Hill of Grace

by Stephen Orr

  Summer turned the wild oats golden from St Kitts to the Potter’s Field. Down Murray Street the carob trees sagged and fig trees wept, dropping fruit into the back of double-parked utes. Old couples walked slowly, stopping to rest in the shade, to remember the smell of beer-wet carpet from the couplings of the Tanunda Hotel. Dust blew up from between the graves in front of Langmeil, settling across the road and on the grass of the Lutheran school, its sprinklers laying out patterns to nourish weeds along cracked footpaths. In the hospital, wedged between the swimming pool and endless vines, porters wandered basement corridors, hiding in storerooms to escape the heat and smell of boiled cabbage. Bruno and Edna Hermann bought a Kelvinator cooler and hung it out of their kitchen window, shutting their blinds and locking themselves away for days at a time. William Miller, trying to fall asleep with his window open, couldn’t ignore the noise, storming onto his front porch and calling, ‘Some of us have no choice!’

  But the Hermanns were snoring, hermetically sealed in a sarcophagus of recycled air which Bluma could only envy as she lay awake sweating, listening to William pacing the verandah.

  Church Avenue, Kilburn, had transformed too. After the first few stinkers, people emerged from their red-brick ovens of an evening, dragging Onkaparinga rugs and carrying teddy-bears and eskies full of Bickford’s cordial. Settling in on the freshly cut lawn on the reserve, they shared stories from a long, cold winter – who’d died of what, who’d married who and if it was true that Premier Playford had the cancer. Late at night a few would resort to war songs, remembering the time, not so long ago, when they dug an air-raid shelter where the council had since planted hydrangeas. Eventually everything would fall quiet, the still night filled with the music of crickets and someone’s dad jogging home for a trot-stop.

  Milk warm in leaky fridges, ice-boxes forever dripping on lino. Houses left open as voices distantly mingled to the tune of a radio someone had set up on the end of seven extension cords. Mo amongst the hibiscus, a sparkling new N-class loco whistling off down the hill towards Islington. And someone saying to Rose, ‘That boarder of yours, he don’t never go home.’

  ‘I know. His people are zealots.’

  Receiving a look of, I’m sure you know what’s best.

  In mid-December, as most of the valley folk were harvesting pines and pickling pig for Christmas, William continued his program of door knocking. On a bright, clear, blue-skyed Tuesday, as the sun warmed the footpaths of Munzberg Court, he walked along in polished black shoes, real leather soles taking the heat up into his feet. Every step was a step closer. Aching corns and doors slammed in his face were a sure sign of salvation. He wore his father’s grey suit and a tie Bluma had bought him for their anniversary. Which one, he thought, wood, tin, opal? It was before the war, but after the worst of the Depression. Time was like that, blurring in giant swathes, a million little memories transforming into one, small victories inflating like a prize pumpkin at the Tanunda show.

  He opened a gate and navigated a weedy yard, tapping on a flyscreen door which was mostly all holes. ‘Hello,’ he called, softly, down the hallway.

  ‘That you, Sue?’

  ‘No, my name is William Miller, I was wondering if we could talk.’

  He heard furniture shifting and a kettle whistling, the clang of metal and then silence. A budgie, hanging on the front porch, flitted around its cage trying to escape the sun. William took it down and placed it in the shade. ‘Hello?’

  ‘I’m comin’ … is it important?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re after money?’

  ‘No.’

  William sat down on a petrol drum and waited. Time was on his side.

  Further up the street, Joshua Heinz stopped, looking at a piece of paper and saying to his youngest son, ‘Two more streets, if not we go home.’

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘Two.’

  They kept walking, Joshua tapping his pipe on the sole of his shoe, walking, tapping, almost tripping over.

  William stood up. ‘Joshua.’

  ‘William.’

  As the Heinzes joined him on the porch, William set to straightening the young boy’s tie. ‘Joshua, you told me one o’clock.’

  ‘I would’ve been. I was stood up. They figure I need their business. You watch, tomorrow there’ll be a phone call.’ He sighed.

  ‘What you waitin’ for?’

  William called down the hall. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hold on.’ And then came the sound of hammering.

  Joshua looked at his son. ‘Don’t be so glum. What are we here for?’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘And what’s he gonna do?’

  ‘Save us.’

  Joshua spat on a hanky and wiped the boy’s face. ‘You tell people – ’

  The door nudged open. A man of about sixty, wearing a singlet and stooping so much he strained his neck to look up at them, shuffled out to the porch and squinted. ‘Haven’t done a fuckin’ thing with this yard. Apologise for the mess.’ When his eyes adjusted he looked at Joshua and said, ‘Didn’t you sell me a car once?’

  ‘No. Maybe it was some insurance.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You up to date?’

  The man laughed and smoothed his singlet down over his belly. ‘You gotta be kidding. Does it look like I got insurance?’

  Taking a moment to look them over, he continued: ‘That what you here for?’

  William stepped forward. ‘No, we’ve come to talk about Jesus.’

  ‘Fuck. Dunno what’s worse. What’s the kiddie for? You lot always bring your kiddies. Think we might feel sorry for yer?’

  The man walked down his front steps and into his garden. Bending over to pull a thistle he nearly fell over. Joshua took him by the arm and he became defensive. ‘Get off. Done alright without you lot up to now. Always round when yer not wanted. Never when yer needed.’

  Joshua smiled. ‘Mr Grosser.’

  But Albert Grosser was bending over to the little boy. ‘You talk, or you just for show?’

  Joshua’s son stepped back and caught himself on the roses. As he untangled himself he said, ‘Next March, on the twenty-first, the Bible says these days will come to an end.’

  ‘What days?’

  Joshua stepped forward. ‘Mr Grosser. I remember I insured your house for fire.’

  ‘And it didn’t burn down.’

  ‘It might’ve.’

  ‘Do I get my money back?’

  William pursued him through a hedge of rosemary. ‘Mr Grosser, Jesus Christ is your insurance.’

  ‘Spare me.’

  ‘Do you deny the truth of Revelations, of the Bible itself?’

  ‘All I know’s you lot are never round when you’re needed.

  Just when a man’s tryin’ to take a piss.’ He looked up at William.

  ‘I got your bita paper in me box.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re a fuckin’ idiot.’

  Joshua looked at him, picking dead heads off carnations which were nearly dead themselves. ‘Albert.’

  ‘It’s my fuckin’ house.’

  William asked him why he was so angry and that’s all it took. Albert was off, telling them about the orphanage at Goodwood and the Marist Brothers with their God is Love and their bamboo canes. He showed them an article he kept in his wallet, stolen from the State Library reading-room, yellowing and broken where it was folded, dated September 1893 and entitled ‘Baby Deserted’. It told the story of how an unidentified mother had abandoned her baby on the floor of the ladies lavatory at the Royal Adelaide Hospital: a small, hairless male done up in a dress and wrapped in a shawl; and beside him, neatly folded, a pile of new clothes for a baby girl. Albert claimed he could still remember the smell of polished floors and disinfectant, could still see light reflected off polished brass and mirrors, could smell the shit and hear the flush of nearby heads.

  ‘Whoever she was,’ he said, ‘the one who left me there, chances are she’d be dea
d by now. Good riddance to bad rubbish. And if some fella put her up to it, maybe God pushed him in front of a truck. God would’ve punished them, eh?’ he asked William.

  Who couldn’t say yes.

  ‘Exactly. So just leave me with my fuckin’ roses. Take the kid next door. That Davies woman’ll be eatin’ outa yer hand in no time.’

  William had his standard argument for this type of situation, but it was no use. Albert had made his choices. A lot more started off a lot worse and still found God. Still, if there were latitudes of Hell, Albert would end up in a temperate zone, fanning himself with the raffia fan of lost opportunities.

  Mrs Davies gave Joshua’s son a piece of Cadbury chocolate. By some strange arrangement, it turned out she was living with Trevor Streim’s uncle. ‘William,’ the uncle said, standing over him, ‘you got bigger worries my friend.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘You’re out there on Langmeil Road?’

  William followed his eyes back across Tanunda. Off to the west a giant plume of smoke rose into the air, mushrooming like a budget Nagasaki, dispersing and blowing back across the town.

  The bells of the Tanunda fire service rang out from Murray Street and people appeared from their homes to watch. Joshua put his hands on his son’s shoulder and said, ‘Walk straight home. Tell mum I’m helping Mr Miller.’

  The boy headed east, looking back over his shoulder, wondering if this wasn’t Mr Miller’s apocalypse come early. The two men started off with a fast walk, then a jog, breaking into a sprint as they pulled off their ties and cursed their choice of footwear.

  The volunteer brigade, as it was, soon pumped the tanks of their ’39 Ahrens-Fox dry. Their leader, a bare-chested Henschke in suit pants and hard hat, ordered Harry Rasch to run a hose back to the closest hydrant in Elizabeth Street. In the meantime, Bluma, Bruno, Edna and Arthur, whose homes were most at risk, helped unload hessian sacks from the fire truck, run them to garden taps and thoroughly soak them.

  Arthur Blessitt and Bruno Hermann were soon out with the first line of volunteers, trying to keep smoke from their eyes as they attacked the flames with the bags. Others filled backpacks from the Millers’ garden hose, spraying flames twelve feet high which were feeding off the weeds and uncut grass of the Langmeil Road paddocks. A wet winter and a dry start to summer had created the disaster William had predicted. The site of his washed-out rally had become a fireball, filling his home and vineyards with smoke as thick as winter fog on the Kaiserstuhl.

  The police, and neighbours from several streets away, did what they could, joining garden hoses like extension cords, filling watering cans and buckets and praying in the traditional Langmeil way. A photographer arrived from the Oracle but soon put down his camera in favour of an old bed sheet Edna had soaked in her laundry trough.

  William and Joshua jumped across the picket fence and into the paddock. William took off his jacket and soaked it with a garden hose, starting to beat at the flames which were still burning towards Langmeil Road. Stepping back to get his breath, he looked over and saw Arthur, staring at him, pulling off his shirt and starting in again. William moved up behind him and put his hand on his shoulder, speaking directly into his ear, ‘Where are the other units?’

  ‘I called. They’re on their way.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Arthur shrugged. ‘Kids …’ Throwing caution to the wind and smiling. ‘Maybe it’s a sign.’

  In the smoke and noise William was off guard too, smiling and returning to the flames with his father’s jacket. After a few more minutes, Harry Rasch returned, waving his arms, and the appliance’s pumps roared to life. Bruno helped a volunteer bring the hose forward and William helped his neighbour pull it across the paddock, freeing it from snags as the flames fell black and smoky in a line not more than fifty feet from their front doors.

  By the time the Nuriootpa appliance arrived it was all over, men shaking hands and putting on their shirts.

  In the throng of white, sweaty bodies, Arthur stepped forward to talk to William. Whether he didn’t see him, or ignored him, Arthur couldn’t be sure. But within minutes, as the last of the hoses were reeled in, William walked back to his house with Joshua and Bluma, fire out, all bets off.

  Christmas approached. Although William wouldn’t say as much, he was lost without the Langmeil community. He felt set adrift without Henry and his knack for organising a committee for this and that, the ladies making Advent wreaths, setting them out around the church with four small candles in the middle, the children weaving garlands from tree branches and flowers which Arthur had supplied: calendulas and lisianthus, gerberas in four colours and bundles of gypsophila. As usual, William knew, a group had been organised for a cooking night at Apex, producing six dozen honey cakes the night before the night before Christmas. All of these parts would come together under Pastor Henry’s baton at a Christmas Eve service which was the highlight of the worshipping year. A decent dose of God and the Gospels, a few hymns and then the carols. And then everyone standing and shaking hands and drifting into the hall for supper.

  Bluma would be there. Refilling the urn, shooing children from under foldaway tables. Topping up the sugar and milk, cutting coffee cake into generous slices and complaining how Joshua’s pipe was triggering her asthma.

  But not this year. This year they would have a quiet night.

  William would have been climbing a ladder to open church hall windows, rusted shut since the twenties, calling for Seymour to get his crowbar from the car. Working until he had them all open, letting in the breeze, carrying the congregation’s voices out across the burnt paddocks of West Tanunda.

  But not this year. This year they’d have coffee with the Hicks’, wandering home down Elizabeth and William Streets, kitchen flues already smoking in anticipation of whole pigs and lamb, fowl and a side of beef ordered from Linke’s last Easter. The smell would pass down hallways and out front doors, mixing with jasmine and tempting them as they walked home. As Bluma thought, Surely we can’t sink any lower. Although she could. March 21, 1952. The only consolation was that if Wilhelm was wrong, then people might take pity on her, inviting her back to their quilting-bees and coffee clutches.

  So they sat around in the Hicks’ living-room, dutifully, singing in uninspired, monotone voices: ‘“O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, Your boughs can teach a lesson …”’

  Mary played piano and Seymour turned the pages. Ellen, William, Bluma and the children sat around them in an arc, Joseph slouching against the kitchen door. Ellen turned and motioned for him to sit down but he shook his head. ‘“That constant faith and hope sublime, Lend strength and comfort all the time …”’ Eventually Joseph joined in, conducting mock-Toscanini as Chas looked at him and smiled. ‘“O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree, Your boughs can teach a lesson …”’

  William knew this wasn’t the time for lessons. As Joseph disappeared into the kitchen they joined hands and William prayed one of his shortest prayers ever, evoking Jesus as a chubby, giggling baby, filling nappies ‘just like any mortal man’. He held open a bag and Bluma produced gifts wrapped in plain, brown paper. For the children there were wooden toys: trains for the boys and a stove set for Vicky. ‘They won’t fall apart,’ he promised. ‘Not like the stuff you buy these days.’

  Joseph opened the kitchen door and walked out into the garden, leaving the dishes half finished. He set off towards the Tanunda Hotel, guessing it was probably closed. Back inside, William presented Seymour and Mary with a leather-bound Bible, inscribed to ‘My True Friends’, the plural ‘s’ added as an afterthought in entirely different ink.

  William walked the Hicks family to Langmeil, up the avenue of pines, past Kavel in his plot, awaiting imminent resurrection from a grave of sandy loam. William wondered if the earth would shake and open up, two hands reaching up as Kavel emerged. William helping him up, dusting down his frock-coat and offering him a comb for his chin whiskers; telling him about Henry and Streim and the others and h
ow things had gone downhill since his time, but how the big fella was waiting for them back at his place on Langmeil Road. Kavel would squint, watch the cars buzz by and wonder why they’d built a zincalume garden shed almost on top of his grave.

  Vicky read the inscription on Kavel’s gravestone to her brothers, ‘“He shall stand in his allotted place at the end of the days.”’ She looked at them as if to say, You don’t think Mr Miller’s right? After all, if it was written in stone then it must be true, Miss Jacka, their teacher, had told them as much. Why would someone go to all the trouble of publishing something, chiselling it or setting it to music if it wasn’t true, she’d asked them. It wouldn’t make sense. Therefore the Bible was right. Then the Gurkis boy had asked, ‘What about the book that Hitler wrote?’ and she’d had to stop and think. ‘Readers away. Algebra texts out.’

  As the roar of Edna’s harmonies filled the church, William shook Seymour’s hand and wished him a merry Christmas. The chorus sung an evening hymn and in the stew of voices, William fancied he could pick out, one by one, Trevor and Bruno, Arthur and Ian, Gunther and Pastor Henry himself.

  Bluma hugged Mary and almost cried. Mary whispered in her ear and she smiled, sighing, clutching her empty bag and peering inside the church. As usual, there was the Christmas tree, a native cypress which reached up into the rafters. Arthur had built a base and a large wooden frame to support it. His movable cross had been cleaned down and put on the altar next to a list of all the places he’d visited. In the foyer there were photos. But he’d left it at that; if anyone was interested they could talk to him and he’d tell them why he’d done it. One reply and one reply only: For the love of Jesus.

  Seymour, Mary, Ellen and her children went into the church. The Millers lingered for a moment then walked off down the hill, through the old graves which William would sometimes stop to read. When they got to the road they held hands and walked home, down streets deserted in favour of worship: Tabor and Langmeil, St John’s, Gnadenberg and Holy Cross, each as full as a Catholic school, people celebrating their oneness through hymns, Silent Night and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, leaving hot houses full of hidden presents unlocked.