“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.
Largely drained of cash, he said good-bye to the child in the corridor. No kisses. He opened her hand, then clasped it in both his, and when she opened it, she found five shillings in it.
“Take good care of that, miss,” said Imelda looking on. “It will be quite safe, Mr. Shea. We expel without fear or favour for theft.”
She opened the front door for Tim, but as soon as he was through she shut it softly, and the conventual silence closed like an ocean over Lucy Rochester’s mute head.
So now, lighter and prouder, he still had to face Kitty. Pee Dee was bending his head down and stealing some grass through the convent’s picket fence.
“Get it into you there, Pee Dee old son,” Tim told him. “Eat her grass. Fifty bobs’ worth.”
Missy, just like Lucy, made her claims on him through silence, and now for the sake of Missy’s uncertain and omnipresent spirit he must top off the day’s berserk largesse. He left Pee Dee to benefit from thief Imelda, and walked to the door of the presbytery. One of the larger houses in town. Just like at home, they comforted themselves pretty well for keeping to lonely beds.
The ancient widow who cooked for the priests answered the door.
“Is Father Bruggy in?” he asked.
“Wait,” said the woman liquidly. “I will see.”
Her accent. He’d heard she was a Belgian. Closing the door then. It wasn’t right she did that, as if he were a supplicant or a thief. It was said that the seminarians who were the sons of the poorer Irish farmers were sent to New South Wales as priests. Yet someone had taught them to behave like people of high class.
The tall, very pale priest named Bruggy was suddenly at the door. He’d had consumption. That may have been why he’d signed on for a subtropic diocese. But didn’t the humid air also weigh on the lungs? It often weighed on his own.
“Hello there, Tim.”
The man sounded weary, as always saddened and thinned down at finding humanity’s tricks so standard, pole to pole. For it might cross the minds of priests and nuns in Ireland that if they travelled twelve thousand miles, they might outrun original sin, slip aboard their steamers into the island chains of innocence. Not so though. The old Adam was already waiting for them on the new shores. Met every damned boat.
“I wondered could I have a word,” said Tim in a hush, to convey it was not a normal theological matter.
“Yes,” the priest agreed, but without much hope of hearing anything new. He motioned Tim to a green-painted garden seat on the verandah. The parlour would have been offered for others. It would be the parlour for the lawyer Sheridan.
Tim wished those things didn’t worry him so much.
“There is a young woman who died here, and Constable Hanney has possession of her head and is showing it to people, hoping they can name her.”
The priest coughed a little into his hand. “I was shown her also. In case she had been to us for counsel, or to the church for a visit. I told the constable it would be exceptional for one of our faith to seek the death of her child in that way.”
Tim said, “But she was just a child herself. I found her face pitiful. I’d like a Mass said for her repose.”
Rich people offered a crown for a Mass for the repose. Some as little as two bob. Hard-up cow-cockies sometimes put up a shamefaced shilling for a Mass of remembrance, though anyone would want to do better than that for their dead. Tim offered his crown coin by putting it down on one of the green slats of the chair.
The priest looked at it and grimaced. He coughed a bit and said, “Hugely generous of you, Tim.” But perhaps he meant hugely odd. “I’ll give you a Mass card. But I don’t think her chances are too good.” He meant by that the only chances worth anything: eternal chances. “Perhaps you should apply your offering to broader purposes, including this unfortunate girl as one element?”
“Well there is a broader purpose. I’d like her name discovered so she can rest.”
The priest wheezed slowly, and you could smell his shaving soap and his camphor-soaked handkerchief.
“She was murdered making a murder,” he said.
“Yes, but a normal girl’s face, Father. In a sense, anyhow.”
Tim beginning to rankle. These people were always telling you parables about the poor and despised coming amongst you, Christ in another guise. Why did they never suspect this girl might have been sent to sort them out?
He should have given the old bugger ten bob. It would have given him greater freedom to express his ideas.
Bruggy said, “These need to be read out from the pulpit, Tim. The Mass intentions. Why don’t I say, For a Secret Intention? Anything more flamboyant might excite and distract the Faithful.”
“That’s fine with me. A secret intention.”
“You need to resist the village rubbish they believe at home, Tim. Don’t for a moment consider yourself haunted.”
Easy to bloody say.
“Of course, when Constable Hanney came here, I realised I might be haunted myself if I let it happen… But don’t be superstitious about it.”
“Somebody’s child, Father,” said Tim.
“Exactly,” said the priest. “But everyone’s child goes to judgment.”
Now Tim stood up. “Not to keep you any further…”
“Hold hard, Tim. I’ll write you that Mass card. A sort of divine receipt if you like.”
He didn’t want anything like that lying around the house to provoke Kitty.
“No need for a card,” he said.
The priest coughed and considered him. “Tim, you didn’t happen to know this girl, did you?”
“No. Wish I had, in fact. Set her to rest.”
As he left the priest picked up the crown from the verandah seat absent-mindedly. A non-avaricious man. Could afford to be, of course.
Tim found that with his energetic nibbling Pee Dee had dislodged a fence paling.
“You bloody blackguard!” Tim genially told the horse.
He untethered the beast and led the dray quickly down the street, not getting up on the board until they were well past the Australia Hotel on the corner of Kemp and Elbow. Safe in the heart of secular Kempsey.
Three
TWO DOZEN DELIVERIES to make now.
Coming out of Mrs. Curran’s in River Street with the empty butter box he’d delivered goods in, he spotted old Dwyer on his horse, with the hessian saddlebags hung over its neck crammed with Chronicles. He saw women come to front fences and buy. And as he delivered goods further up the hill, he found that women smiled as they handed their money over for the delivered biscuits and treacle, sugar and tea. From the back doors, he saw the Chronicle was as often as not opened on their kitchen tables. One of his customers told him, “You’re a really decent chap, Mr. Shea.” Their cash had no reluctance to it today. None of them mentioned the scandalous prices of things. The few who asked for a week’s credit seemed ashamed to do it.