Autumn Music

by Dulcie M. Stone

  The blue-robed statue was distant, way down the front of the church. ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me…’

  At her side, head bowed, Rory was apparently unaware of her distress. She could never tell. Rory was difficult to read. Although he was not a deep man, as her troubled father had been, he was complex. Had he asked forgiveness at pre-Mass confession? He’d never say and she’d never ask. Confession was sanctified. She’d said nothing significant to the anonymous face behind the curtained grille. She’d confessed practiced inanities, puerile sins of omission. She’d not complained and she’d not confessed. Because she had nothing to confess. She’d submissively fulfilled her wifely duty. The fault was not hers.

  Or was it? Could she have committed a grave sin of omission? She’d known the wedding night might be awkward, even painful. She’d known Rory would help her through. He was kind and gentle and loving, and loved. An occasional loss of temper was a hopeful sign. A man without a temper, said Katherine, was a man without passion and passion in a man with a mathematical bent was to be treasured.

  She could have prevented what had happened. She could have stopped him when he’d kept drinking. She could have spoken out. She could have stopped dancing, stopped having selfish fun and returned to Rory. He’d have listened then, before alcohol undermined him. She should have spoken out.

  The distant priest completed the pre-communion prayer. Standing to join the queue creeping towards the altar, Rory reached for her hand. As always since their engagement, they would take communion together.

  She remained seated.

  “Tess!” he whispered. “It’s communion.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Are you okay?”

  She nodded.

  “You’ll miss out.”

  “Go ahead, Rory.”

  She couldn’t go with him. She’d failed him.

  Chapter Two

  The small grey Holden stopped. They were home at last and soon everything would be as it should be. Melbourne had been too big, too impersonal, too – everything. Even the small task of finding her way from the bedroom to the front desk of the hotel had been a challenge. Finding her way to the shops had been impossible. Until Rory, even though he wasn’t interested in fashions and there was no extra money to buy anything, had taken her.

  They’d been to a couple of movie matinees but agreed that sitting in dark theatres on fine autumn afternoons was a waste of precious time. So they’d walked in the autumn tinted parks and been disappointed. Small and mean and clipped and stinking of petrol and starved of life, they’d been no match for the soaring mountains and the tall gums and the lush ferns and the fascinating creatures and the myriad stenches and scents they’d grown up with.

  They’d been apart only once. He’d spent Saturday afternoon watching football at the M.C.G. She’d sat in the pews of St Francis’s Church, trying to enjoy a choir recital. Homesickness had driven her out into the dead Saturday-afternoon streets where she’d flagged a taxi, returned to the lifeless hotel and cried. When he’d returned, she’d told him the church was beautiful and the choir wonderful.

  They’d left the city at noon, climbed through the multi-coloured foothills and arrived at Blackwood in the early evening. Their new home, one of the older buildings, was a rented two-bedroom weatherboard cottage just off Blackwood’s main central road. By the time they turned into its driveway, the sun had already disappeared behind the mountains and the mist was already rising.

  “Home at last, Tess.” Rory led the way from the garage, across the unmown lawn, up the shallow splintered steps and unlocked the front door.

  Rented a month before the wedding, the house, though rundown and neglected, had promised the future they’d planned. With Katherine’s help, they’d cleaned, repaired, refurbished and furnished. Though they were not its owners, there was a lot they still wanted to do. They’d be doing it together. Together in their first home, they’d find happiness, warmth, companionship, fulfilment and eventually save the deposit for their own home. Together they’d start their family.

  Katherine had prepared for their arrival. There was food in the icebox, mail on the kitchen table; the fire was set ready to light and the scent of lavender was in every room. But the delicate perfume failed to totally mask the smell of mould and the weak light from the sixty-watt overheads failed to disguise both the minute size of the rooms and the flimsiness of the cheap new furniture; a momentary distraction only. Their home was clean and neat and a first small step up the ladder Rory would surely climb.

  Quickly unloading the car, they carted in the two large suitcases and the overnight bags. While Rory parked the car in the side carport and set out the meal Katherine had provided, she hung their clothes in the skimpy wardrobe and folded their underwear into the empty drawers.

  Untouched, at the bottom of her case, were the stained blue clothes and the shreds of the pink nightgown. She’d sworn never to wear the handsome blue outfit again. She couldn’t afford not to; she couldn’t be so cruel. Rory had worked very hard to save the money to buy it. She packaged it for the drycleaner. The honeymoon night must be forgotten. Forget the clothes. The honeymoon had been everything it should have been. He’d taken time, stroked her to response, disciplined himself to patience. She loved him.

  He called from the kitchen. “Tess! Tea time!”

  She stuffed the pink shreds into the lowest drawer. She’d burn them tomorrow, while he was away at work.

  They sat on opposite sides of the laminex-topped table set with white linen tablecloth and napkins, flower-patterned dinner set and silver cutlery – all wedding presents opened, prepared for use and stacked in cupboards and drawers in their absence.

  She picked at the plate of cold meat and salad.

  “You’re not eating,” he worried. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “You’d tell me if something’s wrong.”

  “Nothing’s wrong.” She pushed the plate away. “I’m not hungry. I guess I’m excited. Everything’s wonderful. Except, it feels…odd?”

  “How do you mean – odd?”

  “I think…” She was uncertain. “I think it’s because we really are here. We really are here! Maybe I never really thought it would happen?”

  “You read too many romances, Tess.”

  From next door, the dog barked. Mrs Ryan, who’d known them all their lives, would not be a demanding neighbour.

  “I hope her dog doesn’t keep on.” Tidily peeling an apple, he stripped the red skin into one long curl and set it onto his plate.

  “He’s the only company she’s got now.”

  “Good neighbours. We’re lucky there.” He bit into the apple. A thin trickle of juice ran down his chin. He wiped it away.

  The same Rory, handsome and grave and considerate and well mannered. She couldn’t look at him. Not directly.

  “What about the Flemings?” She’d never met the other neighbours who’d moved in last summer. “Will they be good neighbours?”

  “I’ll introduce you. Brenda works. The kids are at school. They’ll be no bother either.”

  “Where does she work?”

  “The mill. In the office, I think. Ask her.”

  “I’d like to work too, Rory.”

  “So you said.” Setting the apple core in the middle of the curling strip of skin, he wiped his hands on the white linen napkin.

  “I know I had to be replaced at the store. I could try for work somewhere else.”

  “We couldn’t work together, Tess. I told you. It’s against company policy.”

  “I know. I’ve thought about that. I really do want to work.”

  “You’ll have plenty to do around here.”

  Collecting the soiled dishes, she set them in the sink. “I thought I might leave these…”

  Interrupted by the telephone, she quickly thanked her mother for preparing the house and then hung up.

  “Did she want to come over?” Rory cleared a space on the ta
ble, fetched the unopened letters, the ledger and his pen. “I haven’t got time for her tonight.”

  She emptied the hot water from the kettle into the sink. “If you’re going to do those, I might as well do these.”

  “Don’t burn yourself, love.”

  Already, they were housekeeping; domesticated husband and wife in their own home.

  “This one’s the electricity,” he frowned. “Katherine’s obviously been cleaning at night.”

  “She’s been so good.”

  “We’ll have to watch the pennies, love.”

  “Not if I bring in some money.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I can bring in some money, Rory. I want to work. Let me help.”

  “Don’t start again, Tess.”

  She wasn’t surprised. Once his mind was made up, he didn’t quickly change it. He’d always been the same. Strong. Responsible. Reliable. Steady. Safe. That was the man his family, his friends and his workmates knew. Rory would change his mind in time, should someone patiently and logically persuade him that a change of mind was wise or warranted or right. Except she knew him better. The dark wedding night stranger was Rory too. He’d rarely shown himself before and then only in an occasional childish tantrum; a forgivable flaw she’d thought he’d grown out of.

  Pensively, from a wary new perspective, she watched him work. His intense face was thin and pale, his keen eyes fixed on the accounts, his strong fingers delicately controlling the thin black fountain pen she’d given him for his twenty-first – his favourite pen. Despite the heritage of the mountains, he was unmistakably an indoors man, an accountant with an accountant’s brain. A young man on his way up, they said. They?

  She thought about it. She knew them well, the people who expected Rory McClure’s success, predicted it, waited for it. They were her family, his family. They were the girls who’d fought her for him, his long-time friends, the outdoor young men who were happy they were not him but yet admired him.

  Everyone knew Rory McClure would one day manage the store, probably a chain of stores. Rory McClure had a mind; he used it. Worth catching. Worth marrying. Most of the girls she’d won him from perceived him as a likely ticket out of here; city-educated girls who wanted to escape from what they criticised as a boring township built on the incestuous inbreeding of the timber community. The city had brainwashed them. The timber country was just fine.

  She was lucky. She didn’t want escape or anything else in particular, not even a job if that would antagonise him. She wanted Rory and she wanted his children. Of all the girls he could have married, Rory McClure had chosen her, Tess O’Reilly.

  Tess McClure.

  She prepared for bed. The first night in her own home. In the bathroom, she critically inspected her face. Her mother, the beautiful Katherine who’d followed her love to the mountains, had not passed on her beauty to her youngest daughter. Nor to any of her children. Except Monny, but then Monny had chosen to be a nun.

  ‘Plain, though not ugly, Tess.’ Katherine’s attempts at consolation had never erased the mirror’s reflection of a round freckled face, mousy hair and dark, overly serious eyes. Stripped of make-up, her face in the harsh light of the stark white bathroom in the rented house mercilessly reinforced the conclusion – she was very lucky to have won Rory McClure’s love.

  They’d grown up together. Rory had three brothers, no sisters, a father and a stepmother. She had two sisters, a mother, a deceased father and two brothers killed in action. They’d been thrown together by their common background, by their similar paths at school, by the long association of their families and by the fact that their mothers had been close friends since the lean days of the Great Depression.

  When Rory’s mother had died in childbirth, Katherine had stepped in to help. The premature death of the boys’ mother had brought the children together. A marriage was expected, until Rory’s father had married a young city-bred beauty. The unwelcome stepmother having usurped the role everyone had predicted would be Katherine’s, the children had grown closer.

  Rory had grown up knowing her, loving her. Now they were here, in their very first home. As a teenager, he’d learned he couldn’t hold his drink so he rarely drank heavily. They’d discussed the wedding breakfast, when his brothers and friends would tempt him. He’d vowed to be strong. He hadn’t been. He hadn’t even fully remembered what he’d done. He’d been appalled at the sight of her torn body. He’d apologised for getting drunk, as her father had so frequently apologised. But Rory was not a man mortally wounded by the savagery of one war and robbed of his sons by the next. Rory would have sons and daughters. And love. If only she could blot out memory.

  She pulled the brush through her hair. If only she could have been born as beautiful as her mother. The eyes in the mirror darkened.

  The double bed left little floor space in the tiny room.

  “I’ll take the side near the door.” Returning from the bathroom, he switched off the light. “I’m used to getting my own breakfast. You sleep in.”

  She lay at his side, tense, staring into the unlit room.

  He leaned across, kissed her. “You believe it now, Tess? Now we’re here. In our own bed in our own home. How do you feel now?”

  “How do you feel, Rory?”

  “Like a married man.” He straddled her.

  She willed herself to please him.

  He fell back. “I wish you liked it, Tess.”

  Mrs Ryan’s dog barked.

  A late car whined down Main Street.

  His light breathing slowed; he was asleep.

  The pillow stifled her tears. It wasn’t his fault.

  From the shelter of the bedroom curtains, she watched her mother’s car pull into the drive. She didn’t have to answer the door; she could pretend to be out.

  The doorbell rang.

  She ignored it.

  The bell rang again and the door creaked open.

  “Tess?” Katherine’s high-pitched call preceded her into the kitchen. “Are you there?”

  “I’m coming, Mum.”

  “I let myself in, dear. I’ll put the kettle on.”

  Hastily checking the mirror, she went to the kitchen.

  “There you are, dear!” Katherine peered into the shadows. “Blooming! I knew you’d be blooming. Rory will make a wonderful husband. Now…tell me all about it.”

  She prevaricated. “I brought you back a present.”

  “A present! You shouldn’t have.”

  She should have and they both knew it. Like a child, Katherine loved presents and parties and celebrations. They were almost as high on her agenda as her beloved church.

  “Careful, Mum! It’s breakable.”

  Katherine’s small quick hands untied the blue ribbon and unwrapped the shiny blue paper that revealed the fine crystal vase she’d found in a city arcade.

  “I love it! I love it!” Katherine hugged her. “You really shouldn’t have.”

  They sat on opposite sides of the kitchen table. They drank tea and they ate the biscuits her mother had brought. They talked about the wedding, the clothes, the people; about the city, the shops, the entertainment. To please her mother, a present as welcome as the blue-wrapped gift, she elaborately prolonged the report of her visit to St Francis’s Church.

  Eventually looking at her tiny gold watch, Katherine declared, “My goodness! The time goes. Do you mind Tess? I won’t help with the dishes. I promised Father Doherty.”

  “Mum! Don’t go!”

  “I have to.”

  “Please!”

  Already at the front door, Katherine paused. “Tess! What’s wrong?”

  What could she say? Why had she imagined she could say anything? Her mother and her father, despite their directly opposing beliefs, had stayed the marriage course. Why? Because the church forbade divorce? Because the church would have excommunicated them? Her father wouldn’t have cared. But Katherine?

  They must have been happy once, before the war. Imposs
ible to doubt it. Impossible, too, to doubt her father’s disbelief. Or Katherine’s piety. When he’d come home, they couldn’t have been happy together, couldn’t even have trusted each other. Yet they’d had a big family. Because they wanted a big family? Because the church forbade any form of contraception? The possibilities were endless.

  What had the nights actually been like for her mother?

  “I don’t have to go, Tess.” Katherine pressed. “I can phone I’ll be late.”

  “It’s nothing, Mum. Go ahead. I’ll do the dishes.”

  “If you’re sure?” Still, Katherine hovered unhappily. “If something’s wrong, Tess…you know you can talk to me.”

  Could she? Her mother wouldn’t want to believe her. Rory was the perfect catch. She’d search for a way to exonerate him, even to blame her. She could talk to no one.

  She followed her mother. “I’ll see you out, Mum.”

  Chapter Three

  1955 Early Autumn

  Her own home. Rented, but her own. Five and a half days a week she could sing along with the radio, listen to talkbacks, read, rest, walk, work. Whatever she wanted to do, she could do. No one was monitoring her. While Rory was contentedly juggling figures in the office of the Blackwood hardware store, she swept, scrubbed, dusted, washed, ironed, mended, gardened, cooked. Fridays, she shopped, buying the cheapest cuts and taking pride in the money she saved. The luxury of time to wander through Kelly’s Fashion House and to spend extra hours at the library was an unanticipated bonus. Occasionally she bought a necessary item of clothing, once a month a magazine.