Autumn Music

by Dulcie M. Stone

  The door opened. “Here you are!” He switched on the light.

  She blinked into the abrupt glare.

  “You’re not in bed.” Sitting in the opposite chair, glass of port in hand, he stretched his legs towards the coals. “What’s up?”

  She threw the log into the fireplace, watched the dying embers ignite the thick new bark. “I’m waiting for Beth.”

  “It’s after midnight!”

  “Not quite.”

  “What time did she say she’d be home?”

  “She didn’t know.”

  “Not good enough, Tess.” He was in a belligerent mood. “Nowhere near good enough! Not on a night like this. Where’s she gone?”

  “She didn’t say. She went straight from work.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “She phoned she’d be driven home late.”

  “Not good enough, Tess.”

  So tonight the waiting would be over. His anger and Beth’s tardiness were coinciding. Whatever was going to happen would happen now. She fetched the wine bottle and a glass and filled it.

  “What’s going on?” He was surprised. “You don’t drink.”

  “I do tonight.” Smooth and rich, the wine was already helping.

  “Who is she with?”

  “I don’t know where she is. Or who she’s with. Because she doesn’t want me to know. She’s ashamed of us.”

  “Rubbish!”

  She shivered.

  “For God’s sake, Tess! There’s nothing to be ashamed of!”

  “Has she told you that?”

  “There’s no excuse,” he blustered. “You should know where she is.”

  She steadied. “Have you met her friends?”

  “What the hell’s got into you tonight? You’re her mother. You should know where she is.”

  “You’re her father,” she retorted. “You drive her to work. She must talk to you.”

  “Of course she talks to me.”

  “Then you’ll know who she’s with.”

  “For God’s sake!”

  She’d pushed too hard. She refilled her glass.

  Firmly, as though he’d never lost control, he set down his empty glass, took the bottle from her and re-corked it. “I know this much. Beth’s not ashamed of us.”

  “Then why doesn’t she ever bring any of her friends home?”

  “Way out here? What do you expect?”

  “Not once. She hasn’t brought a single visitor home.”

  “She’s happy enough to go in to them.”

  “Whoever they are.” The warm liquor slid down easily.

  “You are in a mood.” He left his chair. “I’m going to bed. You wait up if you want.”

  “I haven’t finished talking.”

  “I have.” He opened the door.

  “Not this time,” she protested. “Tonight you’ll listen.”

  “Pull yourself together, Tess. You’re drunk.”

  “You will listen!”

  “Shhh…” Quickly, he re-closed the door. “Lower your voice.”

  “Why?” she cried. “I’ll wake Sean! Who’s Sean?”

  The blood drained from his face.

  She’d gone too far. Too late. There was no going back. “Why did you let me keep him?”

  He stood quite still.

  Careful.

  A log crackled.

  He stirred. “You shouldn’t drink, Tess.”

  “I need an answer. You have to talk to me.”

  “Come to bed, Tess.”

  “If that’s where you want to talk.” He wouldn’t talk in bed; he wouldn’t want her to talk in bed.

  “I don’t want to talk at all.” Though still pale, he was quite calm. “I don’t intend to talk.”

  “Then don’t talk. Just answer the question.”

  He switched off the light. “Drink in the dark if you want to.”

  “I’ll wait for Beth.”

  “So that’s it!” He was relieved. “All this because you’re worried about Beth. Who can I phone?”

  “I told you. I don’t know!”

  “I’ll sit with you.” He left the doorway. “If she isn’t here soon, I’ll go into town. Maybe someone knows something.”

  Firelight flickered on the unlit walls, sparks crackled, the windows rattled, rain battered the corrugated iron roof. He poured another wine but did not drink. She made coffee and brought it back.

  “I should be out looking…” He was uncertain.

  “You know that’s useless.”

  Head cocked for every unusual sound, prepared to again venture out, he drank no alcohol. Anxiety for Beth had convinced him to stay.

  She tried again, “We have to talk about why she stays away.”

  “Not tonight, Tess. Not now.”

  But he was still here, still talking. “She’s probably staying overnight with a friend. She’ll phone tomorrow. She’s done it before.”

  “Why didn’t you say so? Why are you particularly worried tonight? What’s so special tonight?”

  “Nothing. I told you…”

  “A load of garbage.”

  “It’s true and you know it,” she accused. “She’s ashamed of Sean.”

  “For God’s sake! She loves Sean!”

  “She does. Yet she doesn’t bring her friends home to meet him, or us.”

  “Don’t tell me you blame her,” he countered. “You of all people know how hard it is.”

  “You regret keeping him.”

  “I’ve never said that,” he argued. “He’s my son.”

  “You don’t treat him like a son!”

  “He’s a cripple!”

  Truth. At last truth.

  “You insisted on this conversation, Tess. I’ll finish it for you.”

  She reached for her glass; it was empty. She must not respond in any way.

  “You’ve got Beth all wrong.” He was chillingly blunt. “You don’t have a clue what she thinks. Everything you do is centred around Sean.”

  The liquor in her stomach churned to bile.

  “Face it, Tess. We’re not a family. You carry on about family. We’re not a family. We’re four individuals stuck together under the same roof.”

  Stung, she managed, “Why do you stay?”

  “You ask,” he responded. “I’ll tell you. I took a vow. Remember?”

  He’d made a Roman Catholic promise, a religious vow no longer respected, even within its own church walls.

  “If it means anything,” he coldly continued, “I do care for you.”

  Uncertain, she reached out.

  “Don’t.” He stiffened.

  The log had disintegrated. The coals were glowing in the darkening room, the rain rifling the roof in a frantic staccato, the space between them ice.

  Only concern for Beth was keeping him in the room, adherence to the rules keeping him in the marriage. Only the rules?

  What rules? The church was as fickle as tonight’s storm. Was Rory, too, confused by rumours and revelations and changing policies and blatantly biased double standards and criminally concealed crimes? And particularly, very particularly, by the revelation that the church had remained silent while six million Jews and innumerable imperfect children were being slaughtered. Confused. Outraged. Disillusioned. Desperate.

  Critics, critics within the church, were arguing. The faithful were questioning the dogma of old men in cloistered rooms. In a cataclysmic revolution, rules and ritual had become subject to modification, were not infrequently abandoned. Certainties were no longer certain. Unbreakable boundaries were being breeched. Immutable foundations were fragmenting. Where there had been solid ground there was now shifting sand. Or nothing.

  Had Rory ever doubted? He’d never said, or even hinted at doubt. There was no place to hide, no escape from headlines, from cynics – from facts. How could the genuinely faithful survive the revolution? The exposure? The betrayal. Thank God she’d learned doubt. Thank God she’d been taught doubt.

 
Thank God Katherine had gone. How did Monica feel? Beth? How did the middle-aged prematurely greying man in the opposite chair really feel? Would his faith survive the new age?

  “Go to bed, Rory.” She refilled her glass. “I’ll wait for Beth.”

  The hem was finally level.

  “We’ll pay for a sitter, Mum.”

  “It’s James’s idea?”

  “It’s a good idea, Mum. Sean will be happier.”

  “Stand still.”

  The white silk clung tightly to Beth’s slim body; she’d be a beautiful bride. A blue-eyed, fair-skinned, faintly freckled, auburnhaired Irish beauty, she was way too good for James Nolan who didn’t want Sean at his wedding.

  Unfair. James Nolan wasn’t the problem. A bank employee with a promising future, James was the product of his environment. He’d been reared and educated in a world cut off from people with intellectual disability. In James’s world intellect was paramount; physical impairment was conditionally acceptable, intellectual impairment totally taboo. Not so in Beth’s world. Beth had endured and was still enduring bigotry by association. She loved Sean; she loved James. James was her future.

  What had always been inevitable had finally arrived. Each year Sean’s abnormality was becoming more physically obvious. Though remaining wiry, he was small for his age and markedly ‘mongoloid’ in facial appearance. Despite all the work and all the effort, despite his unexpected academic achievements, his essential difference from the Anglo Saxon norm was evident. Few, if any, saw beyond the physical. Few, if any, appreciated Sean’s grave dignity, his pride in achievement and the diligent effort he put into each new task he eagerly undertook.

  Few, if any, gave him the opportunity to converse, to socialise, to be distinctly his own self, to enjoy his gentle and at times sophisticated humour and to share his love of things mechanical and musical. Certainly, James Nolan, his future brother-in-law, was not one of the few. Did Sean realise? Of course he did; he missed little. Although, as yet, he’d never said. Would he ever?

  “Mum!”

  The hem finally level, she rewound the tape measure.

  “Mum!”

  She looked up.

  Standing on the kitchen table, Beth frowned down from the smoke-stained ceiling. “You haven’t heard a word.”

  “I’m sorry. You can get down. I’ve finished.”

  Beth stepped from tabletop to chair to floor.

  Assisting her to unbutton the frock, she draped it across the sewing table. “I’ll finish this tomorrow.”

  “Please Mum – don’t blame James. He’s scared. You can understand.”

  She did. She understood ignorance and why. But why be scared of a little boy? “What an odd thing to say.”

  Beth zipped on her house frock. “You’re not dense, Mum.”

  “Tell James to arrange the sitter.”

  From his room, Sean’s new T.V. blared. Saturday afternoon cartoons kept him indoors and out of the summer sun that burned his fragile skin.

  “I’ve wanted to ask for years…” Beth paused.

  Sweeping up scraps of material, threads of cotton and unused pins, she closed the sewing machine. Since Sean had started school, she and Beth had drifted even further apart. Her fault, her fault. Sean had dominated her life. Rory had got that right. Whatever this was about, it had to be important.

  “Go ahead, love,” she invited. “Whatever it is, just say it.”

  “I know you and Dad are…you don’t…”

  She looked away.

  “I mean…” Beth stammered. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t…I’m sorry.”

  “One day I’ll explain.” Not true. No one would ever hear what had happened.

  Beth recovered. “That’s not my business, Mum.”

  “Then why ask?”

  “You’ve misunderstood what I want to know,” Beth flushed. “It’s James. You had no more children after Sean. Was it because of Sean’s problem?”

  “Tell James to do his homework,” she snapped. “It’s not hereditary.”

  The new era had at least made that clear. James need not fear. Their chance of bearing a child with Down Syndrome was no more than for any other young couple. As well, there was the possibility of early detection – and the opportunity to abort an imperfect foetus. For non-Catholics.

  Poor James. Did he even begin to comprehend what he was getting into? He was worrying about Sean, a worry without foundation. He’d yet to discover the traumas marriage vows imposed. Would he and Beth adhere to the old rules? Or would they embrace the innovations of the new era?

  Poor Beth. The compromises, if there were to be any, would have already begun. Was she to be a virgin bride? Was she on the Pill? Would she ever, if confronted with the unacceptable, consider abortion? Or divorce?

  The hem was level, the long silk train elegant, the neckline fashionably heart-shaped and the sleeves stylishly full. The slender lines of the white gown enhanced the perfect proportions of the small, tense body. Beth, walking down the aisle on her father’s arm, was as beautiful as she’d planned to be.

  Sitting on the McClure side of the church were Rory’s eldest brother, his wife and their eldest daughter. They’d crossed the country for the wedding of Rory’s first-born. They’d passed on the ritual excuse of distance for the many family absentees and made no comment on Sean’s absence. Behind them were groups from Beth’s former schools and the Roland Bank, a couple from the Mothers’ Club, Rory’s closest business associates and Fran and Todd Marshall. Across the aisle, crammed tightly into the pews and standing by the entrance door, were James’s numerous relatives and friends.

  His role in the service ended, Rory crammed into the empty seat at her side. He was shaking. Was he as disturbed as she was? The ceremony to celebrate the beginning of Beth’s new life was marking the end of a significant phase of theirs. With their first-born went hope. James, apparently at his request, was being transferred interstate. They were losing Beth and her children, their grandchildren. James’s fear was robbing them of their hard-won future. Already, the day nowhere near ended, she was feeling inconsolable grief. The touch of Rory’s tailored sleeve, trembling, was intolerable. What would happen to Beth when children started to arrive? If only her mother…

  “I declare you man and wife.” Father O’Shea’s quavering declaration rescued her. “You may kiss the bride.”

  Bridegrooms, bridesmaids and witnesses applauded. Beth turned her joyful face to her husband. The pride of the Nolan’s, James was tall and tanned and muscular and looked more like an athlete than a banker; a physical man with a mathematical brain. She knew too little of him. His fear of siring imperfect children was, unhappily, too easily comprehended. Poor young man. Poor Beth.

  “To the bride.” The glasses were raised; the toasts were sipped by the women and drained by the men.

  Together with the newlywed couple and James’s parents, she and Rory were at the wedding reception head table. At the other tables, hearty country voices reached a crescendo in direct proportion to the decreasing level of beer in the nine galloners Rory had ordered. Though he’d have anticipated the outcome, he’d had no choice. This was how things were done.

  The happy wedding party, following the main courses and Father O’Shea’s timely exit, was as blunt and as bawdy and as crude as the sexually explicit telegrams. Yet, with the possible exception of a few city-hardened guests, innocent. As innocent as the uniquely ingenuous people she’d grown up with. Uncomplicated people, unsophisticated, unpretentious – unthinking. Theirs was the thumping cruelty of genuine innocence. Had he stayed, she’d have blushed for Father O’Shea. She didn’t blush for the children. Country children knew country things.

  Todd engineered an embarrassing climax. The dozen and a half children had been assigned separate tables. Boys stifled in tight grey flannel and high stiff collars, girls in elaborate frills and corkscrew curls, all were on their best behaviour. Eating peanut butter sandwiches, chocolate cakes and rich country cream; drinking chille
d lemonade deteriorated to tepid fizz and probably understanding the innuendos and the clichéd double entendres they’d heard many times. Certainly understanding the blatantly sexual. But neither sniggering nor blushing nor even interested. Their interests lay elsewhere; sport for the boys, clothes for the girls and food and music for all.

  The waiters poured champagne.

  “To the bride…” James’s brother completed his stumbling speech.

  Glasses were raised. All eyes were on Beth – blushing, beautiful, the epitome of the virgin Catholic bride – virgin or not.

  “To the newlyweds!” Glasses high, a rousing cheer, then reverential silence; James’s brother was preparing a final pontification.

  “Where’s Sean?” Todd’s young voice, clarion clear, rang above the expectant heads.

  “Shhh!” Even the children recognised his error.

  “Where’s Sean?” Tall above the seated children, twelve-year-old Todd stood his ground.

  “Shhh!”

  “Sit down, Todd.”

  “Why isn’t Sean here? Sean should be here!”

  “Todd!” Fran cried from her distant table. “This is not the time!”

  Todd stubbornly confronted the watchful faces.

  “Sit down, Todd. Please…” Though the room was full, mother and son might have been alone.

  Wavering, Todd turned uncertainly to the head table, to bride and groom and parents.

  “Please…” Fran begged.

  Todd sat down.

  A hubbub of mixed approval and relief reintroduced the brother, who nervously completed pontificating.

  Formalities over, James turned to his father-in-law. “We’re grateful for the trouble you’ve gone to, sir.”

  “Happy to do it, son.” Rory glowed.

  Son…James was the son Rory thought he should have had. Rory approved of James. Thanks be to God. Today had been Beth’s day. God protect her future.

  “Mr McClure!” Todd approached the table.

  Unprepared, Rory was brusque. “What do you want, Todd?”

  “They said you’d tell me.”

  Rory frowned. “Tell you what?”

  “Where’s Sean?”