An Angel In Australia

by Tom Keneally

  ‘No,’ said Trumble. ‘I can handle it. It’s good pay at the brickworks now. The capitalists want what we produce.’

  He winked, and so it was agreed that the priest and the brickworker would meet at half past six on Sunday evening, at browned-out Homebush railway station, and it was Trumble who seemed more concerned about guilt by association than Darragh. ‘One thing,’ he said. ‘Let’s both catch it as individuals, and link up once it’s on the way. I don’t want to shock any of your parish people.’

  ‘My parish people?’ asked Darragh. ‘Or yours?’

  Even so, Trumble seemed so hugely tickled that Darragh himself felt partially appeased for the dreadful afternoon, partly reassured that the human species could be repaired and redeemed. In that spirit, he let Trumble pour him a second glass of beer.

  AS THE MONSIGNOR had foretold, even Darragh’s half-past-six Mass, a Mass recited in all-green vestments, and designed to accommodate the early risers—the penitential, the insomniacs—was considerably more crowded than usual. Some three hundred and fifty or more of the faithful, he would have guessed. The sermon he had prepared the previous night had been enriched and armoured by his alliance with Trumble.

  The Gospel of the Mass, which Darragh read from St Margaret’s pulpit of panelled native cedar, seemed crowded with omens and significance, perhaps to too great a degree. Christ, smelling bitter persecution in the air, warns his followers, ‘They will put you out of the synagogues: yea, the hour cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he does a service to God …’

  He surveyed his congregation. Fortunately, not too many families at this time of morning. They were certainly attentive. Their frowns were the frowns of goodwill. He addressed them as priests were meant to. ‘My dearly beloved brethren.’ He began to speak of the incident of the adulteress, as related by St John. Jesus was on the Mount of Olives, approaching the Temple of Jerusalem whose stones would be in one generation tumbled by the Roman army. And the ‘scribes and Pharisees’, the members of priestly factions in the Temple, brought Him a woman who had been arrested for adultery and said, to test Him, that Moses’s law decreed this woman must be stoned to death. ‘But what sayest thou?’ Christ bent and wrote in the dust of the ground, as if He did not hear them, but they kept pressing Him—they wanted His answer as potential evidence against Him. Then He rose and famously said, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone …’ Darragh could tell by the pale upturned faces below him that, of course—no fools—they caught his drift. They knew he spoke about the judgement which had been brought down on him by the press, and the fiercer one which had been brought down on Kate Heggarty.

  ‘Stoned to death,’ he said. ‘We’re used to that term. We first heard it as children, at a stage when we were involved in the stone fights boys enjoy, and it did not seem too terrible a death. Consider how ferocious it was to be in the centre of all the hurled stones though, to have the consciousness slowly bludgeoned out of you, and then at last, under the hail of rocks, to breathe for the last time, and to be still. Now the men who threw the stones felt gratified, and went back in that state to their homes, unaware they had been savages.’

  The congregation looked very concerned. Some seemed ready to weep in compassion. Others were agog. In the back pews one of the few children was hushed.

  ‘The stone-throwing impulse is very strong in humans,’ he intoned fairly plainly, a banal but authoritative idea since it came from him. ‘The papers are very good at it.’ There was a faint knowing chuckle. ‘The Sunday Telegraph are experts.’ A relieved uproar of laughter enabled parishioners to glance at each other and grin. Darragh felt a little abashed, since it revealed they had all read the article about him, a thought which was for a moment oppressive. ‘Christ realised that men with lumps of granite in their fists were not the best ministers to deal with the woman’s sin. A woman who died in our parish in the past few weeks has been harshly judged in the manner of the Pharisees. It is all too human of us to judge her, because she paid the excessive price of being murdered for her sin. I believe that this woman needed our compassion and our considered help. We were not able to aid her in her daily life, to prevent her undertaking an association which has had this horrible result. Christ, who saved the woman so long ago, might have left the saving of this woman to us, particularly to her priest, and there’s an extent to which we, and I, might have failed.

  ‘I cannot think it right to judge her savagely after the fact. Let us remember that had she not suffered this dreadful result, if the breath had not been crushed from her, we would have known nothing about her supposed sin, and our judgement would be mild. It is the murderer who is the sinner. We should not burden her memory with the murderous guilt, any more than Christ saw fit to burden the woman taken in adultery with the guilt of a transgression which involved both a woman and a man.’

  He felt a sudden tiredness and, like air from a tyre, the power went out of his oratory. He closed with the normal remarks about the services the faithful could provide the dead through their prayers. ‘May their souls, and all the souls of the faithful departed, rest in peace, Amen.’

  That same sermon, in essence, he gave again at the eight o’clock Mass, before a congregation containing more young families. Only children made noises during it.

  As usual, he hoped to finish the eight o’clock Mass by seven minutes to nine at the latest, to ensure that he had unvested and had left the sacristy by a few minutes to nine, allowing Monsignor Carolan some moments of silent reflection before he went out to the altar to say the nine o’clock Mass. But the number of people receiving communion kept Darragh a minute or so over, and he was conscious as he left the altar and went into the sacristy that he might encounter an irritated monsignor.

  The monsignor stood at the vestment bench in his white alb, with a cincture on, and a maniple at his wrist, while altar boys strained to lift an emerald, thread-of-gold decorated chasuble over his head, and arrange it on his shoulders. Darragh and his altar boys edged up to the long vestment drawers, and parallel to his parish priest he began disrobing, taking off his own chasuble as the monsignor in turn assumed his. He undid his white cincture and divested himself of his stole, kissing the cross embroidered on it.

  ‘Is it true you told people they were to blame for that woman?’ murmured the monsignor.

  ‘That is not true,’ said Darragh, in a supposedly easy voice, so that the altar boys would have no room for gossip about a falling out between the parish priest and the curate. But it was sickening that the monsignor had informants among the congregation.

  ‘You remember last night I told you not to mention her.’

  ‘I didn’t mention her by name,’ said Darragh. ‘But there had to be some reference to her. If people were scandalised by last week’s paper, it was up to me to stanch the scandal this week.’

  The monsignor, a mountain of priesthood in his braided, threaded, looped and glittering robes, joined his hands and sunk his fine-cut nose between them in prayer. Having folded the chasuble, stole and maniple in its drawer—you could not trust the altar boys with that job—Darragh crossed the room and threw the white alb and maniple into a laundry basket, for Mrs Flannery always gave him fresh ones, heavily starched by lay nuns in Parramatta, to start the week.

  Without looking at him, the monsignor put on his head the black four-cornered, three-peaked cap, the biretta, optional wear for priests which older men seemed to favour more than younger, and took up his chalice in its altar cloth, one hand beneath the chalice veil, the other laid flat across the embroidered burse, the customary posture of the priest approaching the altar. Anger was still in his face. He said sideways out of his mouth, ‘Are you going out today, Father?’

  ‘Not today,’ said Darragh. He would visit his mother and Aunt Madge on some other Sabbath. ‘This evening.’

  ‘I’m going out to lunch. I’ll leave you a note before I go.’

  And he progressed through the door, and Darragh heard that pec
uliar unified sound of an entire Catholic congregation rising as one, a noise made up in part of sundry fabrics moving, of limbs of all ages straightening, of ankles hitting kneelers, of knees colliding with the pew in front. This was the nine o’clock Church militant ascending in its ranks to greet its monsignor.

  Darragh ate another presbytery breakfast—a boiled egg, toast—and then, hunched down at the desk in his room, began to apply himself to reading the small hours for the Sunday within the Octave of the Ascension.

  The psalms for the office of Prime were not particular to that Sunday; that is, they were the same psalms that priests, rattling through Prime, early or late at night, after a day in the sun, trying to make Matins and Lauds before midnight, said every Sunday. Deep in Psalm 17, a familiar verse stopped him in mid mutter. ‘Lapis, quem reprobaverunt aedificantes, factus est caput anguli. The stone which the builders have rejected has been made the keystone of the arch.’

  It was not the first time a text penetrated him for good or ill. But by a hand which Darragh could only presume to be divine, the steepling weight of last Sunday’s newspaper shame, which he now understood had been crushing him, crowding him nearer and nearer lunacy, was gone. He could not see how long the relief would last, but the sense of being a favoured child, or at least a being on a just course, returned like a gracious tide he seemed to experience even in his limbs. He dropped to his knees with an enthusiasm he had not felt for some months and offered thanks to Mary, the Mother of humankind, for her intercession, and to Christ, who had also tasted blood and ashes in the Garden of Gethsemane and written something mysterious in the dust of the Temple forecourt as the Pharisees bayed for His divine remission of a terrible sentence. Simultaneously, he felt confirmed in his intentions to meet with Fratelli. Efficacy returned to him like the rain, which even as he knelt began to fall outside. He had heard a distant radio report that in the parched interior, from which the weather came, there had been welcome torrents over the remaining areas held until recently by drought. He felt as graced by torrents as the inimitable earth itself.

  He continued with Vespers and Compline: ‘Ecce nunc tempus acceptabile, ecce nunc dies salutis … Behold now is the proper time, now the day of deliverance …’

  By the time he came downstairs, he was aware both the monsignor and Mrs Flannery would be gone from the house. Sunday midday was the one time of the week Mrs Flannery did not cook, but went to eat a baked dinner at her sister’s house in Concord West. The dining room was empty and innocent of cooking odours. In the hall was an envelope addressed to him in Monsignor Carolan’s handwriting. ‘Dear Father Darragh,’ it began rather formally. ‘Don’t go out tomorrow until we have discussed your future.’ It was signed ‘Vincent Carolan, PP.’ Even that left him calm and armoured in new certainty. There was a second letter, and the monsignor added a note of regret to it that he had forgotten to give it to Darragh the day before, when he returned from retreat. It carried a design of a cross and eagles, and was from Captain O’Rourke. Aspillon, said O’Rourke briefly, was in a compound west of Townsville, more than a thousand miles north. ‘I’m informed he’s in good health. If you wish to write to him it is care of the Detention Compound, Camp Kenney, via Townsville. My unit will be on the move soon, so this is likely to be our last communication.’

  Against what he knew from Fratelli, Captain O’Rourke’s assurances counted for little. But for today, the amiable Gervaise would have to be committed to the care of God. Darragh had far too much else to attend to.

  ‘JESUS,’ SAID TRUMBLE, turning to him as Darragh stepped onto the train behind him. On the station, as earlier arranged, they had barely nodded to each other, but this train to Town Hall was nearly empty, and it was obvious they could travel together as a pair. ‘You look like a dead giveaway, old sport. Let’s find a seat.’

  Trumble indicated facing seats by a window beyond which the occasional hooded lights of these suburbs could be seen. With benign amusement, he looked over his new friend’s appearance. Darragh wore a pair of clerical black trousers, the seminary darkness of which he had tried to cancel out with his schooldays sports coat, a Fair Isle knit sweater, a white shirt left over from youth, and a broad woven tie of a fashion not much favoured in this time of war, dread and excitement. He had worn his black overcoat over it all while he waited to board the train at Homebush. Now, on the train, he and Trumble sat together companionably but not saying much, having talked so thoroughly the night before. At Town Hall Station, Darragh went to the men’s lavatories, spending tuppence—such was the inflation of war—on a toilet cubicle in which he removed his coat and hat, packed them in the little grip he carried, and emerged, he dared hope, like a typical, undistinguished citizen of the world, out with a mate, looking for an after-hours drink.

  ‘If you’d needed strides,’ said Trumble, assessing him as he emerged from the lavatory, ‘I could have given you a grey pair. You look like a bloody archbishop in mufti.’ Darragh was disappointed the effect was not better, and Trumble, seeing this, relented. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll pass you off as a … well, maybe a student of philosophy or some such. Let me carry the bloody grip for you. No, let me. Come on.’

  Trumble, who in other circumstances was in favour of putting priests against the wall and shooting them, was taking his duty of care of Darragh with a thorough seriousness. As they moved up to street level on the corner opposite the wedding-cake architecture of the Town Hall, Darragh was aware of Trumble’s hand extended behind his shoulder, as if to catch him should he suddenly fall back down the stairs.

  Park Street did not seem to know quite what to make of its own blackout-cum-brownout. Department stores retained in their windows a few lights by which dress mannequins could be observed. Light spilled onto the pavement from occasional open cafes and pub doorways. Hoping to be a city hidden from bombers, it yet also hoped to be a city of discreet delights, of wares awaiting the next day’s opening hour.

  ‘Two Japanese reconnaissance planes over Sydney today, and the buggers can’t give up their advertising,’ said Trumble, sniffing at Grace Brothers’ window. It was the first Darragh had heard of Japanese reconnaissance planes, but they were not Trumble’s chief point. ‘They’re loyal to their credo, all right,’ said Trumble of the shopkeepers. ‘They’d rather do business than live.’

  They passed Hyde Park with its anti-aircraft battery, St Mary’s Cathedral, where Darragh had been ordained a priest, looming dark behind. As they passed the Australian Museum, Trumble said jovially, ‘Better watch out, Father. Between here and the Cross there are tarts on every corner. By the way, in the Soviet Union there’s no prostitution. You ought to find that fact interesting.’

  And indeed women in knee-length, low-cut dresses, early winter cardigans and flimsy coats, with acrid port and cigarettes on their breath, appeared from doorways to say, ‘Hello boys!’ ‘Out on the prowl, fellers?’ and, ‘I always liked Australian blokes better than Yanks.’ Though he had lived his boyhood four or five miles from this very point in William Street, Darragh had never before heard this sort of solicitation and found it a shocking yet exhilarating experience, as if he were getting closer to the unacknowledged core of the other reality, the one which did not present itself at the altar rails with shining face. A mysterious Sydney existed of which he had no knowledge, and he climbed with Trumble past car showrooms to the reputed parish of that other Australia, Kings Cross.

  On its hill, and along the ridge of Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross possessed a barely muted commercial energy of a particular kind. Though most doors were closed for the Sabbath, there was a sense of events occurring behind them, of drinks being poured, of jokes and touches exchanged in warm rooms closed to the sight of passers-by. Americans in crisp uniforms discussed their options by every corner.

  Crass Darlinghurst Road led into more urbane Macleay Street, where naval and army officers with eagles on their peaked caps and surer social calendars than the enlisted men hurried towards their evening engagements, delighted—it seemed�
��that accidents of war had offered them such a pleasure port as Sydney.

  ‘Our saviours,’ Trumble told Darragh. ‘They won’t look so posh a week after the Japs arrive. The little yellow men will have ’em digging latrines.’

  This sentiment of Trumble’s was uttered just as he and Darragh passed a knot of American soldiers. It was spoken with undue volume, with Trumble staring ahead unblinking, with a kind of neutral certainty, into the eyes of the tallest of the men. It was one of those situations in which the victims of remarks are not sure that they have heard what they have heard, and would rather let ambiguity pass them by.

  ‘They’ll save us,’ said Darragh, ‘if anyone will.’

  But it was apparent that Trumble was as full of a sense of a coming divine purge as was Mr Regan of Rose Bay. Trumble went on talking, as they moved down Macleay Street, about the fact that fashionable people entertained American officers in the flats around about, gin and whisky being provided from the horn of plenty which America seemed to be even in its retreat. ‘And there they all stand,’ asserted Trumble, on what authority Darragh was unsure, but with Mr Regan’s intensity, ‘glass in hand and weak as water. They don’t seem to understand this is a world game.’

  At the corner of Greenknowe Avenue, Trumble and Darragh waited where Fratelli had nominated. Darragh’s heart seemed to try to find shelter in his throat. Mousy lights shone under the alcove of the post office. A young Australian pilot officer and his woman friend passed Trumble and Darragh, and seemed confused a little by their ill-assorted nature, by the question of what these two men had in common. But as they passed, Frank was relieved to see the couple return quickly to their mutual self-absorption. I shall never know that, he realised. Not that particular fierceness of attention for another. Were my mother and father like that? Did they have that triumphant air of having found together a sublime secret?