A Season on Earth

by Gerald Murnane

  Adrian’s favourite picture in all his aunt’s collection showed a group of young men with a billy can and a sugar bag of provisions setting out for a picnic. The men were in the driveway of a massive stone building with a tower that seemed to Adrian to belong in the Balkans. Behind the building was a broad vista of farmland and beyond it a blur of rooftops in the outlying streets of a fair-sized country town. Visible in the background of this picture was a path bordered with flowering cannas. A student might have walked up and down that path, reciting the Divine Office or praying or meditating, with nothing to distract him but the sound of bees in the shoulder-high canna blossoms. Each time the student reached the end of the path and turned to stride back, he glimpsed the vista of paddocks and the distant roofs. Men were at work in the town. Women were shopping. Children were swinging their legs under their desks in school. All of them—men, women and children—had forgotten the real purpose of life. The student in the grounds of his hilltop monastery, with the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel under the Balkan tower and a library of theology books somewhere on the second storey and the rules of his order regulating every hour of his day and bringing him gradually nearer to perfection—the student would offer up a pious ejaculation on behalf of the people in the far town and would turn back to his meditation between the stately cannas.

  The caption beneath the picture read: Lads off for a day’s hike at the Charleroi Fathers’ junior seminary near Blenheim, NSW. But who were the Charleroi Fathers, and what was a junior seminary?

  Adrian’s aunt explained that some religious orders allowed boys of secondary school age to test their vocations in junior seminaries—places just like boarding schools except that students followed a modified version of the rule of the order concerned. Junior seminaries were common in the Catholic countries of Europe, according to Aunt Kathleen. She thoroughly approved of them. It was tragic how many young chaps felt they had vocations at the age of thirteen or fourteen but later got distracted by the temptations of the world.

  As for the Charleroi Fathers, their real name was the Congregation of Christ the King, which was too much of a mouthful for most people. They had been founded at Charleroi in Belgium in the early eighteenth century by St Henry de Cisy. He was a young nobleman who wanted to serve as a soldier in the cause of the Catholics against the Protestants. But as a young man he had a vision of Christ wearing a golden crown and enthroned as the King of the World. Christ asked Henry why he chose to serve an earthly ruler when he could serve a heavenly king, and Henry was a changed man from that moment. He studied for the priesthood and later founded the Congregation of Christ the King. The special aim of the order was to turn the whole world into the kingdom of Christ. Their mother-house was in Belgium, and they had numerous houses in Europe, but they were a comparatively small order in Australia, and Aunt Kathleen didn’t really know much about them.

  When Adrian heard about the junior seminary in the remote countryside of New South Wales, he knew that he had found his order. If his parents agreed, he could join the Charleroi Fathers as a junior seminarian as soon as the Christmas holidays were over.

  Before he finally committed himself, there were a few more things he had to find out. What sort of robes did the Charleroi Fathers wear? The pictures of priests showed them in black cassocks, but some sort of emblem could be seen near the collar. Adrian’s aunt believed it was a cross surmounted by a crown. Adrian hardly cared what the design was, so long as it was embroidered in a rich colour. His aunt seemed to recall that it was red or blue.

  Where exactly was Blenheim, and where would a Charleroi student study for the priesthood after he had left the junior seminary? Adrian and his aunt consulted the leaflet. Blenheim was about a hundred and twenty miles south of Sydney on the main railway line to Melbourne. After the junior seminary came the novitiate year in the hills near Adelaide and then three years of philosophy at a modern brick monastery in Canberra followed by three years of theology in the headquarters of the Australian and New Zealand Province of the order—a spacious building of two storeys in a northern suburb of Sydney.

  Adrian would do none of his training in Victoria. By the time he was ready to be ordained, the boys of St Carthage’s, and even Denise McNamara, would have forgotten him.

  Last, what sort of work did the Charleroi Fathers do? Did they manage any parishes in Victoria, for instance? As far as Aunt Kathleen knew, the order mostly conducted missions in parishes all over Australia and gave retreats for priests and nuns, although they were not often seen in Victoria. Reverend Father Sherd CCR (the letters stood for the Latin Congregatio Christi Regis) would spend most of his time far from the dreary suburbs of Melbourne, the site of his shameful sins and romantic daydreams.

  Mission priests worked in pairs. During the fortnight of each mission, they preached in the parish church at night and visited Catholic homes by day, always with the aim of rekindling the faith in the lukewarm or the lapsed. In the late 1960s, Father Sherd began a mission in an outer southeastern suburb of Melbourne. During his first sermon, he thought he recognised one of the several upturned faces in the congregation. He faltered for a moment but quickly recovered. From that moment on, he preached like a man inspired. Each time he paused for breath, he saw some tough old workingman drop his head into his hands or some hard-faced housewife press her hand to her mouth in shame.

  Next day, in a quiet street, Father Sherd rang the doorbell of a neat cream-brick veneer. According to the parish records, it was the home of Mr and Mrs Gerard O’Connell and their five children. The young mother opened the door. It was Her!

  They looked at each other for a few moments before either spoke. Motherhood had made her even more beautiful and rounded the curves of her still-youthful body. She would have seen lines in his face and hollows in his cheeks from the harsh life that he led as a religious priest, but his eyes burned with the zeal of a man who had given up everything for God. And in his gaze was no trace of the regard he had once had for her—respect, yes, but romantic affection, no!

  They sat for five minutes in her lounge room. He addressed her as Mrs O’Connell, and she called him Father. Her younger children played around her while he asked her politely about the state of her soul. Of course, she was as pure and devout as ever. Her husband was at work. She said he was a God-fearing man who treated her well.

  When Father Sherd was leaving, she asked him to bless her and the children. She knelt on the polished boards of the lounge-room floor and gathered her children around her. He stood, tall and gaunt in his black cassock, above her. The afternoon sun streamed through the venetians and lit up the red or blue insignia below his collar. He uttered the Latin formula for the blessing with all the fervour that he could summon. Then he farewelled her and strode to the front gate without looking back.

  The sermons given by Father Sherd on the following nights were so impassioned that word of his preaching spread to neighbouring parishes. A loose-living bachelor named Cornthwaite thought he would travel from one of those parishes to sit in a front seat and embarrass the acclaimed mission-priest. Cornthwaite rode over on his motorbike, but the church was empty. The fortnight of the mission had ended, and Reverend Father A. Sherd CCR was in a window seat of the Spirit of Progress express, travelling back towards New South Wales in the service of Christ the King.

  It was hard for Adrian to convince his parents that he had to leave for the Charleroi Fathers’ junior seminary in the new year. His mother asked why he hadn’t mentioned his vocation in all his years at secondary school. His father said no boy could observe the rules of a religious order if he couldn’t even obey a few simple rules in his own house. And he reminded Adrian of all the fights he had with his brothers and the smart answers he gave his parents.

  Adrian worked on them for days. He had two main arguments. First he made them recall the Sunday afternoons when he was only seven or eight and they all lived in the western suburbs. As soon as the Sunday dinner was over he used to spread a tea towel over the dressing table i
n his bedroom and celebrate mass. He wore a towel for a chasuble. His chalice was a two-handled sugar basin half-full of cold tea. The hosts were Life Saver lollies. He read aloud the Latin prayers from his Sunday missal while his parents peeped around the door at him. Sometimes they knelt in front of him at communion time and received a Life Saver each on their tongues and went away with their heads bowed.

  While his parents were thinking this over, he made them read a paragraph he had found in a story about Blessed Peter Julian Eymard, the founder of the Blessed Sacrament Fathers.

  ‘The man who was to give his life to spreading devotion to the Blessed Eucharist showed at a tender age unmistakable signs of his future vocation. As a small child he would dress himself like a priest and reverently imitate the ceremonies he had witnessed at mass, even piping the Latin in his boyish voice.’

  Adrian’s mother was impressed, but his father said if you took a monkey to mass often enough it would start to imitate the priest when you put it back in its cage.

  Adrian’s second argument was to remind them of the quiet thoughtful life he had led for the past few years. While other boys of his age were at the pictures or at dances, he was always reading in his room or meditating in the back shed. He knew he was deceiving them. Most of his time alone he had been thinking of journeys across America or his marriage to Denise. But the circumstances of his vocation were so unusual that no one would have believed the true story.

  Once again his mother became thoughtful. But his father said that was just the point, that Adrian had led a sheltered life and some priest had got at him and persuaded him to leave the world before he even knew what he was giving up.

  Adrian was ready for this objection. He took the vocations pamphlet of the Charleroi Fathers out of his pocket and read a paragraph aloud.

  Satan’s trump card, if you let him play it, is that you should first have a taste of life. ‘How do you know you can give up the pleasures of life, until you try them?’ How many a splendid vocation has been destroyed through a taste of life! Because the real intention of the devil is to lead you to have, not a taste of life but a taste of sin. Do you go into the infectious disease block to see if your health can fight off the germs? If you want to have first a taste of life you have nothing to gain, but a divine vocation to lose forever.

  That stopped Mr Sherd for a while. But Adrian wished he could have assured his father that he knew exactly what he was giving up. Adrian had tasted all that life could offer—first, unbridled sensuality and then the joys of a Catholic marriage. And he had given it all up one morning without a second thought.

  In the end it was his Aunt Kathleen who won his parents over. She had found from the telephone directory that the Charleroi Fathers had a small house in Melbourne, a stopping place for priests conducting missions in Victoria. She telephoned the place and a priest explained that Adrian would study the New South Wales Leaving Honours course at the junior seminary. At the end of his year there, he could return home if he found he wasn’t suited to the Charleroi life. Then, if he wanted to go to Melbourne University, his New South Wales certificate would be as good as a Victorian matriculation pass.

  Adrian was never sure, but he believed his aunt had promised to pay for all his expenses at the junior seminary. One of Mr Sherd’s first objections, when Adrian had told him about his vocation, was that his family couldn’t afford to pay for his upkeep at a seminary year after year.

  Aunt Kathleen took Adrian and his parents to visit the Charleroi house one Saturday afternoon. The priest who met them answered all the parents’ questions patiently. Adrian saw that the device near his collar was embroidered in crimson. The priest explained that it was a crown over the Greek and Latin letters XR for Christus Rex. Adrian would wear it after his year at Blenheim, when he entered the novitiate and assumed the Holy Habit.

  Adrian took away some forms to be filled in by his parish priest, his school principal and his doctor and sent to the Father Provincial of the Congregation of Christ the King in Sydney. When his parish priest saw the form he wanted to know what had attracted Adrian to such an obscure order and why he hadn’t come and talked over the life of a secular priest when he first thought he had a vocation. But the priest said he would give Adrian a good reference because he had seen him at the sacraments regularly.

  The Principal of St Carthage’s College looked at the Charleroi device at the top of the form and said, ‘You’ve chosen a hard, strict order, son. But I think you’ve got what it takes.’

  Adrian took his medical form to the local clinic. A young doctor he had never seen before said, ‘What the blazes is this?’

  Adrian realised this was his first taste of the ignorance and incomprehension he would meet all his life from non-Catholics. He explained that he was applying to enter the junior seminary of a religious order, and the medical examination was to see whether he could stand up to the hard life of the priesthood.

  The doctor was not contemptuous, only very curious. He said, ‘How old are you?’

  Adrian said, ‘Almost seventeen.’

  ‘And you’ve decided you’re going to sign up with these monks, these’—he looked at the form—‘these Christ the King chappies? Do they keep you for life?’

  ‘I don’t have to take my solemn vows until I’m quite sure I’m suited to the life. That won’t be for three or four years.’ ‘Solemn vows, eh? So you won’t be getting married or anything like that?’ He sat back in his chair and looked at Adrian.

  ‘There are three vows—poverty, chastity and obedience. Their purpose is to perfect a man spiritually.’ Adrian was embarrassed, but he offered up his discomfort to God and told himself he was acquiring the virtue of humility.

  The doctor said, ‘Poverty and obedience too? They drive a hard bargain, don’t they?’

  Adrian began another explanation, but the doctor jumped to his feet and began his examination. He filled in the form as he worked, and said he would post it next morning to the Chief Monk.

  In the last few weeks at school Adrian quietly told a few friends about his future. Cornthwaite and his little group soon knew about it, but none of them tried to make a joke of it. Adrian wondered whether it was because they had given up their habits of sin or because he already had the air of a priest and they were treating him with the respect due to the clergy.

  On the very last afternoon he found himself with Cornthwaite, Seskis and O’Mullane on the Swindon station. No one mentioned his vocation. A Coroke train pulled in and Adrian boarded it. The others stayed on the platform to wait for their Frankston train. Adrian stood in the doorway and waved to them as his train moved off. He knew he might never see them again on earth, and he wanted them to know that he bore them no grudge.

  O’Mullane and Seskis waved awkwardly until Cornthwaite nudged them in the way that had always meant he was going to tell them a really foul joke. While they watched him he made an odd, exaggerated gesture with his right arm. No stranger watching would have understood it, but Seskis and O’Mullane did, and laughed.

  Adrian was speeding away from them, but he understood the gesture. Cornthwaite was aping the movements of a fellow committing a sin of impurity by himself. Adrian sat down and resolved to include his former friends in the list of people he would pray for every day for the rest of his life.

  On the first day of the summer holidays Adrian worked out a Divine Office to say each day until he left for New South Wales. Eight times a day at regular intervals he paced up and down the path from the back door to the shed, reciting prayers from his missal. He knew his parents thought he was taking things too far, but they no longer criticised him or tried to tease him. He guessed his Aunt Kathleen had warned them what a grave sin it was for a parent to oppose a child who was following a divine call.

  After Christmas his mother told him he could spend a week with her relations at Orford. She said it would give her a last chance to get used to being without her eldest son. Adrian saw she was trying to tell him how much she would miss him wh
en he was in New South Wales. But he said nothing. He had already shown her the paragraph in the Charleroi Fathers’ pamphlet telling parents what a joy it was to give a son to God.

  At Orford his aunt and uncle treated him as if he was already ordained. They gave him a bed to himself and asked him to lead them in a decade of their family rosary each night. After Sunday mass they took him to the sacristy to shake hands with the parish priest, who said he had once visited the Charleroi house in Rome.

  That afternoon Adrian’s aunt took him to the local convent. When they were leaving, some of the nuns asked him to pray for them. He held up his hand solemnly like a priest about to give a blessing.

  Adrian would have liked to visit the settlement at Mary’s Mount, but his uncle didn’t seem anxious to go. He told Adrian that some of the settlers had gone back to Melbourne and the others were having a hard struggle to make ends meet.

  One hot afternoon Mr McAloon drove Adrian and some of his cousins to a beach a few miles past Cape Otway. They climbed down a flight of narrow stairs cut in the cliff face. The little bay was deserted. Mr McAloon said that very few people knew about the place, but it was safe for swimming if you didn’t go out too far. The two McAloon girls went to the far end of the bay and disappeared behind a tall rock to get changed.

  Adrian stayed in the shallow water. He had to be careful not to risk his life before he was ordained. (It would be a tragedy if he died before experiencing the fullness of the priesthood.) And he had to cope with a strange idea that had just occurred to him.

  He realised he was standing at last on the sort of deserted beach he had dreamed of visiting in Tasmania or America. At Triabunna or on the coast of California the sight of a lonely beach had made him want to do something sublime or queer or wicked. Now at Cape Otway he had the chance to identify the mysterious influence that worked on him in solitary places.