Autumn Music

by Dulcie M. Stone

  The ghost of the frail old nun lived – ‘In your heart you know what you are to do. Why do you come to me? Trust yourself, Tess McClure.’

  Nothing had changed. Not the high-ceiling reception room or the hush of secret cubicles. Even the odour of cheap polishing wax was as it had been.

  ‘I can only tell you this. I have seen too many abandoned children.’ She’d never forgotten the wise old nun.

  “Sister Agnes died long ago.”

  She’d been ushered in by a cheerfully plump matron, bright blousy frock, crimped hair, merry eyes. What had become of the black-robed nun and the sombre countenance? She’d asked, “You still have the children?”

  “Sister will tell you all about it. Would you like refreshments while you wait? Tea? Coffee?”

  “Thank you, no.”

  Everything had changed. The heavenly garden outside was flush with scented blossoms, the lawns emerald and the raucous beat of rock music had accompanied her along the brick path to the heavy front door. The reception area, notwithstanding the high ceiling, narrow windows, plastic crucifix and scattered rugs had been awkwardly transformed into a reasonably comfortable lounge room.

  The door crashed open. A crew-cut head, skimpy T-shirt, tight jeans and youthful sunburned face yelled, “You seen Emma?”

  “Sorry,” she began, “unless Emma…”

  “Ta.” The door slammed behind him.

  Everything had changed.

  Crossing to the tall narrow windows, she looked out across the busy main road to the beach. The crew-cut youngster was racing towards the sea. Had he found Emma?

  “It’s a pity the windows limit our view.”

  She turned. “Monny!”

  Though she knew there’d be no black habit and white coif and nervously anticipated the sleek grooming she’d last seen, Monica’s grey head-to-toe appearance was a new surprise.

  “It’s been far too long.” Monica enfolded her in ample arms. “Oh – how I’ve missed you.”

  So long. Too long. Monica had again changed. No nun’s habit and no sleek business suit. No coif and no fashionable hairstyle. Monica was a conservatively dressed ageing woman not unlike Miss Dixon – warm and caring and comfortable.

  They separated. Monica sat at her side. “There’s only you left for me, Tess.”

  “Don’t you ever see anyone?” They’d been a large family.

  “Since Mother passed, it’s out of sight, out of mind. Sometimes a card at Christmas.” Monica frowned. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t.”

  “You sound…”

  “Bitter?” Except for a fleeting dour twist of her full lips, Monica’s plump face was the face of contentment, of peace; the almost uniform face of the caring nuns and the religious instruction volunteers who’d been their mother’s friends.

  “I never thought you’d become bitter,” she commented.

  “I don’t believe I am,” Monica smiled. “Though I do confess – I am at times lonely.”

  “I never thought.”

  “Not to worry,” Monica soothed. “Family’s become more important with age, it seems.”

  “I’m sorry, Monny. We should have come more often.”

  “How could you? You’ve had your share. More. I could have written more often, too.”

  “After Mum died. I don’t know…”

  While they reminisced, the cheerful matron served tea and fresh-baked scones.

  Until Monica asked the inevitable, “How can I help, Tess?”

  “Oh dear!” she flushed. “You have good reason to be bitter. It’s true. I only come to see you when I want help.”

  “Not true,” Monica gently rebuked. “Stop it. Ask what you want.”

  “You remember when I first came here?”

  “I remember.”

  “Sister Agnes was a wonderful help.”

  “She’s gone. I haven’t her wisdom. I can’t possibly be objective. I’m too jaded. I’m too close, Tess.”

  “I have to talk to someone!”

  “Shhh…don’t. Don’t…I can’t promise to help. I can listen.”

  She talked for a long time. She confided the truth, the actual truth. Perhaps because of the room, the isolation, the seclusion, the expectation of the confessional’s forgiveness. Or perhaps it had nothing to do with the church. Perhaps she talked because of the memory of young mutual trust. She held back nothing.

  “I’ve lost my way, Monny. There’s no reason. Nothing. It’s done. Finished. Sean’s his own man. Beth’s happy.”

  “What about Rory?”

  “What about him?”

  “I ask because…” Monica hesitated. “I’m sorry. Honestly, Tess…I’m not sure it’s me you should be talking to.”

  “Who else is there? Who else can I trust?”

  Folding carefully distant hands in her grey lap, Monica asked, “Do you really want to hear what I have to say?”

  She was suddenly fearful.

  “Be sure, Tess.”

  “I have to. I must. It’s why I’m here.”

  Monica nodded. “Have you thought, Tess? I think perhaps Rory knows hell, too.”

  “He probably does. I told you. We don’t talk.”

  “You don’t need to hear when someone experiences hell. You can see it.”

  She had seen it.

  Not responding, she tried in vain to read the carefully shadowed eyes of her sister. What had they seen? What had been her experience? How did she know? Was that why she hadn’t communicated again until many years after their meeting in the park? The day Monica had confided her own doubts, the day Monica had admitted contemplating leaving the church.

  Monica did not press.

  Pointedly changing direction, she asked, “Do you work with street kids, now? A boy came to the door.”

  Surprisingly, Monica laughed, as she used to laugh. “An enlightening experience, believe me.”

  “Do you need help?”

  “No, Tess,” Monica gently chided. “You can’t hide yourself away here. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Is the lady who served our tea a volunteer? You must need volunteers.”

  “Always. But not you.” The clumsily trimmed grey hair shook. “Not you, Tess.”

  Disappointed, she reached for her handbag.

  “I’m sorry.” Monica was solicitous. “I really am sorry. You must not be offended. If I thought it would help you, I’d be the first to welcome you here. I don’t.”

  Of course. “You are right,” she confessed. “I’m trying to find a way to run away again. You’re quite right.”

  Following her from the room, Monica held open the heavy front door. “You will let me know how this works out for you? I need you to keep in touch.”

  “I promise. I do promise.”

  “The truth, Tess. Tell me the truth. You feel I’ve let you down.”

  She hugged her sister, “Would you like to know what Sister Agnes said? All those years ago?”

  “Naturally,” Monica admitted. “But only if you want to tell me.”

  “She said to trust myself.”

  “That’s what she would say,” Monica nodded. “So now, if you promise not to be offended, I will go further.”

  “I won’t be offended.”

  “I would remind you of your vow. You said you prayed to God to let your baby live, to give your husband a son. You have a son, Tess. You and Rory have a son. Can you honestly believe his life, your life, has no purpose? After what you’ve achieved? After what you’ve learned?”

  Across the road, sea spray whipped at the retaining wall.

  “Look out there, Tess,” Monica pointed. “Look at young Jimmy out there in the sea. He’s my purpose. My reason. There have been many disappointments. Many doubts, as you well know. But God has brought these kids here, to where I am. My work is with them. Surely you can expect no less. Sean’s independence may not be an end for you. It may be a beginning.”

  They embraced, promised to keep in close touch and the heavy convent
door closed. She left the beautiful garden, crossed the road and sat on a splintered beach bench. Last night’s refuse was at her feet – shattered glass, scattered newspapers, food scraps, empty bottles, crumpled cartons, broken syringes. Relics of street kids, vandals, despair, crime, drugs, broken families, broken people. In the water, far out, the bobbing head of the boy from the refuge.

  Was Monica right? Was Sean’s separate life a beginning? Was there more to come? More to do?

  Along the cliff top and down to the sea ran a narrow track. Removing shoes and stockings, she started down to the sand, bare feet skidding on summer-dry grass. Bare feet on summer grass – memories of childhood seaside holidays, of summer paddocks and children’s laughter, of sisters and cousins and friends, memories of happiness.

  When had her different road really started? On the wedding night? Or later, in the first agonising years? Other women knew equal trauma, other women survived their wounds and found their lonely way to mental health and predictable futures – children and home and friends and contentment. When had she begun to feel there was more? From where and when came the insistent itch that there were things yet to do? From where came comprehension that the refuge John Lane offered was not for her? From where came acknowledgement that she was trying to run away? Running away from what? When had it really started?

  Bare feet on dry grass, the smell of brine, the sound of waves lapping the shore. And, again, as ever, the memory of autumn leaves, the tang of decay and the sound of Beth’s petulant chant. “Ice cream, Mummy. Ice cream.”

  The walk. The indelibly imprinted walk, the walk into her future. Pushing Beth’s pram back from Doctor Chapman’s surgery.

  A lifetime.

  A short walk; a lifetime.

  Innocent naivety painfully dying, helpless as the naked limbs of the hopeless trees, insecure as the low-heeled maternity shoes skidding on the dying leaves, fearfully negotiating an impossible pathway.

  A short walk – yet had her imperfect senses, even then, been struck by the warning of implacable destiny? Had she sensed, yet not heeded?

  A short walk – a lifetime, a different destiny. Nothing was ever to be as it should have been. There was to be no large family, no safe domesticity, no ritual faith, no security, no certainty. No more children. Dead children. And Beth. Dead marriage. Dead dreams. No safe haven. And Sean.

  She trod the brittle grass, felt each stone and twig, each fine blade, felt them abrade her tender skin.

  When she was a child, she’d thought as a child. When she was a child, she’d believed as a child. On the long-ago walk from surgery to home, she’d blindly believed herself to be walking a secure path. If there’d been a side track, she’d not have taken it. Her path led to a clear destination.

  Today, on this lonely beachside track, no longer a child, no longer blind, there was no innocence, no naivety. Here was truth. Here, bare feet were choosing to negotiate their painful way down an unknown trail to an unknown place. Here, deliberately turning away from security, she was following an insecure path to a destiny she did not know.

  Here – faith.

  Chapter Twenty

  She’d followed the path down to the beach, watched the lonely swimmer ride the surf, driven back to her modest hotel and telephoned Rory.

  He’d listened and predictably answered, “It’s up to you, Tess. I told you – whatever you decide.”

  She’d stayed the extra night, woken early, packed and driven out of the dismal central city canyons. On both sides of the early morning highway freshly harvested paddocks, stiff with brown stubble, basked under clear summer skies. She was going home.

  In the early afternoon, dwarfed beneath the high sun, Heatherfield loomed. An unremarkable dot, scarcely visible on the state road map, it was shrinking, as country towns everywhere were doing.

  Pulling up in front of the store, she found Valda at her accustomed post. Only Valda. No Rory.

  “Mrs McClure!” Valda was pleased to see her. “He told me the news. He’s upstairs.”

  “I’ll get my case.”

  “You go on up. I’ll get it.”

  At the top of the short flight of stairs, the closed door waited. Should she knock?

  “Tess…” The door opened. “I saw you pull up. Come on in. How was the trip? How’s Monica? I haven’t seen her in ages. Come on in…”

  She stepped across the threshold into tiny cramped rooms, a kitchenette, a bedroom, a shower, a lavatory, a minute laundry. A man’s domain, a lonely bachelor flat. Little colour, except the chance decoration on a garish teapot. No view, other than electricity wires and faded shop façades outside the undraped windows. No music, no sound, other than the intermittent rumble of early afternoon traffic. No scents, no smells, except the sunburned stench of petrol fumes, the horse-drawn timber wagons long gone.

  She put her unopened case on the single bed he’d squeezed into the cramped single bedroom, bathed her face in the starkly white bathroom basin and dried it on the coarse white hand towel precisely folded on the starkly white bath. Utilitarian hardware from the store, serviceable, durable, sensible.

  In the white-tiled kitchenette, making tea, he tentatively asked, “Are you sure, Tess?”

  “I’d like to try, Rory. I can’t be sure.”

  “It’s only temporary,” he excused. “When the house sale is through, we can build…or buy?”

  “Close to Sean and Cathie?”

  “If you think that’s a good idea, Tess.”

  He’d changed. Even in the last month, he’d changed. Unless distance and time away and reflection had sharpened her perception. Or perhaps he actually had changed. Perhaps he too was regretting the empty nest. Whatever the facts, she was seeing a man who’d quite suddenly become not only physically smaller, but less daunting and less sure. He might never have been certain, arrogant, authoritative, ambitious. He might never have been young. Monica was right. Of course, he’d known hell. And, maybe, experience was evoking a deeper search for him too? Or only despair?

  “Rory…” Was there only pity left?

  “I’ve already made up the bed in my office.” He prepared to leave.

  “Can I ask…your lady friend…what about her?”

  “Over. There’s no one else, Tess. Never really has been.”

  She wanted to hold him, comfort him, an insecure child. Where was fear? They’d changed places. The fear was now his – what would she do? Would she stay? Would she leave again? The fear was his.

  She wanted to hold him and dared not.

  “There’s never really been anyone else for me, Tess.”

  “I know, Rory. Can we talk tomorrow? I’m very tired.”

  They bought a house in the street behind the store. A two-bedroom brick veneer, modern, slick and banal, it looked out onto parkland – grossly inadequate compensation for the loss of jagged mountains and broad prairie and huge skies.

  They slept apart. Nothing was to be hurried. As ever since their wedding night, the adhesive that held them together was their church – and now their children.

  The vows they’d taken, the roots from which they’d sprung, the lessons they’d been taught – morals, family, tradition, religion – every breath each took was imbued with the combination of these, together with their doubts, their reservations and the multi-faceted experiences they’d shared. Separate, yet inextricably entwined, their past had been forged together. Separately, they’d made their choice. He’d ended his affair; she’d left unfettered freedom. Together, they’d live their future.

  They talked. Though he never talked about his affair and she never told him about John Lane, who’d sold his house and moved away, he took the place of the brothers she’d lost and the friend she’d never been able to confide in fully. They shared fears and regrets and dreams and hopes and disappointments. They talked of Father Pat’s remarkable faith.

  Sometimes she helped in the shop. Sometimes she had morning tea with Fran. She regularly cleaned the church and regularly attended choir pr
actice. Once a month Father Pat visited to enjoy a roast dinner, beer and casual conversation. Occasionally, not often, she visited Cathie while Sean was at work. Once a month they shared a light Sunday lunch after Mass, either at Sean’s flat or their house. Maintaining the distance Sean and Cathie needed was not easy. This, too, was a shared burden they had in common; about which they could talk.

  But because he remained necessarily involved in service clubs, late-night meetings and distant conferences, she grew increasingly restless. The house was lifeless, the Holden rarely used, the face in the mirror ageing, the single bed lonely, the talks with Rory less urgent and faithfully fulfilled duties sterile. She’d knowingly chosen the path that led here. She’d trusted faith. And found nothing.

  Monica had her reason, her purpose.

  Patience. She’d been patient. She remained patient.

  She’d trusted. And trust was barren.

  She’d learned to talk with Rory, to distance herself appropriately from Sean and Beth. She’d chosen to do as Father Pat had chosen to do. She’d chosen to be loyal, but not blindly loyal, to a church in need, a church in cataclysmic transition.

  She’d acknowledged the strengthening voice of faith. She’d listened to the old priest’s message – Conscience is the voice of the Spirit, the voice of God, speaking to the soul. She’d chosen trust and the uncertain path, wherever that would lead. She’d expected revelation of a different fulfilment and nothing was different.

  Her life was as arid as the summer grass in the tired park outside the banal two-bedroom house. Though not her heart. Her heart had learned trust. She’d chosen and she would be patient.

  Once again, she left the house and walked the short distance to the library where loyal friends still waited in alphabetical order on wellworn shelves.

  “Don’t hold tea for me tonight, Tess. It’s Rotary night. I’ll be late.”

  “Again?” He might as well be still having an affair.

  “You’re welcome to come,” he invited. “It’s wives’ night.”

  Too late. Ill health and Sean’s needs had long limited purely social interaction. She wouldn’t know how to talk to Rotary wives and there was no incentive to make the effort. “It’s too late, Rory. I don’t know them.”