The Thorn Birds (82 page)

Twice she tried to go home to Drogheda on a visit, the second time even going so far as to pay for her plane ticket. Each time an enormously important lastminute reason why she couldn’t go cropped up, but she knew the real reason to be a combination of guilt and cowardice. She just wasn’t able to nerve herself to confront her mother; to do so meant the whole sorry tale would come out, probably in the midst of a noisy storm of grief she had so far managed to avoid. The Drogheda people, especially her mother, must continue to go about secure in their conviction that Justine at any rate was all right, that Justine had survived it relatively unscathed. So, better to stay away from Drogheda. Much better.

Meggie caught herself on a sigh, suppressed it. If her bones didn’t ache so much she might have saddled a horse and ridden, but today the mere thought of it was painful. Some other time, when her arthritis didn’t make its presence felt so cruelly.

She heard a car, the thump of the brass ram’s head on the front door, heard voices murmuring, her mother’s tones, footsteps. Not Justine, so what did it matter?

“Meggie,” said Fee from the veranda entrance, “we have a visitor. Could you come inside, please?”

The visitor was a distinguished-looking fellow in early middle age, though he might have been younger than he appeared. Very different from any man she had ever seen, except that he possessed the same sort of power and self-confidence Ralph used to have.
Used to have
. That most final of tenses, now truly final.

“Meggie, this is Mr. Rainer Hartheim,” said Fee, standing beside her chair.

“Oh!” exclaimed Meggie involuntarily, very surprised at the look of the Rain who had figured so largely in Justine’s letters from the old days. Then, remembering her manners, “Do sit down, Mr. Hartheim.”

He too was staring, startled. “You’re not a bit like Justine!” he said rather blankly.

“No, I’m not.” She sat down facing him.

“I’ll leave you alone with Mr. Hartheim, Meggie, as he says he wants to see you privately. When you’re ready for tea you might ring,” Fee commanded, and departed.

“You’re Justine’s German friend, of course,” said Meggie, at a loss.

He pulled out his cigarette case. “May I?”

“Please do.”

“Would you care for one, Mrs. O’Neill?”

“Thank you, no. I don’t smoke.” She smoothed her dress. “You’re a long way from home, Mr. Hartheim. Have you business in Australia?”

He smiled, wondering what she would say if she knew that he was, in effect, the master of Drogheda. But he had no intention of telling her, for he preferred all the Drogheda people to think their welfare lay in the completely impersonal hands of the gentleman he employed to act as his go-between.

“Please, Mrs. O’Neill, my name is Rainer,” he said, giving it the same pronunciation Justine did, while thinking wryly that this woman wouldn’t use it spontaneously for some time to come; she was not one to relax with strangers. “No, I don’t have any official business in Australia, but I do have a good reason for coming. I wanted to see you.”

“To see
me
?” she asked in surprise. As if to cover sudden confusion, she went immediately to a safer subject: “My brothers speak of you often. You were very kind to them while they were in Rome for Dane’s ordination.” She said Dane’s name without distress, as if she used it frequently. “I hope you can stay a few days, and see them.”

“I can, Mrs. O’Neill,” he answered easily.

For Meggie the interview was proving unexpectedly awkward; he was a stranger, he had announced that he had come twelve thousand miles simply to see her, and apparently he was in no hurry to enlighten her as to why. She thought she would end in liking him, but she found him slightly intimidating. Perhaps his kind of man had never come within her ken before, and this was why he threw her off-balance. A very novel conception of Justine entered her mind at that moment: her daughter could actually relate easily to men like Rainer Moerling Hartheim! She thought of Justine as a fellow woman at last.

Though aging and white-haired she was still very beautiful, he was thinking while she sat gazing at him politely; he was still surprised that she looked not at all like Justine, as Dane had so strongly resembled the Cardinal. How terribly lonely she must be! Yet he couldn’t feel sorry for her in the way he did for Justine; clearly, she had come to terms with herself.

“How is Justine?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I’m afraid I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since before Dane died.”

She didn’t display astonishment. “I haven’t seen her myself since Dane’s funeral,” she said, and sighed. “I’d hoped she would come home, but it begins to look as if she never will.”

He made a soothing noise which she didn’t seem to hear, for she went on speaking, but in a different voice, more to herself than to him.

“Drogheda is like a home for the aged these days,” she said. “We need young blood, and Justine’s is the only young blood left.”

Pity deserted him; he leaned forward quickly, eyes glittering. “You speak of her as if she is a chattel of Drogheda,” he said, his voice now harsh. “I serve you notice, Mrs. O’Neill, she is
not
!”

“What right have you to judge what Justine is or isn’t?” she asked angrily. “After all, you said yourself that you haven’t seen her since before Dane died, and that’s two years ago!”

“Yes, you’re right. It’s all of two years ago.” He spoke more gently, realizing afresh what her life must be like. “You bear it very well, Mrs. O’Neill.”

“Do I?” she asked, tightly trying to smile, her eyes never leaving his.

Suddenly he began to understand what the Cardinal must have seen in her to have loved her so much. It wasn’t in Justine, but then he himself was no Cardinal Ralph; he looked for different things.

“Yes, you bear it very well,” he repeated.

She caught the undertone at once, and flinched. “How do you know about Dane and Ralph?” she asked unsteadily.

“I guessed. Don’t worry, Mrs. O’Neill, nobody else did. I guessed because I knew the Cardinal long before I met Dane. In Rome everyone thought the Cardinal was your brother, Dane’s uncle, but Justine disillusioned me about that the first time I ever met her.”

“Justine? Not Justine!” Meggie cried.

He reached out to take her hand, beating frantically against her knee. “No, no,
no
, Mrs. O’Neill! Justine has absolutely no idea of it, and I pray she never will! Her slip was quite unintentional, believe me.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, I swear it.”

“Then in God’s Name why doesn’t she come home? Why won’t she come to see me? Why can’t she bring herself to look at my face?”

Not only her words but the agony in her voice told him what had tormented Justine’s mother about her absence these last two years. His own mission’s importance dwindled; now he had a new one, to allay Meggie’s fears.

“For that
I
am to blame,” he said firmly.

“You?” asked Meggie, bewildered.

“Justine had planned to go to Greece with Dane, and she’s convinced that had she, he’d still be alive.”

“Nonsense!” said Meggie.

“Quite. But though we know it’s nonsense, Justine doesn’t. It’s up to
you
to make her see it.”

“Up to me? You don’t understand, Mr. Hartheim. Justine has never listened to me in all her life, and at this stage any influence I might once have had is completely gone. She doesn’t even want to see my face.”

Her tone was defeated but not abject. “I fell into the same trap my mother did,” she went on matter-of-factly. “Drogheda is my life…the house, the books…. Here I’m needed, there’s still some purpose in living. Here are people who rely on me. My children never did, you know. Never did.”

“That’s not true, Mrs. O’Neill. If it was, Justine could come home to you without a qualm. You underestimate the quality of the love she bears you. When I say I am to blame for what Justine is going through, I mean that she remained in London because of me, to be with me. But it is for you she suffers, not for me.”

Meggie stiffened. “She has no right to suffer for me! Let her suffer for herself if she must, but not for
me
. Never for
me
!”

“Then you believe me when I say she has no idea of Dane and the Cardinal?”

Her manner changed, as if he had reminded her there were other things at stake, and she was losing sight of them. “Yes,” she said, “I believe you.”

“I came to see you because Justine needs your help and cannot ask for it,” he announced. “You must convince her she needs to take up the threads of her life again—not a Drogheda life, but her own life, which has nothing to do with Drogheda.”

He leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs and lit another cigarette. “Justine has donned some kind of hair shirt, but for all the wrong reasons. If anyone can make her see it, you can. Yet I warn you that if you choose to do so she will never come home, whereas if she goes on the way she is, she may well end up returning here permanently.

“The stage isn’t enough for someone like Justine,” he went on, “and the day is coming when she’s going to realize that. Then she’s going to opt for people—either her family and Drogheda, or me.” He smiled at her with deep understanding. “But people are not enough for Justine either, Mrs. O’Neill. If Justine chooses me, she can have the stage as well, and that bonus Drogheda cannot offer her.” Now he was gazing at her sternly, as if at an adversary. “I came to ask you to make sure she chooses me. It may seem cruel to say this, but I need her more than you possibly could.”

The starch was back in Meggie. “Drogheda isn’t such a bad choice,” she countered. “You speak as if it would be the end of her life, but it doesn’t mean that at all, you know. She could have the stage. This is a true community. Even if she married Boy King, as his grandfather and I have hoped for years, her children would be as well cared for in her absences as they would be were she married to you. This is her
home
! She knows and understands this kind of life. If she chose it, she’d certainly be very well aware what was involved. Can you say the same for the sort of life you’d offer her?”

“No,” he said stolidly. “But Justine thrives on surprises. On Drogheda she’d stagnate.”

“What you mean is, she’d be unhappy here.”

“No, not exactly. I have no doubt that if she elected to return here, married this Boy King—who
is
this Boy King, by the way?”

“The heir to a neighboring property, Bugela, and an old childhood friend who would like to be more than a friend. His grandfather wants the marriage for dynastic reasons; I want it because I think it’s what Justine needs.”

“I see. Well, if she returned here and married Boy King, she’d learn to be happy. But happiness is a relative state. I don’t think she would ever know the kind of satisfaction she would find with me. Because, Mrs. O’Neill, Justine loves me, not Boy King.”

“Then she’s got a very strange way of showing it,” said Meggie, pulling the bell rope for tea. “Besides, Mr. Hartheim, as I said earlier, I think you overestimate my influence with her. Justine has never taken a scrap of notice of anything I say, let alone want.”

“You’re nobody’s fool,” he answered. “You know you can do it if you want to. I can ask no more than that you think about what I’ve said. Take your time, there’s no hurry. I’m a patient man.”

Meggie smiled. “Then you’re a rarity,” she said.

He didn’t broach the subject again, nor did she. During the week of his stay he behaved like any other guest, though Meggie had a feeling he was trying to show her what kind of man he was. How much her brothers liked him was clear; from the moment word reached the paddocks of his arrival, they all came in and stayed in until he left for Germany.

Fee liked him, too; her eyes had deteriorated to the point where she could no longer keep the books, but she was far from senile. Mrs. Smith had died in her sleep the previous winter, not before her due time, and rather than inflict a new housekeeper on Minnie and Cat, both old but still hale, Fee had passed the books completely to Meggie and more or less filled Mrs. Smith’s place herself. It was Fee who first realized Rainer was a direct link with that part of Dane’s life no one on Drogheda had ever had opportunity to share, so she asked him to speak of it. He obliged gladly, having quickly noticed that none of the Drogheda people were at all reluctant to talk of Dane, and derived great pleasure from listening to new tales about him.

Behind her mask of politeness Meggie couldn’t get away from what Rain had told her, couldn’t stop dwelling on the choice he had offered her. She had long since given up hope of Justine’s return, only to have him almost guarantee it, admit too that Justine would be happy if she did return. Also, for one other thing she had to be intensely grateful to him: he had laid the ghost of her fear that somehow Justine had discovered the link between Dane and Ralph.

As for marriage to Rain, Meggie didn’t see what she could do to push Justine where apparently she had no desire to go. Or was it that she didn’t want to see? She had ended in liking Rain very much, but his happiness couldn’t possibly matter as much to her as the welfare of her daughter, of the Drogheda people, and of Drogheda itself. The crucial question was, how vital to Justine’s future happiness was Rain? In spite of his contention that Justine loved him, Meggie couldn’t remember her daughter ever saying anything which might indicate that Rain held the same sort of importance for her as Ralph had done for Meggie.

“I presume you will see Justine sooner or later,” Meggie said to Rain when she drove him to the airport. “When you do, I’d rather you didn’t mention this visit to Drogheda.”

“If you prefer,” he said. “I would only ask you to think about what I’ve said, and take your time.” But even as he made his request, he couldn’t help feeling that Meggie had reaped far more benefit from his visit than he had.

When the mid-April came that was two and a half years after Dane’s death, Justine experienced an overwhelming desire to see something that wasn’t rows of houses, too many sullen people. Suddenly on this beautiful day of soft spring air and chilly sun, urban London was intolerable. So she took a District Line train to Kew Gardens, pleased that it was a Tuesday and she would have the place almost to herself. Nor was she working that night, so it didn’t matter if she exhausted herself tramping the byways.