An Angel In Australia (12 page)

Darragh could tell from the fading light beyond the screen door that soon he must go. He could not sit on in this quiet hour, drinking tea to no purpose.

‘Look,' he said, feeling more her brother than her priest, ‘I know you can't be harangued, Kate. And I don't want to …' He began again. ‘To be honest, I can't see much benefit here, in these walls, from that fellow, whoever he is. I can't see anything notable enough to risk a marriage over. That's what puzzles me.'

Her face flushed, but only mildly. ‘I think, living in the presbytery, it's hard for you to tell, Father.'

‘Is there nothing to be said then?' he asked her. He knew traditional priests would scorn the asking of such a question. They would have walked out the door, warning her emphatically of hell. But that would not have been of any service to her.

‘You know what I'll say,' she said, suddenly straining for breath. ‘I know what you'll say. Have more tea though. Don't give me up for another five mintues.'

So he drank more tea and there was minor conversation but little to say. He rose at last, and thanked her and left fairly briskly, not to string out the futility. He was aware too that there was no basis for future meetings, unless like Mrs Flood she should unexpectedly summon him to bring the sacraments or other comfort. Walking home in a light shower, he felt depressed that the contact had ended. Was Catholicism and its orthodoxy sometimes better designed for the timid, for twitching souls who came too often to confession, for the scrupulous so hungry for absolution at every hour? That was a mystery. A mystery so great that, although not short of breath, he found himself pausing, like an asthmatic gathering strength for the next stride. Like the old monsignor creeping up the seminary driveway.

A
S
D
ARRAGH ATE
toast with nothing but a thin film of butter one Lenten morning, the monsignor, wearing his usual indoors clothing of white shirt and black trousers, came into the dining room, a long, knowing smile on his face. It was of a nature to make Darragh suspect that the man indulgently knew of his letter and visit to Mrs Heggarty, and would want to argue about it and offer a tolerant rebuke of the kind Darragh found harder to answer than screaming outrage. But it was some other mystery of human behaviour and divine will he wished to bring to Darragh's attention.

‘A fine Catholic, that Inspector Kearney,' said the monsignor. ‘Here is a man who must run the investigation of every notable crime in New South Wales. Yet he still has time for the faith of his childhood. He's tracked down your young man, Howley, the missing brother. This Howley's been working on a transport ship, taking supplies to Queensland. Good way to vanish from a community, eh? At least for a time.'

‘Is he well?' asked Darragh.

The monsignor pulled the lower part of his face sideways and assessed his whiskers with the back of his palm. ‘Brother Keogh went to see him at some seamen's canteen in town. The young bloke fobbed him off. By now he's no doubt been around the fleshpots of Townsville, which they say is full of Yanks.'

As for Mr Regan, Darragh's mother's neighbour, so for the monsignor: the Yanks and fleshpots went hand in hand.

‘I suggested to Keogh you might want to go along next time, to confess the boy. And advise him.'

Darragh could not say anything of that. ‘If Brother Keogh wants me to. Yes.' But what an awkward meeting it would be, over mugs of tea in some sailor-frequented place.

‘The bugger's situation needs to be made regular,' declared the monsignor.

Darragh hoped that Brother Howley would both remain on coastal steamers and seek dispensation from his vows. Yet Darragh thought his case too complex for his talents. It was not normal in the way Mrs Heggarty's case was normal.

In the gravel walk between the presbytery and church Darragh paced and recited the office, the crunch of his boots pleasantly syncopating the utterance of the Latin psalms and hymns. This was near the place where he had spoken earlier to the formidable Inspector Kearney, who put murdered spirits to rest and thus needed his beer. As Darragh recited, he frequently had to repress the dangerous images of Mrs Heggarty's honest and lovely fury as she ordered Trumble from her kitchen. And even more fatuously, the silly daydream that he would look up to see her standing by the gateway into the street, tired now of apostasy, a sister in Christ. Her lack of so doing had him restive, and the Latin he recited had a strange feel of being tedious not so much to himself as to God. The
Cantate Domino
passed from his lips more as sigh
than urgent whisper of exultation. ‘
Quemadmodum desiderat cervus ad fontes rivos aquarum
—As the hart yearns for the water of the brooks, so does my soul desire Thee,' felt like an utterance of pale hope rather than accomplished reality. How could it be the established truth of his soul when his eyes kept being drawn towards the street gate?

The gate to the street did creak in answer to his fantasy, and he looked up to see Master Sergeant Fratelli wearing a shining helmet, as if posing for St Gabriel in Raphael's
The Annunciation
. The letters MP on his sleeve showed he was on duty, or close to it. A large camouflaged car stood parked behind him as if, in the best police tradition, sealing an exit. Another soldier was at the wheel.

‘Hello, Father,' called Fratelli. ‘I said I'd be round. I got something you might need. Just a moment.'

He walked to the car, opened its back door and extracted a cardboard box. As he approached again through the gate, Darragh could see the box was laden with groceries, lustrously packaged. Even as America hung on for survival, it had the thoroughness to send its glittering products everywhere with its troops. Perhaps the images on the tins of Spam and peanut butter gave the American warrior a vivid sense of the preciousness of what he fought for. ‘I thought that with rationing and all,' said Fratelli, ‘you and the monsignor might need a little of something extra.'

‘You mustn't put yourself out,' Darragh protested. ‘After all, it's still Lent.'

‘No, I can get this stuff easy, Father. Anyone of my rank can. It's nothing.'

Indeed, Darragh felt an automatic gratitude rise in him. This package would have great potency with Mrs Flannery, who was
always talking abut the difficulties of shopping, and the niggardliness of certain Masonic shopkeepers who knew that she worked for the priests.

‘Well, it's extremely kind of you,' said Darragh, though an instinct told him there was something in Fratelli which wasn't kindness—a mute, jolly force, like that of an out-of-control dog who jumped on everyone, to impose its affection. Darragh took receipt of the box and placed it on the sacristy steps.

Master Sergeant Fratelli, the child of Mammon who had asked for a Mass, said, ‘I'd better get back to the car.'

But the sergeant had not entirely gone. Near the gate he turned and was back with a lowered voice. ‘Let me know if you guys ever need any gas. Petroleum, you know. I could help you.'

Darragh was bewildered by the offer. ‘I don't think we need black market petrol.'

Fratelli inclined his head. The strange, compelling quality was back. ‘If Uncle Sam can't help out a few priests, it's a poor world. Thanks again for the Mass.'

‘You were there?' asked Darragh. He had not seen Fratelli in the congregation.

‘Father, I'm sorry. I was on duty.'

‘That's a good reason,' said Darragh, who respected military duty.

Fratelli saluted, and went back out again to his camouflage-painted vehicle. Carrying the strangely labelled butter, canned salmon, beef and condiments indoors, Darragh became an instant hero to Mrs Flannery. ‘Well,' she said, as if willing to admit Darragh had secret gifts she had not until now seen. As soon as Lent ended, these delicacies, these enhancements of human existence, could be opened and lushly employed in her cooking.

There were other surprises that week. Bert Flood turned up at the presbytery door, wearing a blue suit and a broad dun tie, with the news of his wife's death. She had gone quietly, said Bert. ‘The doc kept the morphine up to her,' he explained. He asked Darragh would he consent to bury Mrs Flood. Then, in the corrugated desert of his face, tears broke forth.

‘Yes,' said Darragh, taking Bert by the elbow into the parlour. ‘She made her confession. There's no hindrance.'

Bert said, ‘She was such a beautiful girl. This bloody TB robbed years off her.'

‘Yes,' said Darragh. ‘I'm sorry, Bert.'

‘She'd be really pleased if you did it.'

‘I just wondered about Ross Trumble. I'm not scared of him. But will he attend the funeral?'

‘Well, look, he helped to nurse the missus, and he's got a lot of respect for what she wanted. He understands this is her show. But I'll sit on him, anyhow.'

‘Yes,' said Darragh. ‘If he's got any respect for Mrs Flood, he shouldn't turn her funeral into some sort of argument.'

Bert took hold of Darragh's elbow in fleeting reassurance. ‘He knows that much, and if he doesn't, I'll soon tell him. But Rossy's all right, Father.'

The question of Trumble's behaviour had already partly preempted the event, the coming funeral. Trumble, for whom everyone made excuses, was a very selfish revolutionary, or so Darragh decided.

There was to be no Requiem Mass, since Darragh considered that to be inappropriate. If he said a Mass, it might prove that there was no one to take the consecrated host but himself. Yet when he entered from the sacristy for the funeral prayers and saw shrunken Mrs Flood's coffin in place, he observed in the body of
the church a number of Catholics—the Clancy sisters and Kate Heggarty among them—who could be depended on to stand and kneel at the right times and to make the sign of the cross impeccably. Darragh described Mrs Flood as a beautiful woman with a winning smile who had travelled far and returned to the faith of her childhood, and even this brought no other response than a stupefied stare from Trumble, who stood in the foyer, beyond the holy water font, amidst the church notices.

Kate Heggarty and the Clancys, along with others were among those who piled into the cars Bert had hired and followed the coffin on the short journey to Rookwood Cemetery, where Darragh read the final burial service. Trumble and Bert stood woodenly yet solidly together at the graveside in Rookwood, Trumble frowning under the stern management of Bert and perhaps of Kate Heggarty, who stood beside him. It was as if Bert had him on drugs, or whisky, or both.

As everyone left the grave, one of the Clancy sisters said to Darragh, ‘Father, she had as fine a service as a
good
Catholic.'

Darragh was trudging over the lumpy clay detritus of recent burials towards the undertaker's car, which would take him back to the presbytery, when he saw Mrs Heggarty at his side. He flinched at the suddenness of the apparition.

‘You do the burial service well, Father.'

‘Thank you.' But he frowned. If she wanted to extend the tricks she had already played on him, what sort of woman was she?

‘You were patient with me, and here I am, hearing the beautiful words of the Church.
Requiem aeternum
…'

‘Yes,' he told her warily.

‘I have to thank you for your patience.'

‘Patience is my job,' he said neutrally. ‘Not all of it. Part of it.'

‘I would be better in the end to make allies among women in my situation. Soldiers' wives …'

Hope surged in him. ‘That sounds sensible to me, Kate.'

She made a conceding-the-point noise with her lips. ‘You know it's hard to live without a man's company. But you see in the end that even the most kindly gifts are a form of keeping a woman in her place. Binding her to feel grateful for every crumb.'

‘But I've already had that argument with you,' said Darragh, growing suspicious of her motives.

‘I'm sorry you think I'm a vain and silly woman,' she told him.

‘What sort of woman are you?'

‘It doesn't matter. I certainly don't think I have a mortgage on your time. I'm nobody. But my father's daughter, I suppose. Rebellious and questioning. That's unlikely to change, either. People don't get set in faith, like you think … like a strawberry in a jelly. But I am very grateful to you, Father.'

She nodded, smiled without intent, and found a path different to his amidst the clumpy earth of the necropolis. Darragh watched her receding, losing herself among the knot of people making their way between the headstones to the cars, and tea at Bert's. He wanted to call her back, as if a chance had been lost.

I
T WAS
P
ALM
S
UNDAY
. A week before his death, Christ entered Jerusalem, a rebel prophet, before the hooves of whose donkey the people strewed cloaks and palm leaves. Christ had a week to suffer, a week to live. To mark this civic triumph which would bring about Christ's death at the hands of jealous authorities, both Judean and Roman, the altar was dressed with palm leaves, and a pile of cut palms stood on a table at the side of the altar, to be blessed and distributed to Mass-goers.

These palms were cut each year by seminarians in the deep gullies of the Blue Mountains, and supplied the parishes of the archdiocese and of much of the palmless hinterland of New South Wales. Darragh, as a student, had traipsed down with others into the sunless, lush groins of earth to cut the native palms, to load the branches, fresh and moist, in sacks, and then to climb out of the valley with them to the escarpment, where a Carolan-like monsignor from Darlinghurst had braked a large truck borrowed from one of the faithful who ran a transport company. This monsignor, secure in his power, dispensed everyone
from his Lenten fast, for the truck was loaded with good things—pastries, cakes, pies. Lent was suspended for one giddy, plump hour as custard tarts and those pink-and-brown delicacies named Neenish tarts were fed into mouths absolved by the monsignor of their own greed. Palms clipped by virgin youths were piled on the truck-bed.

The Lenten fast would end at noon on Easter Saturday. And then the Resurrection would bring joy. So Darragh hoped. He loved the liturgies of Holy Week, and looked to them to restore him to his former self by their manifold mysteries and wonderfully engrossing rites. Since it might be the last Easter of Christian Australia, Darragh had resolved to observe it thoroughly. On Wednesday night the Lamentations of Christ were sung in the cathedral, Darragh catching a train to take part. As each lamentation was concluded—
Oh, my people, why have you abandoned me?
—one more candle was doused, to leave the great nave of the cathedral in deeper darkness. Darragh was back at the cathedral on Thursday morning for the Mass at which the oils were consecrated by the archbishop, and took St Margaret's metal vials, filled with the next year's oils, back to Strathfield with him. On Thursday afternoon, after a Mass at which the monsignor enacted Christ's humility by washing the feet of some of the parish schoolchildren, the altar of St Margaret's was stripped to naked stone, and the tabernacle left as open as an empty tomb. The Eucharist was moved to a side altar, where the devout kept watch till a late hour, as if in response to Christ's complaint to the sleepy apostles in the Garden of Gethsemane, ‘Couldst thou not watch one hour with me?'

On Good Friday, a further vigil, and the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified, that is the Eucharist consecrated the day before. The crucifix, and Christ's pierced feet, were venerated, the reading of
the Passion of Christ by the monsignor, Darragh and Mr O'Toole of the finance committee was conducted and, later, the fourteen Stations of the Cross led by Darragh. Each of the episodes of the Passion and Death was honoured by a numbered depiction of the event attached to the church walls, seven on the west side, seven on the east. The same prayers were recited at each station, to celebrate the event illustrated: Jesus Is Flogged, Jesus Greets His Grieving Mother, Jesus Receives the Crown of Thorns, and all the other intimate tortures to which, for fallen humanity, the Son of God dedicated himself for love.

Then Easter Saturday, and the donning of the white vestments of Christ's imminent Resurrection, and at midnight Mass the lighting of the fire in the entryway of St Margaret's from which the ornate Paschal candle was lit and then carried to the sanctuary and installed in its place.
Christus surrexit hodie, alleluia!

These demanding ceremonies, with attendant sessions to accommodate sinners making a late run to the confessional, lifted the priest out of his lethargies and routines, and Darragh did not think for many seconds of aridity, nor congratulate himself on the redemption of Mrs Flood or grieve the loss of Mrs Heggarty.

The monsignor was going away with Monsignor Plunkett for a two-day golfing holiday at Bowral, and would not be in the parish from Easter Sunday noon until very late on Tuesday evening. There was some financial trick to occur on the Tuesday, the rolling over of a money bill, but Mr Crotty, treasurer of the finance committee, would attend to it. All that the monsignor needed to do was sign two or three sheets of official parish paper in case the bank manager needed a formal letter from the parish priest of St Margaret's for his files. Mr Crotty knew what to put in the letter over the monsignor's signature.

So Darragh received the signed sheets with the illustration of
the splendid church in the upper right-hand corner, and put them in his desk before going off to Rose Bay and lunch with his mother and Aunt Madge. At his mother's that Easter Sunday, he ate sumptuously of the traditional meal of lamb and drank sherry with Aunt Madge who intended, now that Lent was over, to really hit the pictures and catch up on films sacrificed in the penitential season.

On the second morning of the monsignor's absence, when Frank Darragh was eating a breakfast rather richer than normal, the butter plenteous for once on the table due to the American sergeant's generosity, Mrs Flannery went to answer the cranking sound of the bell-key. Having himself heard that noise from the front door, more a rasp than a ring, Darragh had hoped it was not a particular tormented young parishioner, a fellow about eighteen, who attended Mass each day, spending most of his time in his pew rocking on his knees, eyes shut, a sad case of excessive piety. He would frequently approach Frank and ask for an impromptu session in the confessional, at which he would confess some nuance of desire which he thought would damn him to the pit of hell if it were not instantly absolved. This poor, freckled fellow, who worked for the state government as a clerk and seemed to lack friends, was locked in such a relationship to his own sinfulness that no other events counted with him. Even a Japanese invasion would hardly shake his career as the Narcissus of guilt. He was the only person who was likely to interrupt breakfast to plead for absolution.

But it was not him at the door after all. Mrs Flannery came back to tell Frank, ‘It's an American military gentleman.' She clearly approved of the visitor, and lowered her voice. ‘I think it might be the one who brought us those nice things.' There was obvious hope for the arrival of further nice things. ‘He's waiting in the hall.'

Darragh abandoned his breakfast, put his serviette in its silver ring and went out immediately to see Fratelli. The sergeant's fingers, Darragh noticed at first, were working away, moving nervously around the rim of the large white helmet he held in his hands. Looking at the painting of St Jerome, he was full of a restive energy which had not been there on his last visit. He wore a white webbing pistol belt and a baton in its leather sheath, and was white-gaitered as if for duty. The armband with the letters MP on it completed the effect. He looked quite heroic.

‘Father, hi,' said Fratelli.

‘Happy Easter, Sergeant,' said Darragh. ‘If it's not too late.'

‘It's not too late,' said Fratelli, rather distracted. He extended a hand lightly to Darragh's elbow. ‘We have an AWOL situation. A coloured soldier who's been missing from his company these two weeks past. I suppose you'd call it desertion, technically. He's a Catholic. Louisiana. You speak French, Father?'

‘Not much. Why do you ask?'

‘Our boy speaks Creole, or Cajun or whatever. A French language anyhow. But he's got English too. Could you come and talk with him? Otherwise he's likely to get shot.'

Shot? Here on the Western Line of Sydney? It sounded like a film. Fratelli had over-stipended him for a Mass for the repose of a soul, and now he found himself in a film.

‘See,' said Fratelli, laying on Darragh his ponderously earnest almond eyes, ‘he's been hiding with this woman up in Lidcombe. A white woman! The neighbours spotted him and called us. Just like back home, no one likes that sort of thing. See, these guys run when cornered and some of the white MPs won't stand for that.' A wave of Raphaelite ruthlessness passed over Fratelli's eyes. The courtier or the angel in Fratelli was merciful but all the time held a sword behind his back. ‘But you could talk to him,
kind of tell him the Virgin wants him to give himself up, and so on. Maybe you ought to take one of those things you wear round your neck.'

‘A stole?'

‘Yeah, you better take one of those.'

‘But Lidcombe isn't in my parish. Can you wait a moment?'

Fratelli grimaced. ‘Ten minutes,' he suggested. ‘See, I've got this squad waiting outside. I'm in some trouble if that boy skips before we get there.'

Darragh went to the Catholic Directory by the telephone and got the number for Lidcombe parish, Father Gerald Tuomey, P.P. He rang it and the housekeeper answered. He asked if Father Tuomey or his curate were in. The housekeeper said no. Both were out. He began to explain—the American MPs wanted him to go with them to Lidcombe to give spiritual guidance to an American soldier whom they intended to arrest.

‘There's no American soldier here, Father,' the housekeeper assured him.

No, he explained. Within Lidcombe parish. He had hoped to get Father Tuomey's approval, and to inform him as a courtesy.

‘Well, he isn't here, Father, I'm sorry.'

‘Will you tell him I called?'

There was no real choice, he told himself, hanging up, panting as if he'd just run a sprint. Darragh put on his clerical stock to which the white celluloid collar was always affixed, tied its strings around his shirt and fetched his coat. A small stole, purple on one side, white on the other, was always in his pocket—the minimum vestment for solemn moments. Leaving the presbytery, he found that two military cars and a truck were parked near the school, and early arriving schoolchildren were being entertained by having the military police ask them their names, ‘Michael, eh?
Does anyone call you Mickie?' One of the military police was Australian—he wore a slouch hat, though he too was arm-banded, bore ammunition-pouch webbing and had a pistol at belt. Darragh was comforted to see him. Something recognisable in an impending alien scene. He stopped to tell the children to go to the playground.

The scale of this military party, the fact that it was made up of troops of two nations, allayed his earlier canonical fear that Lidcombe was beyond his parish. This was obviously an urgent foray which transcended narrow borders.

‘We're going,' called Fratelli to those of his men who were on the pavement. Those who had been talking to the children climbed back into the truck. Darragh joined Fratelli in the front seat of the first car. The corporal driver and the master sergeant both turned to him. ‘You're a local, Father. What's the best way to Bombay Street, Lidcombe? It's north of the railroad station.'

This seemed to Darragh an excessive demand, that he, the spiritual counsellor, should also be called on to navigate. ‘Surely you know the way,' said Darragh. He saw himself for a second, in this heightened scene, like a nineteenth-century farmer suddenly reluctant to show the mounted traps the way a convict escapee had gone.

‘Sure, we looked up the Parramatta Road route,' the driver said, ‘but there might be a better one.'

It seemed to Darragh that Fratelli understood his reluctance. He lowered his voice.

‘Look, Father, you're a decent guy. But we're coming back with this Negro whatever route we take.'

‘Go up Barker Road,' said Darragh, ‘and turn right at Flemington. Then you can take Parramatta Road.'

‘Got that, Corporal?' asked Fratelli. Along Albert Street,
Darragh could see they were still in the known universe of ordinary bungalows, not unlike his mother's in Rose Bay, and the occasional slightly grander two-storey house with wrought-iron balconies. The earth reached under a giant sky which seemed a guarantee of tranquillity. It was not a sky in which black soldiers could conceivably be shot.

They swung across the bridge over the railway at Flemington and passed the saleyards where sheep came to await slaughter, and then leftwards into the main road. Across the yellow tiles of the Sheepyard Inn (locals called it the Sheep Shit), doors grimly shut now, offering no beer until the afternoon bacchanalian hour or two, fell the shadow of men on an ammunition-pouched mission. The sparse shops of Parramatta Road were passed— Italian greengrocers recently returned from internment, milk bars, butchers, an opaque-windowed wine bar with its purple-faced dipso sitting hunched outside it, waiting for it to open and serve him sweet muscat sherry. Garages, Moran and Cato's grocers, the accustomed sequence, over which glided the silhouette of Sergeant Fratelli's convoy.

Left into Bombay Street and a long, long straggle of low houses—two-storeyed pretension had never reached Lidcombe. This was what Aunt Madge called ‘battler territory', some of the dispiriting aura of the late Depression still hung here. Every tide of event seemed to sweep over the people of such a suburb and recede, leaving them as they were, with the character of desert fruit. As they were, that is, except for the grace of God, abundantly available to them at St Joachim's, Lidcombe, from the hands of Father Tuomey and his curate. In one of these houses with corrugated iron roof and mute windows—Darragh was supposed to believe—hid a black deserter.

The second car pulled ahead of them and vanished far down
the road. The corporal murmured that they'd come in from the next street. ‘You okay, Father?' asked Fratelli, frowning at him, the sergeant's huge eyes unreadable, full of mercy or bloodshed.

‘Yes,' claimed Darragh.

‘This should go well,' murmured Fratelli, and Darragh was reassured.

‘Father,' he said, ‘you wait in the car till I send for you. Okay?'