The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
She sat in her chair, implacable and unpitying, and watched the scarlet form in its agony on the floor. “I loved you, Ralph, but you were never mine. What I had of you, I was driven to steal. Dane was my part, all I could get from you. I vowed you’d never know, I vowed you’d never have the chance to take him away from me. And then he gave himself to you, of his own free will. The image of the perfect priest, he called you. What a laugh I had over that one! But not for anything would I have given you a weapon like knowing he was yours. Except for this. Except for this! For nothing less would I have told you. Though I don’t suppose it matters now. He doesn’t belong to either of us anymore. He belongs to God.”
Cardinal de Bricassart chartered a private plane in Athens; he, Meggie and Justine brought Dane home to Drogheda, the living sitting silently, the dead lying silently on a bier, requiring nothing of this earth any-more.
I have to say this Mass, this Requiem for my son. Bone of my bone, my son. Yes, Meggie, I believe you. Once I had my breath back I would even have believed you without that terrible oath you swore. Vittorio knew the minute he set eyes on the boy, and in my heart I, too, must have known. Your laugh behind the roses from the boy—but my eyes looking up at me, as they used to be in my innocence. Fee knew. Anne Mueller knew. But not we men. We weren’t fit to be told. For so you women think, and hug your mysteries, getting your backs on us for the slight God did you in not creating you in His Image. Vittorio knew, but it was the woman in him stilled his tongue. A masterly revenge.
Say it, Ralph de Bricassart, open your mouth, move your hands in the blessing, begin to chant the Latin for the soul of the departed. Who was your son. Whom you loved more than you loved his mother. Yes, more! For he was yourself all over again, in a more perfect mold.
“In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti…”
The chapel was packed; they were all there who could be there. The Kings, the O’Rourkes, the Davieses, the Pughs, the MacQueens, the Gordons, the Carmichaels, the Hopetons. And the Clearys, the Drogheda people. Hope blighted, light gone. At the front in a great lead-lined casket, Father Dane O’Neill, covered in roses. Why were the roses always out when he came back to Drogheda? It was October, high spring. Or course they were out. The time was right.
“Sanctus…sanctus…sanctus…”
Be warned that the Holy of Holies is upon you. My Dane, my beautiful son. It is better so. I wouldn’t have wanted you to come to this, what I already am. Why I say this for you, I don’t know. You don’t need it, you never needed it. What I grope for, you knew by instinct. It isn’t you who is unhappy, it’s those of us here, left behind. Pity us, and when our times come, help us.
“Ite, Missa est…Requiescat in pace….”
Out across the lawn, down past the ghost gums, the roses, the pepper trees, to the cemetery. Sleep on, Dane, because only the good die young. Why do we mourn? You’re lucky, to have escaped this weary life so soon. Perhaps that’s what Hell is, a long term in earth-bound bondage. Perhaps we suffer our hells in living….
The day passed, the mourners departed, the Drogheda people crept about the house and avoided each other; Cardinal Ralph looked early at Meggie, and could not bear to look again. Justine left with Jean and Boy King to catch the afternoon plane for Sydney, the night plane for London. He never remembered hearing her husky bewitching voice, or seeing those odd pale eyes. From the time when she had met him and Meggie in Athens to the time when she went with Jean and Boy King she had been like a ghost, her camouflage pulled closely around her. Why hadn’t she called Rainer Hartheim, asked him to be with her? Surely she knew how much he loved her, how much he would want to be with her now? But the thought never stayed long enough in Cardinal Ralph’s tired mind to call Rainer himself, though he had wondered about it off and on since before leaving Rome. They were strange, the Drogheda people. They didn’t like company in grief; they preferred to be alone with their pain.
Only Fee and Meggie sat with Cardinal Ralph in the drawing room after a dinner left uneaten. No one said a word; the ormolu clock on the marble mantel ticked thunderously, and Mary Carson’s painted eyes stared a mute challenge across the room to Fee’s grandmother. Fee and Meggie sat together on a cream sofa, shoulders lightly touching; Cardinal Ralph never remembered their being so close in the old days. But they said nothing, did not look at each other or at him.
He tried to see what it was he had done wrong. Too much wrong, that was the trouble. Pride, ambition, a certain unscrupulousness. And love for Meggie flowering among them. But the crowning glory of that love he had never known. What difference would it have made to know his son was his son? Was it possible to love the boy more than he had? Would he have pursued a different path if he had known about his son? Yes! cried his heart. No, sneered his brain.
He turned on himself bitterly. Fool! You ought to have known Meggie was incapable of going back to Luke. You ought to have known at once whose child Dane was. She was so proud of him! All she could get from you, that was what she said to you in Rome. Well, Meggie…. In him you got the best of it. Dear God, Ralph, how could you not have known he was yours? You ought to have realized it when he came to you a man grown, if not before. She was waiting for you to see it, dying for you to see it; if only you had, she would have gone on her knees to you. But you were blind. You didn’t want to see. Ralph Raoul, Cardinal de Bricassart, that was what you wanted; more than her, more than your son. More than your son!
The room had become filled with tiny cries, rustles, whispers; the clock was ticking in time with his heart. And then it wasn’t in time anymore. He had got out of step with it. Meggie and Fee were swimming to their feet, drifting with frightened faces in a watery insubstancial mist, saying things to him he couldn’t seem to hear.
“Aaaaaaah!” he cried, understanding.
He was hardly conscious of the pain, intent only on Meggie’s arms around him, the way his head sank against her. But he managed to turn until he could see her eyes, and looked at her. He tried to say, Forgive me, and saw she had forgiven him long ago. She knew she had got the best of it. Then he wanted to say something so perfect she would be eternally consoled, and realized that wasn’t necessary, either. Whatever she was, she could bear anything. Anything! So he closed his eyes and let himself feel, that last time, forgetfulness in Meggie.
Seven
1965–1969 Justine
19
Sitting at his Bonn desk with an early-morning cup of coffee, Rainer learned of Cardinal de Bricassart’s death from his newspaper. The political storm of the past few weeks was diminishing at last, so he had settled to enjoy his reading with the prospect of soon seeing Justine to color his mood, and unperturbed by her recent silence. That he deemed typical; she was far from ready yet to admit the extent of her commitment to him.
But the news of the Cardinal’s death drove all thought of Justine away. Ten minutes later he was behind the wheel of a Mercedes 280 SL, heading for the autobahn. The poor old man Vittorio would be so alone, and his burden was heavy at the best of times. Quicker to drive; by the time he fiddled around waiting for a flight, got to and from airports, he could be at the Vatican. And it was something positive to do, something he could control himself, always an important consideration to a man like him.
From Cardinal Vittorio he learned the whole story, too shocked at first to wonder why Justine hadn’t thought to contact him.
“He came to me and asked me, did I know Dane was his son?” the gentle voice said, while the gentle hands smoothed the blue-grey back of Natasha.
“And you said?”
“I said I had guessed. I could not tell him more. But oh, his face! His face! I wept.”
“It killed him, of course. The last time I saw him I thought he wasn’t well, but he laughed at my suggestion that he see a doctor.”
“It is as God wills. I think Ralph de Bricassart was one of the most tormented men I have ever known. In death he will find the peace he could not find here in this life.”
“Do you think so? I like rather to think of it as beautiful. I cannot believe Dane found death anything but welcome, and it is not surprising that Our Dear Lord could not wait a moment longer to gather Dane unto Himself. I mourn, yes, not for the boy. For his mother, who must suffer so much! And for his sister, his uncles, his grandmother. No, I do not mourn for him. Father O’Neill lived in almost total purity of mind and spirit. What could death be for him but the entrance into everlasting life? For the rest of us, the passage is not so easy.”
From his hotel Rainer dispatched a cable to London which he couldn’t allow to convey his anger, hurt or disappointment. It merely said: MUST RETURN BONN BUT WILL BE IN LONDON WEEKEND STOP WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME QUERY ALL MY LOVE RAIN
On his desk in the office at Bonn were an express delivery letter from Justine, and a registered packet which his secretary informed him had come from Cardinal de Bricassart’s lawyers in Rome. He opened this first, to learn that under the terms of Ralph de Bricassart’s will he was to add another company to his already formidable list of directorships. Michar Limited. And Drogheda. Exasperated yet curiously touched, he understood that this was the Cardinal’s way of telling him that in the final weighing he had not been found wanting, that those prayers during the war years had borne fruit. Into Rainer’s hands he had delivered the future welfare of Meggie O’Neill and her people. Or so Rainer interpreted it, for the wording of the Cardinal’s will was quite impersonal. It could not dare be otherwise.
He threw the packet into the basket for general non-secret correspondence, immediate reply, and opened the letter from Justine. It began badly, without any kind of salutation.
Thank you for the cable. You’ve no idea how glad I am that we haven’t been in touch these last couple of weeks, because I would have hated to have you around. At the time all I could think when I thought of you was, thank God you didn’t know. You may find this hard to understand, but I don’t want you anywhere near me. There is nothing pretty about grief, Rain, nor any way your witnessing mine could alleviate it. Indeed, you might say this has proved to me how little I love you. If I did truly love you I’d turn to you instinctively, wouldn’t I? But I find myself turning away.
Therefore I would much rather that we call it quits for good and all, Rain. I have nothing to give you, and I want nothing from you. This has taught me how much people mean if they’re around for twenty-six years. I couldn’t bear ever to go through this again, and you said it yourself, remember? Marriage or nothing. Well, I elect nothing.
My mother tells me the old Cardinal died a few hours after I left Drogheda. Funny. Mum was quite cut up about his dying. Not that she said anything, but I know her. Beats me why she and Dane and you liked him so much. I never could, I thought he was too smarmy for words. An opinion I’m not prepared to change just because he’s dead.
And that’s it. All there is. I do mean what I say, Rain. Nothing is what I elect to have from you. Look after yourself.
She had signed it with the usual bold, black “Justine,” and it was written with the new felt-tipped pen she had hailed so gleefully when he gave it to her, as an instrument thick and dark and positive enough to satisfy her.
He didn’t fold the note and put it in his wallet, or burn it; he did what he did with all mail not requiring an answer—ran it through the electric shredder fixed to his wastebasket the minute he had finished reading it. Thinking to himself that Dane’s death had effectively put an end to Justine’s emotional awakening, and bitterly unhappy. It wasn’t fair. He had waited so long.
At the weekend he flew to London anyway but not to see her, though he did see her. On the stage, as the Moor’s beloved wife, Desdemona. Formidable. There was nothing he could do for her the stage couldn’t, not for a while. That’s my good girl! Pour it all out on the stage.
Only she couldn’t pour it all out on the stage, for she was too young to play Hecuba. The stage was simply the one place offering peace and forgetfulness. She could only tell herself: Time heals all wounds—while not believing it. Asking herself why it should go on hurting so. When Dane was alive she hadn’t really thought very much about him except when she was with him, and after they were grown up their time together had been limited, their vocations almost opposed. But his going had created a gap so huge she despaired of ever filling it.
The shock of having to pull herself up in the midst of a spontaneous reaction—I must remember to tell Dane about this, he’ll get such a kick out of it—that was what hurt the most. And because it kept on occurring so often, it prolonged the grief. Had the circumstances surrounding his death been less horrifying she might have recovered more quickly, but the nightmare events of those few days remained vivid. She missed him unbearably; her mind would return again and again to the incredible fact of Dane dead, Dane who would never come back.
Then there was the conviction that she hadn’t helped him enough. Everyone save her seemed to think he was perfect, didn’t experience the troubles other men did, but Justine knew he had been plagued by doubts, had tormented himself with his own unworthiness, had wondered what people could see in him beyond the face and the body. Poor Dane, who never seemed to understand that people loved his goodness. Terrible to remember it was too late to help him now.
She also grieved for her mother. If his dying could do this to her, what must it have done to Mum? The thought made her want to run screaming and crying from memory, consciousness. The picture of the Unks in Rome for his ordination, puffing out their proud chests like pouter pigeons. That was the worst of all, visualizing the empty desolation of her mother and the other Drogheda people.
Be honest, Justine. Was this honestly the worst? Wasn’t there something far more disturbing? She couldn’t push the thought of Rain away, or what she felt as her betrayal of Dane. To gratify her own desires she had sent Dane to Greece alone, when to have gone with him might have meant life for him. There was no other way to see it. Dane had died because of her selfish absorption in Rain. Too late now to bring her brother back, but if in never seeing Rain again she could somehow atone, the hunger and the loneliness would be well worth it.
So the weeks went by, and then the months. A year, two years. Desdemona, Ophelia, Portia, Cleopatra. From the very beginning she flattered herself she behaved outwardly as if nothing had happened to ruin her world; she took exquisite care in speaking, laughing, relating to people quite normally. If there was a change, it was in that she was kinder than of yore, for people’s griefs tended to affect her as if they were her own. But, all told, she was the same outward Justine—flippant, exuberant, brash, detached, acerbic.
Twice she tried to go home to Drogheda on a visit, the second time even going so far as to pay for her plane ticket. Each time an enormously important lastminute reason why she couldn’t go cropped up, but she knew the real reason to be a combination of guilt and cowardice. She just wasn’t able to nerve herself to confront her mother; to do so meant the whole sorry tale would come out, probably in the midst of a noisy storm of grief she had so far managed to avoid. The Drogheda people, especially her mother, must continue to go about secure in their conviction that Justine at any rate was all right, that Justine had survived it relatively unscathed. So, better to stay away from Drogheda. Much better.
Meggie caught herself on a sigh, suppressed it. If her bones didn’t ache so much she might have saddled a horse and ridden, but today the mere thought of it was painful. Some other time, when her arthritis didn’t make its presence felt so cruelly.
She heard a car, the thump of the brass ram’s head on the front door, heard voices murmuring, her mother’s tones, footsteps. Not Justine, so what did it matter?
“Meggie,” said Fee from the veranda entrance, “we have a visitor. Could you come inside, please?”
The visitor was a distinguished-looking fellow in early middle age, though he might have been younger than he appeared. Very different from any man she had ever seen, except that he possessed
“Meggie, this is Mr. Rainer Hartheim,” said Fee, standing beside her chair.
“Oh!” exclaimed Meggie involuntarily, very surprised at the look of the Rain who had figured so largely in Justine’s letters from the old days. Then, remembering her manners, “Do sit down, Mr. Hartheim.”
He too was staring, startled. “You’re not a bit like Justine!” he said rather blankly.
“No, I’m not.” She sat down facing him.
“I’ll leave you alone with Mr. Hartheim, Meggie, as he says he wants to see you privately. When you’re ready for tea you might ring,” Fee commanded, and departed.
“You’re Justine’s German friend, of course,” said Meggie, at a loss.
He pulled out his cigarette case. “May I?”
“Please do.”
“Would you care for one, Mrs. O’Neill?”
“Thank you, no. I don’t smoke.” She smoothed her dress. “You’re a long way from home, Mr. Hartheim. Have you business in Australia?”
He smiled, wondering what she would say if she knew that he was, in effect, the master of Drogheda. But he had no intention of telling her, for he preferred all the Drogheda people to think their welfare lay in the completely impersonal hands of the gentleman he employed to act as his go-between.
“Please, Mrs. O’Neill, my name is Rainer,” he said, giving it the same pronunciation Justine did, while thinking wryly that this woman wouldn’t use it spontaneously for some time to come; she was not one to relax with strangers. “No, I don’t have any official business in Australia, but I do have a good reason for coming. I wanted to see you.”
“To see me?” she asked in surprise. As if to cover sudden confusion, she went immediately to a safer subject: “My brothers speak of you often. You were very kind to them while they were in Rome for Dane’s ordination.” She said Dane’s name without distress, as if she used it frequently. “I hope you can stay a few days, and see them.”