The Thorn Birds

by Colleen McCullough

  Of chief interest to everyone called a friend was how, when and with whom Justine would finally decide to become a fulfilled woman, but she took her time.

  Arthur Lestrange was Albert Jones’s most durable juvenile lead, though he had wistfully waved goodbye to his fortieth birthday the year before Justine arrived at the Culloden. He had a good body, was a steady, reliable actor and his clean-cut, manly face with its surround of yellow curls was always sure to evoke audience applause. For the first year he didn’t notice Justine, who was very quiet and did exactly as she was told. But at the end of the year her freckle treatments were finished, and she began to stand out against the scenery instead of blending into it.

  Minus the freckles and plus makeup to darken her brows and lashes, she was a good-looking girl in an elfin, understated way. She had none of Luke O’Neill’s arresting beauty, or her mother’s exquisiteness. Her figure was passable though not spectacular, a trifle on the thin side. Only the vivid red hair ever stood out. But on a stage she was quite different; she could make people think she was as beautiful as Helen of Troy or as ugly as a witch.

  Arthur first noticed her during a teaching period, when she was required to recite a passage from Conrad’s Lord Jim using various accents. She was extraordinary, really; he could feel the excitement in Albert Jones, and finally understood why Al devoted so much time to her. A born mimic, but far more than that; she gave character to every word she said. And there was the voice, a wonderful natural endowment for any actress, deep, husky, penetrating.

  So when he saw her with a cup of tea in her hand, sitting with a book open on her knees, he came to sit beside her.

  “What are you reading?”

  She looked up, smiled. “Proust.”

  “Don’t you find him a little dull?”

  “Proust dull? Not unless one doesn’t care for gossip, surely. That’s what he is, you know. A terrible old gossip.”

  He had an uncomfortable conviction that she was intellectually patronizing him, but he forgave her. No more than extreme youth.

  “I heard you doing the Conrad. Splendid.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Perhaps we could have coffee together sometime and discuss your plans”

  “If you like,” she said, returning to Proust.

  He was glad he had stipulated coffee, rather than dinner; his wife kept him on short commons, and dinner demanded a degree of gratitude he couldn’t be sure Justine was ready to manifest. However, he followed his casual invitation up, and bore her off to a dark little place in lower Elizabeth Street, where he was reasonably sure his wife wouldn’t think of looking for him.

  In self-defense Justine had learned to smoke, tired of always appearing goody-goody in refusing offered cigarettes. After they were seated she took her own cigarettes out of her bag, a new pack, and peeled the top cellophane from the flip-top box carefully, making sure the larger piece of cellophane still sheathed the bulk of the packet. Arthur watched her deliberateness, amused and interested.

  “Why on earth go to so much trouble? Just rip it all off, Justine.”

  “How untidy!”

  He picked up the box and stroked its intact shroud reflectively. “Now, if I was a disciple of the eminent Sigmund Freud…”

  “If you were Freud, what?” She glanced up, saw the waitress standing beside her. “Cappuccino, please.”

  It annoyed him that she gave her own order, but he let it pass, more intent on pursuing the thought in his mind. “Vienna, please. Now, getting back to what I was saying about Freud. I wonder what he’d think of this? He might say…”

  She took the packet off him, opened it, removed a cigarette and lit it herself without giving him time to find his matches. “Well?”

  “He’d think you liked to keep membranous substances intact, wouldn’t he?”

  Her laughter gurgled through the smoky air, caused several male heads to turn curiously. “Would he now? Is that a roundabout way of asking me if I’m still a virgin, Arthur?”

  He clicked his tonque, exasperated. “Justine! I can see that among other things I’ll have to teach you the fine art of prevarication.”

  “Among what other things, Arthur?” She leaned her elbows on the table, eyes gleaming in the dimness.

  “Well, what do you need to learn?”

  “I’m pretty well educated, actually.”

  “In everything?”

  “Heavens, you do know how to emphasize words, don’t you? Very good, I must remember how you said that.”

  “There are things which can only be learned from firsthand experience,” he said softly, reaching out a hand to tuck a curl behind her ear.

  “Really? I’ve always found observation adequate.”

  “Ah, but what about when it comes to love?” He put a delicate deepness into the word. “How can you play Juliet without knowing what love is?”

  “A good point. I agree with you.”

  “Have you ever been in love?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know anything about love?” This time he put the vocal force on “anything,” rather than “love.”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Ah! Then Freud would have been right, eh?”

  She picked up her cigarettes and looked at their sheathed box, smiling. “In some things, perhaps.”

  Quickly he grasped the bottom of the cellophane, pulled it off and held it in his hand, dramatically crushed it and dropped it in the ashtray, where it squeaked and writhed, expanded. “I’d like to teach you what being a woman is, if I may.”

  For a moment she said nothing, intent on the antics of the cellophane in the ashtray, then she struck a match and carefully set fire to it. “Why not?” she asked the brief flare. “Yes, why not?”

  “Shall it be a divine thing of moonlight and roses, passionate wooing, or shall it be short and sharp, like an arrow?” he declaimed, hand on heart.

  She laughed. “Really, Arthur! I hope it’s long and sharp, myself. But no moonlight and roses, please. My stomach’s not built for passionate wooing.”

  He stared at her a little sadly, shook his head. “Oh, Justine! Everyone’s stomach is built for passionate wooing—even yours, you cold-blooded young vestal. One day, you wait and see. You’ll long for it.”

  “Pooh!” She got up. “Come on, Arthur, let’s get the deed over and done with before I change my mind.”

  “Now? Tonight?”

  “Why on earth not? I’ve got plenty of money for a hotel room, if you’re short.”

  The Hotel Metropole wasn’t far away; they walked through the drowsing streets with her arm tucked cozily in his, laughing. It was too late for diners and too early for the theaters to be out, so there were few people around, just knots of American sailors off a visiting task force, and groups of young girls window-shopping with an eye to sailors. No one took any notice of them, which suited Arthur fine. He popped into a chemist shop while Justine waited outside, emerged beaming happily.

  “Now we’re all set, my love.”

  “What did you buy? French letters?”

  He grimaced. “I should hope not. A French letter is like coming wrapped in a page of the Reader’s Digest—condensed tackiness. No, I got you some jelly. How do you know about French letters, anyway?”

  “After seven years in a Catholic boarding school? What do you think we did? Prayed?” She grinned. “I admit we didn’t do much, but we talked about everything.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Smith surveyed their kingdom, which wasn’t bad for a Sydney hotel room of that era. The days of the Hilton were still to come. It was very large, and had superb views of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. There was no bathroom, of course, but there was a basin and ewer on a marble-topped stand, a fitting accompaniment to the enormous Victorian relics of furniture.

  “Well, what do I do now?” she asked, pulling the curtains back. “It’s a beautiful view, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. As to what you do now, you take your pants off, of course.”

 
“Anything else?” she asked mischievously.

  He sighed. “Take it all off, Justine! If you don’t feel skin with skin it isn’t nearly so good.”

  Neatly and briskly she got out of her clothes, not a scrap coyly, clambered up on the bed and spread her legs apart. “Is this right, Arthur?”

  “Good Lord!” he said, folding his trousers carefully; his wife always looked to see if they were crushed.

  “What? What’s the matter?”

  “You really are a redhead, aren’t you?”

  “What did you expect, purple feathers?”

  “Facetiousness doesn’t set the right mood, darling, so stop it this instant.” He sucked in his belly, turned, strutted to the bed and climbed onto it, began dropping expert little kisses down the side of her face, her neck, over her left breast. “Mmmmmm, you’re nice.” His arms went around her. “There! Isn’t this nice?”

  “I suppose so. Yes, it is quite nice.”

  Silence fell, broken only by the sound of kisses, occasional murmurs. There was a huge old dressing table at the far end of the bed, its mirror still tilted to reflect love’s arena by some erotically minded previous tenant.

  “Put out the light, Arthur.”

  “Darling, no! Lesson number one. There’s no aspect of love which won’t bear the light.”

  Having done the preparatory work with his fingers and deposited the jelly where it was supposed to be, Arthur managed to get himself between Justine’s legs. A bit sore but quite comfortable, if not lifted into ecstasy at least feeling rather motherly, Justine looked over Arthur’s shoulder and straight down the bed into the mirror.

  Foreshortened, their legs looked weird with his darkly matted ones sandwiched between her smooth defreckled ones; however, the bulk of the image in the mirror consisted of Arthur’s buttocks, and as he maneuvered they spread and contracted, hopped up and down, with two quiffs of yellow hair like Dagwood’s just poking above the twin globes and waving at her cheerfully.

  Justine looked; looked again. She stuffed her fist against her mouth wildly, gurgling and moaning.

  “There, there, my darling, it’s all right! I’ve broken you already, so it can’t hurt too much,” he whispered.

  Her chest began to heave; he wrapped his arms closer about her and murmured inarticulate endearments.

  Suddenly her head went back, her mouth opened in a long, agonized wail, and became peal after peal of uproarious laughter. And the more limply furious he got, the harder she laughed, pointing her finger helplessly toward the foot of the bed, tears streaming down her face. Her whole body was convulsed, but not quite in the manner poor Arthur had envisioned.

  In many ways Justine was a lot closer to Dane than their mother was, and what they felt for Mum belonged to Mum. It didn’t impinge upon or clash with what they felt for each other. That had been forged very early, and had grown rather than diminished. By the time Mum was freed from her Drogheda bondage they were old enough to be at Mrs. Smith’s kitchen table, doing their correspondence lessons; the habit of finding solace in each other had been established for all time.

  Though they were very dissimilar in character, they also shared many tastes and appetites, and those they didn’t share they tolerated in each other with instinctive respect, as a necessary spice of difference. They knew each other very well indeed. Her natural tendency was to deplore human failings in others and ignore them in herself; his natural tendency was to understand and forgive human failings in others, and be merciless upon them in himself. She felt herself invincibly strong; he knew himself perilously weak.

  And somehow it all came together as a nearly perfect friendship, in the name of which nothing was impossible. However, since Justine was by far the more talkative, Dane always got to hear a lot more about her and what she was feeling than the other way around. In some respects she was a little bit of a moral imbecile, in that nothing was sacred, and he understood that his function was to provide her with the scruples she lacked within herself. Thus he accepted his role of passive listener with a tenderness and compassion which would have irked Justine enormously had she suspected them. Not that she ever did; she had been bending his ear about absolutely anything and everything since he was old enough to pay attention.

  “Guess what I did last night?” she asked, carefully adjusting her big straw hat so her face and neck were well shaded.

  “Acted in your first starring role,” Dane said.

  “Prawn! As if I wouldn’t tell you so you could be there to see me. Guess again.”

  “Finally copped a punch Bobbie meant for Billie.”

  “Cold as a stepmother’s breast.”

  He shrugged his shoulders, bored. “Haven’t a clue.”

  They were sitting in the Domain on the grass, just below the Gothic bulk of Saint Mary’s Cathedral. Dane had phoned to let Justine know he was coming in for a special ceremony in the cathedral, and could she meet him for a while first in the Dom? Of course she could; she was dying to tell him the latest episode.

  Almost finished his last year at Riverview, Dane was captain of the school, captain of the cricket team, the Rugby, handball and tennis teams. And dux of his class into the bargain. At seventeen he was two inches over six feet, his voice had settled into its final baritone, and he had miraculously escaped such afflictions as pimples, clumsiness and a bobbing Adam’s apple. Because he was so fair he wasn’t really shaving yet, but in every other way he looked more like a young man than a schoolboy. Only the Riverview uniform categorized him.

  It was a warm, sunny day. Dane removed his straw boater school hat and stretched out on the grass, Justine sitting hunched beside him, her arms about her knees to make sure all exposed skin was shaded. He opened one lazy blue eye in her direction.

  “What did you do last night, Jus?”

  “I lost my virginity. At least I think I did.”

  Both his eyes opened. “You’re a prawn.”

  “Pooh! High time, I say. How can I hope to be a good actress if I don’t have a clue what goes on between men and women?”

  “You ought to save yourself for the man you marry.”

  Her face twisted in exasperation. “Honestly, Dane, sometimes you’re so archaic I’m embarrassed! Suppose I don’t meet the man I marry until I’m forty? What do you expect me to do? Sit on it all those years? Is that what you’re going to do, save it for marriage?”

  “I don’t think I’m going to get married.”

  “Well, nor am I. In which case, why tie a blue ribbon around it and stick it in my nonexistent hope chest? I don’t want to die wondering.”

  He grinned. “You can’t, now.” Rolling over onto his stomach, he propped his chin on his hand and looked at her steadily, his face soft, concerned. “Was it all right? I mean, was it awful? Did you hate it?”

  Her lips twitched, remembering. “I didn’t hate it, at any rate. It wasn’t awful, either. On the other hand, I’m afraid I don’t see what everyone raves about. Pleasant is as far as I’m prepared to go. And it isn’t as if I chose just anyone; I selected someone very attractive and old enough to know what he was doing.”

  He sighed. “You are a prawn, Justine. I’d have been a lot happier to hear you say, ‘He’s not much to look at, but we met and I couldn’t help myself.’ I can accept that you don’t want to wait until you’re married, but it’s still something you’ve got to want because of the person. Never because of the act, Jus. I’m not surprised you weren’t ecstatic.”

  All the gleeful triumph faded from her face. “Oh, damn you, now you’ve made me feel awful! If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were trying to put me down—or my motives, at any rate.”

  “But you do know me better, don’t you? I’d never put you down, but sometimes your motives are plain thoughtlessly silly.” He adopted a tolling, monotonous voice. “I am the voice of your conscience, Justine O’Neill.”

  “You are, too, you prawn.” Shade forgotten, she flopped back on the grass beside him so he couldn’t see her face
. “Look, you know why. Don’t you?”

  “Oh, Jussy,” he said sadly, but whatever he was going to add was lost, for she spoke again, a little savagely.

  “I’m never, never, never going to love anyone! If you love people, they kill you. If you need people, they kill you. They do, I tell you!”

  It always hurt him, that she felt left out of love, and hurt more that he knew himself the cause. If there was one overriding reason why she was so important to him, it was because she loved him enough to bear no grudges, had never made him feel a moment’s lessening of her love through jealousy or resentment. To him, it was a cruel fact that she moved on an outer circle while he was the very hub. He had prayed and prayed things would change, but they never did. Which hadn’t lessened his faith, only pointed out to him with fresh emphasis that somewhere, sometime, he would have to pay for the emotion squandered on him at her expense. She put a good face on it, had managed to convince even herself that she did very well on that outer orbit, but he felt her pain. He knew. There was so much worth loving in her, so little worth loving in himself. Without a hope of understanding differently, he assumed he had the lion’s share of love because of his beauty, his more tractable nature, his ability to communicate with his mother and the other Drogheda people. And because he was male. Very little escaped him beyond what he simply couldn’t know, and he had had Justine’s confidence and companionship in ways no one else ever had. Mum mattered to Justine far more than she would admit.

  But I will atone, he thought. I’ve had everything. Somehow I’ve got to pay it back, make it up to her.

  Suddenly he chanced to see his watch, came to his feet bonelessly; huge though he admitted his debt to his sister was, to Someone else he owed even more.

  “I’ve got to go, Jus.”

  “You and your bloody Church! When are you going to grow out of it?”

  “Never, I hope.”

  “When will I see you?”

  “Well, since today’s Friday, tomorrow of course, eleven o’clock, here.”

  “Okay. Be a good boy.”

  He was already several yards away, Riverview boater back on his head, but he turned to smile at her. “Am I ever anything else?”