Colleen McCullough - The Thorn Birds

When the mid-April came that was two and a half years after Dane’s death, Justine experienced an overwhelming desire to see something that wasn’t rows of houses, too many sullen people. Suddenly on this beautiful day of soft spring air and chilly sun, urban London was intolerable. So she took a District Line train to Kew Gardens, pleased that it was a Tuesday and she would have the place almost to herself. Nor was she working that night, so it didn’t matter if she exhausted herself tramping the by-ways.

She knew the park well, of course. London was a joy to any Drogheda person, with its masses of formal flower beds, but Kew was in a class all its own. In the old days she used to haunt it from April to the end of October, for every month had a different floral display to offer.

Mid-April was her favorite time, the period of daffodils and azaleas and flowering trees. There was one spot she thought could lay some claim to being one of the world’s loveliest sights on a small, intimate scale, so she sat down on the damp ground, an audience of one, to drink it in. As far as the eye could see stretched a sheet of daffodils; in mid-distance the nodding yellow horde of bells flowed around a great flowering almond, its branches so heavy with white blooms they dipped downward in arching falls as perfect and still as a Japanese painting. Peace. It was so hard to come by.

And then, her head far back to memorize the absolute beauty of the laden almond amid its rippling golden sea, something far less beautiful intruded. Rainer Moerling Hartheim, of all people, threading his careful way through clumps of daffodils, his bulk shielded from the chilly breeze by the inevitable German leather coat, the sun glittering in his silvery hair.

“You’ll get a cold in your kidneys,” he said, taking off his coat and spreading it lining side up on the ground so they could sit on it.

“How did you find me here?” she asked, wriggling onto a brown satin corner.

“Mrs. Kelly told me you had gone to Kew. The rest was easy. I just walked until I found you.”

“I suppose you think I ought to be falling all over you in gladness, tra-la?”

“Are you?”

“Same old Rain, answering a question with a question. No, I’m not glad to see you. I thought I’d managed to make you crawl up a hollow log permanently.”

“It’s hard to keep a good man up a hollow log permanently. How are you?”

“I’m all right.”

“Have you licked your wounds enough?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s to be expected, I suppose. But I began to realize that once you had dismissed me you’d never again humble your pride to make the first move toward reconciliation. Whereas I, Herzchen , am wise enough to know that pride makes a very lonely bedfellow.”

“Don’t go getting any ideas about kicking it out to make room for yourself, Rain, because I’m warning you, I am not taking you on in that capacity.”

“I don’t want you in that capacity anymore.”

The promptness of his answer irritated her, but she adopted a relieved air and said, “Honestly?”

“If I did, do you think I could have borne to keep away from you so long? You were a passing fancy in that way, but I still think of you as a dear friend, and miss you as a dear friend.”

“Oh, Rain, so do I!”

“That’s good. Am I admitted as a friend, then?”

“Of course.”

He lay back on the coat and put his arms behind his head, smiling at her lazily. “How old are you, thirty? In those disgraceful clothes you look more like a scrubby schoolgirl. If you don’t need me in your life for any other reason, Justine, you certainly do as your personal arbiter of elegance.”

She laughed. “I admit when I thought you might pop up out of the woodwork I did take more interest in my appearance. If I’m thirty, though, you’re no spring chook yourself. You must be forty at least. Doesn’t seem like such a huge difference anymore, does it? You’ve lost weight. Are you all right, Rain?”

“I was never fat, only big, so sitting at a desk all the time has shrunk me, not made me expand.”

Sliding down and turning onto her stomach, she put her face close to his, smiling. “Oh, Rain, it’s so good to see you! No one else gives me a run for my money.”

“Poor Justine! And you have so much of it these days, don’t you?”

“Money?” She nodded. “Odd, that the Cardinal should have left all of his to me. Well, half to me and half to Dane, but of course I was Dane’s sole legatee.” Her face twisted in spite of herself. She ducked her head away and pretended to look at one daffodil in a sea of them until she could control her voice enough to say, “You know, Rain, I’d give my eyeteeth to learn just what the Cardinal was to my family. A friend, only that? More than that, in some mysterious way. But just what, I don’t know. I wish I did.”

“No, you don’t.” He got to his feet and extended his hand.

“Come, Herzchen , I’ll buy you dinner anywhere you think there will be eyes to see that the breach between the carrot-topped Australian actress and the certain member of the German cabinet is healed. My reputation as a playboy has deteriorated since you threw me out.”

“You’ll have to watch it, my friend. They don’t call me a carrot-topped Australian actress any more—these days I’m that lush, gorgeous, titian-haired British actress, thanks to my immortal interpretation of Cleopatra. Don’t tell me you didn’t know the critics are calling me the most exotic Cleo in years?” She cocked her arms and hands into the pose of an Egyptian hieroglyph.

His eyes twinkled. “Exotic?” he asked doubtfully.

“Yes, exotic,” she said firmly.

Cardinal Vittorio was dead, so Rain didn’t go to Rome very much anymore. He came to London instead. At first Justine was so delighted she didn’t look any further than the friendship he offered, but as the months passed and he failed by word or look to mention their previous relationship, her mild indignation became something more disturbing. Not that she wanted a resumption of that other relationship, she told herself constantly; she had finished completely with that sort of thing, didn’t need or desire it anymore. Nor did she permit her mind to dwell on an image of Rain so successfully buried she remembered it only in traitorous dreams.

Those first few months after Dane died had been dreadful, resisting the longing to go to Rain, feel him with her in body and spirit, knowing full well he would be if she let him. But she could not allow this with his face overshadowed by Dane’s. It was right to dismiss him, right to battle to obliterate every last flicker of desire for him. And as time went on and it seemed he was going to stay out of her life permanently, her body settled into unaroused torpor, and her mind disciplined itself to forget.

But now Rain was back it was growing much harder. She itched to ask him whether he remembered that other relationship—how could he have forgotten it? Certainly for herself she had quite finished with such things, but it would have been gratifying to learn he hadn’t; that is, provided of course such things for him spelled Justine, and only Justine.

Pipe dreams. Rain didn’t have the mien of a man who was wasting away of unrequited love, mental or physical, and he never displayed the slightest wish to reopen that phase of their lives. He wanted her for a friend, enjoyed her as a friend. Excellent! It was what she wanted, too. Only… could he have forgotten? No, it wasn’t possible—but God damn him if he had!

The night Justine’s thought processes reached so far, her season’s role of Lady Macbeth had an interesting savagery quite alien to her usual interpretation. She didn’t sleep very well afterward, and the following morning brought a letter from her mother which filled her with vague unease.