The Thorn Birds (83 page)

She knew the park well, of course. London was a joy to any Drogheda person, with its masses of formal flower beds, but Kew was in a class all its own. In the old days she used to haunt it from April to the end of October, for every month had a different floral display to offer.

Mid-April was her favorite time, the period of daffodils and azaleas and flowering trees. There was one spot she thought could lay some claim to being one of the world’s loveliest sights on a small, intimate scale, so she sat down on the damp ground, an audience of one, to drink it in. As far as the eye could see stretched a sheet of daffodils; in mid-distance the nodding yellow horde of bells flowed around a great flowering almond, its branches so heavy with white blooms they dipped downward in arching falls as perfect and still as a Japanese painting. Peace. It was so hard to come by.

And then, her head far back to memorize the absolute beauty of the laden almond amid its rippling golden sea, something far less beautiful intruded. Rainer Moerling Hartheim, of all people, threading his careful way through clumps of daffodils, his bulk shielded from the chilly breeze by the inevitable German leather coat, the sun glittering in his silvery hair.

“You’ll get a cold in your kidneys,” he said, taking off his coat and spreading it lining side up on the ground so they could sit on it.

“How did you find me here?” she asked, wriggling onto a brown satin corner.

“Mrs. Kelly told me you had gone to Kew. The rest was easy. I just walked until I found you.”

“I suppose you think I ought to be falling all over you in gladness, tra-la?”

“Are you?”

“Same old Rain, answering a question with a question. No, I’m not glad to see you. I thought I’d managed to make you crawl up a hollow log permanently.”

“It’s hard to keep a good man up a hollow log permanently. How are you?”

“I’m all right.”

“Have you licked your wounds enough?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s to be expected, I suppose. But I began to realize that once you had dismissed me you’d never again humble your pride to make the first move toward reconciliation. Whereas I,
Herzchen
, am wise enough to know that pride makes a very lonely bedfellow.”

“Don’t go getting any ideas about kicking it out to make room for yourself, Rain, because I’m warning you, I am not taking you on in that capacity.”

“I don’t want you in that capacity anymore.”

The promptness of his answer irritated her, but she adopted a relieved air and said, “Honestly?”

“If I did, do you think I could have borne to keep away from you so long? You were a passing fancy in that way, but I still think of you as a dear friend, and miss you as a dear friend.”

“Oh, Rain, so do I!”

“That’s good. Am I admitted as a friend, then?”

“Of course.”

He lay back on the coat and put his arms behind his head, smiling at her lazily. “How old are you, thirty? In those disgraceful clothes you look more like a scrubby schoolgirl. If you don’t need me in your life for any other reason, Justine, you certainly do as your personal arbiter of elegance.”

She laughed. “I admit when I thought you might pop up out of the woodwork I did take more interest in my appearance. If I’m thirty, though, you’re no spring chook yourself. You must be forty at least. Doesn’t seem like such a huge difference anymore, does it? You’ve lost weight. Are you all right, Rain?”

“I was never fat, only big, so sitting at a desk all the time has shrunk me, not made me expand.”

Sliding down and turning onto her stomach, she put her face close to his, smiling. “Oh, Rain, it’s so good to see you! No one else gives me a run for my money.”

“Poor Justine! And you have so much of it these days, don’t you?”

“Money?” She nodded. “Odd, that the Cardinal should have left all of his to me. Well, half to me and half to Dane, but of course I was Dane’s sole legatee.” Her face twisted in spite of herself. She ducked her head away and pretended to look at one daffodil in a sea of them until she could control her voice enough to say, “You know, Rain, I’d give my eyeteeth to learn just what the Cardinal was to my family. A friend, only that? More than that, in some mysterious way. But just what, I don’t know. I wish I did.”

“No, you don’t.” He got to his feet and extended his hand. “Come,
Herzchen
, I’ll buy you dinner anywhere you think there will be eyes to see that the breach between the carrot-topped Australian actress and the certain member of the German cabinet is healed. My reputation as a playboy has deteriorated since you threw me out.”

“You’ll have to watch it, my friend. They don’t call me a carrot-topped
Australian
actress any more—these days I’m that lush, gorgeous, titian-haired
British
actress, thanks to my immortal interpretation of Cleopatra. Don’t tell me you didn’t know the critics are calling me the most exotic Cleo in years?” She cocked her arms and hands into the pose of an Egyptian hieroglyph.

His eyes twinkled. “Exotic?” he asked doubtfully.

“Yes, exotic,” she said firmly.

Cardinal Vittorio was dead, so Rain didn’t go to Rome very much anymore. He came to London instead. At first Justine was so delighted she didn’t look any further than the friendship he offered, but as the months passed and he failed by word or look to mention their previous relationship, her mild indignation became something more disturbing. Not that she wanted a resumption of that other relationship, she told herself constantly; she had finished completely with that sort of thing, didn’t need or desire it anymore. Nor did she permit her mind to dwell on an image of Rain so successfully buried she remembered it only in traitorous dreams.

Those first few months after Dane died had been dreadful, resisting the longing to go to Rain, feel him with her in body and spirit, knowing full well he would be if she let him. But she could not allow this with his face overshadowed by Dane’s. It was right to dismiss him, right to battle to obliterate every last flicker of desire for him. And as time went on and it seemed he was going to stay out of her life permanently, her body settled into unaroused torpor, and her mind disciplined itself to forget.

But now Rain was back it was growing much harder. She itched to ask him whether he remembered that other relationship—how
could
he have forgotten it? Certainly for herself she had quite finished with such things, but it would have been gratifying to learn he hadn’t; that is, provided of course such things for him spelled Justine, and only Justine.

Pipe dreams. Rain didn’t have the mien of a man who was wasting away of unrequited love, mental or physical, and he never displayed the slightest wish to reopen that phase of their lives. He wanted her for a friend, enjoyed her as a friend. Excellent! It was what she wanted, too. Only…
could
he have forgotten? No, it wasn’t possible—but God damn him if he had!

The night Justine’s thought processes reached so far, her season’s role of Lady Macbeth had an interesting savagery quite alien to her usual interpretation. She didn’t sleep very well afterward, and the following morning brought a letter from her mother which filled her with vague unease.

Mum didn’t write often anymore, a symptom of the long separation which affected them both, and what letters there were were stilted, anemic. This was different, it contained a distant mutter of old age, an underlying weariness which poked up a word or two above the surface inanities like an iceberg. Justine didn’t like it. Old.
Mum
, old!

What was happening on Drogheda? Was Mum trying to conceal some serious trouble? Was Nanna ill? One of the Unks? God forbid, Mum herself? It was three years since she had seen any of them, and a lot could happen in three years, even if it wasn’t happening to Justine O’Neill. Because her own life was stagnant and dull, she ought not to assume everyone else’s was, too.

That night was Justine’s “off” night, with only one more performance of
Macbeth
to go. The daylight hours had dragged unbearably, and even the thought of dinner with Rain didn’t carry its usual anticipatory pleasure. Their friendship was useless, futile, static, she told herself as she scrambled into a dress exactly the orange he hated most. Conservative old fuddy-duddy! If Rain didn’t like her the way she was, he could lump her. Then, fluffing up the low bodice’s frills around her meager chest, she caught her own eyes in the mirror and laughed ruefully. Oh, what a tempest in a teacup! She was acting exactly like the kind of female she most despised. It was probably very simple. She was stale, she needed a rest. Thank God for the end of Lady M!
But what was the matter with Mum
?

Lately Rain was spending more and more time in London, and Justine marveled at the ease with which he commuted between Bonn and England. No doubt having a private plane helped, but it had to be exhausting.

“Why
do
you come to see me so often?” she asked out of the blue. “Every gossip columnist in Europe thinks it’s great, but I confess I sometimes wonder if you don’t simply use me as an excuse to visit London.”

“It’s true that I use you as a blind from time to time,” he admitted calmly. “As a matter of fact, you’ve been dust in certain eyes quite a lot. But it’s no hardship being with you, because I like being with you.” His dark eyes dwelled on her face thoughtfully. “You’re very quiet tonight,
Herzchen
. Is anything worrying you?”

“No, not really.” She toyed with her dessert and pushed it aside uneaten. “At least, only a silly little thing. Mum and I don’t write every week anymore—it’s so long since we’ve seen each other there’s nothing much to say—but today I had such a strange letter from her. Not typical at all.”

His heart sank; Meggie had indeed taken her time thinking about it, but instinct told him this was the commencement of her move, and that it was not in his favor. She was beginning her play to get her daughter back for Drogheda, perpetuate the dynasty.

He reached across the table to take Justine’s hand; she was looking, he thought, more beautiful with maturity, in spite of that ghastly dress. Tiny lines were beginning to give her ragamuffin face dignity, which it badly needed, and character, which the person behind had always owned in huge quantities. But how deep did her surface maturity go? That was the whole trouble with Justine; she didn’t even want to look.

“
Herzchen
, your mother is lonely,” he said, burning his boats. If this was what Meggie wanted, how could he continue to think himself right and her wrong? Justine was her daughter; she must know her far better than he.

“Yes, perhaps,” said Justine with a frown, “but I can’t help feeling there’s something more at base of it. I mean, she must have been lonely for years, so why this sudden whatever it is? I can’t put my finger on it, Rain, and maybe that’s what worries me the most.”

“She’s growing older, which I think you tend to forget. It’s very possible things are beginning to prey upon her which she found easier to contend with in the past.” His eyes looked suddenly remote, as if the brain behind was concentrating very hard on something at variance with what he was saying. “Justine, three years ago she lost her only son. Do you think that pain grows less as time passes? I think it must grow worse. He is gone, and she must surely feel by now that you are gone, too. After all, you haven’t even been home to visit her.”

She shut her eyes. “I will, Rain, I will! I promise I will, and soon! You’re right, of course, but then you always are. I never thought I’d come to miss Drogheda, but lately I seem to be developing quite an affection for it. As if I am a part of it after all.”

He looked suddenly at his watch, smiled ruefully. “I’m very much afraid tonight is one of those occasions when I’ve used you,
Herzchen
. I hate to ask you to find your own way home, but in less than an hour I have to meet some very important gentlemen in a top-secret place, to which I must go in my own car, driven by the triple-A-security-clearanced Fritz.”

“Cloak and dagger!” she said gaily, concealing her hurt. “Now I know why those sudden taxis!
I
am to be entrusted to a cabby, but not the future of the Common Market, eh? Well, just to show you how little I need a taxi or your security-clearanced Fritz, I’m going to catch the tube home. It’s quite early.” His fingers lay rather limply around hers; she lifted his hand and held it against her cheek, then kissed it. “Oh, Rain, I don’t know what I’d do without you!”

He put the hand in his pocket, got to his feet, came round and pulled out her chair with his other hand. “I’m your friend,” he said. “That’s what friends are for, not to be done without.”

But once she parted from him, Justine went home in a very thoughtful mood, which turned rapidly into a depressed one. Tonight was the closest he had come to any kind of personal discussion, and the gist of it had been that he felt her mother was terribly lonely, growing old, and that she ought to go home. Visit, he had said; but she couldn’t help wondering if he had actually meant stay. Which rather indicated that whatever he felt for her in the past was well and truly of the past, and he had no wish to resurrect it.

It had never occurred to her before to wonder if he might regard her as a nuisance, a part of his past he would like to see buried in decent obscurity on some place like Drogheda; but maybe he did. In which case, why had he re-entered her life nine months ago? Because he felt sorry for her? Because he felt he owed her some kind of debt? Because he felt she needed some sort of push toward her mother, for Dane’s sake? He had been very fond of Dane, and who knew what they had talked about during those long visits to Rome when she hadn’t been present? Maybe Dane had asked him to keep an eye on her, and he was doing just that. Waited a decent interval to make sure she wouldn’t show him the door, then marched back into her life to fulfill some promise made to Dane. Yes, that was very likely the answer. Certainly he was no longer in love with her. Whatever attraction she had once possessed for him must have died long since; after all, she had treated him abominably. She had only herself to blame.