Autumn Music

by Dulcie M. Stone

  He looked at his watch. “It’s getting late, Mum.”

  “What does Todd say?” She needed clues from him.

  “Todd won’t let me listen.”

  “So you haven’t asked him?”

  He shrugged.

  “You have asked him.”

  He shrugged.

  Give him time.

  His answer was oblique, intentionally so. “I reckon Todd’s going great at the new school.”

  “It’s a pity you don’t see so much of him.”

  He came to his point. “Why can’t I go there, Mum?”

  Not again. “We’ve talked about it, love. Many times.”

  “Sure. Todd says they’re not so clever.”

  “You’re nearly fourteen, Sean. Old enough not to have to go to school. To any school.”

  “Todd reckons his school’s better than Bernie’s. Why can’t I go?”

  She sat back. How had they arrived here – yet again? She’d brought him in here to impress on him the unacceptable gravity of copying Bernie’s rudeness and, hopefully, to find a way to plan ahead. He’d boxed her into a corner.

  “Mum? Why can’t I go to Bernie’s school?”

  Frustration erupted, “You can’t go! That’s it! You can’t go!”

  His face closed.

  “Sean, love… I’m so sorry.”

  He curled into the chair, head down, knees to chest, back defensively humped.

  “Sean…I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  He did not move.

  She left him there, alone.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “How’s the baby, love?”

  “Don’t worry, Mum. She’s beautiful.” Beth was phoning from a thousand miles away.

  “I wish I could be there.”

  “Everyone’s been marvellous. Thanks for the parcel.”

  She’d knitted for months, small white garments for the baby she’d prayed would be normal. James’s phone call a week ago had finally ended the agonising wait. “Are you phoning from home?”

  “From hospital. We’re going home tomorrow. James is so excited.”

  “So soon. It seems…”

  “Do you like her name? Does Dad like her name?”

  “Louise Margaret? It’s…”

  “We hope you don’t mind, Mum. You met James’s mother…”

  James’s mother was Margaret. “Who thought of Louise?”

  “James likes it.”

  James likes it. James doesn’t like Sean. James doesn’t want us there. James is afraid of Sean. No. He’s afraid of what seeing Sean does to him. He’s afraid of the same thing Beth is afraid of, the same thing we’re all afraid of. Prayers don’t help. Abnormal babies abound. Good people have abnormal babies. Babies grow up.

  “How’s everyone? How’s Dad? How’s Sean?”

  Beth was asking polite questions. Distance had magnified distance. “I’ll write, love. Everyone’s good.” The pips mercifully signalled time. “I’ll write…”

  Outside, spring trees were shimmering in the midday prairie haze. Hardy flowering gums and golden wattles and scented almonds and secret wildflowers and thirsty paddocks were heralding an early summer. Early summer heralding a long summer. Following a dry winter. Too little rain, too often no rain. Firemen burning breaks, working weekends, practising nights. Emergency Services checking equipment, checking infrastructure, raising funds. The Traders Association, the Farmers Association, Country Women’s Association, Catholic Women’s Guild, United Church Women, Mothers’ Clubs, small groups and big groups – each attending to their allotted roles in emergency plans. Years since the last big bush fires. Fear lived in the burgeoning spring growth.

  Though the house still hadn’t sold, the business was thriving. There could be ways to finance a move into town. He was almost never home and then a stranger. Would it make a difference if she and Sean moved closer to his business? If she talked about it, would he consider moving altogether, somewhere better for Sean? Even – God forbid – a special school or, in a few years, a sheltered workshop? Was she thinking of herself? Was fear her motivation? Or frustration? The mountains were at times a prison. The isolated house hated and loved, loathed and embraced.

  Yet the thought of close neighbours, for whatever reason, was still intolerable. The experience had been traumatic for her. For Sean? Again she reassured herself. They’d left close neighbours and suburban bigotry for Sean. They’d avoided retreating back to the high mountains and judgemental family for Sean. Once-rational decisions seemed to be becoming less rational with each passing year. Jumbled motives, disguised reasons, lies and changing perceptions.

  Had their motivation been only Sean’s need? Or had they grabbed Sean’s disability as an excuse to free themselves from challenges they should have confronted? So here was a new challenge. His school days were over. Where to now? She was older and wiser and less afraid to think. Or was this, too, merely another form of self-deception? She’d lost Beth…

  Where was Sean? As every morning after breakfast, he’d gone outside to play with Rusty. Unusually, she hadn’t seen him since. Not even the unexpected pealing of the telephone bell, a sound that always attracted him, had brought him inside. In the trees across the road the singing mountain birds were sweetly content; a butterfly flittered onto the kitchen windowsill, then dipped to an unseen flower. He’d be happy to hear the latest news of Beth’s baby.

  Leaving the house, she called him.

  The singing birds and the whispering trees were her only answer.

  “Sean! Beth phoned! Sean!” She started down the back path.

  Rusty bounded from behind the shed, tail wagging, eager.

  “Where is he? Where’s Sean?”

  Rusty loped to the shed and back again.

  She found him behind the woodshed. He was sitting by the splintered wall – rocking – rocking – back and forth, back and forth.

  “Sean!”

  He stopped, his body rigid.

  “Didn’t you hear the telephone? Beth phoned.”

  He stared ahead, eyes hooded.

  “Beth phoned. The baby’s got a name…”

  He did not move.

  “Sean?” His skin was clammy. Not another fever!

  Rusty licked her hand, Sean’s cheek.

  “What’s wrong? Sean – what’s wrong?”

  Rusty whined, crouched to the soft turf, troubled eyes on Sean.

  She tugged his jacket around his uncovered shoulders. “Your lunch is ready, love.”

  He did not move.

  “You have to eat!”

  He resumed rocking, rhythmic, compulsive.

  “We’re cooking sausages for lunch.”

  He stopped.

  “Come along, love.” Taking his hand, she led him inside.

  Following Christmas morning Mass, they drove to Melbourne. Sean slept in the back seat, she listened to music. And Rory drove carefully. The store was closed until after New Year. Desperately needing a break, Rory was looking forward to long days in the sun watching cricket; the forecasters were promising the weather’s cooperation.

  The motel was in a seaside suburb. Each day Rory caught the early morning tram to the M.C.G. while she and Sean walked, visited movies and occasionally went to the beach. Sean loved swimming, but the unsheltered seaside burned his fine skin and the dense crowds undermined his confidence. In the evenings, they ate takeaways in their room, watched T.V. and went to bed early. Neither she nor Rory wanted to contact former acquaintances. There was no one in the big city they particularly wanted to remember. Except Monica.

  They’d kept in contact. Not closely, but loyally and more frequently than either she or Rory had kept in contact with their other brothers and sisters and cousins. Monica had been her closest and most loyal friend. Still was. In the middle of the holiday week they met for lunch at a seaside restaurant.

  The initial encounter was disconcertingly uncomfortable. Expecting an ageing nun in black habit and white coif, she’d no
t even looked at the tall well-groomed woman approaching their table.

  “It’s so good to see you, Tess.” The stranger lightly kissed her cheek. “And this has to be Sean. Hello, Sean.”

  Monica’s grey hair was fashionably cut, her blue summer frock chic, her shoes elegant and her light make-up experienced. Her voice was cultured but not pompous; her carriage confident but not arrogant. Monica looked, sounded and acted like a quietly self-assured city businesswoman. A tiny silver cross pinned to her dress was the single remaining visual witness to her vocation.

  “I didn’t expect…” She flushed. “You should have warned me.”

  In the presence of her sister, she felt old and jaded. She felt, as well, reluctant mistrust of the unfamiliar woman across the table. So, obviously, did Sean. Impatient to be away, he ate in brooding silence. No use scolding him; there was no way to smile away the discomfort of the meeting. The Aunt Monica Sean knew and had been expecting to meet was the black-robed nun back home in the family photo album.

  The sister she’d expected to meet, the sister in her mind, no longer existed. But then, who had Monica expected to meet? Certainly not a disillusioned frump, dull and sour and joyless, who was acting and probably looked exactly as she felt – dull and sour and joyless. While Sean sulked, they ate quickly, talked politely, avoided eye contact and made their farewells with what had to be mutual relief. They’d catch up again on the telephone. Would they?

  Neither she nor Monica had stood still. As children, though reared at the same time in the same place and within the same sphere of influence, they’d been reared in dramatically different eras. They’d chosen dramatically different ways to live their lives. Had the choice been theirs? Monica believed not. She believed she’d made no choice. She believed a beneficent God had chosen her. Monica believed her vocation to be a gift from God. Happy Monica.

  Even so, they’d remained firm friends. Now time and place and sphere of influence, not differing belief, seemed to have severed the once strong thread.

  Did Monica, too, feel betrayed? Did Monica read reports that revealed a duplicitous church, guilty of hidden crimes, vacillating rules and rigid vetoes that led to illness and death for too many women and the desecration of too many children? What went on in the well-groomed head of the woman she’d just dined with? Better by far if they hadn’t met again. Illusions could have been maintained, as they had been until today, by letters and telephone calls.

  Leaving the restaurant, she and Sean walked through the shops and ran the gauntlet of curious stares – times had changed little. Back in their room, they bought their takeaways and watched old movies until Rory returned. Though he didn’t overtly complain, she knew Sean missed Rusty and Todd and the open spaces – and school. He sometimes asked if Beth was coming to see them. He didn’t seem to understand that this big city was Melbourne, not Sydney. Why would he? He had no experience of big cities. Or was he doing as he sometimes did – playing mental games with her? She still didn’t know.

  She was in the motel’s small en suite, preparing for bed, when the telephone rang.

  “It’s for you!” Rory called. “It’s Monica.”

  “What’s wrong!” She took the receiver. “Are you all right. What’s wrong?”

  “When do you go home?” The voice on the other end of the line was tense, the voice of the stranger.

  “I’m not sure…”

  “I thought you said you have a couple more days.”

  “Yes, but Sean’s…”

  “I need to see you.”

  Something was very wrong. “Of course. Sean and I…”

  “Tess! Please!”

  “We will. We will. We won’t leave without seeing you again.”

  “I have to ask…do you mind? Can Rory mind Sean? I need time alone with you.”

  An extra day was negotiated. Sean joyfully left with his father for the zoo and she boarded a tram for the Botanical Gardens. A short distance from the frantic city centre, the gardens were serenely hospitable. Meeting at the conservatorium, they selected a shaded seat opposite a bed of full-bloomed roses. The sun was high in the midday sky, the trees were motionless in the clear air, an occasional sparrow was cheeping at their feet and a handful of people were strolling indifferently by. They shared sandwiches and a bottle of lemonade and small talk.

  The wrappings had been carefully stuffed in the nearby rubbish bin and the sparrows were dining on the last crumbs when Monica said, “You’re waiting for me to get to the point.”

  “It’s good just to sit with you, Monny. To be together like we used to be.”

  “Not like we used to be.” Monica shook her fashionable head. “Those days are long over.”

  She threw another crumb. The startled sparrows scattered, regrouped and returned.

  “How do you do it, Tess?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We mustn’t lose each other.” Monica was very serious. “At lunch yesterday – I felt I’d lost you.”

  “You didn’t tell me you no longer wear the habit,” she prevaricated. “I wasn’t prepared. Sean wasn’t prepared.”

  “I’m sorry. We haven’t seen each other for so long. Tell me…have I changed so much?”

  “The truth?” She was becoming extremely worried. Something was alarmingly amiss.

  “It’s why we’re here, Tess.”

  “You have changed, but…,” she hesitated. “We never used to play mind games, Monny. Yesterday, you made me feel uncomfortable. Was it Sean?”

  “Oh God! No! Never! How could you think that?”

  How could she not think that? Unfair. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m contemplating leaving.”

  Of course, she had to be.

  “You’re shocked.”

  “I’m shocked,” she admitted. “I’m not surprised.”

  “I see.”

  Carefully, she reiterated. “I am not surprised.”

  Lips trembling, Monica nodded.

  She let the silence lengthen. Something important had just happened. They were again as they used to be. Monica would have been uncertain how she’d react. Now, after testing her reaction, Monica would talk when unsettling emotion was under control and the words fully formed in her mind.

  Eventually, while the sun moved behind the trees and the number of people decreased and the sparrows settled further down the pathway, Monica talked. Of course she was contemplating leaving the sisterhood. Many who’d taken their vows in an era of blind naivety had already left. But Monica was looking more deeply, not merely at how ingenuous she’d been when she’d taken her vows, but at the veracity of the church itself. She was actually contemplating leaving, not merely the sisterhood but the Roman Catholic Church.

  They’d been born into Roman Catholicism, they’d been given no choice, they’d never even known there were choices. Although they’d been educated in sectarian schools, it had never occurred to them that they had the right to choose another religion; the religion of some of their schoolmates. They’d known their father hated the church, they’d heard him rail against it all their lives. But their father was a war victim suffering shellshock. They’d not merely expected to live their lives as their mother and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins lived theirs, they’d known they would. They’d known this with the same certainty with which they knew they needed air to breathe.

  Choice! Even their father hadn’t actively chosen. War had drafted him into atheism, just as surely as war’s most recent victims had been drafted into the Vietnam conflict. Choice. In almost every aspect of their growing up there’d been no choice – no choice of time to go to bed, time to eat, what to wear, who to befriend, what to think what to believe – and where to worship. ‘Why?’ was not a question, ‘no’ not an option.

  No longer. The world was exploding, science was asking questions never before asked and never before answered. Where there had been no knowledge of choice and no question of doubt, there was new revelation. Long-held trut
hs were being universally questioned, disproved, doubted, investigated. Nothing was exempt. Everywhere there was discovery of new truths and exposure of old truths; truths of corruption and lies and greed and venal ambition and evil. And the church was not exempt.

  Poor Monica. She’d been so sure, so secure. The new era of remorseless questioning was bringing with it not only choice but it was also provoking anger and abhorrence and bewilderment and despair. Those trained in obedience were floundering in petrifying storms.

  She listened and she empathised. She did not interrupt or console. Real life had finally caught up. Monica was going to have to do what everyone else had to do – deal with it.

  The shadows were lengthening when Monica cried, “I don’t know how to cope! There’s no purity any more!”

  Finally provoked, she rebuked, “There never was!”

  Monica recoiled.

  “You’ve been had!”

  Monica turned away.

  She should apologise. She didn’t. Because only the truth would clarify and she could not possibly confide in her gentle sister. Nothing was pure. Only a fool believed otherwise. She, too, had been a fool. She’d expected the perfection of purity – a happy ever after marriage, healthy children, living children. She’d expected faith. She’d never received it. Had Monica? Had Monica answered the call of faith or the expectation of others? Faith. In what? In who?

  Slowly recovering, Monica again asked, “How do you do it, Tess? I don’t understand. You still go to Mass. You still pray. How do you do it? You’ve buried your children. You’ve brought Sean up against all odds. And Rory…you can’t tell me all’s well there either. How do you do it?”

  Steadily, she answered, “I attend Mass. Sometimes I think about why I do it. Is it from habit? Am I hedging my bets? You never know, there might be a heaven. And a hell. But then…”

  “What?” Monica prompted.

  “I conclude I go because I’m expected to go.”

  “I couldn’t do that.” Monica frowned.

  “Then I reckon I’m the last person you should be talking to.”

  The long uneventful drive home, although the air conditioning in the car was inadequate, was a restful interlude. They came home to mountains and prairie and emptiness and birdsong and the reassuring sounds of busy tractors and cows across the road filing to milking and empty daytime skies and glittering star-filled nights.