by Joy Dettman
‘The old man told me to get straight home. We’ve got peaches rotting, Father.’
‘Then they’ll rot a while longer, young Patrick O’Brien, and you’ll hold your tongue in God’s house,’ Ryan roared. ‘So, what is love? I’ll tell you what it is. It is the electric current of the soul. And, as with electricity – which you may be seeing the effects of soon and, to some degree, directing its great power – which of us understands what constitutes its great power, and from whence it comes, and to whence it goes?’
That was a new line. Ryan allowed fifteen full seconds of silence for it to be appreciated. Mike appreciated it, because last night, when Rachael kissed him, that’s exactly what he’d felt, an electricity feeling, a sort of delicious, painful spark shooting down from his ears to you-know-where.
‘The electric current of the soul and of that wire holds the power of life and death, of service and of destruction. And who amongst you will be tempted to throw the switch that turns the current of love to where it ought not to go?
‘Passion is the physical side of love, but when disassociated from spiritual love, it becomes lust. Today in Molliston, there is one who, from illicit and promiscuous union, has brought forth a nameless child into such misery as may be brought upon a child when the unmarried man and woman engage in sinful practice.’ He stretched up to his full height of five foot four inches, and glared at the scattering of youths. ‘Let he who has joined with that woman in illicit union, and fathered a child of misery, stand up now and confess his sin.’
In the silence that followed, Billy whispered, ‘It’s probably Paddy. He got the clap and you know how they get that.’
Maybe Rob Hunter heard him. He started clapping, which no one ever did in church. Ryan glanced at him, then vacated his pulpit.
‘Thank you, Father Ryan. I’d like to pick up on one point you made a while back, an excellent point, I might add – the likening of sex to electricity. If you keep it enclosed in rubber then it’s safe as a bank, lads, but remove the rubber and go playing around where you shouldn’t be playing, and your girlfriend ends up in the family way.’
You could have heard a pin drop and Father Ryan looked as if he might be going to drop dead of a stroke, his complexion turning from pink to maroon.
‘This morning, while you lot were having wet dreams, I got to see the end result of what can happen to a young and innocent girl when a randy young swine has been playing around where he shouldn’t be playing. Most of you lads would have gutted a few rabbits in your time. That’s pretty much what I did this morning – stuck my knife in and sliced down, removing a baby and its little mother’s reproductive organs.
‘Whether that infant was conceived in the heat of young passion or in the name of love, whoever impregnated her might as well have taken his pocket-knife to her throat. If I had my way, your sisters and girlfriends would have been sitting in those pews at your sides. Father Ryan wanted to protect their innocent ears. I, myself, would prefer to protect other more innocent areas of their anatomy.’
‘Who did you operate on, Doctor Hunter?’
‘That’s for me to know and Miss Lizzie to find out.’ That one raised a snigger. ‘I know a lot that you don’t know I know. I know there are a couple of you here today who make excursions out to the blacks’ camp to engage in . . . in what your priest might call illicit gratification.’
There was a communal boot-scraping of guilt, and a few eyes turned up to gaze at the ceiling. Father Ryan coughed, attempted to reclaim his pulpit, but Rob held up a hand and turned to him.
‘They probably don’t confess this to you in your box, but there are some pretty girls out there, damn near as white as you. I’ll tell you something else too. I saw one of these lads in my surgery not long back, as proud as punch because he’d caught his first dose of the clap.’
‘Told you so,’ Billy whispered.
‘You lot were born lucky,’ Rob Hunter continued. ‘You sow your wild oats where you will then go on your way. It’s the girl who suffers the pain and the shame – and her innocent babe who will carry the shame of his birth through life. I’m getting old, lads, and I’ve seen too much misery and too much wasteful death. The little lass I operated on this morning, whoever she might be, will be out of our cruel old world before the sun goes down on this bastard of a day. But even if she lives, her life is over. How many of you would be prepared to enter into marriage with a barren, sexless woman, scarred by my butchery?
‘I’m not expecting miracles. I’m not expecting you to stand up and confess your guilt, but if any one of you feels like walking across the road and having a talk to me about safe intercourse, I’ll be there. And if your girlfriends would like to talk to my wife, she’s over there too.’ He looked at his watch, couldn’t believe what its hands were telling him. ‘Righto. I want you.’ He pointed a finger at Patrick O’Brien.
‘What have I done?’
‘When I need sleep, lad, and I can’t get it, my nasty streak starts showing. You can walk back to the surgery with me now.’
‘What about my old man’s peaches?’
‘I don’t eat peaches.’
‘He can’t make me go with him, can he, Father?’
‘You give me any argument, lad, and I take it a degree higher. You can drop your trousers here and now – in the bloody aisle. And if you argue about that, I’ll go to your home and get your mother to help me pull those bloody trousers off you while all of your sisters listen outside the door. Have you got that?’
‘I’m not arguing, but . . . you mean, just because you saw me out at the blacks’ camp…?’
‘You got it in one, lad. There’s disease out there worse than the clap, disease that can ruin your heart, eat into your brain –’
‘He’s only got half a brain to eat into,’ Billy O’Brien yelled, already on his way out the vestry door, with Mike right behind him.
more than meets the eye
From his chair on the veranda, Tom watched Mike Murphy and his mate running up Church Street in their socks, boots in hand; they ran left, up and over the hill, heading for Willama.
His headache and a hopeless weariness were eating Tom alive. His muscles kept twitching, telling him he shouldn’t be sitting out here. He’d put a big lump of corned beef in the boiler, and it wasn’t safe leaving Rosie alone in there with a boiling pot on the stove, but he’d had it with her this morning and he needed some breathing space. At the moment his future seemed to stretch before him like an endless black tunnel, and the way he was feeling right now, he wasn’t going to have much future past midday. The headache was probably a vein waiting to pop and he’d die of a stroke before he got to eat his corned beef. And Rosie would go blithely on her way.
Maybe it would be a bit of a relief, lying back in a comfortable coffin knowing some other poor bugger would have to look after her. She wouldn’t shed any tears for him. No one would – except the poor bugger who had to take care of her.
It was doing him no good sitting here, watching those couples wandering around town, watching all of those children, laughing, licking ice-cream, playing. Even watching two birds sitting side by side on a limb filled Tom with gut-wrenching envy.
She’d been quiet while Kurt was in his office. He hadn’t heard a peep out of her, but when he went down to the kitchen to put the beef on, he found her standing there stark naked. She liked ripping her clothes off these days – hadn’t been so keen on ripping them off back when he might have felt like doing something about it, though, had she?
He did his block with her. That’s when the headache really hit. He yelled at her, and while he was yelling at her he carried her up to her bed, and instead of trying to fight her bloomers off, he fought a pair on, and a dress, which he put on back to front, so she couldn’t get at the buttons. Neither could he. He rolled her over, straddled her, did every one of them up, and stuck two safety pins in, at the neck and waist, just for safety’s sake. He got a pair of shoes on her feet, damn near sat on her lap to tie the
laces, and ended up with his neck gouged by her fingernails, which needed cutting. Her hair needed cutting too, but he wasn’t going to try getting near her with a pair of scissors today.
‘A man can’t go on like this,’ he said. ‘He’s got to bite the bullet. He’s got to.’
That bloody war. If not for it, his Sundays might have been family days, the boys dropping by, bringing wives and grandkids. If those boys had been alive, he never would have taken the shift to the country, Rosie wouldn’t have been as bad, and even if she had been, the boys would have been around to help him. He was a married man without a wife, a father without a son, a lover who’d lost his love. Bloody regrets – that’s all he had, and too many of them.
What he ought to do was put in for a move back to the city and find some cheap private place that would take her, something he could afford. He’d been saving what he could for six months now, putting a bit away each week – then he’d gone and spent a pile on his kitchen sink, and was planning to spend more on a bath heater, though that might make keeping Rosie clean a bit easier.
‘You’re putting off the inevitable,’ Rob had said to him on the road this morning. ‘Whether you do it today or next week, Tom, it will have to be done soon. You’re an accident waiting to happen.’
And Clarrie Morgan coming up here. If anything would drive a man to taking a stroke, it was bloody Clarrie Morgan – and him seeing Rosie. He’d choke himself sneering at what had become of pretty Rosie Davis. He’d look at this town and sneer at what I’ve come down to too, and I’ll follow on his heels like a whipped cur, yelping yes, sir, no, sir, I buried the bones there, sir. Tom had grown up with Morgan, had started out in the force with him. He’d been bigger than Morgan, better, but the bloody war that had stolen Tom’s sons and his soul had turned Morgan into a hero.
He sighed, rubbed at his neck. It did no good thinking about it. It did no good looking back either. You couldn’t alter what was into what could have been, much and all as you might like to.
Tom stood, walked to his open front door, listened. Something had shut her up. He waited, listening to his pot bubble, then he locked the door, stepped down from the veranda and walked diagonally across the road to the café, where he bought one of Mrs White’s ice creams, suddenly craving some sweet comfort.
He should have been down at Reichenberg’s bringing young Chris in. That lad had been drunk last night, jealous, pushed to the limit of his endurance, and he’d probably done it, whether his brother thought he had or not.
Leave it for Morgan. Let him work it out, do the dirty work then get the hell out of my town and leave me to have a stroke in peace.
He should have gone out to see Squire, should have taken a ride down to the pickers’ camp. A mob of them would have been at the cider pit last night, and there were a few in town who looked as trustworthy as trench rats – they were probably out picking.
Wait for Morgan.
Leaning in the slim shade of the café’s veranda, licking ice cream, he was staring at a family group of ants when the Murphys’ old blue heeler wandered across to sniff at his crutch. Tom gave him a scratch behind a moth-eaten ear then fed him the tail-end of his ice cream cone. A good old dog, Blue, he’d fight to the death; he had good eyes, battle scarred, but sympathetic.
With a nudge of his nose the dog said he was moving along, so Tom followed the only bugger in town who had bothered to walk to his side this morning and give him the time of day – apart from Jeanne Johnson, who’d stopped by his veranda after church. She either didn’t know about her sister’s condition or didn’t care, but she heard Rosie squawking and thumping on that parlour window, and offered to sit with her after lunch. He’d accepted gladly.
Old Blue wandered down by the C of E church, sniffed at a shrub or two, sniffed at a dead magpie, while Tom looked across the road and hoped his corned beef wasn’t boiling over. He wasn’t going over there to check on it. Blue, having decided not to spoil the flavour of ice cream by mixing it with blowflies and feathers, crossed over Church Street, heading for the hospital, so Tom followed him. They stopped to appreciate Squire’s car, parked out front. Blue sniffed it, watered its back wheel then wandered down to a shady den he’d excavated beneath Hunter’s hydrangeas. He said his goodbyes with a mangy tail, then disappeared.
Tired of having no one and no place to go, Tom looked around the corner at the residence door, walked to it, and knocked. Nobody home. Nobody ever home there. He wandered along the veranda to the front entrance where he glimpsed Joan doing whatever a nursing sister did with papers.
‘I thought I ought to come over and have a word to Rob. See if he’s –’ He couldn’t complete the sentence. It was a lie anyway, but he couldn’t tell her he’d followed a dog here, seeking sanctuary.
‘He’s in his consultation room with Mr Squire.’
‘What’s he doing here?’
‘He came about Ruby.’
‘How is she?’
‘We’re doing a blood transfusion, Tom, and I don’t like it, but Rob and Irene say she’s so close to death, there is no point in not doing it. He sent some blood over to Willama this morning, for testing, and they telephoned a while back. Apparently, Willie’s blood is safe to give her, but I’ve seen it kill more often than it cures. I was just about to make a cup of tea. Come through,’ she said, leading the way down a wide passage, past the wards.
‘Have the girl’s parents been in to see her yet?’
‘Don’t speak to me about them. I telephoned Mrs Johnson early this morning, and she all but hung up on me. I’ve tried three times since to get her here. I finally got onto Mr Squire and he drove straight in. Apparently, Ruby’s family washed their hands of her when they found out she was in trouble. Mr Squire offered to pay for her treatment.’
‘Very decent of him – given his own situation today.’
‘Yes.’ Joan walked ahead of him to twin doors separating the wards from the residence and Rob’s business area. They weren’t often locked, or even closed, but the key was in her pocket this morning. ‘We’re keeping her down this end – the last thing that little girl needs now is to become town gossip. If she’s going to die, she’s going to die in peace.’
She led him through, locked the doors behind her, then opened a door on the right. Inside, Ruby and Willie lay, connected by a tube feeding blood from brother to sister, and it was hard to tell which one had less colour behind their freckles.
Willie opened his eyes as Joan entered. Tom remained at the door, shaking his head.
‘I don’t like her pulse,’ Irene said. ‘It’s a pity we didn’t do this hours ago, Mrs Hunter.’
‘How much longer?’ Joan asked.
Irene looked at her watch. ‘Five minutes more.’
‘Give her as much as she needs,’ Willie said, and Tom turned away, wanting to howl. He didn’t need this right now – couldn’t stand to see it. This was family. This was what having a family was all about, and he didn’t have one.
‘We’re giving her plenty. You just lie quietly, Willie,’ Irene said. ‘If she lives, it will be your doing. Just you know that, and you remember that, love.’
‘When you finish off here, Irene, you have to go home to get some sleep.’
‘What about you, Mrs Hunter?’
‘I’ll sleep tonight,’ Joan said, and she left Irene to her macabre task and walked Tom towards the residence rooms, further down the passage. Her veil off now, those tight grey curls skipped free. She removed her coverall apron and hung it behind the door as she walked into the kitchen, moving like a girl. She was seven or eight years older than Rosie, but no one would have believed it. He watched her fill two glasses from the tap and offer him one.
‘How’s your drinking water holding up, lass?’
‘We’re down to five rungs in the main tank, and a few more in the small one. Rob says we’ll be reduced to drinking beer before long.’
‘On a day like this, it sounds like a fine alternative to me.’ He emptied the glass
and placed it on the sink, peering out the window as a motor started up. ‘That must be Squire leaving now.’
‘And about time. I want Rob to get some rest. Have you got ten minutes to sit down and have a beer with him? It’s early, but he’s been up all night and it might relax him enough to nod off for an hour or two – or at least get him off his feet for a while.’
‘I’ve got ten minutes, lass.’ They owned a kerosene refrigerator; the beer served here was always cold.
Balm to the soul, that woman – as was her sitting room. High ceilings, long windows shaded by trees, soft tapestry chairs, the open fireplace, hidden for summer by a matching tapestry screen. And on the walls, a gallery of Rob’s paintings – some of them not bad either. Joe Reichenberg’s house was there, painted with the hill and a sunset behind it. That one should have been hanging in a real gallery.
Tom allowed a deep chair to take him, knowing full well he should have been on the other side of the road – if that phone rang again…To hell with the phone, and his boiler of meat. He’d come here looking for sanctuary, and found it.
He’d be fifty come the first of April. The original April fool, Thomo Thompson. He’d taken up with Rosie Davis when he was a hot-blooded eighteen; he’d got her pregnant and wed her before his nineteenth birthday.
Two years in a row she’d been pregnant, and nearly died of it. After Johnny came, her mother had moved in with them to care for Rosie and his boys, and with no spare bed he’d given up his half of the marital bed, imagining it would only be for a week or two. She’d stayed eight years – which had pretty much put an end to any married relationship.
He’d been a sitting duck when Katie Monahan came along. He’d never forgotten her, though by the living Jesus, he’d tried hard to. Three months of uncomplicated, reciprocated love, and today he could remember that girl as if it had been yesterday. Three months isn’t much when you look at a calendar, but ninety-odd nights of talking, laughing, of sharing your dreams and memories with another, had seemed a lot longer when he was twenty-three. By God, he’d loved that girl.
