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 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 expectations 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."
They walked together down the uneasy planking, the exposed coral molten in the dying sun and the fearsome sea a reflected, tumultuous 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 island 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 hollow. 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 proprietary 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 seduced 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 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, passion fruit, 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 within the lagoon, the sea was mirror calm and quite free of currents, 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 surprisingly 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; 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 thousands 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.
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 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 ONEILL. 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 Y. 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 Y. 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 ONEILL, 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 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 desperately, 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 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 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 going!"
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?"
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 imagination, 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 tonight." "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, no woman ever had. What he wanted no woman could ever give him. 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 glittering. 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.
"My God!" she said, and dropped the baby's bottle. He retrieved it, handed it to her and leaned against the veranda railing, facing her: "It's all right. The teat didn't strike the ground; you can feed her with it." The baby was just beginning a deprived quiver. Anne stuck the rubber in her mouth and got enough breath back to speak. "Well, Your Grace, this is a surprise!" Her eyes slid over him, amused. "I must say you don't exactly look like an archbishop. Not that you ever did, even in the proper togs. I always imagine archbishops of any religious denomination to be fat and self-satisfied."
"At the moment I'm not an archbishop, only a priest on a well-earned holiday, so you can call me Ralph. Is this the little thing caused Meggie so much trouble when I was here last? May I have her? I think I can manage to hold the bottle at the appropriate angle."
He settled into a chair alongside Anne, took baby and bottle and continued to feed her, his legs crossed casually.
"Did Meggie name her Justine?"
"Yes."
"I like it. Good Lord, look at the color of her hair! Her grandfather all over."
"That's what Meggie says. I hope the poor little mite doesn't come out in a million freckles later on, but I think she will."
"Well, Meggie's sort of a redhead and she isn't a bit freckled. Though Meggie's skin is a different color and texture, more opaque." He put the empty bottle down, sat the baby bolt upright on his knee, facing him, bent her forward in a salaam and began rhythmically rubbing her back hard. "Among my other duties I have to visit Catholic orphanages, so I'm quite deedy with babies. Mother Gonzaga at my favorite infants' home always says this is the only way to burp a baby. Holding it over one's shoulder doesn't flex the body forward enough, the wind can't escape so easily, and when it does come up there's usually lots of milk as well. This way the baby's bent in the middle, which corks the milk 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 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 fluently." He sighed. "I've always had a talent for languages, and I cultivated it deliberately. It was inevitable that I would be transferred."
Дата добавления: 2015-11-04; просмотров: 25 | Нарушение авторских прав
| <== предыдущая лекция | | | следующая лекция ==> |