Hill of Grace (45 page)

And then, climbing into their carriage, appearing in the doorway, a postal worker in a sweat-soaked shirt. Joseph kneeling down as his children ran to him. They took him back to Ellen and he sat next to her, holding her hand. ‘It came over the speakers at Adelaide . . .'

Over-hearing, other passengers moaned and stood up, making for the carriage door and a long walk home, calling for the conductor and asking if there'd be a bus. ‘Soon,' he promised, looking towards the city in the near distance, its sandstone and granite polished in the heat haze, dressed with billboards and plane trees with burnt leaves.

‘Welcome to Adelaide,' Joseph grinned, carrying two of the four suitcases across the tracks, giving way to a C.R. shunt in search of its load. The two boys, unable to imagine a better way of starting their new lives, half-dragged, half-carried the other two cases behind their father. Mother and daughter followed, tripping and supporting each other, lost in fits of laughter they couldn't explain.

Although Joseph could, delivering his family out of the mouth of disaster. A lonely figure, a little excited, carrying his sense of duty lightly, leading them towards the green of the North Adelaide links, wondering how he was going to fit so many people and so many bags into the clapped out Morris he'd just bought on hire purchase.

Just as he'd expected.

William watched from his back window as Bluma nattered to Edna over the fence. He made a coffee and she was still there, cut up the potatoes for tea, put them in a pot and checked again. By now Bruno had joined them, waving a stick of wurst about in the air as some sort of peace offering. William watched, but refused to go out. It seemed there was only one path. Solitude. Like Jesus in the desert, doing his best to avoid the Hermanns of the world.

She came in and presented him with the sausage, but before she could speak he said, ‘I know, I saw,' slicing up carrots and dropping them into the water.

‘I'll do that,' she said.

‘No, it's alright.'

She put her hands on her hips, staring at him coldly. ‘Come out and say hello.'

He took his time to answer. ‘No. Not that I wouldn't be civil.'

Thinking, they don't mean to gloat, but they do.

Bluma shrugged. ‘You underestimate people. They're happy to let you be.'

He nodded his head. ‘No . . .'

She took out pork chops, and flour, and started to dust them. They worked on in silence, anticipating each other's next move, adding wood to the stove, descending into the cellar for pickled beans.

That night, as rain pounded down on their roof, William left Bluma alone and walked down the hall towards his study. He noticed an envelope under the front door, minus name or explanation. (Delivered by a young boy who happened to be walking past the Langmeil gates as Henry emerged. ‘You Doph Gordon's boy?'

‘Yes sir.'

‘Do an old fella a favour, will yer?')

William closed his study door and opened the envelope, flattening out an article hastily torn from a magazine, a few passages underlined in red, the author careful to avoid any handwriting which might give him away.

The article was a criticism of the Millenialists, comparing their ‘creaky chiliastic ideas' with every Christian folly from the Crusades through to the Salem witch trials. The author, an American professor of theology, used strings of four and five syllable words to bring down the zealots who were harming Christianity – the Christianity of tolerance and understanding, healing and serving the poor.

Eventually the professor got onto dates, and how they could never be trusted. The Millenialists make assumptions which don't hold true, he claimed. A two-page list outlined and demolished them all. William didn't have to look for the ones which applied to him. Someone had already underlined them. For instance, the author argued, the fallacy of the ‘cleansing of the sanctuary', outlined in Daniel 8: 14, which
apparently
stood for Christ's return to earth, although this was never actually said. Or the decree of Artaxerxes,
apparently
issued in 457 BC, but if anyone actually bothered to read Daniel . . . Oh yes,
Cruden's
had it right, but where in
Cruden's
did it explain how an ancient year equalled 365 days? Who was to say a day in prophetic writing represented a modern year? And even if the maths
was
right, didn't the Bible contradict itself when the Gospel of Mark claimed no man knoweth the time, or when Matthew explained that even the angels in heaven were kept in the dark.

The list went on, scrawls of red down the page, and over onto the next. William stopped reading. This time a year ago he would have got out his matches and burnt the pages. This time he just folded them, replaced them in the envelope and locked them in his desk drawer. It was obvious he'd have to set aside a lot of time to dispute it, through research and reading, commentaries on the Bible and a fair dose of faith. He
could
do it. And maybe he'd make an argument. But who'd believe him, who'd even listen to him anymore? He turned off the light and went into bed, trying to keep this thought out of his head. Over the next few days it would return, and he would feel the ground shifting beneath his feet like never before.

It was a Sunday. The rain cleared and Seymour arrived early to help William with the harvest. Bluma kept them in coffee and cake and towards the end of the first row Seymour said, ‘Ellen mentioned you'd come up with another idea?'

Come up with?
William emerged from behind vine leaves to explain. By the time he'd finished he knew Seymour wasn't convinced. ‘It could be, William . . .' Working on in silence, like Bluma, unable to find words for what he was thinking. William, meanwhile, retreated into his final consolation, the voice on the Hill of Grace, speaking to him and him alone, telling him things that were as true then as they were now. A voice without specifics, challenging him to seek the truth and tell it to others. And what if it took twenty attempts, or three consecutive lifetimes? Stiff. This is what he'd been asked to do.

He sat down, took a small Bible from his pocket and started reading. Seymour sat beside him and listened, hearing words that didn't add up to anything anymore.

‘“There be some that stand here which shall not taste of death till they have seen the Kingdom of God come with power . . .”'

William looked at Seymour. ‘Are you with me?'

Seymour sighed and bowed his head. A pair of crows started up in a distant sugar gum. The sun broke through cloud and the last of the rain on the vine leaves glistened, with every colour all at once. William knew he shouldn't expect a reply, knew that Seymour would never be against him, but would never be with him again. He put the Bible back in his pocket and stood up, taking a heavy bunch of grapes and cutting them from the vine. After a few seconds Seymour followed suit and they worked on together.

Lunch came and went but Bluma was nowhere to be seen, busy next door sewing Arthur's pants.

William Miller believed in the end of the world.

When Bluma came home late from church the next morning, William was still thinking about it. As she told him about how she'd been publicly welcomed back, he couldn't help but feel, still, that they were all wrong. Standing beside him as he continued harvesting, she said, ‘Come in for lunch, I have a surprise.'

‘What's that?'

‘Come on.'

‘Later.'

As she walked back to the house he watched her go and realised he was all alone. No one was with him on the Hill of Grace and no one was with him now. His choices were simple, as simple as snow falling, landing on your arm but melting before you could touch it. He heard Bluma behind him again.

He turned to see his son standing beside a freshly picked vine. Nathan smiled and said, ‘G'day, Dad.'

William saw a new man before him, fatter and wind-blown, whiskers growing where they hadn't before, a grin full of optimism and a confident new tone. He looked at Bluma, and then back at Nathan, grasping secateurs as sharp as the day Anthelm had bought them. In the distance someone started hammering, and a woman's voice called out for firewood. A honey-eater flapped its wings as a twig broke beneath its weight and Edna came outside with a wash-basket of Bruno's singlets.

Author's Note

I would like to thank my wife, Catherine, for helping give me time to write. Also, my sons Eamon and Henry, who help keep me in touch with reality. Thanks to Michael Bollen, Gina Inverarity and Ryan Paine for their thoughtful and detailed editing, and to the rest of the team at Wakefield Press. Thanks to my agents Rose Creswell and Annette Hughes who have promoted my work here and overseas. Also, Stephanie, Barbara and many others at the SA Writers' Centre who continue to help and encourage writing in South Australia.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge Noris Ioannou's book,
Barossa Journeys: Into a Valley of Tradition
(Paringa Press, 1997).

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