"Your Eminence, I wish to confess."
"Later, later! First we will talk, and in English. There are ears everywhere these days, but, thank our dear Jesus, not English-speaking ears. Sit down, Ralph, please. Oh, it is so good to see you! I have missed your wise counsel, your rationality, your perfect brand of companionship. They have not given me anyone I like half so well as you."
He could feel his brain clicking into the formality already, feel the very thoughts in his mind take on more stilted phrasing; more than most people, Ralph de Bricassart knew how everything about one changed with one's company, even one's speech. Not for these ears the easy fluency of colloquial English. So he sat down not far away, and directly opposite the slight figure in its scarlet moiré, the color changing yet not changing, of a quality which made its edges fuse with the surroundings rather than stand out from them. The desperate weariness he had known for weeks seemed to be easing a little from his shoulders; he wondered why he had dreaded this meeting so, when he had surely known in his heart he would be understood, forgiven. But that wasn't it, not it at all. It was his own guilt at having failed, at being less than he had aspired to be, at disappointing a man who had been interested, tremendously kind, a true friend. His guilt at walking into this pure presence no longer pure himself.
"Ralph, we are priests, but we are something else before that; something we were before we became priests, and which we cannot escape in spite of our exclusiveness. We are men, with the weaknesses and failings of men. There is nothing you can tell me which could alter the impressions I formed of you during our years together, nothing you could tell me which will make me think less of you, or like you less. For many years I have known that you had escaped this realization of our intrinsic weakness, of our humanity, but I knew you must come to it, for we all do. Even the Holy Father, who is the most humble and human of us all."
"I broke my vows, Your Eminence. That isn't easily forgiven. It's sacrilege."
"Poverty you broke years ago, when you accepted the bequest of Mrs. Mary Carson. Which leaves cha/y and obedience, does it not?" "Then all three were broken, Your Eminence."
"I wish you would call me Vittorio, as you used to! I am not shocked, Ralph, nor disappointed. It is as Our Lord Jesus Christ wills, and I think perhaps you had a great lesson to learn which could not be learned in any way less destructive. God is mysterious, His reasons beyond our poor comprehension. But I think what you did was not done lightly, your vows thrown away as having no value. I know you very well. I know you to be proud, very much in love with the idea of being a priest, very conscious of your exclusiveness. It is possible that you needed this particular lesson to reduce that pride, make you understand that you are first a man, and therefore not as exclusive as you think. Is it not so?" "Yes. I lacked humility, and I believe in a way I aspired to be God Himself. I've sinned most grievously and inexcusably. I can't forgive myself, so how can I hope for divine forgiveness?"
"The pride, Ralph, the pride! It is not your place to forgive, do you not understand that yet? Only God can forgive. Only God! And He will forgive if the sincere repentance is there. He has forgiven greater sins from far greater saints, you know, as well as from far greater villains. Do you think Prince Lucifer is not forgiven? He was forgiven in the very moment of his rebellion. His fate as ruler of Hell is his own, not God's doing. Did he not say it? "Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven!" For he could not overcome his pride, he could not bear to subjugate his will to the Will of Someone else, even though that Someone was God Himself. I do not want to see you make the same mistake, my dearest friend. Humility was the one quality you lacked, and it is the very quality which makes a great saint-or a great man. Until you can leave the matter of forgiveness to God, you will not have acquired true humility."
The strong face twisted. "Yes, I know you're right. I must accept what I am without question, only strive to be better without having pride in what I am. I repent, therefore I shall confess and await forgiveness. I do repent, bitterly." He sighed; his eyes betrayed the conflict his measured words couldn't, not in this room.
"And yet, Vittorio, in a way there was nothing else I could do. Either I ruined her, or I took the ruin upon myself. At the time there didn't seem to be a choice, because I do love her. It wasn't her fault that I've never wanted the love to extend to a physical plane. Her fate became more important than my own, you see. Until that moment I had always considered myself first, as more important than she, because I was a priest, and she was a lesser being. But I saw that I was responsible for what she is.... I should have let her go when she was a child, but I didn't. I kept her in my heart and she knew it. If I had truly plucked her out she would have known that, too, and she would have become someone I couldn't influence." He smiled. "You see that I have much to repent. I tried a little creating of my own."
"It was the Rose?"
The head went back; Archbishop Ralph looked at the elaborate ceiling with its gilded moldings and baroque Murano chandelier. "Could it have been anyone else? She's my only attempt at creation."
"And will she be all right, the Rose? Did you do her more harm by this than in denying her?"
"I don't know, Vittorio. I wish I did! At the time it just seemed the only thing to do. I'm not gifted with Promethean foresight, and emotional involvement makes one a poor judge. Besides, it simply... happened! But I think perhaps she needed most what I gave her, the recognition of her identity as a woman. I don't mean that she didn't know she was a woman. I mean 1 didn't know. If I had first met her as a woman it might have been different, but I knew her as a child for many years."
"You sound rather priggish, Ralph, and not yet ready for forgiveness. It hurts, does it not? That you could have been human enough to yield to human weakness. Was it really done in such a spirit of noble self-sacrifice?" Startled, he looked into the liquid dark eyes, saw himself reflected in them as two tiny manikins of insignificant proportion. "No," he said. "I'm a man, and as a man I found a pleasure in her I didn't dream existed. I didn't know a woman felt like that, or could be the source of such profound joy. I wanted never to leave her, not only because of her body, but because I just loved to be with her-talk to her, not talk to her, eat the meals she cooked, smile at her, share her thoughts. I shall miss her as long as I live." There was something in the sallow ascetic visage which unaccountably reminded him of Meggie's face in that moment of parting; the sight of a spiritual burden being taken up, the resoluteness of a character well able to go forward in spite of its loads, its griefs, its pain. What had he known, the red silk cardinal whose only human addiction seemed to be his languid Abyssinian cat?
"I can't repent of what I had with her in that way," Ralph went on when His Eminence didn't speak. "I repent the breaking of vows as solemn and binding as my life. I can never again approach my priestly duties in the same light, with the same zeal. I repent that bitterly. But Meggie?" The look on his face when he uttered her name made Cardinal Vittorio turn away to do battle with his own thoughts.
"To repent of Meggie would be to murder her." He passed his hand tiredly across his eyes. "I don't know if that's very clear, or even if it gets close to saying what I mean. I can't for the life of me ever seem to express what I feel for Meggie adequately." He leaned forward in his chair as the Cardinal turned back, and watched his twin images grow a little larger. Vittorio's eyes were like mirrors; they threw back what they saw and didn't permit one a glimpse of what went on behind them. Meggie's eyes were exactly the opposite; they went down and down and down, all the way to her soul. "Meggie is a benediction," he said. "She's a holy thing to me, a different kind of sacrament."
"Yes, I understand," sighed the Cardinal. "It is well you feel so. In Our Lord's eyes I think it will mitigate the great sin. For your own sake you had better confess to Father Giorgio, not to Father Guillermo. Father Giorgio will not misinterpret your feelings and your reasoning. He will see the truth. Father Guillermo is less perceptive, and might deem your true repentance debatable." A faint smile crossed his thin mouth like a wispy shadow. "They, too, are men, my Ralph, those who hear the confessions of the great. Never forget it as long as you live. Only in their priesthood do they act as vessels containing God. In all else they are men. And the forgiveness they mete out comes from God, but the ears which listen and judge belong to men."
There was a discreet knock on the door; Cardinal Vittorio sat silently and watched the tea tray being carried to a buhl table. "You see, Ralph? Since my days in Australia I have become addicted to the afternoon tea habit. They make it quite well in my kitchen, though they used not to at first." He held up his hand as Archbishop Ralph started to move toward the teapot. "Ah, no! I shall pour it myself. It amuses me to be 'mother.""
"I saw a great many black shirts in the streets of Genoa and Rome," said Archbishop Ralph, watching Cardinal Vittorio pour. "The special cohorts of II Duce. We have a very difficult time ahead of us, my Ralph. The Holy Father is adamant that there be no fracture between the Church and the secular government of Italy, and he is right in this as in ail things. No matter what happens, we must remain free to minister to all our children, even should a war mean our children will be divided, fighting each other in the name of a Catholic God. Wherever our hearts and our emotions might lie, we must endeavor always to keep the Church removed from political ideologies and international squabbles. I wanted you to come to me because I can trust your face not to give away what your brain is thinking no matter what your eyes might be seeing, and because you have the best diplomatic turn of mind I have ever encountered."
Archbishop Ralph smiled ruefully. "You'll further my career in spite of me, won't you! I wonder what would have happened to me if I hadn't met you?" "Oh, you would have become Archbishop of Sydney, a nice post and an important one," said His Eminence with a golden smile. "But the ways of our lives lie not in our hands. We met because it was meant to be, just as it is meant that we work together now for the Holy Father."
"I can't see success at the end of the road," said Archbishop Ralph. "I think the result will be what the result of impartiality always is. No one will like us, and everyone will condemn us."
"I know that, so does His Holiness. But we can do nothing else. And there is nothing to prevent our praying in private for the speedy downfall of 11 Duce and Der Fuehrer, is there?"
"Do you really think there will be war?"
"I cannot see any possibility of avoiding it."
His Eminence's cat stalked out of the sunny corner where it had been sleeping, and jumped upon the scarlet shimmering lap a little awkwardly, for it was old.
"Ah, Sheba! Say hello to your old friend Ralph, whom you used to prefer to me."
The satanic yellow eyes regarded Archbishop Ralph haughtily, and closed. Both men laughed.
Drogheda had a wireless set. Progress had finally come to Gillanbone in the shape of an Australian Broadcasting Commission radio station, and at long last there was something to rival the party line for mass entertainment. The wireless itself was a rather ugly object in a walnut case which sat on a small exquisite cabinet in the drawing room, its car-battery power source hidden in the cupboard underneath.
Every morning Mrs. Smith, Fee and Meggie turned it on to listen to the Gillanbone district news and weather, and every evening Fee and Meggie turned it on to listen to the ABC national news. How strange it was to be instantaneously connected with Outside; to hear of floods, fires, rainfall in every part of the nation, an uneasy Europe, Australian politics, without benefit of Bluey Williams and his aged newspapers. When the national news on Friday, September 1/, announced that Hitler had invaded Poland, only Fee and Meggie were home to hear it, and neither of them paid any attention. There had been speculation for months; besides, Europe was half a world away. Nothing to do with Drogheda, which was the center of the universe. But on Sunday, September 3rd all the men were in from the paddocks to hear Father Watty Thomas say Mass, and the men were interested in Europe. Neither Fee nor Meggie thought to tell them of Friday's news, and Father Watty, who might have, left in a hurry for Narrengang.
As usual, the wireless set was switched on that evening for the national news. But instead of the crisp, absolutely Oxford tones of the announcer, there came the genteel, unmistakably Australian voice of the Prime Minister, Robert Gordon Menzies.
"Fellow Australians. It is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that in consequence of the persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her, and that, as a result, Australia is also at war....
"It may be taken that Hitler's ambition is not to unite all the German people under one rule, but to bring under that rule as many countries as can be subdued by force. If this is to go on, there can be no security in Europe and no peace in the world.... There can be no doubt that where Great Britain stands, there stand the people of the entire British world.... "Our staying power, and that of the Mother Country, will be best assisted by keeping our production going, continuing our avocations and business, maintaining employment, and with it, our strength. I know that in spite of the emotions we are feeling, Australia is ready to see it through. "May God, in His mercy and compassion, grant that the world may soon be delivered from this agony."
There was a long silence in the drawing room, broken by the megaphonal tones of a short-wave Neville Chamberlain speaking to the British people; Fee and Meggie looked at their men.
"If we count Frank, there are six of us," said Bob into the silence. "All of us except Frank are on the land, which means they won't want to let us serve. Of our present stockmen, I reckon six will want to go and two will want to stay."
"I want to go!" said Jack, eyes shining.
"And me," said Hughie eagerly.
"And us," said Jims on behalf of himself and the inarticulate Patsy. But they all looked at Bob, who was the boss. "We've got to be sensible," he said. "Wool is a staple of war, and not only for clothes. It's used as packing in ammunition and explosives, for all sorts of funny things we don't hear of, I'm sure. Plus we have beef cattle for food, and the old wethers and ewes go for hides, glue, tallow, lanolin-all war staples.
"So we can't go off and leave Drogheda to run itself, no matter what we might want to do. With a war on it's going to be mighty hard to replace the stockmen we're bound to lose. The drought's in its third year, we're scrub-cutting, and the bunnies are driving us silly. For the moment our job's here on Drogheda; not very exciting compared to getting into action, but just as necessary. We'll be doing our best bit here."
The male faces had fallen, the female ones lightened. "What if it goes on longer than old Pig Iron Bob thinks it will?" asked Hughie, giving the Prime Minister his national nickname. Bob thought hard, his weatherbeaten visage full of frowning lines. "If things get worse and it goes on for a long time, then I reckon as long as we've got two stockmen we can spare two Clearys, but only if Meggie's willing to get back into proper harness and work the inside paddocks. It would be awfully hard and in good times we wouldn't stand a chance, but in this drought I reckon five men and Meggie working seven days a week could run Drogheda. Yet that's asking a lot of Meggie, with two little babies." "If it has to be done, Bob, it has to be done," said Meggie. "Mrs. Smith won't mind doing her bit by taking charge of Justine and Dane. When you give the word that I'm needed to keep Drogheda up to full production, I'll start riding the inside paddocks."
"Then that's us, the two who can be spared," said Jims, smiling. "No, it's Hughie and I," said Jack quickly.
"By rights it ought to be Jims and Patsy," Bob said slowly. "You're the youngest and least experienced as stockmen, where as soldiers we'd all be equally inexperienced. But you're only sixteen now, chaps."
"By the time things get worse we'll be seventeen," offered Jims. "We'll look older than we are, so we won't have any trouble enlisting if we've got a letter from you witnessed by Harry Gough."
"Well, right at the moment no one is going. Let's see if we can't bring Drogheda up to higher production, even with the drought and the bunnies." Meggie left the room quietly, went upstairs to the nursery. Dane and Justine were asleep, each in a whitepainted cot. She passed her daughter by, and stood over her son, looking down at him for a long time. "Thank God you're only a baby," she said.
It was almost a year before the war intruded upon the little Drogheda universe, a year during which one by one the stockmen left, the rabbits continued to multiply, and Bob battled valiantly to keep the station books looking worthy of a wartime effort. But at the beginning of June 1940 came the news that the British Expeditionary Force had been evacuated from the European mainland at Dunkirk; volunteers for the second Australian Imperial Force poured in thousands into the recruiting centers, Jims and Patsy among them.
Four years of. riding the paddocks in all weathers had passed the twins' faces and bodies beyond youth, to that ageless calm of creases at the outer corners of the eyes, lines down the nose to the mouth. They presented their letters and were accepted without comment. Bushmen were popular. They could usually shoot well, knew the value of obeying an order, and they were tough. Jims and Patsy had enlisted in Dubbo, but camp was to be Ingleburn, outside Sydney, so everyone saw them off on the night mail. Cormac Carmichael, Eden's youngest son, was on the same train for the same reason, going to the same camp as it turned out. So the two families packed their boys comfortably into a first-class compartment and stood around awkwardly, aching to weep and kiss and have something warming to remember, but stifled by their peculiar British mistrust of demonstrativeness. The big C-36 steam locomotive howled mournfully, the stationmaster began blowing his whistle.
Meggie leaned over to peck her brothers on their cheeks self-consciously, then did the same to Cormac, who looked just like his oldest brother, Connor; Bob, Jack and Hughie wrung three different young hands; Mrs. Smith, weeping, was the only one who did the kissing and cuddling everyone was dying to do. Eden Carmichael, his wife and aging but still handsome daughter with him, went through the same formalities. Then everyone was outside on the Gilly platform, the train was jerking against its buffers and creeping forward. "Goodbye, goodbye!" everyone called, and waved big white handkerchiefs until the train was a smoky streak in the shimmering sunset distance. Together as they had requested, Jims and Patsy were gazetted to the raw, half-trained Ninth Australian Division and shipped to Egypt at the beginning of 1941, just in time to become a part of the rout at Benghazi. The newly arrived General Erwin Rommel had put his formidable weight on the Axis end of the seesaw and begun the first reversal of direction in the great cycling rushes back and forth across North Africa. And, while the rest of the British forces retreated ignominiously ahead of the new Afrika Korps back to Egypt, the Ninth Australian Division was detailed to occupy and hold Tobruk, an outpost in Axis-held territory. The only thing which made the plan feasible was that it was still accessible by sea and could be supplied as long as British ships could move in the Mediterranean. The Rats of Tobruk holed up for eight months, and saw action after action as Rommel threw everything he had at them from time to, time, without managing to dislodge them.
"Do youse know why youse is here?" asked Private Col Stuart, licking the paper on his cigarette and rolling it shut lazily. Sergeant Bob Malloy shifted his Digger hat far enough upward to see his questioner from under its brim. "Shit, no," he said, grinning; it was an oft-asked query.
"Well, it's better than whiting gaiters in the bloody glasshouse," said Private Jims Cleary, pulling his twin brother's shorts down a little so he could rest his head comfortably on soft warm belly. "Yair, but in the glasshouse youse don't keep getting shot at," objected Col, flicking his dead match at a sunbathing lizard. "I know this much, mate," said Bob, rearranging his hat to shade his eyes. "I'd rather get shot at than die of fuckin' boredom."
They were comfortably, disposed in a dry, gravelly dugout just opposite the mines and barbed wire which cut off the southwest corner of the perimeter; on the other side Rommel hung doggedly on to his single piece of the Tobruk territory. A big.50-caliber Browning machine gun shared the hole with them, cases of ammunition neatly beside it, but no one seemed very energetic or interested in the possibility of attack. Their rifles were propped against one wall, bayonets glittering in the brilliant Tobruk sun. Flies buzzed everywhere, but all four were Australian bushmen, so Tobruk and North Africa held no surprises in the way of heat, dust or flies. "Just as well youse is twins, Jims," said Col, throwing pebbles at the lizard, which didn't seem disposed to move. "Youse look like a pair of poofters, all tied up together." "You're just jealous." Jims grinned, stroking Patsy's belly. "Patsy's the best pillow in Tobruk."
"Yair, all right for you, but what about poor Patsy? Go on, Harpo, say something!" Bob teased.
Patsy's white teeth appeared in a smile, but as usual he remained silent. Everyone had tried to get him to talk, but no one had ever succeeded beyond an essential yes or no; in consequence nearly everyone called him Harpo, after the voiceless Marx brother.
"Hear the news?" asked Col suddenly.
"What?"
"The Seventh's Matildas got plastered by the eightyeights at Halfaya. Only gun in the desert big enough to wipe out a Matilda. Went through them big buggers of tanks like a dose of salts."
"Oh, yeah, tell me another!" said Bob skeptically. "I'm a sergeant and I never heard a whisper, you're a private and you know all about it. Well, mate, there's just nothing Jerry's got capable of wiping out a brigade of Matildas."
"I was in Morshead's tent on a message from the CO when I heard it come through on the wireless, and it is true," Col maintained. For a while no one spoke; it was necessary to every inhabitant of a beleaguered outpost like Tobruk that he believe implicitly his own side had sufficient military thrust to get him out. Col's news wasn't very welcome, more so because not one soldier in Tobruk held Rommel lightly. They had resisted his efforts to blow them out because they genuinely believed the Australian fighting man had no peer save a Gurkha, and if faith is nine-tenths of power, they had certainly proved themselves formidable. "Bloody Poms," said Jims. "What we need in North Africa is more Aussies." The chorus of agreement was interrupted by an explosion on the rim of the dugout which blew the lizard into nothing and sent the four soldiers diving for the machine gun and their rifles. "Fuckin' Dago grenade, all splinters and no punch," Bob said with a sigh of relief. "If that was a Hitler special we'd be playing our harps for sure, and wouldn't you like that, eh, Patsy?"
At the beginning of Operation Crusader the Ninth Australian Division was evacuated by sea to Cairo, after a weary, bloody siege which seemed to have accomplished nothing. However, while the Ninth had been holed up inside Tobruk, the steadily swelling ranks of British troops in North Africa had become the British Eighth Army, its new commander General Bernard Law Montgomery.
Fee wore a little silver brooch formed into the rising sun emblem of the AIF; suspended on two chains below it was a silver bar, on which she had two gold stars, one for each son under arms. It assured everyone she met that she, too, was Doing Her Bit for the Country. Because her husband was not a soldier, nor her son, Meggie wasn't entitled to wear a brooch. A letter had come from Luke informing her that he would keep on cutting the sugar; he thought she would like to know in case she had been worried he might join up. There was no indication that he remembered a word of what she had said that morning in the Ingham pub. Laughing wearily and shaking her head, she had dropped the letter in Fee's wastepaper basket, wondering as she did so if Fee worried about her sons under arms. What did she really think of the war? But Fee never said a word, though she wore her brooch every single day, all day. Sometimes a letter would come from Egypt, falling into tatters when it was spread open because the censor's scissors had filled it with neat rectangular holes, once the names of places or regiments. Reading these letters was largely a matter of piecing together much out of- virtually nothing, but they served one purpose which cast all others into the shade: while ever they came, the boys were still alive. There had been no rain. It was as if even the divine elements conspired to blight hope, for 1941 was the fifth year of a disastrous drought. Meggie, Bob, Jack, Hughie and Fee were desperate. The Drogheda bank account was rich enough to buy all the feed necessary to keep the sheep alive, but most of the sheep wouldn't eat. Each mob had a natural leader, the Judas; only if they could persuade the Judas to eat did they stand a hope with the rest, but sometimes even the sight of a chewing Judas couldn't impress the rest of the mob into emulating it.
So Drogheda, too, was seeing its share of bloodletting, and hating it. The grass was all gone, the ground a dark cracked waste lightened only by grey and dunbrown timber stands. They armed themselves with knives as well as rifles; when they saw an animal down someone would cut its throat to spare it a lingering death, eyeless from the crows. Bob put on more cattle and hand-fed them to keep up Drogheda's war effort. There was no profit to be had in it with the price of feed, for the agrarian regions closer in were just as hard hit by lack of rain as the pastoral regions farther out. Crop returns were abysmally low. However, word had come from Rome that they were to do what they could regardless of the cost.
What Meggie hated most of all was the time she had to put in working the paddocks. Drogheda had managed to retain only one of its stockmen, and so far there were no replacements; Australia's greatest shortage had always been manpower. So unless Bob noticed her irritability and fatigue, and gave her Sunday off, Meggie worked the paddocks seven days a week. However, if Bob gave her time off it meant he himself worked harder, so she tried not to let her distress show. It never occurred to her that she could simply refuse to ride as a stockman, plead her babies as an excuse. They were well cared for, and Bob needed her so much more than they did. She didn't have the insight to understand her babies needed her, too; thinking of her longing to be with them as selfishness when they were so well cared for by loving and familiar hands. It was selfish, she told herself. Nor did she have the kind of confidence that might have told her that in her children's eyes she was just as special as they were to her. So she rode the paddocks, and for weeks on end got to see her children only after they were in bed for the night. Whenever Meggie looked at Dane her heart turned over. He was a beautiful child; even strangers on the streets of Gilly remarked on it when Fee took him into town. His habitual expression was a smiling one, his nature a curious combination of quietness and deep, sure happiness; he seemed to have grown into his identity and acquired his self-knowledge with none of the pain children usually experience, for he rarely made mistakes about people or things, and nothing ever exasperated or bewildered him. To his mother his likeness to Ralph was sometimes very frightening, but apparently no one else ever noticed. Ralph had been gone from Gilly for a long time, and though Dane had the same features, the same build, he had one great difference, which tended to cloud the issue. His hair wasn't black like Ralph's, it was a pale gold; not the color of wheat or sunset but the color of Drogheda grass, gold with silver and beige in it.
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