The Thorn Birds (34 page)

For fifteen miles the rough sheet of iron had jarred and bounced over the ground behind the team of draft horses, scarring the mud with deep gouges which would still be visible years later, even in the grass of other seasons. But it seemed they could go no farther; the swirling creek would keep them on its far side, with Drogheda only a mile away. They stood staring at the tops of the ghost gums, clearly visible even in the rain.

“I have an idea,” said Bob, turning to Father Ralph. “Father, you’re the only one on a fresh horse; it will have to be you. Ours will only swim the creek once—they’ve got no more in them after the mud and the cold. Go back and find some empty forty-four-gallon drums, and seal their lids shut so they can’t possibly leak or slip off. Solder them if necessary. We’ll need twelve of them, ten if you can’t find more. Tie them together and bring them back across the creek. We’ll lash them under the iron and float it across like a barge.”

Father Ralph did as he was told without question; it was a better idea than any he had to offer. Dominic O’Rourke of Dibban-Dibban had ridden in with two of his sons; he was a neighbor and not far away as distances went. When Father Ralph explained what had to be done they set about it quickly, scouring the sheds for empty drums, tipping chaff and oats out of drums empty of petrol but in use for storage, searching for lids, soldering the lids to the drums if they were rust-free and looked likely to withstand the battering they would get in the water. The rain was still falling, falling. It wouldn’t stop for another two days.

“Dominic, I hate to ask it of you, but when these people come in they’re going to be half dead. We’ll have to hold the funerals tomorrow, and even if the Gilly undertaker could make the coffins in time, we’d never get them out through the mud. Can any of you have a go at making a couple of coffins? I only need one man to swim the creek with me.”

The O’Rourke sons nodded; they didn’t want to see what the fire had done to Paddy or the boar to Stuart.

“We’ll do it, Dad,” said Liam.

Dragging the drums behind their horses, Father Ralph and Dominic O’Rourke rode down to the creek and swam it.

“There’s one thing, Father!” shouted Dominic. “We don’t have to dig graves in this bloody mud! I used to think old Mary was putting on the dog a bit too much when she put a marble vault in her backyard for Michael, but right at this minute if she was here, I’d kiss her!”

“Too right!” yelled Father Ralph.

They lashed the drums under the sheet of iron, six on either side, tied the canvas shroud down firmly, and swam the exhausted draft horses across on the rope which would finally tow the raft. Dominic and Tom sat astride the great beasts, and at the top of the Drogheda-side bank paused, looking back, while those still marooned hooked up the makeshift barge, pushed it to the bank and shoved it in. The draft horses began walking, Tom and Dominic cooeeing shrilly as the raft began to float. It bobbed and wallowed badly, but it stayed afloat long enough to be hauled out safely; rather than waste time dismantling the pontoons, the two impromptu postilions urged their mounts up the track toward the big house, the sheet of iron sliding along on its drums better than it had without them.

There was a ramp up to great doors at the baling end of the shearing shed, so they put the raft and its burden in the huge empty building amid the reeks of tar, sweat, lanolin and dung. Muffled in oilskins, Minnie and Cat had come down from the big house to take first vigil, and knelt one on either side of the iron bier, rosary beads clicking, voices rising and falling in cadences too well known to need the effort of memory.

The house was filling up. Duncan Gordon had arrived from Each-Uisge, Gareth Davies from Narrengang, Horry Hopeton from Beel-Beel, Eden Carmichael from Barcoola. Old Angus MacQueen had flagged down one of the ambling local goods trains and ridden with the engine driver to Gilly, where he borrowed a horse from Harry Gough and rode out with him. He had covered over two hundred miles of mud, one way or another.

“I’m wiped out, Father,” Horry said to the priest later as the seven of them sat in the small dining room eating steak-and-kidney pie. “The fire went through me from one end to the other and left hardly a sheep alive or a tree green. Lucky the last few years have been good is all I can say. I can afford to restock, and if this rain keeps up the grass will come back real quick. But heaven help us from another disaster during the next ten years, Father, because I won’t have anything put aside to meet it.”

“Well, you’re smaller than me, Horry,” Gareth Davies said, cutting into Mrs. Smith’s meltingly light flaky pastry with evident enjoyment. Nothing in the line of disasters could depress a black-soil plainsman’s appetite for long; he needed his food to meet them. “I reckon I lost about half of my acreage, and maybe two-thirds of my sheep, worse luck. Father, we need your prayers.”

“Aye,” said old Angus. “I wasna sae hard hit as wee Horry and Garry, Father, but bad enough for a’ that. I lost sixty thoosand of ma acres, and half ma wee sheep. ’Tis times like this, Father, make me wish I hadna left Skye as a young laddie.”

Father Ralph smiled. “It’s a passing wish, Angus, you know that. You left Skye for the same reason I left Clunamara. It was too small for you.”

“Aye, nae doot. The heather doesna make sic a bonnie blaze as the gums, eh, Father?”

It would be a strange funeral, thought Father Ralph as he looked around; the only women would be Drogheda women, for all the visiting mourners were men. He had taken a huge dose of laudanum to Fee after Mrs. Smith had stripped her, dried her and put her into the big bed she had shared with Paddy, and when she refused to drink it, weeping hysterically, he had held her nose and tipped it ruthlessly down her throat. Funny, he hadn’t thought of Fee breaking down. It had worked quickly, for she hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours. Knowing she was sound asleep, he rested easier. Meggie he kept tabs on; she was out in the cookhouse at the moment helping Mrs. Smith prepare food. The boys were all in bed, so exhausted they could hardly manage to peel off their wet things before collapsing. When Minnie and Cat concluded their stint of the vigil custom demanded because the bodies lay in a deserted, unblessed place, Gareth Davies and his son Enoch were taking over; the others allotted hour-long spans among themselves as they talked and ate.

None of the young men had joined their elders in the dining room. They were all in the cookhouse ostensibly helping Mrs. Smith, but in reality so they could look at Meggie. When he realized this fact Father Ralph was both annoyed and relieved. Well, it was out of their ranks she must choose her husband, as she inevitably would. Enoch Davies was twenty-nine, a “black Welshman,” which meant he was black-haired and very dark-eyed, a handsome man; Liam O’Rourke was twenty-six, sandy-haired and blue-eyed, like his twenty-five-year-old brother Rory; Connor Carmichael was the spit of his sister, older at thirty-two, and very good-looking indeed, if a little arrogant; the pick of the bunch in Father Ralph’s estimation was old Angus’s grandson Alastair, the closest to Meggie in age at twenty-four and a sweet young man, with his grandfather’s beautiful blue Scots eyes and hair already gray, a family trait. Let her fall in love with one of them, marry him, have the children she wanted so badly. Oh, God, my God, if You will do that for me, I’ll gladly bear the pain of loving her, gladly….

No flowers smothered these coffins, and the vases all around the chapel were empty. What blossoms had survived the terrible heat of the fiery air two nights ago had succumbed to the rain, and laid themselves down against the mud like ruined butterflies. Not even a stalk of bottle brush, or an early rose. And everyone was tired, so tired. Those who had ridden the long miles in the mud to show their liking for Paddy were tired, those who had brought the bodies in were tired, those who had slaved to cook and clean were tired, Father Ralph was so tired he felt as if he moved in a dream, eyes sliding away from Fee’s pinched, hopeless face, Meggie’s expression of mingled sorrow and anger, the collective grief of that collective cluster Bob, Jack and Hughie….

He gave no eulogy; Martin King spoke briefly and movingly on behalf of those assembled, and the priest went on into the Requiem immediately. He had as a matter of course brought his chalice, his sacraments and a stole, for no priest stirred without them when he went offering comfort or aid, but he had no vestments with him, and the house possessed none. But old Angus had called in at the presbytery in Gilly on his way, and carried the black mourning garb of a Requiem Mass wrapped in an oilskin across his saddle. So he stood properly attired with the rain hissing against the windows, drumming on the iron roof two stories up.

Then out into it, the grieving rain, across the lawn all browned and scorched by heat, to the little white-railinged cemetery. This time there were pallbearers willing to shoulder the plain rectangular boxes, slipping and sliding in the mud, trying to see where they were going through the rain beating in their eyes. And the little bells on the Chinese cook’s grave tinkled drably: Hee Sing, Hee Sing, Hee Sing.

It got itself over and done with. The mourners departed on their horses, backs hunched inside their oilskins, some of them staring miserably at the prospect of ruin, others thanking God they had escaped death and the fire. And Father Ralph got his few things together, knowing he must go before he couldn’t go.

He went to see Fee, where she sat at the escritoire staring mutely down at her hands.

“Fee, will you be all right?” he asked, sitting where he could see her.

She turned toward him, so still and quenched within her soul that he was afraid, and closed his eyes.

“Yes, Father, I’ll be all right. I have the books to keep, and five sons left—six if you count Frank, only I don’t suppose we can count Frank, can we? Thank you for that, more than I can ever say. It’s such a comfort to me knowing your people are watching out for him, making his life a little easier. Oh, if I could see him, just once!”

She was like a lighthouse, he thought; flashes of grief every time her mind came round to that pitch of emotion which was too great to be contained. A huge flare, and then a long period of nothing.

“Fee, I want you to think about something.”

“Yes, what?” she was dark again.

“Are you listening to me?” he asked sharply, worried and suddenly more frightened than before.

For a long moment he thought she had retreated so far into herself even the harshness of his voice hadn’t penetrated, but up blazed the beacon again, and her lips parted. “My poor Paddy! My poor Stuart! My poor Frank!” she mourned, then got herself under that iron control once more, as if she was determined to elongate her periods of darkness until the light shone no more in her lifetime.

Her eyes roamed the room without seeming to recognize it. “Yes, Father, I’m listening,” she said.

“Fee, what about your daughter? Do you ever remember that you have a daughter?”

The grey eyes lifted to his face, dwelled on it almost pityingly. “Does any woman? What’s a daughter? Just a reminder of the pain, a younger version of oneself who will do all the things one has done, cry the same tears. No, Father. I try to forget I have a daughter—if I do think of her, it is as one of my sons. It’s her sons a mother remembers.”

“Do you cry tears, Fee? I’ve only seen them once.”

“You’ll never see them again, for I’ve finished with tears forever.” Her whole body quivered. “Do you know something, Father? Two days ago I discovered how much I love Paddy, but it was like all of my life—too late. Too late for him, too late for me. If you knew how I wanted the chance to take him in my arms, tell him I loved him! Oh, God, I hope no other human being ever has to feel my pain!”

He turned away from that suddenly ravaged face, to give it time to don its calm, and himself time to cope with understanding the enigma who was Fee.

He said, “No one else can ever feel
your
pain.”

One corner of her mouth lifted in a stern smile. “Yes. That’s a comfort, isn’t it? It may not be enviable, but my pain is
mine
.”

“Will you promise me something, Fee?”

“If you like.”

“Look after Meggie, don’t forget her. Make her go to the local dances, let her meet a few young men, encourage her to think of marriage and a home of her own. I saw all the young men eyeing her today. Give her the opportunity to meet them again under happier circumstances than these.”

“Whatever you say, Father.”

Sighing, he left her to the contemplation of her thin white hands.

Meggie walked with him to the stables, where the Imperial publican’s bay gelding had been stuffing itself on hay and bran and dwelling in some sort of equine heaven for two days. He flung the publican’s battered saddle on its back and bent to strap the surcingle and girth while Meggie leaned against a bale of straw and watched him.

“Father, look what I found,” she said as he finished and straightened. She held out her hand, in it one pale, pinkish-gray rose. “It’s the only one. I found it on a bush under the tank stands, at the back. I suppose it didn’t get the same heat in the fire, and it was sheltered from the rain. So I picked it for you. It’s something to remember me by.”

He took the half-open bloom from her, his hand not quite steady, and stood looking down at it. “Meggie, I need no reminder of you, not now, not ever. I carry you within me, you know that. There’s no way I could hide it from you, is there?”

“But sometimes there’s a reality about a keepsake,” she insisted. “You can take it out and look at it, and remember when you see it all the things you might forget otherwise. Please take it, Father.”

“My name is Ralph,” he said. He opened his little sacrament case and took out the big missal which was his own property, bound in costly mother-of-pearl. His dead father had given it to him at his ordination, thirteen long years ago. The pages fell open at a great thick white ribbon; he turned over several more, laid the rose down, and shut the book upon it. “Do you want a keepsake from me, Meggie, is that it?”