The Thorn Birds (84 page)

Upon the heels of which thought she wept miserably, succeeded in getting enough hold upon herself to tell herself not to be so stupid, 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 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 anything 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, enduring, 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 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 canceled, 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.

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 Economic 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 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 displayed 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 Napoleon 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!”

“Jus
tine
! When will you learn to remember names? It’s as well you turned me down, a fine politician’s wife 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 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 impulse 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 homesick?”

“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.”

“Go on, it’s not all Cleary pride! I’ve always fancied there was a little dash of Armstrong in it as well.”

But Fee shook her head. “No. Whyever I did what I did, pride hardly entered into it. That’s the purpose of old age, Meggie. To give us a breathing space before we die, in which to see why we did what we did.”

“Provided senility doesn’t render us incapable first,” said Meggie dryly. “Not that there’s any danger of that in you. Nor in me, I suppose.”

“Maybe senility’s a mercy shown to those who couldn’t face retrospection. Anyway, you’re not old enough yet to say you’ve avoided senility. Give it another twenty years.”

“Another
twenty years
!” Meggie echoed, dismayed. “Oh, it sounds so long!”

“Well, you could have made those twenty years less lonely, couldn’t you?” Fee asked, knitting industriously.

“Yes, I could. But it wouldn’t have been worth it, Mum. Would it?” She tapped Justine’s letter with the knob of one ancient knitting needle, the slightest trace of doubt in her tone. “I’ve dithered long enough. Sitting here ever since Rainer came, hoping I wouldn’t need to do anything at all, hoping the decision wouldn’t rest with me. Yet he was right. In the end, it’s been for me to do.”

“Well, you might concede I did a bit too,” Fee protested, injured. “That is, once you surrendered enough of your pride to tell me all about it.”

“Yes, you helped,” said Meggie gently.

The old clock ticked; both pairs of hands continued to flash about the tortoise-shell stems of their needles.

“Tell me something, Mum,” said Meggie suddenly. “Why did you break over Dane when you didn’t over Daddy or Frank or Stu?”

“Break?” Fee’s hands paused, laid down the needles: she could still knit as well as in the days when she could see perfectly. “How do you mean, break?”

“As though it killed you.”

“They all killed me, Meggie. But I was younger for the first three, so I had the energy to conceal it better. More reason, too. Just like you now. But Ralph knew how I felt when Daddy and Stu died. You were too young to have seen it.” She smiled. “I adored Ralph, you know. He was…someone special. Awfully like Dane.”

“Yes, he was. I never realized you’d seen that, Mum—I mean their natures. Funny. You’re a Darkest Africa to me. There are so many things about you I don’t know.”

“I should hope so!” said Fee with a snort of laughter. Her hands remained quiet. “Getting back to the original subject—if you can do this now for Justine, Meggie, I’d say you’ve gained more from your troubles than I did from mine. I wasn’t willing to do as Ralph asked and look out for you. I wanted my memories…nothing but my memories. Whereas you’ve no choice. Memories are all you’ve got.”

“Well, they’re a comfort, once the pain dies down. Don’t you think so? I had twenty-six whole years of Dane, and I’ve learned to tell myself that what happened
must
be for the best, that he must have been spared some awful ordeal he might not have been strong enough to endure. Like Frank, perhaps, only not the same. There are worse things than dying, we both know that.”