The Thorn Birds (29 page)

If it hadn’t been for Father Ralph’s continued absence, Meggie for one would have been absolutely happy. This was what she had always longed to do: be out there in the paddocks astride a horse, doing stockman’s work. Yet the ache for Father Ralph was always there, too, the memory of his kiss something to be dreamed about, treasured, felt again a thousand times. However, memory wasn’t a patch on reality; try as she would, the actual sensation couldn’t be conjured up, only a shadow of it, like a thin sad cloud.

When he wrote to tell them about Frank, her hopes that he would use this as a pretext to visit them were abruptly shatttered. His description of the trip to see, Frank in Goulburn Gaol was carefully worded, stripped of the pain it had engendered, giving no hint of Frank’s steadily worsening psychosis. He had tried vainly to have Frank committed to Morisset asylum for the criminally insane, but no one had listened. So he simply passed on an idealistic image of a Frank resigned to paying for his sins to society, and in a passage heavily underlined told Paddy Frank had no idea they knew what had happened. It had come to his ears, he assured Frank, through Sydney newspapers, and he would make sure the family never knew. After being told this, Frank settled better, he said, and left it at that.

Paddy talked of selling Father Ralph’s chestnut mare. Meggie used the rangy black gelding she had ridden for pleasure as a stock horse, for it was lighter-mouthed and nicer in nature than the moody mares or mean geldings in the yards. Stock horses were intelligent, and rarely placid. Even a total absence of stallions didn’t make them very amiable animals.

“Oh, please, Daddy, I can ride the chestnut, too!” Meggie pleaded. “Think how awful it would be if after all his kindnesses to us, Father should come back to visit and discover we had sold his horse!”

Paddy stared at her thoughtfully. “Meggie, I don’t think Father will come back.”

“But he might! You never know!”

The eyes so like Fee’s were too much for him; he couldn’t bring himself to hurt her more than she was already hurt, poor little thing. “All right then, Meggie, we’ll keep the mare, but make sure you use both the mare and the gelding regularly, for I won’t have a fat horse on Drogheda, do you hear?”

Until then she hadn’t liked to use Father Ralph’s own mount, but after that she alternated to give both the animals in the stables a chance to work off their oats.

It was just as well Mrs. Smith, Minnie and Cat doted on the twins, for with Meggie out in the paddocks and Fee sitting for hours at her escritoire in the drawing room, the two little fellows had a wonderful time. They were into everything, but with such glee and constant good humor that no one could be angry with them for very long. At night in her little house Mrs. Smith, long converted to Catholicism, knelt to her prayers with such deep thankfulness in her heart she could scarcely contain it. Children of her own had never come to gladden her when Rob had been alive, and for years the big house had been childless, its occupants forbidden to mix with the inhabitants of the stockmen’s houses down by the creek. But when the Clearys came they were Mary Carson’s kin, and there were children at last. Especially now, with Jims and Patsy permanent residents of the big house.

It had been a dry winter, and the summer rains didn’t come. Knee-high and lush, the tawny grass dried out in the stark sun until even the inner core of each blade was crisp. To look across the paddocks required slitted eyes and a hat brim drawn far down on the forehead; the grass was mirror-silver, and little spiral whirlwinds sped busily among shimmering blue mirages, transferring dead leaves and fractured grass blades from one restless heap to another.

Oh, but it was dry! Even the trees were dry, the bark falling from them in stiff, crunchy ribbons. No danger yet of the sheep starving—the grass would last another year at least, maybe more—but no one liked to see everything so dry. There was always a good chance the rain would not come next year, or the year after. In a good year they got ten to fifteen inches, in a bad year less than five, perhaps close to none at all.

In spite of the heat and the flies, Meggie loved life out in the paddocks, walking the chestnut mare behind a bleating mob of sheep while the dogs lay flat on the ground, tongues lolling, deceptively inattentive. Let one sheep bolt out of the tightly packed cluster and the nearest dog would be away, a streak of vengeance, sharp teeth hungering to nip into a hapless heel.

Meggie rode ahead of her mob, a welcome relief after breathing their dust for several miles, and opened the paddock gate. She waited patiently while the dogs, reveling in this chance to show her what they could do, bit and goaded the sheep through. It was harder mustering and droving cattle, for they kicked or charged, often killing an unwary dog; that was when the human herdsman had to be ready to do his bit, use his whip, but the dogs loved the spice of danger working cattle. However, to drove cattle was not required of her; Paddy attended to that himself.

But the dogs never ceased to fascinate her; their intelligence was phenomenal. Most of the Drogheda dogs were kelpies, coated in rich brownish tan with creamy paws, chests and eyebrows, but there were Queensland blues too, larger, with blue-grey coats dappled in black, and all varieties of crossbreds between kelpie and blue. The bitches came in heat, were scientifically mated, increased and whelped; after weaning and growing, their pups were tried out in the paddocks, and if good were kept or sold, if no good shot.

Whistling her dogs to heel, Meggie shut the gate on the mob and turned the chestnut mare toward home. Nearby was a big stand of trees, stringybark and iron-bark and black box, an occasional wilga on its outskirts. She rode into its shade thankfully, and having now the leisure to look around, let her eyes roam in delight. The gums were full of budgies, skawking and whistling their parodies of songbirds; finches wheeled from branch to branch; two sulphur-crested cockatoos sat with their heads to one side watching her progress with twinkling eyes; willy-wagtails fossicked in the dirt for ants, their absurd rumps bobbing; crows carked eternally and mournfully. Theirs was the most obnoxious noise in the whole bush song repertoire, so devoid of joy, desolate and somehow soul-chilling, speaking of rotting flesh, of carrion and blowflies. To think of a crow singing like a bellbird was impossible; cry and function fitted perfectly.

Of course there were flies everywhere; Meggie wore a veil over her hat, but her bare arms were constantly plagued, and the chestnut mare’s tail never stopped swishing, its flesh never stopped shivering and creeping for a second. It amazed Meggie that even through the thickness of hide and hair, a horse could feel something as delicate and airy as a fly. They drank sweat, which was why they tormented horses and humans so, but humans never let them do what sheep did, so they used the sheep for a more intimate purpose, laying their eggs around the rump wool, or wherever the wool was damp and dirty.

The air was full of the noise of bees, and alive with brilliant quick dragonflies seeking out the bore drains, alive with exquisitely colored butterflies and day moths. Her horse turned over a piece of rotting log with a hoof; Meggie stared at its underside, her skin crawling. There were witchetty grubs, fat and white and loathsome, wood lice and slugs, huge centipedes and spiders. From burrows rabbits hopped and skittled, flashed back inside with white powder puffs up in the air, then turned to peer out, noses twitching. Farther on an echidna broke off its quest after ants, panicked at her approach. Burrowing so fast that its strong clawed feet were hidden in seconds, it began to disappear under a huge log. Its antics as it dug were amusing, the cruel spines lying flat all over its body to streamline its entry into the ground, earth flying in heaps.

She came out of the timber on the main track to the homestead. A sheet of dappled grey occupied its dust, galahs picking for insects or grubs, but as they heard her coming they took to the air en masse. It was like being inundated by a magenta-pink wave; breasts and underwings soared above her head, the grey turned magically to rich pink. If I had to leave Drogheda tomorrow, she thought, never again to come back, in my dreams I’d live Drogheda in a wash of pink galah undersides…. It must be getting very dry farther out; the kangas are coming in, more and more of them….

A great mob of kangaroos, maybe two thousand strong, was startled out of its placid grazing by the galahs and took off into the distance in long, graceful leaps which swallowed the leagues faster than any other animal save the emu. Horses couldn’t keep up with them.

In between these delightful bouts of nature-studying she thought of Ralph, as always. Privately Meggie had never catalogued what she felt for him as a schoolgirl crush, simply called it love, as they did in books. Her symptoms and feelings were no different from those of an Ethel M. Dell heroine. Nor did it seem fair that a barrier as artificial as his priesthood could stand between her and what she wanted of him, which was to have him as her husband. To live with him as Daddy did with Mum, in such harmony he would adore her the way Daddy did Mum. It had never seemed to Meggie that her mother did very much to earn her father’s adoration, yet worship her he did. So Ralph would soon see that to live with her was far better than living on his own; for it had not dawned upon her that Ralph’s priesthood was something he could not abandon under any circumstances. Yes, she knew it was forbidden to have a priest as husband or lover, but she had got into the habit of getting around it by stripping Ralph of his religious office. Her formal education in Catholicism had never advanced to discussions of the nature of priestly vows, and she was not herself in need of religion, so didn’t pursue it voluntarily. Obtaining no satisfaction from praying, Meggie obeyed the laws of the Church simply because not to do so meant burning in Hell throughout eternity.

In her present daydream she rambled through the bliss of living with him and sleeping with him, as Daddy did with Mum. Then the thought of his nearness excited her, made her shift in the saddle restlessly; she translated it into a deluge of kisses, having no other criterion. Riding the paddocks hadn’t advanced her sexual education at all, for the mere sniff of a dog in the far distance drove all desire to mate out of any animal’s mind, and as on all stations, indiscriminate mating was not allowed. When the rams were sent among the ewes of a particular paddock, Meggie was dispatched elsewhere, and the sight of one dog humping another was simply the signal to flick the pair with her whip, stop their “playing.”

Perhaps no human being is equipped to judge which is worse; inchoate longing with its attendant restlessness and irritability, or specific desire with its willful drive to achieve the desire. Poor Meggie longed, quite what for she didn’t know, but the basic pull was there, and it dragged her inexorably in the direction of Ralph de Bricassart. So she dreamed of him, yearned for him, wanted him; and mourned, that in spite of his declared love for her she meant so little to him that he never came to see her.

Into the middle of her thoughts rode Paddy, heading for the homestead on the same course as she was; smiling, she reined in the chestnut mare and waited for him to catch up.

“What a nice surprise,” said Paddy, walking his old roan beside his daughter’s middle-aged mare.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “Is it dry farther out?”

“A bit worse than this, I think. Lord, I’ve never seen so many kangas! It must be bone dry out Milparinka way. Martin King was talking of a big shoot, but I don’t see how an army of machine guns could reduce the number of kangas by enough to see the difference.”

He was so nice, so thoughtful and forgiving and loving; and it was rarely that she ever had the chance to be with him without at least one of the boys in attendance. Before she could change her mind, Meggie asked the doubting question, the one which gnawed and preyed in spite of all her internal reassurances.

“Daddy, why doesn’t Father de Bricassart ever come to see us?”

“He’s busy, Meggie,” Paddy answered, but his voice had become wary.

“But even priests have holidays, don’t they? He used to love Drogheda so, I’m sure he’d want to spend his holidays here.”

“In one way priests have holidays, Meggie, but in another way they’re never off duty. For instance, every day of their lives they have to say Mass, even if quite alone. I think Father de Bricassart is a very wise man, and knows that it’s never possible to go back to a way of life that’s gone. For him, wee Meggie, Drogheda’s a bit of the past. If he came back, it wouldn’t give him the same sort of pleasure it used to.”

“You mean he’s forgotten us,” she said dully.

“No, not really. If he had, he wouldn’t write so often, or demand news about each of us.” He turned in his saddle, his blue eyes pitying. “I think it’s best that he doesn’t ever come back, so I don’t encourage him to think of it by inviting him.”

“Daddy!”

Paddy plunged into muddy waters doggedly. “Look, Meggie, it’s wrong for you to dream about a priest, and it’s time you understood that. You’ve kept your secret pretty well, I don’t think anyone else knows how you feel about him, but it’s to me your questions come, isn’t it? Not many, but enough. Now take it from me, you’ve got to stop, hear it? Father de Bricassart took holy vows I know he has absolutely no intention of breaking, and you’ve mistaken his fondness for you. He was a grown man when he met you, and you were a little girl. Well, that’s how he thinks of you, Meggie, to this very day.”

She didn’t answer, nor did her face change. Yes, he thought, she’s Fee’s daughter, all right.

After a while she said tautly, “But he could stop being a priest. It’s just that I haven’t had a chance to talk to him about it.”

The shock on Paddy’s face was too genuine not to believe it, so Meggie found it more convincing than his words, vehement though they were.

“Meggie! Oh, good God, that’s the worst of this bush existence! You ought to be in school, my girl, and if Auntie Mary had died sooner I would have packed you off to Sydney in time to get at least a couple of years under your belt. But you’re too old, aren’t you? I wouldn’t have them laugh at you at your age, poor wee Meggie.” He continued more gently, spacing his words to give them a sharp, lucid cruelty, though it was not his intention to be cruel, only to dispel illusions once and for all. “Father de Bricassart is a
priest
, Meggie. He can never, never stop being a priest, understand that. The vows he took are sacred, too solemn to break. Once a man is a priest there can be no turning away, and his supervisors in the seminary make absolutely sure that he knows what he’s swearing before he does. A man who takes those vows knows beyond any doubt that once taken they can’t be broken, ever. Father de Bricassart took them, and he’ll never break them.” He sighed. “Now you know, Meggie, don’t you? From this moment you have no excuse to daydream about Father de Bricassart.”