Colleen McCullough - The Thorn Birds

Mum didn’t write often anymore, a symptom of the long separation which affected them both, and what letters there were were stilted, anemic. This was different, it contained a distant mutter of old age, an underlying weariness which poked up a word or two above the surface inanities like an iceberg. Justine didn’t like it. Old. Mum , old!

What was happening on Drogheda? Was Mum trying to conceal some serious trouble? Was Nanna ill? One of the Unks? God forbid, Mum herself? It was three years since she had seen any of them, and a lot could happen in three years, even if it wasn’t happening to Justine O’Neill. Because her own life was stagnant and dull, she ought not to assume everyone else’s was, too.

That night was Justine’s “off” night, with only one more performance of Macbeth to go. The daylight hours had dragged unbearably, and even the thought of dinner with Rain didn’t carry its usual anticipatory pleasure. Their friendship was useless, futile, static, she told herself as she scrambled into a dress exactly the orange he hated most. Conservative old fuddy-duddy! If Rain didn’t like her the way she was, he could lump her. Then, fluffing up the low bodice’s frills around her meager chest, she caught her own eyes in the mirror and laughed ruefully. Oh, what a tempest in a teacup! She was acting exactly like the kind of female she most despised. It was probably very simple. She was stale, she needed a rest. Thank God for the end of Lady M! But what was the matter with Mum?

Lately Rain was spending more and more time in London, and Justine marveled at the ease with which he commuted between Bonn and England. No doubt having a private plane helped, but it had to be exhausting.

“Why do you come to see me so often?” she asked out of the blue. “Every gossip columnist in Europe thinks it’s great, but I confess I sometimes wonder if you don’t simply use me as an excuse to visit London.”

“It’s true that I use you as a blind from time to time,” he admitted calmly. “As a matter of fact, you’ve been dust in certain eyes quite a lot. But it’s no hardship being with you, because I like being with you.” His dark eyes dwelled on her face thoughtfully. “You’re very quiet tonight, Herzchen . Is anything worrying you?”

“No, not really.” She toyed with her dessert and pushed it aside uneaten. “At least, only a silly little thing. Mum and I don’t write every week anymore—it’s so long since we’ve seen each other there’s nothing much to say—but today I had such a strange letter from her. Not typical at all.”

His heart sank; Meggie had indeed taken her time thinking about it, but instinct told him this was the commencement of her move, and that it was not in his favor. She was beginning her play to get her daughter back for Drogheda, perpetuate the dynasty.

He reached across the table to take Justine’s hand; she was looking, he thought, more beautiful with maturity, in spite of that ghastly dress. Tiny lines were beginning to give her ragamuffin face dignity, which it badly needed, and character, which the person behind had always owned in huge quantities. But how deep did her surface maturity go? That was the whole trouble with Justine; she didn’t even want to look.

“ Herzchen , your mother is lonely,” he said, burning his boats. If this was what Meggie wanted, how could he continue to think himself right and her wrong? Justine was her daughter; she must know her far better than he.

“Yes, perhaps,” said Justine with a frown, “but I can’t help feeling there’s something more at base of it. I mean, she must have been lonely for years, so why this sudden whatever it is? I can’t put my finger on it, Rain, and maybe that’s what worries me the most.”

“She’s growing older, which I think you tend to forget. It’s very possible things are beginning to prey upon her which she found easier to contend with in the past.” His eyes looked suddenly remote, as if the brain behind was concentrating very hard on something at variance with what he was saying. “Justine, three years ago she lost her only son. Do you think that pain grows less as time passes? I think it must grow worse. He is gone, and she must surely feel by now that you are gone, too. After all, you haven’t even been home to visit her.”

She shut her eyes. “I will, Rain, I will! I promise I will, and soon! You’re right, of course, but then you always are. I never thought I’d come to miss Drogheda, but lately I seem to be developing quite an affection for it. As if I am a part of it after all.”

He looked suddenly at his watch, smiled ruefully. “I’m very much afraid tonight is one of those occasions when I’ve used you, Herzchen . I hate to ask you to find your own way home, but in less than an hour I have to meet some very important gentlemen in a top-secret place, to which I must go in my own car, driven by the triple-A-security-clearanced Fritz.”

“Cloak and dagger!” she said gaily, concealing her hurt. “Now I know why those sudden taxis! I am to be entrusted to a cabby, but not the future of the Common Market, eh? Well, just to show you how little I need a taxi or your security-clearanced Fritz, I’m going to catch the tube home. It’s quite early.” His fingers lay rather limply around hers; she lifted his hand and held it against her cheek, then kissed it. “Oh, Rain, I don’t know what I’d do without you!”

He put the hand in his pocket, got to his feet, came round and pulled out her chair with his other hand. “I’m your friend,” he said. “That’s what friends are for, not to be done without.”

But once she parted from him, Justine went home in a very thoughtful mood, which turned rapidly into a depressed one. Tonight was the closest he had come to any kind of personal discussion, and the gist of it had been that he felt her mother was terribly lonely, growing old, and that she ought to go home. Visit, he had said; but she couldn’t help wondering if he had actually meant stay. Which rather indicated that whatever he felt for her in the past was well and truly of the past, and he had no wish to resurrect it.

It had never occurred to her before to wonder if he might regard her as a nuisance, a part of his past he would like to see buried in decent obscurity on some place like Drogheda; but maybe he did. In which case, why had he re-entered her life nine months ago? Because he felt sorry for her? Because he felt he owed her some kind of debt? Because he felt she needed some sort of push toward her mother, for Dane’s sake? He had been very fond of Dane, and who knew what they had talked about during those long visits to Rome when she hadn’t been present? Maybe Dane had asked him to keep an eye on her, and he was doing just that. Waited a decent interval to make sure she wouldn’t show him the door, then marched back into her life to fulfill some promise made to Dane. Yes, that was very likely the answer. Certainly he was no longer in love with her. Whatever attraction she had once possessed for him must have died long since; after all, she had treated him abominably. She had only herself to blame.

Upon the heels of which thought she wept miserably, succeeded in getting enough hold upon herself to tell herself not to be so stupid, twisted about and thumped her pillow in a fruitless quest after sleep, then lay defeated trying to read a script. After a few pages the words began traitorously to blur and swim together, and try as she would to use her old trick of bulldozing despair into some back corner of her mind, it ended in overwhelming her. Finally as the slovenly light of a late London dawn seeped through the windows she sat down at her desk, feeling the cold, hearing the distant growl of traffic, smelling the damp, tasting the sourness. Suddenly the idea of Drogheda seemed wonderful. Sweet pure air, a naturally broken silence. Peace.