Maryanne can’t believe that Katherine has never shared this story before. And while she’s dwelling on this, she’s also telling herself to never, never assume she knows someone, really knows them.
‘Do you regret it?’
‘No.’
Her answer, Maryanne suspects, is too quick.
‘Never?’
Katherine raises her eyebrows. ‘I think about it from time to time. But not enough to call it regret.’
This is not just a different Katherine, but one whom Maryanne finds it almost impossible to imagine. However wrongly, she can picture Katherine out there in the bush living this life she does. But being young and getting proposals of marriage? This is not a Katherine she’s ever contemplated.
‘I never went back there. Never saw him again. I sometimes wonder if he made a go of it. I doubt it.’
‘Why?’
‘His farm just had that look about it. Like it wasn’t going to live.’ She pauses. ‘It was the proposal of a lonely man, on a lonely farm. The sort of place you pass through. On your way to somewhere else.’
A good place to end. Katherine rises, takes the shopping bag and nods at Maryanne, as if to say, well, there you have it. And after Katherine has asked what she needs, Maryanne watches her go, not so much a different Katherine as a mystery. What else has she got up those carefully buttoned sleeves?
No, Katherine, she might have said, you’re not the ordinary run, are you? Nor am I. We’re not. But – and this is the effect of their conversation – who is?
12.
An ancient clerk of courts, grained and gnarled, seems to emerge from the wooden desk at which he sits, desk and man made of the same material. He not so much rises from his chair as comes alive, like some wooden toy that suddenly speaks. And from the moment he rises, the constant hum of talk, the shuffling of feet, the scraping of chairs are silenced, and the judge enters the courtroom and takes his place.
Two policemen leave the room and everybody, apart from the judge, turns their attention to the door through which they’ve left. Those on seats lean forward, straining for a clearer view; hands, here and there, rest on the shoulders of those in front to steady themselves. Either nobody notices a stranger’s touch or nobody cares. They are all one at this moment: eyes, arms, trunks and legs, surrendering themselves to this thing they have become. And motionless, scarcely breathing.
Maryanne stares out across the courtroom from her seat as if looking at a painted scene. No, not so much a painting, she decides, as a vast room of sitters, posing for a photograph, waiting for the white flash that will release them. And she wonders just how long they can stay like this. She smells smoky breath and sweet perfume, mingling in the dusty air blown in on a spring wind; feels the heat coming off bodies, filling the room, almost drugging her. And dream-like, she takes it all in, the sight and the smell, the expectant calm, and part of her surrenders to it, like a child at a show, just one of the crowd, waiting for the villain to appear.
Then the door opens and the policemen return, the cuffed Milhaus between them. The effect is instantaneous. Everybody moves as one, leaning further forward, straining to see more clearly. Mesmerised by the very thing they loathe, in the sway of some power, some force they themselves have created and now have no control over. Whispers ripple through the crowd, low mutterings and indistinct words. And, all the time, their eyes are fixed on the cuffed figure of Milhaus.
And what is it they see? A fallen angel, the mask ripped from his face to reveal the traitor beneath, dark and sinister, made all the more sinister for having once been theirs. Is it like looking upon the devil himself? A devil called Jack Milhaus that they once cheered as one, who lifted them to the heavens, left them breathless with wonder, then betrayed them? Or, for a moment, do they simply register what is standing before them – a young man who woke one morning to find himself at the centre of some all-encompassing madness: at first imagining that a few simple words to the right people would straighten things out; then gradually coming to the realisation that his life was no longer in his own hands, that everything had spun out of control and events had taken on a momentum of their own; and there were no words, simple or otherwise, he could muster that a sympathetic ear might listen to; that words, as he once knew them and used them, didn’t matter any more?
Or do they see the boy, lost and alone on a darkening green playing field, wondering where the players and the cheering crowd have gone? Night coming in and no home to go to.
The judge’s gavel comes down. The whispers and mutterings stop and a new, expectant silence fills the room. More urgent. And it is during this silence that Milhaus lifts his face and scans the crowd. There is something calm in his manner, just as there would have been, Maryanne imagines, in those few seconds before the siren sounded to start a game. And it is then, as he takes in the spectacle, that he sees her. She knows he does. For his eyes linger upon her. He gives her the slightest of nods, his head leaning to one side, and his brow wrinkling in thought, as if to say, can I trust you?
What follows lasts only a matter of seconds. Possibly a minute. No more. But it is like being physically struck. A blow. One that leaves her dazed. And although it all lasts only a moment, the impact of the judge’s words, delivered without emotion, slows everything down so that events do not unfold in the usual, everyday time. Seconds could be minutes, and minutes hours. She’s not even sure she hears correctly. Nothing is quite real.
His crime, the judge tells an unblinking Milhaus, who doesn’t even look at him but stares straight ahead to some open field beyond the walls of the court, is heinous. Treachery. A betrayal of his people, his country and the thousands who have died in battle for the likes of him. There can be no forgiveness. The prisoner will be taken to a place of execution and hanged until dead. May God have mercy on his soul.
The blow is struck, falling with the sudden crack of the judge’s hammer. The silent courtroom erupts into bellowed exultation. The white flash they’ve waited upon all through the strained silence to release them has exploded like a bomb ticking down to its set time. Maryanne is rocked and dazed: the sweet perfume, the smoky breath, the glare of the room – all unreal. The world is a dream and she enters dream-time. Everything around her slows: the cries and shouts in the courtroom take place out there in everyday time, in seconds and minutes, but not for Maryanne.
She is the one still, silent figure in the room, the unmoved observer at the centre of a sudden storm. All around her, arms are waving in joy, faces beaming the way they did when the war began, fingers pointing at the silent figure of Milhaus, who stares straight ahead as if still upon some playing field beyond the walls of the court. Shouts, jeers and laughter all blend and become one swirling wind of sound, going round and round the room, now louder, now softer. God be thanked Who has matched us … And through it all the judge’s hammer comes down again and again, trying to quieten the crowd, but has no effect. It is hopeless. The crowd will not be quietened. Like a runaway class, lost in an ecstasy of revolt, it cannot be recalled.
And, more or less unnoticed by the crowd, Milhaus is led away, disappearing through the same door he came in by. Almost incidental now, she thinks. They have what they craved, this crowd. His job is done. Like, she imagines, the inspiration for a story that is forgotten when the story is written: no longer necessary when it takes on a life of its own. And it is as she sits there, Milhaus and the judge now gone, the police beginning the task of emptying the court, that the judge’s words – all the more stark and dramatic for being flat and unemotional in their delivery, like a dry lecture on a dry subject – come back to her and she feels the blow again. Nausea and disgust rise up in her. For although she dreaded the sentence and had prepared herself for it, although she knew in her bones, like the crowd, that those words would be spoken, that they were the very words they’d all come for, although she knew all of that, she wasn’t prepared for the physical blow of the words themselves: ‘hanged’, ‘dead’, ‘soul’.
The life inside her wriggles and kicks, almost complaining about the noise, impatient to leave, and she calms its protest with soothing hands. Then, slowly coming out of the shock, returning to the world of everyday time and motion, she looks around the room, the crowd thinning, the exultant bellows dying down. Then erupting into life, and dying down again. The world like some dark dream become real, and she passing through it all, observing and observed. It is, she tells herself, like passing through the circles of hell.
And as the room thins and she starts to leave, she notices someone coming towards her. His wig still on, his eyes, like Maryanne’s, dazed. Milhaus’s lawyer: the one he doesn’t trust. She watches his progress, his eyes blank as if he too has been sentenced to death. And when he reaches her he nods, as if to say good day, then hands her a folded piece of paper with, she notices, an envelope tucked inside it.
‘From Mr Milhaus. For you.’
‘For me?’
‘Yes.’
‘But … what is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I’m just the delivery boy.’
With that he turns and leaves her, and Maryanne stands there, watching him stride away, impatience in his every step, wanting only to be rid of the room and the case that has consumed him and the city far too long. When he is gone she looks down at her hand, contemplating the note or whatever it is, wishing it wasn’t there. For she fears this thing and dreads opening it.
13.
When Maryanne returns home and opens the door, Katherine meets her in the hallway, telling her that Father Geoghan is waiting in the front room.
‘Father Geoghan?’
‘Yes.’
‘For me?’
‘Who else?’
Indeed, who else? For as much as she might have thought that everything was settled at their last meeting, it wasn’t. These people never give up. They wear you down. That is how they work. Katherine retreats to the kitchen, almost apologetically, suggesting that this is between Maryanne and Father Geoghan. And as Maryanne enters the room and takes a seat, he nods. Again, as if welcoming her into his home.
‘A windy day for visiting, isn’t it?’ he says.
‘It is.’
‘Disagreeable time of year. You’ve been out, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘Out,’ Maryanne says, giving nothing away, as if to say, that’s my business. And you’re not in charge of me, as much as you might think you are. At the same time her fingers rub the note in her dress pocket, the contents of which she read on the tram, her mind more on what it asks of her than on Father Geoghan.
The priest waits for her to go on, then realises she’s said all she intends to. Brushing her abruptness aside with a wave of the hand, he starts upon the matter he came for. The matter they both know he came for.
‘You’ve had time to consider what we discussed when I was last here?’
Maryanne nods. ‘I have.’
‘And carefully, I hope.’
‘Quite so.’
‘Good. It’s a serious matter.’
‘I’m perfectly aware of that,’ she says, in a manner that suggests, you don’t have to tell me. But Father Geoghan either doesn’t note this or chooses not to.
‘You visited the home I spoke of.’
‘I did.’
‘The sisters are very good, are they not?’
She shrugs. ‘They are.’
He notes the shrug. ‘The Sisters of St Joseph are devoted.’
‘I’ve no doubt they are.’
‘The child will be well looked after. And cared for. The sisters love their work. They love their children. All of them.’
Not their children, Father Geoghan, she says to herself, eyeing the priest once again as a scientist might a sample of insect life under a microscope.
‘Your child will want for nothing, I assure you,’ he continues, as if the matter were concluded. ‘And when it is strong enough, and grown enough, we know just the right home. A good religious home. A good religious family.’
‘You’ve thought of everything, Father.’
‘We have to. Trust me, we know about these things,’ he says softly, again either missing or choosing to miss the irony in Maryanne’s comment, his words and manner quiet and intented to comfort. The howling three-headed dog nowhere in sight. And, seemingly assured that the matter is settled, he leans back in his chair and becomes expansive. ‘And if, in time, the child shows an aptitude, a … shall we say a leaning towards the religious life,’ and here he smiles, as if to say, who knows, we may be blessed with just such a child, ‘then we have special schools for the special children. God’s chosen. A rare honour, but one that falls on some.’
Until this point, Maryanne’s mind has been on two things: Father Geoghan and the note in her pocket, her comments to him almost off-hand. But the casual way he mentions this, as if it were routine, which it may well be for the likes of Father Geoghan, changes that instantly. Did she hear right? Yes, she did.
She is now utterly focused on the priest in front of her. And she is no longer observing him as she might a vaguely interesting specimen, but rather as she might look upon some nasty discovery, some malevolence that’s only just revealed itself: the right home, a religious family, a child with an aptitude, a leaning towards the religious life and, in time, just the school for such special children. The shock of the words is made more dramatic by the casual way in which they are spoken. A child with an aptitude, a leaning … A little priest and nun factory; a calling. That’s it, isn’t it? Maryanne nods to herself as much as to the priest. It’s breathtaking that he can sit there and say all this as if it were the most natural thing in the world. A nice little racket you’ve got there, Father Geoghan.
And suddenly, the mystery of Father Geoghan is solved. And all the thoughts she’s entertained about him – that he must surely at some stage have been a child, must at some point have just been little Kevin playing with his toys, before he became Father Geoghan and acquired the disease of fatal purity – are clarified. There never was any little Kevin. Perhaps nothing remotely like a childhood. You were farmed out, weren’t you, Father? That’s why you’ve got no hesitation in farming out others. And you showed a special aptitude, didn’t you, Father? You were one of God’s chosen. You heard the calling. Isn’t that so?
At the same time, she’s remembering that moment when Father Geoghan did the unforgivable and lost control, that moment when the mask fell away and something happened. When he stared back at her with the eyes of a man who has said too much. And it’s not just the look in his eyes she now remembers, but something else. The pain of remembrance that she didn’t notice then, but does now. And she knows now, or is sure she does, that the way she thinks of Father Geoghan – the plausible, persuasive, devious manager of God’s business – is only half the story. For somewhere in there, there must have been a little Kevin. Of course there was. A little Kev who played games with friends, imaginary and real. An inquisitive little boy, like all little boys. And girls. All of them, full of questions. And little Kevin, little Kev, just another inquisitive child asking all sorts of questions about God. Who is He? And what does He look like? And where is heaven and can we all go there one day? There’d been enough curiosity to arouse the interest of the good religious family he’d been given to, and for them to mention it to the priest. Enough curiosity to be called a special interest, not to mention a special talent for the religious life. Enough to say the lad had been called. Did they tell him that God had called, and that God calls few? And did they ask him if he’d like to live in one of the many rooms in God’s house? Did little Kevin drop his playthings, his tin soldiers, storybooks and board games, and jump at the chance? Was that the last time he was ever just a little boy?
It is then, and she will never understand what came over her, that Maryanne leans forward and lightly rests her hand on the priest’s knee, as, indeed, Father Geoghan had done to her: an impulse to comfort the comforter. For who will
comfort the comforter if she doesn’t?
The priest looks down at her hand as if trying to comprehend one of the great imponderables. Human touch has fallen upon him. And not just any touch, but a woman’s. And he seems at once stunned into immobility by the sheer cheek of it, the effrontery of the woman, and relaxed by the understanding reassurance of the act; at once soothed by the mother he never knew, and slipping under the spell of a cunning witch. Wanting to give in, to trust her, Maryanne imagines, but resistant and wary. Poor man, poor man, you gained cathedrals of wisdom but lost the years of wonder. But it is only a momentary glimpse into the mystery, into the heart of Father Geoghan, before he gently lifts her hand from his knee and places it back on her lap. He stares at her, no loss of control this time, forgiving her as he might an impulsive child. May even have taken the act as a gesture of consent. As if Maryanne were saying, of course, Father, you are right.
‘So, Maryanne,’ he says, as though nothing has happened, and speaking her name as if welcoming her back into the congregation, ‘you’ve decided then?’
‘I have, Father.’ Her tone is almost wistful, tossed between anger and newfound compassion.
‘Good, my child. I’m pleased to hear it. It’s for the best. For you, for the child, for everyone.’
But as he speaks, that glimpse into the heart of the priest fades, and she remembers she is facing the man who, with an absolutely clear conscience, would take her child from her. And with that realisation the steel re-enters her, and she could kick herself for giving in to such sentimental nonsense. ‘Oh, it will be, Father.’ And here a distinctly no-nonsense note comes into her speech. ‘I’ll have the child here. In this house. With my doctor and my sister. And I assure you, Father, I will bring this child up myself to be whatever he or she chooses to be. Not what somebody chooses for the child.’
Year of the Beast Page 13
