Colleen McCullough - The Thorn Birds

She also grieved for her mother. If his dying could do this to her, what must it have done to Mum? The thought made her want to run screaming and crying from memory, consciousness. The picture of the Unks in Rome for his ordination, puffing out their proud chests like pouter pigeons. That was the worst of all, visualizing the empty desolation of her mother and the other Drogheda people.

Be honest, Justine. Was this honestly the worst? Wasn’t there something far more disturbing? She couldn’t push the thought of Rain away, or what she felt as her betrayal of Dane. To gratify her own desires she had sent Dane to Greece alone, when to have gone with him might have meant life for him. There was no other way to see it. Dane had died because of her selfish absorption in Rain. Too late now to bring her brother back, but if in never seeing Rain again she could somehow atone, the hunger and the loneliness would be well worth it.

So the weeks went by, and then the months. A year, two years. Desdemona, Ophelia, Portia, Cleopatra. From the very beginning she flattered herself she behaved outwardly as if nothing had happened to ruin her world; she took exquisite care in speaking, laughing, relating to people quite normally. If there was a change, it was in that she was kinder than of yore, for people’s griefs tended to affect her as if they were her own. But, all told, she was the same outward Justine—flippant, exuberant, brash, detached, acerbic.

Twice she tried to go home to Drogheda on a visit, the second time even going so far as to pay for her plane ticket. Each time an enormously important last-minute reason why she couldn’t go cropped up, but she knew the real reason to be a combination of guilt and cowardice. She just wasn’t able to nerve herself to confront her mother; to do so meant the whole sorry tale would come out, probably in the midst of a noisy storm of grief she had so far managed to avoid. The Drogheda people, especially her mother, must continue to go about secure in their conviction that Justine at any rate was all right, that Justine had survived it relatively unscathed. So, better to stay away from Drogheda. Much better.

Meggie caught herself on a sigh, suppressed it. If her bones didn’t ache so much she might have saddled a horse and ridden, but today the mere thought of it was painful. Some other time, when her arthritis didn’t make its presence felt so cruelly.

She heard a car, the thump of the brass ram’s head on the front door, heard voices murmuring, her mother’s tones, footsteps. Not Justine, so what did it matter?

“Meggie,” said Fee from the veranda entrance, “we have a visitor. Could you come inside, please?”

The visitor was a distinguished-looking fellow in early middle age, though he might have been younger than he appeared. Very different from any man she had ever seen, except that he possessed the same sort of power and self-confidence Ralph used to have. Used to have. That most final of tenses, now truly final.

“Meggie, this is Mr. Rainer Hartheim,” said Fee, standing beside her chair.

“Oh!” exclaimed Meggie involuntarily, very surprised at the look of the Rain who had figured so largely in Justine’s letters from the old days. Then, remembering her manners, “Do sit down, Mr. Hartheim.”

He too was staring, startled. “You’re not a bit like Justine!” he said rather blankly.

“No, I’m not.” She sat down facing him.

“I’ll leave you alone with Mr. Hartheim, Meggie, as he says he wants to see you privately. When you’re ready for tea you might ring,” Fee commanded, and departed.

“You’re Justine’s German friend, of course,” said Meggie, at a loss.

He pulled out his cigarette case. “May I?”

“Please do.”

“Would you care for one, Mrs. O’Neill?”

“Thank you, no. I don’t smoke.” She smoothed her dress. “You’re a long way from home, Mr. Hartheim. Have you business in Australia?”

He smiled, wondering what she would say if she knew that he was, in effect, the master of Drogheda. But he had no intention of telling her, for he preferred all the Drogheda people to think their welfare lay in the completely impersonal hands of the gentleman he employed to act as his go-between.

“Please, Mrs. O’Neill, my name is Rainer,” he said, giving it the same pronunciation Justine did, while thinking wryly that this woman wouldn’t use it spontaneously for some time to come; she was not one to relax with strangers. “No, I don’t have any official business in Australia, but I do have a good reason for coming. I wanted to see you.”

“To see me? ” she asked in surprise. As if to cover sudden confusion, she went immediately to a safer subject: “My brothers speak of you often. You were very kind to them while they were in Rome for Dane’s ordination.” She said Dane’s name without distress, as if she used it frequently. “I hope you can stay a few days, and see them.”

“I can, Mrs. O’Neill,” he answered easily.

For Meggie the interview was proving unexpectedly awkward; he was a stranger, he had announced that he had come twelve thousand miles simply to see her, and apparently he was in no hurry to enlighten her as to why. She thought she would end in liking him, but she found him slightly intimidating. Perhaps his kind of man had never come within her ken before, and this was why he threw her off-balance. A very novel conception of Justine entered her mind at that moment: her daughter could actually relate easily to men like Rainer Moerling Hartheim! She thought of Justine as a fellow woman at last.

Though aging and white-haired she was still very beautiful, he was thinking while she sat gazing at him politely; he was still surprised that she looked not at all like Justine, as Dane had so strongly resembled the Cardinal. How terribly lonely she must be! Yet he couldn’t feel sorry for her in the way he did for Justine; clearly, she had come to terms with herself.

“How is Justine?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I’m afraid I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since before Dane died.”

She didn’t display astonishment. “I haven’t seen her myself since Dane’s funeral,” she said, and sighed. “I’d hoped she would come home, but it begins to look as if she never will.”

He made a soothing noise which she didn’t seem to hear, for she went on speaking, but in a different voice, more to herself than to him.

“Drogheda is like a home for the aged these days,” she said. “We need young blood, and Justine’s is the only young blood left.”

Pity deserted him; he leaned forward quickly, eyes glittering. “You speak of her as if she is a chattel of Drogheda,” he said, his voice now harsh. “I serve you notice, Mrs. O’Neill, she is not! ”

“What right have you to judge what Justine is or isn’t?” she asked angrily. “After all, you said yourself that you haven’t seen her since before Dane died, and that’s two years ago!”

“Yes, you’re right. It’s all of two years ago.” He spoke more gently, realizing afresh what her life must be like. “You bear it very well, Mrs. O’Neill.”

“Do I?” she asked, tightly trying to smile, her eyes never leaving his.

Suddenly he began to understand what the Cardinal must have seen in her to have loved her so much. It wasn’t in Justine, but then he himself was no Cardinal Ralph; he looked for different things.

“Yes, you bear it very well,” he repeated.

She caught the undertone at once, and flinched. “How do you know about Dane and Ralph?” she asked unsteadily.

“I guessed. Don’t worry, Mrs. O’Neill, nobody else did. I guessed because I knew the Cardinal long before I met Dane. In Rome everyone thought the Cardinal was your brother, Dane’s uncle, but Justine disillusioned me about that the first time I ever met her.”