Hill of Grace

by Stephen Orr

  Arriving at the Kegelbahn, William herded all of the members outside, reclaiming the cross to demonstrate, handing it around like a Hoover demonstrator. Trevor Streim misbalanced and had it down on top of him as he lay laughing in the shit and mud of the stockyards. ‘Arthur,’ he said, ‘you need some training wheels for us beginners.’

  Ron Rohwer stood in the background, arms crossed, smiling but refusing to participate. ‘C’mon,’ Julius Rechner joked, dragging him by the arm. But Ron just leaned against the corrugated iron, nodding his head and eventually becoming serious. Seymour arrived just in time for his own circuit, suggesting they all build one and organise races, but Arthur said that missed the point entirely.

  As the group stood around admiring the dovetail joins and bevelling, Arthur’s hand-burnt quotes and the faultless varnishing, William watched Ron duck back inside, unobserved, setting up pins in the absence of any ladies. He wondered if he should just be gracious, if he should go in and offer his hand, talk through their differences, agree to disagree: grace – such as he’d been shown in Henschke’s vineyard, made clear by the voice of God.

  But it was more than that. It all went back to an argument his father had had with Ron’s, sometime in the twenties, when the elder Rohwer had taken Robert’s spot in the Goat Square markets. This was a spot Robert had inherited from Anthelm, who had originally helped other pioneers level and lay out the area last century. But there was Rohwer one Friday morning, set out right in the middle between Linke’s cakes and a long-lost pottery maker, both of whom had pointed out the problem. When Robert and Brigid arrived with their hand-cart full of cucumbers and tomatoes, cabbages and lettuces, everybody watched to see their reaction.

  It was on for young and old. Robert confronted the elder Rohwer and demanded he move; Rohwer replied that there were no reservations and in the absence of any organising committee, he could do as he liked. Robert had never been spoken to like this, especially by a Johnny-come-lately whose family had only been in the valley for twenty years. Again he demanded Rohwer move. No. By now the whole market was silent, hushed in anticipation. Realising that Rohwer couldn’t be reasoned with, Robert upended his table, scattering vegetables, preserves and crockery everywhere – and what was worse, little Golgotha landscapes in a snowdome, glitter in water raining down on the three crucified figures, and a label: The Place of Skulls, 1’6, the whole lot smashing open everywhere. Robert walked off in disgust, the young Wilhelm following, while everyone looked at the elder Rohwer, as if to say, We told you so.

  And that was just the start. Every Friday for months, the elder Rohwer and Robert arrived progressively earlier, the winner setting out his stall in an otherwise empty marketplace, laying out his produce and lighting a fire to cook breakfast. The runner-up set up as close as possible, but never quite on Anthelm’s spot.

  Eventually the town council was asked to step in, settling things by instituting a permit system for stalls, placed randomly around the square according to a lottery draw which, strangely, never saw Robert or Rohwer getting his old spot.

  William stepped towards the door of the Kegelbahn but stopped himself. Like his father, he had nothing to apologise for. Sometimes you just have to sit on the egg you lay, regardless of its chances of hatching.

  Arthur leaned his cross against the wall and they headed inside. It was William and his followers (although no one would call them this) against the rest. Trevor sent for his son to stand the pins and as they waited they sampled some of his latest grenache. Julius, Ron and Trevor started off with perfect scores, and the Millerites had nothing to offer in response, Arthur guttering the ball three times.

  Julius was the one to bring up the topic they’d all been avoiding.

  ‘Where to now, William? Is it William?’

  ‘Wilhelm.’

  ‘Tabor or St John’s?’

  ‘Neither.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They’re all the same.’ Trevor and Ron were still unwilling to buy into it. Julius bowled another strike. ‘Gnadenberg?’

  ‘Too far.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘My dining table is my church now. And as I said, anyone who’s willing to join me …’

  Ron tabulated the scores on the blackboard. ‘Your turn, Seymour.’

  Three pins down, and Arthur only a few more. It was up to William, again. Taking aim at pins the shape of Rohwer’s head, he launched the wooden ball with every ounce of his energy, scoring a strike and looking up at Ron.

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t cheat,’ Ron said, pushing on the chalk so hard it snapped.

  ‘Your people have always been at Langmeil?’ Julius asked.

  William felt like telling him to shut up. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your father was an Elder?’

  ‘No. We’ve always been more concerned with Christ than politics.’

  Avoiding, he thought, Ron and Trevor’s eyes as he said this.

  But Ron, like William, was every bit his father’s son. ‘Robert, William’s father,’ he said to Julius, ‘was heavily involved with Langmeil, Elder or not. As an example, I remember he led a group of parishioners to the Vectis Mission rally in Lyndoch in nineteen … when was it, William?’

  ‘How should I know.’

  ‘Nineteen twenty-two, I think.’

  Ron launched a slow ball which missed the pins completely, but he showed no sign of concern. ‘I was there, a lot younger, much more hair. The pastor was on the back of a truck in an empty paddock, surrounded by a ring of cars and Christians of every denomination. He said, Who amongst you will give testament to his belief? Remember, William, Wilhelm? Anyway, Robert got up.’

  William had been standing in the paddock, listening, more embarrassed than anything else, watching his father, in his overalls and gum boots, about to make a fool of himself.

  For the first time that evening Ron laughed. ‘I remember Robert said, “I have heard the voice of God, and he has told me about the return of his son …”’

  The young William had looked up, shocked. The elder William now felt the eyes of Arthur and Seymour on him, waiting for him to refute the story, to expose Ron for the liar he was, like the stall-thief his father was, money-lenders bringing shame to the temple of God with their Golgotha snowdomes.

  William took another ball. ‘He was caught up in the moment, people were fainting and talking in tongues …’ It was more, he explained, than the laying on of hands and simple prayer. The Vectis people were tricksters, getting people to say things they’d later regret. Good theatre from the back of a Dodge truck.

  ‘Robert later denied it?’ Ron asked.

  ‘No, but he never spoke of it again.’

  And William had always wondered, afraid to ask in case Robert had just been a little drunk, or a little touched by the sun. But deep down he guessed Robert must have heard a voice, or at least thought he had. It was the fault of the Rohwers and Streims of the world that his father had never shared his thoughts again. And it had always puzzled him – what were the clues Robert had been given, were maths and dates involved? And if so, when was that apocalypse? He guessed maybe, all these years later, that Robert had been given a long-term forecast of the event he had divined.

  Ron wasn’t about to give up, scoring another strike and settling back in his chair. ‘He has told me about the return of his son … ’ Laughing.

  William frowned at him. ‘Alright, you’ve made your point.’

  ‘Mightn’t a been an Elder, William, but he was a visionary, like you.’

  ‘My father didn’t have the learning to work out what it meant.

  But he was sincere, in his own way.’

  ‘And so are you.’

  Julius looked at Ron. ‘That’s patronising, Ron.’

  ‘It is not.’

  William ruled off and started to add the scores. He had looked up at his father on the flat-tray and thought, My God, he’s an idiot, even as Robert had continued to say, ‘I don’t know when, but we’ll know it in our lifetime.’<
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  I’m the best and worst of my father, William thought, blowing chalk-dust from his fingers. If he was wrong then I’m wrong, if he was right then we’ll both sit beside Jesus.

  Ron started stacking chairs, feeling he didn’t need to comment on the winning score. ‘Maybe if Robert could’ve lived a bit longer,’ he smiled to William. ‘What would he be, a hundred or so?’

  ‘Eighty.’

  And almost singing: ‘So it’s not inconceivable.’

  The Millerites waited until the others had left, locking up and standing around in the dim yellow light of the showgrounds. A large plywood board with the letters CENTEN sat behind the shed, faded, broken up for other uses, left over from the 1936 Show. It had been part of a diorama of Tanunda, painted by a local artist to celebrate the state’s one hundredth birthday, and had formed the backdrop to a inclined map of the state made from agricultural produce: grapes for the Barossa, oranges for the Riverland, golden wheat for the two peninsulas and papier mache rump steaks for the far north. William had offered some of his cucumbers, but the committee went with a slab of Bruno’s blutwurst, claiming the valley was only so big.

  William looked at the others and said, ‘We should have nothing more to do with Rohwer.’

  Seymour looked surprised. ‘Why?’

  ‘He doesn’t follow the Bible, only committees and their rules. He’s a small man.’

  They walked down familiar roads, cutting across vacant blocks, over trampled grass. William was still fuming. ‘If God tells me to walk to the top of Eden Hill, I will. Rohwer would form a committee to discuss this. Just like his father. Both caught up in their own importance. If God says walk to the top of High Eden Hill …’ He stopped. ‘Would you, Seymour?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Arthur?’

  Arthur adjusted the cushion between his shoulder and the cross. ‘If God said to.’

  And that was enough for William, changing course and leading them towards the gentle slopes of the Eden Hill. Encouraging them to sing as they went.

  The hosts of God encamp around

  The dwellings of the just:

  Deliverance he affords to all

  Who on his succour trust

  Like so many boy scouts on a mission for a bemused, indifferent God. Arthur having trouble getting his cross over granite outcrops, pleading to Seymour for help as William marched on ahead. Halfway up Seymour said, ‘He didn’t actually want us to do this?’

  William stopped and turned back. ‘No, but what if he had?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s another thing.’

  In which case William was happy to compromise, helping them rest Arthur’s cross against a vertical cliff face, where its endless layers of varnish could reflect the moon (in its clear, cold winter sky) over the length and width of the Barossa.

  They knelt down on one knee each and William prayed, quoting from Hebrews thirteen, remembered from a thousand nights in the loft, copying and re-copying for a stony-faced Robert below, sons as sons, disappointments handed down. Copying across the page in one direction and then over the top of it in the other. Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves …

  Seymour felt assured in the confidence of William’s delivery, but for Arthur it was not so much immolation as imitation, hearing Robert on the back of the Dodge truck.

  Bible study was at William’s house the following night. As they got under way, William paced Bluma’s linoless floor as he read from a heavily underscored Bible. ‘“And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away: and there was found no place for them.” Joshua, what do you make of this?’

  But before Joshua had a chance to reply, William was explaining. As he did every week, becoming two and three times a week, until at last they thought they were beginning to understand. Until he thought he was getting through to them, until the code of the Four Horsemen was as clear as the tuning on Seymour’s radio. Until the seven angels, with their vials of plague, actually appeared before their eyes covered in small pox, cholera and typhus. Until a Jerusalem of precious stones was before them to reach out and touch.

  At the very same time, in one of the numerous spare bedrooms in Seymour Hicks’ home, Joseph Tabrar stretched out in his singlet and shorts beside his wife Ellen, describing the garden of their Elizabeth home. He imagined a jacaranda which had grown to full size since they’d moved in, escaping, he thought to himself, Seymour and his crackpot mates. A canopy of purple flowers had broken open and emptied themselves across a carpet of Santa Anna, making a rectangle of mixed hues where Vicky and David used to play.

  She stirred. ‘Did you check them?’

  ‘I did.’ Running his hand across her belly before she sighed and turned over, refusing, it seemed to him lately, to discuss anything except overtime and the kids, the Lutheran school and why he always moped at Langmeil. Followed by the inevitable conversation about compromises, his, which she quickly turned into a discussion of hers.

  A row of wine palms, he said, in cut down barrels, to remind her of Tanunda. Colourless and odourless, thriving in full sun, full of untouchable spikes with their religious connotations. ‘What do you think so far?’

  No reply. But Ellen was awake, staring out of the window at Gruenenberg’s distant spike, listening to Mary in the lounge with Bob Hope barely tuned into Seymour’s radio. ‘“Thanks for the memories …”’ And thinking, Corny, except that life had moments like that. Mary spilt something and cursed – ‘Shit’ – and Ellen smiled, stopping as Joseph, explaining how these warm, winter days triggered something, crawled around in search of her lips.

  David opened the door and stuck his head in. ‘Mum …’

  Joseph rolled back. ‘Back to bed.’

  But Ellen brought their son in and laid him between them, as a buffer, as Joseph turned to face a blank, mortar wall. Continuing nonetheless. ‘Along the path, fuchsias and gardenia …’

  ‘Joe, we need to get some sleep.’

  Joseph closed his eyes and saw addresses, other people’s – he knew every street and house and every peeling letterbox. He could imagine gardens – weedy, not thought-out like his – and children, distracted from street cricket, approaching fat, jolly posties (like W.C. Fields in shorts) and taking their mail. Running up pathways between heavily scented fuchsias, past wine palms, slamming flyscreen doors and throwing the letters down on the phone table.

  The paradise of his Elizabeth, in twenty years time. Oak-and elm-lined streets, shading imported European vehicles, kids playing with neighbours’ kids, the neighbours themselves sharing nectarines grown in the inexhaustible soil of their social experiment come good. Marx and Sartre discussed along paved footpaths which were swept daily by oversized industrial vacuums.

  But even if it ended up a slum, it’d still be their slum. Seymour and Mary would come to visit and say their told-you-so’s – Vicky pregnant at fourteen, David done up in a zoot suit, doing his best to look like Tony Curtis.

  Joseph smiled at the thought of it. He stood up and put on a dressing gown, walking out to the front porch and sitting in a love-seat. Seymour stood in the shadows beside his broken letterbox, sorting his mail: PMG, church business and a land agent for Joseph. He raised the agent’s letter to the moon but then saw Joseph himself, huddled against the cold. He walked towards him. ‘Joseph.’

  ‘Seymour.’

  Inside, Mary sung along to Weill’s September Song, more static than music. Seymour sat beside Joseph in the love-seat. ‘For you.’ Handing him the letter. ‘Ellen mentioned Elizabeth.’

  This time Joseph was short with a reply.

  ‘You’re welcome here,’ Seymour continued, ‘… as long as you want.’

  ‘Or at least until next March,’ Joseph smiled, looking up at him.

  Seymour looked down at the ground and played with his mail.

  ‘Yes, but he’ll live amongst us, like a neighbour.’

  ‘Still, sorta defeats the purpose of real
estate.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Unless he’s wrong.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Lotta others said the same thing, Seymour. Ended up looking very silly. I was always taught the End would be like a big plane crash.’ In which everyone’s kids got killed. Fire and retribution.

  Disasters which proved that Seymour’s God was a loveless one.

  ‘No,’ Seymour continued, ‘business as usual.’

  ‘Convenient.’

  ‘What about land around Tanunda, or Nuri?’

  Joseph was as silent as the sexless Ellen in their bed. At last he looked over. ‘This is your home, Seymour, you have your own ways.’ Thinking how the radio was always tuned to Seymour’s station, the salt and pepper in shakers as Mary liked them, pictures of Kavel and Luther hanging above the children’s beds. ‘I’d like some Beethoven occasionally.’

  ‘Just say. If you don’t tell me …’

  But in Joseph’s home, he wouldn’t have to ask, bowing his head as he sought favours from others. ‘Elizabeth sounds as good as anywhere.’

  ‘You’re crazy, look what you’ve got here.’

  ‘Just the same.’

  Silence. In time Seymour went in, opening and cursing his phone bill. Singing along with Mary, ‘“My heart belongs to daddy …”’

  Joseph sat staring into the night sky, trying to work out how so many small compromises could have added up to this. ‘Why rent, you can live here for next to nothing. Think of the money you’ll save.’

  Ellen dreaming endless afternoons of baking with the mother she’d never have to leave, the father she’d never have to disappoint, the children she’d hardly have to discipline or inspire with the Bible.

  And how you just got stuck in a place and a time, sorting other people’s letters.

  The stage door to Union Hall, on the grounds of Adelaide University, was crowded with stage-struck plumbers, hausfraus and solicitors sucking back Capstan and Turf in a nervous frenzy of half-remembered lines and dance steps. One, a Scottish grandmother from Brighton, practised a waltz she’d later fluff in front of her friends from the Glenelg East Bingo (having worn out a perfectly good Axminster getting it right).