The Salt Madonna

by Catherine Noske

  XV

  September 1992

  Saint’s Day of Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist, 21 September

  Saint’s Day of Michael and All Angels, 29 September

  HANNAH WAKES ON SUNDAY and wonders if her mother will demand to go to church again. Since the Virgin on the point, she has become more fervent, more adamant. She can hear her down in the kitchen. When she walks in, her mother is pouring water from the kettle, both hands on the handle, leaning it awkwardly against the lip of the sink. It is too heavy, Hannah realises. She can’t lift it. She steps forward and realises a moment too late that her mother hasn’t heard her, hasn’t realised she is there.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ her mother asks, recovering. ‘I was just . . .’

  ‘I’ll make it.’

  Her mother nods and sits down, eyes hard. Suddenly and immediately Hannah can’t be there, can’t be in the same room as her mother’s eyes like that.

  ‘I thought I’d take care of that scrub cutting,’ she says. The tea steeps in the pot, she swirls it impatiently in circles.

  ‘You’ll be back in time to take me to the service?’

  Hannah nods without meeting her eye, pours the tea. It isn’t strong enough, but she puts it before her mother anyway, walks out of the kitchen.

  Outside, the brush cutter won’t start. The morning has no warmth to it; her hands are numb. She tugs again and again on the starter cord, fiddles with the spark plugs and opens the choke. The black horse comes over to investigate. He shies when the motor finally catches, but follows her down the paddock to watch.

  It is immensely satisfying, cutting the first swathe. Bracken and acacia ring against the metal, peel away with the blade. Hannah stands with her legs apart and the brush cutter clipped to her waist. Blue fumes of two-stroke rise around her. The black horse stays at a distance with his head low, suspicious. When the brush cutter dies again and she cannot coax it back into life, she throws it down and picks up the rake, drags the mess and branches into rough piles. She stumbles on the stubble as she goes. She has not done a good job. It is haphazard, uneven. She can feel a blister starting on her left hand.

  In the distance, the church bell summons her. Hannah looks back up towards the house, but there is no movement. She counts the peals, imagines the bent shoulders pulling the rope, waits for the last one to fade. Somewhere a cow bellows as though in response, an awkward, rasping call. There is a silence, a pause before it tries again. Hannah looks around herself at the raw piles of scrub. The smell of two-stroke has dissolved into the broken smell of sap. There is no one. Even the black horse has left her. She is completely alone.

  When she returns to the house, she finds her mother waiting at the kitchen table, dressed for church.

  ‘You’re too late,’ she says. She is fierce, sour. ‘We’ve missed it.’

  Hannah can’t bring herself to reply.

  *

  Mary sits at the kitchen table. Her mother has dressed her, ready for the service. Father John sits in front of her, a plate of fruitcake and a cup of tea beside him. Her mother stands alongside, fussing with the hem of her apron. There is a letter on the sideboard. It has some sort of government logo on it. It reminds him of the calls he’s had from the Archbishop. Empty threats and bureaucratic nonsense. He wonders if this is why the mother is so uneasy.

  ‘You are safe here,’ he says to the girl. ‘There’s no reason to be afraid.’

  Mary says nothing. They have been trying again to get her to speak. In the lounge room, a group of the women stand in a circle, hands joined, praying aloud. They are swaying gently, as though pulled by the movement of a wind. He can hear their low monotone from where he sits.

  ‘Please, sweetheart,’ her mother adds. ‘Say something.’

  Father John frowns. The mother’s voice is slowly becoming more desperate, more afraid, reverting to anxiety. He will have to do something, he thinks, to reassure her, to keep her strong. Before anyone else realises. Still the girl sits in silence.

  ‘I’ll read to her, shall I?’ the priest asks.

  The mother nods, biting her lip, almost on the point of tears.

  The priest turns back to the girl. ‘Mary,’ he says, ‘this is the story of Abraham and his son Isaac. God called on Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.’ From the lounge, clearly listening, the women murmur ‘Amen’, marking the ritual. Okay, he is thinking. It is okay. His wife is not there. He breathes deep to make himself relax, avoids the thought that he is losing control. He takes up the Bible and reads methodically, keeps his voice as even as if he were reciting a service or a prayer. The girl closes her eyes, but he can tell she is paying attention. He can almost imagine the words falling on her like dew, and just as softly melting away. It is okay.

  Preparing for his service, Father John thinks about the story, imagines it peopled, alive. Isaac and his father, the child lying on the stone table, his hands bound. And the man raising the knife, feeling its weight in his hand. The boy would have stumbled, walking back down the hill afterwards, he thinks. His legs would have been weak with the power of it. The priest looks out the window of his vestry and sees the small figure, his arms spread, trying to walk straight, coming home. Everyone thinks of Abraham in that story, he realises; no one considers how it would have felt for Isaac, obedient, God-chosen, God-saved. Father John closes his eyes, feels fatigue rise and threaten him. Home. He longs for his wife, longs for the feeling of her arms around him, holding him safe. When he opens his eyes again, she is there, smiling gently at him, and the room seems softer. He could almost cry with gratitude. He feels her presence confirm him, feels himself settle.

  The music begins. Mary’s mother is waiting outside the vestry, under the shelter of the porch, the girl leaning heavily on her arm. Father John smiles at them and allows them to lead the way down to the altar.

  The service is routine, now. The church is full, the pews jammed with bodies which all lean forward, all pray, all sing in the right places. They are hungry; he must feed them of himself. There is a rush at communion. They all come forward now, grasp at his hands on the chalice, long to touch him. They pray, kneeling there at the rail, clutching. Their prayers are small, pathetic, all the same. Save us, save us. Help us. They move him, he wants to cry for them, their desperation. Again and again he offers the wafer, his blessing. Only a few are silent, eyes large. He knows they will not be able to resist for long the emotion rising like water around them.

  The ladies join hands again and start to sing as the procession continues. Father John can see them swaying, caught in the moment, almost orgiastic. A boy and his parents are at the rail before him, quiet, uneasy. He can feel the pressure beneath the boy’s skin, he is almost vibrating, kneeling on the dusty carpet. He sees the boy reach for Mary, whisper to her. Mary looks up at him, wavers a moment, then collapses to the floor.

  The ladies cease singing abruptly. There is an instant of pure silence before a man cries out, and a woman further back screams. The boy’s parents draw close either side of him and try to lead him away, but the people pressing forward won’t let them through. Voices suddenly are raised. People climb over the rail, cluster around Mary on the carpet. Two men pick her up, her mother beside them clutching at her, and she is borne away, still limp. People are crying, a child is wailing full-throated in terror. Father John is frozen at the altar. Across the church, his wife is staring at him, her face full of rage.

  ‘You,’ a man roars, pointing at the boy. ‘This is your fault.’

  The ladies around him take up the call. ‘Him!’ they are screaming. ‘Him!’

  The boy’s mother pulls him behind her, tries to shield him with her body.

  ‘I saw him,’ Mrs Keillor shrieks. ‘I saw him weeks ago. He was watching her in the store . . . He tried to touch her, and she resisted him then!’

  ‘He touched her just now,’ another cries.

  The man who first accused him has the boy by the arm, is dragging him from the church. His mother has been pinned, her arms held b
ehind her back. The boy’s father is flailing, struggling, pulling at him, pulling at the people around them, trying to stop them.

  ‘Help!’ the boy is calling to them. He is crying.

  And suddenly they are all outside, they are all gone. The church is empty. The priest stands at the altar, still holding the wafers in one trembling hand. The chalice of wine has spilt on the floor. Outside, he can hear the screaming continue. He forces himself to the doorway. They have the boy on the grass. There are others pushing his parents back into the hall. Father John sees them bolted in, sees a man leaning against the door, absorbing their weight and their protest. Two women have stripped the boy’s top half, are holding him down. He is pinned by the arms, a man leaning on his legs, his face down in the dirt. They have a belt.

  ‘Repent,’ the women are screaming. ‘You did this! Repent!’

  ‘It wasn’t me!’ the boy yells, head arched back against the pressure on his shoulders. He screams with every stroke of the belt. ‘It was Picnic, it wasn’t me!’

  Face sideways, he is looking across at another boy there beside his mother. The crowd fall on him as well, drag him forward, strip his shirt off and thrust him into the grass alongside the first boy. Again the mother is thrashing, borne away by the man beside her. Watching from the doorway, the priest doesn’t interfere. It will die down, he thinks, it will balance out. He can feel the emotion shifting already, the release, the energy of it. It is beautiful, Father John thinks. It is cathartic. They are together, they are strong. Beside him, in the vestry, Mary has come round, her mother holding her and crying. Already people are smiling, feeling the reassurance of the punishment, the blight removed. Already they are stepping back, slowing, returning to the world. The sky is clear. They release the two boys who both lie there, panting, sobbing, separate but conjoined.

  The priest steps forward. He kneels in the grass and reaches for the first boy’s face, soothes him, pulls him up. With one hand he draws a blessing on the boy’s brow. The people around them soften and ease. He reaches for the second, repeats the gesture. There is a turning. The first boy’s parents are released from the hall, come flying across the grass to fall beside their son. People move back into the church, resume their seats. Father John looks once more at the two prone bodies, the parents kneeling in the grass beside them. They are both breathing, they will be fine. The priest follows his congregation back inside, returns to the altar. A prayer, he thinks. Loud enough that the Lord will hear it.

  *

  Everything is coming undone. Hannah can feel it. In the morning she leaves breakfast and the painkillers all lined up for her mother. At school, half her pupils are still missing, the room scattered and tense. People in the village gather in strange little knots.

  Hannah catches her mother praying, her hands tight against the pain. She holds desperately to her routine. Breakfast, the classroom, and then she goes home to the forest and the steady four-beat of the black horse’s walk. When she comes in to make dinner, her mother asks about the black horse, how he went, and it feels like finding something lost.

  At school, she focuses on this, on the black horse. Not all of her students have come back. All three of the older boys are gone. She avoids Mrs Culliver, ducks out of talking about it, avoids everything, but goes home up the hill to her mother, to the forest and the black horse. Out there, it is calm, easier to ignore the anxious silence of the village.

  And then, riding home, Hannah sees her mother on the veranda. As she watches, her mother falls as if in slow motion. She comes to rest on the bare boards, face down. Hannah has to kick the black horse in the guts before he will canter.

  Everything happens in bright colours, swirls of action and movement. Time disappears, and all sense of rhythm or ease. Hannah feels herself panicking with the immediacy of each decision. There is no phone, still. She rides for the closest house, and help comes by word of mouth. The house swells with people, in and out: Darcy, the women. It is impossible to contact the hospital. Someone is sent to fetch a doctor, and two paramedics come back across the bay on a fishing boat, Sophie with them. Hannah lets it all happen. Her world shrinks to the space of her mother’s bedroom.

  The paramedics are the ones who say it, in the end. They are efficient in green overalls, and Hannah knows before they speak what they are going to say. Sophie shivers beside her.

  ‘She won’t go,’ Hannah says.

  ‘No,’ one of them says, shaking his head. ‘I got that impression. She said something about the church? But we can’t keep treating her here. We will give you what you need to keep her comfortable.’

  Hannah says nothing. From the bedroom her mother coughs and the sound of it rattles through to the living room and scrapes like a nail against her.

  ‘How long will we have?’ Sophie asks.

  ‘Impossible to tell,’ the paramedic says. ‘Could be a week, two maybe. But I’d say less than that, if I had to guess. Even if we had the chest X-ray, we couldn’t really tell. We can send more morphine, if you need it, given the situation. And a nurse.’

  Sophie turns her face away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘It is a terrible time.’

  ‘She isn’t dead yet,’ Hannah hears herself say.

  ‘No,’ he says slowly, his voice strange.

  Sophie turns back to him, wiping her face, frowning at Hannah. ‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘Thanks very much. We do appreciate it.’ She holds out a hand, and the paramedic takes it, squeezes briefly. It feels like a transaction.

  The paramedic leaves them, begins packing and sorting his syringes and dressings, arranging a set of vials in a line on the kitchen table. His colleague is sitting beside him, writing instructions. In the bedroom behind them, their mother is silent. Outside, the morning light is cool and clear.

  *

  Thomas sits in the dunes. The soft touch of light catches on glass at his feet, a bottle, buried to its neck in the sand. It is still half-full of whisky. It is familiar, the pale colour of the spirit moves with déjà vu. He tries to place the memory but can’t. He picks it up and pulls it by its neck from the sand. Granules fall from the glass. He unscrews the top and sniffs at it. The ocean is churning, keening. A lone fishing boat pushes across the bay.

  A voice rings out behind him. He twists his head around, stiff, and sees Picnic pushing down the path towards him, weaving through the low brown bushes of coastal wattle.

  ‘Dickhead!’ he shouts.

  Thomas just turns again to face the ocean and waits for him to come.

  ‘You said my name!’

  Thomas says nothing, and Picnic reaches him at a run, shoves him, slams his shoulder into the sand. He is kneeling over Thomas, raining down blows on Thomas’s head and chest. The fresh scabs down his back crack open, stinging.

  ‘Fuckwit!’ he is yelling. ‘Why the fuck would you do that?’

  ‘Fuck you!’ Thomas screams. ‘You caused all this!’ He swings the bottle at him. Whisky sprays everywhere and disappears into the sand. Picnic rocks back on his heels, stunned. They stare at each other.

  ‘Look,’ Picnic says, pulling his shirt over his head. The skin on his back is stripped and bloody, a mirror image of Thomas’s own. ‘You did that, cunt.’

  There is a pause, then: ‘Sorry,’ Thomas mutters.

  ‘S’okay,’ Picnic says. He sits down beside Thomas, one hand still to his jaw. ‘S’not your fault. They’re fucking mental.’

  Thomas nods. ‘Mum’s gone over to the mainland to report it to the cops. She wants to charge them with assault.’ He reaches again for the bottle. There are a few mouthfuls left in the bottom. He offers it to Picnic. ‘Want some?’

  Picnic ignores him. ‘You know it wasn’t me, right?’ he says, pulling his shirt on gingerly.

  ‘What?’ Thomas asks, tired now, staring out to sea once more.

  ‘I didn’t sleep with her.’

  Thomas gasps. ‘But you . . . You didn’t . . .’

  ‘It wasn’t me.’

  ‘I aske
d you. You said nothing. Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘You didn’t ask me, you dumb cunt. You tried to fucking drown me. I was pissed you thought I would have.’ He looks at Thomas, shakes his head. ‘Seriously, how could you think that?’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ Thomas says. ‘That’s all I know. If it wasn’t you either . . .’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ Picnic says again. Thomas rubs his eyes, tries to focus, tries to understand. Picnic just laughs. ‘Does it matter?’ he asks. ‘Coulda been anyone.’

  Thomas looks at him. ‘But who then? Who did she . . .?’ The realisation burns. Not her. Not her choice. There is a moment when it sinks in, and there is nothing to say. He looks across at Picnic, drawing patterns in the sand with one foot. ‘Your mum still here? You need a place to stay?’

  ‘Nah,’ he says. He reaches a hand out and pulls Thomas up. ‘S’alright. We’re good. I’m getting out of here.’

  ‘Off this shithole island . . .’ Thomas whispers, and Picnic cracks a grin, leads the way back on up through the dunes towards the village.

  *

  Bull wavers uneasily behind the bar. The TV is silent and the room is heavy. He is alone, but there is movement outside, and voices. At first he thinks there is a wedding taking place in the street. The bell from the church is calling incessantly, angrily. People have to raise their voices over it. Nugget and his woman stand together at the war memorial. The priest is standing on the step, arms raised open above them. He is teetering, as though drunk or exhausted. Nugget’s arms are pinned behind his back by another man. His face is white. Marnie beside him isn’t resisting but pleading instead, begging them.

  ‘His arm,’ Bull can hear her saying, plaintive above the bell. ‘Be careful of his arm.’ Her belly is huge, and she has one hand beneath it, as if to help hold its weight. ‘Please,’ she begs, ‘you’ll hurt him.’

  ‘God is love,’ the Father intones, ‘and those who live in love also live in God and God lives in them.’