‘Big kid, wasn’t he? Black hair. He had those bright red cheeks, like – like—’ Merle’s eyes gleamed. ‘Like Father Joseph’s.’
‘Eh?’
‘Father Joseph. Don’t you think Vinny Gower had a look of Father Joseph about him?’
Len sat upright. ‘Jesus wept, Merle!’
‘What?’
‘Let it be! For pity’s sake don’t spread stuff like that around!’
‘I wasn’t going to,’ protested Merle.
‘Says you.’ Len lay down again, pulling the sheet closely round him, as if it might afford some protection from his wife. ‘For God’s sake, leave the poor devils alone.’
IN her room above the shop, Margaret May couldn’t get to sleep either. She lay there thinking that though she’d had many hard times in her life and come through them all, she simply wouldn’t be able to bear it if anything stopped Ruth from going to Sydney. And in the room next door to hers, Ruth shifted restlessly while Tam Finn’s face and his hands and his voice crowded into her mind and Sydney faded and she simply wasn’t sure if she wanted to go away.
OVER at the presbytery, Father Joseph closed his breviary and turned out the light. The room was utterly silent. Outside his windows the country was silent too, so quiet he almost fancied he could hear the sweet sound of his tomatoes ripening, coming into fullness, drawing nourishment from the rich dark soil. Images swam slowly through his mind. He saw the girl running across the paddock this morning, the spitting image of Maidie at that age. He saw Maidie herself appearing at the presbytery door on that terrible winter’s night when Don Gower had died, her dress soaked through, her hair all straggled with rain.
‘Don’s fallen in the dam!’ she cried. ‘He’s drowned! I can’t get him out! Help me, please!’
There’d been bruises on her face.
Bruises.
He blotted the image out and the young girl came back, running across the paddock, her hair streaming out in a dark brown cloud. He thought about her going to Sydney. It was a long time since Father Joseph had been to the city, but he remembered it well. Strolling through Hyde Park on his way to the cathedral he’d felt something soft yet solid land squarely in the middle of his back. ‘Down with the Pope!’ a young voice had shouted from behind him. He’d turned and found a gaggle of students – beards and berets, black turtlenecks, fresh from some demonstration – smirking on the path behind him. Ignore it, he’d thought, and walked on. The missile had been a tomato, of all things, red and pulpy, overripe; it had taken him the best part of half an hour in the men’s room to sponge the mess off his best black clerical jacket.
That was the city for you. No respect. A girl like Ruth Gower would be fair game down there, all right. ‘Ah, Ruth,’ he whispered into the darkness of the room. Ruth among the alien corn.
IN the garden of Fortuna Tam Finn wandered down the path towards the lake, hands in his pockets, whistling. The moon came out and turned the water silver and from the dark shrubbery behind him there came a swift patter and a rustling and a sudden, unearthly scream.
The boy knelt down on the path and waited silently and the peacock came up to him and Tam Finn held out his hand to it and gazed into the small, indifferent eyes. ‘Hello, Dancer,’ he said softly, and the peacock tossed its head back proudly and Tam Finn laughed, remembering Ruth Gower in Starlight Lane. ‘Hello, my beauty,’ he whispered, ‘hello, my lovely one.’
ten
Ruth took the photograph from the mantelpiece and held it in her hands and her mother’s beautiful face smiled up at her, eyes shining, full lips resting lightly one upon the other. Ruth bent her head and kissed the photograph: how cold the glass felt beneath her own warm lips! Her mother had been nineteen when she died, only two years older than Ruth was now.
Did you ever feel like me?’ Ruth whispered. ‘Did you ever ‘feel like you wanted something and yet you didn’t want it, all at the same time?’ It was February now, and Ruth was thinking of her departure for Sydney, only two days away. And thinking, too, of the time she’d met Tam Finn in Starlight Lane: that strange rush of longing and desire, and the fear of that longing that had made her want to run away. There were nights when she woke suddenly in her bed and wished with all her heart that when he’d held his hand out, she’d taken it, that she’d lain down on the grass beside him, on the blue shirt he’d spread out for her.
She’d seen him only once since that morning in Starlight Lane, on a cold evening last week when a southerly had come through and the temperature had dropped from high summer to near winter in less than half an hour. ‘I think we’ll light the fire,’ Nan had said and Ruth went out to the shed to fetch some kindling. The back gate was open, swinging in the wind, and when she’d gone to close it she’d seen Tam Finn away across the paddock, hands in his pockets, kicking an old tin can along the track. In that uneasy twilight, beneath a pink sky with shreds of livid grey cloud racing, he’d looked like an ordinary boy.
She’d closed the gate and gone on watching him. A little further on across the paddock he’d stopped suddenly and flung his head back, and from some deep and hopeless part of him had come a long, low, shivering howl, which made her think of some abandoned creature who’d suddenly glimpsed the crack in the universe which would bring him down. And standing there at the back gate Ruth had realised that even if he’d wanted it, desperately, Tam Finn could never be an ordinary boy.
‘She’d be proud of you.’
Ruth swung round, so deeply startled that she almost dropped the photograph. Her father was standing right beside her; she hadn’t heard him come into the room. ‘What?’
Shyly, he gestured at the photograph. ‘Polly,’ he said, his voice sounding strange on the name, as if he hadn’t spoken it for years. ‘She would have been so proud of you, getting that scholarship, going down to Sydney, all that hard work you did for the exams.’
‘I didn’t,’ cried Ruth, flushing scarlet. ‘I mean, it didn’t seem hard to me.’ She remembered the long spring evenings on the bench in Nan’s garden, sifting through her notes and books until it had grown too dark to see; her pen flying over the pages in the exams – it was like some special kind of happiness, or the memory of some secret joy.
‘You’re a clever girl,’ said Dad. ‘Take after your nan. And your mum, of course. Polly was clever, too.’
‘Was she?’
‘Oh, yes.’ His freckled hands seized at each other, clasping and unclasping. ‘If it hadn’t been for that old semi, she’d have—’ he swallowed, shook his head sadly, ‘she’d have done wonders, our Polly.’
Ruth put the photograph carefully back up on the mantelpiece, in its place. When she turned, her dad was gazing raptly at her face. He cleared his throat. ‘Give us a kiss,’ he said.
There was something about him that made even your lips feel awkward; and the skin of his cheek was as cold as the glass over Polly’s face. The thought that all her lost mother’s radiance had been directed at this sad man filled Ruth with a kind of desolation.
But he’d been different then, Nan had said; he’d been a laughing, singing kind of boy. It seemed Polly’s death had stopped his song.
SHE hurried from the house and made her way to Fee’s place, quickening her step as she passed Joanie Fawkes’ post office. Yesterday she’d been about to go in there to buy stamps when she’d heard Joanie’s voice drifting out through the mesh of the screen door. She’d been talking to Mrs Hogan.
‘She’ll get her head stuffed full of nonsense that’s no use to anyone,’ Joanie had been saying.
‘Specially not for a girl.’
‘Blue-stockings, they called them in my grandma’s day. Old maids, all of them.’
‘And no wonder. You can’t blame the men. Stands to reason girls like that’d know nothing about running a home.’
‘Take no notice,’ Fee had consoled her later. ‘They’re jealous, that’s all.’
Taking no notice was easier said than done, because Ruth couldn’t help thinking, sometimes, w
hat if they were right? What if they were right and all that came from this marvellous new life that Nan kept talking about, was that she ended up an old-maid schoolteacher, all by herself, living in a room in someone else’s house, walking along the road in the mornings to some tiny country school? As she passed the familiar shops and houses Ruth felt they had a different air about them, as if they’d already begun to slip away into the past, like photographs of small children stuck into an album. Last night she’d dreamed she was wandering in a strange city, a vast unknown place where each unfamiliar street led into another and she had no place of her own where she could go, so that there was only the walking, on and on and on . . . she’d woken with a horrid jump of the heart and still half asleep, stumbled to the window to check that Barinjii was still outside. Of course it had been, but the homely buildings looked less solid, and their shadows wavered uncertainly beneath the moon. Doubt had played like knucklebones all down her spine and she’d fallen back to sleep with the thought, I don’t want to go!
She turned out of Main Street and crossed the small park with its ragged grass and row of scruffy rosebushes planted beside the war memorial. Hopeton Street was on the other side, and today there was no old Holden parked outside her friend’s house. Ruth clicked the latch on the gate and began to walk up the path. Fee’s bedroom, with its big wide windows, opened onto the verandah. The curtains were flung back and she could see inside, where boxes and packages lay scattered on the floor, and Fee’s wedding dress hung in splendour from the rail up on the wall. Her own bridesmaid’s dress hung there too, its shadowy lilac colour swallowing up the light. Beside Fee’s dress, it looked as dull and insubstantial as a shabby old book beside a vase of shining flowers.
Fee came into the room. She wore shorts and an old tee-shirt and her feet were bare, but floating all around her, from the fair crown of her head to the soles of her grubby bare feet, was a cloud of white lace and tulle.
Fiona Lachlan was trying on her bridal veil. She stood in front of the mirror, fixing the little coronet more firmly round her head, then she grasped two handfuls of lace and tulle and began to dance, and the beautiful veil floated out around her like a great wave of foam that would lift her up and carry her away. Her face wore a dreamy, absorbed expression; she didn’t notice her friend standing outside on the path.
Ruth turned and hurried back to the gate. She closed it quietly and then began to run away down the road, up Hartley Lane and out into the paddocks behind the houses, through the fences, along the paths and narrow, dusty roads. She didn’t know where she was going or why the vision of Fee in her bridal veil had so disturbed her, only that she had to run, and she ran blindly like she had on that morning when she’d thought Tam Finn was chasing her. The tumult inside her on that day had been a kind of fearful, joyous flood; what she felt now was its very opposite: a slow and aching draining that left only loss behind. Eyes blurred with tears, she stumbled at last down the creek bank and came to the little beach.
Someone was down there.
Someone all covered in blood was lying on the narrow stretch of sand.
‘Ah.’ Ruth drew in a cold, aching breath, but she didn’t scream because her throat had closed on any sound. She simply stood and stared and as she did, her tear-filled eyes began to clear and she saw that the pool of blood was nothing more than a red dress.
A dark-haired girl in a bright red dress was lying on the sand. The girl had one arm across her face but Ruth knew at once who it was. She knew the dress and she knew the dark hair, the deep blue-black of it, like Tam Finn’s, like the shine on a crow’s wide wing.
Helen Hogan.
Helen lowered her arm, and Ruth saw that her face was swollen and smudged with crying. There was a big rip in her dress almost from waist to knee. Helen sat up and bunched the tear together. ‘What do you think you’re staring at?’ she demanded.
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing, eh?’ Helen tilted her head back and yawned. She gathered the blue-black hair in big handfuls, twisted it on top of her head and then let it fall again, heavily. Her red dress was cut low in the front so the tops of her white breasts showed and Ruth imagined Tam Finn’s head lying there, his white face pressed into that soft, translucent skin.
‘I could do what you did,’ said Helen unexpectedly.
‘What?’
‘Win a scholarship. Go to Sydney.’ Seeing the expression on Ruth’s face, her voice rose. ‘Oh yes, I could. Easily. If I wanted to, that is. If I’d wanted to stay at school and sit mooning over dusty old books and writing essays day and night and night and day, I could have passed those exams just as well as you did. And gone down to the university.’
‘Yes, but—’ began Ruth, and then couldn’t think of any more to say.
‘Yes, but—’ mimicked Helen, and Ruth remembered Tam Finn mimicking her in Starlight Lane: ‘No, thenk you.’ She pictured the two of them, dark heads together, talking about her and laughing.
‘Yes, but,’ said Helen again. ‘Yes, I could have, but I wanted to have a life, see? A real life. That’s the thing, you know; the only thing.’ With a sudden swift movement she got to her feet and Ruth flinched back from her.
Helen laughed. ‘Thought I was goin’ to punch you, eh? For coming spying around down here? Well, I’ll tell you something for free, Miss High-and-Mighty, I don’t hit babies, see?’
There was blood after all, Ruth saw. A thin red trickle of it was sliding down Helen’s long, pale leg.
They both gazed at it. Helen made no move to wipe it off. She swung her head back, and the black hair swirled. ‘So just you remember this when you’re down in Sydney: just remember that you know nothing, okay? Nothing that’s real.’
A sudden gust of hot wind sent the long fronds of the willows swaying. ‘Something’s burning,’ said Helen, sniffing at the smoky air. ‘Somewhere.’ She smiled and now Ruth could smell the burning too, and when she breathed in, she thought there was a taste of ashes in her mouth.
‘Scared?’ sneered Helen, throwing her arms out wide. ‘Scared of fires, little girl? Little baby?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Yes you are.’ Helen laughed. She threw her head back again, and her beautiful throat quivered with the laughter, a beating pulse beneath the pearly skin. Then she stopped, and her voice was filled with scorn as she looked Ruth up and down. ‘Better run home to Mummy, then! Oops!’ Helen slapped a hand over her grinning mouth. Her fingernails were painted red to match her dress, but the polish was chipped and the tips were ragged and bitten down. ‘Sorry! I forgot, you haven’t got a mummy, only a wicked old granny who pushed her hubby in the dam!’
‘She didn’t!’
‘Oh, didn’t she? How come everyone says she did, then?’
‘It’s not everyone. It’s just people like you.’
‘People like me, eh?’ Helen smiled dangerously. ‘You mean like – the dirt beneath your little feet?’
‘No, I didn’t mean that, I meant—’
‘I don’t care what you meant,’ said Helen savagely, ‘or what you think in that fancy brain of yours, Little Miss Know-Nothing!’ She glanced down at her torn dress, the smear of blood on her thigh, and smiled slowly. Then, dismissively, she waved her hand. ‘Get lost, why don’t you?’ She lunged forward again. ‘Go on! Scram! Run away home to Nan!’
eleven
Up at Saint Columba’s they were doing the flowers again. In the back kitchen, Milly was taking down the big silver altar vases for the pink lilies Margaret May had brought. Cold water spurted from the tap above the sink, filling the small room with the deep dark scent of foliage and earth.
Merle Hogan’s big hands moved angrily amongst the flowers; she’d had another fight with Helen this morning – and now mucky green sap was running, the thick stalks of the lilies were leaking all over her. ‘Ugh! Nasty stuff!’ She wiped her fingers on the front of her apron and went to stand at the small window which overlooked the presbytery garden. ‘Tsk,’ she murmured after a little whil
e, and shook her head from side to side. ‘Tsk!’
‘What’s the matter, Merle?’ asked Milly.
‘Will you look at that poor old man! Just look! Why, he’s a shadow of himself!’
Milly went to the window and peered out: she saw Father Joseph forking the soil round his tomato plants and thought he appeared as big and bulky as ever. ‘He looks all right to me.’
Merle drew in a loud, important breath and rounded suddenly on Margaret May. ‘I’m surprised at you,’ she said, ‘upsetting him like this!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know very well what I mean! The poor old soul’s worried sick about your Ruth swanning off to Sydney and what she’ll get up to there!’
‘She’s not swanning and she’s not getting up to anything,’ retorted Margaret May. ‘She’s going to the university to study for her degree.’
‘Her degree,’ sniffed Merle. ‘Studying’s not all they do in that place! Mrs Ryan told me yesterday the worry about your Ruth is eating the poor man away! And to think you and Father Joseph used to be such friends!’ Merle’s words were accusing but her voice had a gloating sound – this would teach the old fool to have favourites! And it would teach Margaret May Gower a lesson, too.
Margaret May looked out into the garden; the old man’s arthritis was troubling him again, she could tell by the way he moved. They hadn’t spoken to each other since that morning in the presbytery three weeks ago. She’d believed then that he’d come round to the idea of Ruth going to the university, but he’d stuck to his guns and she’d stuck to hers. They shook hands at the door after Mass, and that was all. It seemed strange that she no longer had him as a friend when they’d known each other for such a long time. When Ruth goes, she thought, when Ruth goes down to the university – when it’s an accomplished fact – then he’ll come round. Only – Margaret May was worried about her granddaughter. Last night when they were doing the dishes, Ruth had said suddenly, ‘Nan, what if—’ and then stopped, the tea towel drooping from her hand.
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