It was very hot, but Bishop Ralph didn't mind the dry Athens air after Sydney's humidity. Walking rapidly, as usual in boots, breeches and soutane, he strode up the rocky ramp to the Acropolis, through the frowning Propylon, past the Erechtheum, on up the incline with its slippery rough stones to the Parthenon, and. down to the wall beyond.
There, with the wind ruffling his dark curls, a little grey about the ears now, he stood and looked across the white city to the bright hills and the clear, astonishing aquamarine of the Aegean Sea. Right below him was the Plaka with its rooftop cafes, its colonies of Bohemians, and to one side a great theater lapped up the rock. In the distance were Roman columns, Crusader forts and Venetian castles, but never a sign of the Turks. What amazing people, these Greeks. To hate the race who had ruled them for seven hundred years so much that once freed they hadn't left a mosque or a minaret standing. And so ancient, so full of rich heritage. His Normans had been fur-clad barbarians when Pericles clothed the top of the rock in marble, and Rome had been a rude village. Only now, eleven thousand miles away, was he able to think of Meggie without wanting to weep. Even so, the distant hills blurred for a moment before he brought his emotions under control. How could he possibly blame her, when he had told her to do it? He understood at once why she had been determined not to tell him; she didn't want him to meet her new husband, or be a part of her new life. Of course in his mind he had assumed she would bring whomever she married to Gillanbone if not to Drogheda itself, that she would continue to live where he knew her to be safe, free from care and danger. But once he thought about it, he could see this was the last thing she would want. No, she had been bound to go away, and so long as she and this Luke O'neill were together, she wouldn't come back. Bob said they were saving to buy a property in Western Queensland, and that news had been the death knell. Meggie meant never to come back. As far as he was concerned, she intended to be dead.
But are you happy, Meggie? Is he good to you? Do you love him, this Luke O'neill? What kind of man is he, that you turned from me to him? What was it about him, an ordinary stockman, that you liked better than Enoch Davies or Liam O'Rourke or Alastair MacQueen? Was it that 1 didn't know him, that 1 could make no comparisons? Did you do it to torture me, Meggie, to pay me back? But why are there no children? What's the matter with the man, that he roams up and down the state like a vagabond and puts you to live with friends? No wonder you have no child; he's not with you long enough. Meggie, why? Why did you marry this Luke O'neill?
Turning, he made his way down from the Acropolis, and walked the busy streets of Athens. In the open-air markets around Evripidou Street he lingered, fascinated by the people, the huge baskets of kalamari and fish reeking in the sun, the vegetables and tinsel slippers hung side by side; the women amused him, their unashamed and open cooing over him, a legacy of a culture basically very different from his puritanical own. Had their unabashed admiration been lustful (he could not think of a better word) it would have embarrassed him acutely, but he accepted it in the spirit intended, as an accolade for extraordinary physical beauty. The hotel was on Omonia Square, very luxurious and expensive. Archbishop di
Contini-Verchese was, sitting in a chair by his balcony windows, quietly thinking; as Bishop Ralph came in he turned his head, smiling. "In good time, Ralph. I would like to pray."
"I thought everything was settled? Are there sudden complications, Your Grace?"
"Not of that kind. I had a letter from Cardinal Monteverdi today, expressing the wishes of the Holy Father."
Bishop Ralph felt his shoulders tighten, a curious prickling of the skin around his ears. "Tell me."
"As soon as the talks are over-and they are over-I am to proceed to Rome. There I am to be blessed with the biretta of a cardinal, and continue my work in Rome under the direct supervision of His Holiness."
"Whereas I?"
"You will become Archbishop de Bricassart, and go back to Australia to fill my shoes as Papal Legate."
The prickling skin around his ears flushed red hot; his head whirled, rocked. He, a non-Italian, to be honored with the Papal Legation! It was unheard of! Oh, depend on it, he would be Cardinal de Bricassart yet! "Of course you will receive training and instruction in Rome first. That will take about six months, during which I will be with you to introduce you to those who are my friends. I want them to know you, because the time will come when I shall send for you, Ralph, to help me with my work in the Vatican."
"Your Grace, I can't thank you enough! It's due to you, this great chance." "God grant I am sufficiently intelligent to see when a man is too able to leave in obscurity, Ralph! Now let us kneel and pray. God is very good." His rosary beads and missal were sitting on a table nearby; hand trembling, Bishop Ralph reached for the beads and knocked the missal to the floor. It fell open at the middle. The Archbishop; who was closer to it, picked it up and looked curiously at the brown, tissue thin shape which had once been a rose.
"How extraordinary! Why do you keep this? Is it a memory of your home, or perhaps of your mother?" The eyes which saw through guile and dissimulation were looking straight at him, and there was no time to disguise his emotion, or his apprehension.
"No." He grimaced. "I want no memories of my mother."
"But it must have great meaning for you, that you store it so lovingly within the pages of the book most dear to you. Of what does it speak?" "Of a love as pure as that I bear my God, Vittorio. It does the book nothing but honor."
"That I deduced, because I know you. But the-love, does it endanger your love for the Church?"
"No. It was for the Church I forsook her, that I always will forsake her. I've gone so far beyond her, and I can never go back again."
"So at last I understand the sadness! Dear Ralph, it is not as bad as you think, truly it is not. You will live to do great good for many people, you will be loved by many people. And she, having the love which is contained in such an old, fragrant memory as this, will never want. Because you kept the love alongside the rose."
"I don't think she understands at all."
"Oh, yes. If you have loved her thus, then she is woman enough to understand. Otherwise you would have forgotten her, and abandoned this relic long since."
"There have been times when only hours on my knees have stopped me from leaving my post, going to her."
The Archbishop eased himself out of his chair and came to kneel beside his friend, this beautiful man whom he loved as he had loved few things other than his God and his Church, which to him were indivisible. "You will not leave, Ralph, and you know it well. You belong to the Church, you always have and you always will. The vocation for you is a true one. We shall pray now, and I shall add the Rose to my prayers for the rest of my life. Our Dear Lord sends us many griefs and much pain during our progress to eternal life. We must learn to bear it, I as much as you."
At the end of August Meggie got a letter from Luke to say he was in Townsville Hospital with Weil's disease, but that he was in no danger and would be out soon.
"So it looks like we don't have to wait until the end of the year for our holiday, Meg. I can't go back to the cane until I'm one hundred percent fit, and the best way to make sure I am is to have a decent holiday. So I'll be along in a week or so to pick you up. We're going to Lake Eacham on the Atherton Tableland for a couple of weeks, until I'm well enough to go back to work."
Meggie could hardly believe it, and didn't know if she wanted to be with him or not, now that the opportunity presented itself. Though the pain of her mind had taken a lot longer to heal than the pain of her body, the memory of her honeymoon ordeal in the Dunny pub had been pushed from thought so long it had lost the power to terrify her, and from her reading she understood better now that much of it had been due to ignorance, her own and Luke's. Oh, dear Lord, pray this holiday would mean a child! If she could only have a baby to love it would be so much easier. Anne wouldn't mind a baby around, she'd love it. So would Luddie. They had told her so a hundred times, hoping Luke would come once for long enough to rectify his wife's barren loveless existence.
When she told them what the letter said they were delighted, but privately skeptical.
"Sure as eggs is eggs that wretch will find some excuse to be off without her," said Anne to Luddie.
Luke had borrowed a car from somewhere, and picked Meggie up early in the morning. He looked thin, wrinkled and yellow, as if he had been pickled. Shocked, Meggie gave him her case and climbed in beside him. "What is Weil's disease, Luke? You said you weren't in any danger, but it looks to me as if you've been very sick indeed."
"Oh, it's just some sort of jaundice most cutters get sooner or later. The cane rats carry it, we pick it up through a cut or sore. I'm in good health, so I wasn't too sick compared to some who get it. The quacks say I'll be fit as a fiddle in no time."
Climbing up through a great gorge filled with jungle, the road led inland, a river in full spate roaring and tumbling below, and at one spot a magnificent waterfall spilling to join it from somewhere up above, right athwart the road. They drove between the cliff and the angling water in a wet, glittering archway of fantastic light and shadow. And as they climbed the air grew cool, exquisitely fresh; Meggie had forgotten how good cool air made her feel. The jungle leaned across them, so impenetrable no one ever dared to enter it. The bulk of it was quite invisible under the weight of leafy vines lying sagging from treetop to treetop, continuous and endless, like a vast sheet of green velvet flung across the forest. Under the eaves Meggie caught glimpses of wonderful flowers and butterflies, cartwheeling webs with great elegant speckled spiders motionless at their hubs, fabulous fungi chewing at mossy trunks, birds with long trailing red or blond tails. Lake Eacham lay on top of the tableland, idyllic in its unspoiled setting. Before night fell they strolled out onto the veranda of their boardinghouse to look across the still water. Meggie wanted to watch the enormous fruit bats called flying foxes wheel like precursors of doom in thousands down toward the places where they found their food. They were monstrous and repulsive, but singularly timid, entirely benign. To see them come across a molten sky in dark, pulsating sheets was awesome; Meggie never missed watching for them from the Himmelhoch veranda.
And it was heaven to sink into a soft cool bed, not have to lie still until one spot was sweat-saturated and then move carefully to a new spot, knowing the old one wouldn't dry out anyway. Luke took a flat brown packet out of his case, picked a handful of small round objects out of it and laid them in a row on the bedside table.
Meggie reached out to take one, inspect it. "What on earth is it?" she asked curiously.
"A French letter." He had forgotten his decision of two years ago, not to tell her he practiced contraception. "I put it on myself before I go inside you. Otherwise I might start a baby, and we can't afford to do that until we get our place." He was sitting naked on the side of the bed, and he was thin, ribs and hips protruding. But his blue eyes shone, he reached out to clasp her hand as it held the French letter. "Nearly there,
Meg, nearly there! I reckon another five thousand pounds will buy us the best property to be had west of Charters Towers."
"Then you've got it," she said, her voice quite calm. "I can write to Bishop de Bricassart and ask him for a loan of the money. He won't charge us interest."
"You most certainly won't!" he snapped. "Damn it, Meg, where's your pride? We'll work for what we have, not borrow! I've never owed anyone a penny in all my life, and I'm not going to start now."
She scarcely heard him, glaring at him through a haze of brilliant red. In all her life she had never been so angry! Cheat, liar, egotist! How dared he do it to her, trick her out of a baby, try to make her believe he ever had any intention of becoming a grazier! He'd found his niche, with Arne Swenson and the sugar.
Concealing her rage so well it surprised her, she turned her attention back to the little rubber wheel in her hand. "Tell me about these French letter things. How do they stop me having a baby?"
He came to stand behind her, and contact of their bodies made her shiver; from excitement he thought, from disgust she knew. "Don't you know anything, Meg?"
"No," she lied. Which was true about French letters, at any rate; she could not remember ever seeing a mention of them.
His hands played with her breasts, tickling. "Look, when I come I make this-I don't know-stuff, and if I'm up inside you with nothing on, it stays there. When it stays there long enough or often enough, it makes a baby." So that was it! He wore the thing, like a skin on a sausage! Cheat! Turning off the light, he drew her down onto the bed, and it wasn't long before he was groping for his antibaby device; she heard him making the same sounds he had made in the Dunny pub bedroom, knowing now they meant he was pulling on the French letter. The cheat! But how to get around it?
Trying not to let him see how much he hurt her, she endured him. Why did it have to hurt so, if this was a natural thing?
"It's no good, is it, Meg?" he asked afterward. "You must be awfully small for it to keep on hurting so much after the first time. Well, I won't do it again. You don't mind if I do it on your breast, do you?" "Oh, what does it matter?" she asked wearily. "If you mean you're not going to hurt me, all right!"
"You might be a bit more enthusiastic, Meg!"
"What for?"
But he was rising again; it was two years since he had had time or energy for this. Oh, it was nice to be with a woman, exciting and forbidden. He didn't feel at all married to Meg; it wasn't any different from getting a bit in the paddock behind the Kynuna pub, or having high-and-mighty Miss Carmichael against the shearing shed wall. Meggie had nice breasts, firm from all that riding, just the way he liked them, and he honestly preferred to get his pleasure at her breast, liking the sensation of unsheathed penis sandwiched between their bellies. French letters cut a man's sensitivity a lot, but not to don one when he put himself inside her was asking for trouble.
Groping, he pulled at her buttocks and made her lie on top of him, then seized one nipple between his teeth, feeling the hidden point swell and harden on his tongue. A great contempt for him had taken. possession of Meggie; what ridiculous creatures men were, grunting and sucking and straining for what they got out of it. He was becoming more excited, kneading her back and bottom, gulping away for all the world like a great overgrown kitten sneaked back to its mother. His hips began to move in a rhythmic, jerky fashion, and sprawled across him awkwardly because she was hating it too much to try helping him, she felt the tip of his unprotected penis slide between her legs.
Since she was not a participant in the act, her thoughts were her own. And it was then the idea came. As slowly and unobtrusively as she could, she maneuvered him until he was right at the most painful part of her; with a great indrawn breath to keep her courage up, she forced the penis in, teeth clenched. But though it did hurt, it didn't hurt nearly as much. Minus its rubber sheath, his member was more slippery, easier to introduce and far easier to tolerate.
Luke's eyes opened. He tried to push her away, but oh, God! It was unbelievable without the French letter; he had never been inside a woman bare, had never realized what a difference it made. He was so close, so excited he couldn't bring himself to push her away hard enough, and in the end he put his arms round her, unable to keep up his breast activity. Though it wasn't manly to cry out, he couldn't prevent the noise leaving him, and afterward kissed her softly.
"Luke?"
"What?"
"Why can't we do that every time? Then you wouldn't have to put on a French letter."
"We shouldn't have done it that time, Meg, let alone again. I was right in you when I came."
She leaned over him, stroking his chest. "But don't you see? I'm sitting up! It doesn't stay there at all, it runs right out again! Oh, Luke, please! It's so much nicer, it doesn't hurt nearly as much. I'm sure it's all right, because I can feel it running out. Please!"
What human being ever lived who could resist the repetition of perfect pleasure when offered so plausibly? Adam-like, Luke nodded, for at this stage he was far less informed than Meggie.
"I suppose there's truth in what you say, and it's much nicer for me when you're not fighting it. All right, Meg, we'll do it that way from now on."
And in the darkness she smiled, content. For it had not all run out. The moment she felt him shrink out of her she had drawn up all the internal muscles into a knot, slid off him onto her back, stuck her crossed knees in the air casually and hung on to what she had with every ounce of determination in her. Oho, my fine gentleman, I'll fix you yet! You wait and see, Luke O'neill! I'll get my baby if it kills me! Away from the heat and humidity of the coastal plain Luke mended rapidly. Eating well, he began to put the weight he needed back again, and his skin faded from the sickly yellow to its usual brown. With the lure of an eager, responsive Meggie in his bed it wasn't too difficult to persuade him to prolong the original two weeks into three, and then into four. But at the end of a month he rebelled.
"There's no excuse, Meg. I'm as well as I've ever been. We're sitting up here on top of the world like a king and queen, spending money. Arne needs me."
"Won't you reconsider, Luke? If you really wanted to, you could buy your station now."
"Let's hang on a bit longer the way we are, Meg."
He wouldn't admit it, of course, but the lure of the sugar was in his bones, the strange fascination some men have for utterly demanding labor. As long as his young man's strength held up, Luke would remain faithful to the sugar. The only thing Meggie could hope for was to force him into changing his mind by giving him a child, an heir to the property out around Kynuna.
So she went back to Himmelhoch to wait and hope. Please, please, let there be a baby! A baby would solve everything, so please let there be a baby. And there was. When she told Anne and Luddie, they were overjoyed. Luddie especially turned out to be a treasure. He did the most exquisite smocking and embroidery, two crafts Meggie had never had time to master, so while he pushed a tiny needle through delicate fabric with his horny, magical hands, Meggie helped Anne get the nursery together. The only trouble was the baby wasn't sitting well, whether because of the heat or her unhappiness Meggie didn't know. The morning sickness was all day, and persisted long after it should have stopped; in spite of her very slight weight gain she began to suffer badly from too much fluid in the tissues of her body, and her blood pressure went up to a point at which Doc Smith became apprehensive. At first he talked of hospital in Cairns for the remainder of her pregnancy, but after a long think about her husbandless, friendless situation he decided she would be better off with Luddie and Anne, who did care for her. For the last three weeks of her term, however, she must definitely go to Cairns.
"And try to get her husband to come and see her!" he roared to Luddie. Meggie had written right away to tell Luke she was pregnant, full of the usual feminine conviction that once the not-wanted was an irrefutable fact, Luke would become wildly enthusiastic. His answering letter scotched any such delusions. He was furious. As far as he was concerned, becoming a father simply meant he would have two nonworking mouths to feed, instead of none. It was a bitter pill for Meggie to swallow, but swallow it she did; she had no choice. Now the coming child bound her to him as tightly as her pride. But she felt ill, helpless, utterly unloved; even the baby didn't love her, didn't want to be conceived or born. She could feel it inside her, the weakly tiny creature's feeble protests against growing into being. Had she been able to tolerate the two-thousand-mile rail journey home, she would have gone, but Doc Smith shook his lead firmly. Get on a train for a week or more, even in broken stages, and that would be the end of the baby. Disappointed and unhappy though she was, Meggie wouldn't consciously do anything to harm the baby. Yet as time went on her enthusiasm and her longing to have someone of her own to love withered in her; the incubus child hung heavier, more resentful.
Doc Smith talked of an earlier transfer to Cairns; he wasn't sure Meggie could survive a birth in Dungloe, which had only a cottage infirmary. Her blood pressure was recalcitrant, the fluid kept mounting; he talked of toxemia and eclampsia, other long medical words which frightened Anne and Luddie into agreeing, much as they longed to see the baby born at Himmelhoch. By the end of May there were only four weeks left to go, four weeks until Meggie could rid herself of this intolerable burden, this ungrateful child. She was learning to hate it, the very being she had wanted so much before discovering what trouble it would cause. Why had she assumed Luke would look forward to the baby once its existence was a reality? Nothing in his attitude or conduct since their marriage indicated he would. Time she admitted it was a disaster, abandoned her silly pride and tried to salvage what she could from the ruins. They had married for all the wrong reasons: he for her money, she as an escape from Ralph de Bricassart while trying to retain Ralph de Bricassart. There had never been any pretense at love, and only love might have helped her and Luke to overcome the enormous difficulties their differing aims and desires created. Oddly enough, she never seemed able to hate Luke, where she found herself hating Ralph de Bricassart more and more frequently. Yet when all was said and done, Ralph had been far kinder and fairer to her than Luke. Not once had he encouraged her to dream of him in any roles save priest and friend, for even on the two occasions when he had kissed her, she had begun the move herself.
Why be so angry with him, then? Why hate Ralph and not Luke? Blame her own fears and inadequacies, the huge, outraged resentment she felt because he had consistently rejected her when she loved and wanted him so much. And blame that stupid impulse which had led her to marry Luke O'neill. A betrayal of her own self and Ralph. No matter if she could never have married him, slept with him, had his child. No matter if he didn't want her, and he didn't want her. The fact remained that he was who she wanted, and she ought never to have settled for less.
But knowing the wrongs couldn't alter them. It was still Luke O'neill she had married, Luke O'neill's child she was carrying. How could she be happy at the thought of Luke O'neill's child, when even he didn't want it? Poor little thing. At least when it was born it would be its own piece of humanity, and could be loved as that. Only... What wouldn't she give, for Ralph de Bricassart's child? The impossible, the never-to-be. He served an institution which insisted on having all of him, even that part of him she had no use for, his manhood. That Mother Church required from him as a sacrifice to her power as an institution, and thus wasted him, stamped his being out of being, made sure that when he stopped he would be stopped forever. Only one day she would have to pay for her greed. One day there wouldn't be any more Ralph de Bricassarts, because they'd value their manhood enough to see that her demanding it of them was a useless sacrifice, having no meaning whatsoever.... Suddenly she stood up and waddled through to the living room, where Anne was sitting reading an underground copy of Norman Lindsay's banned novel, Redheap, very obviously enjoying every forbidden word. "Anne, I think you're going to get your wish."
Anne looked up absently. "What, dear?"
"Phone Doc Smith. I'm going to have this wretched baby here and now." "Oh, my God! Get into the bedroom and lie down--not your bedroom, ours!" Cursing the whims of fate and the determination of babies, Doc Smith hurried out from Dungloe in his battered car with the local midwife in the back and as much equipment as he could carry from his little cottage hospital. No use taking her there; he could do as much for her at Himmelhoch. But Cairns was where she ought to be. "Have you let the husband know?" he asked as he pounded up the front steps, his midwife behind him.
"I sent a telegram. She's in my room; I thought it would give you more space."
Hobbling in their wake, Anne went into her bedroom. Meggie was lying on the bed, wide-eyed and giving no indication of pain except for an occasional spasm of her hands, a drawing-in of her body. She turned her head to smile at
Anne, and Anne saw that the eyes were very frightened. "I'm glad I never got to Cairns" she said. "My mother never went to hospital to have hers, and Daddy said once she had a terrible time with Hat. But she survived, and so will I. We're hard to kill, we Cleary women." It was hours later when the doctor joined Anne on the veranda. "It's a long, hard business for the little woman. First babies are rarely easy, but this one's not lying well and she just drags on without getting anywhere. If she was in Cairns she could have a Caesarean, but that's out of the question here. She'll just have to push it out all by herself." "Is she conscious?"
"Oh, yes. Gallant little soul, doesn't scream or complain. The best ones usually have the worst time of it in my opinion. Keeps asking me if Ralph's here yet, and I have to tell her some lie about the Johnstone in flood. I thought her husband's name was Luke?"
"It is."
"Hmmm! Well, maybe that's why she's asking for this Ralph, whoever he is. Luke's no comfort, is he?"
"Luke's a bastard."
Anne leaned forward, hands on the veranda railing. A taxi was coming from the Dunny road, and had turned off up the incline to Himmelhoch. Her excellent eyesight just discerned a black-haired man in the back, and she crowed with relief and joy.
"I don't believe what I see, but I think Luke's finally remembered he's got a wife!"
"I'd best go back to her and leave you to cope with him, Anne. I won't mention it to her, in case it isn't him. If it is him, give him a cup of tea and save the hard stuff for later. He's going to need it."
The taxi drew up; to Anne's surprise the driver got out and went to the back door to open it for his passenger. Joe Castiglione, who ran Dunny's sole taxi, wasn't usually given to such courtesies.
"Himmelhoch, Your Grace," he said, bowing deeply. A man in a long, flowing black soutane got out, a purple grosgrain sash about his waist. As he turned, Anne thought for a dazed moment that Luke O'neill was playing some elaborate trick on her. Then she saw that this was a far different man, a good ten years older than Luke. My God! she thought as the graceful figure mounted her steps two at a time. He's the handsomest chap I've ever seen! An archbishop, no less! What does a Catholic archbishop want with a pair of old Lutherans like Luddie and me? "Mrs. Mueller?" he asked, smiling down at her with kind, aloof blue eyes. As if he had seen much he would give anything not to have seen, and had managed to stop feeling long ago.
"Yes, I'm Anne Mueller."
"I'm Archbishop Ralph de Bricassart, His Holiness's Legate in Australia. I understand you have a Mrs. Luke O'neill staying with you?" "Yes, sir." Ralph? Ralph? Was this Ralph?
"I'm a very old friend of hers. I wonder if I might see her, please?" "Well, I'm sure she'd be delighted, Archbishop"!--- no, that wasn't right, one didn't say Archbishop, one said Your Grace, like Joe Castiglione-"under more normal circumstances, but at the moment Meggie's in labor, and having a very hard time."
Then she saw that he hadn't succeeded in stopping feeling at all, only disciplined it to a doglike abjection at the back of his thinking mind. His eyes were so blue she felt she drowned in them, and what she saw in them now made her wonder what Meggie was to him, and what he was to Meggie. "I knew something was wrong! I've felt that something was wrong for a long time, but of late my worry's become an obsession. I had to come and see for myself. Please, let me see her! If you wish for a reason, I am a priest." Anne had never intended to deny him. "Come along, Your Grace, through here, please." And as she shuffled slowly between her two sticks she kept thinking: Is the house clean and tidy? Have I dusted? Did we remember to throw out that smelly old leg of lamb, or is it all through the place? What a time for a man as important as this one to come calling! Luddie, will you never get your fat arse off that tractor and come in? The boy should have found you hours ago! He went past Doc Smith and the midwife as if they didn't exist to drop on his knees beside the bed, his hand reaching for hers. "Meggie!"
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