Love In a Sunburnt Country (10 page)

Finding yourself ‘fathoms deep', as Shakespeare says, is different for everyone. Some people slide happily into love, and glory in the slide; for some the loss of self-containment is a violence done to their soul; and then there are the dreamy travellers who simply miss the ‘no turning back' sign on the road. My friend Art who, like David, is a man not given to self-deception, wrote of falling in love with his wife Anna: ‘I don't remember a borderline between not love and love. It was obvious even from the edge that the water was deep.'

For David, a man of the dry inland, I would draw another analogy. The Murchison is dry most of the time. Nonetheless, spread throughout are the oases. Out here they are called ‘sweet patches' and in them grow tall trees, grasses and bushes, green even in the dry times. In the driest times animal life withdraws into these sweet patches to wait for rain. They are a refreshment to the pastoralist's spirit, with their promise that all the land will be green again when rain comes, and a place for life to hide out when it does not—and all pastoralists know each sweet patch on their land and visit them when they can. For David, Cathy stood out like a sweet patch in the dry land, and his destination was quickly set.

David was a direct person and not given to reflection. He would see what needed to be done or said, and do or say it. Added to this, from an early age he had picked and chosen from among the prevailing social norms. This is something that many School of the Air children do. The rest of us are taught in the primary-school playground that what other people think counts, but School of the Air children often play only with their siblings and the family pets. David was far more his own man in consequence and so, even though he was Catholic, he had never taken on the social norm of ‘nuns belong to the Lord and aren't for marrying'.

He set about courting Cathy. But this was not a standard courtship, as Cathy herself had no idea she was participating in such a thing. David did need to reflect at length, perhaps for the first time in his life, on how to get to know Cathy without causing her to back away from the friendship. He attempted to be with her on all occasions, he went out of his way to help, and he began sharing all he could of his life with her.

Cathy doesn't remember exactly when it was borne upon her that it wasn't only David's family she liked so much—and, after all, both his family and hers were complex, passionate, fun-loving Catholic families—but David himself, in particular. The veil of not-knowing would sometimes flutter up, only to come down and blind her to the significance of their connection once more.

‘One day Janet's daughter Simone rang me up. She was only two years old but she had terrific language. She said, “Could you come and stay at my house?” so I played along and said, “Oh yes, and what day would you like me to come, Simone?” In the end Janet took the phone and said she was coming into town and could pick me up. She asked if I could stay for a couple of days. And then I discovered that Josie and Henry were going to be away and David was staying with Paul and Janet …'

A look of remembered consciousness flashes across Cathy's mobile face. She called a friend in Melbourne. Trisha had been a nun but she had left her congregation as it wasn't a good fit for her. Cathy explained the situation to her. Perhaps she shouldn't go, with a single young man being there too? Trisha laughed, and said “Go on, you'll have a great time,” and so Cathy went. What a revelation this hesitation was! Cathy didn't know David well and knew too that she generally found men easy company and no threat at all to her choice to be in religious life yet, quite correctly, something about David, even on little acquaintance, was ringing her alarm bells.

‘So there I was having breakfast, lunch, dinner with David, Paul and Janet … and there were times when I just was talking to David. And I thought, “Crikey, this is a bit … interesting.” It was quite a different feeling than I'd had with anyone else I'd ever related to.'

She now saw David often. He'd not been a regular church attender, but now, with an ulterior motive firmly in place, his lanky relaxed frame was very visible most Sundays. She was pleased to see him every time, her response untrammelled by any awkward consciousness of just why he was there. Often he'd drop into the convent as well and they would talk.

‘I don't know why the other nuns left me alone so often,' says Cathy comically, and I can't help laughing. ‘The order didn't send any young ones after me for a long time either,' she adds in a thoughtful tone. And the other nuns do seem to have been away quite a lot.

‘When the other nuns were all away travelling for the Feast of St Benedict, I thought, “Well, because it's the Feast of St Benedict, I'm going to have a party.” And so I invited people, including Janet and Paul, and I said to Janet, “If David wants to come, tell him to come.” He came as well, and it was a fun night. We had a shared dinner and conversation. Even then I didn't consciously think about it, but I was really happy that he'd come. I remember seeing him helping Janet with Simone and carrying her out to the car, and thinking, “Oh, he's lovely with little children.”'

It wasn't long after this that she did know, finally and fully, how she felt about David. He had dropped in after a function Cathy had organised for children. It was a rainy day, and the children were excited, and she looked up to see David talking to Janet. David nodded to her, and smiled, and came over to talk … and as Cathy thought to herself, ‘How nice to see him', she suddenly knew just how attracted to him she was. It was a double awareness: she realised her own feelings and for the first time made a guess at David's own.

Finally Cathy was awake. Her first thought was that it must be infatuation on both sides and she knew that that feeling was not one to trust. But was it infatuation? In the midst of this unlooked-for confusion, this sense of David having overturned her beautifully balanced applecart on its pre-determined path, the convent was visited by the congregation leader for Western Australia, Sister Colleen. Cathy knew her well and had a great respect for her, having lived with her in Adelaide.

‘And Colleen said to me: “Where to from here?” Because normally nuns will go to a place, stay there a set time and move onto something else. She said: “Maybe you'd like to do a theology degree?” And I would have! It would have been really good to go back to Melbourne to do a theology degree, I'd have enjoyed that. But when I was talking to her I did tell her that I wasn't sure what was happening, that it was probably nothing, but that there was a man around who was kind of … something was happening … but I was sure it was going to be nothing.'

Perhaps because for so long he had looked for a sign that Cathy was aware that he felt more for her than friendship, and finally he could read that in her face, perhaps because there was a chance she would leave Mt Magnet, or perhaps for both these reasons, David chose early July in 1992 to say exactly how he felt.

‘I used to go for walks in the evening. I went for a walk one evening, and went past the corner hotel. Henry Jones (David's father) and David were in there, so I stuck my head in to say hello. They said, “Come in, come in!” so of course I went in, because I liked David, didn't I? We were talking, and I said I had to go, because I needed to be home for tea and I was already a few minutes late. David came outside with me. And then he said: “I love you, and I just wish I could tell the whole world.” I knew he meant it and I thought, “Oh, no! What is going on in my life?” I knew then that I had to make a decision. Was I going to stay in religious life or was I going to leave?'

*

The Rule of St Benedict places great emphasis on willingness to listen for the voice of God and in doing so, transcend the limitations of your personal vision. Cathy's faith required that she not go against God's will. Was David, and marriage to him, simply a temptation away from the path she had rightly taken all those years before? She still wanted to be guided by God and to read, as if from a compass, the direction her life should take.

So Cathy immersed herself in the work that she had to do. In her spare time she walked, in every moment listening within for the voice of God. That year was a particularly good one for wildflowers, especially for everlastings, which are Cathy's favourites. Only in some years, when it rains for long enough and at the right time, do everlastings grace Western Australia's outback. In a good year they flow across great swathes of flat inland like the rain that calls them out of the soil. Everlastings grow best in the places where a puddle once sat. The deeper the water was, the higher the plant. So, where road edges were splashed with puddles, now they were splashed with everlastings. The channels that directed water away from the road and into the bush were occupied now by flowers, floating improbably above the softly grassed red earth. This hallucinatory effect is courtesy of their nearly invisible dark stems, and the way their papery heads respond to the softest zephyr.

In drawing comfort from the everlastings Cathy was also aware of their symbolism. One everlasting on its own does not achieve very much, but in assembly every pink, white or yellow flower works to create a glorious tapestry and Cathy prayed to be guided to the tapestry God had in mind for her. Although these flowers are called ‘everlastings', like us, they do not last forever. While Cathy believed in an eternal life of the spirit, she believed too that there is just one life for us all on the planet. How best could she give of herself in this life?

She called her friend Trisha again.

‘I said to Trisha: “I don't know what to do. I really like him, he really likes me, and he wants me to make a decision but I have to do God's will …” and Trisha said, “Cathy, God wants you to be happy.”'

Of course, for Christians those words are not as simple as they sound—they might sound like ‘you go, girl', but that is not what Trisha meant. She was suggesting to Cathy that guidance would come in the form of being shown where to find that happiness. Benedictines believe too that guidance should be looked for within everyday life and conversation and community, and so Cathy listened to her friend.

That night Cathy lit a lamp, knelt down on her prayer stool and prayed for many hours. It was very late when the thought came to her that she should take twelve months' leave from the community—and with the thought came an incredible feeling of peace, like the softest and warmest blanket, wrapping around her indecision, her confusion, her sense of failure. Weeks of turmoil slid away as the peace sank into her bones. Cathy knew she had finally set foot on the right path in God's eyes.

In the morning she rang to ask for leave, eventually speaking to the head of the congregation. Leaving religious life is a serious decision. Just as when she entered religious life counselling was required in order to ensure she was not acting on a whim, she was now required to trial life outside the convent before making a final decision, to ensure she was not being snared by infatuation. The head of the order asked Cathy to return to Melbourne so this counselling could take place.

With her request for leave in place she went to see David at Boogardie. At this stage David and Cathy's love was not even suspected by most people. However, David's mother Josie, a most devout Catholic—for whom it was unthinkable that any man should charm a nun away from her calling and out of the convent, and horrifying that a son of hers should do so!—was unable to dismiss her suspicion that this was in fact what David was doing. Josie is famous for her good cheer, her honesty, her good business mind—but inside the family she's also known for her ‘40 questions' and she was beginning to ask them.

Cathy found David at Janet and Paul's house. He was sensibly, but most unromantically, dressed in a tracksuit. Mt Magnet in late July is extremely cold. It was clear that Cathy had something important to say, so David suggested they move somewhere both warm and private—difficult in Janet's busy house with three little children who knew that these two adults could be counted on for games and attention. This warm and private place was Janet's pantry.

With the pantry door shut tight Cathy brought David up to date. He was delighted. He's not a man for half-measures or nuances of feeling. All he wanted was for Cathy to marry him.

The next visit was out to Boogardie, for Cathy and David to tell his parents Henry and Josie what was happening. Cathy was nervous about this, because the Joneses are a Catholic family and there is a general disapproval about nuns or priests renouncing their vows—she was equally concerned about the reaction of her own parents. She heard later from Josie that David didn't actually say who it was who was coming for dinner—he had simply said to his mother, on the way out the door in the morning, quite casually: ‘Somebody will be here for tea.' This was rather a typical statement by David (and, indeed, many station men) because, for all their isolation, stations can be very busy with people passing through—friends travelling, stock agents, agricultural department staff …

Cathy arrived, very nervous, homemade fruit cake in hand, and hoping that David would be in from work. He was, but he was in the shower, and it was Josie who came to the door. The sight of Cathy standing there must have transformed all Josie's teeming suspicions into an astonished and horrified certainty and she said, ‘Oh, it's you!' in a voice that clearly revealed this.

The four of them—David, Cathy, Josie and Henry—sat down to dinner and the conversation was wide-ranging but did not touch at all on why Cathy had come to dinner. At the meal's conclusion, Henry took in the increasingly taut atmosphere with foreboding and immediately excused himself.

‘He didn't muck around with things like this—he went straight to bed,' says Cathy, matter-of-factly, affectionately and comically. ‘The three of us went to sit in the lounge room and Josie asked all her questions. David charming a nun was the last thing she'd have wanted—she believed a nun should stay a nun and not go off and marry somebody. And she wanted to know, “What is going to happen? Will you still be able to be in the Catholic Church? Can you and David get married in the Catholic Church?” She was really concerned about that. I said, “Yes, we can get married in the Catholic Church—if I was a priest leaving it would be much harder. Women are dispensable, but priests are not. They are pretty strict on releasing them from their ordination, but it won't be a problem for me.”'