A Season on Earth

by Gerald Murnane

  They called each other ‘Denise’ and ‘Adrian’ without formally introducing themselves—although they were both too shy to mention the day when they showed each other their names on exercise books. There was so much to talk about—the subjects they studied at school, the sports they played, the radio programs they listened to at night, the things they did at weekends. When Denise said she liked going to the pictures when she got the chance, Adrian knew she was inviting him to ask her to the pictures in Accrington some day when they knew each other better.

  Adrian got more pleasure from hearing the schoolgirl Denise talk about her likes and dislikes and hobbies than he had once got from imagining her as his wife. He chatted to her every night for nearly two months. The only bother he had was that sometimes when he stood near her in the train of an afternoon, he almost forgot himself and blurted out the story he was saving for their conversation that night.

  When it was almost December, Adrian decided to speed up events so he would be deeply involved with her before they had to part for the long summer holidays. One night in bed he asked her quietly would she care to go to the pictures with him on the following Saturday night. It was much easier than he had expected. She even blushed a little as she answered, proving that this was the first time any young man had asked her out. She told him she would ask her parents, and the next day it was all arranged.

  On the Saturday night Adrian and Denise sat together in one of the special buses that took crowds of young couples from outlying suburbs into Accrington to the Plaza or the Lyric.

  During the first picture Adrian leaned his upper arm against Denise’s shoulder and was pleased to see she did not draw away from him. At interval he gently grasped her elbow when she was jostled by the crowds around the ice-cream counter.

  The main picture had a lot of kissing and romance. Adrian was not interested in the plot. He was planning for the moment when he would reach out boldly and take Denise’s hand. It was lying naked and limp and easily within his reach, just above her knee. He couldn’t approach it where it was—Denise might see his hand coming and think for an instant he was going to touch her on the thigh. But at last she lifted it onto the armrest between them, which he had left unoccupied for that very purpose. He still had to wait until there was no kissing on the screen. (He reasoned that if he reached for her hand at a moment when a man and woman were pressed together in the film, Denise might think he was planning to court her with kisses and hugs like a man from Hollywood.)

  At last, when a band was playing a song with only a suggestion of romance in its words, he rested his hand on hers. The white hand did not move. He lifted it up with all the tenderness that his five fingers could express and laid it between his palms (keeping it as far away as possible from his own thighs and lap). Still it did not even twitch or tauten. He saw from the corner of his eye that Denise was watching the film as if nothing had happened to her hand.

  He knew it was only modesty that made her hand so limp. She must have suspected he was deeply in love with her, but she would have to be absolutely certain of it before she could yield any part of her body to him. He kept her hand in his and tried to convince himself that his dream really had come true at last, that he was actually sitting beside Denise McNamara and caressing her hand. And then he had a powerful erection.

  It was the biggest and strongest that he had ever had in a public place—almost certainly more fierce than the monster that had appeared for no reason one morning in Form Three and lasted all through a Latin period. It made a conspicuous mound in his trousers as it tried to stand upright and flex itself.

  Adrian’s first thought was that he must keep the thing hidden from Denise. He lifted her hand back onto the armrest, gave it a farewell pat, and left it there. Then he slid his left hand (the hand farther from Denise) into his trousers pocket and slowly eased the huge thing until it lay pointing along the inside edge of his thigh. It was uncomfortable and restless in its new position, but at least it no longer made a threatening lump in his trousers. He thanked God that Denise kept her eyes on the screen while all this was going on.

  Adrian gave up trying to follow the film and prepared for the moment when the lights came on and he had to stand up and walk outside with Denise beside him. He concentrated on the most frightening thoughts—losing his trousers on the way back from the communion rails at mass; letting off a thunderous fart as he walked past the microphone to receive his prize on the stage of Swindon town hall at St Carthage’s Speech Night; vomiting all over his examination answers just before the supervisor came to collect them in the crowded Exhibition Building. But he could not make his erection go down.

  When the film finally ended Adrian kept his left hand in his pocket to hold the thing down. He had to walk very slowly, but he pretended to yawn a lot so Denise would think he was tired. In the bus he had some trouble getting Denise to sit on his right side, away from the battle going on in his trousers.

  Denise invited him to her house for a cup of tea. Adrian limped towards her front gate, trying to look down at himself in the light from a street lamp to see how much was visible.

  He prayed that her parents would be in bed, but they were in the lounge room listening to Geoff Carmichael’s Supper Club on the radio. Of course Adrian had to take his hand out of his pocket to be introduced to them. He was sure Mrs McNamara didn’t notice anything unusual. (She looked to be in her forties, so she probably hadn’t seen anything like it for years.) But Denise’s father looked him up and down quickly before shaking hands. Adrian was sure the father of a girl as beautiful and innocent as Denise would be always alert for signs that her purity was threatened. If Mr McNamara had noticed the least sign of movement in Adrian’s trousers he would be too polite to say anything about it with his wife and daughter in the room, but he would tell his daughter afterwards that she was forbidden to associate with that young Sherd fellow any more.

  The parents soon left the young people alone in the dining room. Denise leaned forward across the table to talk to Adrian about the film. He said to himself (slowly and distinctly, so the message would travel down his nerves into his groin) that he was looking into the eyes of the most chaste and modest and beautiful girl in the world. But instead of dying of shame, the thing in his trousers reared up as if he had promised it some filthy pleasure.

  For the rest of his time in the dining room, Adrian let his erection do what it liked out of sight under the table while he took a pure delight in looking at Denise’s pink earlobes, the white hollow at the base of her throat, and the faultless symmetry of her face.

  When it was time to go, he walked behind her to the front door. Then he dodged quickly past her and said goodnight over his shoulder. He had never intended to kiss her after their first outing together. He wanted to emphasise that it was not physical gratification he was looking for when he went out with her. It was just as well—he shuddered to think what might have happened if he had stood with his body close to hers and no free hand to keep in his pocket.

  By the time he had closed the McNamaras’ front gate his erection had shrivelled up and promised to cause no more trouble that night. But Adrian was already planning how to outwit it when he next went out with Denise.

  After school a few days later, Adrian took a tram from Swindon into the city and went to a shop he had learned about from advertisements in the Sporting Globe. In the window he saw wheelchairs, artificial legs, bedpans, braces for injured backs, strange thick stockings and things he supposed were trusses. He asked the man at the counter for an athletic support and hoped he looked like a footballer or bike rider who needed one for a genuine reason. The man came towards him with a tape measure. Adrian shrank back. He couldn’t believe he had to take out his privates in the shop and have them measured. But the man only pulled the tape measure around Adrian’s waist and went to some drawers behind the counter. Adrian would have asked for a size smaller than his fitting but he was afraid the man would think he was some kind of pervert who tortured his orga
n before he masturbated.

  That night Adrian wore the jockstrap to bed under his pyjamas. Before he lay down, he pressed his penis flat against his testicles and pulled the belt of the jockstrap as high as it would reach around his waist. Purely as a part of his experiment, he teased his organ by poking it with his fingers. It swelled a little, but the elastic easily held it down. Adrian was satisfied it would give him no trouble that night, no matter how long he held Denise’s hand, or even if she responded by squeezing his.

  A little later he was chatting to her again in the Saturday night picture bus to Accrington. Everything was peaceful between his legs because he knew he wouldn’t be reaching for her hand until they had settled down in the theatre and the lights had gone out. Suddenly the young woman in the seat in front of them leaned her head on the shoulder of the young man beside her and shifted her body until it pressed against his. Adrian shifted an inch or so away from Denise to show her he didn’t approve of couples making an exhibition of themselves in public. Denise sat very still. He supposed she was as irritated as he was by the couple. But then she placed her hand calmly and deliberately on the seat between them, with the fingers neatly arranged as though she meant him to place his own hand over them.

  Before he had time to consider whether Denise was actually inviting him to hold her hand and whether he ought to take it so early in the evening, there was trouble in his jockstrap. His member was straining against its bonds and arching itself into a shape like a banana. He clasped Denise’s hand quickly to distract her attention.

  He held Denise’s hand all through both films. He avoided giving it any unusual signs of affection such as squeezing it or stroking it, and he was glad to find that it lay quietly under his the whole time. Some time after interval his penis seemed to concede defeat and lay down peacefully.

  As the film ended Adrian was looking forward to talking with Denise on the bus and in her dining room. He was halfway to the bus stop before he realised he had underestimated the enemy in his jockstrap. While he had been watching the second film it had eased itself into a new position. (He might even have helped it unwittingly when he shifted his legs around.) Now it was pointing ever so slightly upwards and stretching just enough to keep itself there. Whenever it chose—in the bus, or in McNamaras’ lounge room in front of Denise’s parents, or more likely on the front veranda when he tried to kiss her goodnight, it could draw itself up to its full height and stand out like a broomstick against the front of his trousers and make a mockery of his courtship.

  Adrian stood for a minute in the middle of his darkened bedroom. He took a few steps forward and then reached down once more to check what was happening beneath his pyjamas. His enemy had consolidated its position still further.

  Adrian realised he could never escape from the danger of mortal sin. He would always be at the mercy of his own penis. He took off his jockstrap and hid it in his wardrobe. Then he put on his pyjamas and climbed into bed.

  There was just one more thing to do before he went to sleep. He walked up the path to McNamaras’ house and knocked on the front door. Denise herself opened it. She was not his wife or his fiancée or even the young woman he had twice taken to the pictures. She was a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl in the tunic and blouse and jacket of the Academy of Mount Carmel.

  She hesitated to ask him inside because her parents were both out and she was alone in the house. He stepped past her and strode into the lounge room. She closed the front door and stood in front of him. She had never looked more beautiful and pathetic. She said something like, ‘I always thought it would end like this,’ or ‘It was impossible from the start.’ But he was not really listening.

  He gripped both her wrists with one hand. With his free hand he tore at her clothing. Something, perhaps the memory of all she had once meant to him, made him hesitate to undress her completely. He simply exposed the charms that he would never enjoy and stared at them for a long, solemn moment. Then he released her.

  She stumbled backwards and fell among the cushions on the couch. She lay there, fumbling with her clothes to cover herself. The last thing Adrian saw before he turned and walked out of the house forever was the emblem on the pocket of her jacket, the snowcapped holy mountain of Carmel with a circle of stars above it, falling back into place over her naked left breast.

  After his jockstrap had let him down, Adrian still caught his usual Coroke train, but he got into the rear carriage, well away from the Mount Carmel girl’s carriage, and he only travelled as far as Caulfield. He was training every night at the racecourse for the House Sports. He wore his new jockstrap whenever he trained, and found it improved his running.

  One morning instead of the usual Christian Doctrine period, Adrian’s class had a priest to speak to them.

  The priest was a stranger. He put his hands in his pockets, leaned back against the brother’s desk and said, ‘My name is Father Kevin Parris and my job is to visit secondary schools to give advice to any young chaps like yourselves who want to find out about the work of the secular priest.

  ‘You all know the difference of course between a secular priest like myself and a religious priest—a member of a religious order—who takes a vow of obedience to the head of his order. I think it’s fair to say that the secular priests are the backbone of the church. Not even the most ancient of the religious orders can trace its history back as far as we can. The first priests that Christ ordained were secular priests. I’m talking of course about the Apostles—the very first Catholic clergy. And the work that Christ sent them out to do is the same work that the secular priests of the Melbourne Archdiocese are doing today.

  ‘You boys know without being told what that work is. Maybe a few of you live in parishes that have been entrusted to some order or other, but the great majority of you were baptised by a secular priest, you made your first confession to a secular priest, and you received your first communion from a secular priest. Those of you who marry in later life will probably receive that sacrament in the presence of a secular priest. And when you come to die, please God you’ll receive the last sacrament from one of us too.

  ‘Of course there’s a thousand and one other tasks we perform as well. You might compare us to the rucks and rovers in a football team. We have a roving commission to go wherever we’re needed and do the heavy work. And boys, just like any other football team, the priests of your archdiocese need a steady stream of recruits.

  ‘You might be interested in a few facts and figures about vocations to the priesthood here in Melbourne. I was ordained myself in 1944—that’s ten years ago now. At the ceremony in St Pat’s Cathedral there were seventeen of us ordained for this archdiocese. Now, in those days, seventeen new priests were barely enough to meet the demands of the archdiocese. I remember the Archbishop telling us all that we were only going to fill the gaps left by deaths and serious illness among the priests of Melbourne.

  ‘Well, that was 1944. Now, I don’t have to tell you how Melbourne has grown in the last few years. Think of all the new suburbs stretching for miles out towards Frankston and Coroke and Dandenong where there were only farms and market gardens a few years back. And all those suburbs need Catholic churches and schools for the families growing up there. Then think of the thousands of New Australians who’ve come to this country since the war—most of them from Catholic countries. All these people need priests to serve them.

  ‘And what do we find? This year, 1954, we had twenty-three ordinations. That’s just six more than in 1944. You can see we’re not really keeping up with the demand for priests. It’s been calculated that we need a minimum of fifty to sixty ordinations each year until 1960 just to properly staff the parishes we’ve already got and keep some of our overworked priests from cracking up under the strain. Our team is up against it. We’ve got our nineteenth and twentieth men on the field and we’re fighting overwhelming odds. The coach is crying out for new recruits. And this brings me to the point of my little talk to you.

  ‘Theologians t
ell us that God always provides enough vocations for the needs of His church in every age. In others words, this year all over Melbourne God has planted the seeds of a vocation in the hearts of enough young men to meet the needs of our archdiocese. But God only calls—He never compels. So if we find next year an insufficient number of candidates entering our seminary, we can only conclude that a great many young men have deliberately turned their backs on a call from God.

  ‘And now I’m going to speak bluntly. Bearing in mind the needs of our archdiocese at present, I would say that each of the major Catholic colleges (and this includes St Carthage’s of course), that each of them should have at least ten boys in the matriculation class this year who’ve been called by God to be priests in the Archdiocese of Melbourne. Next year most of you chaps will be in matric and the same will apply to you. Which means there could well be ten of you listening to me now who’ve already been called, or will soon be called by God, to serve Him as priests.

  ‘To have a vocation to the priesthood, a boy needs three things—good health, the right level of intelligence and the right intention. Good health means an average constitution strong enough to stand up to a lifetime of hard work—you all look to me as if you’ve got that. As for intelligence, any boy who can pass the matric exam (including a pass in Latin) will have the intelligence to cope with the studies for the priesthood. Health and intelligence are fairly easy to judge. The third sign of a vocation is the one you have to be really sure of.

  ‘A boy who has a right intention will first of all be of good moral character. Now, this doesn’t mean he has to be a saint or a goody-goody. He’ll be a good average Catholic boy who’s keen on football and sport and works hard at his studies and doesn’t join in smutty conversations. Of course he’ll have temptations like we all do. But he’ll have learnt how to beat them with the help of prayer and the sacraments. And as for the right intention, well, it could be the desire to win souls for God—to give up your whole life to do His work.