The Slow Natives

by Thea Astley

“That’s no good! Oh, that’s no good!” Sister Matthew cried impatiently. “Oh, no good, no good.”

  She ran past her across the yard in the twilight, breaking the solid air apart, it had become so heavy, so turgid with unrisen prayers that clung stickily to her face as she wiped and wiped. “Please,” she kept praying to the holy-picture faces of childhood that she knew lined the sky in rows, holding their crosses, lilies, roses, racks. “Please.”

  No one, it seemed, was at home.

  Fearful of the question, dreading the answer, Sister Matthew, moving for years as she had in an atmosphere denuded of emotional relationships except for that great familial union with God, began saying nevertheless, “What is afflicting me? What is my restlessness?” And, as she became braver, or more honest, “Am I in love?”

  She reeled back.

  But this carnivore came in again across the filthy dust of the arena. “Am I in love?” Literally she leapt to one side of her narrow cell and prayed quickly quickly Jesus Mary and Joseph I give you my heart and my soul. She said this many times but eventually the word “heart” broke into the steady flow of supplication. This word had fleshly connotation.

  “Assist me now and in my last agony.”

  But this was the agony—this intrusion of the world, this desire to be noticed, applauded, approved, smiled upon. Ah, there. There it was. Smiled on. She did not finish the aspiration. She was the small girl again in the expensive coat—Mother always dressed her better than the neighbour’s children—so much better she could never play. “Don’t spoil your lovely jacket, dear. Mind those new shoes. Elizabeth, Elizabeth there’s a spot on your new skirt. What is that spot? Ice-cream? Ice-cream? But where could you have got icecream? Then they had no right at all to offer, tempt, seduce and make that dreadful spot on your virtue.”

  “May I breathe forth my soul in peace with you amen.”

  She sat down to write her apologies to Mr Leverson and her pen, as if controlled by evil, said, “Dear Mr Leverson, I am unhappy and sad. Not because of the letter I wrote to Monsignor Connolly, not because it was lies and wicked, but because I cannot please you. Why does this make me unhappy? I want—” She poised her investigating pen over the abyss and then plunged down down—“to see you smile on me with kindness and approval.” She was so shocked by this, by what she had written, that then she tore the paper across many ways until it was tiny and meaningless as confetti; but all the scraps of white and blue she tossed sadly over her unmarried shoulders, took her birthday pound that small sister had sent last month but which, somehow, had escaped Mother St Jude’s surveillance of the mail. “Little Rosemary,” she had said as she handed the letter across. “What a good child to write so often.”

  God bless again and again that sprawling unformed script.

  Outside the hay-scented mouth of the day opened, the sweet white teeth of houses nibbling away at the plummy sky. Quieter than prayer, Sister Matthew went down the stairs past the porridged refectory, through the courtyard where the boarders queued for their eleven o’clock ration of thick bread and butter, and round the side by the empty school hall. The rest of the community was in chapel, but sedatives and doctor’s orders had insisted she remain in bed. While the Office chanted steadily she went, silent and black, through the front gate and courageously unpartnered past the disapproving saints into the shelter of the puritanic trees of Fitzherbert Street that never before had observed nuns ambulant and solitary. Yet the external world neither crashed nor thundered; the sky remained mute and blue, and the only chaos went on within, in the headache that for weeks had accompanied her anxiety and frightened her now into lowering her eyes to watch the renegade feet that carried her almost involuntarily towards the town. The teeth of the street might eat her up.

  This was different from those occasions when, lawfully partnered, she had walked briskly, head lowered, to the church or primary school. A problem of concealment confronted her for the hour before the train came in. The station was four credos distant. How often, accompanied by Sister Philomene, had she walked to St Scholastica’s on Saturday afternoon to decorate the altars with flowers, polish the brass candelabra, and lay stiffened white altar cloths across the holy table. Not a minute had been wasted then in secular communion. They did not speak as they sped along the footpaths; rather they prayed, but softly so as not to cause comment, their gloved hands unobtrusively slipping along the wooden beads.

  Sister Matthew lingered nervously, unsurely, in the ladies’ waiting-room, appalled by its grime and mercifully not comprehending its walls. At the last moment she bought her ticket, still in the trance that could not calculate change or what might have to be done on reaching the city or even how she might survive, so conditioned was she by unwordliness.

  “Return or single?” asked the curious attendant. But she had only enough money for a single and he watched her oddly as he slicked a stamp across it.

  Sister Matthew judged it best not to reply.

  Within the slow terror, the outrage of her behaviour welled. Not even an umbrella for comfort, she was aware. They are devices made for religious, for the prodding of ferrules into dusty waiting-places, for shelter from the savagery and intolerance of public eyes, for holding, for remembering, for placing the hands in repose. Heretically she pondered the substitution of umbrella for cross, but there was, she knew, in that handle to be gripped, much comfort, whereas the out-flung arms supported anguish. The Cross had come not to bring peace but the sword; looked like, but was never held as, the religious dagger it really was.

  The umbrella was the symbol of peace.

  Her train reeled in. The box-cars hiccuped to a stop. Primly she entered the nearest second-class carriage and took a seat against a far window where silently she addressed the patron saint of delays. Her prayer was answered, for down the line the engine screamed its protest at the enforced journey and they rumbled out again across the downlands she had not crossed for five years—Sister Matthew, two wheat-farmers, and a mother with a small baby.

  She was terrified. There was nothing behind which she could hide.

  Sister Beatrice found Reverend Mother in close relationship with a confidential phone that whispered urgently in her coif.

  “Father Lingard,” she explained at last, replacing the receiver, “says he made inquiries at the station and she has bought a ticket to Brisbane. Heaven knows where she obtained the money!”

  Sister Beatrice did not know what to say.

  “She will have to be brought back at once,” stated Reverend Mother, setting her jaw forward and raising her upper lip to reveal the broken tooth. “I can hardly allow her to wander around the countryside creating a scandal.”

  Sister Beatrice ate her reply.

  “If you think I should have taken her off the train before Brisbane, I think not,” Reverend Mother continued, uttering strategy aloud. “There could be a most shocking scene. It would do more harm than good.” The last phrase comforted her in some way and she repeated it. “We must pray for her, Sister.” She closed her eyes and one knew she had already begun.

  “Prayer is hardly enough,” Sister Beatrice dared to say. Her heart ached for the delinquent.

  Mother St Jude chose to ignore this. She believed in forgiving much in times of stress.

  “It’s true! It’s true!” Sister Beatrice cried, her red face swollen with pity and unshed tears. “What will she do when she reaches there? She is completely unable to look after herself?”

  Reverend Mother opened her eyes. “I’ve wired St Benedict’s. Someone will be there to meet her. She will have to go straight into hospital, where she should undoubtedly have been some weeks ago. She needs prayer, Sister Beatrice, and care.”

  “But what do we know about her own feelings? Has anyone ever tried to discover?”

  “Feelings are not what is important, Sister. One’s soul in the sight of God is what matters.”

  I am by nature a blasphemer and heretic, Sister Beatrice admitted angrily. “You are hard, Reverend
Mother,” she said. “Forgive me, but you are hard. I cannot even pretend to be fond of that poor little soul, but I feel not only that I want to help, but that I must.”

  “Hard?” Mother St Jude rose from her chair abruptly, turned her back on the other woman, and stood for a long time at the window gazing across the garden at the unspeaking saints.

  “I suppose I am,” she said at last. “I suppose I am. One has to be in this position. I think . . . I’m not sure. Perhaps not.” She appeared to plead. “I wasn’t once, you know.” But she did not turn round, did not face her accuser.

  “I’m sorry,” Sister Beatrice began to cry. “Oh please—I’m sorry. It’s the upset. We all say things.”

  “No.” The icy white handsome face crumbled only slightly as it turned. “No. You are right. I have become hard, without meaning or wanting. But I shall tell you this. I want to tell you. Years ago—not here but in another House—when I was younger, you understand, and I still had my sensitivities and feelings of loss, I sat in a room much like this and held my sister’s boy upon my knee. After she had gone I sat on and wept, wept because I could not have a child. I wept until it seemed everything dried up and I grew hard, as you call it. I put up a shell between myself and what I had given up. Oh, I could tell you all sorts of stories against myself.”

  “Ah, don’t.” Sister Beatrice’s big warm face bent anxiously towards her. “Don’t,” she begged.

  “Yes, I must. I must tell you this. One of my past pupils came back and told me herself. She didn’t mean it as a criticism. It was funny and pitiful and I’ll never forget. A pretty girl. Always polite. Adrienne was her name. At school she charmed everybody, opened doors, helped with books, never failed to curtsey when she met one of the sisters, won the prix d’honneur. A model girl. Sometimes I hoped. . . . However, she married and had her child, which later she brought to show me, all pink and gold and like herself. But that is not the point. Do listen, Sister. Hold this against your soul as a warning. In the labour ward, she told me, under the effects of ether and so on, she had cried out—it was the joke of the hospital—’Please, Reverend Mother, may I have permission to have this baby without curtseying?’”

  Shame consumed Sister Beatrice for her day-old treachery.

  Mother St Jude paused, but her hands made some agitated comments on the window-sill.

  What could be said?

  The slow roses wasted timelessly in their bowl. The Little Flower watched safely behind glass. Mother St Jude could not turn her tear-distorted face to her subordinate, who, uncertain what to do, acted finally like a woman and went across the room to stand closely beside her superior, her plump hands resting gently, warmly on the stiff authoritative arm.

  “There,” she said. “There.”

  Mother St Jude stopped crying after a moment or two, but the small release had softened and blunted her perception so that, after all, Sister Matthew was not met by colleagues when she arrived at Roma Street. During a halt for refreshments at Ipswich she had cleverly left the train and travelled down on another running an hour later. She was inured to fasts and long retreats. Those awaiting her in Brisbane were flummoxed, and Sister Matthew, hunting through a telephone directory for Mr Leverson’s home address, felt she might have foxed a court of the Inquisition.

  Even this simple action held unknowns. In the gelatinous case of the telephone booth she was an anachronism of such deliciousness several people stopped to look in their Brisbane florals and braces, but she, preserved by the side-wings of her habit, did not see. Outside the afternoon split open like a lemon. Building pips. Tropic clear sun, bitter sour. Directly in front of her a cab rank held the loitering cabbies, the orange louts who didn’t give a damn about fare or foul.

  “Where to, Sister?” he asked when she slipped in behind. She counted her change and said, “I only have five shillings. Will that take me to Kangaroo Point?”

  “Okay,” he said. “It’s robbing the poor, but we’ll see what we can do.” The robbers, it seemed, were everywhere.

  In the morning sun truth, the no-news blank, smacked Varga hard. Tommy Seabrook went home on the three bus just an hour too late to catch dad, who, drawn by habit rather than affection, had investigated the suburban distance between himself and Iris, wanting not her company but her reassurance that Varga was all right, was not what he had for some hours been beginning to suspect. Bernard, despite family urgencies, was trapped by impersonal demands of the examinations committee and had gone back into the city to escape Iris’s tragic face and insane preoccupation with possibilities, all gloomy, desperate, final. With an indifferent calm that maddened Iris, who had obviously undergone some cathartic soul-searching, Gerald took coffee and conversation. Bewilderment gave her a certain feminine charm and for an hour or so, unaware, she contrived to look younger so that Seabrook Senior was lulled back into misplaced sentiment and was reaching for her hand in order to press it when the doorbell rang.

  “Oh God!” Iris cried, snatching her manicured fingers back, and running to the door. “Keith!”

  Against the translucent panel a shape was pressed, a shape whose outline presented no familiar document, but seemed like some large and heavy bird curved injured against the entrance. Hesitant, Iris lifted the latch and turned the handle, at whose first movement the shape receded. Yet upon the door’s opening there was revealed a pale and fine-featured nun, young, with the desperation of saint or madwoman in her eye.

  Each tongue was tied.

  “Is Mr Leverson at home?” at last one managed.

  Iris supported her belt with an impatient thumb and shook her head.

  “I’m so sorry,” apologized the little nun. “I have to see him.”

  She did not move to go away. The street streamed emptily east and west. Iris, her eyes searching behind for her son, did not know what to do. Religious were in a different category altogether. “I am a Wasp,” she used to describe herself whimsically in courting days to a charmed Bernard. “White Australian Single and Protestant.”

  “Was he expecting you?”

  “Oh no.”

  “But you know him then—I mean, you have met?”

  “Yes.” The nun smiled gently.

  “Oh.”

  “As a music examiner.”

  Iris permitted a strained social smile. He must hate you, thought Sister Matthew. But she was wrong.

  “Would you care to come in and wait? Only, you see, I don’t know when he’ll be back, and besides—”

  “May I?” the nun asked eagerly. “I’ve come from Condamine. The train seemed so slow, you know, like another lifetime altogether.”

  Something was wrong, Iris sensed, some propriety was being outraged. Her thoughts trailed ridiculously. . . . Would she be staying at a hotel, convent, motel? Had she simply come or been sent! Unequal to this, she limply invited her.

  “Come in,” she said, and wondered frantically if she should show her to the bathroom. “Would you care to . . . wash, perhaps?”

  “No, thank you,” Sister Matthew said, with her smile a trifle lop-sided, and they went back to the sitting-room for awkward introduction and interpretation with coffee-drinking Gerald.

  “Would you care for some, Sister?” Iris asked in her social manner, indicating the percolater and the cream.

  “No.” Sister Matthew could not be bothered explaining that it was forbidden to eat publicly and, not being bothered, was overcome by the temptation to outrage the unseen Mother Superior. “Yes, perhaps I will then.”

  She drank neatly as Chaucer’s prioress, not a drop falling upon her white starched coif that creaked so oddly as she leant forward to reach the sugar.

  “It’s Lent,” she said—and took two lumps.

  “But it’s not!” Iris exclaimed.

  “Figuratively,” Sister Matthew said. She glanced carefully under her black veil rim at the man who had absent-mindedly said, “Thank you, darling”, to one not his wife. She stirred this piece of knowledge reflectively in with the sugar, not
really listening while Mr Seabrook flexed conversational muscles and shouldered the weight of a Socratic-type conversation that finally left him exhausted. Incongruities seemed the natural outcome of his dalliance—agony column cris de coeur, agitated nuns. He was tempted to laugh. When Iris had first told him of Keith’s disappearance he had added this to the sum of all the insanities of living that propelled him through the nine to five grind, and became only the comic bric-a-brac that, coated thinly with seriousness, could not at bottom be taken too profoundly.

  “I must be off,” he said to Iris. “Don’t worry. Everything will be right. As soon as Tommy gets in I’ll ring and let you know if anything’s developed. They’ll probably be together.”

  He paused before the nun, who still kept her eyes down.

  “Good-bye, Sister,” he said. “It’s been most interesting meeting—”

  “Please don’t lie, Mr Seabrook,” she said.

  The sandy old fake went scarlet. “Oh, but I assure—”

  “Good-bye,” Sister Matthew interrupted. “Good-bye. I feel the calm of frankness. Perhaps it is the coffee. There is something soothing about deliberately disregarding a rule.”

  Disturbed, lover and lover confronting each other at the door, fumbled and mauled not person but an exposed astonishment cheap as paper flowers, those emotions that had gathered dust and needed flicking with some lightly purple feathered rod making tokens of fastidiousness.

  Shiny, long, false, adulterous, his car kept its lamps averted, but he climbed into the familiar stink and handled the crumbling road map, the oil-rag in the glove-box. It was all safe, known.

  “Careful what you say back there,” he was compelled to warn.

  “Do you think she’s mad?”

  “Crazy as all-get-out. Maybe she’s a salesman in disguise. Maybe she’ll nab the cutlery while you’re gone.”

  “Oh, shut up!” Iris snapped, suddenly petulant.

  That’s why we’re through, Gerald thought. You’re not only a silly bitch. You’re a dominating suburban bitch and it’s through for ever and ever.