The Thorn Birds (5 page)

Meggie jumped, looking around in bewilderment. There was a hollow clatter as twenty children all put their pencils down together, a muted rustling as precious sheets of paper were shuffled to one side so elbows could be surreptitiously placed on desks. With a heart that seemed to crumple down toward her boots, Meggie realized everyone was staring at her. Sister Agatha was coming down the aisle rapidly; Meggie’s terror was so acute that had there only been somewhere to flee, she would have run for her life. But behind her was the partition shutting off the middle grade’s room, on either side desks crowded her in, and in front was Sister Agatha. Her eyes nearly filled her pinched little face as she stared up at the nun in suffocated fear, her hands clenching and unclenching on the desktop.

“You spoke, Meghann Cleary.”

“Yes, Sister.”

“And what did you say?”

“My name, Sister.”

“Your
name
!” Sister Agatha sneered, looking around at the other children as if they, too, surely must share her contempt. “Well, children, are we not honored? Another Cleary in our school, and she cannot wait to broadcast her name!” She turned back to Meggie. “
Stand up when I address you
, you ignorant little savage! And hold out your hands, please.”

Meggie scrambled out of her seat, her long curls swinging across her face and bouncing away. Gripping her hands together, she wrung them desperately, but Sister Agatha did not move, only waited, waited, waited…. Then somehow Meggie managed to force her hands out, but as the cane descended she snatched them away, gasping in terror. Sister Agatha locked her fingers in the bunched hair on top of Meggie’s head and hauled her closer, bringing her face up to within inches of those dreadful spectacles.

“Hold out your hands, Meghann Cleary.” It was said courteously, coldly, implacably.

Meggie opened her mouth and vomited all over the front of Sister Agatha’s habit. There was a horrified intake of breath from every child in the room as Sister Agatha stood with the disgusting sick dripping down her black pleats onto the floor, her face purple with rage and astonishment. Then down came the cane, anywhere it could land on Meggie’s body as she flung up her arms to shield her face and cringed, still retching, into the corner. When Sister Agatha’s arm was so tired it did not want to lift the cane, she pointed toward the door.

“Go home, you revolting little Philistine,” she said, turned on her heel and went through into Sister Declan’s classroom.

Meggie’s frantic gaze found Stu; he nodded his head as if to tell her she must do as she was told, his soft blue-green eyes full of pity and understanding. Wiping her mouth with her handkerchief, she stumbled through the door and out into the playground. There were still two hours to go before school was dismissed; she plodded down the street without interest, knowing there was no chance the boys would catch up with her, and too frightened to find somewhere to wait for them. She had to go home on her own, confess to Mum on her own.

Fee nearly fell over her as she staggered out of the back door with a full basket of wet washing. Meggie was sitting on the top-step of the back veranda, her head down, the ends of her bright curls sticky and the front of her dress stained. Putting down the crushing weight of the basket, Fee sighed, pushed a strand of wayward hair out of her eyes.

“Well, what happened?” she demanded tiredly.

“I was sick all over Sister Agatha.”

“Oh, Lord!” Fee said, her hands on her hips.

“I got caned, too,” Meggie whispered, the tears standing unshed in her eyes.

“A nice kettle of fish, I must say.” Fee heaved her basket up, swaying until she got it balanced. “Well, Meggie, I don’t know what to do with you. We’ll have to wait and see what Daddy says.” And she walked off across the backyard toward the flapping half-full clotheslines.

Rubbing her hands wearily around her face, Meggie stared after her mother for a moment, then got up and started down the path to the forge.

Frank had just finished shoeing Mr. Robertson’s bay mare, and was backing it into a stall when Meggie appeared in the doorway. He turned and saw her, and memories of his own terrible misery at school came flooding back to him. She was so little, so baby-plump and innocent and sweet, but the light in the eyes had been brutally quenched and an expression lurked there which made him want to murder Sister Agatha. Murder her, really murder her, take the double chins and squeeze…. Down went his tools, off came his apron; he walked to her quickly.

“What’s the matter, dear?” he asked, bending over until her face was level with his own. The smell of vomit rose from her like a miasma, but he crushed his impulse to turn away.

“Oh, Fruh-Fruh-Frank!” she wailed, her face twisting up and her tears undammed at last. She threw her arms around his neck and clung to him passionately, weeping in the curiously silent, painful way all the Cleary children did once they were out of infancy. It was horrible to watch, and not something soft words or kisses could heal.

When she was calm again he picked her up and carried her to a pile of sweet-smelling hay near Mr. Robertson’s mare; they sat there together and let the horse lip at the edges of their straw bed, lost to the world. Meggie’s head was cradled on Frank’s smooth bare chest, tendrils of her hair flying around as the horse blew gusty breaths into the hay, snorting with pleasure.

“Why did she cane all of us, Frank?” Meggie asked. “I told her it was my fault.”

Frank had got used to her smell and didn’t mind it any more; he reached out a hand and absently stroked the mare’s nose, pushing it away when it got too inquisitive.

“We’re poor, Meggie, that’s the main reason. The nuns always hate poor pupils. After you’ve been in Sister Ag’s moldy old school a few days you’ll see it’s not only the Clearys she takes it out on, but the Marshalls and the MacDonalds as well. We’re all poor. Now, if we were rich and rode to school in a big carriage like the O’Briens, they’d be all over us like a rash. But we can’t donate organs to the church, or gold vestments to the sacristy, or a new horse and buggy to the nuns. So we don’t matter. They can do what they like to us.

“I remember one day Sister Ag was so mad at me that she kept screaming at me, ‘Cry, for the love of heaven! Make a noise, Francis Cleary! If you’d give me the satisfaction of hearing you bellow, I wouldn’t hit you so hard or so often!’

“That’s another reason why she hates us; it’s where we’re better than the Marshalls and the MacDonalds. She can’t make the Clearys cry. We’re supposed to lick her boots. Well, I told the boys what I’d do to any Cleary who even whimpered when he was caned, and that goes for you, too, Meggie. No matter how hard she beats you, not a whimper. Did you cry today?”

“No, Frank,” she yawned, her eyelids drooping and her thumb poking blindly across her face in search of her mouth. Frank put her down in the hay and went back to his work, humming and smiling.

Meggie was still asleep when Paddy walked in. His arms were filthy from mucking out Mr. Jarman’s dairy, his wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes. He took in Frank shaping an axle on the anvil, sparks swirling round his head, then his eyes passed to where his daughter was curled up in the hay, with Mr. Robertson’s bay mare hanging her head down over the sleeping face.

“I thought this is where she’d be,” Paddy said, dropping his riding crop and leading his old roan into the stable end of the barn.

Frank nodded briefly, looking up at his father with that darkling glance of doubt and uncertainty Paddy always found so irritating, then he returned to the white-hot axle, sweat making his bare sides glisten.

Unsaddling his roan, Paddy turned it into a stall, filled the water compartment and then mixed bran and oats with a little water for its food. The animal rumbled affectionately at him when he emptied the fodder into its manger, and its eyes followed him as he walked to the big trough outside the forge, took off his shirt. He washed arms and face and torso, drenching his riding breeches and his hair. Toweling himself dry on an old sack, he looked at his son quizzically.

“Mum told me Meggie was sent home in disgrace. Do you know what exactly happened?”

Frank abandoned his axle as the heat in it died. “The poor little coot was sick all over Sister Agatha.”

Wiping the grin off his face hastily, Paddy stared at the far wall for a moment to compose himself, then turned toward Meggie. “All excited about going to school, eh?”

“I don’t know. She was sick before they left this morning, and it held them up long enough to be late for the bell. They all got sixers, but Meggie was terribly upset because she thought she ought to have been the only one punished. After lunch Sister Ag pounced on her again, and our Meggie spewed bread and jam all over Sister Ag’s clean black habit.”

“What happened then?”

“Sister Ag caned her good and proper, and sent her home in disgrace.”

“Well, I’d say she’s had punishment enough. I have a lot of respect for the nuns and I know it isn’t our place to question what they do, but I wish they were a bit less eager with the cane. I know they have to beat the three R’s into our thick Irish heads, but after all, it was wee Meggie’s first day at school.”

Frank was staring at his father, amazed. Not until this moment had Paddy ever communicated man-to-man with his oldest son. Shocked out of perpetual resentment, Frank realized that for all his proud boasting, Paddy loved Meggie more than he did his sons. He found himself almost liking his father, so he smiled without the mistrust.

“She’s a bonzer little thing, isn’t she?” he asked.

Paddy nodded absently, engrossed in watching her. The horse blew its lips in and out, flapping; Meggie stirred, rolled over and opened her eyes. When she saw her father standing beside Frank she sat bolt upright, fright paling her skin.

“Well, Meggie girl, you’ve had quite a day, haven’t you?” Paddy went over and lifted her out of the hay, gasping as he caught a whiff of her. Then he shrugged his shoulders and held her against him hard.

“I got caned, Daddy,” she confessed.

“Well, knowing Sister Agatha, it won’t be the last time,” he laughed, perching her on his shoulder. “We’d better see if Mum’s got any hot water in the copper to give you a bath. You smell worse than Jarman’s dairy.”

Frank went to the doorway and watched the two fiery heads bobbing up the path, then turned to find the bay mare’s gentle eyes fixed on him.

“Come on, you big old bitch. I’ll ride you home,” he told it, scooping up a halter.

Meggie’s vomiting turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Sister Agatha still caned her regularly, but always from far enough away to escape the consequences, which lessened the strength of her arm and quite spoiled her aim.

The dark child who sat next to her was the youngest daughter of the Italian man who owned and operated Wahine’s bright blue café. Her name was Teresa Annunzio, and she was just dull enough to escape Sister Agatha’s attention without being so dull that it turned her into Sister Agatha’s butt. When her teeth grew in she was quite strikingly beautiful, and Meggie adored her. During lesson breaks in the playground they walked with arms looped around each other’s waists, which was the sign that you were “best friends” and not available for courting by anyone else. And they talked, talked, talked.

One lunchtime Teresa took her into the café to meet her mother and father and grown-up brothers and sisters. They were as charmed with her golden fire as Meggie was with their darkness, likening her to an angel when she turned her wide, beautifully flecked grey eyes upon them. From her mother she had inherited an indefinable air of breeding which everyone felt immediately; so did the Annunzio family. As eager as Teresa to woo her, they gave her big fat potato chips fried in sizzling cauldrons of lamb dripping, and a piece of boned fish which tasted delicious, dipped as it was in floury batter and fried in the smoking well of liquid fat along with the chips, only in a separate wire basket. Meggie had never eaten food so delicious, and wished she could lunch at the café more often. But this had been a treat, requiring special permission from her mother and the nuns.

Her conversation at home was all “Teresa says” and “Do you know what Teresa did?” until Paddy roared that he had heard more than enough about Teresa.

“I don’t know that it’s such a good idea to be too thick with Dagos,” he muttered, sharing the British community’s instinctive mistrust of any dark or Mediterranean people. “Dagos are dirty, Meggie girl, they don’t wash too often,” he explained lamely, wilting under the look of hurt reproach Meggie gave him.

Fiercely jealous, Frank agreed with him. So Meggie spoke less often of her friend when she was at home. But home disapproval couldn’t interfere with the relationship, confined as it was by distance to school days and hours; Bob and the boys were only too pleased to see her utterly engrossed in Teresa. It left them to career madly around the playground just as if their sister did not exist.

The unintelligible things Sister Agatha was always writing on the blackboard gradually began to make sense, and Meggie learned that a “+” meant you counted all the numbers up to a total, where a “-” meant you took the numbers on the bottom away from the numbers on the top and wound up with less than you had in the first place. She was a bright child, and would have been an excellent if not brilliant student had she only been able to overcome her fear of Sister Agatha. But the minute those gimlet eyes turned her way and that dry old voice rapped a curt question at her, she stammered and stuttered and could not think. Arithmetic she found easy, but when called upon to demonstrate her skill verbally she could not remember how many two and two made. Reading was the entrance into a world so fascinating she couldn’t get enough of it; but when Sister Agatha made her stand to read a passage out loud, she could hardly pronounce “cat,” let alone “miaow.” It seemed to her that she was forever quivering under Sister Agatha’s sarcastic comments or flushing bright red because the rest of the class was laughing at her. For it was always her slate Sister Agatha held up to sneer at, always her laboriously written sheets of paper Sister Agatha used to demonstrate the ugliness of untidy work. Some of the richer children were lucky enough to possess erasers, but Meggie’s only eraser was the tip of her finger, which she licked and rubbed over her nervous mistakes until the writing smudged and the paper came away in miniature sausages. It made holes and was strictly forbidden, but she was desperate enough to do anything to avoid Sister Agatha’s strictures.