Autumn Music

by Dulcie M. Stone

  Stopping at the new community-funded kindergarten, she unlocked the high bolt on the gate, crossed the sparsely equipped playground, ascended the shallow steps and entered. The assistant, reading a story to a group of children seated on a square of bright carpet at her feet, did not pause. The children, only momentarily distracted, quickly returned to the story. Beth, in the front row, remained exclusively attentive to the story. The directress beckoned from her office. She tiptoed in.

  “Debbie’s a great storyteller.” Mrs Jansen smiled. “She weaves a magic spell. I’ll be sad to lose her.”

  “Is she going?”

  “She’s getting married at Christmas. Then she’ll be moving to Melbourne. We’ll miss her very much.”

  “You’ll find someone.”

  “No doubt. Though Debbie will be very hard to replace.” The directress set down her pen. “How are you, Mrs McClure? We’ve not seen much of you this term.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve let you down.”

  “Not at all,” the directress quickly reassured. “We missed you, of course. Not all the mothers have your interest.”

  “I love being here. I told you…I wanted to be a teacher.”

  “Beth says you’ve been sick.”

  She blushed. “It’s morning sickness.”

  “Congratulations!”

  “You’re the first to know. It’s just been confirmed.” She was suddenly uneasy. She hadn’t yet told Rory. Or Katherine.

  “You are pleased?” The older woman had detected her discomfort.

  She’d been rash. Excitement had loosened her tongue. The sounds of loud laughter and scurrying feet intruded; a reply wasn’t required.

  “I’m sorry we can’t talk longer, Mrs McClure.” The directress led the way back to the play room. “It’s home time. Beth will be waiting.”

  “She isn’t expecting me to be here. I arranged for her to walk with her friends.”

  “She’s such a happy soul.”

  Children scampered down the shallow steps and across the playground to meet waiting mothers. Unaware of her presence, Beth marshalled her small group of close friends and started for the unlocked gate.

  “Wait, Beth.” She joined the group. “I’ll walk with you. I got here earlier than I expected.”

  “I’m walking on my own,” four-year-old Beth objected. “You said I could manage.”

  “I didn’t expect to be here.”

  “You said I could wait at Silvy’s house.”

  Silvy, blonde and fragile, was clinging to Beth’s hand. “Can Beth still come for lunch, Mrs McClure?”

  “Can I Mummy? You promised. Can I?”

  “Of course you can, love.”

  The children walked staidly ahead, responsible as senior citizens, grave as undertakers and arrogantly proud of their independence. There was absolutely no danger, no major road to cross, no itinerants in Blackwood’s stolid workforce, no hazards for this quartet of pre-schoolers homeward bound in the middle of the day.

  She ached for the birth of the child in her womb. She’d persuaded herself that Beth needed a brother or sister and Rory needed a son. The truth was that, even though they’d like a big family, they were happy with the status quo. Having another child was infinitely more necessary to her than to either of them. She could have prevented falling pregnant. Or, necessarily within the confines of church rules, she could have considerably minimised the risk. She hadn’t. She’d passively endured the sexual act, not only as her wifely duty but as the means to her ends. She was happy with this morning’s news. Her life was threatened. Doctor Chapman had suggested termination. She could die.

  Within the next few months, she could die. Beth would be cared for by her doting grandmother and grow in love and dutiful acceptance. Katherine would beat her breast and pray and organise. Rory would grieve and marry again and better manage his sexual life. She could die and she’d be missed. But grief was customary and their God would comfort them.

  From every perspective, this was good news. For the first time in months, she was at peace. This was as it should be. God had frowned, now He was smiling. He frowned and He smiled! God was capricious. Heresy! Katherine would be appalled. Father Doherty would hear her confession and forgive her.

  Except there was nothing to confide, nothing to confess. Because the thought was fleeting and irrelevant. Because she’d been born to bear children and she was having a child; she’d been born to rear a family and she was going to have a family.

  Rory was initially furious. “You should have been more careful!”

  Tempted to remind him he’d been happy to come back from sleeping in the spare room, she said nothing. A man has needs a woman cannot comprehend.

  Then he worried, “What will we do if anything happens to you? I love you, Tess.”

  “I’ll be okay,” she promised. “Beth needs brothers and sisters. She shouldn’t be an only child. She’s like a little old woman.”

  “It’s too risky, Tess.”

  “It’s too late.”

  Throughout the early months she obediently attended Mass. Yet acceptance of Holy Communion proved impossible, dishonest, even a kind of bribery. She honestly tried. She even got as far as joining the queue. Inevitably, as though her body had a will of its own, she found herself back in the pew with Beth, waiting for Rory.

  Six months into the pregnancy, they were as always at Sunday’s ten o’clock Mass. The Pope had died. Long live the Pope! Pray for world peace! Beg for world peace, the communist hordes an intensifying threat. If the child in her womb was a son, so be it; she’d be fulfilling her destiny.

  His green stole precisely draped around his thick neck, Father Doherty was distributing communion. Rory had joined the queue winding to the altar. Beth was at her side in the empty pews.

  So far so good. There’d been no sign of high blood pressure, but then last time there hadn’t been either. ‘Let this child live, Lord. Let him live. Let me live.’

  Rising from her place, she stepped over Beth’s outstretched legs and joined Rory in the queue.

  As she’d done for most of her life, she knelt at the altar, accepted the wafer and the wine and returned to her seat. ‘Let him live, Lord.’

  Rory took her hand in his. “Good girl.”

  The baby died.

  Doctor Chapman saved her.

  Father Doherty blessed her.

  Rory arranged the burial.

  Katherine came to visit and did not leave.

  Rory worked longer hours.

  Beth started school, prepared for her first communion and accepted it in the white gown and veil Katherine had made. The family visited from all their different locations and celebrated.

  She’d survived two life-threatening pregnancies. Her babies had not. God’s will was clear. She was to care for Rory and Beth. There were to be no more children. Amen.

  Rory McClure, readily accepting transfer to a Melbourne suburban branch of the expanding store chain, took the next inevitable step up his career ladder. His ambition was being realised, his loyalty and skills recognised. As predicted, he and his family would be leaving the mountains.

  Contrary to expectation, she welcomed the move. Mrs Ryan’s amiable curiosity had become a burden, her mother’s constant counsel to prayerfully accept God’s will inescapable torture, the community’s smug insularity frustrating and the regular family celebrations agony. The reputedly healthy climate of togetherness in everything, whether sorrow or joy, heartache or happiness, was stifling. Rory’s flourishing career offered the escape she’d never expected to crave so desperately. But she didn’t confide it. The times of sharing with Rory, if there had ever genuinely been any, were long past.

  She moved with him and Beth down from the mountains and into the outer Melbourne suburb. His job assured and his prospects rosy, Rory put a deposit on a ten-year-old three-bedroom brick veneer house in mint condition. He traded in the small grey Holden for a second-hand blue E. H. model. His image as a successful accountant moving
into upper management and heavy responsibility was on track for the perfect future everyone had predicted.

  The new neighbours, insulated behind their high suburban fences, remained strangers. Attending to the new house, rearing Beth, supporting Rory, exploring the new neighbourhood, reading the new books and the new magazines, listening to new records of the revolutionary new music she could now afford to buy, filled each diligently contrived minute of each busy day.

  Occasionally there was a phone call from Monica, a letter or card from Gerry or a distant relative or friend. Occasionally, Katherine descended from the mountains for a prolonged visit. With her, she walked, shopped, made new frocks for Beth, attended movie matinees and listened with diminishing interest to news of the mountain families. Intimate personal information was never exchanged. She was no longer Katherine’s naïve youngest child who’d come to the city on her honeymoon. The puppy fat was gone, the long russet curls had been cut short, the full lips were tight and the dark eyes wary.

  Though she did not for a moment regret the loss of invasive family fellowship, she deeply mourned the loss of daily contact with the high country. She’d grown up with tall forests and thick undergrowth and spring blossoms and summer skies and winter storms – and the tragic grandeur of autumn. She missed the stark, frequently brutal, evidence of the changing seasons. High suburban fences and shelter from the weather’s ferocity were proving to be inadequate compensation for the rich beauty she’d left.

  Sometimes she visited Monica, whose convent was a lengthy tram ride across the suburbs. But Monica, using her privileged position as older sister and dedicated nun, was inclined to probe too deeply. Though she loved her sister, a nun could never begin to comprehend the marriage bedroom. She could never know the subtleties of relationship between a wife and her husband, father of her child.

  Even so, Monica was perhaps the one person she should confide in. She’d surely understand the trauma of unrelenting grief and maybe even the conviction of God’s treachery. Though Monica’s grief was essentially different, she too had known the loss of father and brothers. Her deep faith, her vocation, had survived that. She’d understand. Leaning on Monica would be easy. Her common sense and unfailing optimism and strong faith might help. But only for a few hours, if that. Because then she’d have to go home and confront life alone. The momentary relief would, in the end, weaken her. On her visits to the convent she listened, confided nothing and left and gradually saw her sister less often.

  She’d tried to build a family, a family where there was love and warmth and where everyone shared the bad things as they shared the good things and where no one was alone. She’d tried to do it at great personal cost to her health, her faith, her wellbeing, her dignity, her reason for living. When Rory was at work and Beth at school, when the silence of the daytime suburban street screamed the absence of singing birds and whispering trees and ringing axes and children’s laughter, she felt hollow. Empty. Did Rory feel so alone? Or did his career fill the void? Or his church? Or his faith?

  As a family, they attended weekly Mass. Because Rory suggested it and because she still needed to sing, she joined the suburban church’s small choir. Singing was a comfortable way to participate in the ritual while avoiding the pressure of further commitment. No one commented when she shunned communion, no one attempted intimate friendship.

  Though the choir members were vociferously divided by politics, especially the prospect of conscription to the war in Vietnam, the huge controversies of the rapidly changing church were whispered only in hushed corners. Would her plight have been any different if the Pill had been available earlier? Would she and Rory have discussed it, as the choir women were doing? Would he have consented to defy the church and not risk her life? Because, even though she’d been his ally, he had in fact risked it, was still risking it. A condom had never been an option. It could have been, could be. Two and two make four and logic demanded he protect her from risk. He didn’t. He risked her life without discussion or argument.

  Did she want to argue? Did she want to defy the church and go on the Pill? Did she want to find another way of life? A life that was more than family? Less than family? Too late now. Given this choice when she was younger, the choice these women were struggling with, what would she have done? Was it too late? Of course not. But, because Rory seldom demanded sex, the chance of pregnancy was too remote to warrant what would necessarily become a bitter argument. If it happened, it happened. She’d survived before. She’d survive again, or she wouldn’t.

  Beth’s tenth birthday was celebrated with a small party of school friends, as well as Katherine, Monica in her black habit and Rory who’d promised to come home early – and did.

  She led the singing; it was expected.

  Chapter Six

  The new pregnancy was a total surprise.

  “Not to worry, science has made great strides,” the middle-aged suburban doctor smugly proclaimed. “You’ll be right as rain, Mrs McClure. We’ll monitor you very carefully.”

  Thank you, God.

  The distant mountain family was happy and Katherine ecstatic. Rory would have another child, Beth a sibling and she fulfilment. Science was performing astonishing miracles in every field of human endeavour, while diplomats, having retreated from treacherous political brinks, would surely arrive at solutions to end the terrible and divisive conflagration in Vietnam. Hope was possible.

  The new baby would survive and would live in the new world the scientists and diplomats were preparing for him – a world where youth’s widespread despair would no longer be warranted. She resurrected her father’s silver crucifix and placed it on the table beside their bed. She went to Mass as often as possible, she listened to the exhortations to pray for peace, to fear communism and she joyfully accepted communion. She travelled the long journey across the suburbs once a week to visit the convent and her sister and to attend Mass with the nuns.

  She was no longer alone. The baby in her womb kept her happy company. Rory was gentle and kind and helpful and loving and all the things he knew best how to be. Beth blossomed and matured and learned how to knit and sew the small clothes for the new baby.

  She carried him to full term, endured a protracted labour and, eventually, bore the son Rory had always wanted; the grandson her father’s memory demanded and her mother needed. They were at last a family, a real family.

  “I strongly suggest, Mrs McClure,” the middle-aged suburban doctor unhappily advised, “there are places for babies like him. They’re very efficient. They know what they’re doing.”

  “I can’t send him away! He’s my son!”

  “I told you, Mrs McClure. The infant is handicapped.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with him!”

  “I’m afraid there is, Mrs McClure.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Believe me, my dear, we are.”

  “You told my husband you’re doing more tests.”

  “It’s routine, Mrs McClure. Your child suffers from mongolism. You’ve read the literature. You know the picture. I have talked with your husband.”

  How could they be so cruel?

  “You’ve been through a difficult time,” he counselled. “You should think this through carefully. Think of your daughter. What the child’s handicap means for her. How it will affect her life. You do understand your choices?”

  “My husband explained.”

  “Talk to your husband,” he soothed. “You’ve read the literature. You know the prognosis.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with him.”

  “Letting him go will be difficult, I know. Believe me, it’s for the best. You must not allow yourself to become attached.”

  She turned away.

  “My advice, Mrs McClure. Forget him.” The doctor left the hospital room.

  His advice remained. She left the bed and again examined her sleeping son. A plump cherub, his tiny head was well formed, his rosebud mouth sweetly curved. He was beautiful. Ho
w could they know?

  She peeled away the soft blanket, caressed the tiny hands, feet, fingers, toes, chest. He was solidly plump. Though he, too, had endured the long exhausting labour his small heart was strongly beating. What was different about him? How could they possibly know he was handicapped? How could they tell? What had made them first suspect something was wrong? What was wrong? What did this particular handicap actually mean?

  Gathering him from the cot, she cradled him to the bed and set the rosebud mouth to her breast. Her son was beautiful.

  Yet more tests were sent off to the slick science laboratories. Rory was aloof, Beth was not permitted to visit. Monica came every day. Katherine, who’d travelled down from the mountains, was minding Beth and Rory. Nurses were tiptoeing around as nurses always do when… Shhh! The past was past. This baby was well and fit and strong and beautiful. For now. He was strong and fit for now. The future was just that, the future.

  The test results arrived. The middle-aged suburban doctor was mercilessly forthright. There were many facets of Mongolism the tests could detect, physical abnormalities; there were many facets the tests could not detect but could predict. In the future, there’d almost certainly be frequent colds and most probably frequent pneumonia. There’d certainly be intellectual disability. Mongoloid children seldom lived into their late twenties. If the baby survived these first weeks, she could expect each day to be fraught with problems. If…

  The doctor hastened on. Every one of the usual childhood illnesses would present a major hurdle. She and her husband could expect to live their lives on a knife-edge of anxiety. Their daughter would necessarily have to learn to be subordinate to the demands of her handicapped brother. If he lived. If the infant lived, as he advised all parents in this unfortunate position and as he’d already advised her, they should earnestly consider cutting the ties. They should send him to a place better equipped to manage him. Kinder by far to cut the ties before attachment made the inevitable more difficult for all concerned.