The Stranger House (25 page)

“That would in the circumstances be taking coals to Newcastle, isn’t that the phrase? It’s a fresh battery so we should be all right. Mrs Appledore can’t be too long. I am sure the drinkers of Illthwaite expect their pub to open on time. Why don’t we sit down and wait till we hear something from above.”

“OK. As long as you mean in the kitchen.”

This amused him. They sat side by side, the torch between them, leaning against one of the walls. After a while he said, “Tell me about yourself, Sam.”

“What’s this? Occupational therapy, or the confessional?”

“Whatever you want it to be. I just thought talking might pass the time.”

“And stop me throwing another wobbly, you mean?”

“That would be a good result,” he agreed, “But it would help me as well. Darkness holds terrors for me too sometimes. Not the same as yours, but real and devastating nonetheless.”

“That’s supposed to comfort me?” she said, “Look, if we’re going to talk, I need something to call you. What was it Dracula’s daughter from the Hall called you? Mick?”

“Not Mick. Mig. That’s what my friends call me.”

“Then that will have to do, though it doesn’t mean we’re friends.”

“And I shall continue to call you Sam, with the same qualification.”

“I thought you men of God had to be friends with everyone,” she said.

“Indeed,” he said, “But with some people it’s harder than others.”

She knew what he was trying to do. Get her angry, get her talking, get her doing anything that might keep the darkness from finding its way into the heart of her being.

She said, “I remember my pa sitting with some of his mates having a drink one night and one of them had the toothache real bad. And Pa said to him, ‘Have you tried shoving a banana up your arse?’ And he said, ‘Will that work?’ And Pa said, ‘No, but it’ll give your friends a laugh.’”

Madero laughed and said, “Stoicism Australasian style. You love your father, I think, Sam.”

“Yeah. Don’t you?”

“Yes, I did. I miss him greatly.”

“He’s dead? I’m sorry.”

“Me too. My religion says I shouldn’t be, but I am.”

“How come you still go on about your religion even after you gave it up?”

“You’ve been talking about me? I’m flattered. But you are misinformed. It would be truer to say it gave me up, or rather it directed me to another path. But I still need it to tell me who I am. What about you, Sam? Perhaps you are one of the lucky ones who are so sure who they are that external help isn’t necessary. So who are you, Sam? Why don’t you tell me who you are, so I’ll know whether I can like you or not?”

She fixed her eyes on the torch and thought, why not? Might as well talk about herself before that self became reduced to a single unit of terror as small as that point of light.

“Why not?” she said, “Seeing I don’t have anything better to do.”

She took a deep breath and began.

Tell you who I am? That’s hard.

You grow up and no one ever tells you who you are. Not even maths, which tells you most things, can do that. You’ve got to find out for yourself. Mostly you do it piecemeal, one small new thing following another till, with luck, you get a picture.

Sometimes you get a big piece and don’t recognize it. Not till much later. I got one when I was eleven, but I managed to ignore it for the next ten years.

I was at university by then and I reckoned I was pretty cool. I knew how the world ticked. Life was a game of chance, if you got dealt a decent hand, you’d be mad not to play it. Me, I was good, I’d drawn four to a running flush: I had a loving home, good health, no financial worries, and I was doing a course I loved.

Mathematics.

At school it was dead easy. I’ve got one of those memories, I can scan a page and recall every word of it, even if I don’t understand half of what it means. It wasn’t till I got to university that I began to feel even slightly stretched, and I loved it.

I had great tutors, one in particular, Andy Jamieson, a Pom from Cambridge UK on sabbatical. In my finals
year, AJ asked me if I fancied coming to his old college to do my doctorate. My best friend Martie who was at Melbourne with me was sure he wanted to get into my pants. But I knew the truth was both better and worse. AJ hadn’t got the slightest interest in my body. He just knew I was a better mathematician than he was.

That’s not vain, by the way. In maths you know these things.

I said yes, why not? It was only later the thought of travelling right across the world began to get to me. When I was eleven I’d seen this TV play about these kids who got shoved on a boat without a by-your-leave and ferried out to Oz to start a new life. It really got to me then, but I hadn’t thought about it for years. Now I recalled those poor kids in the play who’d made the journey the other way, not knowing what awaited them, and I felt really ashamed of feeling scared.

I got my First then came home to work for Pa to earn some bucks to help finance the trip. He’d have coughed up the lot, no problem, but I could see he was pleased. My mate Martie was getting married to some jock with a Greek-god profile whose old man owned half of Victoria. She asked me to join her on a pre-wedding shopping spree, and Pa told me to go and kit myself out with some wet weather gear for Cambridge.

We’d been away three days, having a great time, when my mobile rang. It was Ma, telling me that Gramma Ada, that’s my pa’s ma who lived with us, had collapsed. It was her heart, it was bad.

I headed home straightaway. Gramma had been part of my life for so long that I couldn’t imagine how things could be without her.

Maybe I’d get home and find it had all been a false alarm, I told myself. But when I saw the priest’s car parked outside the house, I knew things must be bad. Your money or your life, that’s all those bastards ever want from you, that’s what my pa used to say.

Sorry.

Gramma was a Catholic. Pa never got in the way of that, but he didn’t even pay lip service. I didn’t know why he took against your lot so much, but I let him set my agenda because he was my pa and knew everything.

When I got to know what he knew, I was glad.

Sometimes Gramma would talk to me about the Church in her easy-going loving way, usually after the priest had paid a visit. I think he must have gone on at her about me. I don’t know if he ever had a go at Pa, but if he did, I’d guess he only tried once.

When I went up to Gramma’s room, I thought I was too late. She lay there like a corpse and for the first time it struck me how very old she was. I knew Pa was only just turned forty. And I knew Gramma was eighty-five. But it wasn’t till I saw her lying there that it occurred to me that she must have been well into her forties when she had Pa.

So much for my mathematical mind.

Ma said, “Here’s Sammy to see you.”

I went and sat down by the bed. On the other side sat the priest, playing with those beads you lot lug around. I once asked Pa about them. He said they were like a holy abacus to help reckon up how much the Church was going to get from someone’s will.

Gramma’s priest looked like he was minded to stay but Ma said, “Let’s go downstairs and brew a pot of tea, Father.” She could be pretty firm herself, Ma.

I took Gramma’s hand and she opened her eyes, recognized me and said, “Sammy, you’re here. That’s OK then,” and closed her eyes again.

For a second I thought that she’d just held on till I got home then decided to give up the ghost. But now she spoke again, so low I had to strain to hear her.

What she said didn’t make much sense.

She said, “I thought not having kids of my own was a curse, but it turned out a blessing. Soon as I saw him I knew your pa was the one, even before I heard his name. And then he gave us you with your lovely red hair. That’s the colour I’d have chosen for myself, and now I’d got it in you, and that was even better ‘cos I’d got you with it.”

She reached up to touch my hair, but she didn’t have the strength, so I bent over her and let it fall over her hand and her face and when I drew back she was gone.

I didn’t say anything to anyone till after the funeral.

That was a real bash. She’d been well loved. Afterwards everyone came back to the house even though it was a hell of a drive for most of them. The priest was there too. He’d given Gramma a good send-off in the church, so I reckon he deserved his throat-easer, and you had to admire the way he downed the stuff like mother’s milk.

When he came to take his leave, he offered Pa his hand, which Pa took like it was a copperhead.

“I’ll be off now, Sam,” he said, real hearty, like they were best mates, “I know how much you’ll miss your ma. I promised her I’d keep an eye on you all and I’ll be back very soon to see how you’re getting on.”

“No, you won’t,” said Pa.

You could have heard a pin drop.

“I’m sorry?” said the priest.

“You heard,” said Pa.

I said he didn’t waste words.

And to give the priest his due, he had the sense not to keep pressing.

He went out of the door. Pa turned to the remaining guests and said, “All this talking makes a man thirsty. Who’s empty?”

It was later that same night after all our visitors had gone and me and Ma and Pa were sitting together nursing mugs of tea that I spoke.

I told them what Gramma had said and asked what it meant.

Pa didn’t hesitate. He said, “They adopted me.”

I said, “Is that it?”

He said, “I’m adopted. You’re not. What’s your problem?”

I could see his point. I mean he was the one who’d found out his ma and pa weren’t his real ma and pa, not me. But I’d still felt my life had taken a little lurch.

I said, “I’ve just seen someone I thought was my grandmother put in the ground, now I find she wasn’t really related to me at all.”

“So you’re going to miss her less?”

“No, of course not!’

“Well then.”

He stood up and ran his fingers through my hair.

“Your ma knows the tale, such as it is. I’ve got some things I need to check.”

I sometimes think Pa will live forever, ‘cos whenever death comes for him, he’ll always have something he needs to check.

When he’d gone out, I turned to Ma and said, “Well?”

And she told me what she knew from talking to Gramma over the years and what she’d managed to extract from Pa.

Gramma Flood’s tale was one of sorrow turned to joy.

She’d wanted children and so had Granpa. When she reached her forties and they hadn’t come, their thoughts turned to adoption.

Technically they were a bit old, but they were in good with their priest, who gave them such a red-hot intro to a Catholic adoption agency, they checked out fine.

No shortage, it seemed. Odd thing that about you Catholics; even those ready to risk the sin of fornication still draw the line at contraception.

Gramma loved to tell Ma the tale. Seems Granpa was taken by a strapping boy with lung power to match his physique. Then Gramma spotted this smaller kid, with a stubble of red hair. He lay very quiet, though when you got close you could see his eyes were alert and watchful. When the nun in charge saw her interest, she smiled and said, “Now I think there may be a message here for you, Mrs Flood. You take this one, you won’t have to change his name because he’s called Flood already. Sam Flood.”

That clinched matters. How could this be simple coincidence? asked Gramma. In her eyes, this baby was gift-wrapped from God. And Sam, my pa, seemed to confirm her judgment by growing up a loving son and taking to wine-making like it was in his blood.

In himself he stayed as he was when first she saw him: quiet, watchful, self-contained. Granpa saw no reason to tell him he’d been adopted, but Gramma thought different and when he got to sixteen, she decided it was time to tell him the truth.

Not that there was much to tell. All she knew was that his mother had been a young woman who’d got into trouble, turned to the nuns for help, and died in childbirth. No details known about her origins or the baby’s father.

I can see Pa taking in this news. I bet he said next to nothing, asked a couple of brief questions maybe, showed no emotion. But a couple of days later he vanished.

He was away for a week. He’d gone in search of more information about his real mother. What he discovered seems little enough, but for a boy of sixteen to discover anything was remarkable. Don’t know who’s better at walling up a secret, the government bureaucrats or you Catholic bastards.

Sorry. Maybe things are better now, but this was a decade before that English woman who finally got all this murky stuff out in the open started chipping away. Don’t expect her book was on the curriculum at your seminary, but if you ever get to read it, you’ll see what a hell of a job she had to make progress.

What he discovered was that his mother, Samantha Flood, far from being a young woman who’d got into trouble and sought the help of the nuns, had been little more than a child herself and already in the nuns’ care when she got pregnant.

And she was English, an orphan brought out here for resettlement.

When Ma told me this my mind went hurtling back ten years.

“You mean she was like those kids in that play?” I asked incredulously.

“Looks like it,” said Ma, “Back then no one knew how many of them there were, of course. Somehow your pa
got to see her death certificate. It gave her address as St Rumbald’s Orphanage.”

“This wasn’t where Gramma went to choose Pa then?” I interrupted.

“No, that was the baby unit of the Catholic Hospital. They don’t have facilities for taking care of infants out at St Rumbald’s. Or anyone, from the sound of it. Your pa hitched a lift out there and asked to see the records but they told him there weren’t any. He got real frustrated. That’s why he decked the priest.”

Told you you wouldn’t like this.

“Pa hit a priest?” I said, surprised without being amazed, “Why?”

“I asked him that,” she said with a bit of a smile, “He said, hitting a nun wouldn’t have looked so good. But when I pressed him, he said he reckoned the tight rein those nuns kept their girls on, the only bastards who’d get close enough to dip their wicks would have to be priests.”