The Thorn Birds (53 page)

Meggie leaned against the door, limp with relief; if it meant she didn’t eat again until she was back in Dunny, she wasn’t venturing to the dining room. Luckily the publican had put her right next to the women’s bathroom, so she ought to be able to make that journey when necessary. The moment she thought her legs would hold her up she wobbled to the bed and sat on it, her head bowed, looking at her quivering hands.

All the way down she had thought about the best way of going about it, and everything in her cried, Quickly, quickly! Until coming to live at Himmelhoch she had never read a description of a seduction, and even now, armed with several such recountings, she wasn’t confident of her ability to go about one herself. But that was what she had to do, for she knew once she started to talk to Luke it would be all over. Her tongue itched to tell him what she really thought of him. But more than that, the desire to be back on Drogheda with Ralph’s baby made safe consumed her.

Shivering in the sultry sugary air she took off her clothes and lay down on the bed, eyes closed, willing herself not to think beyond the expediency of making Ralph’s baby safe.

The footballers didn’t worry Luke at all when he entered the pub alone at nine o’clock; by then most of them were insensible, and the few still on their feet were too far gone to notice anything farther away than their beer glasses.

Luddie had been exactly right; at the end of his week’s stint as cook Luke was rested, eager for a change and oozing goodwill. When Braun’s young son had brought Meggie’s message down to the barracks he was just washing the last of the supper dishes and planning to cycle into Ingham, join Arne and the blokes on their customary Saturday-night binge. The prospect of Meggie was a very agreeable alternative; ever since that holiday on the Atherton he had found himself wanting her occasionally in spite of his physical exhaustion. Only his horror of starting her off on the let’s-settle-down-in-our-own-home cry had kept him away from Himmelhoch whenever he was near Dunny. But now she had come to him, and he was not at all averse to a night in bed. So he finished the dishes in a hurry, and was lucky enough to be picked up by a truck after he had pedaled a scant half mile. But as he walked his bike the three blocks from where his ride had dropped him to the pub where Meggie was staying, some of his anticipation flattened. All the chemist shops were closed, and he didn’t have any French letters. He stopped, stared in a window full of moth-eaten, heat-stippled chocolates and dead blowflies, then shrugged. Well, he’d just have to take his chances. It would only be tonight, and if there was a baby, with any luck it would be a boy this time.

Meggie jumped nervously when she heard his knock, got off the bed and padded over to the door.

“Who is it?” she called.

“Luke,” came his voice.

She turned the key, opened the door a tiny way, and stepped behind it as Luke pushed it wider. The moment he was inside she slammed it shut, and stood looking at him. He looked at her; at the breasts which were bigger, rounder, more enticing than ever, the nipples no longer pale pink but a rich dark red from the baby. If he had been in need of stimuli they were more than adequate; he reached out to pick her up, and carried her to the bed.

By daylight she still hadn’t spoken a word, though her touch had welcomed him to a pitch of fevered want he had never before experienced. Now she lay moved away from him, and curiously divorced from him.

He stretched luxuriously, yawned, cleared his throat. “What brings you down to Ingham, Meg?” he asked.

Her head turned; she regarded him with wide, contemptuous eyes.

“Well, what brings you here?” he repeated, nettled.

No reply, only the same steady, stinging gaze, as if she couldn’t be bothered answering. Which was ridiculous, after the night.

Her lips opened; she smiled. “I came to tell you I’m going home to Drogheda,” she said.

For a moment he didn’t believe her, then he looked at her face more closely and saw she meant it, all right. “Why?” he asked.

“I told you what would happen if you didn’t take me to Sydney,” she said.

His astonishment was absolutely genuine. “But, Meg! That’s flaming eighteen months ago! And I
gave
you a holiday! Four bloody expensive weeks on the Atherton! I couldn’t afford to take you to Sydney on top of that!”

“You’ve been to Sydney twice since then, both times without me,” she said stubbornly. “I can understand the first time, since I was expecting Justine, but heaven knows I could have done with a holiday away from The Wet this last January.”

“Oh, Christ!”

“What a skinflint you are, Luke,” she went on gently. “Twenty thousand pounds you’ve had from me, money that’s rightfully mine, and yet you begrudge the few measly pounds it would have cost you to take me to Sydney. You and your money! You make me sick.”

“I haven’t touched it,” he said feebly. “It’s there, every penny of it, and more besides.”

“Yes, that’s right. Sitting in the bank, where it always will. You haven’t any intention of spending it, have you? You want to adore it, like a golden calf. Admit it, Luke, you’re a miser. And what an unforgivable idiot you are into the bargain! To treat your wife and daughter the way you wouldn’t dream of treating a pair of dogs, to ignore their existences, let alone their needs! You complacent, conceited, self-centered
bastard
!”

White-faced, trembling, he searched for speech; to have Meg turn on him, especially after the night, was like being bitten to death by a butterfly. The injustice of her accusations appalled him, but there didn’t seem to be any way he could make her understand the purity of his motives. Womanlike, she saw only the obvious; she just couldn’t appreciate the grand design at back of it all.

So he said, “Oh, Meg!” in tones of bewilderment, despair, resignation. “I’ve never ill-treated you,” he added. “No, I definitely haven’t! There’s no one could say I was cruel to you. No one! You’ve had enough to eat, a roof over your head, you’ve been warm—”

“Oh, yes,” she interrupted. “That’s one thing I’ll grant you. I’ve never been warmer in my life.” She shook her head, laughed. “What’s the use? It’s like talking to a brick wall.”

“I might say the same!”

“By all means do,” said Meggie icily, getting off the bed and slipping on her panties. “I’m not going to divorce you,” she said. “I don’t want to marry again. If you want a divorce, you know where to find me. Technically speaking, I’m the one at fault, aren’t I? I’m deserting you—or at least that’s the way the courts in this country will see it. You and the judge can cry on each other’s shoulders about the perfidies and ingratitude of women.”

“I never deserted you,” he maintained.

“You can keep my twenty thousand pounds, Luke. But not another penny do you ever get from me. My future income I’m going to use to support Justine, and perhaps another child if I’m lucky.”

“So that’s it!” he said. “All you were after was another bloody baby, wasn’t it? That’s why you came down here—a swan song, a little present from me for you to take back to Drogheda with you! Another bloody baby, not
me
! It never was me, was it? To you I’m just a breeder! Christ, what a have!”

“That’s all most men are to most women,” she said maliciously. “You bring out the worst in me, Luke, in more ways than you’ll ever understand. Be of good cheer! I’ve earned you more money in the last three and a half years than the sugar has. If there is another child, it’s none of your concern. As of this minute I never want to see you again, not as long as I live.”

She was into her clothes. As she picked up her handbag and the little case by the door she turned back, her hand on the knob.

“Let me give you a little word of advice, Luke. In case you ever get yourself another woman, when you’re too old and too tired to give yourself to the cane any more. You can’t kiss for toffee. You open your mouth too wide, you swallow a woman whole like a python. Saliva’s fine, but not a deluge of it.” She wiped her hand viciously across her mouth. “You make me want to be sick! Luke O’Neill, the great I-am! You’re a nothing!”

After she had gone he sat on the edge of the bed staring at the closed door for a long while. Then he shrugged and started to dress. Not a long procedure, in North Queensland. Just a pair of shorts. If he hurried he could get a ride back to the barracks with Arne and the blokes. Good old Arne. Dear old mate. A man was a fool. Sex was one thing, but a man’s mates were quite another.

Not wanting anyone to know of her return, Meggie rode out to Drogheda on the mail truck with old Bluey Williams, Justine in a basket on the seat beside her. Bluey was delighted to see her and eager to know what she had been doing for the last four years, but as they neared the homestead he fell silent, divining her wish to come home in peace.

Back to brown and silver, back to dust, back to that wonderful purity and spareness North Queensland so lacked. No profligate growth here, no hastening of decay to make room for more; only a slow, wheeling inevitability like the constellations. Kangaroos, more than ever. Lovely little symmetrical wilgas, round and matronly, almost coy. Galahs, soaring in pink waves of undersides above the truck. Emus at full run. Rabbits, hopping out of the road with white powder puffs flashing cheekily. Bleached skeletons of dead trees in the grass. Mirages of timber stands on the far curving horizon as they came across the Dibban-Dibban plain, only the unsteady blue lines across their bases to indicate that the trees weren’t real. The sound she had so missed but never thought to miss, crows carking desolately. Misty brown veils of dust whipped along by the dry autumn wind like dirty rain. And the grass, the silver-beige grass of the Great Northwest, stretching to the sky like a benediction.

Drogheda, Drogheda! Ghost gums and sleepy giant pepper trees a-hum with bees. Stockyards and buttery yellow sandstone buildings, alien green lawn around the big house, autumn flowers in the garden, wallflowers and zinnias, asters and dahlias, marigolds and calendulas, chrysanthemums, roses, roses. The gravel of the backyard, Mrs. Smith standing gaping, then laughing, crying, Minnie and Cat running, old stringy arms like chains around her heart. For Drogheda was home, and here was her heart, for always.

Fee came out to see what all the fuss was about.

“Hello Mum. I’ve come home.”

The grey eyes didn’t change, but in the new growth of her soul Meggie understood. Mum
was
glad; she just didn’t know how to show it.

“Have you left Luke?” Fee asked, taking it for granted that Mrs. Smith and the maids were as entitled to know as she was herself.

“Yes. I shall never go back to him. He didn’t want a home, or his children, or me.”

“Children?”

“Yes. I’m going to have another baby.”

Oohs and aahs from the servants, and Fee speaking her judgment in that measured voice, gladness underneath.

“If he doesn’t want you, then you were right to come home. We can look after you here.”

Her old room, looking out across the Home Paddock, the gardens. And a room next door for Justine, the new baby when it came. Oh, it was so good to be home!

Bob was glad to see her, too. More and more like Paddy, he was becoming a little bent and sinewy as the sun baked his skin and his bones to dryness. He had the same gentle strength of character, but perhaps because he had never been the progenitor of a large family, he lacked Paddy’s fatherly mien. And he was like Fee, also. Quiet, self-contained, not one to air his feelings or opinions. He had to be into his middle thirties, Meggie thought in sudden surprise, and still he wasn’t married. Then Jack and Hughie came in, two duplicate Bobs without his authority, their shy smiles welcoming her home. That must be it, she reflected; they are so shy, it is the land, for the land doesn’t need articulateness or social graces. It needs only what they bring to it, voiceless love and wholehearted fealty.

The Cleary men were all home that night, to unload a truck of corn Jims and Patsy had picked up from the AML&F. in Gilly.

“I’ve never seen it so dry, Meggie,” Bob said. “No rain in two years, not a drop. And the bunnies are a bigger curse than the kangas; they’re eating more grass than sheep and kangas combined. We’re going to try to hand-feed, but you know what sheep are.”

Only too well did Meggie know what sheep were. Idiots, incapable of understanding even the rudiments of survival. What little brain the original animal had ever possessed was entirely bred out of these woolly aristocrats. Sheep wouldn’t eat anything but grass, or scrub cut from their natural environment. But there just weren’t enough hands to cut scrub to satisfy over a hundred thousand sheep.

“I take it you can use me?” she asked.

“Can we! You’ll free up a man’s hands for scrubcutting, Meggie, if you’ll ride the inside paddocks the way you used to.”

True as their word, the twins were home for good. At fourteen they quit Riverview forever, couldn’t head back to the black-oil plains quickly enough. Already they looked like juvenile Bobs, Jacks and Hughies, in what was gradually replacing the old-fashioned grey twill and flannel as the uniform of the Great Northwest grazier: white moleskin breeches, white shirt, a flat-crowned grey felt hat with a broad brim, and ankle-high elastic-sided riding boots with flat heels. Only the handful of half-caste aborigines who lived in Gilly’s shanty section aped the cowboys of the American West, in high-heeled fancy boots and ten-gallon Stetsons. To a black-soil plainsman such gear was a useless affectation, a part of a different culture. A man couldn’t walk through the scrub in high-heeled boots, and a man often had to walk through the scrub. And a ten-gallon Stetson was far too hot and heavy.

The chestnut mare and the black gelding were both dead; the stables were empty. Meggie insisted she was happy with a stock horse, but Bob went over to Martin King’s to buy her two of his part-thoroughbred hacks—a creamy mare with a black mane and tail, and a leggy chestnut gelding. For some reason the loss of the old chestnut mare hit Meggie harder than her actual parting from Ralph, a delayed reaction; as if in this the fact of his going was more clearly stated. But it was so good to be out in the paddocks again, to ride with the dogs, eat the dust of a bleating mob of sheep, watch the birds, the sky, the land.