The Salt Madonna

by Catherine Noske

  Her mother frowns peevishly. ‘Well, I hope it does clear. It would be such a shame. You’ll help me get down there, won’t you? They’re working so hard in preparation.’

  Hannah looks up with surprise. ‘Oh? And I’m not? I’ve been sewing all afternoon! Who’s they?’

  ‘You think I don’t have any friends?’ Her mother is watching her with black eyes.

  Hannah sighs. ‘No. Of course you have friends . . . I was just wondering.’ She shoves the kettle under the tap and fills it by its spout.

  ‘Mrs Keillor came to visit me, to make sure you were bringing me to the parade. She offered to bring me herself. Have you heard about the Burnetts’ grapes?’ her mother asks. ‘They’ve got fruit again! Three rows of it!’

  ‘Yes,’ Hannah says. ‘I heard.’

  *

  Mrs Keillor kneels and listens to the prayer, wonders at the intensity of Father John’s voice. There is something more than usual in the service, something she hasn’t heard in a while. Easter, she wonders, with its moment of rebirth? Or the Easter parade? He has been taking an interest for the first time in two years, checking in on her organising, making suggestions, encouraging the involvement of the Burnett girl. He looks thin, pinched in the face, but he is more animated than he has been. He proclaims with his hands, calls out beyond the reach of their gathering. It is a good-sized group. The priest calls Amen, and it is echoed in a murmur which has almost a single voice, repeated again after the readings and the gospel.

  ‘God does not need Lent,’ Father John starts his sermon, ‘but we do. Have you wondered about this? Why we have it?’ He is swaying slightly behind the lectern and she wonders if she should offer him a glass of water. ‘Last night, I broke my fast and ate, and it felt like something miraculous. Because it is God loving us, God rewarding our strength. This cycle means giving of ourselves. The cycle of fast and feast taps into some deeper and subliminal longing which we know as a longing for God. It reminds us both of his ability to punish us and his mercy.’

  Mrs Keillor follows the rise and fall of his voice. A slow weariness creeps up on her, as though his speech is hypnotic, has some power or weight. It isn’t uncomfortable. She feels herself relaxing into the moment, more so than she has in weeks. Beside her, Val is looking drowsy, almost dreamy. Something in us is letting go, she thinks. For some reason, the thought gives her a strange sense of hope.

  Outside, afterwards, she can feel it in the chatter and the laughter. People are talking peacefully about chocolate, family, the parade on Sunday. There is no gossip, nothing poisonous. Val stands at the doorway handing out flyers and Mrs Keillor picks up a handful and joins her.

  ‘How’s your girl?’ she asks Ellen Burnett as she comes through. She tries to make it seem genuine, hold on to the hopefulness and ignore the little sting that comes in thinking about the role of the Virgin, all her efforts to arrange things disrupted. ‘Is she ready now? Excited?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ the woman replies. ‘I think so. Father John is helping.’

  Mrs Keillor raises her eyebrows. ‘He’s visited you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ellen rubs her watery eyes. ‘He’s been coming every day . . .’ She trails off. ‘I’d forgotten how he could be.’

  ‘How he could be?’

  ‘You know – how you can’t look away.’

  Val nods. ‘Yes. The sermon today . . .’

  ‘And his idea for Mary to be in the parade. He thinks it will help her. It’s lovely. We’re so grateful to you for everything you’ve been doing, Lydia, and for allowing it. I know it was your turn.’

  Mrs Keillor pats her on the arm. ‘I’m sure Mary will be beautiful,’ she says, keeping the bitterness from her tone.

  ‘Your grapes,’ Val breaks in. ‘Are they really fruiting? Father John has been telling everyone. It’s unbelievable.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Ellen says. ‘You can come see, if you like. It’s just the three rows near the house. The ones Mary and I picked out in January. Funny, isn’t it?’

  Mrs Keillor smiles and wonders at it, remembers how she watched the two figures work the vines. ‘Perhaps after the parade . . .’

  The priest emerges from the church and approaches them. ‘Well, ladies,’ he says, ‘what did you think of the sermon?’

  He is actually smiling.

  *

  Hannah can’t help going in the end. The whole village is there, it seems, except for Darcy. She looks for him, but can’t see him. There is a fete in the car park. Her mother leans on a stick beside her, refuses the offer of an arm, buys honey and homemade soap. There is a barbecue and ice-creams. Women handing out Easter eggs. At midday, the school kids play out the Stations of the Cross on the back of Mulvey’s flatbed truck. Jesus loses his crown of thorns, and Veronica waves to her parents. The shape and progression of it are overwhelmingly familiar. Hannah finds herself murmuring the words. Her mother smiles, reaches out and squeezes her hand. After, the children flock, screaming, alive with the false colours of their towel robes. Through it all, the smell from the river is rank, a heavy layer over the movement and colour. Familiar too. They all ignore it. Beside her mother, a woman holds a lace handkerchief to her nose, goes on talking with animation as though nothing is wrong.

  The official ceremonies start down at the point. They follow the same ritual Hannah remembers, the same path and prostrations shown in the sepia photographs on the wall of the pub, a celebration stretching back fifty, one hundred years. Hannah wonders exactly when it started. The old women of the church are ridiculous on their hands and knees, heads bent, bowing to the Virgin as she gazes out to sea, disregarding them. But the priest’s voice is soft and compelling. Hannah watches him with interest, the beneficent figure in white robes. He is new to her, but not anomalous with the scene. He has a gentle charisma. He leads them to the village and they hoist Mary up on a wicker chair, six men beneath her lifting broomstick handles like pallbearers lifting a coffin. As they do, a gust of wind comes through from over the hill, from the open ocean beyond. It sweeps down over the village and pushes back the miasma of the river smell, sends it out over the bay and towards the mainland, cleans the world for them. Everywhere around her, people are turning, smiling, looking up at Mary. Hannah’s mother is clapping. The woman beside her laughs. The pallbearers start to move, carrying Mary aloft, and slowly the congregation follows.

  For a moment, as Hannah watches, Mary disappears, and all that is left is an empty chair, the whole community together behind it, joined together, their backs aching towards her. Like a pack, like a bundle of dogs, they move as one, turn as one, some animalistic movement. She feels her own body drawn towards the church above them, leaning into the pull. Hannah shivers. Beside her, her mother’s face is hungry and strained, but she walks upright and with pride.

  When they finally arrive, it seems as though the church will overflow. People are pressed in, standing, filling the church with a gentle fug of noise and body heat. They have seated Mary up at the altar, the font pushed back to the wall to make room for her to preside. The domesticity inherent to the clutter of furniture makes Hannah smile. It is cramped at the front, and the women in the front row have to hold their legs tucked primly beneath them. It is cramped in the pews as well, but no one seems to notice or mind. People are staring at Mary. Father John enters with the Easter candle. When he lights it, their faces are close and lit by the glow.

  ‘The Light of Christ,’ he says. He is facing Mary.

  ‘Thanks be to God,’ they intone.

  ‘Beautiful,’ Hannah’s mother whispers. The woman beside her nods. A child murmurs and giggles somewhere behind. Hannah finds herself constantly looking at Mary. At the altar, the priest takes a moment to look around. She can see him taking it all in. He clears his throat.

  ‘Hymn one-twenty-seven, “To the Name of Our Salvation”.’ He speaks quietly but the whole church listens. Hymnbooks rustle. The whole church sings.

  *

  Mrs Keillor thinks of the parade as her greatest victory
. A victory of organisation, but also a victory over herself, her jealousy, her woman’s weakness. It is a good turnout, with people from the mainland come over on the ferry as well as most of the village. The schoolchildren are running and yelling. Susan Culliver waves at her, pins in her mouth, adjusting a disciple’s robe. She can see her husband eating a sausage in bread and watching it all with the mayor from the mainland. The women are babbling, excited, gathered and waiting for the ceremony to start. And then it begins. She has asked Father John to read from the New Testament, this year, down at the point. His voice is gentle, loving. They act out the worshipping, follow the traditions, and Mary is brought forward, as planned. As they lift her, a beautiful sweep of clean air sends back the smell of the river, and she can feel herself laughing. She watches Mary and knows the priest was right. The girl is strange, sitting up there so demurely, but there is something very powerful in her, something of grace that she herself could not have brought, hoisted above the crowd on that chair. And she is the one who has organised it all! She is flushed with pride as they carry the girl on a wicker chair out in front of the crowd, her hair wreathed with woven palm. They have dressed her in a simple blue dress, a white shawl. She is serene up there, and very beautiful. It is a sight of awe. And it feels right. Their whole island, their whole community, gathered. And then they all walk together up to the church. Mrs Keillor smiles to see it. She walks directly behind Father John. Behind her, she can hear people chattering and laughing, happy. Following.

  For a moment, in the middle of everything, Mrs Keillor looks at Mary and sees her own youth unreeling itself into the crowd; the girl, thin-limbed in the dress, as a ghost, a memory, some version of herself poised there in another world, sacred, something lost and precious. Around, the press of bodies is warm like family. Home, she thinks. It is the only word she can find to describe the sensation.

  *

  Thomas follows with everyone else as the parade winds up towards the church, but his eyes don’t leave Mary. For a moment, as he watches her, it is as if everyone else disappears. He is the only one there. The street is empty, it’s just him and her. But then there is a shout and it all comes back, closes in like a wave. There is a weight growing in him, his bones becoming metal, and he imagines running to her, standing before her as a shield, arms raised in protection. He eyes the men around him. They stare at her. She is shivering. Her hands are clenched tight around fistfuls of the cloth they have draped her in.

  There are tourists from the mainland. Down at the jetty, Thomas had seen the men sizing them up as they would a mob of cattle, assessing profits and costs. Picnic was working in a food tent, selling sausages in bread and cheap icy poles, fistfuls of loose change in one hand and a blue glove on the other. In the church, the tourists sit up the back and people cast sly glances at them. Thomas sits mute through the service, his mother mouthing the words beside him. He wonders if she realises she is doing it, or if it is entirely automatic. The priest’s voice rises to proclamation, almost begs for their belief. The prayers drone, the church reverberates in a bumbling semitone from the heavy stone walls. Thomas can’t listen, goes back to watching Mary, watching the tourists. He turns to stare at them and his mother reaches a hand out to straighten him. He shifts in his seat, bounces one leg. His father looks across at him and frowns. Outside, it starts to rain, falling with a gentle insistency on the stained-glass windows. The Christ figure runs with technicoloured tears, paints the priest in stripes of light. Mary stares straight ahead, looking at no one and nothing. Thomas stares at her, lets himself imagine taking her hand and walking from the church, feels himself slow down.

  *

  The service goes just as she had planned. As it comes to an end, Mrs Keillor finds herself wishing they could stay there forever, safe, joined in that moment of love. At the altar, still enthroned, Mary maintains her poise, and it is mesmerising. All across the church, people are watching her. Mrs Keillor allows herself to stare at the girl, finds it almost meditative within the space of the prayers, the familiar patterns of repetition. Alleluia, Christ is risen. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, he is risen indeed. Mrs Keillor thinks of the Burnetts’ fruit, Ellen’s incessant chattering about her daughter. Mercy, mercy, mercy. Wonderful, a mother’s love. But it is easy to believe Mary is special, there in the church. Father John’s sermon comes back to her; Mary is the steady weight at the centre of it all, and she is beautiful. Mrs Keillor doesn’t want it to end.

  VIII

  April–May 1992

  Easter Monday, 20 April

  Saint’s Day of Mark the Evangelist, 25 April

  Saint’s Day of Matthias the Apostle, 14 May

  FATHER JOHN WAKES ON Easter Monday and his wife is beside him in the bed. He rolls towards her, still bleary with sleep, but it was only a mirage and she has already disappeared. She was with him almost the whole of Easter Day, and he allows himself to feel cheated. He tries to remember what he was dreaming of and wonders if Ellen Burnett will call. It feels like a lifetime since she first called. So much has changed. He dresses and eats. Breakfast is a revelation now the fast has ended, tea rich with smoky flavour. Like clockwork, as he finishes, the phone rings. This time it is not a disruption but anticipated, expected. His wife stands by the sink to listen, and the sight of her there fills him with joy.

  ‘Thank you for yesterday,’ the woman says. ‘It was lovely, Father.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ he starts, but she cuts across him.

  ‘Can we meet? There is something I want to talk to you about.’

  ‘Has she spoken to you?’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘It isn’t that. Well, it’s about Mary. And the grapes, like I showed you. I think . . .’ There is an awkward silence, and then she speaks in a rush. ‘I think it was Mary who made the grapes fruit again.’

  He pauses, unsure of what to say. His wife shifts her weight from one foot to the other.

  ‘Can we meet, Father?’ the woman asks again. ‘I need to talk to you. Is it possible?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, meet me at the church.’

  Her thanks are profuse and convoluted, words running one over the other like water, and slowly he begins to understand what she thinks he has said.

  ‘Possible to talk,’ he clarifies, ‘not . . . I only meant . . .’

  But she has already hung up. Just like that, he thinks. The power of a word. Afterwards, he knows she will remember it as the moment things began.

  He is waiting for her when she walks in the gates. The sky is soft and grey above. He is waiting in the doorway, as if before a service. She wants a confession, he thinks. She wants High Church and absolution. As he watches her approach, he can feel his wife behind him. Glorious that she is there. For that alone, he thinks, this is worth it. He pulls his shoulders back, arranges his face.

  ‘About the grapes,’ he begins, when they are both seated in a pew.

  ‘You’ll think I am mad,’ she says, her voice plaintive, ‘talking about them like that.’ She seems to shiver suddenly, almost to unravel. ‘Like a miracle. My beautiful girl,’ she whispers, looking down. ‘Ignore me, Father. I know it can’t be real. It was just the parade, all the talk of Easter, of Christ coming again, how she looked up there . . .’

  He stiffens in his seat. She is embarrassed, he realises. A wave of pity sweeps through him. It makes him draw breath, the feeling is so strong. He had forgotten this pity, he realises. He had forgotten what it was like to care.

  ‘What is it?’ he asks. The woman is crying, and he realises there is more. The grapes have just been the excuse. She looks at him, her face screwed up.

  ‘This morning . . .’ she gasps. ‘I caught her vomiting! She didn’t do anything. I’d know. She’s a good girl, she wouldn’t do that.’

  Father John stares at her, caught. It takes him a moment to work it out, but when he does, he realises that somehow he isn’t surprised. She breaks down sobbing and falls against him. His pity plays against the urge to push her away. Focus, he thinks.


  ‘What wouldn’t she do, Ellen?’ His tone is firm, interrogatory.

  She sits up again, mouth open and face wet. ‘She wouldn’t . . . sleep with anyone. She didn’t. She’s fourteen! I’d know.’

  ‘She doesn’t have a boyfriend?’

  ‘No!’ she wails. ‘I’d know.’

  ‘But if you think she is pregnant . . . That isn’t possible, Ellen. She must have . . . with someone.’ He hesitates, remembers the child prostrate on the white sheets, his first visit, and her silence. ‘That bruise she had on her face, the first day I visited. What was it?’

  The woman breathes deeply enough that each breath causes her body to rock on the pew. She wipes at the tears on her cheeks. ‘She fell. Weeks ago. It’s gone now. She was running – she slipped!’ Her tone rises, pitches slowly up towards hysterical. ‘It’s gone, it’s gone. It has nothing to do with this!’ She falls on him once again, incoherent. His wife steps backwards from the pew, averts her gaze. Stop, he tells himself. The emotion he has unleashed in her disturbs him. Let it go, he thinks. Let it fade like the bruise has.

  ‘I’ll come to her,’ he says, soothing the woman, one hand on her head. He can feel her tears soak through to his shoulder as he holds her, pats her back. Distasteful, her heat and weeping; or it would be, if not for the power of her need. He casts a quick eye around the church, looking again for his wife. She has disappeared. ‘I’ll come again, today. Please, don’t worry. I’ll come now.’

  The girl is asleep when he enters her bedroom. She is small and flat on the bed, and the gloom shows her hair and eyelashes as dark against the pale of her face. It is hard to believe sin of her. Easier to see the power she held over them in the parade. There is nothing to show she is pregnant.

  ‘Don’t wake her,’ he whispers.

  He just stands there and looks. The mother behind him sighs. After a moment, he backs out and they creep down to the tiny kitchen.

  ‘It’s not possible, she’s a good girl,’ Ellen says, her voice tremulous and hopeful at the same time.