The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
“I can, Mrs. O’Neill,” he answered easily.
For Meggie the interview was proving unexpectedly awkward; he was a stranger, he had announced that he had come twelve thousand miles simply to see her, and apparently he was in no hurry to enlighten her as to why. She thought she would end in liking him, but she found him slightly intimidating. Perhaps his kind of man had never come within her ken before, and this was why he threw her off-balance. A very novel conception of Justine entered her mind at that moment: her daughter could actually relate easily to men like Rainer Moerling Hartheim! She thought of Justine as a fellow woman at last.
Though aging and white-haired she was still very beautiful, he was thinking while she sat gazing at him politely; he was still surprised that she looked not at all like Justine, as Dane had so strongly resembled the Cardinal. How terribly lonely she must be! Yet he couldn’t feel sorry for her in the way he did for Justine; clearly, she had come to terms with herself.
“How is Justine?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I’m afraid I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since before Dane died.”
She didn’t display astonishment. “I haven’t seen her myself since Dane’s funeral,” she said, and sighed. “I’d hoped she would come home, but it begins to look as if she never will.”
He made a soothing noise which she didn’t seem to hear, for she went on speaking, but in a different voice, more to herself than to him.
“Drogheda is like a home for the aged these days,” she said. “We need young blood, and Justine’s is the only young blood left.”
Pity deserted him; he leaned forward quickly, eyes glittering. “You speak of her as if she is a chattel of Drogheda,” he said, his voice now harsh. “I serve you notice, Mrs. O’Neill, she is not!”
“What right have you to judge what Justine is or isn’t?” she asked angrily. “After all, you said yourself that you haven’t seen her since before Dane died, and that’s two years ago!”
“Yes, you’re right. It’s all of two years ago.” He spoke more gently, realizing afresh what her life must be like. “You bear it very well, Mrs. O’Neill.”
“Do I?” she asked, tightly trying to smile, her eyes never leaving his.
Suddenly he began to understand what the Cardinal must have seen in her to have loved her so much. It wasn’t in Justine, but then he himself was no Cardinal Ralph; he looked for different things.
“Yes, you bear it very well,” he repeated.
She caught the undertone at once, and flinched. “How do you know about Dane and Ralph?” she asked unsteadily.
“I guessed. Don’t worry, Mrs. O’Neill, nobody else did. I guessed because I knew the Cardinal long before I met Dane. In Rome everyone thought the Cardinal was your brother, Dane’s uncle, but Justine disillusioned me about that the first time I ever met her.”
“Justine? Not Justine!” Meggie cried.
He reached out to take her hand, beating frantically against her knee. “No, no, no, Mrs. O’Neill! Justine has absolutely no idea of it, and I pray she never will! Her slip was quite unintentional, believe me.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, I swear it.”
“Then in God’s Name why doesn’t she come home? Why won’t she come to see me? Why can’t she bring herself to look at my face?”
Not only her words but the agony in her voice told him what had tormented Justine’s mother about her absence these last two years. His own mission’s importance dwindled; now he had a new one, to allay Meggie’s fears.
“For that I am to blame,” he said firmly.
“You?” asked Meggie, bewildered.
“Justine had planned to go to Greece with Dane, and she’s convinced that had she, he’d still be alive.”
“Nonsense!” said Meggie.
“Quite. But though we know it’s nonsense, Justine doesn’t. It’s up to you to make her see it.”
“Up to me? You don’t understand, Mr. Hartheim. Justine has never listened to me in all her life, and at this stage any influence I might once have had is completely gone. She doesn’t even want to see my face.”
Her tone was defeated but not abject. “I fell into the same trap my mother did,” she went on matter-of-factly. “Drogheda is my life…the house, the books…. Here I’m needed, there’s still some purpose in living. Here are people who rely on me. My children never did, you know. Never did.”
“That’s not true, Mrs. O’Neill. If it was, Justine could come home to you without a qualm. You underestimate the quality of the love she bears you. When I say I am to blame for what Justine is going through, I mean that she remained in London because of me, to be with me. But it is for you she suffers, not for me.”
Meggie stiffened. “She has no right to suffer for me! Let her suffer for herself if she must, but not for me. Never for me!”
“Then you believe me when I say she has no idea of Dane and the Cardinal?”
Her manner changed, as if he had reminded her there were other things at stake, and she was losing sight of them. “Yes,” she said, “I believe you.”
“I came to see you because Justine needs your help and cannot ask for it,” he announced. “You must convince her she needs to take up the threads of her life again—not a Drogheda life, but her own life, which has nothing to do with Drogheda.”
He leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs and lit another cigarette. “Justine has donned some kind of hair shirt, but for all the wrong reasons. If anyone can make her see it, you can. Yet I warn you that if you choose to do so she will never come home, whereas if she goes on the way she is, she may well end up returning here permanently.
“The stage isn’t enough for someone like Justine,” he went on, “and the day is coming when she’s going to realize that. Then she’s going to opt for people—either her family and Drogheda, or me.” He smiled at her with deep understanding. “But people are not enough for Justine either, Mrs. O’Neill. If Justine chooses me, she can have the stage as well, and that bonus Drogheda cannot offer her.” Now he was gazing at her sternly, as if at an adversary. “I came to ask you to make sure she chooses me. It may seem cruel to say this, but I need her more than you possibly could.”
The starch was back in Meggie. “Drogheda isn’t such a bad choice,” she countered. “You speak as if it would be the end of her life, but it doesn’t mean that at all, you know. She could have the stage. This is a true community. Even if she married Boy King, as his grandfather and I have hoped for years, her children would be as well cared for in her absences as they would be were she married to you. This is her home! She knows and understands this kind of life. If she chose it, she’d certainly be very well aware what was involved. Can you say the same for the sort of life you’d offer her?”
“No,” he said stolidly. “But Justine thrives on surprises. On Drogheda she’d stagnate.”
“What you mean is, she’d be unhappy here.”
“No, not exactly. I have no doubt that if she elected to return here, married this Boy King—who is this Boy King, by the way?”
“The heir to a neighboring property, Bugela, and an old childhood friend who would like to be more than a friend. His grandfather wants the marriage for dynastic reasons; I want it because I think it’s what Justine needs.”
“I see. Well, if she returned here and married Boy King, she’d learn to be happy. But happiness is a relative state. I don’t think she would ever know the kind of satisfaction she would find with me. Because, Mrs. O’Neill, Justine loves me, not Boy King.”
“Then she’s got a very strange way of showing it,” said Meggie, pulling the bell rope for tea. “Besides, Mr. Hartheim, as I said earlier, I think you overestimate my influence with her. Justine has never taken a scrap of notice of anything I say, let alone want.”
“You’re nobody’s fool,” he answered. “You know you can do it if you want to. I can ask no more than that you think about what I’ve said. Take your time, there’s no hurry. I’m a patien
Meggie smiled. “Then you’re a rarity,” she said.
He didn’t broach the subject again, nor did she. During the week of his stay he behaved like any other guest, though Meggie had a feeling he was trying to show her what kind of man he was. How much her brothers liked him was clear; from the moment word reached the paddocks of his arrival, they all came in and stayed in until he left for Germany.
Fee liked him, too; her eyes had deteriorated to the point where she could no longer keep the books, but she was far from senile. Mrs. Smith had died in her sleep the previous winter, not before her due time, and rather than inflict a new housekeeper on Minnie and Cat, both old but still hale, Fee had passed the books completely to Meggie and more or less filled Mrs. Smith’s place herself. It was Fee who first realized Rainer was a direct link with that part of Dane’s life no one on Drogheda had ever had opportunity to share, so she asked him to speak of it. He obliged gladly, having quickly noticed that none of the Drogheda people were at all reluctant to talk of Dane, and derived great pleasure from listening to new tales about him.
Behind her mask of politeness Meggie couldn’t get away from what Rain had told her, couldn’t stop dwelling on the choice he had offered her. She had long since given up hope of Justine’s return, only to have him almost guarantee it, admit too that Justine would be happy if she did return. Also, for one other thing she had to be intensely grateful to him: he had laid the ghost of her fear that somehow Justine had discovered the link between Dane and Ralph.
As for marriage to Rain, Meggie didn’t see what she could do to push Justine where apparently she had no desire to go. Or was it that she didn’t want to see? She had ended in liking Rain very much, but his happiness couldn’t possibly matter as much to her as the welfare of her daughter, of the Drogheda people, and of Drogheda itself. The crucial question was, how vital to Justine’s future happiness was Rain? In spite of his contention that Justine loved him, Meggie couldn’t remember her daughter ever saying anything which might indicate that Rain held the same sort of importance for her as Ralph had done for Meggie.
“I presume you will see Justine sooner or later,” Meggie said to Rain when she drove him to the airport. “When you do, I’d rather you didn’t mention this visit to Drogheda.”
“If you prefer,” he said. “I would only ask you to think about what I’ve said, and take your time.” But even as he made his request, he couldn’t help feeling that Meggie had reaped far more benefit from his visit than he had.
When the mid-April came that was two and a half years after Dane’s death, Justine experienced an overwhelming desire to see something that wasn’t rows of houses, too many sullen people. Suddenly on this beautiful day of soft spring air and chilly sun, urban London was intolerable. So she took a District Line train to Kew Gardens, pleased that it was a Tuesday and she would have the place almost to herself. Nor was she working that night, so it didn’t matter if she exhausted herself tramping the byways.
She knew the park well, of course. London was a joy to any Drogheda person, with its masses of formal flower beds, but Kew was in a class all its own. In the old days she used to haunt it from April to the end of October, for every month had a different floral display to offer.
Mid-April was her favorite time, the period of daffodils and azaleas and flowering trees. There was one spot she thought could lay some claim to being one of the world’s loveliest sights on a small, intimate scale, so she sat down on the damp ground, an audience of one, to drink it in. As far as the eye could see stretched a sheet of daffodils; in mid-distance the nodding yellow horde of bells flowed around a great flowering almond, its branches so heavy with white blooms they dipped downward in arching falls as perfect and still as a Japanese painting. Peace. It was so hard to come by.
And then, her head far back to memorize the absolute beauty of the laden almond amid its rippling golden sea, something far less beautiful intruded. Rainer Moerling Hartheim, of all people, threading his careful way through clumps of daffodils, his bulk shielded from the chilly breeze by the inevitable German leather coat, the sun glittering in his silvery hair.
“You’ll get a cold in your kidneys,” he said, taking off his coat and spreading it lining side up on the ground so they could sit on it.
“How did you find me here?” she asked, wriggling onto a brown satin corner.
“Mrs. Kelly told me you had gone to Kew. The rest was easy. I just walked until I found you.”
“I suppose you think I ought to be falling all over you in gladness, tra-la?”
“Are you?”
“Same old Rain, answering a question with a question. No, I’m not glad to see you. I thought I’d managed to make you crawl up a hollow log permanently.”
“It’s hard to keep a good man up a hollow log permanently. How are you?”
“I’m all right.”
“Have you licked your wounds enough?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s to be expected, I suppose. But I began to realize that once you had dismissed me you’d never again humble your pride to make the first move toward reconciliation. Whereas I, Herzchen, am wise enough to know that pride makes a very lonely bedfellow.”
“Don’t go getting any ideas about kicking it out to make room for yourself, Rain, because I’m warning you, I am not taking you on in that capacity.”
“I don’t want you in that capacity anymore.”
The promptness of his answer irritated her, but she adopted a relieved air and said, “Honestly?”
“If I did, do you think I could have borne to keep away from you so long? You were a passing fancy in that way, but I still think of you as a dear friend, and miss you as a dear friend.”
“Oh, Rain, so do I!”
“That’s good. Am I admitted as a friend, then?”
“Of course.”
He lay back on the coat and put his arms behind his head, smiling at her lazily. “How old are you, thirty? In those disgraceful clothes you look more like a scrubby schoolgirl. If you don’t need me in your life for any other reason, Justine, you certainly do as your personal arbiter of elegance.”
She laughed. “I admit when I thought you might pop up out of the woodwork I did take more interest in my appearance. If I’m thirty, though, you’re no spring chook yourself. You must be forty at least. Doesn’t seem like such a huge difference anymore, does it? You’ve lost weight. Are you all right, Rain?”
“I was never fat, only big, so sitting at a desk all the time has shrunk me, not made me expand.”
Sliding down and turning onto her stomach, she put her face close to his, smiling. “Oh, Rain, it’s so good to see you! No one else gives me a run for my money.”
“Poor Justine! And you have so much of it these days, don’t you?”
“Money?” She nodded. “Odd, that the Cardinal should have left all of his to me. Well, half to me and half to Dane, but of course I was Dane’s sole legatee.” Her face twisted in spite of herself. She ducked her head away and pretended to look at one daffodil in a sea of them until she could control her voice enough to say, “You know, Rain, I’d give my eyeteeth to learn just what the Cardinal was to my family. A friend, only that? More than that, in some mysterious way. But just what, I don’t know. I wish I did.”
“No, you don’t.” He got to his feet and extended his hand. “Come, Herzchen, I’ll buy you dinner anywhere you think there will be eyes to see that the breach between the carrot-topped Australian actress and the certain member of the German cabinet is healed. My reputation as a playboy has deteriorated since you threw me out.”
“You’ll have to watch it, my friend. They don’t call me a carrot-topped Australian actress any more—these days I’m that lush, gorgeous, titian-haired British actress, thanks to my immortal interpretation of Cleopatra. Don’t tell me you didn’t know the critics are calling me the most exotic Cleo in years?” She cocked her arms and hands into the pose of an Egyptian hieroglyph.
His
“Yes, exotic,” she said firmly.
Cardinal Vittorio was dead, so Rain didn’t go to Rome very much anymore. He came to London instead. At first Justine was so delighted she didn’t look any further than the friendship he offered, but as the months passed and he failed by word or look to mention their previous relationship, her mild indignation became something more disturbing. Not that she wanted a resumption of that other relationship, she told herself constantly; she had finished completely with that sort of thing, didn’t need or desire it anymore. Nor did she permit her mind to dwell on an image of Rain so successfully buried she remembered it only in traitorous dreams.
Those first few months after Dane died had been dreadful, resisting the longing to go to Rain, feel him with her in body and spirit, knowing full well he would be if she let him. But she could not allow this with his face overshadowed by Dane’s. It was right to dismiss him, right to battle to obliterate every last flicker of desire for him. And as time went on and it seemed he was going to stay out of her life permanently, her body settled into unaroused torpor, and her mind disciplined itself to forget.
But now Rain was back it was growing much harder. She itched to ask him whether he remembered that other relationship—how could he have forgotten it? Certainly for herself she had quite finished with such things, but it would have been gratifying to learn he hadn’t; that is, provided of course such things for him spelled Justine, and only Justine.
Pipe dreams. Rain didn’t have the mien of a man who was wasting away of unrequited love, mental or physical, and he never displayed the slightest wish to reopen that phase of their lives. He wanted her for a friend, enjoyed her as a friend. Excellent! It was what she wanted, too. Only…could he have forgotten? No, it wasn’t possible—but God damn him if he had!