The Thorn Birds (75 page)

“When I got my new post in the government.”

“No wonder I rated a mention in the
News of the World
! Did you see it?”

“You know I never read rags, Justine.”

“Well, nor do I; someone showed it to me,” she said, then pitched her voice higher and endowed it with a shabby-genteel, fraightfully naice accent. “What up-and-coming carrot-topped Australian actress is cementing very cordial relations with what member of the West German cabinet?”

“They can’t be aware how long we’ve known each other,” he said tranquilly, stretching out his legs and making himself comfortable.

Justine ran her eyes over his clothes with approval; very casual, very Italian. He was rather in the European fashion swim himself, daring to wear one of the fishing-net shirts which enabled Italian males to demonstrate the hairiness of their chests.

“You should never wear a suit and collar and tie,” she said suddenly.

“No? Why not?”

“Machismo is definitely your style—you know, what you’ve got on now, the gold medallion and chain on the hairy chest. A suit makes you look as if your waistline is bulging, when it really isn’t at all.”

For a moment he gazed at her in surprise, then the expression in his eyes became alert, in what she called his “concentrated thinking look.” “A first,” he said.

“What’s a first?”

“In the seven years I’ve known you, you’ve never before commented upon my appearance except perhaps to disparage it.”

“Oh, dear, haven’t I?” she asked, looking a little ashamed. “Heavens, I’ve thought of it often enough, and never disparagingly.” For some reason she added hastily, “I mean, about things like the way you look in a suit.”

He didn’t answer, but he was smiling, as at a very pleasant thought.

That ride with Rainer seemed to be the last quiet thing to happen for days. Shortly after they returned from visiting Cardinal de Bricassart and Cardinal di Contini-Verchese, the limousine Rainer had hired deposited the Drogheda contingent at their hotel. Out of the corner of her eye Justine watched Rain’s reaction to her family, entirely uncles. Right until the moment her eyes didn’t find her mother’s face, Justine had been convinced she would change her mind, come to Rome. That she hadn’t was a cruel blow; Justine didn’t know whether she ached more on Dane’s behalf or on her own. But in the meantime here were the Unks, and she was undoubtedly their hostess.

Oh, they were so shy! Which one of them was which? The older they got, the more alike they looked. And in Rome they stuck out like—well, like Australian graziers on holiday in Rome. Each one was clad in the city-going uniform of affluent squatters: tan elastic-sided riding boots, neutral trousers, tan sports jackets of very heavy, fuzzy wool with side vents and plenty of leather patches, white shirts, knitted wool ties, flat-crowned grey hats with broad brims. No novelty on the streets of Sydney during Royal Easter Show time, but in a late Roman summer, extraordinary.

And I can say with double sincerity, thank God for Rain! How good he is with them. I wouldn’t have believed anyone could stimulate Patsy into speech, but he’s doing it, bless him. They’re talking away like old hens, and
where
did he get Australian beer for them? He likes them, and he’s interested, I suppose. Everything is grist to the mill of a German industrialist-politician, isn’t it? How can he stick to his faith, being what he is? An enigma, that’s what you are, Rainer Moerling Hartheim. Friend of popes and cardinals, friend of Justine O’Neill. Oh, if you weren’t so ugly I’d kiss you, I’m so terribly grateful. Lord, fancy being stuck in Rome with the Unks and no Rain! You are well named.

He was sitting back in his chair, listening while Bob told him about shearing, and having nothing better to do because he had so completely taken charge, Justine watched him curiously. Mostly she noticed everything physical about people immediately, but just occasionally that vigilance slipped and people stole up on her, carved a niche in her life without her having made that vital initial assessment. For if it wasn’t made, sometimes years would go by before they intruded into her thoughts again as strangers. Like now, watching Rain. That first meeting had been responsible, of course; surrounded by churchmen, awed, frightened, brazening it out. She had noticed only the obvious things: his powerful build, his hair, how dark he was. Then when he had taken her off to dinner the chance to rectify things had been lost, for he had forced an awareness of himself on her far beyond his physical attributes; she had been too interested in what the mouth was saying to look at the mouth.

He wasn’t really ugly at all, she decided now. He looked what he was, perhaps, a mixture of the best and the worst. Like a Roman emperor. No wonder he loved the city. It was his spiritual home. A broad face with high, wide cheekbones and a small yet aquiline nose. Thick black brows, straight instead of following the curve of the orbits. Very long, feminine black lashes and quite lovely dark eyes, mostly hooded to hide his thoughts. By far his most beautiful possession was his mouth, neither full nor thin-lipped, neither small nor large, but very well shaped, with a distinct cut to the boundaries of its lips and a peculiar firmness in the way he held it; as if perhaps were he to relax his hold upon it, it might give away secrets about what he was really like. Interesting, to take a face apart which was already so well known, yet not known at all.

She came out of her reverie to find him watching her watch him, which was like being stripped naked in front of a crowd armed with stones. For a moment his eyes held hers, wide open and alert, not exactly startled, rather arrested. Then he transferred his gaze calmly to Bob, and asked a pertinent question about boggis. Justine gave herself a mental shake, told herself not to go imagining things. But it was fascinating, suddenly to see a man who had been a friend for years as a possible lover. And not finding the thought at all repulsive.

There had been a number of successors to Arthur Lestrange, and she hadn’t wanted to laugh. Oh, I’ve come a long way since that memorable night. But I wonder have I actually progressed at all? It’s very nice to have a man, and the hell with what Dane said about it being the
one
man. I’m not going to make it one man, so I’m not going to sleep with Rain; oh, no. It would change too many things, and I’d lose my friend. I need my friend, I can’t afford to be without my friend. I shall keep him as I keep Dane, a male human being without any physical significance for me.

The church could hold twenty thousand people, so it wasn’t crowded. Nowhere in the world had so much time and thought and genius been put into the creation of a temple of God; it paled the pagan works of antiquity to insignificance. It did. So much love, so much sweat. Bramante’s basilica, Michelangelo’s dome, Bernini’s colonnade. A monument not only to God, but to Man. Deep under the
confessio
in a little stone room Saint Peter himself was buried; here the Emperor Charlemagne had been crowned. The echoes of old voices seemed to whisper among the pouring slivers of light, dead fingers polished the bronze rays behind the high altar and caressed the twisted bronze columns of the
baldacchino
.

He was lying on the steps, face down, as though dead. What was he thinking? Was there a pain in him that had no right to be there, because his mother had not come? Cardinal Ralph looked through his tears, and knew there was no pain. Beforehand, yes; afterward, certainly. But now, no pain. Everything in him was projected into the moment, the miracle. No room in him for anything which was not God. It was his day of days, and nothing mattered save the task at hand, the vowing of his life and soul to God. He could probably do it, but how many others actually had? Not Cardinal Ralph, though he still remembered his own ordination as filled with holy wonder. With every part of him he had tried, yet something he had withheld.

Not so august as this, my ordination, but I live it again through him. And wonder what he truly is, that in spite of our fears for him he could have passed among us so many years and not made an unfriend, let alone a real enemy. He is loved by all, and he loves all. It never crosses his mind for an instant that this state of affairs is extraordinary. And yet, when he came to us first he was not so sure of himself;
we
have given him that, for which perhaps our existences are vindicated. There have been many priests made here, thousands upon thousands, yet for him there is something special. Oh, Meggie! Why wouldn’t you come to see the gift you’ve given Our Lord—the gift I could not, having given Him myself? And I suppose that’s it, how he can be here today free of pain. Because for today I’ve been empowered to take his pain to myself, free him from it. I weep his tears, I mourn in his place. And that is how it should be.

Later he turned his head, looked at the row of Drogheda people in alien dark suits. Bob, Jack, Hughie, Jims, Patsy. A vacant chair for Meggie, then Frank. Justine’s fiery hair dimmed under a black lace veil, the only female Cleary present. Rainer next to her. And then a lot of people he didn’t know, but who shared in today as fully as the Drogheda people did. Only today it was different, today it was special for him. Today he felt almost as if he, too, had had a son to give. He smiled, and sighed. How must Vittorio feel, bestowing Dane’s priesthood upon him?

Perhaps because he missed his mother’s presence so acutely, Justine was the first person Dane managed to take aside at the reception Cardinal Vittorio and Cardinal Ralph gave for him. In his black soutane with the high white collar he looked magnificent, she thought; only not like a priest at all. Like an actor playing a priest, until one looked into the eyes. And there it was, the inner light, that something which transformed him from a very good-looking man into one unique.

“Father O’Neill,” she said.

“I haven’t assimilated it yet, Jus.”

“That isn’t hard to understand. I’ve never felt quite the way I did in Saint Peter’s, so what it must have been like for you I can’t imagine.”

“Oh, I think you can, somewhere inside. If you truly couldn’t, you wouldn’t be such a fine actress. But with you, Jus, it comes from the unconscious; it doesn’t erupt into thought until you need to use it.”

They were sitting on a small couch in a far corner of the room, and no one came to disturb them.

After a while he said, “I’m so pleased Frank came,” looking to where Frank was talking with Rainer, more animation in his face than his niece and nephew had ever seen. “There’s an old Rumanian refugee priest I know,” Dane went on, “who has a way of saying, ‘Oh, the poor one!’ with such compassion in his voice…. I don’t know, somehow that’s what I always find myself saying about our Frank. And yet, Jus, why?”

But Justine ignored the gambit, went straight to the crux. “I could kill Mum!” she said through her teeth. “She had no right to do this to you!”

“Oh, Jus! I understand. You’ve got to try, too. If it had been done in malice or to get back at me I might be hurt, but you know her as well as I do, you know it’s neither of those. I’m going down to Drogheda soon. I’ll talk to her then, find out what’s the matter.”

“I suppose daughters are never as patient with their mothers as sons are.” She drew down the corners of her mouth ruefully, shrugged. “Maybe it’s just as well I’m too much of a loner ever to inflict myself on anyone in the mother role.”

The blue eyes were very kind, tender; Justine felt her hackles rising, thinking Dane pitied her.

“Why don’t you marry Rainer?” he asked suddenly.

Her jaw dropped, she gasped. “He’s never asked me,” she said feebly.

“Only because he thinks you’d say no. But it might be arranged.”

Without thinking, she grabbed him by the ear, as she used to do when they were children. “Don’t you dare, you dog-collared prawn! Not one word, do you hear?
I don’t love Rain
! He’s just a friend, and I want to keep it that way. If you so much as light a candle for it, I swear I’ll sit down, cross my eyes and put a curse on you, and you remember how that used to scare the living daylights out of you, don’t you?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “It wouldn’t work, Justine! My magic is stronger than yours these days. But there’s no need to get so worked up about it, you twit. I was wrong, that’s all. I assumed there was a case between you and Rain.”

“No, there isn’t. After
seven years
? Break it down, pigs might fly.” Pausing, she seemed to seek for words, then looked at him almost shyly. “Dane, I’m so happy for you. I think if Mum was here she’d feel the same. That’s all it needs, for her to see you now, like this. You wait, she’ll come around.”

Very gently he took her pointed face between his hands, smiling down at her with so much love that her own hands came up to clutch at his wrists, soak it in through every pore. As if all those childhood years were remembered, treasured.

Yet behind what she saw in his eyes on her behalf she sensed a shadowy doubt, only perhaps doubt was too strong a word; more like anxiety. Mostly he was sure Mum would understand eventually, but he
was
human, though all save he tended to forget the fact.

“Jus, will you do something for me?” he asked as he let her go.

“Anything,” she said, meaning it.

“I’ve got a sort of respite, to think about what I’m going to do. Two months. And I’m going to do the heavy thinking on a Drogheda horse after I’ve talked to Mum—somehow I feel I can’t sort anything out until after I’ve talked to her. But first, well…I’ve got to get up my courage to go home. So if you could manage it, come down to the Peloponnese with me for a couple of weeks, tick me off good and proper about being a coward until I get so sick of your voice I put myself on a plane to get away from it.” He smiled at her. “Besides, Jussy, I don’t want you to think I’m going to exclude you from my life absolutely, any more than I will Mum. You need your old conscience around occasionally.”

“Oh, Dane, of course I’ll go!”

“Good,” he said, then grinned, eyed her mischievously. “I really do need you, Jus. Having you bitching in my ear will be just like old times.”