One Sunday (15 page)

‘She could always climb like a monkey, Mr Thompson. You know Mr Croft's mulberry trees? When I was a boy I went there one day with my billy and I found her hiding from her governess, so high up in that tree and far out over the water. Her dress was too fine for climbing, and it was stained –' His fingers went to his lips, steadying them. Better not to speak of the mulberry tree. Better to close his mouth now, say no more, but a floodgate had opened up in him and he couldn't close it.

‘Last summer, she'd come knocking at our window at all hours, laughing, her frock wet from her swim. Christian would go to her – and not return until dawn. Then all through last winter they met at the bridge. In September, they were planning to run away and live together, force her family to agree to their marriage. Christian packed his things and borrowed my money, but she didn't meet him. Two weeks later we heard she had married Dave Kennedy. My brother –' Kurt shook his head. ‘For him it was as if the world had ended. For weeks his eyes were a ghost's eyes. This is when he began drinking.'

‘Not many in town understood that marriage. Not that I've got anything against Kennedy, not personally. I don't know him well enough to have anything against him, though he comes across as a sullen sort of a coot –' He closed his mouth. He'd have to watch himself or he'd be standing under the tree chewing the fat with the gossips.

The interview continued, the pen scratching its spidery scrawl. No master of the pen, Tom Thompson, he kept his sentences short, wrote no more than necessary, knowing that Clarrie Morgan would consider this case solved as soon as he saw that Reichenberg name and got a look at that bloodstained shirt. He'd fought in that war.

Her father had slapped her face. He only ever did that if people lost control, so Helen knew she must have screamed. That slap had forced the scream inward to become caught in her throat. It was choking her.

Squires did not display emotion in public. That was one of his rules. He had ten million rules.

Rule: A crippled Johnson infant may share their classroom, but they must keep themselves above her, help teach Ruby her place. A Squire daughter must not treat the Johnson children as their equals.

Rule: A Squire daughter may mix only with a select few of the town girls.

And what if the select few didn't select you? What then? Rachael had made her own selections.

Rule: Squire daughters must not aspire to higher education. They must play the piano, must sit embroidering tablecloths for their hope chest, even if one had no ear for music and hoped she'd never get married.

Rule: Squires did not forget what the Germans had done to this family, did not acknowledge the existence of Molliston Germans. If a German walked into a store while they were in it, then a Squire walked out.

Rule: Squires did not shop at Smith's boot shop, even if he did make Ruby's built-up boot, and make the most beautiful handbags, because the boot shop Smith had been born a Schmidt.

Most in town chose to ignore or forget Mr Smith's German origin, but not Nicholas Squire.

Helen sniffed in a long sobbing breath and her ears blocked, blocked up so totally that she couldn't swallow. She couldn't remember crawling into the old wardrobe, hadn't crawled in there for years, but that's where she was curled now. There had been enough air in there when she was small, she'd been able to rock herself in there when she was small. She wasn't small now, and her rocking was rocking the whole wardrobe.

Squire daughters who were almost sixteen, old enough to become engaged, did not hide in wardrobes, in locked rooms.

Helen hadn't known that the key to Arthur's room fitted her lock. It had been in her pocket since her parents left for Willama. Though she had no real recollection of locking it, she must have because her father was hammering at that door, demanding she open it.

She rocked harder.

Rule: Squire daughters were locked in their room; they did not lock themselves in their room.

He had too many rules. Too hard to remember all of them. So much easier to do nothing, to want nothing, to let him decide what she ought to want – let him decide who she ought to marry, when she ought to marry.

Rachael had married who he'd wanted her to marry. Now she was dead. Not passed away, but dead like Freddy was dead, and Great-grandmother Molly, and Grandma Lorna, and the five sons Olivia lost at birth, and Jennifer and Arthur's tiny girl was dead. Dead, dead, dead and gone, and now Rachael was dead and gone and Helen wanted to be dead with her. If she stayed in this wardrobe long enough, eventually she must run out of air.

Father Ryan had been here. She hadn't heard his car drive in but she'd heard it drive out again. Couldn't mistake that car's roar. Everyone laughed at Father Ryan when they heard him driving up to the church. They wouldn't be laughing this morning when he arrived an hour late.

‘Open this door, Helen!'

Perhaps her father felt she ought to dress in something suitably modest and go to church with him.

‘Helen! Open this door immediately.'

She rocked harder and the wardrobe rocked.

Rule: Squire daughters must attend church each week, sit in the Squires' pew, hat on, gloves on, stomach in, shoulders straight, never looking left or right.

The Squire pew would be full on Tuesday. The church would be full for Rachael. Nicholas's beautiful guest rooms would all be full by Monday night. All of his city friends would come, and Mrs Johnson and her girls would work from dawn to dark, running up and down that long L-shaped passage, feeding dozens in the big dining room.

‘You must come out, darling.'

Now Olivia was out there pleading. Helen curled herself into a tighter ball, her knees hugged to her chest, rocking, rocking so hard the wardrobe tilted. Why wouldn't it run out of air so she could go to sleep and never wake up again? Not a tiny crack of light came through that door, so how could air possibly come through?

 

The bell had stopped its ringing, the organ was playing, the priest was in his pulpit, though all was not well with the world. That old coot hadn't been over to the hospital to give communion to Great-grandma Murphy, which would have only taken him a couple of minutes. She'd been sitting propped up in that hospital bed since eight o'clock, wearing her Sunday hat and refusing to break her fast, and was probably sitting there still – if she hadn't passed out. Mary had tried to make her eat something, but at ninety-six, and too close to Heaven, old Gran was not planning on bringing God's wrath down on her at this late stage of the game.

Irene was still at the hospital though Mary hadn't sighted her. Gwyneth was missing too, probably walking down by the common with Kelvin Curtin, who wasn't a Catholic, and who she wasn't supposed to be walking down by the common with, but did every Sunday. Most of Mary's boys were up and gone, though two still clung to their beds.

‘Burn in hell then, you drunken little sods,' Mary said, giving up on getting them to church. Her apron off, tossed over a chair, she picked up her hat and jammed it down hard on her head. ‘And if I'm not back by half past eleven, then one of you throw those potatoes and pumpkin in with my roast, or you won't be eating any of it. And don't use my sink to wash in. I've got bunnies soaking there in salt water. ‘Michael! Are you out there somewhere?'

‘I'm still here.'

‘You're going to confession today, my lad.'

‘I haven't done anything to confess.'

‘Don't you lie to me,' she said, making a beeline for the church. ‘Tuck that shirt in, and pull those pants up. The crotch is hanging down to your knees.'

They chose seats close to the open door. Gwyneth wandered in and sat beside Mike. ‘You're going to get it,' she hissed in Mike's ear.

‘Get what?'

‘Mr Curtin saw you this morning –'

‘Saw him doing what?' Mary asked.

‘Nothing,' her offspring chorused.

Reg Curtin owned land opposite Squire's bush paddock. He'd probably been out picking peaches at dawn when Mike carried Squire's latest ‘No Trespassing' sign down to the river and chucked it in. He kept his head low as Father Ryan started up, then stopped. Jeanne Johnson, followed by a swarm of younger Johnsons, entered the church, genuflecting as they searched for seats. Seating that mob usually took considerable time, but with many of the men gone to Willama to join the search party, there was plenty of room today.

Father Ryan got on with his sermonising, gave communion, gave his blessing, then told the unmarried chaps to stay where they were. There weren't a lot – and a couple of those tried to get out. Ryan caught them. Mike was more than willing to remain in his seat – until the priest reached into his pew and grabbed his ear, twisted it. ‘Be off with you, Michael Murphy.'

‘I'm unmarried, Father.'

‘Get along with your mother, or you'll be getting a sharp clip on the ear.'

Mike skedaddled out the other end of the pew and into a swarm of blowflies. The town common, directly behind the church, and the slaughter yards, not much further down, were breeding grounds for flies, and most of those blowflies were devout – or had a liking for bluestone walls and shade; they swarmed around the Catholic church on hot days. A few flew indoors for the lecture; Mike hoped they were male and unmarried. And Dr Hunter followed them in! He definitely didn't qualify. He wasn't a Catholic.

‘You heard him. Get along home, Michael,' Mary said.

‘What about confession? You said I had to go.'

Like hell he would, but there was something going on here this morning, and a thirteen year old boy who had a patch of black hair growing under each arm and a bit more growing somewhere lower down had to learn what he could, wherever he could learn it. He scooted around the side of the church to where Billy O'Brien waited, his boots off. They'd been learning what they could, where they could, for two years now, and had taken on the task of keeping the hinges of the vestry door well greased so the Molliston lads could continue their learning. The door had no lock. There were a couple of old slide bolts on the inside, which no one had slid in fifty years. They'd seized. Who was likely to rob the house of God?

With no one watching, except a couple of retired horses leaning over the common fence, Mike removed his boots before opening the vestry door fast and closing it faster. Two more blowflies got in. Keeping low then, the boys crawled, and the blowflies flew, closer to the action. Ryan was in his pulpit, Rob Hunter at his side. Whatever this was about, it was something big enough to make those two get their heads together.

‘Lust,' the priest roared. There was nothing Ryan enjoyed more than getting his teeth into illicit gratification of urges and the disaster that might befall those who engaged in such gratification. The boys had listened in to a few of these talks.

‘The two great forces of life are appetite and procreation, which God intended should be of benefit and happiness to man, but through abuse, these appetites have become the agencies of disease and great misery. The man and the woman who degrade, who debase those of God's most precious gifts to the gross gratification of passion, fall like Lucifer, from the heights of heaven to the depths of hell.'

‘The old man told me to get straight home. We've got peaches rotting, Father.'

‘Then they'll rot a while longer, young Patrick O'Brien, and you'll hold your tongue in God's house,' Ryan roared. ‘So, what is love? I'll tell you what it is. It is the electric current of the soul. And, as with electricity – which you may be seeing the effects of soon and, to some degree, directing its great power – which of us understands what constitutes its great power, and from whence it comes, and to whence it goes?'

That was a new line. Ryan allowed fifteen full seconds of silence for it to be appreciated. Mike appreciated it, because last night, when Rachael kissed him, that's exactly what he'd felt, an electricity feeling, a sort of delicious, painful spark shooting down from his ears to you-know-where.

‘The electric current of the soul and of that wire holds the power of life and death, of service and of destruction. And who amongst you will be tempted to throw the switch that turns the current of love to where it ought not to go?

‘Passion is the physical side of love, but when disassociated from spiritual love, it becomes lust. Today in Molliston, there is one who, from illicit and promiscuous union, has brought forth a nameless child into such misery as may be brought upon a child when the unmarried man and woman engage in sinful practice.' He stretched up to his full height of five foot four inches, and glared at the scattering of youths. ‘Let he who has joined with that woman in illicit union, and fathered a child of misery, stand up now and confess his sin.'

In the silence that followed, Billy whispered, ‘It's probably Paddy. He got the clap and you know how they get that.'

Maybe Rob Hunter heard him. He started clapping, which no one ever did in church. Ryan glanced at him, then vacated his pulpit.

‘Thank you, Father Ryan. I'd like to pick up on one point you made a while back, an excellent point, I might add – the likening of sex to electricity. If you keep it enclosed in rubber then it's safe as a bank, lads, but remove the rubber and go playing around where you shouldn't be playing, and your girlfriend ends up in the family way.'

You could have heard a pin drop and Father Ryan looked as if he might be going to drop dead of a stroke, his complexion turning from pink to maroon.

‘This morning, while you lot were having wet dreams, I got to see the end result of what can happen to a young and innocent girl when a randy young swine has been playing around where he shouldn't be playing. Most of you lads would have gutted a few rabbits in your time. That's pretty much what I did this morning – stuck my knife in and sliced down, removing a baby and its little mother's reproductive organs.

‘Whether that infant was conceived in the heat of young passion or in the name of love, whoever impregnated her might as well have taken his pocket-knife to her throat. If I had my way, your sisters and girlfriends would have been sitting in those pews at your sides. Father Ryan wanted to protect their innocent ears. I, myself, would prefer to protect other more innocent areas of their anatomy.'

‘Who did you operate on, Doctor Hunter?'

‘That's for me to know and Miss Lizzie to find out.' That one raised a snigger. ‘I know a lot that you don't know I know. I know there are a couple of you here today who make excursions out to the blacks' camp to engage in . . . in what your priest might call illicit gratification.'

There was a communal boot-scraping of guilt, and a few eyes turned up to gaze at the ceiling. Father Ryan coughed, attempted to reclaim his pulpit, but Rob held up a hand and turned to him.

‘They probably don't confess this to you in your box, but there are some pretty girls out there, damn near as white as you. I'll tell you something else too. I saw one of these lads in my surgery not long back, as proud as punch because he'd caught his first dose of the clap.'

‘Told you so,' Billy whispered.

‘You lot were born lucky,' Rob Hunter continued. ‘You sow your wild oats where you will then go on your way. It's the girl who suffers the pain and the shame – and her innocent babe who will carry the shame of his birth through life. I'm getting old, lads, and I've seen too much misery and too much wasteful death. The little lass I operated on this morning, whoever she might be, will be out of our cruel old world before the sun goes down on this bastard of a day. But even if she lives, her life is over. How many of you would be prepared to enter into marriage with a barren, sexless woman, scarred by my butchery?