Hill of Grace (36 page)

Joshua showed them into his study, smelling of port and Butter Menthols, clearing insurance quotations from a sofa and assuring them the chocolate stains were old. A newspaper was spread across his desk, an article on Freddie Bartholomew's lost millions sitting half read under the children's crayon renderings of the Adelaide Baths. ‘I can't get Franck out of my head,' he said to Ron. ‘I need Harry here, and the other voices, otherwise I get lost. Do you find that?'

Ron smiled. ‘To be honest, I don't practise.'

‘Neither should I.'

Sarah and a few of the children returned with lemonade. ‘The little ones made this,' she said, ‘but I can vouch for it.'

The boy who had met them at the gate toppled a glass but Joshua only laughed, passing Sarah the newspaper to blot it. He lit his pipe. It went out straight away and he put it back on his desk.

‘You're friends with Bruno Hermann's grand-daughter?'

Gunther asked Sarah, although he knew quite well.

‘Yes.'

But no mention of Gnadenberg, or Henschke's with its endless stone walls, or how she'd got hold of William's secret and given it to Lilli, Nathan and beyond. ‘Mr Miller's neighbour, isn't he?'

Gunther asked, probing.

Sarah frowned. ‘Who?'

‘Bruno Hermann.'

‘Yes.'

Joshua was curious. ‘Why do you ask?'

Gunther drank some lemonade and said, ‘No reason.' But then looked back at the young girl. ‘William Miller has some very . . . peculiar ideas.'

She shrugged. ‘Are you asking or telling?'

For Gunther it was too much like disrespect, just what he'd expect from a Heinz. Sensing this, Ron Rohwer took over. ‘How do you feel about all this business, Joshua? Are you looking forward to – ' Joshua tapped his pipe in a bakelite ashtray. ‘Thank you, children.'

After they'd gone, Gunther explained how they'd just been to see Seymour Hicks. How the conversation had started off amicably until they'd mentioned what they'd come for. How Seymour had refused to talk about William or their prayer group. How he was unwilling or unable to discuss what they believed. How they'd said that if an idea couldn't be talked about, then it couldn't be taken seriously. And finally, when they asked him how he'd feel after March, how he'd stood up and shown them the door. ‘It was very hard to understand,' Ron explained. ‘We just went as peacemakers. Next thing he's slamming the door behind us without so much as . . .'

Joshua looked at them. ‘He knew you wouldn't see our side.'

‘We were willing to talk.'

‘Pastor Henry asked you to do this?'

Gunther shook his head. ‘No, just the opposite, he wants to let it all blow over. Only, we don't think it'll be that easy for you and Seymour . . . and your families.'

‘Look at Arthur Blessitt,' Ron continued. ‘People have already forgotten that he was . . . involved.'

Joshua straightened up a pile of paperwork. ‘You've come to talk, or give me an ultimatum?'

‘Joshua,' Gunther protested, ‘we all know Tanunda, and the valley, and how people think. William will never live this down. He's wrong, and deep down he knows it. He needs others to . . . flatter him.'

‘Gunther, please,' Joshua replied, shaking his head.

‘I didn't mean you.'

‘I'm with William because I believe what the Bible says.'

‘But it doesn't say that.'

‘Have you ever listened to his explanation?'

‘Of course, it's nothing new, people have been playing around with dates for centuries. A hundred and twenty years ago there was this fella in America, said the same as William, managed to persuade hundreds. Most of them sold their farms and came to live with him. No one doubted what he said because he was convincing.'

Joshua sat stony-faced, refusing to do what they'd accused Seymour of doing. Ron Rohwer took out his Bible and turned to Matthew 24, repeating and repeating how the hour and day no man knoweth. ‘Look, here, read it. It's what the Bible
really
says.'

‘But it says other things.'

‘Indirectly. But here it's clear.' Turning to Acts he read: ‘“It is not for you to know the times or the seasons . . .”'

Through all of this Joshua sat motionless, focusing on a toy stethoscope his youngest had left in his bookcase.

Outside, the Heinz children tuned Ron's car radio, keeping watch for Moses and Aaron and sneaking a few chocolates from Gunther's Old Gold assortment.

‘It's a matter of faith,' Joshua said at last.

‘That's not the point,' Ron replied.

‘It is.'

‘We have faith. We believe the Word. But it doesn't mention March twenty-first.'

Joshua started to feel like he was following a script. ‘What about the signs?'

‘Joshua.'

‘The A-bomb?' He knew he was on shaky ground, he only hoped they didn't know about William's scrapbook. ‘And what about the Reds, taking over Asia, blowing up temples?'

Gunther sat forward. ‘And Mussolini, and Hitler and his gas chambers. Didn't mean the end of the world.'

Joshua stopped, his head full of the images that had got him started. Piles of glasses and shoes, gold fillings and bodies they hadn't managed to burn in time. And in the realisation that life goes on, he wondered whether he had been right. ‘What do people say about me?'

Ron sat forward, sensing they were making some progress.

‘They say you were misled.'

Joshua took a long, deep breath and then exhaled through his nose. He could smell sausage cooking in the kitchen and hear the voice of his wife Catherine laughing with Sarah. He could see the colour and movement of kingfishers outside of his window.

The children struck gold: Gunther's half-eaten Violet Crumble in the glove box and Rudy Valle on the radio.

Joshua was running through the vines again, slipping in the mud, lying in filth, looking up into the sky through rain and cursing God. For not making things clear. For promising and then taking away.

Chapter Sixteen

Another hot day. Mary Hicks sat in the darkness of her bedroom, her feet in a bucket of water, a vinegar rag across her forehead and cucumber peel on the back of her neck. As she cooled herself with a bamboo fan she longed for distantly remembered gully winds, southerlies come to save them from over the Kaiserstuhl. Shadows and blurred shapes filled her bedroom, light cut into slices, laying itself across near new Berber courtesy of blinds as sharp as the Apex's bread slicer.

In the kitchen a puddle of water sat in front of the Hicks' new all-electric fridge, its condenser broken, wet towels draped across its shiny, new enamel in an attempt to keep their food cold. If only Nathan was still around. That's what the valley needed, she thought, people with skills, skills for the modern age, more electricians and fridge mechanics and less barrel makers and bakers.

Joseph walked in the front door, sweat spreading osmotically from the armpits of his PMG shirt over pockets and through collars. ‘Hello.'

Mary sat up, pulling her frock over her shoulders, wondering if she should close her bedroom door. ‘That you, Joe?'

‘Where is everyone?'

‘They've gone out.'

Joseph stepped in the puddle on the kitchen floor and placed his lunch box on the table. ‘I was going to take the kids to the movies.'

Mary stopped to think. ‘Maybe they forgot.'

‘Where did Ellen take them?'

Mary knew how he'd react, she'd seen him growing moodier with the passage of every hot day, saying things he'd formerly left unsaid, like, ‘There's no future in this town, if you had any sense you'd get out too, Mary,' although what his plans were she wasn't sure.

‘She went with Seymour.'

‘Where?'

A dozen places rushed through her head: the Black and White, the supermarket, Linke's, a walk . . . but on a hundred degree day? No point. Everyone knew everything in Tanunda, handbills or no handbills. She only risked getting him even more off-side. ‘I think they just went to see William.'

No reply. She heard his bedroom door slam and a few minutes later the front door. Waiting until the house was clear and looking in his room, she found his work clothes thrown into a pile in the corner, a bottle of California poppy left open and the smell of Rexona lingering. And in a piece of predictably bad timing, the voices of the children and Ellen and Seymour coming up the street.

Joseph walked down Murray Street towards the Institute. Sitting on a bench beside Wohler's he listened to the rantings of the God-man, Tanunda's occasional speaker on matters theological. Like William, he was a member of no church, but unlike William, he didn't claim to have any bigger or better ideas. He stood before a placard which read,
About 1930 I had a gathering of children at
the Nuri high school. Children made decisions for the Lord Jesus Christ.
I am wondering whether anyone remembers this occasion?
But if they did, they weren't saying.

God-man was a rarity, appearing two or three times a year, in pouring rain or fierce dust storms, year after year, wondering why no one knew about the children after so many years of asking. ‘I just spoke to them and said that if they agreed to believe in the Lord Jesus, to hold up their hands, and many of them did.' Joseph listened to the tone in his voice: like Arthur's, full of longing to know more about Christ. ‘I pray for the children who held up their hands, and that they'll keep believing.'

At seven o'clock he passed into the Institute in a better frame of mind. After drinking from the water cooler and wetting down his face and hair, he bought a ticket and went into the hall. Fabric had been taped over the windows and tarpaulins rolled out over the skylights. Despite this it was nearly as bright as outside. Flies buzzed in a low orbit through an ether of rising damp, naphthalene and poppy oil. Families lingered in aisles to catch up as children ran up into a balcony of stored filing cabinets. Joseph sat down in the back on a pew salvaged from Tabor, after they'd gone the way of chrome and vinyl. In his hands he held five paper bags he'd prepared that morning, each with a banana and sherbets, a couple of coconut ice and a Brockhoff biscuit. As the newsreel started to flicker and people scurried to their seats, he opened the first bag and started peeling what would become his tea.

Francis the talking mule, with its stupid voice-over and tormented sidekick, had got them started. But Joe could remember laughing anyway, sitting in the very same possie with the very same brown bags. Chas laughing on Vicky's shoulder, the half fake laugh he remembered all of his kids having. All of them eating their food within the first five minutes and asking for Coke.

This time it was
Francis Goes to the Races
, an even cornier journey into the world of talking animals in which Francis fed his master Best Bets, straight from the horse's mouth. Ten minutes in he was already squirming, having foreseen the ending by an hour or so, consoling himself with coconut ice which rained down like rampant dandruff. As the film continued, he couldn't find anything funny. Without the children there was nothing. Just coconut forming a snowfield on his shirt as life passed him by – Donald O'Connor as the payer of bills, the bringer of discipline and the sorter of mail.

Gags and showtunes were no substitute for family. Things had changed a lot in the last twelve months. The sequel could never match the original, Mickey Rooney would never be as good as O'Connor. This time last summer he'd hardly heard of William Miller, Ellen was still his wife and his children his children. Now they always seemed to be elsewhere, in spirit as much as body.

Fans clicked away high on the ceiling. The ticket and candy bar girls sat along the back wall sipping lemonade and barley water, wiping themselves with flannels they kept cold in ice-water. Joseph saw the door opening and watched as one of the girls went out, returning with Ellen and the children, Ellen standing in the aisle, searching for him in light that was still too bright by half. Must have picked out my bald spot, he thought, as she ushered the children past knees and handbags, settling them in beside him and sitting at the opposite end. He sent the four bags, minus the coconut ice, back towards her, putting his arm around Chas and concentrating on the donkey's lines.

During intermission the children helped some of the men open high windows with a long, wooden pole. The first smell and light breezes of a southerly change blew in the front doors and fire exits they'd left open. Everyone could sense its approach. In the hall the mood changed from El Alamein to VE Day. Families gathered in clusters and laughter echoed between the Bessa brick walls. Flies retreated to distant barbecues and as the temperature started to drop, top buttons of frocks were done up in a frenzy of shame.

Joseph stood in the foyer biting the edges off a chocolate ice-cream, listening to Ellen explain how they'd only dropped in to pick up some wine. ‘You said we weren't going till seven,' she said, putting part of the blame back onto him. What would O'Connor say? What could
he
say? Next it would be, Stop feeling sorry for yourself, making mountains out of molehills. Instead he tried a different approach. ‘I spoke to Jim Fairlie today.'

‘Fairlie?'

‘He's acting manager.'

The shutters were pulled down on the candy bar and the girl pushed the buzzer. Empty paper cups blew in the front door from Murray Street, scraping across the floorboards and coming to rest against the door of the ladies powder room. ‘He said I can transfer,' Joseph continued. ‘To the GPO.'

She looked confused. ‘So . . .?'

‘So, we can set up in town. More opportunities in the city.'

‘But where do we live?'

‘I'll find a place.'

Ellen, caught between a buzzer, Alastair Sim and Chas pulling on her sleeve, could only manage: ‘It's starting.'