‘When there are things in the world we cannot explain, good or bad, God asks only faith of us. When we are tested beyond possibility, when all is dark, we must mend our ways, we must trust and continue. God makes the grapes fruit,’ the priest is saying. ‘He gives life to our children. They are our light! Our children bring us together and give us the strength and hope we need to continue.’
The people of the congregation are staring at him, staring at Mary. The women at the front are kneeling now, and some of the congregation are following. They are confused. The whole room is confused, but for the women at the front, and their certainty is compelling. Thomas feels his mother staring at him, her eyes wide. Her whole face is a question.
‘Our Saviour,’ the priest says again, ‘led us forward from dissolution and into a fresh, new day. Our Saviour rescued us from the depths of despair. Our Saviour retrieved us from our Fall. Amen.’
And around him, Thomas hears a handful of voices murmur it back.
‘The hymn on your pew sheets,’ Father John says, and nods to the woman sitting at the electric piano.
The first notes come out reedy and weak. The women at the front begin to sing, their voices tremulous: ‘Come, thou long-expected Jesus, born to set Thy people free! From our sins and fears release us, let us find our rest in Thee!’
Nobody rises. Thomas can feel himself standing, turning, trying to get out. He can’t work out who he is angrier with: the women at the front, the village as a whole, his mother, Mary. Eyes around the room turn to him. The row is full, he can’t move. His mother grips his arm and drags him down. Still the women sing. People here and there take up the pew sheet to join them.
‘Born Thy people to deliver, born a child and yet a king, born to reign in us forever, now Thy gracious kingdom bring!’
Thomas feels the world creep up around the corners of his vision. He wants to laugh with disbelief. Slowly, the voices in the church continue to rise. He doesn’t notice when it is finished. He only notices when the priest walks down the aisle to take his position at the door as usual, but this time with Mary standing opposite him. The ladies from the front lead the congregation out. As they pass Mary they each give a strange bob, like a curtsy.
‘God bless you,’ Father John is whispering. ‘God bless you and bring you peace.’
The rest of the congregation files silently out the door. They hurry past Mary without looking at her. And outside, they don’t linger to talk but move off quickly, almost furtively. Thomas leans on his mother as she tows him past Mary and the priest. Just as they make it through the door, a woman in front of them pulls away from her husband and comes trotting back. The priest and the women greet her with cries of joy.
‘This is brave of you,’ Father John says. ‘This is strong, to believe. It takes courage, I know, to trust in Him.’
One of the women reaches out and pulls the newcomer into an embrace. ‘You’ll be saved,’ she says, arms tight around her.
‘Thomas,’ his mother croaks, urging him towards their car. ‘Come on.’
In the front seat, his father sits with hands white on the steering wheel. His mother closes her door. They are silent. Thomas wants to scream. Neither his mother nor his father are saying a thing.
I DIDN’T GO TO their gathering in the village, or up to the church that first time Mary appeared. I didn’t even think of it. I was angry. And I was lost in my own world up on the hill, my vision narrowing to the scope of my mother’s ever-diminishing movement. This isn’t an excuse. It’s just how it was.
I called the police again, later – once I had gone, and I’d seen her for myself, and she was showing, and it was sure. I spoke to a different detective, another man. He was more talkative, older. He didn’t have any record of my previous call. He didn’t seem to care. But apparently it had been reported by someone else, another local woman, someone who had seen her at the church the very first time she appeared. He wouldn’t say who. He asked me about Thomas. He knew Thomas’s name.
‘You’re her teacher, you say?’
‘Yes.’ I was careful, this time. I kept my voice neutral, I didn’t want to expose myself.
‘So you will have seen her in the classroom, at school?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were there any boys she was close to? Any chance she had a boyfriend?’
I couldn’t lie. I remembered her and Thomas sitting together, after she handed the form in. I remembered seeing them holding hands under the table, I remembered him letting her copy from his book.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Yes. We’re working on the hypothesis this is a Romeo and Juliet situation at the moment.’
‘A what?’
‘Romeo and Juliet. Both of them underage. Legally, we could press charges for rape, but there’s very little precedent, and there’s never a win in us doing that, for anyone involved.’ He paused. ‘We’ve notified social services, and the hospital,’ he said. ‘They’re going to add her to the roster for the district nurses, keep an eye on her. But it’s a bit tricky, with you lot on the island. Might take a month or so before someone’s free to make it over. Lucky we’ve got some time with this one. You’ve all been very diligent in reporting it.’
I felt myself floundering.
‘Thank you,’ he said, as he fobbed me off. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’
I didn’t know what to say in reply.
XI
June 1992
The Birth of John the Baptist, 24 June
Saints’ Day of Peter and Paul, Apostles, 29 June
IT WAS MY MOTHER who pushed me to go to the church, eventually. I knew, by then, what they were doing with Mary, but I didn’t want to be part of it. We went on a day that was pure winter, and expected it to be cold and dark inside. The bell called us in, its noise otherworldly. There were blow heaters going and the interior was lit with candles. There was a sheen of smoke at the ceiling. It was soft, dreamlike. Mary was there, seated in the front row like a normal parishioner. Her mother was beside her, and a bevy of women held her in. They seemed to move as one. The service was different – new prayers, new readings. The hymns were archaic and hard to follow. I faltered a step behind the rest of the congregation the whole way. My mother kept looking at me sideways, tapping me on the leg. I felt like a child. I was so nervous I wanted to giggle.
I realised afterwards what they had done. I had spent the whole service trying to keep up and didn’t once think of the reality of what was happening. The prayers and the songs all pointed to the Madonna, held her in their story as a miracle of the faith, but Mary herself wasn’t seen beneath it all. At certain moments, they brought her forward as a centre to our focus, gave us permission to gaze upon her. They had her dressed in a simple, white robe. She was somehow timeless with it draped gently across her shoulders. If she was showing, I didn’t notice. Just like that, her pregnancy was allowed to remain in the abstract. I didn’t dare protest that this was the life of a girl. I didn’t even think to. Oh, perhaps I should show you. I can’t explain it. I was fascinated. I’m not even sure why. But I stared at her, and I was filled with hope and love.
Secretly, yes, it made me want to go again.
HANNAH WAKES EARLY. THE house is silent around her. She lies still and remembers mornings like this as a girl, going out early to feed the horses before school, or sneaking out into the bush, or running away down the paddock simply for the joy of seeing the world come alive around her. The bush smelt different in the mornings. More alive, more green. A timorous starling starts up outside her window, and is immediately joined by other, stronger voices. Somewhere in the house, her mother coughs. Outside, the black horse calls. Hannah drags a jumper and tracksuit pants on over her pyjamas and slips downstairs to find her gumboots.
The air is wet and fresh. Dew clings to leaves and fence wire. It is threaded through the horses’ whiskers. Droplets shake loose one at a time as the black horse bobs his head. Hannah snuggles into his neck and lets his smell fill her world. Ghost nickers behi
nd her, hopeful for his breakfast. The black horse’s coat is thick and soft, an old man’s coat, filling out for the winter. His rug has slipped and she straightens it. When the sun clears the tree line, she leaves them and heads inside to wash and dress.
Her mother is in the kitchen, the first time she has risen for the morning in a week.
‘Out with the horses?’ she asks, by way of greeting.
‘Yes,’ Hannah says. ‘You’re up.’
Her mother nods. There is pain laced around her mouth. She has laid out bowls and spoons, pours Hannah some muesli and places it in front of her.
‘Thanks,’ Hannah says, watching her. She picks up the spoon and starts to eat. The clock on the wall says ten past eight; she has less time than she thought.
‘Can you do something for me?’ her mother asks.
Hannah glances again at the clock, and frowns. ‘This morning? I’m going to be late.’
‘No, no. Not this morning.’
‘Well, what then?’
‘Take me to the church on Sunday.’
Hannah freezes, her stomach turns. ‘Why?’ she asks.
‘We should go. Everyone else is.’
‘Why now?’
‘What do you mean, why now? Why do you think!’
Hannah looks up. Her mother is almost cross, confused. Under her eyes, Hannah feels like a child.
‘I want to know what is happening,’ her mother says. ‘With that girl.’
‘Mary?’
‘Yes,’ her mother says, more gently. ‘Mary.’
‘You want to help her?’
‘I want to see her.’
The question ‘why’ rises again in Hannah’s mouth, and she bites down on it. She looks down at her bowl, spoons a mouthful in silence.
‘Who has been here?’ she asks. ‘Has the priest been visiting?’
Her mother snaps. ‘What do you mean, who has been here? Are you my jailer now? Darcy told me about her, and Sarah from the store. And the other ladies, they still come to visit. Lydia Keillor. I have friends.’
Hannah can imagine it, Mrs Keillor and her bevy at the kitchen table. ‘Sorry,’ she murmurs. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘Well, good. You’ll take me, then.’
‘Can we talk about it later?’ Hannah asks. ‘I’ve really got to go.’
Her mother harrumphs and hobbles out of the kitchen. The door to her bedroom closes with force. Hannah sighs and dumps her bowl in the sink, gathers her car keys and her bag.
It is a quiet morning at the school. Hannah finds a reflective mood following her around. Outside, the sky is soft and grey and cool, cut by a sharp breeze. She imagines the black horse at home, grazing by the dam, his reflection curt and sharp against the smeared colours of the bush and the sky. The children are subdued. There is no giggling in the classroom. The three boys in year nine are stiff and silent at the back. Hannah carries a textbook around and around the classroom, without knowing why.
‘Miss Mulvey,’ one of the younger girls calls out, halfway through the maths lesson, ‘is Mary pregnant?’
The whole classroom seems to tense. Hannah is suddenly aware that the mood in the room is electric. She wonders if it has been like this all morning, and she simply hadn’t noticed.
‘What?’ she asks stupidly.
‘My mum said that she’s having a baby and that’s why she was at church, because it’s a miracle from God.’
‘My dad said Father John has lost his marbles,’ says a kid from down the front.
‘Yeah, but she’s having a baby, right?’
‘My dad said she’s probably like our bitch Kelly going round with her tail in the air.’
‘Your dad’s full of shit!’
Hannah stands and watches as the discussion spins out of her control. Children are turned in their seats, yelling at each other. The boys up the back are half standing.
‘ENOUGH!’ Hannah yells finally, slamming her textbook down on a table. She is shaking. Staring around, she can tell that they have been silenced not by respect but by curiosity, anticipating that she might break down in front of them. ‘Enough,’ she says again, in a more even tone. ‘You do not talk like that in here.’
‘I didn’t mean anything by bitch, miss. Kelly’s our dog.’
‘I know,’ Hannah says. She feels the urge to laugh hysterically and clamps down on that, too. ‘You can’t say that about Mary, though. And you can’t talk like that to each other.’
They say nothing. They are still watching her, still waiting for her to yell.
‘Dad says we shouldn’t believe what people tell us,’ the boy down the front says, probing.
Hannah licks her lips, considers carefully how to respond. ‘Mary isn’t well,’ she says slowly. ‘Her parents have decided she’ll be homeschooled from now on.’
There is a bang at the back of the classroom, and all eyes turn towards the sound. Thomas is standing before his desk, his chair overturned beside him, eyes blazing, staring her down. He looks ill, she notices. He looks as though he is burning.
‘Bitch,’ he chokes.
Hannah steps back.
‘Bitch.’
He turns and runs from the classroom, the door bouncing off its frame behind him. The rest of the class gasp and hurry to the windows, watch him running across the school grounds and down towards the beach.
‘Quiet down,’ Hannah says, without moving. And because it isn’t her who has broken, because it was someone else, the balance in the classroom has been restored, and she has regained control. ‘Back to your chairs,’ she calls. By the time she has closed the door, they are all back in their places, heads bent down to their sheets. Only Thomas’s chair is still out of place.
She waits for him in the classroom at home time. His bag is still there, solitary on its peg. The two other boys look at it as they leave, but don’t dare touch it. Hannah sits at her desk and forces herself to remain calm. How did it all build up? How did it come to this? It feels wrong, on a deep, planetary level. As though some fault line has opened in the world’s trajectory or they’ve fallen through a black hole and they are spinning in empty space. Outside she can hear the murmur of children and parents and it is the same as it ever was, the same as it always will be, and nothing has changed at all.
*
Thomas is hiding out down near the water when they come in off the ferry: an old woman draped in colourful scarves leaning on the arm of a grey-looking man. The ferryman, Frank, avoids looking at them. It is as though he doesn’t know what to say. The woman has thin fingers, spider-thin, moving constantly about her chest and throat. He can see her craning her head back to look at the statue of the Virgin on the point. The man looks pained – not as if he is in pain, but something different. He hasn’t really arrived; he isn’t really there. Thomas watches him help the woman down the steps to the pier and waits for the moment they look up to the island, see it properly for the first time, the half-step of awe as they take in its natural beauty. The woman stumbles as she does, and Thomas snorts. But the man doesn’t notice. His eyes never leave the woman.
He leads her towards the car park and she follows meekly, clinging to him. She walks hunched over. She is shivering, and as the breeze lifts one of her scarves, Thomas realises that underneath she is bald. She is ill, he realises. She looks up as they pass him and catches his eye. She is smiling. She looks crazy, he thinks. Like a fanatic. Even her fingers seem possessed, creeping across her chest with a strange desperation, back and forth, and it is only after she has performed the movements several times that he realises that she is constantly, ceaselessly, drawing the cross. They stop in the car park, and the man – her husband, Thomas guesses – puts his arm around her, as if to shelter her. Mrs Keillor appears in her car. She gets out to open the doors for them, fusses around and helps the woman in. The car pulls out, turns right onto the main street, then takes a left up the hill towards the church. Thomas starts to run.
They’re already inside when he gets there.
The woman is seated in a pew at the front, the rest of them standing around her. The door of the church is open, as is the door to the vestry off to the side. Thomas folds himself into the shadow of the porch, and watches. There are other women there, being introduced to the newcomers one by one. Mrs Keillor is officiating. They are fawning over the sick woman, showering her with their affection, though Thomas can see Mrs Smith masking her repulsion, erasing a moment of disappointment as she shakes the woman’s hand. It makes him want to sneer. Perhaps the woman sees it too, because she clasps her spider hands as though begging.
‘Please,’ she says, ‘will you let me meet her? The girl?’
A woman appears beside Thomas carrying a giant vase of flowers from the hall. She doesn’t notice him, her face turned from the blooms, but hurries straight past into the church. Mrs Keillor waves at her with one hand, and she stops halfway down the aisle.
‘Yes, yes,’ Mrs Keillor says. ‘Of course, my dear. She is coming.’
Thomas realises he is holding his breath. The lady with the flowers darts forward and places them on a plinth, pulls out a chair from the corner.
‘Ellen,’ Mrs Keillor calls. ‘You should come out now!’
Mary and her mother step forward from the vestry. Thomas feels it like a kick. Her mother has a hand on each of Mary’s shoulders, her head lowered in a strange combination of protectiveness and worship. The women all bow their heads, and Mrs Keillor ushers Mary forward to the chair. The sick woman’s hands are at her mouth, as though to hold herself in. Her husband sits heavily behind her. The woman lowers herself awkwardly to the carpet runner of the aisle, kneels before Mary with her arms reaching out in supplication. Mary’s face holds the half-caught moment of waking, between confusion and recognition.
Thomas looks away, lets himself slide down the stone to sit in the grass by the doorway, his back to the wall. It hurts, it physically hurts him to see her. A crow calls from the cypress by the gate. A train of ants march their way up the carapace. He wonders how the woman came to be here, who told her about Mary, what she heard. He wonders who arranged it all. He clutches at the grass to stop the world from moving. Above him, a slip of white cloud trails in the sky. One of the woman’s scarves, he thinks. It slips away and he pictures her caught in it and spinning away just as quickly, dragged through the sky by her throat. He wonders if dying would feel like flying, and if she would know the difference. There is a movement in the church. The woman appears at the doorway, still smiling but crying too, half carried by her husband. They don’t notice him but cross directly to the car, Mrs Keillor behind them.
The Salt Madonna Page 19