Thomas Keneally - A River Town

Mother Imelda could be heard thumping up the corridor and now burst into the room. A big woman, her beads clicking against her unimaginable thighs.

“Well, Mr. Shea!” she cried out, closing the door for herself. She’d once told him that her father had owned a warehouse in Waterford, but he had wondered in that case what she was doing here in her Order’s remotest province. Surely, unless he’d gone broke, her father could have swung her a grander appointment than commanding Christ’s outpost amongst the bush-flash children of cow-cockies in the Macleay. Of course, maybe adventure called, as it had with him—if adventure was the dream of separateness, of not seeking out the common landfalls of your clans: Boston, Brooklyn. These matters weren’t accessible to thought or to measurement.

The Primitive Methodist waif had stood up too, though her closed demeanour gave nothing away. “Sit, sit,” said Mother Imelda, dragging one of the chairs out from under the solemn table and sitting on it, the black cloth of her thumping big hips and thighs dominating the small child on the sofa.

Tim now said who this was. The Rochester child. Mother Imelda may have heard of the accident… Now Mrs. Shea had both a child and sister on the way, hence it was impossible… The Sisters of Mercy were the only boarding school in the valley… Mrs. Shea and I wanted her well looked after… Of course, her dead father’s wishes must be respected, and her own as a child who has reached the age of reason. So she is a Protestant, and that must be observed.

Mother Imelda laughed and patted the polished surface of the table. “We don’t lack here for children who are Protestant.”

“Then I would like to see her taken on by you, Mother.”

Mother Imelda looked out past the picture of the Supreme Pontiff and through the lace at the window towards the huge glare outside. Often Tim looked into the nullity of Australian air and wondered what it meant for the existence of a living God. All that light a question put to the sorts of things people believed in dimmer regions, twelve thousand miles away. But it did not seem to wither Mother Imelda’s certainty. It did not seem to put a crease in it.

“Lucy, do you think you would like to join us here? We put a large stress on cleanliness and on obedience. We do not countenance backchat. Did you have backchat at home?”

Tim said, “I’ve found that little Miss Rochester rarely engages in forward chat let alone the back variety.”

Somehow Mother Imelda did not quite relish the little joke.

“Well, Mr. Shea. Given your domestic arrangements, I understand that you would want Miss Rochester to be a year-round boarder.”

Tim felt himself colour with shame. It was a question he had not thought of; was the child to have her Christmases and her Easters in the convent or was there a place for her at his table?

He said, prickling, “We would, of course, take the child for outings and the larger holidays. But it seems this will be… this will be where she lives. I can’t think of better.”

Mother Imelda put her hand cursorily to Lucy Rochester’s small chin. “Are those your clothes there. In the bag?”

“I will provide a better port for her, Mother,” said Tim.

“You should go outside and sit on the verandah. I want you to tell me how many magpies you count in the trees about.”

The small girl rose, keeping her eyes on Tim, and went, opening and closing the door so smoothly.

Now Tim knew he must make a proposal. Imelda would say how much a week. She advertised in the Argus , day pupils thrippence a week. How much for boarders? They ate of his groceries, half his anyhow. The other half from Doolan’s in West. Keep the two good Irish tradesmen happy. Happy about what? Since the goods were supplied for what could loosely be called the love of God. He hoped Imelda informed the Deity of the way she stretched him.

She stared at his chest. He was aware of the dockets in his breast pocket. He imagined they still had the faint warmth of Kitty’s firm hand on them. He would need to make a deal… only good sense. Imelda herself was that sort of practical woman. He was underwriting the convent’s edibles and useables to the tune of twenty pounds a year wholesale, and that was over thirty pounds retail. What was so blasphemous about her taking the child’s boarding fees out in jam and cheese?

Yet he was flinching within. He wasn’t scared of the woman. Rather he did not want her to shame him, or the thoroughness of Albert’s tragedy, with haggling.

So he started first. He wanted to be able to tell Kitty that. I started first .

He managed to say, “So, Mother Imelda, we must come to an accommodation I suppose.”

He recognised at once in Imelda that dangerous blitheness of someone about to frame the best transaction they can for themselves. “It is thrippence a day to the day school. We add on ninepence a week for boarders. For year-round boarders—we have one other—we give a two week discount, and so that is fifty shillings a year. Can you afford that, Mr. Shea?”

The question affronted him. His hand was already in his vest pocket. He would lay all the causes why he should get special consideration down in front of her.

“I was hoping,” he said, “that since the child is not mine, and in view of some of my offerings to your community here, you might meet me part of the way.”

“Does Mr. Rochester have an estate?”

“There may be a shilling or two left when the bank’s finished. It’s a matter of doubt, though.”

“You know how we are placed, Mr. Shea. From some parents we have to beg. We have expenses too, legal expenses, for instance. The town clerk is a member of the Orange Lodge and we are subject to more inspections and interference and legal argument than any of the hotels in town. We are the hotel of God, that’s why. We can’t and won’t soften him with a bottle of whisky every fortnight. The way things are now it would be in all frankness hard for us to take Lucy, even though the situation cries out to mercy. We have to give our preferences to the Catholic poor, who unhappily abound and are in many cases themselves orphans.”

Bugger it. Going against his nature, he had already debased himself enough and to no good effect.

“Of course I can meet the child’s fees then,” he told her.

Generosity the chief revenge. He had his now. He felt a serenity at such a moment which he could not obtain by any other means.

“It is payable at a term in advance,” said Imelda, a miser for Jesus’ sake. “That’s sixteen shillings and sixpence ha’penny for the first term, Tim.”

Tim hunted in the other pocket of his vest and found two ten shilling notes. He handed her both notes.

“Perhaps you could give me a receipt at some stage, Mother.”

“You are always in our prayers, Mr. Shea, and your lovely little wife.”

Bloody sight littler than you anyhow, Imelda. Just the same, what a bloody grocer this woman would have been! Savage’s Emporium wouldn’t have touched her. She would have pursued debtors along the riverflats of Euroka, into the cedar camps of the Hastings Range and amongst the swamps of the lower Macleay. Men coming out of the scrub with grime on their foreheads and an axe on their shoulders to be bushwhacked by big Imelda with her cashbook.

“You may want to give Lucy a few shillings too for expenses,” Imelda suggested.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Tim, going for his pocket again. He hoped that from the point of view of some abstract critic, which was partly himself and partly a subscriber to a progressive age, he did not look too much like a willing peasant, being sucked dry by a hungry Faith. He wanted this unseen critic to accept that he was acceding to Imelda as a matter of grandeur, of style. Because he did not want to live meanly.