Colleen McCullough - The Thorn Birds

When she was calm again he picked her up and carried her to a pile of sweet-smelling hay near Mr. Robertson’s mare; they sat there together and let the horse lip at the edges of their straw bed, lost to the world. Meggie’s head was cradled on Frank’s smooth bare chest, tendrils of her hair flying around as the horse blew gusty breaths into the hay, snorting with pleasure.

“Why did she cane all of us, Frank?” Meggie asked. “I told her it was my fault.”

Frank had got used to her smell and didn’t mind it any more; he reached out a hand and absently stroked the mare’s nose, pushing it away when it got too inquisitive.

“We’re poor, Meggie, that’s the main reason. The nuns always hate poor pupils. After you’ve been in Sister Ag’s moldy old school a few days you’ll see it’s not only the Clearys she takes it out on, but the Marshalls and the MacDonalds as well. We’re all poor. Now, if we were rich and rode to school in a big carriage like the O’Briens, they’d be all over us like a rash. But we can’t donate organs to the church, or gold vestments to the sacristy, or a new horse and buggy to the nuns. So we don’t matter. They can do what they like to us.

“I remember one day Sister Ag was so mad at me that she kept screaming at me, ‘Cry, for the love of heaven! Make a noise, Francis Cleary! If you’d give me the satisfaction of hearing you bellow, I wouldn’t hit you so hard or so often!’

“That’s another reason why she hates us; it’s where we’re better than the Marshalls and the MacDonalds. She can’t make the Clearys cry. We’re supposed to lick her boots. Well, I told the boys what I’d do to any Cleary who even whimpered when he was caned, and that goes for you, too, Meggie. No matter how hard she beats you, not a whimper. Did you cry today?”

“No, Frank,” she yawned, her eyelids drooping and her thumb poking blindly across her face in search of her mouth. Frank put her down in the hay and went back to his work, humming and smiling.

Meggie was still asleep when Paddy walked in. His arms were filthy from mucking out Mr. Jarman’s dairy, his wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes. He took in Frank shaping an axle on the anvil, sparks swirling round his head, then his eyes passed to where his daughter was curled up in the hay, with Mr. Robertson’s bay mare hanging her head down over the sleeping face.

“I thought this is where she’d be,” Paddy said, dropping his riding crop and leading his old roan into the stable end of the barn.

Frank nodded briefly, looking up at his father with that darkling glance of doubt and uncertainty Paddy always found so irritating, then he returned to the white-hot axle, sweat making his bare sides glisten.

Unsaddling his roan, Paddy turned it into a stall, filled the water compartment and then mixed bran and oats with a little water for its food. The animal rumbled affectionately at him when he emptied the fodder into its manger, and its eyes followed him as he walked to the big trough outside the forge, took off his shirt. He washed arms and face and torso, drenching his riding breeches and his hair. Toweling himself dry on an old sack, he looked at his son quizzically.

“Mum told me Meggie was sent home in disgrace. Do you know what exactly happened?”

Frank abandoned his axle as the heat in it died. “The poor little coot was sick all over Sister Agatha.”

Wiping the grin off his face hastily, Paddy stared at the far wall for a moment to compose himself, then turned toward Meggie. “All excited about going to school, eh?”

“I don’t know. She was sick before they left this morning, and it held them up long enough to be late for the bell. They all got sixers, but Meggie was terribly upset because she thought she ought to have been the only one punished. After lunch Sister Ag pounced on her again, and our Meggie spewed bread and jam all over Sister Ag’s clean black habit.”

“What happened then?”

“Sister Ag caned her good and proper, and sent her home in disgrace.”

“Well, I’d say she’s had punishment enough. I have a lot of respect for the nuns and I know it isn’t our place to question what they do, but I wish they were a bit less eager with the cane. I know they have to beat the three R’s into our thick Irish heads, but after all, it was wee Meggie’s first day at school.”

Frank was staring at his father, amazed. Not until this moment had Paddy ever communicated man-to-man with his oldest son. Shocked out of perpetual resentment, Frank realized that for all his proud boasting, Paddy loved Meggie more than he did his sons. He found himself almost liking his father, so he smiled without the mistrust.

“She’s a bonzer little thing, isn’t she?” he asked.

Paddy nodded absently, engrossed in watching her. The horse blew its lips in and out, flapping; Meggie stirred, rolled over and opened her eyes. When she saw her father standing beside Frank she sat bolt upright, fright paling her skin.

“Well, Meggie girl, you’ve had quite a day, haven’t you?” Paddy went over and lifted her out of the hay, gasping as he caught a whiff of her. Then he shrugged his shoulders and held her against him hard.

“I got caned, Daddy,” she confessed.

“Well, knowing Sister Agatha, it won’t be the last time,” he laughed, perching her on his shoulder. “We’d better see if Mum’s got any hot water in the copper to give you a bath. You smell worse than Jarman’s dairy.”

Frank went to the doorway and watched the two fiery heads bobbing up the path, then turned to find the bay mare’s gentle eyes fixed on him.

“Come on, you big old bitch. I’ll ride you home,” he told it, scooping up a halter.

Meggie’s vomiting turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Sister Agatha still caned her regularly, but always from far enough away to escape the consequences, which lessened the strength of her arm and quite spoiled her aim.

The dark child who sat next to her was the youngest daughter of the Italian man who owned and operated Wahine’s bright blue café. Her name was Teresa Annunzio, and she was just dull enough to escape Sister Agatha’s attention without being so dull that it turned her into Sister Agatha’s butt. When her teeth grew in she was quite strikingly beautiful, and Meggie adored her. During lesson breaks in the playground they walked with arms looped around each other’s waists, which was the sign that you were “best friends” and not available for courting by anyone else. And they talked, talked, talked.

One lunchtime Teresa took her into the café to meet her mother and father and grown-up brothers and sisters. They were as charmed with her golden fire as Meggie was with their darkness, likening her to an angel when she turned her wide, beautifully flecked grey eyes upon them. From her mother she had inherited an indefinable air of breeding which everyone felt immediately; so did the Annunzio family. As eager as Teresa to woo her, they gave her big fat potato chips fried in sizzling cauldrons of lamb dripping, and a piece of boned fish which tasted delicious, dipped as it was in floury batter and fried in the smoking well of liquid fat along with the chips, only in a separate wire basket. Meggie had never eaten food so delicious, and wished she could lunch at the café more often. But this had been a treat, requiring special permission from her mother and the nuns.

Her conversation at home was all “Teresa says” and “Do you know what Teresa did?” until Paddy roared that he had heard more than enough about Teresa.

“I don’t know that it’s such a good idea to be too thick with Dagos,” he muttered, sharing the British community’s instinctive mistrust of any dark or Mediterranean people. “Dagos are dirty, Meggie girl, they don’t wash too often,” he explained lamely, wilting under the look of hurt reproach Meggie gave him.