A Season on Earth

by Gerald Murnane

  While his aunt was out of the room, Adrian leafed through her stacks of Catholic magazines, looking for other leagues or confraternities with special privileges for members. He puzzled over a magazine he had never seen before—St Gerard’s Monthly, published by the Divine Zeal Fathers at their monastery in Bendigo.

  The centre pages were full of photos with brief captions: The Hosking Family of Birchip, Vic.; The McInerney Family of Elmore, Vic.; The Mullaly Family of Taree, NSW. Each family consisted of husband and wife and at least four children. Four was the bare minimum. In some of the magazines Adrian found plenty of eights and nines and tens. The record seemed to belong to the Farrelly family of Texas, Queensland. There were sixteen people in the photo. Five or six were adults, but Adrian assumed that these were the oldest children. One of the women was holding a baby—she was probably the mother of the fourteen.

  Adrian thought at first that the families were entrants in some kind of competition. But there was no mention of prizes. Apparently the only reward for a family was the pleasure of seeing themselves in the pages of St Gerard’s Monthly and feeling superior to the Catholic families with less than four children.

  The mothers were all what Adrian’s father would have called well preserved. Some were even quite pretty. There were none with fat legs or large sagging breasts like Mrs De Kloover, who led nine children into mass every Sunday at Our Lady of Good Counsel’s.

  It was this that interested Adrian most. He was planning to become the father of a Catholic family himself, and there were still a few things he wasn’t sure about. One thing that worried him was whether he would still be attracted to his wife after she had borne him several children. The pictures in St Gerard’s Monthly reassured him. Men like Mr McInerney and Mr Farrelly were apparently drawn to their wives long after the romantic excitement of the honeymoon had died away.

  It would be possible for Denise to have at least ten children and still keep her youthful figure and complexion. Over the years she would probably develop a Catholic mother’s face like some of those in the photos. This was very different from the face of a non-Catholic mother of two or three children. The Catholic mother wore very little make-up—the non-Catholic plastered herself with powder and lipstick and sometimes even a little rouge. The Catholic’s face was open, frank, quick to smile, but still as modest as a girl’s in the presence of any man other than her husband. The non-Catholic’s looked as though it concealed many a guilty secret.

  The difference between the faces was probably the result of Catholic husbands’ copulating with their wives quietly in the dark while their children were asleep in the surrounding rooms, whereas non-Catholics often did it in broad daylight in their lounge rooms while their children were packed off to their aunts or grandparents for the weekend. Also, the Catholic men would have done it fairly quickly and without any antics that might have overemphasised its place in the marriage, while the non-Catholics probably talked and joked about it and thought of ways to make it last longer.

  As well as a Catholic face there was a Catholic figure—Catholic breasts with gentle curves and not enough prominence to attract unwanted admirers, and Catholic legs with ankles and calves neatly shaped to lead the eye away from the area above the knees. As the years brought her more children, Mrs Denise Sherd would develop these too.

  It was only logical that there were also Catholic and non-Catholic pudenda. Although Adrian had got out of the habit of thinking of such things, he allowed himself to distinguish briefly between a modest shrinking Catholic kind and another kind that was somehow a little the worse for wear.

  Each issue of St Gerard’s Monthly had a column called ‘The Hand that Rules the World’ by someone called Monica. Adrian read one of these columns.

  Recently on our holidays in Melbourne I boarded a tram with six of my seven. (Son No. 1 was elsewhere with Proud Father.) Most of my readers will be familiar with the cool stare of scrutiny which I had from Mrs Young Modern in the opposite seat with her pigeon pair.

  Of course I returned her gaze. After all, I had far more right to be critical, with six bonny young Australians to my credit.

  Well, it turned out that she was more interested in inspecting my children than their mother. Of course she was hoping to find a shoe unshined or a sock that needed darning. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Mrs Two Only,’ I said under my breath, ‘but while you were gossiping at your bridge party or out in your precious car, I wasn’t wasting my time.’

  I had the satisfaction of seeing her face fall when she realised my six were at least as beautifully turned out as her two. If we had got on speaking terms I’m sure I would have had to answer the old question for the hundredth time—Readers, are you tired of it, too?—‘How on earth do you manage?’

  There was much more, but Adrian paused to think. He wished Denise could have read ‘The Hand that Rules the World’. As the mother of a large family she would have to be ready for all those stares and questions from non-Catholics. Monica’s columns were full of arguments that Catholic mothers could turn to when they were tempted to feel discontented with their lot. For instance, she pointed out that bringing a new soul into the world was infinitely more worthwhile than acquiring a luxury such as a washing machine. (And anyway, as she reminded her readers, a thorough boiling in a good old-fashioned copper did a much better job than a few twirls in a slick-looking machine.)

  Adrian decided that after his marriage he would send a subscription to the Divine Zeal Fathers so Denise would get her St Gerard’s Monthly regularly.

  When his aunt found him reading the magazine she took it politely from him and said, ‘No harm done, young man, but St Gerard’s Monthly is really more suitable for parents only.’ Adrian was angry to think there might have been much more useful information in the magazine that he hadn’t found. He resented his spinster aunt treating him like a child when he was seriously concerned about the problems of Catholic parenthood.

  One night towards the end of their honeymoon, Sherd reminded his wife that the natural result of their love for each other might well be a large family. He was about to list some of the problems this might bring, when she interrupted him.

  ‘Darling, you don’t seem to realise. Ever since I can remember, my mother got St Gerard’s Monthly. It taught me what to expect from marriage and to accept whatever family God might send. And you might think this was silly of me, but after I fell in love with you, one of my favourite daydreams was opening up the centre pages of the Monthly and seeing a picture of the Sherd family from wherever we came from.’

  While Sherd and his wife were still honeymooning in Tasmania, Adrian spent ten minutes each morning in the Swindon parish church searching among the racks of Australian Catholic Truth Society pamphlets. He was looking for one simple piece of information. When he found it he would know all that was necessary for his role as a Catholic husband.

  Each day he borrowed two or three pamphlets and read them under the desk in the Christian Doctrine period. Next morning he returned them to the racks in the church and went on with his search. He read page after page advising husbands and wives to be courteous and considerate, to set a good example to each other, and to co-operate unselfishly in the upbringing of the children that God sent them. But he did not find the information he needed.

  What he wanted to know was how often he should have carnal relations with his wife to be sure of fertilising her as soon as possible after the wedding. He believed there was a certain time each month when it was easy for a woman to conceive. If he (or his wife) could discover when this was, he could arrange to copulate with her on the correct date each month and so make it easier for God to bless them with children.

  But the problem was to find when this important date occurred. Anyone could tell when a female dog or cat was on heat from the odd way it behaved, but it was unthinkable that Denise should have to get into a state like that to let him know she was ready to be impregnated. If women were no different from dogs or cats in this respect, the odds were
that somewhere, at some time, he would have seen a woman on heat. But in all the years he had been watching women and girls on trains and trams he had never seen one who looked as if she was even thinking of sexual matters.

  Adrian searched the pamphlet racks for a week and then gave up. But without the information he could not think realistically about his future. He decided to invent a game that would make his marriage to Denise seem true to life.

  Each night when he got home from school he took two dice from his brothers’ Ludo box. He shook the first and rolled it. An even number meant that Sherd (the husband) felt in the mood to suggest intercourse to his wife that night.

  Before throwing the second of the dice he saw himself saying casually to Denise (they were still on their honeymoon, so the conversation could take place as they strolled back from the beach to their hotel) that it might be nice to give themselves to each other that night in bed. Then he rolled the die.

  If it showed an even number, Denise would answer something like, ‘Yes, darling, I’d be more than happy if you used your marriage rights tonight.’ If it showed an odd number she said, ‘If you don’t mind, I’m not feeling strong enough for it. Perhaps some other time.’ And she smiled warmly to show that she loved him as much as ever.

  On a night when both dice came up with even numbers, Adrian would rest now and then from his homework and enjoy the quiet contentment that a husband felt when he knew his wife would willingly submit to him a few hours later. But it was almost as pleasant on the other nights to look forward to a half-hour in bed together sharing their inmost thoughts and looking forward to years more of such happiness in the future.

  But throwing the dice was only part of the game. Assuming that a woman could conceive on one day of each month, there was one chance in thirty that an act of intercourse would be successful. Adrian chalked a faint line around a section of thirty bricks on the outside of the lounge-room chimney. On one of the bricks near the centre of the marked area he put a faint X. Then he hid a tennis ball in a geranium bush near the chimney.

  Each morning after a night when the two dice had showed evens (and Mrs Sherd had yielded to her husband) Adrian walked quietly to the lounge-room chimney on his way back from the lavatory. He found the tennis ball and wet it in the dew or under the garden tap. Then he took aim at the panel of bricks, closed his eyes tightly and tossed the ball.

  He tossed it carelessly and with no deliberate effort to hit the brick marked X. When he heard the impact of the ball he opened his eyes and looked for the wet mark on the bricks. If this mark (or the greater part of it) lay within the perimeter of the brick marked X, then the conjugal act of the previous night between Mr and Mrs Sherd would have resulted in conception.

  Adrian shook the dice each night until the honeymoon was over. On four of those nights a pair of even numbers came up, but in each case the mark of the tennis ball was well wide of the lucky brick.

  At the end of this time he was satisfied with the way the dice and the ball were working, except that things weren’t happening fast enough. He wanted to share with his wife as soon as possible the joys of Catholic parenthood, but at the rate he was going it might take years—so many years, perhaps, that it might be time to marry Denise before he had discovered what marriage was really like.

  He decided to throw the dice seven times each night. This meant he would experience a week of marriage every day of his life in Accrington. At that rate a year of marriage would take less than two months of 1954. By the end of Form Five he would have been married for nearly four years and fathered as many children. At that stage he would probably have to speed things up a little more. He would have to be careful not to get too close to the time (he could hardly bear to think about it) when Denise would begin to show signs of ageing. According to the pictures in St Gerard’s Monthly she could produce at least a dozen children before this happened. But if he had a lucky run with the dice and ball they might have twelve children long before they were forty years old.

  After the birth of each child beyond the fourth, he would have a special throw of three dice to decide his wife’s health. If the number thirteen came up, she would be showing signs of varicose veins in her legs. He would send her to a Catholic doctor for a thorough check-up. If nothing could be done for her, he could alter the rules of the game so that he abstained unselfishly from time to time to give her a sporting chance.

  Living through seven nights of marriage each night was not as interesting as he had expected. The high point of each week came each morning at the chimney. Sometimes he had to toss the ball three or four times for a week when Denise had been unusually compliant.

  At last, after eighteen weeks of marriage (eighteen days of Accrington time) he opened his eyes one morning at the chimney and saw a broad wet blotch in the middle of the brick that stood for conception. He had always thought he would be able to take such a thing calmly, but he found himself wanting to run and tell the news to someone—even his parents or brothers. All that day at school he wished he had a friend to share his secret.

  Adrian went on throwing the dice for a few more nights. His wife couldn’t be sure she had conceived until she saw a doctor. They were entitled to perform the act a few more times until then. But as soon as the doctor had pronounced her pregnant, Adrian put away the dice and spent his nights at Accrington living through the weeks when he and his wife spent their time before sleep holding hands and talking about their first child.

  Much as he loved Denise, he found he was bored. It wasn’t that he needed sexual gratification. He had always said, and he still maintained, that the touch of Denise’s hand or the sight of her bare white shoulders was enough to satisfy all his physical wants. And it wasn’t that he was running out of things to talk about. There were still hundreds of stories he wanted to tell her about his early years. The trouble was that he couldn’t endure the long months of her pregnancy without the fun of seeing the dice and ball do their work.

  The next day was Saturday at Accrington. Adrian knew what he had to do to make his future more inviting. He took the dice out into the shed in his backyard. He had a sheaf of pages from an exercise book to use as a calendar. There was enough space for all the years he wanted. He threw a die once to decide the sex of their first child. It was a girl. They named it Maureen Denise.

  In the first week after the mother and child came home from hospital, nothing happened. Then the dice started rolling again. Adrian threw them thirty times and scored five acts of sexual union. He went outside and tossed the tennis ball five times without success. Then he went back to his calendar in the shed and crossed a month off his married life and rolled the dice again.

  Adrian worked all day with the dice and ball. (He told his brothers he was playing a game of Test cricket, with the dice to score runs and the ball to dismiss batsmen.) By evening he had been married nearly nine years and was the father of five daughters and one son.

  As soon as he was home from mass on the Sunday morning, he went out to the shed again. He was looking forward to throwing the ball at the chimney again, but he couldn’t face another day with the dice. He decided on an easy solution. He would simply toss the ball ten times for each month. It seemed silly after so many years of marriage to be always asking his wife’s permission before the act. In future she would have to submit to it ten times a month whether she liked it or not.

  By midday the best part of his life was over. He had been married fifteen years and fathered eleven children—eight daughters and three sons. Their names and birthdays were all entered in his calendar.

  Now that he had worked out a future for himself he was exhausted and a little disappointed. He was almost sorry he had cheated by speeding up events instead of using the dice and ball patiently and enjoying each year as it came. He knew what people meant when they said their life was slipping away from them.

  He sat beside the chimney wondering what he could think about in bed that night. A simple solution occurred to him. He multiplied fifteen by
twelve to obtain the number of months of his active sexual life. Then he went back to the shed and cut up small squares of paper. He numbered them from one to one hundred and eighty and put them all into a tobacco tin. Each night he would shake the tin and draw out a number. He drew out a number for that very night. It was forty-three. From his calendar he learned that in month forty-three he was trying to father his fourth child.

  That night (Accrington time) Adrian went to bed eager to meet the Denise who was already the mother of three young children. And the next day at school he wondered which of all the possible Denises would share his bed that night after he had consulted the numbers in the tobacco tin. She might have been a radiant young mother, fresh from breastfeeding her first child, or a mature woman like the mothers in St Gerard’s Monthly with the curves of her body gently rounded by years of child-bearing and about her eyes the faintest shadows of weariness from caring for her eight or nine children all day.

  On the last evening of their honeymoon, Sherd and his bride stood looking at the scene that had been called Triabunna with Distant View of Maria Island in the coloured booklet, Tasmania: A Visitor’s Guide, on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in Sherd’s boyhood home.

  The newlyweds had to decide where to make their permanent home. Sherd wondered what was to stop them from settling among the low hills of Maria Island that were just then strangely bright in the last rays of the setting sun. If he could have been sure there was a Catholic church and school and a Catholic doctor on the island, he and his wife would have been happy for the rest of their lives on a small farm that looked across the water to Triabunna.

  He only decided to return to Victoria for the sake of his wife. She was just a little homesick, and she said she preferred to live where she could visit her mother two or three times a year.

  All that Adrian knew of Victoria was the western suburb of Melbourne where he had grown up and gone to primary school, Accrington and the few south-eastern suburbs that he crossed in the train to St Carthage’s or explored on his bike at weekends, the landscape on either side of the railway line between Melbourne and Colac and a few miles of farmland around his uncle’s property at Orford. None of these places seemed a fitting backdrop for the scenes of his married life—carrying a radiant Denise across the threshold of their first home, bringing her home from hospital with their first child and so on.