make love to you. Thinking was so hard. Everything was so hard. Nothing seemed to work, not even her legs. She couldn't get up, she would never get up again. There was no room in her mind for anyone but Dane, and her thoughts went in ever-diminishing circles around Dane. Until she thought of her mother, the Drogheda people. Oh, God. The news would come there, come to her, come to them. Mum didn't even have the lovely last sight of his face in Rome. They'll send the cable to the Gilly police, I suppose, and old Sergeant Ern will climb into his car and drive out all the miles to Drogheda, to tell my mother that her only son is dead. Not the right man for the job, and an almost-stranger. Mrs. O'Neill, my deepest, most heartfelt regrets, your son is dead. Perfunctory, courteous, empty words... No! I can't let them do that to her, not to her, she is my mother, too! Not that way, not the way I had to hear it. She pulled the other part of the phone off the table onto her lap, put the receiver to her ear and dialed the operator. "Switch? Trunks, please, international. Hello? I want to place an urgent call to Australia, Gillanbone one-two-one-two. And please, please hurry." Meggie answered the phone herself. It was late, Fee had gone to bed. These days she never felt like seeking 638 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

her own bed early, she preferred to sit listening to the crickets and frogs, doze over a book, remember. "Hello?" "London calling, Mrs. O'Neill," said Hazel in Gilly. "Hello, Justine," Meggie said, not perturbed. Jussy called, infre- quently, to see how everything was. "Mum? Is that you, Mum?" "Yes, it's Mum here," said Meggie gently, sensing Justine's dis- tress. "Oh, Mum! Oh, Mum!" There was what sounded like a gasp, or a sob. "Mum, Dane's dead. Dane's dead!" A pit opened at her feet. Down and down and down it went, and had no bottom. Meggie slid into it, felt its lips close over her head, and understood that she would never come out again as long as she lived. What more could the gods do? She hadn't known when she asked it. How could she have asked it, how could she not have known? Don't tempt the gods, they love it. In not going to see him in this most beautiful moment of his life, share it with him, she had finally thought to make the payment. Dane would be free of it, and free of her. In not seeing the face which was dearer to her than all other faces, she would repay. The pit closed in, suf- focating. Meggie stood there, and realized it was too late. "Justine, my dearest, be calm," said Meggie strongly, not a falter in her voice. "Calm yourself and tell me. Are you sure?" "Australia House called me—they thought I was his next of kin. Some dreadful man who only wanted to know what I wanted done with the body. 'The body,' he kept calling Dane. As if he wasn't entitled to it anymore, as if it was anyone's." Meggie heard her sob. "God! I suppose the poor man hated what he was doing. Oh, Mum, Dane's dead!" "How, Justine? Where? In Rome? Why hasn't Ralph called me?" THE THORN BIRDS / 639

At law he's mine again, he doesn't belong to the Church and they can't stop me. I'll phone Australia House right away, and the em- bassy in Athens if I can get through. He must come home! I'd hate to think of him lying somewhere far from Drogheda. Here is where he belongs, he'll have to come home. Come with him, Justine." But Justine sat in a heap, shaking her head as if her mother could see. Come home? She could never come home again. If she had gone with Dane he wouldn't be dead. Come home, and have to look at her mother's face every day for the rest of her life? No, it didn't bear thinking of. "No, Mum," she said, the tears rolling down her skin, hot like molten metal. Who on earth ever said people most moved don't weep? They don't know anything about it. "I shall stay here and work. I'll come home with Dane, but then I'm going back. I can't live on Drogheda." For three days they waited in a purposeless vacuum, Justine in London, Meggie and the family on Drogheda, stretching the official silence into tenuous hope. Oh, surely after so long it would turn out to be a mistake, surely if it was true they would have heard by now! Dane would come in Justine's front door smiling, and say it was all a silly mistake. Greece was in revolt, all sorts of silly mis- takes must have been made. Dane would come in the door and laugh the idea of his death to scorn, he'd stand there tall and strong and alive, and he'd laugh. Hope began to grow, and grew with every minute they waited. Treacherous, horrible hope. He wasn't dead, no! Not drowned, not Dane who was a good enough swim- mer to brave any kind of sea and live. So they waited, not acknow- ledging what had happened in the hope it would prove to be a mistake. Time later to notify people, let Rome know. On the fourth morning Justine got the message. Like THE THORN BIRDS / 641

an old woman she picked up the receiver once more, and asked for Australia. "Mum?" "Justine?" "Oh, Mum, they've buried him already; we can't bring him home! What are we going to do? All they can say is that Crete is a big place, the name of the village isn't known, by the time the cable arrived he'd already been spirited away somewhere and disposed of. He's lying in an unmarked grave somewhere! I can't get a visa for Greece, no one wants to help, it's chaos. What are we going to do, Mum?" "Meet me in Rome, Justine," said Meggie. Everyone save Anne Mueller was there around the phone, still in shock. The men seemed to have aged twenty years in three days, and Fee, shrunken birdlike, white and crabbed, drifted about the house saying over and over, "Why couldn't it have been me? Why did they have to take him? I'm so old, so old! I wouldn't have minded going, why did it have to be him? Why couldn't it have been me? I'm so old!" Anne had collapsed, and Mrs. Smith, Minnie and Cat walked, slept tears. Meggie stared at them silently as she put the phone down. This was Drogheda, all that was left. A little cluster of old men and old women, sterile and broken. "Dane's lost," she said. "No one can find him; he's been buried somewhere on Crete. It's so far away! How could he rest so far from Drogheda? I'm going to Rome, to Ralph de Bricassart. If anyone can help us, he can." Cardinal de Bricassart's secretary entered his room. "Your Eminence, I'm sorry to disturb you, but a lady wishes to see you. I explained that there is a congress, that you are very busy and cannot see anyone, but she says she will sit in the vestibule until you have time for her." "Is she in trouble, Father?" 642 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Yet when he lifted his face from his hands her dead cold heart bounded, twisted, leaped. It was Dane's face, with a suffering written upon it that Dane would never live to feel. Oh, thank God! Thank God he's dead, can never now go through what this man has, what I have. Better he's dead than to suffer something like this. "How can I help, Meggie?" he asked quietly, suppressing his own emotions to don the soul-deep guise of her spiritual counselor. "Greece is in chaos. They've buried Dane somewhere on Crete, and I can't find out where, when, why. Except I suppose that my instructions directing that he be flown home were endlessly delayed by the civil war, and Crete is hot like Australia. When no one claimed him, I suppose they thought he had no one, and buried him." She leaned forward in her chair tensely. "I want my boy back, Ralph, I want him found and brought home to sleep where he be- longs, on Drogheda. I promised Jims I'd keep him on Drogheda and I will, if I have to crawl on my hands and knees through every graveyard on Crete. No fancy Roman priest's tomb for him, Ralph, not as long as I'm alive to put up a legal battle. He's to come home." "No one is going to deny you that, Meggie," he said gently. "It's consecrated Catholic ground, which is all the Church asks. I too have requested that I be buried on Drogheda." "I can't get through all the red tape," she went on, as if he hadn't spoken. "I can't speak Greek, and I have no power or influence. So I came to you, to use yours. Get me back my son, Ralph!" "Don't worry, Meggie, we'll get him back, though it may not be very quickly. The Left are in charge now, and they're very anti- Catholic. However, I'm not without friends in Greece, so it will be done. Let me start the wheels in motion immediately, and don't worry. He is a priest of the Holy Catholic Church, we'll get him back." THE THORN BIRDS / 645

His hand had gone to the bell cord, but Meggie's coldly fierce gaze stilled it. "You don't understand, Ralph. I don't want wheels set in motion. I want my son back—not next week or next month, but now! You speak Greek, you can get visas for yourself and me, you'll get res- ults. I want you to come to Greece with me now, and help me get my son back." There was much in his eyes: tenderness, compassion, shock, grief. But they had become the priest's eyes too, sane, logical, reasonable. "Meggie, I love your son as if he were my own, but I can't leave Rome at the moment. I'm not a free agent—you above all others should know that. No matter how much I may feel for you, how much I may feel on my own account, I can't leave Rome in the midst of a vital congress. I am the Holy Father's aide." She reared back, stunned and outraged, then shook her head, half-smiling as if at the antics of some inanimate object beyond her power to influence; then she trembled, licked her lips, seemed to come to a decision and sat up straight and stiff. "Do you really love my son as if he were your own, Ralph?" she asked. "What would you do for a son of yours? Could you sit back then and say to his mother, No, I'm very sorry, I can't possibly take the time off? Could you say that to the mother of your son?" Dane's eyes, yet not Dane's eyes. Looking at her; bewildered, full of pain, helpless. "I have no son," he said, "but among the many, many things I learned from yours was that no matter how hard it is, my first and only allegiance is to Almighty God." "Dane was your son too," said Meggie. He stared at her blankly. "What?" "I said, Dane was your son too. When I left Matlock Island I was pregnant. Dane was yours, not Luke O'Neill's." 646 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

would I have given you a weapon like knowing he was yours. Ex- cept for this. Except for this! For nothing less would I have told you. Though I don't suppose it matters now. He doesn't belong to either of us anymore. He belongs to God." Cardinal de Bricassart chartered a private plane in Athens; he, Meggie and Justine brought Dane home to Drogheda, the living sitting silently, the dead lying silently on a bier, requiring nothing of this earth any-more. I have to say this Mass, this Requiem for my son. Bone of my bone, my son. Yes, Meggie, I believe you. Once I had my breath back I would even have believed you without that terrible oath you swore. Vittorio knew the minute he set eyes on the boy, and in my heart I, too, must have known. Your laugh behind the roses from the boy—but my eyes looking up at me, as they used to be in my innocence. Fee knew. Anne Mueller knew. But not we men. We weren't fit to be told. For so you women think, and hug your mysteries, getting your backs on us for the slight God did you in not creating you in His Image. Vittorio knew, but it was the woman in him stilled his tongue. A masterly revenge. Say it, Ralph de Bricassart, open your mouth, move your hands in the blessing, begin to chant the Latin for the soul of the departed. Who was your son. Whom you loved more than you loved his mother. Yes, more! For he was yourself all over again, in a more perfect mold. "In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti... " The chapel was packed; they were all there who could be there. The Kings, the O'Rourkes, the Davieses, the Pughs, the MacQueens, the Gordons, the Carmichaels, the Hopetons. And the Clearys, the Drogheda people. Hope blighted, light gone. At the front in a great lead-lined casket, Father Dane O'Neill, covered 648 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

in roses. Why were the roses always out when he came back to Drogheda? It was October, high spring. Or course they were out. The time was right. "Sanctus...sanctus...sanctus..." Be warned that the Holy of Holies is upon you. My Dane, my beautiful son. It is better so. I wouldn't have wanted you to come to this, what I already am. Why I say this for you, I don't know. You don't need it, you never needed it. What I grope for, you knew by instinct. It isn't you who is unhappy, it's those of us here, left behind. Pity us, and when our times come, help us. "Ite, Missa est...Requiescat in pace..." Out across the lawn, down past the ghost gums, the roses, the pepper trees, to the cemetery. Sleep on, Dane, because only the good die young. Why do we mourn? You're lucky, to have escaped this weary life so soon. Perhaps that's what Hell is, a long term in earth-bound bondage. Perhaps we suffer our hells in living... The day passed, the mourners departed, the Drogheda people crept about the house and avoided each other; Cardinal Ralph looked early at Meggie, and could not bear to look again. Justine left with Jean and Boy King to catch the afternoon plane for Sydney, the night plane for London. He never remembered hearing her husky bewitching voice, or seeing those odd pale eyes. From the time when she had met him and Meggie in Athens to the time when she went with Jean and Boy King she had been like a ghost, her camouflage pulled closely around her. Why hadn't she called Rainer Hartheim, asked him to be with her? Surely she knew how much he loved her, how much he would want to be with her now? But the thought never stayed long enough in Cardinal Ralph's tired mind to call Rainer himself, though he had wondered about it off and on since before leaving Rome. They were strange, the Drogheda people. They didn't like company in grief; they preferred to be alone with their pain. THE THORN BIRDS / 649

Only Fee and Meggie sat with Cardinal Ralph in the drawing room after a dinner left uneaten. No one said a word; the ormolu clock on the marble mantel ticked thunderously, and Mary Carson's painted eyes stared a mute challenge across the room to Fee's grandmother. Fee and Meggie sat together on a cream sofa, shoulders lightly touching; Cardinal Ralph never remembered their being so close in the old days. But they said nothing, did not look at each other or at him. He tried to see what it was he had done wrong. Too much wrong, that was the trouble. Pride, ambition, a certain unscrupulousness. And love for Meggie flowering among them. But the crowning glory of that love he had never known. What difference would it have made to know his son was his son? Was it possible to love the boy more than he had? Would he have pursued a different path if he had known about his son? Yes! cried his heart. No, sneered his brain. He turned on himself bitterly. Fool! You ought to have known Meggie was incapable of going back to Luke. You ought to have known at once whose child Dane was. She was so proud of him! All she could get from you, that was what she said to you in Rome. Well, Meggie... In him you got the best of it. Dear God, Ralph, how could you not have known he was yours? You ought to have realized it when he came to you a man grown, if not before. She was waiting for you to see it, dying for you to see it; if only you had, she would have gone on her knees to you. But you were blind. You didn't want to see. Ralph Raoul, Cardinal de Bricassart, that was what you wanted; more than her, more than your son. More than your son! The room had become filled with tiny cries, rustles, whispers; the clock was ticking in time with his heart. And then it wasn't in time anymore. He had got out of step with it. Meggie and Fee were swimming to their feet, drifting with frightened faces in a watery insubstancial 650 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

mist, saying things to him he couldn't seem to hear. "Aaaaaaah!" he cried, understanding. He was hardly conscious of the pain, intent only on Meggie's arms around him, the way his head sank against her. But he man- aged to turn until he could see her eyes, and looked at her. He tried to say, Forgive me, and saw she had forgiven him long ago. She knew she had got the best of it. Then he wanted to say something so perfect she would be eternally consoled, and realized that wasn't necessary, either. Whatever she was, she could bear anything. Anything! So he closed his eyes and let himself feel, that last time, forgetfulness in Meggie. THE THORN BIRDS / 651

SEVEN 1965–1969 JUSTINE 653

19 Sitting at his Bonn desk with an early-morning cup of coffee, Rainer learned of Cardinal de Bricassart's death from his newspaper. The political storm of the past few weeks was diminishing at last, so he had settled to enjoy his reading with the prospect of soon seeing Justine to color his mood, and unperturbed by her recent silence. That he deemed typical; she was far from ready yet to admit the extent of her commitment to him. But the news of the Cardinal's death drove all thought of Justine away. Ten minutes later he was behind the wheel of a Mercedes 280 SL, heading for the autobahn. The poor old man Vittorio would be so alone, and his burden was heavy at the best of times. Quicker to drive; by the time he fiddled around waiting for a flight, got to and from airports, he could be at the Vatican. And it was something positive to do, something he could control himself, al- ways an important consideration to a man like him. From Cardinal Vittorio he learned the whole story, too shocked at first to wonder why Justine hadn't thought to contact him. "He came to me and asked me, did I know Dane was his son?" the gentle voice said, while the gentle hands smoothed the blue- grey back of Natasha. 655

borne fruit. Into Rainer's hands he had delivered the future welfare of Meggie O'Neill and her people. Or so Rainer interpreted it, for the wording of the Cardinal's will was quite impersonal. It could not dare be otherwise. He threw the packet into the basket for general non-secret corres- pondence, immediate reply, and opened the letter from Justine. It began badly, without any kind of salutation. Thank you for the cable. You've no idea how glad I am that we haven't been in touch these last couple of weeks, be- cause I would have hated to have you around. At the time all I could think when I thought of you was, thank God you didn't know. You may find this hard to understand, but I don't want you anywhere near me. There is nothing pretty about grief, Rain, nor any way your witnessing mine could alleviate it. Indeed, you might say this has proved to me how little I love you. If I did truly love you I'd turn to you instinct- ively, wouldn't I? But I find myself turning away. Therefore I would much rather that we call it quits for good and all, Rain. I have nothing to give you, and I want nothing from you. This has taught me how much people mean if they're around for twenty-six years. I couldn't bear ever to go through this again, and you said it yourself, remember? Marriage or nothing. Well, I elect nothing. My mother tells me the old Cardinal died a few hours after I left Drogheda. Funny. Mum was quite cut up about his dy- ing. Not that she said anything, but I know her. Beats me why she and Dane and you liked him so much. I never could, I thought he was too smarmy for words. An opinion I'm not prepared to change just because he's dead. THE THORN BIRDS / 657

And that's it. All there is. I do mean what I say, Rain. Nothing is what I elect to have from you. Look after yourself. She had signed it with the usual bold, black "Justine," and it was written with the new felt-tipped pen she had hailed so gleefully when he gave it to her, as an instrument thick and dark and positive enough to satisfy her. He didn't fold the note and put it in his wallet, or burn it; he did what he did with all mail not requiring an answer—ran it through the electric shredder fixed to his wastebasket the minute he had finished reading it. Thinking to himself that Dane's death had ef- fectively put an end to Justine's emotional awakening, and bitterly unhappy. It wasn't fair. He had waited so long. At the weekend he flew to London anyway but not to see her, though he did see her. On the stage, as the Moor's beloved wife, Desdemona. Formidable. There was nothing he could do for her the stage couldn't, not for a while. That's my good girl! Pour it all out on the stage. Only she couldn't pour it all out on the stage, for she was too young to play Hecuba. The stage was simply the one place offering peace and forgetfulness. She could only tell herself: Time heals all wounds—while not believing it. Asking herself why it should go on hurting so. When Dane was alive she hadn't really thought very much about him except when she was with him, and after they were grown up their time together had been limited, their vocations almost opposed. But his going had created a gap so huge she des- paired of ever filling it. The shock of having to pull herself up in the midst of a spontan- eous reaction—I must remember to tell Dane about this, he'll get such a kick out of it—that was what hurt the most. And because it kept on occurring 658 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

so often, it prolonged the grief. Had the circumstances surrounding his death been less horrifying she might have recovered more quickly, but the nightmare events of those few days remained vivid. She missed him unbearably; her mind would return again and again to the incredible fact of Dane dead, Dane who would never come back. Then there was the conviction that she hadn't helped him enough. Everyone save her seemed to think he was perfect, didn't experience the troubles other men did, but Justine knew he had been plagued by doubts, had tormented himself with his own unworthiness, had wondered what people could see in him beyond the face and the body. Poor Dane, who never seemed to understand that people loved his goodness. Terrible to remember it was too late to help him now. She also grieved for her mother. If his dying could do this to her, what must it have done to Mum? The thought made her want to run screaming and crying from memory, consciousness. The picture of the Unks in Rome for his ordination, puffing out their proud chests like pouter pigeons. That was the worst of all, visualizing the empty desolation of her mother and the other Drogheda people. Be honest, Justine. Was this honestly the worst? Wasn't there something far more disturbing? She couldn't push the thought of Rain away, or what she felt as her betrayal of Dane. To gratify her own desires she had sent Dane to Greece alone, when to have gone with him might have meant life for him. There was no other way to see it. Dane had died because of her selfish absorption in Rain. Too late now to bring her brother back, but if in never seeing Rain again she could somehow atone, the hunger and the loneliness would be well worth it. So the weeks went by, and then the months. A year, two years. Desdemona, Ophelia, Portia, Cleopatra. From the very beginning she flattered herself she behaved THE THORN BIRDS / 659

outwardly as if nothing had happened to ruin her world; she took exquisite care in speaking, laughing, relating to people quite nor- mally. If there was a change, it was in that she was kinder than of yore, for people's griefs tended to affect her as if they were her own. But, all told, she was the same outward Justine—flippant, exuberant, brash, detached, acerbic. Twice she tried to go home to Drogheda on a visit, the second time even going so far as to pay for her plane ticket. Each time an enormously important last-minute reason why she couldn't go cropped up, but she knew the real reason to be a combination of guilt and cowardice. She just wasn't able to nerve herself to confront her mother; to do so meant the whole sorry tale would come out, probably in the midst of a noisy storm of grief she had so far managed to avoid. The Drogheda people, especially her mother, must continue to go about secure in their conviction that Justine at any rate was all right, that Justine had survived it relatively un- scathed. So, better to stay away from Drogheda. Much better. Meggie caught herself on a sigh, suppressed it. If her bones didn't ache so much she might have saddled a horse and ridden, but today the mere thought of it was painful. Some other time, when her arthritis didn't make its presence felt so cruelly. She heard a car, the thump of the brass ram's head on the front door, heard voices murmuring, her mother's tones, footsteps. Not Justine, so what did it matter? "Meggie," said Fee from the veranda entrance, "we have a visitor. Could you come inside, please?" The visitor was a distinguished-looking fellow in early middle age, though he might have been younger than he appeared. Very different from any man she had ever seen, except that he possessed the same sort of power and self-confidence Ralph used to have. Used to have. That most final of tenses, now truly final. 660 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

ordination." She said Dane's name without distress, as if she used it frequently. "I hope you can stay a few days, and see them." "I can, Mrs. O'Neill," he answered easily. For Meggie the interview was proving unexpectedly awkward; he was a stranger, he had announced that he had come twelve thousand miles simply to see her, and apparently he was in no hurry to enlighten her as to why. She thought she would end in liking him, but she found him slightly intimidating. Perhaps his kind of man had never come within her ken before, and this was why he threw her off-balance. A very novel conception of Justine entered her mind at that moment: her daughter could actually relate easily to men like Rainer Moerling Hartheim! She thought of Justine as a fellow woman at last. Though aging and white-haired she was still very beautiful, he was thinking while she sat gazing at him politely; he was still sur- prised that she looked not at all like Justine, as Dane had so strongly resembled the Cardinal. How terribly lonely she must be! Yet he couldn't feel sorry for her in the way he did for Justine; clearly, she had come to terms with herself. "How is Justine?" she asked. He shrugged. "I'm afraid I don't know. I haven't seen her since before Dane died." She didn't display astonishment. "I haven't seen her myself since Dane's funeral," she said, and sighed. "I'd hoped she would come home, but it begins to look as if she never will." He made a soothing noise which she didn't seem to hear, for she went on speaking, but in a different voice, more to herself than to him. "Drogheda is like a home for the aged these days," she said. "We need young blood, and Justine's is the only young blood left." Pity deserted him; he leaned forward quickly, eyes glittering. "You speak of her as if she is a chattel of 662 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Drogheda," he said, his voice now harsh. "I serve you notice, Mrs. O'Neill, she is not!" "What right have you to judge what Justine is or isn't?" she asked angrily. "After all, you said yourself that you haven't seen her since before Dane died, and that's two years ago!" "Yes, you're right. It's all of two years ago." He spoke more gently, realizing afresh what her life must be like. "You bear it very well, Mrs. O'Neill." "Do I?" she asked, tightly trying to smile, her eyes never leaving his. Suddenly he began to understand what the Cardinal must have seen in her to have loved her so much. It wasn't in Justine, but then he himself was no Cardinal Ralph; he looked for different things. "Yes, you bear it very well," he repeated. She caught the undertone at once, and flinched. "How do you know about Dane and Ralph?" she asked unsteadily. "I guessed. Don't worry, Mrs. O'Neill, nobody else did. I guessed because I knew the Cardinal long before I met Dane. In Rome everyone thought the Cardinal was your brother, Dane's uncle, but Justine disillusioned me about that the first time I ever met her." "Justine? Not Justine!" Meggie cried. He reached out to take her hand, beating frantically against her knee. "No, no, no, Mrs. O'Neill! Justine has absolutely no idea of it, and I pray she never will! Her slip was quite unintentional, be- lieve me." "You're sure?" "Yes, I swear it." "Then in God's Name why doesn't she come home? Why won't she come to see me? Why can't she bring herself to look at my face?" Not only her words but the agony in her voice told him what had tormented Justine's mother about her absence these last two years. His own mission's importance THE THORN BIRDS / 663

dwindled; now he had a new one, to allay Meggie's fears. "For that I am to blame," he said firmly. "You?" asked Meggie, bewildered. "Justine had planned to go to Greece with Dane, and she's con- vinced that had she, he'd still be alive." "Nonsense!" said Meggie. "Quite. But though we know it's nonsense, Justine doesn't. It's up to you to make her see it." "Up to me? You don't understand, Mr. Hartheim. Justine has never listened to me in all her life, and at this stage any influence I might once have had is completely gone. She doesn't even want to see my face." Her tone was defeated but not abject. "I fell into the same trap my mother did," she went on matter-of-factly. "Drogheda is my life...the house, the books... Here I'm needed, there's still some purpose in living. Here are people who rely on me. My children never did, you know. Never did." "That's not true, Mrs. O'Neill. If it was, Justine could come home to you without a qualm. You underestimate the quality of the love she bears you. When I say I am to blame for what Justine is going through, I mean that she remained in London because of me, to be with me. But it is for you she suffers, not for me." Meggie stiffened. "She has no right to suffer for me! Let her suffer for herself if she must, but not for me. Never for me!" "Then you believe me when I say she has no idea of Dane and the Cardinal?" Her manner changed, as if he had reminded her there were other things at stake, and she was losing sight of them. "Yes," she said, "I believe you." "I came to see you because Justine needs your help and cannot ask for it," he announced. "You must convince her she needs to take up the threads of her life again—not a Drogheda life, but her own life, which has nothing to do with Drogheda." 664 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

He leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs and lit another cigar- ette. "Justine has donned some kind of hair shirt, but for all the wrong reasons. If anyone can make her see it, you can. Yet I warn you that if you choose to do so she will never come home, whereas if she goes on the way she is, she may well end up returning here permanently. "The stage isn't enough for someone like Justine," he went on, "and the day is coming when she's going to realize that. Then she's going to opt for people—either her family and Drogheda, or me." He smiled at her with deep understanding. "But people are not enough for Justine either, Mrs. O'Neill. If Justine chooses me, she can have the stage as well, and that bonus Drogheda cannot offer her." Now he was gazing at her sternly, as if at an adversary. "I came to ask you to make sure she chooses me. It may seem cruel to say this, but I need her more than you possibly could." The starch was back in Meggie. "Drogheda isn't such a bad choice," she countered. "You speak as if it would be the end of her life, but it doesn't mean that at all, you know. She could have the stage. This is a true community. Even if she married Boy King, as his grandfather and I have hoped for years, her children would be as well cared for in her absences as they would be were she married to you. This is her home! She knows and understands this kind of life. If she chose it, she'd certainly be very well aware what was involved. Can you say the same for the sort of life you'd offer her?" "No," he said stolidly. "But Justine thrives on surprises. On Drogheda she'd stagnate." "What you mean is, she'd be unhappy here." "No, not exactly. I have no doubt that if she elected to return here, married this Boy King—who is this Boy King, by the way?" "The heir to a neighboring property, Bugela, and an old child- hood friend who would like to be more than a friend. His grand- father wants the marriage for dynastic THE THORN BIRDS / 665

reasons; I want it because I think it's what Justine needs." "I see. Well, if she returned here and married Boy King, she'd learn to be happy. But happiness is a relative state. I don't think she would ever know the kind of satisfaction she would find with me. Because, Mrs. O'Neill, Justine loves me, not Boy King." "Then she's got a very strange way of showing it," said Meggie, pulling the bell rope for tea. "Besides, Mr. Hartheim, as I said earlier, I think you overestimate my influence with her. Justine has never taken a scrap of notice of anything I say, let alone want." "You're nobody's fool," he answered. "You know you can do it if you want to. I can ask no more than that you think about what I've said. Take your time, there's no hurry. I'm a patient man." Meggie smiled. "Then you're a rarity," she said. He didn't broach the subject again, nor did she. During the week of his stay he behaved like any other guest, though Meggie had a feeling he was trying to show her what kind of man he was. How much her brothers liked him was clear; from the moment word reached the paddocks of his arrival, they all came in and stayed in until he left for Germany. Fee liked him, too; her eyes had deteriorated to the point where she could no longer keep the books, but she was far from senile. Mrs. Smith had died in her sleep the previous winter, not before her due time, and rather than inflict a new housekeeper on Minnie and Cat, both old but still hale, Fee had passed the books com- pletely to Meggie and more or less filled Mrs. Smith's place herself. It was Fee who first realized Rainer was a direct link with that part of Dane's life no one on Drogheda had ever had opportunity to share, so she asked him to speak of it. He obliged gladly, having quickly noticed that none of the Drogheda people were at all reluct- ant to talk of Dane, and derived great pleasure from listening to new tales about him. 666 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

Behind her mask of politeness Meggie couldn't get away from what Rain had told her, couldn't stop dwelling on the choice he had offered her. She had long since given up hope of Justine's re- turn, only to have him almost guarantee it, admit too that Justine would be happy if she did return. Also, for one other thing she had to be intensely grateful to him: he had laid the ghost of her fear that somehow Justine had discovered the link between Dane and Ralph. As for marriage to Rain, Meggie didn't see what she could do to push Justine where apparently she had no desire to go. Or was it that she didn't want to see? She had ended in liking Rain very much, but his happiness couldn't possibly matter as much to her as the welfare of her daughter, of the Drogheda people, and of Drogheda itself. The crucial question was, how vital to Justine's future happiness was Rain? In spite of his contention that Justine loved him, Meggie couldn't remember her daughter ever saying anything which might indicate that Rain held the same sort of im- portance for her as Ralph had done for Meggie. "I presume you will see Justine sooner or later," Meggie said to Rain when she drove him to the airport. "When you do, I'd rather you didn't mention this visit to Drogheda." "If you prefer," he said. "I would only ask you to think about what I've said, and take your time." But even as he made his request, he couldn't help feeling that Meggie had reaped far more benefit from his visit than he had. When the mid-April came that was two and a half years after Dane's death, Justine experienced an overwhelming desire to see something that wasn't rows of houses, too many sullen people. Suddenly on this beautiful day of soft spring air and chilly sun, urban London was intolerable. So she took a District Line train to Kew Gardens, pleased that it was a Tuesday and she THE THORN BIRDS / 667

would have the place almost to herself. Nor was she working that night, so it didn't matter if she exhausted herself tramping the by- ways. She knew the park well, of course. London was a joy to any Drogheda person, with its masses of formal flower beds, but Kew was in a class all its own. In the old days she used to haunt it from April to the end of October, for every month had a different floral display to offer. Mid-April was her favorite time, the period of daffodils and aza- leas and flowering trees. There was one spot she thought could lay some claim to being one of the world's loveliest sights on a small, intimate scale, so she sat down on the damp ground, an audience of one, to drink it in. As far as the eye could see stretched a sheet of daffodils; in mid-distance the nodding yellow horde of bells flowed around a great flowering almond, its branches so heavy with white blooms they dipped downward in arching falls as perfect and still as a Japanese painting. Peace. It was so hard to come by. And then, her head far back to memorize the absolute beauty of the laden almond amid its rippling golden sea, something far less beautiful intruded. Rainer Moerling Hartheim, of all people, threading his careful way through clumps of daffodils, his bulk shielded from the chilly breeze by the inevitable German leather coat, the sun glittering in his silvery hair. "You'll get a cold in your kidneys," he said, taking off his coat and spreading it lining side up on the ground so they could sit on it. "How did you find me here?" she asked, wriggling onto a brown satin corner. "Mrs. Kelly told me you had gone to Kew. The rest was easy. I just walked until I found you." "I suppose you think I ought to be falling all over you in gladness, tra-la?" "Are you?" "Same old Rain, answering a question with a question. 668 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

No, I'm not glad to see you. I thought I'd managed to make you crawl up a hollow log permanently." "It's hard to keep a good man up a hollow log permanently. How are you?" "I'm all right." "Have you licked your wounds enough?" "Well, that's to be expected, I suppose. But I began to realize that once you had dismissed me you'd never again humble your pride to make the first move toward reconciliation. Whereas I, Herzchen, am wise enough to know that pride makes a very lonely bedfellow." "Don't go getting any ideas about kicking it out to make room for yourself, Rain, because I'm warning you, I am not taking you on in that capacity." "I don't want you in that capacity anymore." The promptness of his answer irritated her, but she adopted a relieved air and said, "Honestly?" "If I did, do you think I could have borne to keep away from you so long? You were a passing fancy in that way, but I still think of you as a dear friend, and miss you as a dear friend." "Oh, Rain, so do I!" "That's good. Am I admitted as a friend, then?" "Of course." He lay back on the coat and put his arms behind his head, smiling at her lazily. "How old are you, thirty? In those disgraceful clothes you look more like a scrubby schoolgirl. If you don't need me in your life for any other reason, Justine, you certainly do as your personal arbiter of elegance." She laughed. "I admit when I thought you might pop up out of the woodwork I did take more interest in my appearance. If I'm thirty, though, you're no spring chook yourself. You must be forty at least. Doesn't seem like such a huge difference anymore, does it? You've lost weight. Are you all right, Rain?" THE THORN BIRDS / 669

any further than the friendship he offered, but as the months passed and he failed by word or look to mention their previous relation- ship, her mild indignation became something more disturbing. Not that she wanted a resumption of that other relationship, she told herself constantly; she had finished completely with that sort of thing, didn't need or desire it anymore. Nor did she permit her mind to dwell on an image of Rain so successfully buried she re- membered it only in traitorous dreams. Those first few months after Dane died had been dreadful, resist- ing the longing to go to Rain, feel him with her in body and spirit, knowing full well he would be if she let him. But she could not al- low this with his face overshadowed by Dane's. It was right to dismiss him, right to battle to obliterate every last flicker of desire for him. And as time went on and it seemed he was going to stay out of her life permanently, her body settled into unaroused torpor, and her mind disciplined itself to forget. But now Rain was back it was growing much harder. She itched to ask him whether he remembered that other relationship—how could he have forgotten it? Certainly for herself she had quite fin- ished with such things, but it would have been gratifying to learn he hadn't; that is, provided of course such things for him spelled Justine, and only Justine. Pipe dreams. Rain didn't have the mien of a man who was wasting away of unrequited love, mental or physical, and he never displayed the slightest wish to reopen that phase of their lives. He wanted her for a friend, enjoyed her as a friend. Excellent! It was what she wanted, too. Only...could he have forgotten? No, it wasn't possible—but God damn him if he had! The night Justine's thought processes reached so far, her season's role of Lady Macbeth had an interesting savagery quite alien to her usual interpretation. She didn't sleep very well afterward, and the following THE THORN BIRDS / 671

morning brought a letter from her mother which filled her with vague unease. Mum didn't write often anymore, a symptom of the long separa- tion which affected them both, and what letters there were were stilted, anemic. This was different, it contained a distant mutter of old age, an underlying weariness which poked up a word or two above the surface inanities like an iceberg. Justine didn't like it. Old. Mum, old! What was happening on Drogheda? Was Mum trying to conceal some serious trouble? Was Nanna ill? One of the Unks? God for- bid, Mum herself? It was three years since she had seen any of them, and a lot could happen in three years, even if it wasn't hap- pening to Justine O'Neill. Because her own life was stagnant and dull, she ought not to assume everyone else's was, too. That night was Justine's "off" night, with only one more perform- ance of Macbeth to go. The daylight hours had dragged unbearably, and even the thought of dinner with Rain didn't carry its usual anticipatory pleasure. Their friendship was useless, futile, static, she told herself as she scrambled into a dress exactly the orange he hated most. Conservative old fuddy-duddy! If Rain didn't like her the way she was, he could lump her. Then, fluffing up the low bodice's frills around her meager chest, she caught her own eyes in the mirror and laughed ruefully. Oh, what a tempest in a teacup! She was acting exactly like the kind of female she most despised. It was probably very simple. She was stale, she needed a rest. Thank God for the end of Lady M! But what was the matter with Mum? Lately Rain was spending more and more time in London, and Justine marveled at the ease with which he commuted between Bonn and England. No doubt having a private plane helped, but it had to be exhausting. "Why do you come to see me so often?" she asked out of the blue. "Every gossip columnist in Europe 672 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

thinks it's great, but I confess I sometimes wonder if you don't simply use me as an excuse to visit London." "It's true that I use you as a blind from time to time," he admitted calmly. "As a matter of fact, you've been dust in certain eyes quite a lot. But it's no hardship being with you, because I like being with you." His dark eyes dwelled on her face thoughtfully. "You're very quiet tonight, Herzchen. Is anything worrying you?" "No, not really." She toyed with her dessert and pushed it aside uneaten. "At least, only a silly little thing. Mum and I don't write every week anymore—it's so long since we've seen each other there's nothing much to say—but today I had such a strange letter from her. Not typical at all." His heart sank; Meggie had indeed taken her time thinking about it, but instinct told him this was the commencement of her move, and that it was not in his favor. She was beginning her play to get her daughter back for Drogheda, perpetuate the dynasty. He reached across the table to take Justine's hand; she was looking, he thought, more beautiful with maturity, in spite of that ghastly dress. Tiny lines were beginning to give her ragamuffin face dignity, which it badly needed, and character, which the person behind had always owned in huge quantities. But how deep did her surface maturity go? That was the whole trouble with Justine; she didn't even want to look. "Herzchen, your mother is lonely," he said, burning his boats. If this was what Meggie wanted, how could he continue to think himself right and her wrong? Justine was her daughter; she must know her far better than he. "Yes, perhaps," said Justine with a frown, "but I can't help feeling there's something more at base of it. I mean, she must have been lonely for years, so why this sudden whatever it is? I can't put my finger on it, Rain, and maybe that's what worries me the most." THE THORN BIRDS / 673

any kind of personal discussion, and the gist of it had been that he felt her mother was terribly lonely, growing old, and that she ought to go home. Visit, he had said; but she couldn't help wondering if he had actually meant stay. Which rather indicated that whatever he felt for her in the past was well and truly of the past, and he had no wish to resurrect it. It had never occurred to her before to wonder if he might regard her as a nuisance, a part of his past he would like to see buried in decent obscurity on some place like Drogheda; but maybe he did. In which case, why had he re-entered her life nine months ago? Because he felt sorry for her? Because he felt he owed her some kind of debt? Because he felt she needed some sort of push toward her mother, for Dane's sake? He had been very fond of Dane, and who knew what they had talked about during those long visits to Rome when she hadn't been present? Maybe Dane had asked him to keep an eye on her, and he was doing just that. Waited a decent interval to make sure she wouldn't show him the door, then marched back into her life to fulfill some promise made to Dane. Yes, that was very likely the answer. Certainly he was no longer in love with her. Whatever attraction she had once possessed for him must have died long since; after all, she had treated him abomin- ably. She had only herself to blame. Upon the heels of which thought she wept miserably, succeeded in getting enough hold upon herself to tell herself not to be so stu- pid, twisted about and thumped her pillow in a fruitless quest after sleep, then lay defeated trying to read a script. After a few pages the words began traitorously to blur and swim together, and try as she would to use her old trick of bulldozing despair into some back corner of her mind, it ended in overwhelming her. Finally as the slovenly light of a late London dawn seeped through the windows she sat down at her desk, feeling the cold, hearing the distant THE THORN BIRDS / 675

growl of traffic, smelling the damp, tasting the sourness. Suddenly the idea of Drogheda seemed wonderful. Sweet pure air, a naturally broken silence. Peace. She picked up one of her black felt-tipped pens and began a letter to her mother, her tears drying as she wrote. I just hope you understand why I haven't been home since Dane died [she said], but no matter what you think about that, I know you'll be pleased to hear that I'm going to rectify my omission permanently. Yes, that's right. I'm coming home for good, Mum. You were right—the time has come when I long for Drogheda. I've had my flutter, and I've discovered it doesn't mean any- thing to me at all. What's in it for me, trailing around a stage for the rest of my life? And what else is there here for me aside from the stage? I want something safe, permanent, en- during, so I'm coming home to Drogheda, which is all those things. No more empty dreams. Who knows? Maybe I'll marry Boy King if he still wants me, finally do something worthwhile with my life, like having a tribe of little Northwest plainsmen. I'm tired, Mum, so tired I don't know what I'm saying, and I wish I had the power to write what I'm feeling. Well, I'll struggle with it another time. Lady Macbeth is over and I hadn't decided what to do with the coming season yet, so I won't inconvenience anyone by deciding to bow out of acting. London is teeming with actresses. Clyde can replace me adequately in two seconds, but you can't, can you? I'm sorry it's taken me thirty-one years to realize that. Had Rain not helped me it might have taken even longer, but he's a most perceptive bloke. He's never met you, yet he seems to understand you 676 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

better than I do. Still, they say the onlooker sees the game best. That's certainly true of him. I'm fed up with him, always supervising my life from his Olympian heights. He seems to think he owes Dane some sort of debt or promise, and he's forever making a nuisance of himself popping over to see me; only I've finally realized that I'm the nuisance. If I'm safely on Drogheda the debt or promise or whatever it was is can- celed, isn't it? He ought to be grateful for the plane trips I'll save him, anyway. As soon as I've got myself organized I'll write again, tell you when to expect me. In the meantime, remember that in my strange way I do love you. She signed her name without its usual flourish, more like the "Justine" which used to appear on the bottom of dutiful letters written from boarding school under the eagle eye of a censoring nun. Then she folded the sheets, put them in an airmail envelope and addressed it. On the way to the theater for the final performance of Macbeth she posted it. She went straight ahead with her plans to quit England. Clyde was upset to the extent of a screaming temper tantrum which left her shaking, then overnight he turned completely about and gave in with huffy good grace. There was no difficulty at all in disposing of the lease to the mews flat for it was in a high-demand category; in fact, once the word leaked out people rang every five minutes until she took the phone off the hook. Mrs. Kelly, who had "done" for her since those far-off days when she had first come to London, plodded dolefully around amid a jungle of wood shavings and crates, bemoaning her fate and surreptitiously putting the phone back on its cradle in the hope someone would ring with the power to persuade Justine to change her mind. THE THORN BIRDS / 677

In the midst of the turmoil, someone with that power did ring, only not to persuade her to change her mind; Rain didn't even know she was going. He merely asked her to act as his hostess for a dinner party he was giving at his house on Park Lane. "What do you mean, house on Park Lane?" Justine squeaked, astonished. "Well, with growing British participation in the European Eco- nomic Community, I'm spending so much time in England that it's become more practical for me to have some sort of local pied-à- terre, so I've leased a house on Park Lane," he explained. "Ye gods, Rain, you flaming secretive bastard! How long have you had it?" "About a month." "And you let me go through that idiotic charade the other night and said nothing? God damn you!" She was so angry she couldn't speak properly. "I was going to tell you, but I got such a kick out of your thinking I was flying over all the time that I couldn't resist pretending a bit longer," he said with a laugh in his voice. "I could kill you!" she ground from between her teeth, blinking away tears. "No, Herzchen, please! Don't be angry! Come and be my hostess, then you can inspect the premises to your heart's content." "Suitably chaperoned by five million other guests, of course! What's the matter, Rain, don't you trust yourself alone with me? Or is it me you don't trust?" "You won't be a guest," he said, answering the first part of her tirade. "You'll be my hostess, which is quite different. Will you do it?" She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand and said gruffly, "Yes." It turned out to be more enjoyable than she had dared hope, for Rain's house was truly beautiful and he himself in such a good mood Justine couldn't help 678 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

but become infected by it. She arrived properly though a little too flamboyantly gowned for his taste, but after an involuntary grimace at first sight of her shocking-pink slipper satin, he tucked her arm through his and conducted her around the premises before the guests arrived. Then during the evening he behaved perfectly, treating her in front of the others with an offhand intimacy which made her feel both useful and wanted. His guests were so politically important her brain didn't want to think about the sort of decisions they must have to make. Such ordinary people, too. That made it worse. "I wouldn't have minded so much if even one of them had dis- played symptoms of the Chosen Few," she said to him after they had gone, glad of the chance to be alone with him and wondering how quickly he was going to send her home. "You know, like Na- poleon or Churchill. There's a lot to be said for being convinced one is a man of destiny, if one is a statesman. Do you regard yourself as a man of destiny?" He winced. "You might choose your questions better when you're quizzing a German, Justine. No, I don't, and it isn't good for politicians to deem themselves men of destiny. It might work for a very few, though I doubt it, but the vast bulk of such men cause themselves and their countries endless trouble." She had no desire to argue the point. It had served its purpose in getting a certain line of conversation started; she could change the subject without looking too obvious. "The wives were a pretty mixed bunch, weren't they?" she asked artlessly. "Most of them were far less presentable than I was, even if you don't approve of hot pink. Mrs. Whatsit wasn't too bad, and Mrs. Hoojar simply disappeared into the matching wallpaper, but Mrs. Gumfoozler was abominable. How does her husband manage to put up with her? Oh, men are such fools about choosing their wives!" "Justine! When will you learn to remember names? It's as well you turned me down, a fine politician's wife THE THORN BIRDS / 679

you would have made. I heard you er-umming when you couldn't remember who they were. Many men with abominable wives have succeeded very well, and just as many with quite perfect wives haven't succeeded at all. In the long run it doesn't matter, because it's the caliber of the man which is put to the test. There are few men who marry for reasons purely politic." That old ability to put her in her place could still shock; she made him a mock salaam to hide her face, then sat down on the rug. "Oh, do get up, Justine!" Instead she defiantly curled her feet under her and leaned against the wall to one side of the fireplace, stroking Natasha. She had discovered on her arrival that after Cardinal Vittorio's death Rain had taken his cat; he seemed very fond of it, though it was old and rather crotchety. "Did I tell you I was going home to Drogheda for good?" she asked suddenly. He was taking a cigarette out of his case; the big hands didn't falter or tremble, but proceeded smoothly with their task. "You know very well you didn't tell me," he said. "Then I'm telling you now." "When did you come to this decision?" "Five days ago. I'm leaving at the end of this week, I hope. It can't come soon enough." "I see." "Is that all you've got to say about it?" "What else is there to say, except that I wish you happiness in whatever you do?" He spoke with such complete composure she winced. "Why, thank you!" she said airily. "Aren't you glad I won't be in your hair much longer?" "You're not in my hair, Justine," he answered. She abandoned Natasha, picked up the poker and began rather savagely nudging the crumbling logs, which had burned away to hollow shells; they collapsed 680 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

inward in a brief flurry of sparks, and the heat of the fire abruptly decreased. "It must be the demon of destructiveness in us, the im- pulse to poke the guts out of a fire. It only hastens the end. But what a beautiful end, isn't it, Rain?" Apparently he wasn't interested in what happened to fires when they were poked, for he merely asked, "By the end of the week, eh? You're not wasting much time." "What's the point in delaying?" "And your career?" "I'm sick of my career. Anyway, after Lady Macbeth what is there left to do?" "Oh, grow up, Justine! I could shake you when you come out with such sophomoric rot! Why not simply say you're not sure the theater has any challenge for you anymore, and that you're home- sick?" "All right, all right, all right! Have it any way you bloody well want! I was being my usual flippant self. Sorry I offended!" She jumped to her feet. "Dammit, where are my shoes? What's happened to my coat?" Fritz appeared with both articles of clothing, and drove her home. Rain excused himself from accompanying her, saying he had things to do, but as she left he was sitting by the freshly built up fire, Natasha on his lap, looking anything but busy. "Well," said Meggie to her mother, "I hope we've done the right thing." Fee peered at her, nodded. "Oh, yes, I'm sure of it. The trouble with Justine is that she isn't capable of making a decision like this, so we don't have any choice. We must make it for her." "I'm not sure I like playing God. I think I know what she really wants to do, but even if I could tax her with it face to face, she'd prevaricate." "The Cleary pride," said Fee, smiling faintly. "It does crop up in the most unexpected people." THE THORN BIRDS / 681

ever know what it was really like, because they couldn't. They'd have to have been a part of it." "Yes," said Meggie, who hadn't stopped knitting. "They'd have to have been a part of it." Saying goodbye to Rain in a letter, devastated by grief and shock, had been easy; in fact enjoyable in a cruel way, for she had lashed back then—I'm in agony, so ought you to be. But this time Rain hadn't put himself in a position where a Dear John letter was pos- sible. It had to be dinner at their favorite restaurant. He hadn't suggested his Park Lane house, which disappointed but didn't surprise her. No doubt he intended saying even his final goodbyes under the benign gaze of Fritz. Certainly he wasn't taking any chances. For once in her life she took care that her appearance should please him; the imp which usually prodded her into orange frills seemed to have retired cursing. Since Rain liked unadorned styles, she put on a floor-length silk jersey dress of dull burgundy red, high to the neck, long tight sleeves. She added a big flat collar of tortuous gold studded with garnets and pearls, and matching bracelets on each wrist. What horrible, horrible hair. It was never disciplined enough to suit him. More makeup than normal, to conceal the evidence of her depression. There. She would do if he didn't look too closely. He didn't seem to; at least he didn't comment upon weariness or possible illness, even made no reference to the exigencies of packing. Which wasn't a bit like him. And after a while she began to experience a sensation that the world must be ending, so different was he from his usual self. He wouldn't help her make the dinner a success, the sort of affair they could refer to in letters with reminiscent pleasure and amuse- ment. If she could only have persuaded herself that he was simply upset at her going, it might have been all right. But she couldn't. His mood 684 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

just wasn't that sort. Rather, he was so distant she felt as if she were sitting with a paper effigy, one-dimensional and anxious to be off floating in the breeze, far from her ken. As if he had said goodbye to her already, and this meeting was a superfluity. "Have you had a letter from your mother yet?" he asked politely. "No, but I don't honestly expect one. She's probably bereft of words." "Would you like Fritz to take you to the airport tomorrow?" "Thanks, I can catch a cab," she answered ungraciously. "I wouldn't want you to be deprived of his services." "I have meetings all day, so I assure you it won't inconvenience me in the slightest." "I said I'd take a cab!" He raised his eyebrows. "There's no need to shout, Justine. Whatever you want is all right with me." He wasn't calling her Herzchen any more; of late she had noticed its frequency declining, and tonight he had not used the old endear- ment once. Oh, what a dismal, depressing dinner this was! Let it be over soon! She found she was looking at his hands and trying to remember what they felt like, but she couldn't. Why wasn't life neat and well organized, why did things like Dane have to happen? Perhaps because she thought of Dane, her mood suddenly plummeted to a point where she couldn't bear to sit still a moment longer, and put her hands on the arms of her chair. "Do you mind if we go?" she asked. "I'm developing a splitting headache." At the junction of the High Road and Justine's little mews Rain helped her from the car, told Fritz to drive around the block, and put his hand beneath her elbow courteously to guide her, his touch quite impersonal. In the freezing damp of a London drizzle they walked THE THORN BIRDS / 685

slowly across the cobbles, dripping echoes of their footsteps all around them. Mournful, lonely footsteps. "So, Justine, we say goodbye," he said. "Well, for the time being, at any rate," she answered brightly, "but it's not forever, you know. I'll be across from time to time, and I hope you'll find the time to come down to Drogheda." He shook his head. "No. This is goodbye, Justine. I don't think we have any further use for each other." "You mean you haven't any further use for me," she said, and managed a fairly creditable laugh. "It's all right, Rain! Don't spare me, I can take it!" He took her hand, bent to kiss it, straightened, smiled into her eyes and walked away. There was a letter from her mother on the mat. Justine stooped to pick it up, dropped her bag and wrap where it had lain, her shoes nearby, and went into the living room. She sat down heavily on a packing crate, chewing at her lip, her eyes resting for a moment in wondering, bewildered pity on a magnificent head-and-shoulders study of Dane taken to commemorate his ordination. Then she caught her bare toes in the act of caressing the rolled-up kangaroo- fur rug, grimaced in distaste and got up quickly. A short walk to the kitchen, that was what she needed. So she took a short walk to the kitchen, where she opened the refrigerator, reached for the cream jug, opened the freezer door and withdrew a can of filter coffee. With one hand on the cold-water tap to run water for her coffee, she looked around wide-eyed, as it she had never seen the room before. Looked at the flaws in the wallpaper, at the smug philodendron in its basket hung from the ceiling, at the black pussy-cat clock wagging its tail and rolling its eyes at the spectacle of time being so frivolously frittered away. PACK HAIR- BRUSH, said the blackboard in large capitals. On the table lay a pencil sketch of Rain she had done some weeks ago. And a packet of cigarettes. She took one 686 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

and lit it, put the kettle on the stove and remembered her mother's letter, which was still screwed up in one hand. May as well read it while the water heated. She sat down at the kitchen table, flipped the drawing of Rain onto the floor and planted her feet on top of it. Up yours, too, Rainer Moerling Hartheim! See if I care, you great dogmatic leather-coated Kraut twit. Got no further use for me, eh? Well, nor have I for you! My dear Justine [said Meggie] No doubt you're proceeding with your usual impulsive speed, so I hope this reaches you in time. If anything I've said lately in my letters has caused this sudden decision of yours, please forgive me. I didn't mean to provoke such a drastic reaction. I suppose I was simply looking for a bit of sympathy, but I always forget that under that tough skin of yours, you're pretty soft. Yes, I'm lonely, terribly so. Yet it isn't anything your coming home could possibly rectify. If you stop to think for a moment, you'll see how true that is. What do you hope to accomplish by coming home? It isn't within your power to restore to me what I've lost, and you can't make reparation either. Nor is it purely my loss. It's your loss too, and Nanna's, and all the rest. You seem to have an idea, and it's quite a mistaken idea, that in some way you were responsible. This present impulse looks to me suspiciously like an act of contrition. That's pride and presumption, Justine. Dane was a grown man, not a helpless baby. I let him go, didn't I? If I had let myself feel the way you do, I'd be sitting here blaming myself into a mental asylum because I had permitted him to live his own life. But I'm not sitting here blaming myself. We're none of us God, though I think I've had more chance to learn that than you. In coming home, you're handing me your life like THE THORN BIRDS / 687

a sacrifice. I don't want it. I never have wanted it. And I refuse it now. You don't belong on Drogheda, you never did. If you still haven't worked out where you do belong, I suggest you sit down right this minute and start some serious thinking. Sometimes you really are awfully dense. Rainer is a very nice man, but I've never yet met a man who could possibly be as altruistic as you seem to think he is. For Dane's sake indeed! Do grow up, Justine! My dearest one, a light has gone out. For all of us, a light has gone out. And there's absolutely nothing you can do about it, don't you understand? I'm not insulting you by trying to pretend I'm perfectly happy. Such isn't the human condition. But if you think we here on Drogheda spend our days weeping and wailing, you're quite wrong. We enjoy our days, and one of the main reasons why is that our lights for you still burn. Dane's light is gone forever. Please, dear Justine, try to accept that. Come home to Drogheda by all means, we'd love to see you. But not for good. You'd never be happy settled here permanently. It is not only a needless sacrifice for you to make, but a useless one. In your sort of career, even a year spent away from it would cost you dearly. So stay where you belong, be a good citizen of your world. The pain. It was like those first few days after Dane died. The same sort of futile, wasted, unavoidable pain. The same anguished impotence. No, of course there was nothing she could do. No way of making up, no way. Scream! The kettle was whistling already. Hush, kettle, hush! Hush for Mummy! How does it feel to be Mummy's only child, kettle? Ask Justine, she knows. Yes, Justine knows all about being the only child. But 688 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

I'm not the child she wants, that poor fading old woman back on the ranch. Oh, Mum! Oh, Mum...Do you think if I humanly could, I wouldn't? New lamps for old, my life for his! It isn't fair, that Dane was the one to die... She's right. My going back to Drogheda can't alter the fact that he never can. Though he lies there forever, he never can. A light has gone out, and I can't rekindle it. But I see what she means. My light still burns in her. Only not on Drogheda. Fritz answered the door, not clad in his smart navy chauffeur's uniform, clad in his smart butler's morning suit instead. But as he smiled, bowed stiffly and clicked his heels in good old-fashioned German manner, a thought occurred to Justine; did he do double duty in Bonn, too? "Are you simply Herr Hartheim's humble servant, Fritz, or are you really his watchdog?" she asked, handing him her coat. Fritz remained impassive. "Herr Hartheim is in his study, Miss He was sitting looking at the fire, leaning a little forward, Natasha curled sleeping on the hearth. When the door opened he looked up, but didn't speak, didn't seem glad to see her. So Justine crossed the room, knelt, and laid her forehead on his lap. "Rain, I'm so sorry for all the years, and I can't atone," she whispered. He didn't rise to his feet, draw her up with him; he knelt beside her on the floor. "A miracle," he said. She smiled at him. "You never did stop loving me, did you?" "No, Herzchen, never." "I must have hurt you very much." "Not in the way you think. I knew you loved me, and I could wait. I've always believed a patient man must win in the end." THE THORN BIRDS / 689

Meggie put the form down on the table and stared wide-eyed through the window at the wealth of autumn roses in the garden. Perfume of roses, bees of roses. And the hibiscus, the bottlebrush, the ghost gums, the bougainvillaea up above the world so high, the pepper trees. How beautiful the garden was, how alive. To see its small things grow big, change, and wither; and new little things come again in the same endless, unceasing cycle. Time for Drogheda to stop. Yes, more than time. Let the cycle renew itself with unknown people. I did it all to myself, I have no one else to blame. And I cannot regret one single moment of it. The bird with the thorn in its breast, it follow an immunatable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very instant the thron enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life left to utter another note. But we, when we put the thorns in our breasts, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still we do it. 692 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

E-BOOK EXTRA: COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH ON... Becoming a writer I was too young to know how to write when I started writing—[that is to say,] in my head. Once I knew how to write with a pencil, nothing could have stopped me. I don't think I ever thought of it as a talent to write books; I just loved to write. Writing professionally First, you have to enjoy writing and, after that, at least in the case of writing novels, I think most people write to supplement their incomes. I certainly started writing professionally to earn some extra money. [In terms of advice on how to become a professional writer,] try to plan your writing career so that what you produce is something a publisher thinks people will want to read. [One way to test that is to actually write the book:] I am one of those writers who writes the book before negotiating with a publisher. What she's like when she's writing I'm about the same as I always am: obsessive, nitpicking, and obli- vious to the outside world. Seeing one's book become a film It feels dreadful. Where ideas come from That is not a question I can really answer. I get an idea for a book and I go with it, but I don't usually get the same [sort of] idea again. A rule on works in progress Never show what you write to the people who are closest to you. Editing I do most of the editing—that is, the framing of how the book is going to be and how to express it in prose. Once I have the book in late draft an editor at the publishing house takes over and edits it again. [But the editor can't change much:] The writer of a book has to approve every change an editor suggests. Sometimes an ed- itor has good suggestions to make; at other times the writer may 693

not agree with the editor's comments. In the case of the latter, then the writer wins. The book she enjoyed writing the most and why A Creed for the Third Millennium. I'm very concerned about the world population explosion. (I set A Creed for the Third Millennium in the U.S. because I lived there for fifteen years and I view it very well. It also suited the theme of the book to situate it in the U.S.) An Indecent Obsession I wrote An Indecent Obsession because I was interested in exploring a situation wherein one woman was in control of a group of men. Not being overwhelmed by the success of The Thorn Birds I didn't have to "get back to writing": I never stopped writing. The only thing that I did vow was that I would never write Son of Thorn Birds—and I never have. Research I love doing the research and I like my facts to be correct. Provided that I am writing fiction, there is still plenty of room for a writer to use her imagination. War I am an old war buff. There is very little that I don't know about the mechanics of war, whether it is war in the time of Julius Caesar or war in the twentieth century. Identifying with characters When writing fiction I think the writer always feels close to the main characters. For myself I always love my villains as well. Who her favorite character is in The Thorn Birds Father Ralph. Why she lives where she lives I moved to Norfolk Island [off Australia's east coast] twenty years ago from the United States because the very few remaining members of my family were growing old and I wanted to be closer to them. I also was living on my own and wanted to continue living on my own, so I was looking for somewhere safe for a famous woman to live and that's how I wound up on Norfolk Island. Adapted from "A Current Affair: Live Chat with Colleen McCullough," November 5, 1998, on the occasion of the publication of Ms. McCul- lough's biography of Roden Cutler, V.C., and posted, at the time of this e-book publication (June 2003), at sn.com.au/stories/114.asp. 694 / COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH

About the Author Colleen McCullough enjoys worldwide renown, and her novels are bestsellers in a multitude of languages. She is the author of Tim (1974), The Thorn Bird's (1977), An Indecent Obsession (1981), A Creed for the Third Millennium (1985), The Ladies of Missalonghi (1987); The First Man in Rome (1990), The Grass Crown (1991), Fortune's Favorites (1993), Caesar's Women (1996), Caesar (1997); and Morgan's Run (2000). She lives with her husband, Ric Robinson, on Norfolk Island in the South Pacific.

Praise for Colleen McCullough and her beloved classic THE THORN BIRDS "A perfect read...beautiful...gripping...The kind of book the word blockbuster was made for. It keeps you hanging till the last paragraph." Boston Globe "Refreshing, addictive, infectious, and fast...A rich Proustian potpourri of times, places, and people...an old-fashioned rattling good tale." Time "Exhilarating...bursting with happiness as well as pain. The novel explodes with a powerful sensitivity for human emotions." Pittsburgh Press "Vastly entertaining...It has that certain something that happens only when a natural storyteller is thoroughly enjoying telling her story. It ingratiates, it holds, it lives." New Haven Register

By Colleen McCullough Tim The Thorn Birds An Indecent Obsession A Creed for the Third Millennium The Ladies of Missalonghi Morgan's Run The First Man in Rome The Grass Crown Fortune's Favorites Caesar's Women Caesar

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. A portion of this work originally appeared in Family Circle. Verses from "Clancy of the Overflow" by A.B paterson reprinted by permission of the copyright proprietor and Angus and Robertson Publishers. THE THORN BIRDS. Copyright © 1977 by Colleen McCullough. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound™. PerfectBound™ and the PerfectBound™ logo are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. "Colleen McCullough On..." Copyright © 1998, 2003 by Colleen McCullough Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader June 2003 eISBN 0-06-058621-4

About the Publisher Australia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.