A River Town

by Thomas Keneally

  “You’ll see her again,” he said then to Annie, in a voice out of which he took all the sting which came from the direction of Staines and Gould, Mother Imelda, Kitty.

  Little Kitty, five feet and no inches, followed him and Lucy out to Pee Dee and the wagon. Kitty had a wad of dockets in her hand. She gave them to him.

  “Show that old nun these, all unpaid. She’s only a woman, you know, she’s got armpits like the rest.”

  “Christ, you know I can’t push dockets at Imelda.”

  She took them from his hand again and began to push them into the pockets of his vest.

  On the way to the convent, no one rushed up to acclaim him, and he felt all the better for that. He was able to feel, therefore, an ordinary citizen, which was half of his secretly desired condition. The other half of the desired condition was for people to say, “There goes Mr. Shea. Generous man.” Not for such definitions to appear in print, but for them to recur in the mouths of Macleay citizens. This was the vanity Kitty mistrusted in him.

  Bryson of West had different ideas. He had a storekeeper’s meanness, and delighted in people saying, “Shrewd old bastard!” He had farmers put up land as guarantee against his supplying them credit on jam and flour. The way to wealth and property in the new land. Hard to imagine the mean and continuous effort of the brain needed for enterprises like that. To Tim it was like an effort of extreme mathematics. Why make it? So customary was all this in the bush, though, that farmers had come to Tim and offered to sign letters of agreement for credit. Pride wouldn’t let him enforce them.

  As the big convent in Kemp Street loomed up, he said to the girl as another inducement, “I will come and take you on a visit to Crescent Head with Mrs. Shea and the children. Have to get up early in the morning to get to Crescent Head!”

  The memory of Crescent Head’s ozone and surf hissed in the summer street. A favoured place.

  But it was a silly gesture against the numb, grave fact. She was nobody’s child.

  Tim knocked on the large, glass-panelled door at the front of the convent. Very strange, the smell of convents. Brass polish, bees’ wax, a lingering scent of extinguished candles.

  The youngest nun answered the door. Only eighteen months off the boat. All that black serge these women wore. Welcome in frozen Ireland. How did it feel here? What did they sleep in, these poor women, in this heat? How did they make their peace with the thick night in New South Wales?

  A pleasant-looking young woman, some farmer’s lost child from Offaly or Kerry. A native elegance in her despite the pigshit in her family farmyard. Her noble-faced mother—Tim could just imagine her—carrying her bitter secrets in her face, the secrets of her womb, the secrets of short funds and high rent. Dragged down by the gravity of things. And the child thinks, I can get above this! The sacrifice of earthly love a small thing, since the rewards of earthly love were so quickly diminished and brought to bugger-all.

  And here she was answering a door in the Macleay. In a place which had once been a rumour but was now too solid, and its sun so high.

  She seemed happy though. At least she harboured that young intention to have the joy of the Lord shine forth from her face.

  She said, “It’s Mr. Shea isn’t it?”

  The consecrated woman showed them through into the front parlour. Here stood a big dresser and a bees-waxed table and upright chairs. On the wall the lean, amiable-looking Pope Leo XIII, and the visage of Bishop Eugene Skelton, Bishop of Lismore, New South Wales. On a pedestal in the corner a plaster Saint Vincent de Paul. On a pedestal by the window the Virgin Mary in blue and white crushed the serpent with her foot.

  Tim and Lucy did not sit at the table. It had very much the air of being reserved for higher events. They sat instead on a settee of severe lines, covered with maroon cloth.

  The young nun went to fetch her superior.

  “These are just women, you know,” Tim told Lucy. “Women like Mrs. Sutter. Women like my wife. They dress in that way. Tradition. But they have instincts of care, like all other women.”

  For he seemed to remember Albert Rochester was a Primitive Methodist, and all these nunnish robes and furnitures would have been accursed in his eyes. His wizened daughter, though, took them as they came.

  Mother Imelda could be heard thumping up the corridor and now burst into the room. A big woman, her beads clicking against her unimaginable thighs.

  “Well, Mr. Shea!” she cried out, closing the door for herself. She’d once told him that her father had owned a warehouse in Waterford, but he had wondered in that case what she was doing here in her Order’s remotest province. Surely, unless he’d gone broke, her father could have swung her a grander appointment than commanding Christ’s outpost amongst the bush-flash children of cow-cockies in the Macleay. Of course, maybe adventure called, as it had with him—if adventure was the dream of separateness, of not seeking out the common landfalls of your clans: Boston, Brooklyn. These matters weren’t accessible to thought or to measurement.

  The Primitive Methodist waif had stood up too, though her closed demeanour gave nothing away. “Sit, sit,” said Mother Imelda, dragging one of the chairs out from under the solemn table and sitting on it, the black cloth of her thumping big hips and thighs dominating the small child on the sofa.

  Tim now said who this was. The Rochester child. Mother Imelda may have heard of the accident … Now Mrs. Shea had both a child and sister on the way, hence it was impossible … The Sisters of Mercy were the only boarding school in the valley … Mrs. Shea and I wanted her well looked after … Of course, her dead father’s wishes must be respected, and her own as a child who has reached the age of reason. So she is a Protestant, and that must be observed.

  Mother Imelda laughed and patted the polished surface of the table. “We don’t lack here for children who are Protestant.”

  “Then I would like to see her taken on by you, Mother.”

  Mother Imelda looked out past the picture of the Supreme Pontiff and through the lace at the window towards the huge glare outside. Often Tim looked into the nullity of Australian air and wondered what it meant for the existence of a living God. All that light a question put to the sorts of things people believed in dimmer regions, twelve thousand miles away. But it did not seem to wither Mother Imelda’s certainty. It did not seem to put a crease in it.

  “Lucy, do you think you would like to join us here? We put a large stress on cleanliness and on obedience. We do not countenance backchat. Did you have backchat at home?”

  Tim said, “I’ve found that little Miss Rochester rarely engages in forward chat let alone the back variety.”

  Somehow Mother Imelda did not quite relish the little joke.

  “Well, Mr. Shea. Given your domestic arrangements, I understand that you would want Miss Rochester to be a year-round boarder.”

  Tim felt himself colour with shame. It was a question he had not thought of; was the child to have her Christmases and her Easters in the convent or was there a place for her at his table?

  He said, prickling, “We would, of course, take the child for outings and the larger holidays. But it seems this will be … this will be where she lives. I can’t think of better.”

  Mother Imelda put her hand cursorily to Lucy Rochester’s small chin. “Are those your clothes there. In the bag?”

  “I will provide a better port for her, Mother,” said Tim.

  “You should go outside and sit on the verandah. I want you to tell me how many magpies you count in the trees about.”

  The small girl rose, keeping her eyes on Tim, and went, opening and closing the door so smoothly.

  Now Tim knew he must make a proposal. Imelda would say how much a week. She advertised in the Argus, day pupils thrippence a week. How much for boarders? They ate of his groceries, half his anyhow. The other half from Doolan’s in West. Keep the two good Irish tradesmen happy. Happy about what? Since the goods were supplied for what could loosely be called the love of God. He hoped Imelda informed t
he Deity of the way she stretched him.

  She stared at his chest. He was aware of the dockets in his breast pocket. He imagined they still had the faint warmth of Kitty’s firm hand on them. He would need to make a deal … only good sense. Imelda herself was that sort of practical woman. He was underwriting the convent’s edibles and useables to the tune of twenty pounds a year wholesale, and that was over thirty pounds retail. What was so blasphemous about her taking the child’s boarding fees out in jam and cheese?

  Yet he was flinching within. He wasn’t scared of the woman. Rather he did not want her to shame him, or the thoroughness of Albert’s tragedy, with haggling.

  So he started first. He wanted to be able to tell Kitty that. I started first.

  He managed to say, “So, Mother Imelda, we must come to an accommodation I suppose.”

  He recognised at once in Imelda that dangerous blitheness of someone about to frame the best transaction they can for themselves. “It is thrippence a day to the day school. We add on ninepence a week for boarders. For year-round boarders—we have one other—we give a two week discount, and so that is fifty shillings a year. Can you afford that, Mr. Shea?”

  The question affronted him. His hand was already in his vest pocket. He would lay all the causes why he should get special consideration down in front of her.

  “I was hoping,” he said, “that since the child is not mine, and in view of some of my offerings to your community here, you might meet me part of the way.”

  “Does Mr. Rochester have an estate?”

  “There may be a shilling or two left when the bank’s finished. It’s a matter of doubt, though.”

  “You know how we are placed, Mr. Shea. From some parents we have to beg. We have expenses too, legal expenses, for instance. The town clerk is a member of the Orange Lodge and we are subject to more inspections and interference and legal argument than any of the hotels in town. We are the hotel of God, that’s why. We can’t and won’t soften him with a bottle of whisky every fortnight. The way things are now it would be in all frankness hard for us to take Lucy, even though the situation cries out to mercy. We have to give our preferences to the Catholic poor, who unhappily abound and are in many cases themselves orphans.”

  Bugger it. Going against his nature, he had already debased himself enough and to no good effect.

  “Of course I can meet the child’s fees then,” he told her.

  Generosity the chief revenge. He had his now. He felt a serenity at such a moment which he could not obtain by any other means.

  “It is payable at a term in advance,” said Imelda, a miser for Jesus’ sake. “That’s sixteen shillings and sixpence ha’penny for the first term, Tim.”

  Tim hunted in the other pocket of his vest and found two ten shilling notes. He handed her both notes.

  “Perhaps you could give me a receipt at some stage, Mother.”

  “You are always in our prayers, Mr. Shea, and your lovely little wife.”

  Bloody sight littler than you anyhow, Imelda. Just the same, what a bloody grocer this woman would have been! Savage’s Emporium wouldn’t have touched her. She would have pursued debtors along the riverflats of Euroka, into the cedar camps of the Hastings Range and amongst the swamps of the lower Macleay. Men coming out of the scrub with grime on their foreheads and an axe on their shoulders to be bushwhacked by big Imelda with her cashbook.

  “You may want to give Lucy a few shillings too for expenses,” Imelda suggested.

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” said Tim, going for his pocket again. He hoped that from the point of view of some abstract critic, which was partly himself and partly a subscriber to a progressive age, he did not look too much like a willing peasant, being sucked dry by a hungry Faith. He wanted this unseen critic to accept that he was acceding to Imelda as a matter of grandeur, of style. Because he did not want to live meanly.

  Largely drained of cash, he said good-bye to the child in the corridor. No kisses. He opened her hand, then clasped it in both his, and when she opened it, she found five shillings in it.

  “Take good care of that, miss,” said Imelda looking on. “It will be quite safe, Mr. Shea. We expel without fear or favour for theft.”

  She opened the front door for Tim, but as soon as he was through she shut it softly, and the conventual silence closed like an ocean over Lucy Rochester’s mute head.

  So now, lighter and prouder, he still had to face Kitty. Pee Dee was bending his head down and stealing some grass through the convent’s picket fence.

  “Get it into you there, Pee Dee old son,” Tim told him. “Eat her grass. Fifty bobs’ worth.”

  Missy, just like Lucy, made her claims on him through silence, and now for the sake of Missy’s uncertain and omnipresent spirit he must top off the day’s berserk largesse. He left Pee Dee to benefit from thief Imelda, and walked to the door of the presbytery. One of the larger houses in town. Just like at home, they comforted themselves pretty well for keeping to lonely beds.

  The ancient widow who cooked for the priests answered the door.

  “Is Father Bruggy in?” he asked.

  “Wait,” said the woman liquidly. “I will see.”

  Her accent. He’d heard she was a Belgian. Closing the door then. It wasn’t right she did that, as if he were a supplicant or a thief. It was said that the seminarians who were the sons of the poorer Irish farmers were sent to New South Wales as priests. Yet someone had taught them to behave like people of high class.

  The tall, very pale priest named Bruggy was suddenly at the door. He’d had consumption. That may have been why he’d signed on for a subtropic diocese. But didn’t the humid air also weigh on the lungs? It often weighed on his own.

  “Hello there, Tim.”

  The man sounded weary, as always saddened and thinned down at finding humanity’s tricks so standard, pole to pole. For it might cross the minds of priests and nuns in Ireland that if they travelled twelve thousand miles, they might outrun original sin, slip aboard their steamers into the island chains of innocence. Not so though. The old Adam was already waiting for them on the new shores. Met every damned boat.

  “I wondered could I have a word,” said Tim in a hush, to convey it was not a normal theological matter.

  “Yes,” the priest agreed, but without much hope of hearing anything new. He motioned Tim to a green-painted garden seat on the verandah. The parlour would have been offered for others. It would be the parlour for the lawyer Sheridan.

  Tim wished those things didn’t worry him so much.

  “There is a young woman who died here, and Constable Hanney has possession of her head and is showing it to people, hoping they can name her.”

  The priest coughed a little into his hand. “I was shown her also. In case she had been to us for counsel, or to the church for a visit. I told the constable it would be exceptional for one of our faith to seek the death of her child in that way.”

  Tim said, “But she was just a child herself. I found her face pitiful. I’d like a Mass said for her repose.”

  Rich people offered a crown for a Mass for the repose. Some as little as two bob. Hard-up cow-cockies sometimes put up a shamefaced shilling for a Mass of remembrance, though anyone would want to do better than that for their dead. Tim offered his crown coin by putting it down on one of the green slats of the chair.

  The priest looked at it and grimaced. He coughed a bit and said, “Hugely generous of you, Tim.” But perhaps he meant hugely odd. “I’ll give you a Mass card. But I don’t think her chances are too good.” He meant by that the only chances worth anything: eternal chances. “Perhaps you should apply your offering to broader purposes, including this unfortunate girl as one element?”

  “Well there is a broader purpose. I’d like her name discovered so she can rest.”

  The priest wheezed slowly, and you could smell his shaving soap and his camphor-soaked handkerchief.

  “She was murdered making a murder,” he said.

 
“Yes, but a normal girl’s face, Father. In a sense, anyhow.”

  Tim beginning to rankle. These people were always telling you parables about the poor and despised coming amongst you, Christ in another guise. Why did they never suspect this girl might have been sent to sort them out?

  He should have given the old bugger ten bob. It would have given him greater freedom to express his ideas.

  Bruggy said, “These need to be read out from the pulpit, Tim. The Mass intentions. Why don’t I say, For a Secret Intention? Anything more flamboyant might excite and distract the Faithful.”

  “That’s fine with me. A secret intention.”

  “You need to resist the village rubbish they believe at home, Tim. Don’t for a moment consider yourself haunted.”

  Easy to bloody say.

  “Of course, when Constable Hanney came here, I realised I might be haunted myself if I let it happen … But don’t be superstitious about it.”

  “Somebody’s child, Father,” said Tim.

  “Exactly,” said the priest. “But everyone’s child goes to judgment.”

  Now Tim stood up. “Not to keep you any further …”

  “Hold hard, Tim. I’ll write you that Mass card. A sort of divine receipt if you like.”

  He didn’t want anything like that lying around the house to provoke Kitty.

  “No need for a card,” he said.

  The priest coughed and considered him. “Tim, you didn’t happen to know this girl, did you?”

  “No. Wish I had, in fact. Set her to rest.”

  As he left the priest picked up the crown from the verandah seat absent-mindedly. A non-avaricious man. Could afford to be, of course.

  Tim found that with his energetic nibbling Pee Dee had dislodged a fence paling.

  “You bloody blackguard!” Tim genially told the horse.

  He untethered the beast and led the dray quickly down the street, not getting up on the board until they were well past the Australia Hotel on the corner of Kemp and Elbow. Safe in the heart of secular Kempsey.