The Thorn Birds

17

“Well,” said Justine to her mother, “I’ve decided what I’m going to do.”

“I thought it was already decided. Arts at Sydney University, isn’t that right?”

“Oh, that was just a red herring to lull you into a false sense of security while I made my plans. But now it’s all set, so I can tell you.”

Meggie’s head came up from her task, cutting fir-tree shapes in cookie dough; Mrs. Smith was ill and they were helping out in the cookhouse. She regarded her daughter wearily, impatiently, helplessly. What could one do with someone like Justine? If she announced she was going off to train as a whore in a Sydney bordello, Meggie very much doubted whether she could be turned aside. Dear, horrible Justine, queen among juggernauts.

“Go on, I’m all agog,” she said, and went back to producing cookies.

“I’m going to be an actress.”

“A what?”

“An actress.”

“Good Lord!” The fir trees were abandoned again. “Look, Justine, I hate to be a spoilsport and truly I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but do you think you’re—well, quite physically equipped to be an actress?”

“Oh, Mum!” said Justine, disgusted. “Not a film star; an actress! I don’t want to wiggle my hips and stick out my breasts and pout my wet lips! I want to act.” She was pushing chunks of defatted beef into the corning barrel. “I have enough money to support myself during whatever sort of training I choose, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, thanks to Cardinal de Bricassart.”

“Then it’s all settled. I’m going to study acting with Albert Jones at the Culloden Theater, and I’ve written to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, asking that I be put on their waiting list.”

“Are you quite sure, Jussy?”

“Quite sure. I’ve known for a long time.” The last piece of bloody beef was tucked down under the surface of the corning solution; Justine put the lid on the barrel with a thump. “There! I hope I never see another bit of corned beef as long as I live.”

Meggie handed her a completed tray of cookies. “Put these in the oven, would you? Four hundred degrees. I must say this comes as something of a surprise. I thought little girls who wanted to be actresses role-played constantly, but the only person I’ve ever seen you play has been yourself.”

“Oh, Mum! There you go again, confusing film stars with actresses. Honestly, you’re hopeless.”

“Well, aren’t film stars actresses?”

“Of a very inferior sort. Unless they’ve been on the stage first, that is. I mean, even Laurence Olivier does an occasional film.”

There was an autographed picture of Laurence Olivier on Justine’s dressing table; Meggie had simply deemed it juvenile crush stuff, though at the time she remembered thinking at least Justine had taste. The friends she sometimes brought home with her to stay a few days usually treasured pictures of Tab Hunter and Rory Calhoun.

“I still don’t understand,” said Meggie, shaking her head. “An actress!”

Justine shrugged. “Well, where else can I scream and yell and howl but on a stage? I’m not allowed to do any of those here, or at school, or anywhere! I like screaming and yelling and howling, dammit!”

“But you’re so good at art, Jussy! Why not be an artist?” Meggie persevered.

Justine turned from the huge gas stove, flicked her finger against a cylinder gauge. “I must tell the kitchen rouseabout to change bottles; we’re low. It’ll do for today, though.” The light eyes surveyed Meggie with pity. “You’re so impractical, Mum, really. I thought it was supposed to be the children who didn’t stop to consider a career’s practical aspects. Let me tell you, I don’t want to starve to death in a garret and be famous after I’m dead. I want to enjoy a bit of fame while I’m still alive, and be very comfortable financially. So I’ll paint as a hobby and act for a living. How’s that?”

“You’ve got an income from Drogheda, Jussy,” Meggie said desperately, breaking her vow to remain silent no matter what. “It would never come to starving in a garret. If you’d rather paint, it’s all right. You can.”

Justine looked alert, interested. “How much have I got, Mum?”

“Enough that if you preferred, you need never work at anything.”

“What a bore! I’d end up talking on the telephone and playing bridge; at least that’s what the mothers of most of my school friends do. Because I’d be living in Sydney, not on Drogheda. I like Sydney much better than Drogheda.” A gleam of hope entered her eye. “Do I have enough to pay to have my freckles removed with this new electrical treatment?”

“I should think so. But why?”

“Because then someone might see my face, that’s why.”

“I thought looks didn’t matter to an actress?”

“Enough’s enough, Mum. My freckles are a pain.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be an artist?”

“Quite sure, thank you.” She did a little dance. “I’m going to tread the boards, Mrs. Worthington!”

“How did you get yourself into the Culloden?”

“I auditioned.”

“And they took you?”

“Your faith in your daughter is touching, Mum. Of course they took me! I’m superb, you know. One day I shall be very famous.”

Meggie beat green food coloring into a bowl of runny icing and began to drizzle it over already baked fir trees. “Is it important to you, Justine? Fame?”

“I should say so.” She tipped sugar in on top of butter so soft it had molded itself to the inner contours of the bowl; in spite of the gas stove instead of the wood stove, the cookhouse was very hot. “I’m absolutely iron-bound determined to be famous.”

“Don’t you want to get married?”

Justine looked scornful. “Not bloody likely! Spend my life wiping snotty noses and cacky bums? Salaaming to some man not half my equal even though he thinks he’s better? Ho ho ho, not me!”

“Honestly, you’re the dizzy limit! Where do you pick up your language?”

Justine began cracking eggs rapidly and deftly into a basin, using one hand. “At my exclusive ladies’ college, of course.” She drubbed the eggs unmercifully with a French whisk. “We were quite a decent bunch of girls, actually. Very cultured. It isn’t every gaggle of silly adolescent females can appreciate the delicacy of a Latin limerick:

Meggie’s lips twitched. “I’m going to hate myself for asking, but what did the Roman say?”

“‘It’s a bloody good protection.’”

“Is that all? I thought it was going to be a lot worse. You surprise me. But getting back to what we were saying, dear girl, in spite of your neat effort to change the subject, what’s wrong with marriage?”

Justine imitated her grandmother’s rare snort of ironic laughter. “Mum! Really! You’re a fine one to ask that, I must say.”

Meggie felt the blood well up under her skin, and looked down at the tray of bright-green trees. “Don’t be impertinent, even if you are a ripe old seventeen.”

“Isn’t it odd?” Justine asked the mixing bowl. “The minute one ventures onto strictly parental territory, one becomes impertinent. I just said: You’re a fine one to ask. Perfectly true, dammit! I’m not necessarily implying you’re a failure, or a sinner, or worse. Actually I think you’ve shown remarkable good sense, dispensing with your husband. What have you needed one for? There’s been tons of male influence for your children with the Unks around, you’ve got enough money to live on. I agree with you! Marriage is for the birds.”

“You’re just like your father!”

“Another evasion. Whenever I displease you, I become just like my father. Well, I’ll have to take your word for that, since I’ve never laid eyes on the gentleman.”

“When are you leaving?” Meggie asked desperately.

Justine grinned. “Can’t wait to get rid of me, eh? It’s all right, Mum, I don’t blame you in the least. But I can’t help it, I just love shocking people, especially you. How about taking me into the ’drome tomorrow?”

“Make it the day after. Tomorrow I’ll take you to the bank. You’d better know how much you’ve got. And, Justine…”

Justine was adding flour and folding expertly, but she looked up at the change in her mother’s voice. “Yes?”

“If ever you’re in trouble, come home, please. We’ve always got room for you on Drogheda, I want you to remember that. Nothing you could ever do would be so bad you couldn’t come home.”

Justine’s gaze softened. “Thanks, Mum. You’re not a bad old stick underneath, are you?”

“Old?” gasped Meggie. “I am not old! I’m only forty-three!”

“Good Lord, as much as that?”

Meggie hurled a cookie and hit Justine on the nose. “Oh, you wretch!” she laughed. “What a monster you are! Now I feel like a hundred.”

Her daughter grinned.

At which moment Fee walked in to see how things in the cookhouse were going; Meggie hailed her arrival with relief.

“Mum, do you know what Justine just told me?”

Fee’s eyes were no longer up to anything beyond the uttermost effort of keeping the books, but the mind at back of those smudged pupils was as acute as ever.

“How could I possibly know what Justine just told you?” she inquired mildly, regarding the green cookies with a slight shudder.

“Because sometimes it strikes me that you and Jussy have little secrets from me, and now, the moment my daughter finishes telling me her news, in you walk when you never do.”

“Mmmmmm, at least they taste better than they look,” commented Fee, nibbling. “I assure you, Meggie, I don’t encourage your daughter to conspire with me behind your back. What have you done to upset the applecart now, Justine?” she asked, turning to where Justine was pouring her sponge mixture into greased and floured tins.

“I told Mum I was going to be an actress, Nanna, that’s all.”

“That’s all, eh? Is it true, or only one of your dubious jokes?”

“Oh, it’s true. I’m starting at the Culloden.”

“Well, well, well!” said Fee, leaning against the table and surveying her own daughter ironically. “Isn’t it amazing how chidren have minds of their own, Meggie?”

Meggie didn’t answer.

“Do you disapprove, Nanna?” Justine growled, ready to do battle.

“I? Disapprove? It’s none of my business what you do with your life, Justine. Besides, I think you’ll make a good actress.”

“You do?” gasped Meggie.

“Of course she will,” said Fee. “Justine’s not the sort to choose unwisely, are you, my girl?”

“No.” Justine grinned, pushing a damp curl out of her eye. Meggie watched her regarding her grandmother with an affection she never seemed to extend to her mother.

“You’re a good girl, Justine,” Fee pronounced, and finished the cookie she had started so unenthusiastically. “Not bad at all, but I wish you’d iced them in white.”

“You can’t ice trees in white,” Meggie contradicted.

“Of course you can when they’re firs; it might be snow,” her mother said.

“Too late now, they’re vomit green,” laughed Justine.

“Justine!”

“Ooops! Sorry, Mum, didn’t mean to offend you. I always forget you’ve got a weak stomach.”

“I haven’t got a weak stomach,” said Meggie, exasperated.

“I came to see if there was any chance of a cuppa,” Fee broke in, pulling out a chair and sitting down. “Put on the kettle, Justine, like a good girl.”

Meggie sat down, too. “Do you really think this will work out for Justine, Mum?” she asked anxiously.

“Why shouldn’t it?” Fee answered, watching her granddaughter attending to the tea ritual.

“It might be a passing phase.”

“Is it a passing phase, Justine?” Fee asked.

“No,” Justine said tersely, putting cups and saucers on the old green kitchen table.

“Use a plate for the biscuits, Justine, don’t put them out in their barrel,” said Meggie automatically, “and for pity’s sake don’t dump the whole milk can on the table, put some in a proper afternoon tea jug.”

“Yes, Mum, sorry, Mum,” Justine responded, equally mechanically. “Can’t see the point of frills in the kitchen. All I’ve got to do is put whatever isn’t eaten back where it came from, and wash up a couple of extra dishes.”

“Just do as you’re told; it’s so much nicer.”

“Getting back to the subject,” Fee pursued, “I don’t think there’s anything to discuss. It’s my opinion that Justine ought to be allowed to try, and will probably do very well.”

“I wish I could be so sure,” said Meggie glumly.

“Have you been on about fame and glory, Justine?” her grandmother demanded.

“They enter the picture,” said Justine, putting the old brown kitchen teapot on the table defiantly and sitting down in a hurry. “Now don’t complain, Mum; I’m not making tea in a silver pot for the kitchen and that’s final.”

“The teapot is perfectly appropriate,” Meggie smiled.

“Oh, that’s good! There’s nothing like a nice cup of tea,” sighed Fee, sipping. “Justine, why do you persist in putting things to your mother so badly? You know it isn’t a question of fame and fortune. It’s a question of self, isn’t it?”

“Self, Nanna?”

“Of course. Self. Acting is what you feel you were meant to do, isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“Then why couldn’t you have explained it so to your mother? Why upset her with a lot of flippant nonsense?”

Justine shrugged, drank her tea down and pushed the empty cup toward her mother for more. “Dunno,” she said.

“I-don’t-know,” Fee corrected. “You’ll articulate properly on the stage, I trust. But self is why you want to be an actress, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” answered Justine reluctantly.

“Oh, that stubborn, pigheaded Cleary pride! It will be your downfall, too, Justine, unless you learn to rule it. That stupid fear of being laughed at, or held up to some sort of ridicule. Though why you think your mother would be so cruel I don’t know.” She tapped Justine on the back of her hand. “Give a little, Justine; cooperate.”

But Justine shook her head and said, “I can’t.”

Fee sighed. “Well, for what earthly good it will do you, child, you have my blessing on your enterprise.”

“Ta, Nanna, I appreciate it.”

“Then kindly show your appreciation in a concrete fashion by finding your uncle Frank and telling him there’s tea in the kitchen, please.”

Justine went off, and Meggie stared at Fee. “Mum, you’re amazing, you really are.”

Fee smiled. “Well, you have to admit I never tried to tell any of my children what to do.”

“No, you never did,” said Meggie tenderly. “We did appreciate it, too.”

The first thing Justine did when she arrived back in Sydney was begin to have her freckles removed. Not a quick process, unfortunately; she had so many it would take about twelve months, and then she would have to stay out of the sun for the rest of her life, or they would come back. The second thing she did was to find herself an apartment, no mean feat in Sydney at that time, when people built private homes and regarded living en masse in buildings as anathema. But eventually she found a two-room flat in Neutral Bay, in one of the huge old waterside Victorian mansions which had fallen on hard times and been made over into dingy semi-apartments. The rent was five pounds ten shillings a week, outrageous considering that the bathroom and kitchen were communal, shared by all the tenants. However, Justine was quite satisfied. Though she had been well trained domestically, she had few homemaker instincts.

Living in Bothwell Gardens was more fascinating than her acting apprenticeship at the Culloden, where life seemed to consist in skulking behind scenery and watching other people rehearse, getting an occasional walk-on, memorizing masses of Shakespeare, Shaw and Sheridan.

Including Justine’s, Bothwell Gardens had six flats, plus Mrs. Devine the landlady. Mrs. Devine was a sixty-five-year-old Londoner with a doleful sniff, protruding eyes and a great contempt for Australia and Australians, though she wasn’t above robbing them. Her chief concern in life seemed to be how much gas and electricty cost, and her chief weakness was Justine’s next-door neighbor, a young Englishman who exploited his nationality cheerfully.

“I don’t mind giving the old duck an occasional tickle while we reminisce,” he told Justine. “Keeps her off my back, you know. You girls aren’t allowed to run electric radiators even in winter, but I was given one and I’m allowed to run it all summer as well if I feel like it.”

“Pig,” said Justine dispassionately.

His name was Peter Wilkins, and he was a traveling salesman. “Come in and I’ll make you a nice cuppa sometime,” he called after her, rather taken with those pale, intriguing eyes.

Justine did, careful not to choose a time when Mrs. Devine was lurking jealously about, and got quite used to fighting Peter off. The years of riding and working on Drogheda had endowed her with considerable strength, and she was untroubled by shibboleths like hitting below the belt.

“God damn you, Justine!” gasped Peter, wiping the tears of pain from his eyes. “Give in, girl! You’ve got to lose it sometime, you know! This isn’t Victorian England, you aren’t expected to save it for marriage.”

“I have no intention of saving it for marriage,” she answered, adjusting her dress. “I’m just not sure who’s going to get the honor, that’s all.”

“You’re nothing to write home about!” he snapped nastily; she had really hurt.

“No, that I’m not. Sticks and stones, Pete. You can’t hurt me with words. And there are plenty of men who will shag anything if it’s a virgin.”

“Plenty of women, too! Watch the front flat.”

“Oh, I do, I do,” said Justine.

The two girls in the front flat were lesbians, and had hailed Justine’s advent gleefully until they realized she not only wasn’t interested, she wasn’t even intrigued. At first she wasn’t quite sure what they were hinting at, but after they spelled it out baldly she shrugged her shoulders, unimpressed. Thus after a period of adjustment she became their sounding board, their neutral confidante, their port in all storms; she bailed Billie out of jail, took Bobbie to the Mater hospital to have her stomach pumped out after a particularly bad quarrel with Billie, refused to take sides with either of them when Pat, Al, Georgie and Ronnie hove in turns on the horizon. It did seem a very insecure kind of emotional life, she thought. Men were bad enough, but at least they had the spice of intrinsic difference.

So between the Culloden and Bothwell Gardens and girls she had known from Kincoppal days, Justine had quite a lot of friends, and was a good friend herself. She never told them all her troubles as they did her; she had Dane for that, though what few troubles she admitted to having didn’t appear to prey upon her. The thing which fascinated her friends the most about her was her extraordinary self-discipline; as if she had trained herself from infancy not to let circumstances affect her well-being.

Of chief interest to everyone called a friend was how, when and with whom Justine would finally decide to become a fulfilled woman, but she took her time.

Arthur Lestrange was Albert Jones’s most durable juvenile lead, though he had wistfully waved goodbye to his fortieth birthday the year before Justine arrived at the Culloden. He had a good body, was a steady, reliable actor and his clean-cut, manly face with its surround of yellow curls was always sure to evoke audience applause. For the first year he didn’t notice Justine, who was very quiet and did exactly as she was told. But at the end of the year her freckle treatments were finished, and she began to stand out against the scenery instead of blending into it.

Minus the freckles and plus makeup to darken her brows and lashes, she was a good-looking girl in an elfin, understated way. She had none of Luke O’Neill’s arresting beauty, or her mother’s exquisiteness. Her figure was passable though not spectacular, a trifle on the thin side. Only the vivid red hair ever stood out. But on a stage she was quite different; she could make people think she was as beautiful as Helen of Troy or as ugly as a witch.

Arthur first noticed her during a teaching period, when she was required to recite a passage from Conrad’s Lord Jim using various accents. She was extraordinary, really; he could feel the excitement in Albert Jones, and finally understood why Al devoted so much time to her. A born mimic, but far more than that; she gave character to every word she said. And there was the voice, a wonderful natural endowment for any actress, deep, husky, penetrating.

So when he saw her with a cup of tea in her hand, sitting with a book open on her knees, he came to sit beside her.

“What are you reading?”

She looked up, smiled. “Proust.”

“Don’t you find him a little dull?”

“Proust dull? Not unless one doesn’t care for gossip, surely. That’s what he is, you know. A terrible old gossip.”

He had an uncomfortable conviction that she was intellectually patronizing him, but he forgave her. No more than extreme youth.

“I heard you doing the Conrad. Splendid.”

“Thank you.”

“Perhaps we could have coffee together sometime and discuss your plans?”

“If you like,” she said, returning to Proust.

He was glad he had stipulated coffee, rather than dinner; his wife kept him on short commons, and dinner demanded a degree of gratitude he couldn’t be sure Justine was ready to manifest. However, he followed his casual invitation up, and bore her off to a dark little place in lower Elizabeth Street, where he was reasonably sure his wife wouldn’t think of looking for him.

In self-defense Justine had learned to smoke, tired of always appearing goody-goody in refusing offered cigarettes. After they were seated she took her own cigarettes out of her bag, a new pack, and peeled the top cellophane from the flip-top box carefully, making sure the larger piece of cellophane still sheathed the bulk of the packet. Arthur watched her deliberateness, amused and interested.

“Why on earth go to so much trouble? Just rip it all off, Justine.”

“How untidy!”

He picked up the box and stroked its intact shroud reflectively. “Now, if I was a disciple of the eminent Sigmund Freud…”

“If you were Freud, what?” She glanced up, saw the waitress standing beside her. “Cappuccino, please.”

It annoyed him that she gave her own order, but he let it pass, more intent on pursuing the thought in his mind. “Vienna, please. Now, getting back to what I was saying about Freud. I wonder what he’d think of this? He might say…”

She took the packet off him, opened it, removed a cigarette and lit it herself without giving him time to find his matches. “Well?”

“He’d think you liked to keep membranous substances intact, wouldn’t he?”

Her laughter gurgled through the smoky air, caused several male heads to turn curiously. “Would he now? Is that a roundabout way of asking me if I’m still a virgin, Arthur?”

He clicked his tonque, exasperated. “Justine! I can see that among other things I’ll have to teach you the fine art of prevarication.”

“Among what other things, Arthur?” She leaned her elbows on the table, eyes gleaming in the dimness.

“Well, what do you need to learn?”

“I’m pretty well educated, actually.”

“In everything?”

“Heavens, you do know how to emphasize words, don’t you? Very good, I must remember how you said that.”

“There are things which can only be learned from firsthand experience,” he said softly, reaching out a hand to tuck a curl behind her ear.

“Really? I’ve always found observation adequate.”

“Ah, but what about when it comes to love?” He put a delicate deepness into the word. “How can you play Juliet without knowing what love is?”

“A good point. I agree with you.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“No.”

“Do you know anything about love?” This time he put the vocal force on “anything,” rather than “love.”

“Nothing at all.”

“Ah! Then Freud would have been right, eh?”

She picked up her cigarettes and looked at their sheathed box, smiling. “In some things, perhaps.”

Quickly he grasped the bottom of the cellophane, pulled it off and held it in his hand, dramatically crushed it and dropped it in the ashtray, where it squeaked and writhed, expanded. “I’d like to teach you what being a woman is, if I may.”

For a moment she said nothing, intent on the antics of the cellophane in the ashtray, then she struck a match and carefully set fire to it. “Why not?” she asked the brief flare. “Yes, why not?”

“Shall it be a divine thing of moonlight and roses, passionate wooing, or shall it be short and sharp, like an arrow?” he declaimed, hand on heart.

She laughed. “Really, Arthur! I hope it’s long and sharp, myself. But no moonlight and roses, please. My stomach’s not built for passionate wooing.”

He stared at her a little sadly, shook his head. “Oh, Justine! Everyone’s stomach is built for passionate wooing—even yours, you cold-blooded young vestal. One day, you wait and see. You’ll long for it.”

“Pooh!” She got up. “Come on, Arthur, let’s get the deed over and done with before I change my mind.”

“Now? Tonight?”

“Why on earth not? I’ve got plenty of money for a hotel room, if you’re short.”

The Hotel Metropole wasn’t far away; they walked through the drowsing streets with her arm tucked cozily in his, laughing. It was too late for diners and too early for the theaters to be out, so there were few people around, just knots of American sailors off a visiting task force, and groups of young girls window-shopping with an eye to sailors. No one took any notice of them, which suited Arthur fine. He popped into a chemist shop while Justine waited outside, emerged beaming happily.

“Now we’re all set, my love.”

“What did you buy? French letters?”

He grimaced. “I should hope not. A French letter is like coming wrapped in a page of the Reader’s Digest—condensed tackiness. No, I got you some jelly. How do you know about French letters, anyway?”

“After seven years in a Catholic boarding school? What do you think we did? Prayed?” She grinned. “I admit we didn’t do much, but we talked about everything.”

Mr. and Mrs. Smith surveyed their kingdom, which wasn’t bad for a Sydney hotel room of that era. The days of the Hilton were still to come. It was very large, and had superb views of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. There was no bathroom, of course, but there was a basin and ewer on a marble-topped stand, a fitting accompaniment to the enormous Victorian relics of furniture.

“Well, what do I do now?” she asked, pulling the curtains back.

“It’s a beautiful view, isn’t it?”

“Yes. As to what you do now, you take your pants off, of course.”

“Anything else?” she asked mischievously.

He sighed. “Take it all off, Justine! If you don’t feel skin with skin it isn’t nearly so good.”

Neatly and briskly she got out of her clothes, not a scrap coyly, clambered up on the bed and spread her legs apart. “Is this right, Arthur?”

“Good Lord!” he said, folding his trousers carefully; his wife always looked to see if they were crushed.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“You really are a redhead, aren’t you?”

“What did you expect, purple feathers?”

“Facetiousness doesn’t set the right mood, darling, so stop it this instant.” He sucked in his belly, turned, strutted to the bed and climbed onto it, began dropping expert little kisses down the side of her face, her neck, over her left breast. “Mmmmmm, you’re nice.” His arms went around her. “There! Isn’t this nice?”

“I suppose so. Yes, it is quite nice.”

Silence fell, broken only by the sound of kisses, occasional murmurs. There was a huge old dressing table at the far end of the bed, its mirror still tilted to reflect love’s arena by some erotically minded previous tenant.

“Put out the light, Arthur.”

“Darling, no! Lesson number one. There’s no aspect of love which won’t bear the light.”

Having done the preparatory work with his fingers and deposited the jelly where it was supposed to be, Arthur managed to get himself between Justine’s legs. A bit sore but quite comfortable, if not lifted into ecstasy at least feeling rather motherly, Justine looked over Arthur’s shoulder and straight down the bed into the mirror.

Foreshortened, their legs looked weird with his darkly matted ones sandwiched between her smooth defreckled ones; however, the bulk of the image in the mirror consisted of Arthur’s buttocks, and as he maneuvered they spread and contracted, hopped up and down, with two quiffs of yellow hair like Dagwood’s just poking above the twin globes and waving at her cheerfully.

Justine looked; looked again. She stuffed her fist against her mouth wildly, gurgling and moaning.

“There, there, my darling, it’s all right! I’ve broken you already, so it can’t hurt too much,” he whispered.

Her chest began to heave; he wrapped his arms closer about her and murmured inarticulate endearments.

Suddenly her head went back, her mouth opened in a long, agonized wail, and became peal after peal of uproarious laughter. And the more limply furious he got, the harder she laughed, pointing her finger helplessly toward the foot of the bed, tears streaming down her face. Her whole body was convulsed, but not quite in the manner poor Arthur had envisioned.

In many ways Justine was a lot closer to Dane than their mother was, and what they felt for Mum belonged to Mum. It didn’t impinge upon or clash with what they felt for each other. That had been forged very early, and had grown rather than diminished. By the time Mum was freed from her Drogheda bondage they were old enough to be at Mrs. Smith’s kitchen table, doing their correspondence lessons; the habit of finding solace in each other had been established for all time.

Though they were very dissimilar in character, they also shared many tastes and appetites, and those they didn’t share they tolerated in each other with instinctive respect, as a necessary spice of difference. They knew each other very well indeed. Her natural tendency was to deplore human failings in others and ignore them in herself; his natural tendency was to understand and forgive human failings in others, and be merciless upon them in himself. She felt herself invincibly strong; he knew himself perilously weak.

And somehow it all came together as a nearly perfect friendship, in the name of which nothing was impossible. However, since Justine was by far the more talkative, Dane always got to hear a lot more about her and what she was feeling than the other way around. In some respects she was a little bit of a moral imbecile, in that nothing was sacred, and he understood that his function was to provide her with the scruples she lacked within herself. Thus he accepted his role of passive listener with a tenderness and compassion which would have irked Justine enormously had she suspected them. Not that she ever did; she had been bending his ear about absolutely anything and everything since he was old enough to pay attention.

“Guess what I did last night?” she asked, carefully adjusting her big straw hat so her face and neck were well shaded.

“Acted in your first starring role,” Dane said.

“Prawn! As if I wouldn’t tell you so you could be there to see me. Guess again.”

“Finally copped a punch Bobbie meant for Billie.”

“Cold as a stepmother’s breast.”

He shrugged his shoulders, bored. “Haven’t a clue.”

They were sitting in the Domain on the grass, just below the Gothic bulk of Saint Mary’s Cathedral. Dane had phoned to let Justine know he was coming in for a special ceremony in the cathedral, and could she meet him for a while first in the Dom? Of course she could; she was dying to tell him the latest episode.

Almost finished his last year at Riverview, Dane was captain of the school, captain of the cricket team, the Rugby, handball and tennis teams. And dux of his class into the bargain. At seventeen he was two inches over six feet, his voice had settled into its final baritone, and he had miraculously escaped such afflictions as pimples, clumsiness and a bobbing Adam’s apple. Because he was so fair he wasn’t really shaving yet, but in every other way he looked more like a young man than a schoolboy. Only the Riverview uniform categorized him.

It was a warm, sunny day. Dane removed his straw boater school hat and stretched out on the grass, Justine sitting hunched beside him, her arms about her knees to make sure all exposed skin was shaded. He opened one lazy blue eye in her direction.

“What did you do last night, Jus?”

“I lost my virginity. At least I think I did.”

Both his eyes opened. “You’re a prawn.”

“Pooh! High time, I say. How can I hope to be a good actress if I don’t have a clue what goes on between men and women?”

“You ought to save yourself for the man you marry.”

Her face twisted in exasperation. “Honestly, Dane, sometimes you’re so archaic I’m embarrassed! Suppose I don’t meet the man I marry until I’m forty? What do you expect me to do? Sit on it all those years? Is that what you’re going to do, save it for marriage?”

“I don’t think I’m going to get married.”

“Well, nor am I. In which case, why tie a blue ribbon around it and stick it in my nonexistent hope chest? I don’t want to die wondering.”

He grinned. “You can’t, now.” Rolling over onto his stomach, he propped his chin on his hand and looked at her steadily, his face soft, concerned. “Was it all right? I mean, was it awful? Did you hate it?”

Her lips twitched, remembering. “I didn’t hate it, at any rate. It wasn’t awful, either. On the other hand, I’m afraid I don’t see what everyone raves about. Pleasant is as far as I’m prepared to go. And it isn’t as if I chose just anyone; I selected someone very attractive and old enough to know what he was doing.”

He sighed. “You are a prawn, Justine. I’d have been a lot happier to hear you say, ‘He’s not much to look at, but we met and I couldn’t help myself.’ I can accept that you don’t want to wait until you’re married, but it’s still something you’ve got to want because of the person. Never because of the act, Jus. I’m not surprised you weren’t ecstatic.”

All the gleeful triumph faded from her face. “Oh, damn you, now you’ve made me feel awful! If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were trying to put me down—or my motives, at any rate.”

“But you do know me better, don’t you? I’d never put you down, but sometimes your motives are plain thoughtlessly silly.” He adopted a tolling, monotonous voice. “I am the voice of your conscience, Justine O’Neill.”

“You are, too, you prawn.” Shade forgotten, she flopped back on the grass beside him so he couldn’t see her face. “Look, you know why. Don’t you?”

“Oh, Jussy,” he said sadly, but whatever he was going to add was lost, for she spoke again, a little savagely.

“I’m never, never, never going to love anyone! If you love people, they kill you. If you need people, they kill you. They do, I tell you!”

It always hurt him, that she felt left out of love, and hurt more that he knew himself the cause. If there was one overriding reason why she was so important to him, it was because she loved him enough to bear no grudges, had never made him feel a moment’s lessening of her love through jealousy or resentment. To him, it was a cruel fact that she moved on an outer circle while he was the very hub. He had prayed and prayed things would change, but they never did. Which hadn’t lessened his faith, only pointed out to him with fresh emphasis that somewhere, sometime, he would have to pay for the emotion squandered on him at her expense. She put a good face on it, had managed to convince even herself that she did very well on that outer orbit, but he felt her pain. He knew. There was so much worth loving in her, so little worth loving in himself. Without a hope of understanding differently, he assumed he had the lion’s share of love because of his beauty, his more tractable nature, his ability to communicate with his mother and the other Drogheda people. And because he was male. Very little escaped him beyond what he simply couldn’t know, and he had had Justine’s confidence and companionship in ways no one else ever had. Mum mattered to Justine far more than she would admit.

But I will atone, he thought. I’ve had everything. Somehow I’ve got to pay it back, make it up to her.

Suddenly he chanced to see his watch, came to his feet bonelessly; huge though he admitted his debt to his sister was, to Someone else he owed even more.

“I’ve got to go, Jus.”

“You and your bloody Church! When are you going to grow out of it?”

“Never, I hope.”

“When will I see you?”

“Well, since today’s Friday, tomorrow of course, eleven o’clock, here.”

“Okay. Be a good boy.”

He was already several yards away, Riverview boater back on his head, but he turned to smile at her. “Am I ever anything else?”

She grinned. “Bless you, no. You’re too good to be true; I’m the one always in trouble. See you tomorrow.”

There were huge padded red leather doors inside the vestibule of Saint Mary’s; Dane poked one open and slipped inside. He had left Justine a little earlier than was strictly necessary, but he always liked to get into a church before it filled, became a shifting focus of sighs, coughs, rustles, whispers. When he was alone it was so much better. There was a sacristan kindling branches of candles on the high altar; a deacon, he judged unerringly. Head bowed, he genuflected and made the Sign of the Cross as he passed in front of the tabernacle, then quietly slid into a pew.

On his knees, he put his head on his folded hands and let his mind float freely. He didn’t consciously pray, but rather became an intrinsic part of the atmosphere, which he felt as dense yet ethereal, unspeakably holy, brooding. It was as if he had turned into a flame in one of the little red glass sanctuary lamps, always just fluttering on the brink of extinction, sustained by a small puddle of some vital essence, radiating a minute but enduring glow out into the far darknesses. Stillness, formlessness, forgetfulness of his human identity; these were what Dane got from being in a church. Nowhere else did he feel so right, so much at peace with himself, so removed from pain. His lashes lowered, his eyes closed.

From the organ gallery came the shuffling of feet, a preparatory wheeze, a breathy expulsion of air from pipes. The Saint Mary’s Cathedral Boys’ School choir was coming in early to sandwich a little practice between now and the coming ritual. It was only a Friday midday Benediction, but one of Dane’s friends and teachers from Riverview was celebrating it, and he had wanted to come.

The organ gave off a few chords, quietened into a rippling accompaniment, and into the dim stone-lace arches one unearthly boy’s voice soared, thin and high and sweet, so filled with innocent purity the few people in the great empty church closed their eyes, mourned for that which could never come to them again.

Bread of angels, heavenly bread, O thing of wonder. Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice! Let Thine ear be attuned to the sounds of my supplication. Turn not away, O Lord, turn not away. For Thou art my Sovereign, my Master, my God, and I am Thy humble servant. In Thine eyes only one thing counts, goodness. Thou carest not if Thy servants be beautiful or ugly. To Thee only the heart matters; in Thee all is healed, in Thee I know peace.

Lord, it is lonely. I pray it be over soon, the pain of life. They do not understand that I, so gifted, find so much pain in living. But Thou dost, and Thy comfort is all which sustains me. No matter what Thou requirest of me, O Lord, shall be give, for I love Thee. And if I might presume to ask anything of Thee, it is that in Thee all else shall be forever forgotten…

“You’re very quiet, Mum,” said Dane. “Thinking of what? Of Drogheda?”

“No,” said Meggie drowsily. “I’m thinking that I’m getting old. I found half a dozen grey hairs this morning, and my bones ache.”

“You’ll never be old, Mum,” he said comfortably.

“I wish that were true, love, but unfortunately it isn’t. I’m beginning to need the borehead, which is a sure sign of old age.”

They were lying in the warm winter sun on towels spread over the Drogheda grass, by the borehead. At the far end of the great pool boiling water thundered and splashed, the reek of sulphur drifted and floated into nothing. It was one of the great winter pleasures, to swim in the borehead. All the aches and pains of encroaching age were soothed away, Meggie thought, and turned to lie on her back, her head in the shade of the log on which she and Father Ralph had sat so long ago. A very long time ago; she was unable to conjure up even a faint echo of what she must have felt when Ralph had kissed her.

Then she heard Dane get up, and opened her eyes. He had always been her baby, her lovely little boy; though she had watched him change and grow with proprietary pride, she had done so with an image of the laughing baby superimposed on his maturing face. It had not yet occurred to her that actually he was no longer in any way a child.

However, the moment of realization came to Meggie at that instant, watching him stand outlined against the crisp sky in his brief cotton swimsuit.

My God, it’s all over! The babyhood, the boyhood. He’s a man. Pride, resentment, a female melting at the quick, a terrific consciousness of some impending tragedy, anger, adoration, sadness; all these and more Meggie felt, looking up at her son. It is a terrible thing to create a man, and more terrible to create a man like this. So amazingly male, so amazingly beautiful.

Ralph de Bricassart, plus a little of herself. How could she not be moved at seeing in its extreme youth the body of the man who had joined in love with her? She closed her eyes, embarrassed, hating having to think of her son as a man. Did he look at her and see a woman these days, or was she still that wonderful cipher, Mum? God damn him, God damn him! How dared he grow up?

“Do you know anything about women, Dane?” she asked suddenly, opening her eyes again.

He smiled. “The birds and the bees, you mean?”

“That you know, with Justine for a sister. When she discovered what lay between the covers of physiology textbooks she blurted it all out to everyone. No, I mean have you ever put any of Justine’s clinical treatises into practice?”

His head moved in a quick negative shake, he slid down onto the grass beside her and looked into her face. “Funny you should ask that, Mum. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about it for a long time, but I didn’t know how to start.”

“You’re only eighteen, love. Isn’t it a bit soon to be thinking of putting theory into practice?” Only eighteen. Only. He was a man, wasn’t he?

“That’s it, what I wanted to talk to you about. Not putting it into practice at all.”

How cold the wind was, blowing down from the Great Divide. Peculiar, she hadn’t noticed until now. Where was her robe? “Not putting it into practice at all,” she said dully, and it was not a question.

“That’s right. I don’t want to, ever. Not that I haven’t thought about it, or wanted a wife and children. I have. But I can’t. Because there isn’t enough room to love them and God as well, not the way I want to love God. I’ve known that for a long time. I don’t seem to remember a time when I didn’t, and the older I become the greater my love for God grows. It’s a great mystery, loving God.”

Meggie lay looking into those calm, distant blue eyes. Ralph’s eyes, as they used to be. But ablaze with something quite alien to Ralph’s. Had he had it, at eighteen? Had he? Was it perhaps something one could only experience at eighteen? By the time she entered Ralph’s life, he was ten years beyond that. Yet her son was a mystic, she had always known it. And she didn’t think that at any stage of his life Ralph had been mystically inclined. She swallowed, wrapped the robe closer about her lonely bones.

“So I asked myself,” Dane went on, “what I could do to show Him how much I loved Him. I fought the answer for a long time, I didn’t want to see it. Because I wanted a life as a man, too, very much. Yet I knew what the offering had to be, I knew… There’s only one thing I can offer Him, to show Him nothing else will ever exist in my heart before Him. I must offer up His only rival; that’s the sacrifice He demands of me. I am His servant, and He will have no rivals. I have had to choose. All things He’ll let me have and enjoy, save that.” He sighed, plucked at a blade of Drogheda grass. “I must show Him that I understand why He gave me so much at my birth. I must show Him that I realize how unimportant my life as a man is.”

“You can’t do it, I won’t let you!” Meggie cried, her hand reaching for his arm, clutching it. How smooth it felt, the hint of great power under the skin, just like Ralph’s. Just like Ralph’s! Not to have some glossy girl put her hand there, as a right?

“I’m going to be a priest,” said Dane. “I’m going to enter His service completely, offer everything I have and am to Him, as His priest. Poverty, chastity and obedience. He demands no less than all from His chosen servants. It won’t be easy, but I’m going to do it.”

The look in her eyes! As if he had killed her, ground her into the dust beneath his foot. That he should have to suffer this he hadn’t known, dreaming only of her pride in him, her pleasure at giving her son to God. They said she’d be thrilled, uplifted, completely in accord. Instead she was staring at him as if the prospect of his priesthood was her death sentence.

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be,” he said in despair, meeting those dying eyes. “Oh, Mum, can’t you understand? I’ve never, never wanted to be anything but a priest! I can’t be anything but a priest!”

Her hand fell from his arm; he glanced down and saw the white marks of her fingers, the little arcs in his skin where her nails had bitten deeply. Her head went up, she laughed on and on and on, huge hysterical peals of bitter, derisive laughter.

“Oh, it’s too good to be true!” she gasped when she could speak again, wiping the tears from the corners of her eyes with a trembling hand. “The incredible irony! Ashes of roses, he said that night riding to the borehead. And I didn’t understand what he meant. Ashes thou wert, unto ashes return. To the Church thou belongest, to the Church thou shalt be given. Oh, it’s beautiful, beautiful! God rot God, I say! God the sod! The utmost Enemy of women, that’s what God is! Everything we seek to do, He seeks to undo!”

“Oh, don’t! Oh, don’t Mum, don’t!” He wept for her, for her pain, not understanding her pain or the words she was saying. His tears fell, twisted in his heart; already the sacrifice had begun, and in a way he hadn’t dreamed. But though he wept for her, not even for her could he put it aside, the sacrifice. The offering must be made, and the harder it was to make, the more valuable it must be in His eyes.

She had made him weep, and never in all his life until now had she made him weep. Her own rage and grief were put away resolutely. No, it wasn’t fair to visit herself upon him. What he was his genes had made him. Or his God. Or Ralph’s God. He was the light of her life, her son. He should not be made to suffer because of her, ever.

“Dane, don’t cry,” she whispered, stroking the angry marks on his arm. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. You gave me a shock, that’s all. Of course I’m glad for you, truly I am! How could I not be? I was shocked; I just didn’t expect it, that’s all.” She chuckled, a little shakily. “You did rather drop it on me like a rock.”

His eyes cleared, regarded her doubtfully. Why had he imagined he killed her? Those were Mum’s eyes as he had always known them; full of love, very much alive. The strong young arms gathered her close, hugged her. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

“Mind? A good Catholic mother mind her son becoming a priest? Impossible!” She jumped to her feet. “Brr! How cold it’s got! Let’s be getting back.”

They hadn’t taken the horses, but a jeeplike Land-Rover; Dane climbed behind the wheel, his mother sat beside him.

“Do you know where you’re going?” asked Meggie, drawing in a sobbing breath, pushing the tumbled hair out of her eyes.

“Saint Patrick’s College, I suppose. At least until I find my feet. Perhaps then I’ll espouse an order. I’d rather like to be a Jesuit, but I’m not quite sure enough of that to go straight into the Society of Jesus.”

Meggie stared at the tawny grass bouncing up and down through the insect-spattered windscreen. “I have a much better idea, Dane.”

“Oh?” He had to concentrate on driving; the track dwindled a bit and there were always new logs across it.

“I shall send you to Rome, to Cardinal de Bricassart. You remember him, don’t you?”

“Do I remember him? What a question, Mum! I don’t think I could forget him in a million years. He’s my example of the perfect priest. If I could be the priest he is, I’d be very happy.”

“Perfection is as perfection does!” said Meggie tartly. “But I shall give you into his charge, because I know he’ll look after you for my sake. You can enter a seminary in Rome.”

“Do you really mean it, Mum? Really?” Anxiety pushed the joy out of his face. “Is there enough money? It would be much cheaper if I stayed in Australia.”

“Thanks to the selfsame Cardinal de Bricassart, my dear, you’ll never lack money.”

At the cookhouse door she pushed him inside. “Go and tell the girls and Mrs. Smith,” she said. “They’ll be absolutely thrilled.”

One after the other she put her feet down, made them plod up the ramp to the big house, to the drawing room where Fee sat, miraculously not working but talking to Anne Mueller instead, over an afternoon tea tray. As Meggie came in they looked up, saw from her face that something serious had happened.

For eighteen years the Muellers had been visiting Drogheda, expecting that was how it always would be. But Luddie Mueller had died suddenly the preceding autumn, and Meggie had written immediately to Anne to ask her if she would like to live permanently on Drogheda. There was plenty of room, a guest cottage for privacy; she could pay board if she was too proud not to, though heaven knew there was enough money to keep a thousand permanent houseguests. Meggie saw it as a chance to reciprocate for those lonely Queensland years, and Anne saw it as salvation. Himmelhoch without Luddie was horribly lonely. Though she had put on a manager, not sold the place; when she died it would go to Justine.

“What is it, Meggie?” Anne asked.

Meggie sat down. “I think I’ve been struck by a retributory bolt of lightning.”

“What?”

“You were right, both of you. You said I’d lose him. I didn’t believe you, I actually thought I could beat God. But there was never a woman born who could beat God. He’s a Man.”

Fee poured Meggie a cup of tea. “Here, drink this,” she said, as if tea had the restorative powers of brandy. “How have you lost him?”

“He’s going to become a priest.” She began to laugh, weeping at the same time.

Anne picked up her sticks, hobbled to Meggie’s chair and sat awkwardly on its arm, stroking the lovely red-gold hair. “Oh, my dear! But it isn’t as bad as all that.”

“Do you know about Dane?” Fee asked Anne.

“I’ve always known,” said Anne.

Meggie sobered. “It isn’t as bad as all that? It’s the beginning of the end, don’t you see? Retribution. I stole Ralph from God, and I’m paying with my son. You told me it was stealing, Mum, don’t you remember? I didn’t want to believe you, but you were right, as always.”

“Is he going to Saint Pat’s?” Fee asked practically.

Meggie laughed more normally. “That’s no sort of reparation, Mum. I’m going to send him to Ralph, of course. Half of him is Ralph; let Ralph finally enjoy him.” She shrugged. “He’s more important than Ralph, and I knew he’d want to go to Rome.”

“Did you ever tell Ralph about Dane?” asked Anne; it wasn’t a subject ever discussed.

“No, and I never will. Never!”

“They’re so alike he might guess.”

“Who, Ralph? He’ll never guess! That much I’m going to keep. I’m sending him my son, but no more than that. I’m not sending him his son.”

“Beware of the jealousy of the gods, Meggie,” said Anne softly. “They might not have done with you yet.”

“What more can they do to me?” mourned Meggie.

When Justine heard the news she was furious, though for the last three or four years she had had a sneaking suspicion it was coming. On Meggie it burst like a clap of thunder, but on Justine it descended like an expected shower of icy water.

First of all, because Justine had been at school in Sydney with him, and as his confidante had listened to him talk of the things he didn’t mention to his mother. Justine knew how vitally important his religion was to Dane; not only God, but the mystical significance of Catholic rituals. Had he been born and brought up a Protestant, she thought, he was the type to have eventually turned to Catholicism to satisfy something in his soul. Not for Dane an austere, calvinistic God. His God was limned in stained glass, wreathed in incense, wrapped in lace and gold embroidery, hymned in musical complexity, and worshipped in lovely Latin cadences.

Too, it was a kind of ironic perversity that someone so wonderfully endowed with beauty should deem it a crippling handicap, and deplore its existence. For Dane did. He shrank from any reference to his looks; Justine fancied he would far rather have been born ugly, totally unprepossessing. She understood in part why he felt so, and perhaps because her own career lay in a notoriously narcissistic profession, she rather approved of his attitude toward his appearance. What she couldn’t begin to understand was why he positively loathed his looks, instead of simply ignoring them.

Nor was he highly sexed, for what reason she wasn’t sure: whether he had taught himself to sublimate his passions almost perfectly, or whether in spite of his bodily endowments some necessary cerebral essence was in short supply. Probably the former, since he played some sort of vigorous sport every day of his life to make sure he went to bed exhausted. She knew very well that his inclinations were “normal,” that is, heterosexual, and she knew what type of girl appealed to him—tall, dark and voluptuous. But he just wasn’t sensually aware; he didn’t notice the feel of things when he held them, or the odors in the air around him, or understand the special satisfaction of shape and color. Before he experienced a sexual pull the provocative object’s impact had to be irresistible, and only at such rare moments did he seem to realize there was an earthly plane most men trod, of choice, for as long as they possibly could.

He told her backstage at the Culloden, after a performance. It had been settled with Rome that day; he was dying to tell her and yet he knew she wasn’t going to like it. His religious ambitions were something he had never discussed with her as much as he wanted to, for she became angry. But when he came backstage that night it was too difficult to contain his joy any longer.

“You’re a prawn,” she said in disgust.

“It’s what I want.”

“Idiot.”

“Calling me names won’t change a thing, Jus.”

“Do you think I don’t know that? It affords me a little much-needed emotional release, that’s all.”

“I should think you’d get enough on the stage, playing Electra. You’re really good, Jus.”

“After this news I’ll be better,” she said grimly. “Are you going to Saint Pat’s?”

“No. I’m going to Rome, to Cardinal de Bricassart. Mum arranged it.”

“Dane, no! It’s so far away!”

“Well, why don’t you come, too, at least to England? With your background and ability you ought to be able to get a place somewhere without too much trouble.”

She was sitting at a mirror wiping off Electra’s paint, still in Electra’s robes; ringed with heavy black arabesques, her strange eyes seemed even stranger. She nodded slowly. “Yes, I could, couldn’t I?” she asked thoughtfully. “It’s more than time I did… Australia’s getting a bit too small… Right, mate! You’re on! England it is!”

“Super! Just think! I get holidays, you know, one always does in the seminary, as if it was a university. We can plan to take them together, trip around Europe a bit, come home to Drogheda. Oh, Jus, I’ve thought it all out! Having you not far away makes it perfect.”

She beamed. “It does, doesn’t it? Life wouldn’t be the same if I couldn’t talk to you.”

“That’s what I was afraid you were going to say.” He grinned. “But seriously, Jus, you worry me. I’d rather have you where I can see you from time to time. Otherwise who’s going to be the voice of your conscience?”

He slid down between a hoplite’s helmet and an awesome mask of the Pythoness to a position on the floor where he could see her, coiling himself into an economical ball, out of the way of all the feet. There were only two stars’ dressing rooms at the Culloden and Justine didn’t rate either of them yet. She was in the general dressing room, among the ceaseless traffic.

“Bloody old Cardinal de Bricassart!” she spat. “I hated him the moment I laid eyes on him!”

Dane chuckled. “You didn’t, you know.”

“I did! I did!”

“No, you didn’t. Aunt Anne told me one Christmas hol, and I’ll bet you don’t know.”

“What don’t I know?” she asked warily.

“That when you were a baby he fed you a bottle and burped you, rocked you to sleep. Aunt Anne said you were a horrible cranky baby and hated being held, but when he held you, you really liked it.”

“It’s a flaming lie!”

“No, it’s not.” He grinned. “Anyway, why do you hate him so much now?”

“I just do. He’s like a skinny old vulture, and he gives me the dry heaves.”

“I like him. I always did. The perfect priest, that’s what Father Watty calls him. I think he is, too.”

“Well, fuck him, I say!”

“Justine!”

“Shocked you that time, didn’t I? I’ll bet you never even thought I knew that word.”

His eyes danced. “Do you know what it means? Tell me, Jussy, go on, I dare you!”

She could never resist him when he teased; her own eyes began to twinkle. “You might be going to be a Father Rhubarb, you prawn, but if you don’t already know what it means, you’d better not investigate.”

He grew serious. “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

A very shapely pair of female legs stopped beside Dane, pivoted. He looked up, went red, looked away, and said, “Oh, hello, Martha,” in a casual voice.

“Hello yourself.”

She was an extremely beautiful girl, a little short on acting ability but so decorative she was an asset to any production; she also happened to be exactly Dane’s cup of tea, and Justine had listened to his admiring comments about her more than once. Tall, what the movie magazines always called sexsational, very dark of hair and eye, fair of skin, with magnificent breasts.

Perching herself on the corner of Justine’s table, she swung one leg provocatively under Dane’s nose and watched him with an undisguised appreciation he clearly found disconcerting. Lord, he was really something! How had plain old cart-horse Jus collected herself a brother who looked like this? He might be only eighteen and it might be cradle-snatching, but who cared?

“How about coming over to my place for coffee and whatever?” she asked, looking down at Dane. “The two of you?” she added reluctantly.

Justine shook her head positively, her eyes lighting up at a sudden thought. “No, thanks, I can’t. You’ll have to be content with Dane.”

He shook his head just as positively, but rather regretfully, as if he was truly tempted. “Thanks anyway, Martha, but I can’t.” He glanced at his watch as at a savior. “Lord, I’ve only got a minute left on my meter! How much longer are you going to be, Jus?”

“About ten minutes.”

“I’ll wait for you outside, all right?”

“Chicken!” she mocked.

Martha’s dusky eyes followed him. “He is absolutely gorgeous. Why won’t he look at me?”

Justine grinned sourly, scrubbed her face clean at last. The freckles were coming back. Maybe London would help; no sun. “Oh, don’t worry, he looks. He’d like, too. But will he? Not Dane.”

“Why? What’s the matter with him? Never tell me he’s a poof! Shit, why is it every gorgeous man I meet is a poof? I never thought Dane was, though; he doesn’t strike me that way at all.”

“Watch your language, you dumb wart! He most certainly isn’t a poof. In fact, the day he looks at Sweet William, our screaming juvenile, I’ll cut his throat and Sweet William’s, too.”

“Well, if he isn’t a pansy and he likes, why doesn’t he take? Doesn’t he get my message? Does he think I’m too old for him?”

“Sweetie, at a hundred you won’t be too old for the average man, don’t worry about it. No, Dane’s sworn off sex for life, the fool. He’s going to be a priest.”

Martha’s lush mouth dropped open, she swung back her mane of inky hair. “Go on!”

“True, true.”

“You mean to say all that’s going to be wasted?”

“Afraid so. He’s offering it to God.”

“Then God’s a bigger poofter than Sweet Willie.”

“You might be right,” said Justine. “He certainly isn’t too fond of women, anyway. Second-class, that’s us, way back in the Upper Circle. Front Stalls and the Mezzanine, strictly male.”

“Oh.”

Justine wriggled out of Electra’s robe, flung a thin cotton dress over her head, remembered it was chilly outside, added a cardigan, and patted Martha kindly on the head. “Don’t worry about it, sweetie. God was very good to you; he didn’t give you any brains. Believe me, it’s far more comfortable that way. You’ll never offer the Lords of Creation any competition.”

“I don’t know, I wouldn’t mind competing with God for your brother.”

“Forget it. You’re fighting the Establishment, and it just can’t be done. You’d seduce Sweet Willie far quicker, take my word for it.”

A Vatican car met Dane at the airport, whisked him through sunny faded streets full of handsome, smiling people; he glued his nose to the window and drank it all in, unbearably excited at seeing for himself the things he had seen only in pictures—the Roman columns, the rococo palaces, the Renaissance glory of Saint Peter’s.

And waiting for him, clad this time in scarlet from head to foot, was Ralph Raoul, Cardinal de Bricassart. The hand was outstretched, its ring glowing; Dane sank on both knees to kiss it.

“Stand up, Dane, let me look at you.”

He stood, smiling at the tall man who was almost exactly his own height; they could look each other in the eye. To Dane the Cardinal had an immense aura of spiritual power which made him think of a pope rather than a saint, yet those intensely sad eyes were not the eyes of a pope. How much he must have suffered to appear so, but how nobly he must have risen above his suffering to become this most perfect of priests.

And Cardinal Ralph gazed at the son he did not know was his son, loving him, he thought, because he was dear Meggie’s boy. Just so would he have wanted to see a son of his own body; as tall, as strikingly good-looking, as graceful. In all his life he had never seen a man move so well. But far more satisfying than any physical beauty was the simple beauty of his soul. He had the strength of the angels, and something of their unearthliness. Had he been so himself, at eighteen? He tried to remember, span the crowded events of threefifths of a lifetime; no, he had never been so. Was it because this one came truly of his own choice? For he himself had not, though he had had the vocation, of that much he still was sure.

“Sit down, Dane. Did you do as I asked, start to learn Italian?”

“At this stage I speak it fluently but without idiom, and I read it very well. Probably the fact that it’s my fourth language makes it easier. I seem to have a talent for languages. A couple of weeks here and I ought to pick up the vernacular.”

“Yes, you will. I, too, have a talent for languages.”

“Well, they’re handy,” said Dane lamely. The awesome scarlet figure was a little daunting; it was suddenly hard to remember the man on the chestnut gelding at Drogheda.

Cardinal Ralph leaned forward, watching him.

“I pass the responsibility for him to you, Ralph,” Meggie’s letter had said. “I charge you with his well-being, his happiness. What I stole, I give back. It is demanded of me. Only promise me two things, and I’ll rest in the knowledge you’ve acted in his best interests. First, promise me you’ll make sure before you accept him that this is what he truly, absolutely wants. Secondly, that if this is what he wants, you’ll keep your eye on him, make sure it remains what he wants. If he should lose heart for it, I want him back. For he belonged to me first. It is I who gives him to you.”

“Dane, are you sure?” asked the Cardinal.

“Absolutely.”

“Why?”

His eyes were curiously aloof, uncomfortably familiar, but familiar in a way which was of the past.

“Because of the love I bear Our Lord. I want to serve Him as His priest all of my days.”

“Do you understand what His service entails, Dane?”

“Yes.”

“That no other love must ever come between you and Him? That you are His exclusively, forsaking all others?”

“Yes.”

“That His Will be done in all things, that in His service you must bury your personality, your individuality, your concept of yourself as uniquely important?”

“Yes.”

“That if necessary you must face death, imprisonment, starvation in His Name? That you must own nothing, value nothing which might tend to lessen your love for Him?”

“Yes.”

“Are you strong, Dane?”

“I am a man, Your Eminence. I am first a man. It will be hard, I know. But I pray that with His help I shall find the strength.”

“Must it be this, Dane? Will nothing less than this content you?”

“Nothing.”

“And if later on you should change your mind, what would you do?”

“Why, I should ask to leave,” said Dane, surprised. “If I changed my mind it would be because I had genuinely mistaken my vocation, for no other reason. Therefore I should ask to leave. I wouldn’t be loving Him any less, but I’d know this isn’t the way He means me to serve Him.”

“But once your final vows are taken and you are ordained, you realize there can be no going back, no dispensation, absolutely no release?”

“I understand that,” said Dane patiently. “But if there is a decision to be made, I will have come to it before then.”

Cardinal Ralph leaned back in his chair, sighed. Had he ever been that sure? Had he ever been that strong? “Why to me, Dane? Why did you want to come to Rome? Why not have remained in Australia?”

“Mum suggested Rome, but it had been in my mind as a dream for a long time. I never thought there was enough money.”

“Your mother is very wise. Didn’t she tell you?”

“Tell me what, Your Eminence?”

“That you have an income of five thousand pounds a year and many thousands of pounds already in the bank in your own name?”

Dane stiffened. “No. She never told me.”

“Very wise. But it’s there, and Rome is yours if you want. Do you want Rome?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you want me, Dane?”

“Because you’re my conception of the perfect priest, Your Eminence.”

Cardinal Ralph’s face twisted. “No, Dane, you can’t look up to me as that. I’m far from a perfect priest. I have broken all my vows, do you understand? I had to learn what you already seem to know in the most painful way a priest can, through the breaking of my vows. For I refused to admit that I was first a mortal man, and only after that a priest.”

“Your Eminence, it doesn’t matter,” said Dane softly. “What you say doesn’t make you any less my conception of the perfect priest. I think you don’t understand what I mean, that’s all. I don’t mean an inhuman automaton, above the weaknesses of the flesh. I mean that you’ve suffered, and grown. Do I sound presumptuous? I don’t intend to, truly. If I’ve offended you, I beg your pardon. It’s just that it’s so hard to express my thoughts! What I mean is that becoming a perfect priest must take years, terrible pain, and all the time keeping before you an ideal, and Our Lord.”

The telephone rang; Cardinal Ralph picked it up in a slightly unsteady hand, spoke in Italian.

“Yes, thank you, we’ll come at once.” He got to his feet. “It’s time for afternoon tea, and we’re to have it with an old, old friend of mine. Next to the Holy Father he’s probably the most important priest in the Church. I told him you were coming, and he expressed a wish to meet you.”

“Thank you, Your Eminence.”

They walked through corridors, then through pleasant gardens quite unlike Drogheda’s, with tall cypresses and poplars, neat rectangles of grass surrounded by pillared walkways, mossy flagstones; past Gothic arches, under Renaissance bridges. Dane drank it in, loving it. Such a different world from Australia, so old, perpetual.

It took them fifteen minutes at a brisk pace to reach the palace; they entered, and passed up a great marble staircase hung with priceless tapestries.

Vittorio Scarbanza, Cardinal di Contini-Verchese was sixty-six now, his body partially crippled by a rheumatic complaint, but his mind as intelligent and alert as it had always been. His present cat, a Russian blue named Natasha, was curled purring in his lap. Since he couldn’t rise to greet his visitors he contented himself with a wide smile, and beckoned them. His eyes passed from Ralph’s beloved face to Dane O’Neill and widened, narrowed, fixed on him stilly. Within his chest he felt his heart falter, put the welcoming hand to it in an instinctive gesture of protection, and sat staring stupidly up at the younger edition of Ralph de Bricassart.

“Vittorio, are you all right?” Cardinal Ralph asked anxiously, taking the frail wrist between his fingers, feeling for a pulse.

“Of course. A little passing pain, no more. Sit down, sit down!”

“First, I’d like you to meet Dane O’Neill, who is as I told you the son of a very dear friend of mine. Dane, this is His Eminence Cardinal di Contini-Verchese.”

Dane knelt, pressed his lips to the ring; over his bent tawny head Cardinal Vittorio’s gaze sought Ralph’s face, scanned it more closely than in many years. Very slightly he relaxed; she had never told him, then. And he wouldn’t suspect, of course, what everyone who saw them together would instantly surmise. Not father-son, of course, but a close relationship of the blood. Poor Ralph! He had never seen himself walk, never watched the expressions on his own face, never caught the upward flight of his own left eyebrow. Truly God was good, to make men so blind.

“Sit down. The tea is coming. So, young man! You wish to be a priest, and have sought the assistance of Cardinal de Bricassart?”

“Yes, Your Eminence.”

“You have chosen wisely. Under his care you will come to no harm. But you look a little nervous, my son. Is it the strangeness?”

Dane smiled Ralph’s smile, perhaps minus conscious charm, but so much Ralph’s smile it caught at an old, tired heart like a passing flick from barbed wire. “I’m overwhelmed, Your Eminence. I hadn’t realized quite how important cardinals are. I never dreamed I’d be met at the airport, or be having tea with you.”

“Yes, it is unusual… Perhaps a source of trouble, I see that. Ah, here is our tea!” Pleased, he watched it laid out, lifted an admonishing finger. “Ah, no! I shall be ‘mother.’ How do you take your tea, Dane?”

“The same as Ralph,” he answered, blushed deeply. “I’m sorry, Your Eminence, I didn’t mean to say that!”

“It’s all right, Dane, Cardinal di Contini-Verchese understands. We met first as Dane and Ralph, and we knew each other far better that way, didn’t we? Formality is new to our relationship. I’d prefer it remain Dane and Ralph in private. His Eminence won’t mind, will you, Vittorio?”

“No. I am fond of Christian names. But returning to what I was saying about having friends in high places, my son. It could be a trifle uncomfortable for you when you enter whichever seminary is decided upon, this long friendship with our Ralph. To have to keep going into involved explanations every time the connection between you is remarked upon would be very tedious. Sometimes Our Lord permits of a little white lie”—he smiled, the gold in his teeth flashing—“and for everyone’s comfort I would prefer that we resort to one such tiny fib. For it is difficult to explain satisfactorily the tenuous connections of friendship, but very easy to explain the crimson cord of blood. So we will say to all and sundry that Cardinal de Bricassart is your uncle, my Dane, and leave it at that,” ended Cardinal Vittorio suavely.

Dane looked shocked, Cardinal Ralph resigned.

“Do not be disappointed in the great, my son,” said Cardinal Vittorio gently. “They, too, have feet of clay, and resort to comfort via little white lies. It is a very useful lesson you have just learned, but looking at you, I doubt you will take advantage of it. However, you must understand that we scarlet gentlemen are diplomats to our fingertips. Truly I think only of you, my son. Jealousy and resentment are not strangers to seminaries any more than they are to secular institutions. You will suffer a little because they think Ralph is your uncle, your mother’s brother, but you would suffer far more if they thought no blood bond linked you together. We are first men, and it is with men you will deal in this world as in others.”

Dane bowed his head, then leaned forward to stroke the cat, pausing with his hand extended. “May I? I love cats, Your Eminence.”

No quicker pathway to that old but constant heart could he have found. “You may. I confess she grows too heavy for me. She is a glutton, are you not, Natasha? Go to Dane; he is the new generation.”

There was no possibility of Justine transferring herself and her belongings from the southern to the northern hemisphere as quickly as Dane had; by the time she worked out the season at the Culloden and bade a not unregretful farewell to Bothwell Gardens, her brother had been in Rome two months.

“How on earth did I manage to accumulate so much junk?” she asked, surrounded by clothes, papers, boxes.

Meggie looked up from where she was crouched, a box of steel wool soap pads in her hand.

“What were these doing under your bed?”

A look of profound relief swept across her daughter’s flushed face. “Oh, thank God! Is that where they were? I thought Mrs. D’s precious poodle ate them; he’s been off color for a week and I wasn’t game to mention my missing soap pads. But I knew the wretched animal ate them; he’ll eat anything that doesn’t eat him first. Not,” continued Justine thoughtfully, “that I wouldn’t be glad to see the last of him.”

Meggie sat back on her heels, laughing. “Oh, Jus! Do you know how funny you are?” She threw the box onto the bed among a mountain of things already there. “You’re no credit to Drogheda, are you? After all the care we took pushing neatness and tidiness into your head, too.”

“I could have told you it was a lost cause. Do you want to take the soap pads back to Drogheda? I know I’m sailing and my luggage is unlimited, but I daresay there are tons of soap pads in London.”

Meggie transferred the box into a large carton marked MRS. D. “I think we’d better donate them to Mrs. Devine; she has to render this flat habitable for the next tenant.” An unsteady tower of unwashed dishes stood on the end of the table, sprouting gruesome whiskers of mold. “Do you ever wash your dishes?”

Justine chuckled unrepentantly. “Dane says I don’t wash them at all, I shave them instead.”

“You’d have to give this lot a haircut first. Why don’t you wash them as you use them?”

“Because it would mean trekking down to the kitchen again, and since I usually eat after midnight, no one appreciates the patter of my little feet.”

“Give me one of the empty boxes. I’ll take them down and dispose of them now,” said her mother, resigned; she had known before volunteering to come what was bound to be in store for her, and had been rather looking forward to it. It wasn’t very often anyone had the chance to help Justine do anything; whenever Meggie had tried to help her she had ended feeling an utter fool. But in domestic matters the situation was reversed for once; she could help to her heart’s content without feeling a fool.

Somehow it got done, and Justine and Meggie set out in the station wagon Meggie had driven down from Gilly, bound for the Hotel Australia, where Meggie had a suite.

“I wish you Drogheda people would buy a house at Palm Beach or Avalon,” Justine said, depositing her case in the suite’s second bedroom. “This is terrible, right above Martin Place. Just imagine being a hop, skip and jump from the surf! Wouldn’t that induce you to hustle yourselves on a plane from Gilly more often?”

“Why should I come to Sydney? I’ve been down twice in the last seven years—to see Dane off, and now to see you off. If we had a house it would never be used.”

“Codswallop.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because there’s more to the world than bloody Drogheda, dammit! That place, it drives me batty!”

Meggie sighed. “Believe me, Justine, there’ll come a time when you’ll yearn to come home to Drogheda.”

“Does that go for Dane, too?”

Silence. Without looking at her daughter, Meggie took her bag from the table. “We’ll be late. Madame Rocher said two o’clock. If you want your dresses before you sail, we’d better hurry.”

“I am put in my place,” Justine said, and grinned.

“Why is it, Justine, that you didn’t introduce me to any of your friends? I didn’t see a sign of anyone at Bothwell Gardens except Mrs. Devine,” Meggie said as they sat in Germaine Rocher’s salon watching the languid mannequins preen and simper.

“Oh, they’re a bit shy… I like that orange thing, don’t you?”

“Not with your hair. Settle for the grey.”

“Pooh! I think orange goes perfectly with my hair. In grey I look like something the cat dragged in, sort of muddy and half rotten. Move with the times, Mum. Redheads don’t have to be seen in white, grey, black, emerald green or that horrible color you’re so addicted to—what is it, ashes of roses? Victorian!”

“You have the name of the color right,” Meggie said. She turned to look at her daughter. “You’re a monster,” she said wryly, but with affection.

Justine didn’t pay any attention; it was not the first time she had heard it. “I’ll take the orange, the scarlet, the purple print, the moss green, the burgundy suit…”

Meggie sat torn between laughter and rage. What could one do with a daughter like Justine?

The Himalaya sailed from Darling Harbor three days later. She was a lovely old ship, flat-hulled and very seaworthy, built in the days when no one was in a tearing hurry and everyone accepted the fact England was four weeks away via Suez or five weeks away via the Cape of Good Hope. Nowadays even the ocean liners were streamlined, hulls shaped like destroyers to get there faster. But what they did to a sensitive stomach made seasoned sailors quail.

“What fun!” Justine laughed. “We’ve got a whole lovely footie team in first class, so it won’t be as dull as I thought. Some of them are gorgeous.”

“Now aren’t you glad I insisted on first class?”

“I suppose so.”

“Justine, you bring out the worst in me, you always have,” Meggie snapped, losing her temper at what she took for ingratitude. Just this once couldn’t the little wretch at least pretend she was sorry to be going? “Stubborn, pig-headed, self-willed! You exasperate me.”

For a moment Justine didn’t answer, but turned her head away as if she was more interested in the fact that the all-ashore gong was ringing than in what her mother was saying. She bit the tremor from her lips, put a bright smile on them. “I know I exasperate you,” she said cheerfully as she faced her mother. “Never mind, we are what we are. As you always say, I take after my dad.”

They embraced self-consciously before Meggie slipped thankfully into the crowds converging on gangways and was lost to sight. Justine made her way up to the sun deck and stood by the rail with rolls of colored streamers in her hands. Far below on the wharf she saw the figure in the pinkish-grey dress and hat walk to the appointed spot, stand shading her eyes. Funny, at this distance one could see Mum was getting up toward fifty. Some way to go yet, but it was there in her stance. They waved in the same moment, then Justine threw the first of her streamers and Meggie caught its end deftly. A red, a blue, a yellow, a pink, a green, an orange; spiraling round and round, tugging in the breeze.

A pipe band had come to bid the football team farewell and stood with pennons flying, plaids billowing, skirling a quaint version of “Now Is the Hour.” The ship’s rails were thick with people hanging over, holding desperately to their ends of the thin paper streamers; on the wharf hundreds of people craned their necks upward, lingering hungrily on the faces going so far away, young faces mostly, off to see what the hub of civilization on the other side of the world was really like. They would live there, work there, perhaps come back in two years, perhaps not come back at all. And everyone knew it, wondered.

The blue sky was plumped with silver-white clouds and there was a tearing Sydney wind. Sun warmed the upturned heads and the shoulder blades of those leaning down; a great multicolored swath of vibrating ribbons joined ship and shore. Then suddenly a gap appeared between the old boat’s side and the wooden struts of the wharf; the air filled with cries and sobs; and one by one in their thousands the streamers broke, fluttered wildly, sagged limply and crisscrossed the surface of the water like a mangled loom, joined the orange peels and the jellyfish to float away.

Justine kept doggedly to her place at the rail until the wharf was a few hard lines and little pink pinheads in the distance; the Himalaya’s tugs turned her, towed her helplessly under the booming decks of the Sydney Harbor Bridge, out into the mainstream of that exquisite stretch of sunny water.

It wasn’t like going to Manly on the ferry at all, though they followed the same path past Neutral Bay and Rose Bay and Cremorne and Vaucluse; no. For this time it was out through the Heads, beyond the cruel cliffs and the high lace fans of foam, into the ocean. Twelve thousand miles of it, to the other side of the world. And whether they came home again or not, they would belong neither here nor there, for they would have lived on two continents and sampled two different ways of life.

Money, Justine discovered, made London a most alluring place. Not for her a penniless existence clinging to the fringes of Earl’s Court—“Kangaroo Valley” they called it because so many Australians made it their headquarters. Not for her the typical fate of Australians in England, youth-hosteling on a shoestring, working for a pittance in some office or school or hospital, shivering thin-blooded over a tiny radiator in a cold, damp room. Instead, for Justine a mews flat in Kensington close to Knightsbridge, centrally heated; and a place in the company of Clyde Daltinham Roberts, The Elizabethan Group.

When the summer came she caught a train to Rome. In afteryears she would smile, remembering how little she saw of that long journey across France, down Italy; her whole mind was occupied with the things she had to tell Dane, memorizing those she simply mustn’t forget. There were so many she was bound to leave some out.

Was that Dane? The tall, fair man on the platform, was that Dane? He didn’t look any different, and yet he was a stranger. Not of her world anymore. The cry she was going to give to attract his attention died unuttered; she drew back a little in her seat to watch him, for the train had halted only a few feet beyond where he stood, blue eyes scanning the windows without anxiety. It was going to be a pretty one-sided conversation when she told him about life since he had gone away, for she knew now there was no thirst in him to share what he experienced with her. Damn him! He wasn’t her baby brother anymore; the life he was living had as little to do with her as it did with Drogheda. Oh, Dane! What’s it like to live something twenty-four hours of every day?

“Hah! Thought I’d dragged you down here on a wild-goose chase, didn’t you?” she said, creeping up behind him unseen.

He turned, squeezed her hands and stared down at her, smiling. “Prawn,” he said lovingly, taking her bigger suitcase and tucking her free arm in his. “It’s good to see you,” he added as he handed her into the red Lagonda he drove everywhere; Dane had always been a sports car fanatic, and had owned one since he was old enough to hold a license.

“Good to see you, too. I hope you found me a nice pub, because I meant what I wrote. I refuse to be stuck in a Vatican cell among a heap of celibates.” She laughed.

“They wouldn’t have you, not with the Devil’s hair. I’ve booked you into a little pension not far from me, but they speak English so you needn’t worry if I’m not with you. And in Rome it’s no problem getting around on English; there’s usually someone who can speak it.”

“Times like this I wish I had your gift for foreign languages. But I’ll manage; I’m very good at mimes and charades.”

“I have two months, Jussy, isn’t it super? So we can take a look at France and Spain and still have a month on Drogheda. I miss the old place.”

“Do you?” She turned to look at him, at the beautiful hands guiding the car expertly through the crazy Roman traffic. “I don’t miss it at all; London’s too interesting.”

“You don’t fool me,” he said. “I know what Drogheda and Mum mean to you.”

Justine clenched her hands in her lap but didn’t answer him.

“Do you mind having tea with some friends of mine this afternoon?” he asked when they had arrived. “I rather anticipated things by accepting for you already. They’re so anxious to meet you, and as I’m not a free man until tomorrow, I didn’t like to say no.”

“Prawn! Why should I mind? If this was London I’d be inundating you with my friends, so why shouldn’t you? I’m glad you’re giving me a look-see at the blokes in the seminary, though it’s a bit unfair to me, isn’t it? Hands off the lot of them.”

She walked to the window, looked down at a shabby little square with two tired plane trees in its paved quadrangle, three tables strewn beneath them, and to one side a church of no particular architectural grace or beauty, covered in peeling stucco.

“Dane…”

“Yes?”

“I do understand, really I do.”

“Yes, I know.” His face lost its smile. “I wish Mum did, Jus.”

“Mum’s different. She feels you deserted her; she doesn’t realize you haven’t. Never mind about her. She’ll come round in time.”

“I hope so.” He laughed. “By the way, it isn’t the blokes from the seminary you’re going to meet today. I wouldn’t subject them or you to such temptation. It’s Cardinal de Bricassart. I know you don’t like him, but promise you’ll be good.”

Her eyes lit with peculiar witchery. “I promise! I’ll even kiss every ring that’s offered to me.”

“Oh, you remember! I was so mad at you that day, shaming me in front of him.”

“Well, since then I’ve kissed a lot of things less hygienic than a ring. There’s one horrible pimply youth in acting class with halitosis and decayed tonsils and a rotten stomach I had to kiss a total of twenty-nine times, and I can assure you, mate, that after him nothing’s impossible.” She patted her hair, turned from the mirror. “Have I got time to change?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. You look fine.”

“Who else is going to be there?”

The sun was too low to warm the ancient square, and the leprous patches on the plane tree trunks looked worn, sick. Justine shivered.

“Cardinal di Contini-Verchese will be there.”

She had heard that name, and opened her eyes wider. “Phew! You move in pretty exalted circles, don’t you?”

“Yes. I try to deserve it.”

“Does it mean some people make it hard on you in other areas of your life here, Dane?” she asked, shrewdly.

“No, not really. Who one knows isn’t important. I never think of it, so nor does anyone else.”

The room, the red men! Never in all her life had Justine been so conscious of the redundancy of women in the lives of some men as at that moment, walking into a world where women simply had no place except as humble nun servants. She was still in the olive-green linen suit she had put on outside Turin, rather crumpled from the train, and she advanced across the soft crimson carpet cursing Dane’s eagerness to be there, wishing she had insisted on donning something less travel-marked.

Cardinal de Bricassart was on his feet, smiling; what a handsome old man he was.

“My dear Justine,” he said, extending his ring with a wicked look which indicated he well remembered the last time, and searching her face for something she didn’t understand. “You don’t look at all like your mother.”

Down on one knee, kiss the ring, smile humbly, get up, smile less humbly. “No, I don’t, do I? I could have done with her beauty in my chosen profession, but on a stage I manage. Because it has nothing to do with what the face actually is, you know. It’s what you and your art can convince people the face is.”

A dry chuckle came from a chair; once more she trod to salute a ring on an aging wormy hand, but this time she looked up into dark eyes, and strangely in them saw love. Love for her, for someone he had never seen, could scarcely have heard mentioned. But it was there. She didn’t like Cardinal de Bricassart any more now than she had at fifteen, but she warmed to this old man.

“Sit down, my dear,” said Cardinal Vittorio, his hand indicating the chair next to him.

“Hello, pusskins,” said Justine, tickling the blue-grey cat in his scarlet lap. “She’s nice, isn’t she?”

“Indeed she is.”

“What’s her name?”

“Natasha.”

The door opened, but not to admit the tea trolley. A man, mercifully clad as a layman; one more red soutane, thought Justine, and I’ll bellow like a bull.

But he was no ordinary man, even if he was a layman. They probably had a little house rule in the Vatican, continued Justine’s unruly mind, which specifically barred ordinary men. Not exactly short, he was so powerfully built he seemed more stocky than he was, with massive shoulders and a huge chest, a big leonine head, long arms like a shearer. Ape-mannish, except that he exuded intelligence and moved with the gait of someone who would grasp whatever he wanted too quickly for the mind to follow. Grasp it and maybe crush it, but never aimlessly, thoughtlessly; with exquisite deliberation. He was dark, but his thick mane of hair was exactly the color of steel wool and of much the same consistency, could steel wool have been crimped into tiny, regular waves.

“Rainer, you come in good time,” said Cardinal Vittorio, indicating the chair on his other side, still speaking in English. “My dear,” he said, turning to Justine as the man finished kissing his ring and rose, “I would like you to meet a very good friend. Herr Rainer Moerling Hartheim. Rainer, this is Dane’s sister, Justine.”

He bowed, clicking his heels punctiliously, gave her a brief smile without warmth and sat down, just too far off to one side to see. Justine breathed a sigh of relief, especially when she saw that Dane had draped himself with the ease of habit on the floor beside Cardinal Ralph’s chair, right in her central vision. While she could see someone she knew and loved well, she would be all right. But the room and the red men and now this dark man were beginning to irritate her more than Dane’s presence calmed; she resented the way they shut her out. So she leaned to one side and tickled the cat again, aware that Cardinal Vittorio sensed and was amused by her reactions.

“Is she spayed?” asked Justine.

“Of course.”

“Of course! Though why you needed to bother I don’t know. Just being a permanent inhabitant of this place would be enough to neuter anyone’s ovaries.”

“On the contrary, my dear,” said Cardinal Vittorio, enjoying her hugely. “It is we men who have psychologically neutered ourselves.”

“I beg to differ, Your Eminence.”

“So our little world antagonizes you?”

“Well, let’s just say I feel a bit superfluous, Your Eminence. A nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live here.”

“I cannot blame you. I also doubt that you like to visit. But you will get used to us, for you must visit us often, please.”

Justine grinned. “I hate being on my best behavior,” she confided. “It brings out the absolute worst in me—I can feel Dane’s horrors from here without even looking at him.”

“I was wondering how long it was going to last,” said Dane, not at all put out. “Scratch Justine’s surface and you find a rebel. That’s why she’s such a nice sister for me to have. I’m not a rebel, but I do admire them.”

Herr Hartheim shifted his chair so that he could continue to keep her in his line of vision even when she straightened, stopped playing with the cat. At that moment the beautiful animal grew tired of the hand with an alien female scent, and without getting to its feet crawled delicately from red lap to grey, curling itself under Herr Hartheim’s strong square stroking hands, purring so loudly that everyone laughed.

“Excuse me for living,” said Justine, not proof against a good joke even when she was its victim.

“Her motor is as good as ever,” said Herr Hartheim, the amusement working fascinating changes in his face. His English was so good he hardly had an accent, but it had an American inflection; he rolled his r’s.

The tea came before everyone settled down again, and oddly enough it was Herr Hartheim who poured, handing Justine her cup with a much friendlier look than he had given her at introduction.

“In a British community,” he said to her, “afternoon tea is the most important refreshment of the day. Things happen over teacups, don’t they? I suppose because by its very nature it can be demanded and taken at almost any time between two and five-thirty, and talking is thirsty work.”

The next half hour seemed to prove his point, though Justine took no part in the congress. Talk veered from the Holy Father’s precarious health to the cold war and then the economic recession, all four men speaking and listening with an alertness Justine found absorbing, beginning to grope for the qualities they shared, even Dane, who was so strange, so much an unknown. He contributed actively, and it wasn’t lost upon her that the three older men listened to him with a curious humility, almost as if he awed them. His comments were neither uninformed nor naïve, but they were different, original, holy. Was it for his holiness they paid such serious attention to him? That he possessed it, and they didn’t? Was it truly a virtue they admired, yearned for themselves? Was it so rare? Three men so vastly different one from the other, yet far closer bound together than any of them were to Dane. How difficult it was to take Dane as seriously as they did! Not that in many ways he hadn’t acted as an older brother rather than a younger; not that she wasn’t aware of his wisdom, his intellect or his holiness. But until now he had been a part of her world. She had to get used to the fact that he wasn’t anymore.

“If you wish to go straight to your devotions, Dane, I’ll see your sister back to her hotel,” commanded Herr Rainer Moerling Hartheim without consulting anyone’s wishes on the subject.

And so she found herself walking tongue-tied down the marble stairs in the company of that squat, powerful man. Outside in the yellow sheen of a Roman sunset he took her elbow and guided her into a black Mercedes limousine, its chauffeur standing to attention.

“Come, you don’t want to spend your first evening in Rome alone, and Dane is otherwise occupied,” he said, following her into the car. “You’re tired and bewildered, so it’s better you have company.”

“You don’t seem to be leaving me any choice, Herr Hartheim.”

“I would rather you called me Rainer.”

“You must be important, having a posh car and your own chauffeur.”

“I’ll be more important still when I’m chancellor of West Germany.”

Justine snorted. “I’m surprised you’re not already.”

“Impudent! I’m too young.”

“Are you?” She turned sideways to look at him more closely, discovering that his dark skin was unlined, youthful, that the deeply set eyes weren’t embedded in the fleshy surrounds of age.

“I’m heavy and I’m grey, but I’ve been grey since I was sixteen and heavy since I’ve had enough to eat. At the present moment I’m a mere thirty-one.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” she said, kicking her shoes off. “That’s still old to me—I’m sweet twenty-one.”

“You’re a monster,” he said, smiling.

“I suppose I must be. My mother says the same thing. Only I’m not sure what either of you means by monster, so you can give me your version, please.”

“Have you already got your mother’s version?”

“I’d embarrass the hell out of her if I asked.”

“Don’t you think you embarrass me?”

“I strongly suspect, Herr Hartheim, that you’re a monster, too, so I doubt if anything embarrasses you.”

“A monster,” he said again under his breath. “All right then, Miss O’Neill, I’ll try to define the term for you. Someone who terrifies others; rolls over the top of people; feels so strong only God can defeat; has no scruples and few morals.”

She chuckled. “It sounds like you, to me. And I have so too got morals and scruples. I’m Dane’s sister.”

“You don’t look a bit like him.”

“More’s the pity.”

“His face wouldn’t suit your personality.”

“You’re undoubtedly right, but with his face I might have developed a different personality.”

“Depending on which comes first, eh, the chicken or the egg? Put your shoes on; we’re going to walk.”

It was warm, and growing dark; but the lights were brilliant, there were crowds it seemed no matter where they walked, and the roads were jammed with shrieking motor scooters, tiny aggressive Fiats, Goggomobils looking like hordes of panicked frogs. Finally he halted in a small square, its cobbles worn to smoothness by the feet of many centuries, and guided Justine into a restaurant.

“Unless you’d prefer al fresco?” he asked.

“Provided you feed me, I don’t much care whether it’s inside, outside, or halfway between.”

“May I order for you?”

The pale eyes blinked a little wearily perhaps, but there was still fight in Justine. “I don’t know that I go for all that high-handed masterful-male business,” she said. “After all, how do you know what I fancy?”

“Sister Anna carries her banner,” he murmured. “Tell me what sort of food you like, then, and I’ll guarantee to please you. Fish? Veal?”

“A compromise? All right, I’ll meet you halfway, why not? I’ll have pâté, some scampi and a huge plate of saltimbocca, and after that I’ll have a cassata and a cappuccino coffee. Fiddle around with that if you can.”

“I ought to slap you,” he said, his good humor quite unruffled. He gave her order to the waiter exactly as she had stipulated it, but in rapid Italian.

“You said I don’t look a bit like Dane. Aren’t I like him in any way at all?” she asked a little pathetically over coffee, too hungry to have wasted time talking while there was food on the table.

He lit her cigarette, then his own, and leaned into the shadows to watch her quietly, thinking back to his first meeting with the boy months ago. Cardinal de Bricassart minus forty years of life; he had seen it immediately, and then had learned they were uncle and nephew, that the mother of the boy and the girl was Ralph de Bricassart’s sister.

“There is a likeness, yes,” he said. “Sometimes even of the face. Expressions far more than features. Around the eyes and the mouth, in the way you hold your eyes open and your mouths closed. Oddly enough, not likenesses you share with your uncle the Cardinal.”

“Uncle the Cardinal?” she repeated blankly.

“Cardinal de Bricassart. Isn’t he your uncle? Now, I’m sure I was told he was.”

“That old vulture? He’s no relation of ours, thank heavens. He used to be our parish priest years ago, a long time before I was born.”

She was very intelligent; but she was also very tired. Poor little girl—for that was what she was, a little girl. The ten years between them yawned like a hundred. To suspect would bring her world to ruins, and she was so valiant in defense of it. Probably she would refuse to see it, even if she were told outright. How to make it seem unimportant? Not labor the point, definitely not, but not drop it immediately, either.

“That accounts for it, then,” he said lightly.

“Accounts for what?”

“The fact that Dane’s likeness to the Cardinal is in general things—height, coloring, build.”

“Oh! My grandmother told me our father was rather like the Cardinal to look at,” said Justine comfortably.

“Haven’t you ever seen your father?”

“Not even a picture of him. He and Mum separated for good before Dane was born.” She beckoned the waiter. “I’d like another cappuccino, please.”

“Justine, you’re a savage! Let me order for you!”

“No, dammit, I won’t! I’m perfectly capable of thinking for myself, and I don’t need some bloody man always to tell me what I want and when I want it, do you hear?”

“Scratch the surface and one finds a rebel; that was what Dane said.”

“He’s right. Oh, if you knew how I hate being petted and cosseted and fussed over! I like to act for myself, and I won’t be told what to do! I don’t ask for quarter, but I don’t give any, either.”

“I can see that,” he said dryly. “What made you so, Herzchen? Does it run in the family?”

“Does it? I honestly don’t know. There aren’t enough women to tell, I suppose. Only one per generation. Nanna, and Mum, and me. Heaps of men, though.”

“Except in your generation there are not heaps of men. Only Dane.”

“Due to the fact Mum left my father, I expect. She never seemed to get interested in anyone else. Pity, I think. Mum’s a real home-body; she would have liked a husband to fuss over.”

“Is she like you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“More importantly, do you like each other?”

“Mum and I?” She smiled without rancor, much as her mother would have done had someone asked her whether she liked her daughter. “I’m not sure if we like each other, but there is something there. Maybe it’s a simple biological bond; I don’t know.” Her eyes kindled. “I’ve always wanted her to talk to me the way she does to Dane, and wanted to get along with her the way Dane does. But either there’s something lacking in her, or something lacking in me. Me, I’d reckon. She’s a much finer person than I am.”

“I haven’t met her, so I can’t agree or disagree with your judgment. If it’s of any conceivable comfort to you, Herzchen, I like you exactly the way you are. No, I wouldn’t change a thing about you, even your ridiculous pugnacity.”

“Isn’t that nice of you? And after I insulted you, too. I’m not really like Dane, am I?”

“Dane isn’t like anyone else in the world.”

“You mean because he’s so not of this world?”

“I suppose so.” He leaned forward, out of the shadows into the weak light of the little candle in its Chianti bottle. “I am a Catholic, and my religion has been the one thing in my life which has never failed me, though I have failed it many times. I dislike speaking of Dane, because my heart tells me some things are better left undiscussed. Certainly you aren’t like him in your attitude to life, or God. Let’s leave it, all right?”

She looked at him curiously. “All right, Rainer, if you want. I’ll make a pact with you—no matter what we discuss, it won’t be the nature of Dane, or religion.”

Much had happened to Rainer Moerling Hartheim since that meeting with Ralph de Bricassart in July 1943. A week afterward his regiment had been dispatched to the Eastern Front, where he spent the remainder of the war. Torn and rudderless, too young to have been indoctrinated into the Hitler Youth in its leisurely prewar days, he had faced the consequences of Hitler in feet of snow, without ammunition, the front line stretched so thin there was only one soldier for every hundred yards of it. And out of the war he carried two memories: that bitter campaign in bitter cold, and the face of Ralph de Bricassart. Horror and beauty, the Devil and God. Half crazed, half frozen, waiting defenseless for Khrushchev’s guerrillas to drop from low-flying planes parachuteless into the snowdrifts, he beat his breast and muttered prayers. But he didn’t know what he prayed for: bullets for his gun, escape from the Russians, his immortal soul, the man in the basilica, Germany, a lessening of grief.

In the spring of 1945 he had retreated back across Poland before the Russians, like his fellow soldiers with only one objective—to make it into Britishdor American-occupied Germany. For if the Russians caught him, he would be shot. He tore his papers into shreds and burned them, buried his two Iron Crosses, stole some clothes and presented himself to the British authorities on the Danish border. They shipped him to a camp for displaced persons in Belgium. There for a year he lived on the bread and gruel which was all the exhausted British could afford to feed the thousands upon thousands of people in their charge, waiting until the British realized their only course was release.

Twice officials of the camp had summoned him to present him with an ultimatum. There was a boat waiting in Ostend harbor loading immigrants for Australia. He would be given new papers and shipped to his new land free of charge, in return for which he would work for the Australian government for two years in whatever capacity they chose, after which his life would become entirely his own. Not slave labor; he would be paid the standard wage, of course. But on both occasions he managed to talk himself out of summary emigration. He had hated Hitler, not Germany, and he was not ashamed of being a German. Home meant Germany; it had occupied his dreams for over three years. The very thought of yet again being stranded in a country where no one spoke his language nor he theirs was anathema. So at the beginning of 1947 he found himself penniless on the streets of Aachen, ready to pick up the pieces of an existence he knew he wanted very badly.

He and his soul had survived, but not to go back to poverty and obscurity. For Rainer was more than a very ambitious man; he was also something of a genius. He went to work for Grundig, and studied the field which had fascinated him since he first got acquainted with radar: electronics. Ideas teemed in his brain, but he refused to sell them to Grundig for a millionth part of their value. Instead he gauged the market carefully, then married the widow of a man who had managed to keep a couple of small radio factories, and went into business for himself. That he was barely into his twenties didn’t matter. His mind was characteristic of a far older man, and the chaos of postwar Germany created opportunities for young men.

Since his wedding had been a civil one, the Church permitted him to divorce his wife; in 1951 he paid Annelise Hartheim exactly twice the current value of her first husband’s two factories, and did just that, divorced her. However, he didn’t remarry.

What had happened to the boy in the frozen terror of Russia did not produce a soulless caricature of a man; rather it arrested the growth of softness and sweetness in him, and threw into high relief other qualities he possessed—intelligence, ruthlessness, determination. A man who has nothing to lose has everything to gain, and a man without feelings cannot be hurt. Or so he told himself. In actual fact, he was curiously similar to the man he had met in Rome in 1943; like Ralph de Bricassart he understood he did wrong even as he did it. Not that his awareness of the evil in him stopped him for a second; only that he paid for his material advancement in pain and self-torment. To many people it might not have seemed worth the price he paid, but to him it was worth twice the suffering. One day he was going to run Germany and make it what he had dreamed, he was going to scotch the Aryan Lutheran ethic, shape a broader one. Because he couldn’t promise to cease sinning he had been refused absolution in the confessional several times, but somehow he and his religion muddled through in one piece, until accumulated money and power removed him so many layers beyond guilt he could present himself repentant, and be shriven.

In 1955, one of the richest and most powerful men in the new West Germany and a fresh face in its Bonn parliament, he went back to Rome. To seek out Cardinal de Bricassart, and show him the end result of his prayers. What he had imagined that meeting might be he could not afterward remember, for from beginning to end of it he was conscious of only one thing: that Ralph de Bricassart was disappointed in him. He had known why, he hadn’t needed to ask. But he hadn’t expected the Cardinal’s parting remark:

“I had prayed you would do better than I, for you were so young. No end is worth any means. But I suppose the seeds of our ruin are sown before our births.”

Back in his hotel room he had wept, but calmed after a while and thought: What’s past is done with; for the future I will be as he hoped. And sometimes he succeeded, sometimes he failed. But he tried. His friendship with the men in the Vatican became the most precious earthly thing in his life, and Rome became the place to which he fled when only their comfort seemed to stand between himself and despair. Comfort. Theirs was a strange kind. Not the laying on of hands, or soft words. Rather a balm from the soul, as if they understood his pain.

And he thought, as he walked the warm Roman night after depositing Justine in her pension, that he would never cease to be grateful to her. For as he had watched her cope with the ordeal of that afternoon interview, he had felt a stirring of tenderness. Bloody but unbowed, the little monster. She could match them every inch of the way; did they realize it? He felt, he decided, what he might have felt on behalf of a daughter he was proud of, only he had no daughter. So he had stolen her from Dane, carried her off to watch her aftermath reaction to that overpowering ecclesiasticism, and to the Dane she had never seen before; the Dane who was not and could not ever be a full-hearted part of her life.

The nicest thing about his personal God, he went on, was that He could forgive anything; He could forgive Justine her innate godlessness and himself the shutting down of his emotional powerhouse until such time as it was convenient to reopen it. Only for a while he had panicked, thinking he had lost the key forever. He smiled, threw away her cigarette. The key… Well, sometimes keys had strange shapes. Perhaps it needed every kink in every curl of that red head to trip the tumblers; perhaps in a room of scarlet his God had handed him a scarlet key.

A fleeting day, over in a second. But on looking at his watch he saw it was still early, and knew the man who had so much power now that His Holiness lay near death would still be wakeful, sharing the nocturnal habits of his cat. Those dreadful hiccups filling the small room at Castel Gandolfo, twisting the thin, pale, ascetic face which had watched beneath the white crown for so many years; he was dying, and he was a great Pope. No matter what they said, he was a great Pope. If he had loved his Germans, if he still liked to hear German spoken around him, did it alter anything? Not for Rainer to judge that.

But for what Rainer needed to know at the moment, Castel Gandolfo was not the source. Up the marble stairs to the scarlet-and-crimson room, to talk to Vittorio Scarbanza, Cardinal di Contini-Verchese. Who might be the next Pope, or might not. For almost three years now he had watched those wise, loving dark eyes rest where they most liked to rest; yes, better to seek the answers from him than from Cardinal de Bricassart.

“I never thought I’d hear myself say it, but thank God we’re leaving for Drogheda,” said Justine, refusing to throw a coin in the Trevi Fountain. “We were supposed to take a look at France and Spain; instead we’re still in Rome and I’m as unnecessary as a navel. Brothers!”

“Hmmm, so you deem navels unnecessary? Socrates was of the same opinion, I remember,” said Rainer.

“Socrates was? I don’t recollect that! Funny, I thought I’d read most of Plato, too.” She twisted to stare at him, thinking the casual clothes of a holiday-maker in Rome suited him far better than the sober attire he wore for Vatican audiences.

“He was absolutely convinced navels were unnecessary, as a matter of fact. So much so that to prove his point he unscrewed his own navel and threw it away.”

Her lips twitched. “And what happened?”

“His toga fell off.”

“Hook! Hook!” She giggled. “Anyway, they didn’t wear togas in Athens then. But I have a horrible feeling there’s a moral in your story.” Her face sobered. “Why do you bother with me, Rain?”

“Stubborn! I’ve told you before, my name is pronounced Ryner, not Rayner.”

“Ah, but you don’t understand,” she said, looking thoughtfully at the twinkling streams of water, the dirty pool loaded with dirty coins. “Have you ever been to Australia?”

His shoulders shook, but he made no sound. “Twice I almost went, Herzchen, but I managed to avoid it.”

“Well, if you had gone you’d understand. You have a magical name to an Australian, when it’s pronounced my way. Rainer. Rain. Life in the desert.”

Startled, he dropped his cigarette. “Justine, you aren’t falling in love with me, are you?”

“What egotists men are! I hate to disappoint you, but no.” Then, as if to soften any unkindness in her words, she slipped her hand into his, squeezed. “It’s something much nicer.”

“What could be nicer than falling in love?”

“Almost anything, I think. I don’t want to need anyone like that, ever.”

“Perhaps you’re right. It’s certainly a crippling handicap, taken on too early. So what is much nicer?”

“Finding a friend.” Her hand rubbed his. “You are my friend, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” Smiling, he threw a coin in the fountain. “There! I must have given it a thousand D-marks over the years, just for reassurance that I would continue to feel the warmth of the south. Sometimes in my nightmares I’m cold again.”

“You ought to feel the warmth of the real south,” said Justine. “A hundred and fifteen in the shade, if you can find any.”

“No wonder you don’t feel the heat.” He laughed the soundless laugh, as always; a hangover from the old days, when to laugh aloud might have tempted fate. “And the heat would account for the fact that you’re hard-boiled.”

“Your English is colloquial, but American. I would have thought you’d have learned English in some posh British university.”

“No. I began to learn it from Cockney or Scottish or Midlands tommies in a Belgian camp, and didn’t understand a word of it except when I spoke to the man who had taught it to me. One said ‘abaht,’ one said ‘aboot,’ one said ‘about,’ but they all meant ‘about.’ So when I got back to Germany I saw every motion picture I could, and bought the only records available in English, records made by American comedians. But I played them over and over again at home, until I spoke enough English to learn more.”

Her shoes were off, as usual; awed, he had watched her walk barefooted on pavements hot enough to fry an egg, and over stony places.

“Urchin! Put your shoes on.”

“I’m an Aussie; our feet are too broad to be comfortable in shoes. Comes of no really cold weather; we go barefoot whenever we can. I can walk across a paddock of bindy-eye burns and pick them out of my feet without feeling them,” she said proudly. “I could probably walk on hot coals.” Then abruptly she changed the subject. “Did you love your wife, Rain?”

“No.”

“Did she love you?”

“Yes. She had no other reason to marry me.”

“Poor thing! You used her, and you dropped her.”

“Does it disappoint you?”

“No, I don’t think so. I rather admire you for it, actually. But I do feel very sorry for her, and it makes me more determined than ever not to land in the same soup she did.”

“Admire me?” His tone was blank, astonished.

“Why not? I’m not looking for the things in you she undoubtedly did, now am I? I like you, you’re my friend. She loved you, you were her husband.”

“I think, Herzchen,” he said a little sadly, “that ambitious men are not very kind to their women.”

“That’s because they usually fall for utter doormats of women, the ‘Yes, dear, no, dear, three bags full, dear, and where would you like it put?’ sort. Hard cheese all round, I say. If I’d been your wife, I’d have told you to go pee up a rope, but I’ll bet she never did, did she?”

His lips quivered. “No, poor Annelise. She was the martyr kind, so her weapons were not nearly so direct or so deliciously expressed. I wish they made Australian films, so I knew your vernacular. The ‘Yes, dear’ bit I got, but I have no idea what hard cheese is.”

“Tough luck, sort of, but it’s more unsympathetic.” Her broad toes clung like strong fingers to the inside of the fountain wall, she teetered precariously backward and righted herself easily. “Well, you were kind to her in the end. You got rid of her. She’s far better off without you, though she probably doesn’t think so. Whereas I can keep you, because I’ll never let you get under my skin.”

“Hard-boiled. You really are, Justine. And how did you find out these things about me?”

“I asked Dane. Naturally, being Dane he just gave me the bare facts, but I deduced the rest.”

“From your enormous store of past experience, no doubt. What a fraud you are! They say you’re a very good actress, but I find that incredible. How do you manage to counterfeit emotions you can never have experienced? As a person you’re more emotionally backward than most fifteen-year-olds.”

She jumped down, sat on the wall and leaned to put her shoes on, wriggling her toes ruefully. “My feet are swollen, dammit.” There was no indication by a reaction of rage or indignation that she had even heard the last part of what he said. As if when aspersions or criticisms were leveled at her she simply switched off an internal hearing aid. How many there must have been. The miracle was that she didn’t hate Dane.

“That’s a hard question to answer,” she said. “I must be able to do it or I wouldn’t be so good, isn’t that right? But it’s like…a waiting. My life off the stage, I mean. I conserve myself, I can’t spend it offstage. We only have so much to give, don’t we? And up there I’m not myself, or perhaps more correctly I’m a succession of selves. We must all be a profound mixture of selves, don’t you think? To me, acting is first and foremost intellect, and only after that, emotion. The one liberates the other, and polishes it. There’s so much more to it than simply crying or screaming or producing a convincing laugh. It’s wonderful, you know. Thinking myself into another self, someone I might have been, had the circumstances been there. That’s the secret. Not becoming someone else, but incorporating the role into me as if she was myself. And so she becomes me.” As though her excitement was too great to bear in stillness, she jumped to her feet. “Imagine, Rain! In twenty years’ time I’ll be able to say to myself, I’ve committed murders, I’ve suicided, I’ve gone mad, I’ve saved men or ruined them. Oh! The possibilities are endless!”

“And they will all be you.” He rose, took her hand again. “Yes, you’re quite right, Justine. You can’t spend it offstage. In anyone else, I’d say you would in spite of that, but being you, I’m not so sure.”

18

If they applied themselves to it, the Drogheda people could imagine that Rome and London were no farther away than Sydney, and that the grown-up Dane and Justine were still children going to boarding school. Admittedly they couldn’t come home for all the shorter vacations of other days, but once a year they turned up for a month at least. Usually in August or September, and looking much as always. Very young. Did it matter whether they were fifteen and sixteen or twenty-two and twenty-three? And if the Drogheda people lived for that month in early spring, they most definitely never went round saying things like, Well, only a few weeks to go! or, Dear heaven, it’s not a month since they left! But around July everyone’s step became brisker, and permanent smiles settled on every face. From the cookhouse to the paddocks to the drawing room, treats and gifts were planned.

In the meantime there were letters. Mostly these reflected the personalities of their authors, but sometimes they contradicted. One would have thought, for instance, that Dane would be a meticulously regular correspondent and Justine a scrappy one. That Fee would never write at all. That the Cleary men would write twice a year. That Meggie would enrich the postal service with letters every day, at least to Dane. That Mrs. Smith, Minnie and Cat would send birthday and Christmas cards. That Anne Mueller would write often to Justine, never to Dane.

Dane’s intentions were good, and he did indeed write regularly. The only trouble was he forgot to post his efforts, with the result that two or three months would go by without a word, and then Drogheda would receive dozens on the same mail run. The loquacious Justine wrote lengthy missives which were pure stream-of-consciousness, rude enough to evoke blushes and clucks of alarm, and entirely fascinating. Meggie wrote once every two weeks only, to both her children. Though Justine never received letters from her grandmother, Dane did quite often. He also got word regularly from all his uncles, about the land and the sheep and the health of the Drogheda women, for they seemed to think it was their duty to assure him all was truly well at home. However, they didn’t extend this to Justine, who would have been flabbergasted by it anyway. For the rest, Mrs. Smith, Minnie, Cat and Anne Mueller, correspondence went as might be expected.

It was lovely reading letters, and a burden writing them. That is, for all save Justine, who experienced twinges of exasperation because no one ever sent her the kind she desired—fat, wordy and frank. It was from Justine the Drogheda people got most of their information about Dane, for his letters never plunged his readers right into the middle of a scene. Whereas Justine’s did.

It took Dane eight years in Rome to attain his priesthood, and at their beginning no one thought they could ever end. Yet those eight years used themselves up faster than any of the Drogheda people had imagined. Just what they thought he was going to do after he was ordained they didn’t know, except that they did assume he would return to Australia. Only Meggie and Justine suspected he would want to remain in Italy, and Meggie at any rate could lull her doubts with memories of his content when he came back each year to his home. He was an Australian, he would want to come home. With Justine it was different. No one dreamed she would come home for good. She was an actress; her career would founder in Australia. Where Dane’s career could be pursued with equal zeal anywhere at all.

Thus in the eighth year there were no plans as to what the children would do when they came for their annual holiday; instead the Drogheda people were planning their trip to Rome, to see Dane ordained a priest.

“We fizzled out,” said Meggie.

“I beg your pardon, dear?” asked Anne.

They were sitting in a warm corner of the veranda reading, but Meggie’s book had fallen neglected into her lap, and she was absently watching the antics of two willy-wagtails on the lawn. It had been a wet year; there were worms everywhere and the fattest, happiest birds anyone ever remembered. Bird songs filled the air from dawn to the last of dusk.

“I said we fizzled out,” repeated Meggie, crowlike. “A damp squib. All that promise! Whoever would have guessed it in 1921, when we arrived on Drogheda?”

“How do you mean?”

“A total of six sons, plus me. And a year later, two more sons. What would you think? Dozens of children, half a hundred grandchildren? So look at us now. Hal and Stu are dead, none of the ones left alive seem to have any intention of ever getting married, and I, the only one not entitled to pass on the name, have been the only one to give Drogheda its heirs. And even then the gods weren’t happy, were they? A son and a daughter. Several grandchildren at least, you might think. But what happens? My son embraces the priesthood and my daughter’s an old maid career woman. Another dead end for Drogheda.”

“I don’t see what’s so strange about it,” said Anne. “After all, what could you expect from the men? Stuck out here as shy as kangas, never meeting the girls they might have married. And with Jims and Patsy, the war to boot. Could you see Jims marrying when he knows Patsy can’t? They’re far too fond of each other for that. And besides, the land’s demanding in a neutered way. It takes just about all they’ve got to give, because I don’t think they have a great deal. In a physical sense, I mean. Hasn’t it ever struck you, Meggie? Yours isn’t a very highly sexed family, to put it bluntly. And that goes for Dane and Justine, too. I mean, there are some people who compulsively hunt it like tomcats, but not your lot. Though perhaps Justine will marry. There’s this German chap Rainer; she seems terribly fond of him.”

“You’ve hit the nail on the head,” said Meggie, in no mood to be comforted. “She seems terribly fond of him. Just that. After all, she’s known him for seven years. If she wanted to marry him, it would have happened ages ago.”

“Would it? I know Justine pretty well,” answered Anne truthfully, for she did; better than anyone else on Drogheda, including Meggie and Fee. “I think she’s terrified of committing herself to the kind of love marriage would entail, and I must say I admire Rainer. He seems to understand her very well. Oh, I don’t say he’s in love with her for sure, but if he is, at least he’s got the sense to wait until she’s ready to take the plunge.” She leaned forward, her book falling forgotten to the tiles. “Oh, will you listen to that bird? I’m sure even a nightingale couldn’t match it.” Then she said what she had been wanting to say for weeks. “Meggie, why won’t you go to Rome to see Dane ordained? Isn’t that peculiar? Dane—ordain.”

“I’m not going to Rome!” said Meggie between clenched teeth. “I shall never leave Drogheda again.”

“Meggie, don’t! You can’t disappoint him so! Go, please! If you don’t, Drogheda won’t have a single woman there, because you’re the only woman young enough to take the flight. But I tell you, if I thought for one minute my body would survive I’d be right on that plane.”

“Go to Rome and see Ralph de Bricassart smirking? I’d rather be dead!”

“Oh, Meggie, Meggie! Why must you take out your frustrations on him, and on your son? You said it once yourself—it’s your own fault. So beggar your pride, and go to Rome. Please!”

“It isn’t a question of pride.” She shivered. “Oh, Anne, I’m frightened to go! Because I don’t believe it, I just don’t! My flesh creeps when I think about it.”

“And what about the fact he mightn’t come home after he’s a priest? Did that ever occur to you? He won’t be given huge chunks of leave the way he was in the seminary, so if he decides to remain in Rome you may well have to take yourself there if you ever want to see him at all. Go to Rome, Meggie!”

“I can’t. If you knew how frightened I am! It’s not pride, or Ralph scoring one over on me, or any of the things I say it is to stop people asking me questions. Lord knows, I miss both my men so much I’d crawl on my knees to see them if I thought for a minute they wanted me. Oh, Dane would be glad to see me, but Ralph? He’s forgotten I ever existed. I’m frightened, I tell you. I know in my bones that if I go to Rome something will happen. So I’m not going.”

“What could happen, for pity’s sake?”

“I don’t know… If I did, I’d have something to battle. A feeling, how can I battle a feeling? Because that’s all it is. A premonition. As if the gods are gathering.”

Anne laughed. “You’re becoming a real old woman, Meggie. Stop!”

“I can’t, I can’t! And I am an old woman.”

“Nonsense, you’re just in brisk middle age. Well and truly young enough to hop on that plane.”

“Oh, leave me alone!” said Meggie savagely, and picked up her book.

Occasionally a crowd with a purpose converges upon Rome. Not tourism, the voyeuristic sampling of past glories in present relics; not the filling in of a little slice of time between A and B, with Rome a point on the line between those two places. This is a crowd with a single uniting emotion; it bursts with pride, for it is coming to see its son, nephew, cousin, friend ordained a priest in the great basilica which is the most venerated church in the world. Its members put up in humble pensiones, luxury hotels, the homes of friends or relatives. But they are totally united, at peace with each other and with the world. They do the rounds dutifully; the Vatican Museum with the Sistine Chapel at its end like a prize for endurance; the Forum, the Colosseum, the Appian Way, the Spanish Steps, the greedy Trevi Fountain, the son et lumière. Waiting for the day, filling in time. They will be accorded the special privilege of a private audience with the Holy Father, and for them Rome will find nothing too good.

This time it wasn’t Dane waiting on the platform to meet Justine, as it had been every other time; he was in retreat. Instead, Rainer Moerling Hartheim prowled the dirty paving like some great animal. He didn’t greet her with a kiss, he never did; he just put an arm about her shoulders and squeezed.

“Rather like a bear,” said Justine.

“A bear?”

“I used to think when I first met you that you were some sort of missing link, but I’ve finally decided you’re more of a bear than a gorilla. It was an unkind comparison, the gorilla.”

“And bears are kind?”

“Well, perhaps they do one to death just as quickly, but they’re more cuddly.” She linked her arm through his and matched his stride, for she was almost as tall as he. “How’s Dane? Did you see him before he went into retreat? I could kill Clyde, not letting me go sooner.”

“Dane is as always.”

“You haven’t been leading him astray?”

“Me? Certainly not. You look very nice, Herzchen.”

“I’m on my very best behavior, and I bought out every couturier in London. Do you like my new short skirt? They call it the mini.”

“Walk ahead of me, and I’ll tell you.”

The hem of the full silk skirt was about midthigh; it swirled as she turned and came back to him. “What do you think, Rain? Is it scandalous? I noticed no one in Paris is wearing this length yet.”

“It proves a point, Herzchen—that with legs as good as yours, to wear a skirt one millimeter longer is scandalous. I’m sure the Romans will agree with me.”

“Which means my arse will be black and blue in an hour instead of a day. Damn them! Though do you know something, Rain?”

“What?”

“I’ve never been pinched by a priest. All these years I’ve been flipping in and out of the Vatican with nary a pinch to my credit. So I thought maybe if I wore a miniskirt, I might be the undoing of some poor prelate yet.”

“You might be my undoing.” He smiled.

“No, really? In orange? I thought you hated me in orange, when I’ve got orange hair.”

“It inflames the senses, such a busy color.”

“You’re teasing me,” she said, disgusted, climbing into his Mercedes limousine, which had a German pennant fluttering from its bonnet talisman. “When did you get the little flag?”

“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 elasticsided 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.”

“Uh-uh-uh! No obscenities, Father O’Neill!”

His arms went behind his head, he leaned back on the couch contentedly. “I am! Isn’t it marvelous? And maybe after I’ve seen Mum, I can concentrate on Our Lord. I think that’s where my inclinations lie, you know. Simply thinking about Our Lord.”

“You ought to have espoused an order, Dane.”

“I still can, and I probably will. I have a whole lifetime; there’s no hurry.”

Justine left the party with Rainer, and after she talked of going to Greece with Dane, he talked of going to his office in Bonn. “About bloody time,” she said. “For a cabinet minister you don’t seem to do much work, do you? All the papers call you a playboy, fooling around with carrot-topped Australian actresses, you old dog, you.”

He shook his big fist at her. “I pay for my few pleasures in more ways than you’ll ever know.”

“Do you mind if we walk, Rain?”

“Not if you keep your shoes on.”

“I have to these days. Miniskirts have their disadvantages; the days of stockings one could peel off easily are over. They’ve invented a sheer version of theatrical tights, and one can’t shed those in public without causing the biggest furor since Lady Godiva. So unless I want to ruin a five-guinea pair of tights, I’m imprisoned in my shoes.”

“At least you improve my education in feminine garb, under as well as over,” he said mildly.

“Go on! I’ll bet you’ve got a dozen mistresses, and undress them all.”

“Only one, and like all good mistresses she waits for me in her negligee.”

“Do you know, I believe we’ve never discussed your sex life before? Fascinating! What’s she like?”

“Fair, fat, forty and flatulent.”

She stopped dead. “Oh, you’re kidding me,” she said slowly. “I can’t see you with a woman like that.”

“Why not?”

“You’ve got too much taste.”

“Chacun à son goût, my dear. I’m nothing much to look at, myself—why should you assume I could charm a young and beautiful woman into being my mistress?”

“Because you could!” she said indignantly. “Oh, of course you could!”

“My money, you mean?”

“Not, not your money! You’re teasing me, you always do! Rainer Moerling Hartheim, you’re very well aware how attractive you are, otherwise you wouldn’t wear gold medallions and netting shirts. Looks aren’t everything—if they were, I’d still be wondering.”

“Your concern for me is touching, Herzchen.”

“Why is it that when I’m with you I feel as if I’m forever running to catch up with you, and I never do?” Her spurt of temper died; she stood looking at him uncertainly. “You’re not serious, are you?”

“Do you think I am?”

“No! You’re not conceited, but you do know how very attractive you are.”

“Whether I do or not isn’t important. The important thing is that you think I’m attractive.”

She was going to say: Of course I do; I was mentally trying you on as a lover not long ago, but then I decided it wouldn’t work, I’d rather keep on having you for my friend. Had he let her say it, he might have concluded his time hadn’t come, and acted differently. As it was, before she could shape the words he had her in his arms, and was kissing her. For at least sixty seconds she stood, dying, split open, smashed, the power in her screaming in wild elation to find a matching power. His mouth—it was beautiful! And his hair, incredibly thick, vital, something to seize in her fingers fiercely. Then he took her face between his hands and looked at her, smiling.

“I love you,” he said.

Her hands had gone up to his wrists, but not to enclose them gently, as with Dane; the nails bit in, scored down to meat savagely. She stepped back two paces and stood rubbing her arm across her mouth, eyes huge with fright, breasts heaving.

“It couldn’t work,” she panted. “It could never work, Rain!”

Off came the shoes; she bent to pick them up, then turned and ran, and within three seconds the soft quick pad of her feet had vanished. Not that he had any intention of following her, though apparently she had thought he might. Both his wrists were bleeding, and they hurt. He pressed his handkerchief first to one and then to the other, shrugged, put the stained cloth away, and stood concentrating on the pain. After a while he unearthed his cigarette case, took out a cigarette, lit it, and began to walk slowly. No one passing by could have told from his face what he felt. Everything he wanted within his grasp, reached for, lost. Idiot girl. When would she grow up? To feel it, respond to it, and deny it.

But he was a gambler, of the win-a-few, lose-a-few kind. He had waited seven long years before trying his luck, feeling the change in her at this ordination time. Yet apparently he had moved too soon. Ah, well. There was always tomorrow—or knowing Justine, next year, the year after that. Certainly he wasn’t about to give up. If he watched her carefully, one day he’d get lucky.

The soundless laugh quivered in him; fair, fat, forty and flatulent. What had brought it to his lips he didn’t know, except that a long time ago his ex-wife had said it to him. The four F’s, describing the typical victim of gallstones. She had been a martyr to them, poor Annelise, even though she was dark, skinny, fifty and as well corked as a genie in a bottle. What am I thinking of Annelise for, now? My patient campaign of years turned into a rout, and I can do no better than poor Annelise. So, Fräulein Justine O’Neill! We shall see.

There were lights in the palace windows; he would go up for a few minutes, talk to Cardinal Ralph, who was looking old. Not well. Perhaps he ought to be persuaded into a medical examination. Rainer ached, but not for Justine; she was young, there was time. For Cardinal Ralph, who had seen his own son ordained, and not known it.

It was still early, so the hotel foyer was crowded. Shoes on, Justine crossed quickly to the stairs and ran up them, head bent. Then for some time her trembling hands couldn’t find the room key in her bag and she thought she would have to go down again, brave the throng about the desk. But it was there; she must have passed her fingers over it a dozen times.

Inside at last, she groped her way to the bed, sat down on its edge and let coherent thought gradually return. Telling herself she was revolted, horrified, disillusioned; all the while staring drearily at the wide rectangle of pale light which was the night sky through the window, wanting to curse, wanting to weep. It could never be the same again, and that was a tragedy. The loss of the dearest friend. Betrayal.

Empty words, untrue; suddenly she knew very well what had frightened her so, made her flee from Rain as if he had attempted murder, not a kiss. The rightness of it! The feeling of coming home, when she didn’t want to come home any more than she wanted the liability of love. Home was frustration, so was love. Not only that, even if the admission was humiliating; she wasn’t sure she could love. If she was capable of it, surely once or twice her guard would have slipped; surely once or twice she would have experienced a pang of something more than tolerant affection for her infrequent lovers. It didn’t occur to her that she deliberately chose lovers who would never threaten her self-imposed detachment, so much a part of herself by now that she regarded it as completely natural. For the first time in her life she had no reference point to assist her. There was no time in the past she could take comfort from, no once-deep involvement, either for herself or for those shadowy lovers. Nor could the Drogheda people help, because she had always withheld herself from them, too.

She had had to run from Rain. To say yes, commit herself to him, and then have to watch him recoil when he found out the extent of her inadequacy? Unbearable! He would learn what she was really like, and the knowledge would kill his love for her. Unbearable to say yes, and end in being rebuffed for all time. Far better to do any rebuffing herself. That way at least pride would be satisfied, and Justine owned all her mother’s pride. Rain must never discover what she was like beneath all that brick flippancy.

He had fallen in love with the Justine he saw; she had not allowed him any opportunity to suspect the sea of doubts beneath. Those only Dane suspected—no, knew.

She bent forward to put her forehead against the cool bedside table, tears running down her face. That was why she loved Dane so, of course. Knowing what the real Justine was like, and still loving her. Blood helped, so did a lifetime of shared memories, problems, pains, joys. Whereas Rain was a stranger, not committed to her the way Dane was, or even the other members of her family. Nothing obliged him to love her.

She sniffled, wiped her palm around her face, shrugged her shoulders and began the difficult business of pushing her trouble back into some corner of her mind where it could lie peacefully, unremembered. She knew she could do it; she had spent all her life perfecting the technique. Only it meant ceaseless activity, continuous absorption in things outside herself. She reached over and switched on the bedside lamp.

One of the Unks must have delivered the letter to her room, for it was lying on the bedside table, a pale-blue air letter with Queen Elizabeth in its upper corner.

“Darling Justine,” wrote Clyde Daltinham-Roberts, “Come back to the fold, you’re needed! At once! There’s a part going begging in the new season’s repertoire, and a tiny little dicky-bird told me you just might want it. Desdemona, darling? With Marc Simpson as your Othello? Rehearsals for the principals start next week, if you’re interested.”

If she was interested! Desdemona! Desdemona in London! And with Marc Simpson as Othello! The opportunity of a lifetime. Her mood skyrocketed to a point where the scene with Rain lost significance, or rather assumed a different significance. Perhaps if she was very, very careful she might be able to keep Rain’s love; a highly acclaimed, successful actress was too busy to share much of her life with her lovers. It was worth a try. If he looked as if he were getting too close to the truth, she could always back off again. To keep Rain in her life, but especially this new Rain, she would be prepared to do anything save strip off the mask.

In the meantime, news like this deserved some sort of celebration. She didn’t feel up to facing Rain yet, but there were other people on hand to share her triumph. So she put on her shoes, walked down the corridor to the Unks’ communal sitting room, and when Patsy let her in she stood with arms spread wide, beaming.

“Break out the beer, I’m going to be Desdemona!” she announced in ringing tones.

For a moment no one answered, then Bob said warmly, “That’s nice, Justine.”

Her pleasure didn’t evaporate; instead it built up to an uncontrollable elation. Laughing, she flopped into a chair and stared at her uncles. What truly lovely men they were! Of course her news meant nothing to them! They didn’t have a clue who Desdemona was. If she had come to tell them she was getting married, Bob’s answer would have been much the same.

Since the beginning of memory they had been a part of her life, and sadly she had dismissed them as contemptuously as she did everything about Drogheda. The Unks, a plurality having nothing to do with Justine O’Neill. Simply members of a conglomerate who drifted in and out of the homestead, smiled at her shyly, avoided her if it meant conversation. Not that they didn’t like her, she realized now; only that they sensed how foreign she was, and it made them uncomfortable. But in this Roman world which was alien to them and familiar to her, she was beginning to understand them better.

Feeling a glow of something for them which might have been called love, Justine stared from one creased, smiling face to the next. Bob, who was the life force of the unit, the Boss of Drogheda, but in such an unobtrusive way; Jack, who merely seemed to follow Bob around, or maybe it was just that they got along so well together; Hughie, who had a streak of mischief the other two did not, and yet so very like them; Jims and Patsy, the positive and negative sides of a self-sufficient whole; and poor quenched Frank, the only one who seemed plagued by fear and insecurity. All of them save Jims and Patsy were grizzled now, indeed Bob and Frank were white-haired, but they didn’t really look very different from the way she remembered them as a little girl.

“I don’t know whether I ought to give you a beer,” Bob said doubtfully, standing with a cold bottle of Swan in his hand.

The remark would have annoyed her intensely even half a day ago, but at the moment she was too happy to take offense.

“Look, love, I know it’s never occurred to you to offer me one through the course of our sessions with Rain, but honestly I’m a big girl now, and I can handle a beer. I promise it isn’t a sin.” She smiled.

“Where’s Rainer?” Jims asked, taking a full glass from Bob and handing it to her.

“I had a fight with him.”

“With Rainer?”

“Well, yes. But it was all my fault. I’m going to see him later and tell him I’m sorry.”

None of the Unks smoked. Though she had never asked for a beer before, on earlier occasions she had sat smoking defiantly while they talked with Rain; now it took more courage than she could command to produce her cigarettes, so she contented herself with the minor victory of the beer, dying to gulp it down thirstily but mindful of their dubious regard. Ladylike sips, Justine, even if you are dryer than a secondhand sermon.

“Rain’s a bonzer bloke,” said Hughie, eyes twinkling.

Startled, Justine suddenly realized why she had grown so much in importance in their thoughts: she had caught herself a man they’d like to have in the family. “Yes, he is rather,” she said shortly, and changed the subject. “It was a lovely day, wasn’t it?”

All the heads bobbed in unison, even Frank’s, but they didn’t seem to want to discuss it. She could see how tired they were, yet she didn’t regret her impulse to visit them. It took a little while for near-atrophied senses and feelings to learn what their proper functions were, and the Unks were a good practice target. That was the trouble with being an island; one forgot there was anything going on beyond its shores.

“What’s Desdemona?” Frank asked from the shadows where he hid.

Justine launched into a vivid description, charmed by their horror when they learned she would be strangled once a night, and only remembered how tired they must be half an hour later when Patsy yawned.

“I must go,” she said, putting down her empty glass. She had not been offered a second beer; one was apparently the limit for ladies. “Thanks for listening to me blather.”

Much to Bob’s surprise and confusion, she kissed him good night; Jack edged away but was easily caught, while Hughie accepted the farewell with alacrity. Jims turned bright red, endured it dumbly. For Patsy, a hug as well as a kiss, because he was a little bit of an island himself. And for Frank no kiss at all, he averted his head; yet when she put her arms around him she could sense a faint echo of some intensity quite missing in the others. Poor Frank. Why was he like that?

Outside their door, she leaned for a moment against the wall. Rain loved her. But when she tried to phone his room the operator informed her he had checked out, returned to Bonn.

No matter. It might be better to wait until London to see him, anyway. A contrite apology via the mail, and an invitation to dinner next time he was in England. There were many things she didn’t know about Rain, but of one characteristic she had no doubt at all; he would come, because he hadn’t a grudging bone in his body. Since foreign affairs had become his forte, England was one of his most regular ports of call.

“You wait and see, my lad,” she said, staring into her mirror and seeing his face instead of her own. “I’m going to make England your most important foreign affair, or my name isn’t Justine O’Neill.”

It had not occurred to her that perhaps as far as Rain was concerned, her name was indeed the crux of the matter. Her patterns of behavior were set, and marriage was no part of them. That Rain might want to make her over into Justine Hartheim never even crossed her mind. She was too busy remembering the quality of his kiss, and dreaming of more.

There remained only the task of telling Dane she couldn’t go to Greece with him, but about this she was untroubled. Dane would understand, he always did. Only somehow she didn’t think she’d tell him all the reasons why she wasn’t able to go. Much as she loved her brother, she didn’t feel like listening to what would be one of his sternest homilies ever. He wanted her to marry Rain, so if she told him what her plans for Rain were, he’d cart her off to Greece with him if it meant forcible abduction. What Dane’s ears didn’t hear, his heart couldn’t grieve about.

“Dear Rain,” the note said. “Sorry I ran like a hairy goat the other night, can’t think what got into me. The hectic day and everything, I suppose. Please forgive me for behaving like an utter prawn. I’m ashamed of myself for making so much fuss about a trifle. And I daresay the day had got to you, too, words of love and all, I mean. So I tell you what—you forgive me, and I’ll forgive you. Let’s be friends, please. I can’t bear to be at outs with you. Next time you’re in London, come to dinner at my place and we’ll formally draft out a peace treaty.”

As usual it was signed plain “Justine.” No words even of affection; she never used them. Frowning, he studied the artlessly casual phrases as if he could see through them to what was really in her mind as she wrote. It was certainly an overture of friendship, but what else? Sighing, he was forced to admit probably very little. He had frightened her badly; that she wanted to retain his friendship spoke of how much he meant to her, but he very much doubted whether she understood exactly what she felt for him. After all, now she knew he loved her; if she had sorted herself out sufficiently to realize she loved him too, she would have come straight out with it in her letter. Yet why had she returned to London instead of going to Greece with Dane? He knew he shouldn’t hope it was because of him, but despite his misgivings, hope began to color his thoughts so cheerfully he buzzed his secretary. It was 10 A.M. Greenwich Mean Time, the best hour to find her at home.

“Get me Miss O’Neill’s London flat,” he instructed, and waited the intervening seconds with a frown pulling at the inner corners of his brows.

“Rain!” Justine said, apparently delighted. “Did you get my letter?”

“This minute.”

After a delicate pause she said. “And will you come to dinner soon?”

“I’m going to be in England this coming Friday and Saturday. Is the notice too short?”

“Not if Saturday evening is all right with you. I’m in rehearsal for Desdemona, so Friday’s out.”

“Desdemona?”

“That’s right, you don’t know! Clyde wrote to me in Rome and offered me the part. Marc Simpson as Othello, Clyde directing personally. Isn’t it wonderful? I came back to London on the first plane.”

He shielded his eyes with his hand, thankful his secretary was safely in her outer office, not sitting where she could see his face. “Justine, Herzchen, that’s marvelous news!” he managed to say enthusiastically. “I was wondering what brought you back to London.”

“Oh, Dane understood,” she said lightly, “and in a way I think he was quite glad to be alone. He had concocted a story about needing me to bitch at him to go home, but I think it was all more for his second reason, that he doesn’t want me to feel excluded from his life now he’s a priest.”

“Probably,” he agreed politely.

“Saturday evening, then,” she said. “Around six, then we can have a leisurely peace treaty session with the aid of a bottle or two, and I’ll feed you after we’ve reached a satisfactory compromise. All right?”

“Yes, of course. Goodbye, Herzchen.”

Contact was cut off abruptly by the sound of her receiver going down; he sat for a moment with his still in his hand, then shrugged and replaced it on its cradle. Damn Justine! She was beginning to come between him and his work.

She continued to come between him and his work during the succeeding days, though it was doubtful if anyone suspected. And on Saturday evening a little after six he presented himself at her apartment, empty-handed as usual because she was a difficult person to bring gifts. She was indifferent to flowers, never ate candy and would have thrown a more expensive offering carelessly in some corner, then forgotten it. The only gifts Justine seemed to prize were those Dane had given her.

“Champagne before dinner?” he asked, looking at her in surprise.

“Well, I think the occasion calls for it, don’t you? It was our first-ever breaking of relations, and this is our first-ever reconciliation,” she answered plausibly, indicating a comfortable chair for him and settling herself on the tawny kangaroo-fur rug, lips parted as if she had already rehearsed replies to anything he might say next.

But conversation was beyond him, at least until he was better able to assess her mood, so he watched her in silence. Until he had kissed her it had been easy to keep himself partially aloof, but now, seeing her again for the first time since, he admitted that it was going to be a great deal harder in the future.

Probably even when she was a very old woman she would still retain something not quite fully mature about face and bearing; as though essential womanliness would always pass her by. That cool, self-centered, logical brain seemed to dominate her completely, yet for him she owned a fascination so potent he doubted if he would ever be able to replace her with any other woman. Never once had he questioned whether she was worth the long struggle. Possibly from a philosophical standpoint she wasn’t. Did it matter? She was a goal, an aspiration.

“You’re looking very nice tonight, Herzchen,” he said at last, tipping his champagne glass to her in a gesture half toast, half acknowledgment of an adversary.

A coal fire simmered unshielded in the small Victorian grate, but Justine didn’t seem to mind the heat, huddled close to it with her eyes fixed on him. Then she put her glass on the hearth with a ringing snap and sat forward, her arms linked about her knees, bare feet hidden by folds of densely black gown.

“I can’t stand beating around the bush,” she said. “Did you mean it, Rain?”

Suddenly relaxing deeply, he lay back in his chair. “Mean what?”

“What you said in Rome… That you loved me.”

“Is that what this is all about, Herzchen?”

She looked away, shrugged, looked back at him and nodded.

“Well, of course.”

“But why bring it up again? You told me what you thought, and I had gathered tonight’s invitation wasn’t extended to bring up the past, only plan a future.”

“Oh, Rain! You’re acting as if I’m making a fuss! Even if I was, surely you can see why.”

“No, I can’t.” He put his glass down and bent forward to watch her more closely. “You gave me to understand most emphatically that you wanted no part of my love, and I had hoped you’d at least have the decency to refrain from discussing it.”

It had not occurred to her that this meeting, no matter what its outcome, would be so uncomfortable; after all, he had put himself in the position of a suppliant, and ought to be waiting humbly for her to reverse her decision. Instead he seemed to have turned the tables neatly. Here she was feeling like a naughty schoolgirl called upon to answer for some idiotic prank.

“Look, sport, you’re the one who changed the status quo, not me! I didn’t ask you to come tonight so I could beg forgiveness for having wounded the great Hartheim ego!”

“On the defensive, Justine?”

She wriggled impatiently. “Yes, dammit! How do you manage to do that to me, Rain? Oh, I wish just once you’d let me enjoy having the upper hand!”

“If I did, you’d throw me out like a smelly old rag,” he said, smiling.

“I can do that yet, mate!”

“Nonsense! If you haven’t done it by now you never will. You’ll go on seeing me because I keep you on the hop—you never know what to expect from me.”

“Is that why you said you loved me?” she asked painfully. “Was it only a ploy to keep me on the hop?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’re a prize bastard!” she said through her teeth, and marched across the rug on her knees until she was close enough to give him the full benefit of her anger. “Say you love me again, you big Kraut prawn, and watch me spit in your eye!”

He was angry, too. “No, I’m not going to say it again! That isn’t why you asked me to come, is it? My feelings don’t concern you one bit, Justine. You asked me to come so you could experiment with your own feelings, and it didn’t enter your mind to consider whether that was being fair to me.”

Before she could move away he leaned forward, gripped her arms near the shoulders and clamped her body between his legs, holding her firmly. Her rage vanished at once; she flattened her palms on his thighs and lifted her face. But he didn’t kiss her. He let go of her arms and twisted to switch off the lamp behind him, then relaxed his hold on her and laid his head back against the chair, so that she wasn’t sure if he had dimmed the room down to glowing coals as the first move in his love-making, or simply to conceal his expression. Uncertain, afraid of outright rejection, she waited to be told what to do. She should have realized earlier that one didn’t tamper with people like Rain. They were as invincible as death. Why couldn’t she put her head on his lap and say: Rain, love me, I need you so much and I’m so sorry? Oh, surely if she could get him to make love to her some emotional key would turn and it would all come tumbling out, released…

Still withdrawn, remote, he let her take off his jacket and tie, but by the time she began to unbutton his shirt she knew it wasn’t going to work. The kind of instinctive erotic skills which could make the most mundane operation exciting were not in her repertoire. This was so important, and she was making an absolute mess of it. Her fingers faltered, her mouth puckered. She burst into tears.

“Oh, no! Herzchen, liebchen, don’t cry!” He pulled her onto his lap and turned her head into his shoulder, his arms around her. “I’m sorry, Herzchen, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“Now you know,” she said between sobs. “I’m a miserable failure; I told you it wouldn’t work! Rain, I wanted so badly to keep you, but I knew it wouldn’t work if I let you see how awful I am!”

“No, of course it wouldn’t work. How could it? I wasn’t helping you, Herzchen.” He tugged at her hair to bring her face up to his, kissed her eyelids, her wet cheeks, the corners of her mouth. “It’s my fault, Herzchen, not yours. I was paying you back; I wanted to see how far you could go without encouragement. But I think I have mistaken your motives, nicht wahr?” His voice had grown thicker, more German. “And I say, if this is what you want you shall have it, but it shall be together.”

“Please, Rain, let’s call it off! I haven’t got what it takes. I’ll only disappoint you!”

“Oh, you’ve got it, Herzchen, I’ve seen it on the stage. How can you doubt yourself when you’re with me?”

Which was so right her tears dried.

“Kiss me the way you did in Rome,” she whispered. Only it wasn’t like the kiss in Rome at all. That had been something raw, startled, explosive; this was very languorous and deep, an opportunity to taste and smell and feel, settle by layers into voluptuous ease. Her fingers returned to the buttons, his went to the zipper of her dress, then he covered her hand with his and thrust it inside his shirt, across skin matted with fine soft hair. The sudden hardening of his mouth against her throat brought a helpless response so acute she felt faint, thought she was falling and found she had, flat on the silky rug with Rain looming above her. His shirt had come off, perhaps more, she couldn’t see, only the fire glancing off his shoulders spread over her, and the beautiful stern mouth. Determined to destroy its discipline for all time, she locked her fingers in his hair and made him kiss her again, harder, harder!

And the feel of him! Like coming home, recognizing every part of him with her lips and hands and body, yet fabulous and strange. While the world sank down to the minute width of the firelight lapping against darkness, she opened herself to what he wanted, and learned something he had kept entirely concealed for as long as she had known him; that he must have made love to her in imagination a thousand times. Her own experience and newborn intuition told her so. She was completely disarmed. With any other man the intimacy and astonishing sensuality would have appalled her, but he forced her to see that these were things only she had the right to command. And command them she did. Until finally she cried for him to finish it, her arms about him so strongly she could feel the contours of his very bones.

The minutes wore away, wrapped in a sated peace. They had fallen into an identical rhythm of breathing, slow and easy, his head against her shoulder, her leg thrown across him. Gradually her rigid clasp on his back relaxed, became a dreamy, circular caress. He sighed, turned over and reversed the way they were lying, quite unconsciously inviting her to slide still deeper into the pleasure of being with him. She put her palm on his flank to feel the texture of his skin, slid her hand across warm muscle and cupped it around the soft, heavy mass in his groin. To feel the curiously alive, independent movements within it was a sensation quite new to her; her past lovers had never interested her sufficiently to want to prolong her sexual curiosity to this languid and undemanding aftermath. Yet suddenly it wasn’t languid and undemanding at all, but so enormously exciting she wanted him all over again.

Still she was taken unaware, knew a suffocated surprise when he slipped his arms across her back, took her head in his hands and held her close enough to see there was nothing controlled about his mouth, shaped now solely because of her, and for her. Tenderness and humility were literally born in her in that moment. It must have shown in her face, for he was gazing at her with eyes grown so bright she couldn’t bear them, and bent over to take his upper lip between her own. Thoughts and senses merged at last, but her cry was smothered soundless, an unuttered wail of gladness which shook her so deeply she lost awareness of everything beyond impulse, the mindless guidance of each urgent minute. The world achieved its ultimate contraction, turned in upon itself, and totally disappeared.

Rainer must have kept the fire going, for when gentle London daylight soaked through the folds of the curtains the room was still warm. This time when he moved Justine became conscious of it, and clutched his arm fearfully.

“Don’t go!”

“I’m not, Herzchen.” He twitched another pillow from the sofa, pushed it behind his head and shifted her closer in to his side, sighing softly. “All right?”

“Yes.”

“Are you cold?”

“No, but if you are we could go to bed.”

“After making love to you for hours on a fur rug? What a comedown! Even if your sheets are black silk.”

“They’re ordinary old white ones, cotton. This bit of Drogheda is all right, isn’t it?”

“Bit of Drogheda?”

“The rug! It’s made of Drogheda kangaroos,” she explained.

“Not nearly exotic or erotic enough. I’ll order you a tiger skin from India.”

“Reminds me of a poem I heard once:

“Well, Herzchen, I must say it’s high time you bounced back! Between the demands of Eros and Morpheus, you haven’t been flippant in half a day.” He smiled.

“I don’t feel the need at the moment,” she said with an answering smile, settling his hand comfortably between her legs. “The tiger skin doggerel just popped out because it was too good to resist, but I haven’t got a single skeleton left to hide from you, so there’s not much point in flippancy, is there?” She sniffed, suddenly aware of a faint odor of stale fish drifting on the air. “Heavens, you didn’t get any dinner and now it’s time for breakfast! I can’t expect you to live on love!”

“Not if you expect such strenuous demonstrations of it, anyway.”

“Go on, you enjoyed every moment of it.”

“Indeed I did.” He sighed, stretched, yawned. “I wonder if you have any idea how happy I am.”

“Oh, I think so,” she said quietly.

He raised himself on one elbow to look at her. “Tell me, was Desdemona the only reason you came back to London?”

Grabbing his ear, she tweaked it painfully. “Now it’s my turn to pay you back for all those headmasterish questions! What do you think?”

He prized her fingers away easily, grinning. “If you don’t answer me, Herzchen, I’ll strangle you far more permanently than Marc does.”

“I came back to London to do Desdemona, but because of you. I haven’t been able to call my life my own since you kissed me in Rome, and well you know it. You’re a very intelligent man, Rainer Moerling Hartheim.”

“Intelligent enough to have known I wanted you for my wife almost the first moment I saw you,” he said.

She sat up quickly. “Wife?”

“Wife. If I’d wanted you for my mistress I’d have taken you years ago, and I could have. I know how your mind works; it would have been relatively easy. The only reason I didn’t was because I wanted you for my wife and I knew you weren’t ready to accept the idea of a husband.”

“I don’t know that I am now,” she said, digesting it.

He got to his feet, pulling her up to stand against him. “Well, you can put in a little practice by getting me some breakfast. If this was my house I’d do the honors, but in your kitchen you’re the cook.”

“I don’t mind getting your breakfast this morning, but theoretically to commit myself until the day I die?” She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s my cup of tea, Rain.”

It was the same Roman emperor’s face, and imperially unperturbed by threats of insurrection. “Justine, this is not something to play with, nor am I someone to play with. There’s plenty of time. You have every reason to know I can be patient. But get it out of your head entirely that this can be settled in any way but marriage. I have no wish to be known as anyone less important to you than a husband.”

“I’m not giving up acting!” she said aggressively.

“Verfluchte Kiste, did I ask you to? Grow up, Justine! Anyone would think I was condemning you to a life sentence over a sink and stove! We’re not exactly on the breadline, you know. You can have as many servants as you want, nannies for the children, whatever else is necessary.”

“Erk!” said Justine, who hadn’t thought of children.

He threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, Herzchen, this is what’s known as the morning after with a vengeance! I’m a fool to bring up realities so soon, I know, but all you have to do at this stage is think about them. Though I give you fair warning—while you’re making your decision, remember that if I can’t have you for my wife, I don’t want you at all.”

She threw her arms around him, clinging fiercely. “Oh, Rain, don’t make it so hard!” she cried.

Alone, Dane drove his Lagonda up the Italian boot, past Perugia, Firenze, Bologna, Ferrara, Padova, better by-pass Venezia, spend the night in Trieste. It was one of his favorite cities, so he stayed on the Adriatic coast a further two days before heading up the mountain road to Ljubljana, another night in Zagreb. Down the great Sava River valley amid fields blue with chicory flowers to Beograd, thence to Nis, another night. Macedonia and Skopje, still in crumbling ruins from the earthquake two years before; and Tito-Veles the vacation city, quaintly Turkish with its mosques and minarets. All the way down Yugoslavia he had eaten frugally, too ashamed to sit with a great plate of meat in front of him when the people of the country contented themselves with bread.

The Greek border at Evzone, beyond it Thessalonika. The Italian papers had been full of the revolution brewing in Greece; standing in his hotel bedroom window watching the bobbing thousands of flaming torches moving restlessly in the darkness of a Thessalonika night, he was glad Justine had not come.

“Pap-an-dre-ou! Pap-an-dre-ou! Pap-an-dre-ou!” the crowds roared, chanting, milling among the torches until after midnight.

But revolution was a phenomenon of cities, of dense concentrations of people and poverty; the scarred countryside of Thessaly must still look as it had looked to Caesar’s legions, marching across the stubble-burned fields to Pompey at Pharsala. Shepherds slept in the shade of skin tents, storks stood one-legged in nests atop little old white buildings, and everywhere was a terrifying aridity. It reminded him, with its high clear sky, its brown treeless wastes, of Australia. And he breathed of it deeply, began to smile at the thought of going home. Mum would understand, when he talked to her.

Above Larisa he came onto the sea, stopped the car and got out. Homer’s wine-dark sea, a delicate clear aquamarine near the beaches, purple-stained like grapes as it stretched to the curving horizon. On a greensward far below him stood a tiny round pillared temple, very white in the sun, and on the rise of the hill behind him a frowning Crusader fortress endured. Greece, you are very beautiful, more beautiful than Italy, for all that I love Italy. But here is the cradle, forever.

Panting to be in Athens, he pushed on, gunned the red sports car up the switchbacks of the Domokos Pass and descended its other side into Boeotia, a stunning panorama of olive groves, rusty hillsides, mountains. Yet in spite of his haste he stopped to look at the oddly Hollywoodish monument to Leonidas and his Spartans at Thermopylae. The stone said: “Stranger, go tell the Spartans that here we lie, in obedience to their command.” It struck a chord in him, almost seemed to be words he might have heard in a different context; he shivered and went on quickly.

In melted sun he paused for a while above Kamena Voura, swam in the clear water looking across the narrow strait to Euboea; there must the thousand ships have sailed from Aulis, on their way to Troy. It was a strong current, swirling seaward; they must not have had to ply their oars very hard. The ecstatic cooings and strokings of the ancient black-garbed crone in the bathhouse embarrassed him; he couldn’t get away from her fast enough. People never referred to his beauty to his face anymore, so most of the time he was able to forget it. Delaying only to buy a couple of huge, custard-filled cakes in the shop, he went on down the Attic coast and finally came to Athens as the sun was setting, gilding the great rock and its precious crown of pillars.

But Athens was tense and vicious, and the open admiration of the women mortified him; Roman women were more sophisticated, subtle. There was a feeling in the crowds, pockets of rioting, grim determination on the part of the people to have Papandreou. No, Athens wasn’t herself; better to be elsewhere. He put the Lagonda in a garage and took the ferry to Crete.

And there at last, amid the olive groves, the wild thyme and the mountains, he found his peace. After a long bus ride with trussed chickens screeching and the all-pervasive reek of garlic in his nostrils, he found a tiny white-painted inn with an arched colonnade and three umbrellaed tables outside on the flagstones, gay Greek bags hanging festooned like lanterns. Pepper trees and Australian gum trees, planted from the new South Land in soil too arid for European trees. The gut roar of cicadas. Dust, swirling in red clouds.

At night he slept in a tiny cell-like room with shutters wide open, in the hush of dawn he celebrated a solitary Mass, during the day he walked. No one bothered him, he bothered no one. But as he passed the dark eyes of the peasants would follow him in slow amazement, and every face would crease deeper in a smile. It was hot, and so quiet, and very sleepy. Perfect peace. Day followed day, like beads slipping through a leathery Cretan hand.

Voicelessly he prayed, a feeling, an extension of what lay all through him, thoughts like beads, days like beads. Lord, I am truly Thine. For Thy many blessings I thank Thee. For the great Cardinal, his help, his deep friendship, his unfailing love. For Rome and the chance to be at Thy heart, to have lain prostrate before Thee in Thine own basilica, to have felt the rock of Thy Church within me. Thou hast blessed me above my worth; what can I do for Thee, to show my appreciation? I have not suffered enough. My life has been one long, absolute joy since I began in Thy service. I must suffer, and Thou Who suffered will know that. It is only through suffering that I may rise above myself, understand Thee better. For that is what this life is: the passage toward understanding Thy mystery. Plunge Thy spear into my breast, bury it there so deeply I am never able to withdraw it! Make me suffer… For Thee I forsake all others, even my mother and my sister and the Cardinal. Thou alone art my pain, my joy. Abase me and I shall sing Thy beloved Name. Destroy me, and I shall rejoice. I love Thee. Only Thee…

He had come to the little beach where he liked to swim, a yellow crescent between beetling cliffs, and stood for a moment looking across the Mediterranean to what must be Libya, far below the dark horizon. Then he leaped lightly down the steps to the sand, kicked off his sneakers, picked them up, and trod through the softly yielding contours to the spot where he usually dropped shoes, shirt, outer shorts. Two young Englishmen talking in drawling Oxford accents lay like broiling lobsters not far away, and beyond them two women drowsily speaking in German. Dane glanced at the women and self-consciously hitched his swimsuit, aware they had stopped conversing and had sat up to pat their hair, smile at him.

“How goes it?” he asked the Englishmen, though in his mind he called them what all Australians call the English, Pommies. They seemed to be fixtures, since they were on the beach every day.

“Splendidly, old boy. Watch the current—it’s too strong for us. Storm out there somewhere.”

“Thanks.” Dane grinned, ran down to the innocently curling wavelets and dived cleanly into shallow water like the expert surfer he was.

Amazing, how deceptive calm water could be. The current was vicious, he could feel it tugging at his legs to draw him under, but he was too strong a swimmer to be worried by it. Head down, he slid smoothly through the water, reveling in the coolness, the freedom. When he paused and scanned the beach he saw the two German women pulling on their caps, running down laughing to the waves.

Cupping his hands around his mouth, he called to them in German to stay in shallow water because of the current. Laughing, they waved acknowledgment. He put his head down then, swam again, and thought he heard a cry. But he swam a little farther, then stopped to tread water in a spot where the undertow wasn’t so bad. There were cries; as he turned he saw the women struggling, their twisted faces screaming, one with her hands up, sinking. On the beach the two Englishmen had risen to their feet and were reluctantly approaching the water.

He flipped over onto his belly and flashed through the water, closer and closer. Panicked arms reached for him, clung to him, dragged him under; he managed to grip one woman around the waist long enough to stun her with a swift clip on the chin, then grabbed the other by the strap of her swimsuit, shoved his knee hard into her spine and winded her. Coughing, for he had swallowed water when he went under, he turned on his back and began towing his helpless burdens in.

The two Pommies were standing shoulder-deep, too frightened to venture any farther, for which Dane didn’t blame them in the least. His toes just touched the sand; he sighed in relief. Exhausted, he exerted a last superhuman effort and thrust the women to safety. Fast regaining their senses, they began screaming again, thrashing about wildly. Gasping, Dane managed a grin. He had done his bit; the Poms could take over now. While he rested, chest heaving, the current had sucked him out again, his feet no longer brushed the bottom even when he stretched them downward. It had been a close call. If he hadn’t been present they would certainly have drowned; the Poms hadn’t the strength or skill to save them. But, said a voice, they only wanted to swim so they could be near you; until they saw you they hadn’t any intention of going in. It was your fault they were in danger, your fault.

And as he floated easily a terrible pain blossomed in his chest, surely as a spear would feel, one long and red-hot shaft of screaming agony. He cried out, threw his arms up above his head, stiffening, muscles convulsed; but the pain grew worse, forced his arms down again, thrust his fists into his armpits, brought up his knees. My heart! I’m having a heart attack, I’m dying! My heart! I don’t want to die! Not yet, not before I’ve begun my work, not before I’ve had a chance to prove myself! Dear Lord, help me! I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die!

The spasmed body stilled, relaxed; Dane turned onto his back, let his arms float wide and limp in spite of the pain. Wet-lashed, he stared up at the soaring vault of the sky. This is it; this is Thy spear, that I in my pride begged for not an hour ago. Give me the chance to suffer, I said, make me suffer. Now when it comes I resist, not capable of perfect love. Dearest Lord, Thy pain! I must accept it, I must not fight it, I must not fight Thy will. Thy hand is mighty and this is Thy pain, as Thou must have felt it on the Cross. My God, my God, I am Thine! If this is Thy will, so be it. Like a child I put myself into Thy infinite hand. Thou art too good to me. What have I done to deserve so much from Thee, and from the people who love me better than they love anyone else? Why hast Thou given me so much, when I am not worthy? The pain, the pain! Thou art so good to me. Let it not be long, I asked, and it has not been long. My suffering will be short, quickly over. Soon I shall see Thy face, but now, still in this life, I thank Thee. The pain! My dearest Lord, Thou art too good to me. I love Thee!

A huge tremor passed through the still, waiting body. His lips moved, murmured a Name, tried to smile. Then the pupils dilated, drove all the blue from his eyes forever. Safe on the beach at last, the two Englishmen dumped their weeping charges on the sand and stood looking for him. But the placid deep blue sea was empty, vast; the wavelets ran up rushing and retreated. Dane was gone.

Someone thought of the United States Air Force station nearby, and ran for help. Not thirty minutes after Dane had disappeared a helicopter took off, beat the air frantically and swooped in ever-increasing circles outward from the beach, searching. No one expected to see anything. Drowned men sank to the bottom and didn’t come up for days. An hour passed; then fifteen miles out to sea they sighted Dane floating peacefully on the bosom of the deep, arms outstretched, face turned up to the sky. For a moment they thought he was alive and cheered, but as the craft came low enough to throw the water into hissing foam, it was plain he was dead. The coordinates were given over the helicopter’s radio, a launch sped out, and three hours later returned.

Word had spread. The Cretans had loved to see him pass, loved to exchange a few shy words. Loved him, though they didn’t know him. They flocked down to the sea, women all in black like dowdy birds, men in old-fashioned baggy trousers, white shirts open at the collar and sleeves rolled up. And stood in silent groups, waiting.

When the launch came in a burly master sergeant sprang out onto the sand, turned back to receive a blanket-draped form into his arms. He marched a few feet up the beach beyond the water line, and with the help of another man laid his burden down. The blanket fell apart; there was a high, rustling whisper from the Cretans. They came crowding around, pressing crucifixes to weather-beaten lips, the women softly keening, a wordless ohhhh-hhhh! that had almost a melody in it, mournful, patient, earth-bound, female.

It was about five in the afternoon; the barred sun was sliding westward behind the frowning cliff, but was still high enough to light up the little dark cluster on the beach, the long, still form on the sand with its golden skin, its closed eyes whose lashes were spiky from drying salt, the faint smile on the blued lips. A stretcher was brought forward, then all together Cretans and American servicemen bore Dane away.

Athens was in turmoil, rioting crowds overturning all order, but the USAF colonel got through to his superiors on a special frequency band, Dane’s blue Australian passport in his hand. It said, as such documents do, nothing about him. His profession was simply marked “Student,” and in the back under next of kin Justine’s name was listed, with her London address. Unconcerned by the legal meaning of the term, he had put her name because London was far closer to Rome than Drogheda. In his little room at the inn, the square black case which housed his priestly implements had not been opened; it waited with his suitcase for directions as to where it should be sent.

When the phone rang at nine in the morning Justine rolled over, opened a bleary eye and lay cursing it, vowing she would have the bloody thing disconnected. Because the rest of the world thought it only right and proper to commence whatever they did at nine in the morning, why did they assume the same of her?

But it rang, and rang, and rang. Maybe it was Rain; that thought tipped the balance toward consciousness, and Justine got up, slopped reeling out to the living room. The German parliament was in urgent session; she hadn’t seen Rain in a week and hadn’t been optimistic about her chances of seeing him for at least another week. But perhaps the crisis had resolved, and he was calling to tell her he was on his way over.

“Hello?”

“Miss Justine O’Neill?”

“Yes, speaking.”

“This is Australia House, in the Aldwych, you know?” The voice had an English inflection, gave a name she was too tired to hear because she was still assimilating the fact that the voice was not Rain’s.

“Okay, Australia House.” Yawning, she stood on one foot and scratched its top with the sole of the other.

“Do you have a brother, a Mr. Dane O’Neill?”

Justine’s eyes opened. “Yes, I do.”

“Is he at present in Greece, Miss O’Neill?”

Both feet settled into the rug, stood braced. “Yes, that’s right.” It did not occur to her to correct the voice, explain it was Father, not Mister.

“Miss O’Neill, I very much regret to say that it is my unfortunate duty to give you some bad news.”

“Bad news? Bad news? What is it? What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

“I regret to have to inform you that your brother, Mr. Dane O’Neill, was drowned yesterday in Crete, I understand in heroic circumstances, performing a sea rescue. However, you realize there is a revolution in Greece, and what information we have is sketchy and possibly not accurate.”

The phone stood on a table near the wall and Justine leaned against the solid support the wall offered. Her knees buckled, she began to slide very slowly downward, wound up in a curled heap on the floor. Not laughing and not crying, she made noises somewhere in between, audible gasps. Dane drowned. Gasp. Dane dead. Gasp. Crete, Dane, drowned. Gasp. Dead, dead.

“Miss O’Neill? Are you there, Miss O’Neill?” asked the voice insistently.

Dead. Drowned. My brother!

“Miss O’Neill, answer me!”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Oh, God, I’m here!”

“I understand you are his next of kin, therefore we must have your instructions as to what to do with the body. Miss O’Neill, are you there?”

“Yes, yes!”

“What do you want done with the body, Miss O’Neill?”

Body! He was a body, and they couldn’t even say his body, they had to say the body. Dane, my Dane. He is a body. “Next of kin?” she heard her voice asking, thin and faint, torn by those great gasps. “I’m not Dane’s next of kin. My mother is, I suppose.”

There was a pause. “This is very difficult, Miss O’Neill. If you’re not the next of kin, we’ve wasted valuable time.” The polite sympathy gave way to impatience. “You don’t seem to understand there’s a revolution going on in Greece and the accident happened in Crete, even more remote and hard to contact. Really! Communication with Athens is virtually impossible and we have been instructed to forward the next of kin’s personal wishes and instructions regarding the body immediately. Is your mother there? May I speak to her, please?”

“My mother’s not here. She’s in Australia.”

“Australia? Lord, this gets worse and worse! Now we’ll have to send a cable to Australia; more delays. If you are not the next of kin, Miss O’Neill, why did your brother’s passport say you were?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and found she had laughed.

“Give me your mother’s address in Australia; we’ll cable her at once. We have to know what to do with the body! By the time cables get back and forth, this will mean a twelve-hour delay, I hope you realize that. It’s going to be difficult enough without this mix-up.”

“Phone her, then. Don’t waste time with cables.”

“Our budget does not extend to international phone calls, Miss O’Neill,” said that stiff voice. “Now, will you please give me your mother’s name and address?”

“Mrs. Meggie O’Neill,” Justine recited, “Drogheda, Gillanbone, New South Wales, Australia.” She spelled out the unfamiliar names for him.

“Once again, Miss O’Neill, my deepest regrets.”

The receiver clicked, began the interminable burr of the dial tone. Justine sat on the floor and let it slip into her lap. There was a mistake, it would all sort itself out. Dane drowned, when he swam like a champion? No, it wasn’t true. But it is, Justine, you know it is, you didn’t go with him to protect him and he drowned. You were his protector from the time he was a baby and you should have been there. If you couldn’t save him, you should have been there to drown with him. And the only reason you didn’t go with him was because you wanted to be in London so you could get Rain to make love to you.

Thinking was so hard. Everything was so hard. Nothing seemed to work, not even her legs. She couldn’t get up, she would never get up again. There was no room in her mind for anyone but Dane, and her thoughts went in ever-diminishing circles around Dane. Until she thought of her mother, the Drogheda people. Oh, God. The news would come there, come to her, come to them. Mum didn’t even have the lovely last sight of his face in Rome. They’ll send the cable to the Gilly police, I suppose, and old Sergeant Ern will climb into his car and drive out all the miles to Drogheda, to tell my mother that her only son is dead. Not the right man for the job, and an almost-stranger. Mrs. O’Neill, my deepest, most heartfelt regrets, your son is dead. Perfunctory, courteous, empty words… No! I can’t let them do that to her, not to her, she is my mother, too! Not that way, not the way I had to hear it.

She pulled the other part of the phone off the table onto her lap, put the receiver to her ear and dialed the operator.

“Switch? Trunks, please, international. Hello? I want to place an urgent call to Australia, Gillanbone one-two-one-two. And please, please hurry.”

Meggie answered the phone herself. It was late, Fee had gone to bed. These days she never felt like seeking her own bed early, she preferred to sit listening to the crickets and frogs, doze over a book, remember.

“Hello?”

“London calling, Mrs. O’Neill,” said Hazel in Gilly.

“Hello, Justine,” Meggie said, not perturbed. Jussy called, infrequently, to see how everything was.

“Mum? Is that you, Mum?”

“Yes, it’s Mum here,” said Meggie gently, sensing Justine’s distress.

“Oh, Mum! Oh, Mum!” There was what sounded like a gasp, or a sob. “Mum, Dane’s dead. Dane’s dead!”

A pit opened at her feet. Down and down and down it went, and had no bottom. Meggie slid into it, felt its lips close over her head, and understood that she would never come out again as long as she lived. What more could the gods do? She hadn’t known when she asked it. How could she have asked it, how could she not have known? Don’t tempt the gods, they love it. In not going to see him in this most beautiful moment of his life, share it with him, she had finally thought to make the payment. Dane would be free of it, and free of her. In not seeing the face which was dearer to her than all other faces, she would repay. The pit closed in, suffocating. Meggie stood there, and realized it was too late.

“Justine, my dearest, be calm,” said Meggie strongly, not a falter in her voice. “Calm yourself and tell me. Are you sure?”

“Australia House called me—they thought I was his next of kin. Some dreadful man who only wanted to know what I wanted done with the body. ‘The body,’ he kept calling Dane. As if he wasn’t entitled to it anymore, as if it was anyone’s.” Meggie heard her sob. “God! I suppose the poor man hated what he was doing. Oh, Mum, Dane’s dead!”

“How, Justine? Where? In Rome? Why hasn’t Ralph called me?”

“No, not in Rome. The Cardinal probably doesn’t know anything about it. In Crete. The man said he was drowned, a sea rescue. He was on holiday, Mum, he asked me to go with him and I didn’t, I wanted to play Desdemona, I wanted to be with Rain. If I’d only been with him! If I had, it mightn’t have happened. Oh, God, what can I do?”

“Stop it, Justine,” said Meggie sternly. “No thinking like that, do you hear me? Dane would hate it, you know he would. Things happen, why we don’t know. The important thing now is that you’re all right, I haven’t lost both of you. You’re all I’ve got left now. Oh, Jussy, Jussy, it’s so far away! The world’s big, too big. Come home to Drogheda! I hate to think of you all alone.”

“No, I’ve got to work. Work is the only answer for me. If I don’t work, I’ll go mad. I don’t want people, I don’t want comfort. Oh, Mum!” She began to sob bitterly. “How are we going to live without him?”

How indeed? Was that living? God’s thou wert, unto God return. Dust to dust. Living’s for those of us who failed. Greedy God, gathering in the good ones, leaving the world to the rest of us, to rot.

“It isn’t for any of us to say how long we’ll live,” said Meggie. “Jussy, thank you so much for telling me yourself, for phoning.”

“I couldn’t bear to think of a stranger breaking the news, Mum. Not like that, from a stranger. What will you do? What can you do?”

With all her will Meggie tried to pour warmth and comfort across the miles to her devastated girl in London. Her son was dead, her daughter still lived. She must be made whole. If it was possible. In all her life Justine seemed only to have loved Dane. No one else, even herself.

“Dear Justine, don’t cry. Try not to grieve. He wouldn’t have wanted that, now would he? Come home, and forget. We’ll bring Dane home to Drogheda, too. At law he’s mine again, he doesn’t belong to the Church and they can’t stop me. I’ll phone Australia House right away, and the embassy in Athens if I can get through. He must come home! I’d hate to think of him lying somewhere far from Drogheda. Here is where he belongs, he’ll have to come home. Come with him, Justine.”

But Justine sat in a heap, shaking her head as if her mother could see. Come home? She could never come home again. If she had gone with Dane he wouldn’t be dead. Come home, and have to look at her mother’s face every day for the rest of her life? No, it didn’t bear thinking of.

“No, Mum,” she said, the tears rolling down her skin, hot like molten metal. Who on earth ever said people most moved don’t weep? They don’t know anything about it. “I shall stay here and work. I’ll come home with Dane, but then I’m going back. I can’t live on Drogheda.”

For three days they waited in a purposeless vacuum, Justine in London, Meggie and the family on Drogheda, stretching the official silence into tenuous hope. Oh, surely after so long it would turn out to be a mistake, surely if it was true they would have heard by now! Dane would come in Justine’s front door smiling, and say it was all a silly mistake. Greece was in revolt, all sorts of silly mistakes must have been made. Dane would come in the door and laugh the idea of his death to scorn, he’d stand there tall and strong and alive, and he’d laugh. Hope began to grow, and grew with every minute they waited. Treacherous, horrible hope. He wasn’t dead, no! Not drowned, not Dane who was a good enough swimmer to brave any kind of sea and live. So they waited, not acknowledging what had happened in the hope it would prove to be a mistake. Time later to notify people, let Rome know.

On the fourth morning Justine got the message. Like an old woman she picked up the receiver once more, and asked for Australia.

“Mum?”

“Justine?”

“Oh, Mum, they’ve buried him already; we can’t bring him home! What are we going to do? All they can say is that Crete is a big place, the name of the village isn’t known, by the time the cable arrived he’d already been spirited away somewhere and disposed of. He’s lying in an unmarked grave somewhere! I can’t get a visa for Greece, no one wants to help, it’s chaos. What are we going to do, Mum?”

“Meet me in Rome, Justine,” said Meggie.

Everyone save Anne Mueller was there around the phone, still in shock. The men seemed to have aged twenty years in three days, and Fee, shrunken birdlike, white and crabbed, drifted about the house saying over and over, “Why couldn’t it have been me? Why did they have to take him? I’m so old, so old! I wouldn’t have minded going, why did it have to be him? Why couldn’t it have been me? I’m so old!” Anne had collapsed, and Mrs. Smith, Minnie and Cat walked, slept tears.

Meggie stared at them silently as she put the phone down. This was Drogheda, all that was left. A little cluster of old men and old women, sterile and broken.

“Dane’s lost,” she said. “No one can find him; he’s been buried somewhere on Crete. It’s so far away! How could he rest so far from Drogheda? I’m going to Rome, to Ralph de Bricassart. If anyone can help us, he can.”

Cardinal de Bricassart’s secretary entered his room.

“Your Eminence, I’m sorry to disturb you, but a lady wishes to see you. I explained that there is a congress, that you are very busy and cannot see anyone, but she says she will sit in the vestibule until you have time for her.”

“Is she in trouble, Father?”

“Great trouble, Your Eminence, that much is easy to see. She said I was to tell you her name is Meggie O’Neill.” He gave it a lilting foreign pronunciation, so that it came out sounding like Meghee Onill.

Cardinal Ralph came to his feet, the color draining from his face to leave it as white as his hair.

“Your Eminence! Are you ill?”

“No, Father, I’m perfectly all right, thank you. Cancel my appointments until I notify you otherwise, and bring Mrs. O’Neill to me at once. We are not to be disturbed unless it is the Holy Father.”

The priest bowed, departed. O’Neill. Of course! It was young Dane’s name, he should have remembered. Save that in the Cardinal’s palace everyone just said Dane. Ah, he had made a grave mistake, keeping her waiting. If Dane was His Eminence’s dearly loved nephew then Mrs. O’Neill was his dearly loved sister.

When Meggie came into the room Cardinal Ralph hardly knew her. It was thirteen years since he had last seen her; she was fifty-three and he was seventy-one. Both of them aged now, instead of only him. Her face hadn’t changed so much as settled, and into a mold unlike the one he had given her in his imagination. Substitute a trenchant incisiveness for sweetness, a touch of iron for softness; she resembled a vigorous, aging, willful martyr rather than the resigned, contemplative saint of his dreams. Her beauty was as striking as ever, her eyes still that clear silvery grey, but both had hardened, and the once vivid hair had faded to a drab beige, like Dane’s without the life. Most disconcerting of all, she wouldn’t look at him for long enough to satisfy his eager and loving curiosity.

Unable to greet this Meggie naturally, he stiffly indicated a chair. “Please sit down.”

“Thank you,” she said, equally stilted.

It was only when she was seated and he could gaze down upon her whole person that he noticed how visibly swollen her feet and ankles were.

“Meggie! Have you flown all the way through from Australia without breaking your journey? What’s the matter?”

“Yes, I did fly straight through,” she said. “For the past twenty-nine hours I’ve been sitting in planes between Gilly and Rome, with nothing to do except stare out the window at the clouds, and think.” Her voice was harsh, cold.

“What’s the matter?” he repeated impatiently, anxious and fearful.

She lifted her gaze from her feet and looked at him steadily.

There was something awful in her eyes; something so dark and chilling that the skin on the back of his neck crawled and automatically he put his hand up to stroke it.

“Dane is dead,” said Meggie.

His hand slipped, flopped like a rag doll’s into his scarlet lap as he sank into a chair. “Dead?” he asked slowly. “Dane dead?”

“Yes. He was drowned six days ago in Crete, rescuing some women from the sea.”

He leaned forward, put his hands over his face. “Dead?” she heard him say indistinctly. “Dane dead? My beautiful boy! He can’t be dead! Dane—he was the perfect priest—all that I couldn’t be. What I lacked he had.” His voice broke. “He always had it—that was what we all recognized—all of us who aren’t perfect priests. Dead? Oh, dear Lord!”

“Don’t bother about your dear Lord, Ralph,” said the stranger sitting opposite him. “You have more important things to do. I came to ask for your help—not to witness your grief. I’ve had all those hours in the air to go over the way I’d tell you this, all those hours just staring out the window at the clouds knowing Dane is dead. After that, your grief has no power to move me.”

Yet when he lifted his face from his hands her dead cold heart bounded, twisted, leaped. It was Dane’s face, with a suffering written upon it that Dane would never live to feel. Oh, thank God! Thank God he’s dead, can never now go through what this man has, what I have. Better he’s dead than to suffer something like this.

“How can I help, Meggie?” he asked quietly, suppressing his own emotions to don the soul-deep guise of her spiritual counselor.

“Greece is in chaos. They’ve buried Dane somewhere on Crete, and I can’t find out where, when, why. Except I suppose that my instructions directing that he be flown home were endlessly delayed by the civil war, and Crete is hot like Australia. When no one claimed him, I suppose they thought he had no one, and buried him.” She leaned forward in her chair tensely. “I want my boy back, Ralph, I want him found and brought home to sleep where he belongs, on Drogheda. I promised Jims I’d keep him on Drogheda and I will, if I have to crawl on my hands and knees through every graveyard on Crete. No fancy Roman priest’s tomb for him, Ralph, not as long as I’m alive to put up a legal battle. He’s to come home.”

“No one is going to deny you that, Meggie,” he said gently. “It’s consecrated Catholic ground, which is all the Church asks. I too have requested that I be buried on Drogheda.”

“I can’t get through all the red tape,” she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “I can’t speak Greek, and I have no power or influence. So I came to you, to use yours. Get me back my son, Ralph!”

“Don’t worry, Meggie, we’ll get him back, though it may not be very quickly. The Left are in charge now, and they’re very anti-Catholic. However, I’m not without friends in Greece, so it will be done. Let me start the wheels in motion immediately, and don’t worry. He is a priest of the Holy Catholic Church, we’ll get him back.”

His hand had gone to the bell cord, but Meggie’s coldly fierce gaze stilled it.

“You don’t understand, Ralph. I don’t want wheels set in motion. I want my son back—not next week or next month, but now! You speak Greek, you can get visas for yourself and me, you’ll get results. I want you to come to Greece with me now, and help me get my son back.”

There was much in his eyes: tenderness, compassion, shock, grief. But they had become the priest’s eyes too, sane, logical, reasonable. “Meggie, I love your son as if he were my own, but I can’t leave Rome at the moment. I’m not a free agent—you above all others should know that. No matter how much I may feel for you, how much I may feel on my own account, I can’t leave Rome in the midst of a vital congress. I am the Holy Father’s aide.”

She reared back, stunned and outraged, then shook her head, half-smiling as if at the antics of some inanimate object beyond her power to influence; then she trembled, licked her lips, seemed to come to a decision and sat up straight and stiff. “Do you really love my son as if he were your own, Ralph?” she asked. “What would you do for a son of yours? Could you sit back then and say to his mother, No, I’m very sorry, I can’t possibly take the time off? Could you say that to the mother of your son?”

Dane’s eyes, yet not Dane’s eyes. Looking at her; bewildered, full of pain, helpless.

“I have no son,” he said, “but among the many, many things I learned from yours was that no matter how hard it is, my first and only allegiance is to Almighty God.”

“Dane was your son too,” said Meggie.

He stared at her blankly. “What?”

“I said, Dane was your son too. When I left Matlock Island I was pregnant. Dane was yours, not Luke O’Neill’s.”

“It—isn’t—true!”

“I never intended you to know, even now,” she said. “Would I lie to you?”

“To get Dane back? Yes,” he said faintly.

She got up, came to stand over him in the red brocade chair, took his thin, parchmentlike hand in hers, bent and kissed the ring, the breath of her voice misting its ruby to milky dullness. “By all that you hold holy, Ralph, I swear that Dane was your son. He was not and could not have been Luke’s. By his death I swear it.”

There was a wail, the sound of a soul passing between the portals of Hell. Ralph de Bricassart fell forward out of the chair and wept, huddled on the crimson carpet in a scarlet pool like new blood, his face hidden in his folded arms, his hands clutching at his hair.

“Yes, cry!” said Meggie. “Cry, now that you know! It’s right that one of his parents be able to shed tears for him. Cry, Ralph! For twenty-six years I had your son and you didn’t even know it, you couldn’t even see it. Couldn’t see that he was you all over again! When my mother took him from me at birth she knew, but you never did. Your hands, your feet, your face, your eyes, your body. Only the color of his hair was his own; all the rest was you. Do you understand now? When I sent him here to you, I said it in my letter. ‘What I stole, I give back.’ Remember? Only we both stole, Ralph. We stole what you had vowed to God, and we’ve both had to pay.”

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 anymore.

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. Of 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.