Daughter of Australia (6 page)

S
eventy-five miles north of Geraldton, near Kalbarri, the orphanage hovered above jagged cliffs that gave no hint of human inhabitation save the serpentine dirt road roughed out by convicts more than a decade before. Green fingers of hopbush worked daily to reclaim the road, their roots creeping over wagon ruts and lines sluiced by years of winter rain; immovable boulders blocked every turn. But few needed to pass along this route. The people of the north, the wild country, stayed in the north; the people of the south, the sun country, stayed in the south.

So this road met the Bishop's experimental petrol-fueled car with great amusement. Pointed rocks poked at the thin rubber tires and bounced the iron frame precariously over hidden roots and ruts. The whole of the orphanage watched the steel and rubber creature. Not even age precluded a gaping mouth as the battered car pulled up to the level lot of the church amid a cloud of dust and exhaust. Through the blanket of smoke, a man floundered with a gearshift, each jolt bringing loud screeches from the engine and more smoke farting from the tailpipe until he pulled something hard and the engine closed down with a whine. The passenger's door opened and an arm clothed in black smacked away the fumes.

Father McIntyre reached a hand into the smoke. “Welcome, Your Grace.”

The Bishop stepped from the car, leaned against the car looking ill, then chuckled. “That journey is not for the faint of heart.” He beat at his cope. Sprays of dust clouded and stuck to his red, sweaty face. Putting his palms to the small of his back, he arched his spine in a long, tight stretch, his stomach bulging. Another man fumbled with bags tied to the trunk platform and then, with hands draped with vestments, joined the Bishop's side.

Father McIntyre's lips parted. Recognition reached his body first and his face drained.

“My new assistant, Deacon Johnson,” introduced the Bishop.

“Hello, Father McIntyre.” The man addressed the priest calmly, but his eyes were questioning and apprehensive. “It's good to see you again.”

The Bishop looked up in surprise. “You know one another?”

The Deacon did not take his eyes off Father McIntyre and answered gently, “We were at the seminary together in New South Wales. I was his tutor for many years.”

Father McIntyre tried to remind himself that the man had once been a friend and he let that memory obscure the others until the blood returned to his face and his chest opened again. “Deacon Johnson,” he greeted formally. “It's been a long time.”

“Good we started here,” noted the Bishop. “Always helps to see a familiar face.”

“We're not your only stop?”

“Hardly!” the Bishop huffed. “We've almost a dozen other missions to visit.” He slapped a hand to the Father's shoulder. “You're not the only one in need of money, you know. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to clean up and have a rest.” The Bishop walked past the children, did not greet them with expression or voice. “Besides, I'm sure you and Deacon Johnson have a lot of catching up to do.”

Father McIntyre watched the retreating figure, fully conscious of the Deacon's weighted gaze against his profile. He clasped his hands behind his back, breathed the briny sea into his nostrils before speaking. “It was a long time ago, Robert. There's no need to speak of it.”

The Deacon's round cheeks twitched. “I know, but I feel I should—”

He stopped the man's sentence with one piercing look. “It was a long time ago.”

O
n this day, the waves did not crash but lapped and licked the stones of the cliffs. The pages in the book open at James's knees hardly rustled in the calm. He read little of her diary, absorbing each word in both style and meaning to create some picture of his mother. At the end of each page, he hesitated to turn to the next, for each page opened a window to his past, both the good and bad of it. He was in no rush to read the diary. He was an orphan. He knew how it ended.

James closed the book and placed it under bent knees, embracing them with his arms as he followed the sounds of the tide. Then a movement shadowed a boulder. A stick cracked. His skin iced. He waited, became as still as the rocks. Pebbles crunched to his right and he sprang upright. “Who's there?” he hollered. James tucked the book into his waistband and bent slowly for a rock, raised it into the air, readied it. “Who's back there?”

A figure emerged from behind the thorny arms of a Murchison rose. James lowered the rock and dropped it from his fingers. “You shouldn't be up here,” he warned.

Leonora stepped from behind the prickly wires. Her shoulders rose and settled with nervous breathing and her eyes circled with worry. “You shouldn't be up here,” he repeated. “The cliffs aren't safe.” James stepped forward and she retreated with as many steps.

“I'm not going to hurt you.” He walked quickly, but she moved quicker and the full sea and its distance rose up behind her. “Stop!” he shouted, but she did not understand and her feet backed into the space where the grass could no longer grow and the sand met the crumbles of the cliff edge. James did not see or think but bolted forward and grabbed her arm just as her ankle gave in against a loose rock that rolled to the sea. He pulled her roughly from the edge and did not let go until she squirmed her whitened wrist from his grip.

Adrenaline pumped hard and he didn't know quite what had happened except that she was there and did not fall over the edge and he couldn't quite believe it. They stared hard at each other, their chests heaving. Leonora's eyes flickered to the rosebush.

“What is it?” he asked. “What's over there?” She didn't answer, watched his every move as he crawled under the prickly canopy. She grabbed his arm and made him stop, then pointed to the ground. There, near his next step, was a cluster of sticks, a mound of petals and leaves. In the center, a small yellow and gray bird, her wing jutting out awkwardly, blinked with slow, pale lids.

Leonora still held his arm, squeezed it vaguely, a great begging holding her face. He knelt against the sandy base and pushed the stems away, holding them carefully between the thorns. “I won't hurt her,” he whispered.

James caressed the bird's lead-colored head. “She's a western yellow robin. Her wing's broken, though.

“Wait here.” James shuffled from the brambles and returned a moment later, his fingers soiled and holding a wriggling earthworm. He placed it on the ground. The bird tilted her head one way and then the other, pecked, held the worm longways in her beak and then in three choking jerks ate it.

Leonora turned to James and her eyes were bright with gratitude. She smiled cautiously. James smiled back. He never smiled and he didn't understand.

“T
he tarps are all we have to protect the dormitories.” Father McIntyre pointed to the wounded building. “It's a temporary fix. Certainly won't get us through another winter.” Bishop Ridley nodded and continued walking, leading the tour more than following it, taking the steep slope toward the rows of dwarf fruit trees.

“The orchard will come back, but it will take time. Some of the trees were pulled out from the roots.” Father McIntyre took his elbow. “Watch your step, Bishop,” he said as they stepped over an open hole. “The cherries did much better—”

The Bishop interrupted, “How many children reside here?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“And staff?”

“Three nuns and a cook.”

The Bishop studied him. “And you.”

“And me, yes.”

The Bishop walked with fingers joined loosely behind his back. Father McIntyre slowed his gait to match, though he was impatient to show the Bishop all that needed to be done. The fence posts to the farm peeked up from the valley and Father McIntyre wasted no time. “In the past, shearing brought in—”

“How many children . . . I'm sorry, Father, I didn't mean to interrupt.”

“No, please continue.”

Bishop Ridley scanned the sky. “How many children have been adopted?”

He tried to dodge the question. “How many? I guess that depends. The orphanage has been here since before I started.”

“How many since you started, then?” the Bishop asked.

Father McIntyre wiped a sweaty palm against his hip. “None.”

The Bishop's jaw dropped. “Not a one? In all this time?”

“This is not a wealthy state, Your Grace. Times are hard. We aren't exactly easy to get to.” He meant it to sound light but knew right away his error.

“You make a good point.” The Bishop raised his eyebrows, his mind busy. “This place is remote for an orphanage. Perhaps it would be better utilized as a seminary. Young priests need the solitude. Children need the opposite.”

Father McIntyre swam through waves of nerves and stopped. “May I speak frankly?” The Bishop nodded, curious.

“This is more than an orphanage. For these children, it is a sanctuary, a
life
. For most of them, this is their only chance.” Father McIntyre stared deep into the man's expressionless features. “They receive vocation training ensuring they will not turn wayward as the unskilled do. Each child will leave this place with the ability to support himself and become a decent working adult and, no doubt, a strong advocate of the church.” He did not speak with emotion but with profession and he held the Bishop's eyes so they could not look away.

“We do not ask for charity but for an investment,” he continued. “These children work and study hard. We sustain ourselves from the farm and orchard and only ask enough to get work started again. The storm has brought us a challenging time.”

“You wrote for money before the storm ever came, Father McIntyre.” The Bishop flared his nostrils skeptically. “Several times, I believe.”

“That's true. But I've only asked to benefit the children. To give them every opportunity.”

“You're a dedicated man,” said the Bishop blandly. The priest was not sure if it was a compliment.

The men did not continue to the farm, for the need was gone. Nothing he could show the Bishop would outweigh his words. Around the turn, they sought the bench under the shade of a waning sun and Father McIntyre did not feel like filling in the spaces any longer. The sun weighed on his eyelids and a twinge of a headache started at the temples. He was bored with the Bishop, bored with his disinterest, and he looked forward to the morning, when he would leave.

A group of boys played ball in the field, their activity a welcome distraction. Father McIntyre relaxed and smiled at the way the children fought for the ball, their feet quick and carefree; he smiled at the laughing faces, the joy children brought into the world, his world. He looked at the Bishop's profile to see if he smiled, too. But the Bishop didn't, and for the first time Father McIntyre saw plainly the thoughts in the man's unmoving features, the wheels that ground past the present and sped toward the future when children did not run in these fields or take shelter in this place. To Bishop Ridley, the orphanage was a minor distraction—a lost cause.

 

Father McIntyre entered his office with a quick push of the door, forgetting it was occupied. Deacon Johnson jumped with the noise, his hand on his chest. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!” He chuckled at his own surprise. “I was just finishing up the accounts. Forgot where I was for a moment. Numbers will do that to you.”

Father McIntyre slouched into the chair, his face heavy and dull. “I trust you found everything in order?”

“Yes. Your records are very thorough.” The Deacon frowned. “What's wrong, Colin?”

Father McIntyre intertwined his fingers, picked at his thumbnail. “Bishop Ridley never planned to give us any money, did he?”

The man pinched his lip. A slight blush entered his cheeks. “No.”

“Then why come?” the Father almost shouted. “Why bother with the journey, with the pleasantries, when he could have ignored my letters as he has in the past? Why have you look over the books when he has no plans to add to them?”

“The Bishop plans to close half the parishes,” he answered softly, his eyes unblinking. “He came to decide which ones should go.”

The words kicked Father McIntyre square under the ribs. He leaned his back against the chair and looked at the ceiling, digesting the words and trying to think through the pain in his abdomen. He dug his elbows into his legs, rubbed his eyebrows with his fingers. “What can I do?”

The Deacon placed his glasses on his nose and opened the ledger. “The numbers are not good. But you know this. You were running at a loss before the storm, and now . . .” He looked at the Father with gravity. “If it doesn't turn around, the Bishop will close the orphanage.”

Father McIntyre scoffed, “Turn it around, he says!” Hopelessness flooded his chest and he twisted his mouth. “Is there nothing that can be done?”

The Deacon's pupils rose above his glasses and he held up a finger for patience, then flipped through the lined pages of the ledger. “There's a number here I wanted to ask you about.” He turned the ledger toward the Father and pointed. “Under the word ‘Leonora.' ”

“That's not our money.” He pushed the ledger away. “Belongs to a child here.”

Deacon Johnson cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

“There's a girl here. Her name is Leonora. When she came, there was money set aside for her future; it belongs to her.”

“She's a ward of the church,” the Deacon corrected. “The money belongs to us.”

“Someone cared enough for this girl to set aside money.” His jaw set. “I won't touch it.”

“You don't have a choice.”

“I do have a choice,” Father McIntyre retorted, then checked his tone. “You don't understand. This girl is . . . special.”

“How so?”

“She doesn't speak.”

The Deacon grew stern. “Colin, this is not a place for children like that and you know it. There are state hospitals for that sort of thing. She should have never been placed here.”

“She's not retarded, for Pete's sake! The poor child has been through things we can't imagine, abandoned, shuffled from one place to another. It's no wonder she doesn't speak. No one has probably ever listened to her.” He pinched his knee. “A child like that has no future. She needs that money to survive. I won't allow it to be touched.”

The Deacon studied him and the Father's insides bubbled. “Don't you dare look at me like that, Robert. Don't you analyze me!”

“You can't save the world.”

Father McIntyre turned his head away, but the past was seeping toward them.

“You put too much pressure on yourself, Colin. It's not healthy.”

“Stop it!” Father McIntyre ordered.

“I know you.” Deacon Johnson leaned forward, his eyes watery, helpless. “You lose yourself in salvation. I still have nightmares about what I saw, what you did to yourself.”

“Stop it!” Father McIntyre clamped his eyes and covered his ears with his hands, pressed until he heard his pulse, but it was too late; something red and sick was entering and weaving its way through the floorboards and inching through the roof eaves. He glanced at the thin white scars across his wrists. He tore his hands away and folded them against his stomach.

“Do you forget? It was me.” The Deacon pounded his chest with an open hand. “It was me who found you!”

“Damn it!” Father McIntyre hammered the desk with his fist. “How dare you bring this here! How dare you soil this place, my place, with those . . . with that hell.” He looked around wildly. “This is my place.
My place,
do you hear? You have no right to bring that back.” He paced the floor, caged, blood pumping too hard and quick. He turned back to the Deacon and held out his wrists, his white hands reaching out from the black sleeves, Christ-like. “I spill no blood, do you see? I have skin long healed.” He suddenly spoke calmly. “You have no right to cut them open again.”

Father McIntyre returned to his seat, his pupils round and black. “I'm not the same man you knew. That was a different life for me.”

“Yes, I see that!” the Deacon cried. “I saw that the moment I stepped out of the car. But when I saw your face here, the stress, the hopelessness . . . it took me back. Just because we age doesn't mean old demons can't strike.”

“My demons have long been dealt with, Robert. I'm among angels here.”

“Then let me help you keep it that way,” he urged. “There is an answer here, at least a temporary one. You need to use that girl's money.”

Father McIntyre's neck flopped against his collar.

“Listen to me.” The Deacon danced in his seat. “If the orphanage closes, where will she go? She'll be sent to a hospital or put in a work home or worse. You said yourself she has no future. Here the child is safe. Here she will be fed, nurtured, schooled as will the other children. An individual's need must be sacrificed for the betterment of the whole. You see? You have no other choice.

“Let me help you, Colin. If you're no longer a liability to the church, I can sway the Bishop to let things stand. But you must understand this money is only a bandage. This place is stagnant; there are no children leaving. You need to find adopters, donors, it's the only way.”

Father McIntyre lowered his eyes and nodded, the fight gone.

 

Bishop Ridley and Deacon Johnson left at first light. The smell of salt air, no longer tainted by the car's trail of exhaust, entered Father McIntyre's veins, freshened the blood.

Father McIntyre stepped upon the path to the sea, sought shade below the pepper tree and closed his eyes. He pressed his palms against the blue-black dots of hair beneath the surface of his chin and cheeks, felt their points under his fingertips. When he opened his eyes, James was there, standing with his strange seriousness and silent dignity. The priest smiled at the boy, patted the ground. “Sit. Sit.”

James folded his legs, bent his spine over the triangle of limbs.

“Haven't seen you much lately. Everything all right?” he asked. James nodded.

Father McIntyre focused on James's face, the frowning young lines. The Bible stuck out from the boy's shirt. He tapped James on the knee. “So, tell me what's got you reading the Good Book so intently these days.”

James lowered his chin, shadowing the grass with the oval of his head. “I don't know.”

“Then read me a passage that interests you. Surely, you've found some favorites.”

The boy did not move; his chest did not rise or fall.

Father McIntyre laughed, plucked the book from the boy's waistband. “Fine. I'll choose one.” He pulled out his glasses, opened the book to the middle. At first, his eyes blindly stared at the page, confused by the slanted, elegant handwriting. He flipped several more pages with his index finger, saw the dates listed in the corners. He closed the book, turned his face away. “How long have you had it?” he asked, his voice dim.

The boy's silence was long and pained. “Since the storm.”

“Have you read it?”

“No,” James answered. “Well, some.”

“You shouldn't have kept it.”

“Yes, Father.”

“And I shouldn't have kept it from you.”

James's mouth fell. Father McIntyre put the book in the boy's hands. “I was wrong to keep it from you.” He gazed at the child. “I never read it, James. I hope you believe me. This was never meant for anyone's eyes but yours.” The two sat among the rustle of sparse leaves for several minutes.

“Do you think . . .” James ventured, then stopped, bit his bottom lip.

“What is it, son?”

“Do you think I have relatives . . . in Ireland?”

He thought of that for a moment. “Hmmm. It's possible.”

“My father was from there. Maybe I have uncles?” His voice pitched higher. “Maybe they would bring me to live with them?”

Father McIntyre pursed his lips and tapped his foot. “There's no way to know that, son.”

“You could write a letter.” The boy's expression changed and there was hope. “He was from Limerick. It says so in the diary. You could write the town or the church.”