Hill of Grace (10 page)

Going inside, Bruno said to Edna, ‘William is moody again.'

‘Why?' she asked.

But Bruno didn't say anything, Lilli having already explained to both of them how Nathan had dragged her up to Menge's Hill when he should have been studying.

The following day was Pastor Henry's turn to have his say about Erntedanke, the harvest thanksgiving rich with the imagery of the vine and the winepress. The ladies had spent the previous evening decorating Langmeil church with their homemade garlands. The winning entry from Farm Day was given pride of place on the altar beside Henry. It was a controlled explosion of Arthur's gladiolus and lisianthus which Ian Doms' youngest had dreamt up as a tribute to the Blessed Mary. Who soon took centre-stage in a hymn of thanksgiving which finished in an exaltation to the great vigneron, imploring him to keep them safe from the Eyeties with their sparkling reds and the industrial chemists with their tartaric acid.

Thy word, O God, keep ever pure:

Protect Thy congregation;

Keep us untainted, and secure

From this vile generation . . .

Henry watched as Edna, bent over the organ, lost her spot in a coughing fit and Bruno sprung from his chair in anticipation of a very public Heimlich manoeuvre. Soon she recovered and continued, her rheumy fingers clicking like so many wishbones snapping cleanly in two. The front row grimaced as they listened, as they did every Sunday, suffering over the distorted blur of an improvised C sharp minor (she could only play on the black keys).

The Nicene Creed was invoked and a sermon, in Henry's most musical voice, led the congregation towards the lake of fire in which those missing from the book of life, at the End of Days, would be cast. What would the lake look like, he asked. The settling pond at the cement works, or the fountain in front of Yaldara homestead? Most probably like a slurry of hot, fermenting hops, indigestion bubbling up from the Sons of Darkness as they spent their eternities in perpetual copulation.

And then he began to improvise, smiling as he dared to descend from his pulpit to play the role of Christ, recently returned to earth in fulfilment of his promise. He had just appeared in Heuzenroeder's homeopathic shop as the elder Mrs Heuzenroeder was closing up. This got a big laugh, and the elder Mrs Heuzenroeder herself blushed in shades of red which Max Factor hadn't even dreamt of. Christ, unable to convince her of who he was, was sent packing down Murray Street, where he set up a soapbox in front of the Holden dealership.

‘“It's me!”' Henry cried, re-mounting his pulpit as grandmothers farted beside their respective Stations of the Cross.

Jesus is crucified.

Henry took the voice of a heckler. ‘“If it's you, give us a sign!”'

Jesus is taken down.

As the Messiah, Henry explained, re-inflated a flat tyre on one of the dealership's FXs.

William, unsure if he should be alarmed at the levity, smiled a shallow smile he could explain away later if need be.

Henry waited until the laughing subsided and whispered, ‘“The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”'

And everybody heard him, replying in a hushed, communal whisper. ‘Amen.'

As church was let out, Bruno stopped the Millers beneath the tallest of the candle pines at the top of the hill. Shaking Nathan's hand he said, ‘We're all happy for you. And you too, William.'

Holding his neighbour's arm and rubbing it.

‘Nathan's decided,' William said, curt. ‘There's no good going on about it now.'

‘About what?'

But William was already off down the avenue of pines, followed distantly by Bluma and Nathan.

Chapter Six

William popped his head into Arthur's workshop. ‘Seymour's waiting.'

‘I'll be right there.'

He waited outside with his hands in his pockets, watching a snail moving up the stem of a mostly dead larkspur. Inside, Arthur finished marking an arm of his cross with a hot poker:
What shall
I render to the Lord, For all his bounty to me?
The smell of burning Tasmanian oak wafted out, through a plastic fly curtain, over to William as he picked up the snail and bowled it with his best Neil Harvey over-arm.

‘Arthur!'

‘Coming.'

Seymour Hicks, sitting behind the wheel of his hearse, tried to sound his horn but remembered it didn't work. Winding down the window he called, ‘William,' as Mary rubbed away the condensation and said, ‘It's like the good old days.'

‘When was that?'

She kicked her husband's leg. ‘The demister didn't work back then either.'

The hearse had been converted into a mini bus, of sorts, cushioned pews down both sides, feet resting on the metal receptacle which used to hold the coffins.

Joseph Tabrar, sitting beside his wife and three children, looked at his blurred reflection in a silver crucifix screwed into the roof. Then he turned to Ellen and asked, ‘Have you looked?'

Referring to the brochure he'd given her on the satellite city of Elizabeth, a township about to be constructed in the outer northern orbits of Adelaide; promising ‘all new homes and amenities, parks and gardens in a formal style . . . modern hospitals and well-equipped schools'. All for the children of the migrants who Premier Playford would tempt over from the land of hope and hailstone, subsidising their fares in a hazy dream of Chips Rafferty with sheep. In reality a housing estate, doing horizontally what England had done vertically. Backyards big enough for cabbages and lettuces but little else.

‘If we get in now . . . pay a deposit.'

Ellen didn't look at him, staring ahead. ‘David, did you bring your Brownie?'

Their middle child grimaced. ‘It's Chas's too,' implicating his youngest brother. ‘When do I get to use it?'

‘All the time.'

Joseph looked into the clouded window. ‘Quiet!'

‘All those migrants,' his wife replied, trying to draw him out on her terms.

‘So what?'

‘I've always lived here.'

Close to Mary, her mother with her Barossa roots and a taste for white pudding. Close to Seymour, who'd always believed if it wasn't for him his daughter would have fallen into a great, dark chasm of Presbyterian shame and poverty. Ironing shirts in a tenement bed-sit for the dim-wit husband with his drinking problem (which would surely develop when they moved away) as their kids (with their filthy faces) crawled up the walls.

These were Seymour's thoughts, as he waited behind the wheel, looking back through the cracked rear-vision mirror, thinking, we all have a cross to bear. Because of the alternatives. Because of things we can't change. Nailing notices on church doors:
21. Life
without Christ is stew without meat. 22. Dr Mosse and his Indian Root
Pills cannot cure their way to Heaven. 23. Heaven is no seaside resort
reached by steam train.

Ellen turned to Joseph. ‘I've read your brochure,' she said.

But now Joseph refused to answer.

‘This can't go on forever,' he whispered.

Seymour thought he could make out Joseph's words. Unsure, he decided to say nothing, although he had before, late one night a year ago. ‘If you're unhappy, leave, but if you think my daughter will go with you . . .'

Both Joseph and Seymour stared at Ellen.

‘Don't be stupid, we're perfectly happy,' she replied, intent on damage control, taking Joseph by the arm and soothing his fiery temper.

Arthur opened the back of the hearse and climbed in. ‘Sorry.'

Followed by William and Bluma who, they claimed, had left Nathan inside with a book on the history of the Railways. The hearse set off, stopping next to pick up Julius Rechner, William telling the teacher how he shouldn't feel bad about Nathan, having only done his job.

‘Nathan could repeat,' Julius consoled. ‘He still has it in him.'

‘He could, but he won't,' Bluma interrupted, shaking her head.

‘I could talk to him.'

William shook his hand in the air. ‘At that age, they can't be told.'

Detouring via Gruenberg they picked up Ron Rohwer and his young wife, then made for Lyndoch, only a few miles down the road, for the second outing of the Langmeil church's social club.

The first, they laughed and remembered as they drove, had been a trip to the South Australian Museum in Adelaide. Pastor Henry had shown them around the Micronesian and Aboriginal galleries, commenting how, although the Aborigines had been denied the good news of Christ, they'd nonetheless manufactured some very charming artefacts. Ian Doms, who couldn't come this year, had actually picked up a boomerang and said, ‘They produced
this
, as Michaelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel.'

This missed the point altogether, Henry explained. Without the light of Jesus there could be no Sistine Chapel. Therefore, the boomerang affirmed the message of Christ even more.

But worse was to come. They were joined by a natural history guide who showed them around the stuffed animals, stopping in front of a wedge-tailed eagle and saying, ‘In evolutionary terms, the birds of prey pre-dated most of our . . . garden varieties.' Going on to relate this to Charles Darwin, the pigeon-fancier, who had compared the English carrier and short-faced tumbler, outlining differences and similarities in their beaks and skulls, explaining how their elongated eyelids and nostril orifices proved their brotherhood beyond a doubt.

Like the Negro and the Asian. Eskimo and European.

Moving on to Annie, Darwin's daughter, whose death the guide described in the most Dickensian terms. ‘After she died, Darwin realised . . .'

‘What?' William asked.

‘The purpose of all this.'

Turning on his heels and presenting them with a whole gallery of dead things, caught in the act of hunting and eating, preening and sleeping.

‘The purpose being?' William asked.

‘Nothing. Life was meaningless. God couldn't expect to take the credit for all Creation and at the same time strike down innocent children. It didn't add up.'

Silence. William shook his head. ‘And all this came from Mars?'

The guide smiled. ‘Perhaps.'

William stepped forward but before he could say anything else, Bluma was dragging him off towards the cafeteria.

No such dilemmas at Dinkum World, the social committee had decided. Here was a place, according to the brochures, where the best of Australia was celebrated. In the spirit of a Lawson story, read by a sheepless Rafferty around a roaring fire as cattle moaned in the distance – this would be the archetypal Aussie day. Visitors and migrants would go away understanding a little bit more about the wide, brown land.

A stobie pole painted with acacia-entwined slouch hats was their first taste of Dinkum World. The hearse turned off and followed a paling fence covered with Aussie advertisements: homemakers with a Persil dazzle clutching their husbands' new Pelaco shirts.

Arriving at a carpark overgrown with asparagus fern, the group bundled out of the hearse and paid a sixteen-year-old the precise amount at group discount rate, pound notes tied up with a piece of Bluma's recycled string. Pastor Henry was there waiting for them, smiling.

First up, a man called Doctor Hamilton (this was never explained) showed the social committee how to attach corks to their hats. William improvised with one each side of his woollen cap. They were then led down a garden path, the joke having to be explained, and stopped before a replica outback dunny. When you opened the door and dropped a penny in a slot, the toilet seat lifted and a giant redback spider raised its head out of the pan. Bluma clung to Mary Hicks' arm and laughed. ‘Who knows what's living down ours?'

‘It may get a bit blue, ladies,' Doctor Hamilton said. They then continued along a path to the next exhibit: a nightie on a pole. Doctor Hamilton urged William to turn a handle and as he did the pole lifted and then dropped. They looked at the Doctor. ‘Up and down like a bride's nightie.'

No response.

Jesus Christ, religious nuts, Hamilton thought, having had groups like this from the valley before. ‘A real Aussie saying,' Hamilton explained, but no one was buying a word.

‘Okay, this way to our wildlife exhibits,' the Doctor said at last, motioning towards the path.

As they continued Pastor Henry noticed a sandbox, the type used to stub out cigarettes. ‘That's nothing,' Hamilton explained, but Henry was already standing beside it. Inside the sandbox was a small jam jar full of what looked like dog's hair; an old, winged nun's habit was arranged around it. Henry's expression turned from anticipation to confusion.

‘What is it?' Bluma asked.

‘This way,' Doctor Hamilton urged.

As they shuffled along, mostly in silence, Seymour pulled up beside William and said, ‘I've checked all your dates.'

‘And?'

Seymour smiled.

‘Seymour, to me there's no doubt. I've had no theological training –

' ‘How's it possible then?' Ron Rohwer interrupted from behind.

‘Faith,' William replied, turning his head back. ‘Faith, the Bible, study, time . . . and a well worn
Cruden's Concordance
.'

‘Setting dates is a folly,' Ron said. ‘A sin. How does it go? “No man knoweth the hour or day, not the angels in Heaven . . . the Father only.” Is that right, Pastor Henry?'

‘Sorry?' Still caught up in the old Glen Ewin jam jar.

‘“No man knoweth the hour . . .”' Ron repeated.

‘Yes, Matthew . . . twenty-four.'

‘William seems to think he knows.'

‘Who's to say? The Bible's a very strange, a very imprecise book.'

‘But it's the word of God.'

‘And others.'

‘“Take heed,”' Ron continued, ‘“watch and pray, you won't know when the time is . . .” or words to that effect.'