n the last day of 1937 Meggie caught the train to Townsville. Though her holiday had scarcely begun, she already felt much better, for she had left the molasses reek of Dunny behind her. The biggest settlement in North Queensland, Townsville was a thriving town of several thousands living in white wooden houses atop stilts. A tight connection between train and boat left her with no time to explore, but in a way Meggie wasn’t sorry she had to rush to the wharf without a chance to think; after that ghastly voyage across the Tasman sixteen years ago she wasn’t looking forward to thirty-six hours in a ship much smaller than the Wahine.

But it was quite different, a whispering slide in glassy waters, and she was twenty-six, not ten. The air was between cyclones, the sea was exhausted; though it was only midday Meggie put her head down and slept dreamlessly until the steward woke her at six the next morning with a cup of tea and a plate of plain sweet biscuits.

Up on deck was a new Australia, different again. In a high clear sky, delicately colorless, a pink and pearly glow suffused slowly upward from the eastern rim of the ocean until the sun stood above the horizon and the light lost its neonatal redness, became day. The ship was slithering soundlessly through water which had no taint, so translucent over the side that one could look fathoms down to grottoes of purple and see the forms of vivid fish flashing by. In distant vistas the sea was a greenish-hued aquamarine, splotched with wine-dark stains where weed or coral covered the floor, and on all sides it seemed islands with palmy shores of brilliant white sand just grew out of it spontaneously like crystals in silica—jungle-clad and mountainous islands or flat, bushy islands not much higher than the water.

“The flat ones are the true coral islands,” explained a crewman. “If they’re ring-shaped and enclose a lagoon they’re called atolls, but if they’re just a lump of reef risen above the sea they’re called cays. The hilly islands are the tops of mountains, but they’re still surrounded by coral reefs, and they have lagoons.”

“Where’s Matlock Island?” Meggie asked.

He looked at her curiously; a lone woman going on holiday to a honeymoon island like Matlock was a contradiction in terms. “We’re sailing down Whitsunday Passage now, then we head out to the Pacific edge of the reef. Matlock’s ocean side is pounded by the big breakers that come in for a hundred miles off the deep Pacific like express trains, roaring so you can’t hear yourself think. Can you imagine riding the same wave for a hundred miles?” He sighed wistfully. “We’ll be at Matlock before sundown, madam.”

And an hour before sundown the little ship heaved its way through the backwash of the surf whose spume rose like a towering misty wall into the eastern sky. A jetty on spindling piles doddered literally half a mile out across the reef exposed by low tide, behind it a high, craggy coastline which didn’t fit in with Meggie’s expectations of tropical splendor. An elderly man stood waiting, helped her from ship to jetty, and took her cases from a crewman.

“How d’you do, Mrs. O’Neill,” he greeted her. “I’m Rob Walter. Hope your husband gets the chance to come after all. Not too much company on Matlock this time of year; it’s really a winter resort.”

They walked together down the uneasy planking, the exposed coral molten in the dying sun and the fearsome sea a reflected, tumultuous glory of crimson foam.

“Tide’s out, or you’d have had a rougher trip. See the mist in the east? That’s the edge of the Great Barrier Reef itself. Here on Matlock we hang onto it by the skin of our teeth; you’ll feel the island shaking all the time from the pounding out there.” He helped her into a car. “This is the windward side of Matlock—a bit wild and unwelcome looking, eh? But you wait until you see the leeward side, ah! Something like, it is.”

They hurtled with the careless speed natural to the only car on Matlock down a narrow road of crunchy coral bones, through palms and thick undergrowth with a tall hill rearing to one side, perhaps four miles across the island’s spine.

“Oh, how beautiful!” said Meggie.

They had emerged on another road which ran all around the looping sandy shores of the lagoon side, crescent-shaped and hollow. Far out was more white spray where the ocean broke in dazzling lace on the edges of the lagoon reef, but within the coral’s embrace the water was still and calm, a polished silver mirror tinged with bronze.

“Island’s four miles wide and eight long,” her guide explained. They drove past a straggling white building with a deep veranda and shoplike windows. “The general store,” he said with a proprietary flourish. “I live there with the Missus, and she’s not too happy about a lone woman coming here, I can tell you. Thinks I’ll be seduced was how she put it. Just as well the bureau said you wanted complete peace and quiet, because it soothed the Missus a bit when I put you in the farthest-out place we have. There’s not a soul in your direction; the only other couple here are on the other side. You can lark around without a stitch on—no one will see you. The Missus isn’t going to let me out of her sight while you’re here. When you need something, just pick up your phone and I’ll bring it out. No sense walking all the way in. And Missus or no, I’ll call in on you once a day at sunset, just to make sure you’re all right. Best that you’re in the house then—and wear a proper dress, in case the Missus comes along for the ride.”

A one-story structure with three rooms, the cottage had its own private curve of white beach between two prongs of the hill diving into the sea, and here the road ended. Inside it was very plain, but comfortable. The island generated its own power, so there was a little refrigerator, electric light, the promised phone, and even a wireless set. The toilet flushed, the bath had fresh water; more modern amenities than either Drogheda or Himmelhoch, Meggie thought in amusement. Easy to see most of the patrons were from Sydney or Melbourne, and so inured to civilization they couldn’t do without it.

Left alone while Rob sped back to his suspicious Missus, Meggie unpacked and surveyed her domain. The big double bed was a great deal more comfortable than her own nuptial couch had been. But then, this was a genuine honeymoon paradise and the one thing its clients would demand was a decent bed; the clients of the Dunny pub were usually too drunk to object to herniating springs. Both the refrigerator and the overhead cupboards were well stocked with food, and on the counter stood a great basket of bananas, passionfruit, pineapples and mangoes. No reason why she shouldn’t sleep well, and eat well.

For the first week Meggie seemed to do nothing but eat and sleep; she hadn’t realized how tired she was, nor that Dungloe’s climate was what had killed her appetite. In the beautiful bed she slept the moment she lay down, ten and twelve hours at a stretch, and food had an appeal it hadn’t possessed since Drogheda. She seemed to eat every minute she was awake, even carrying mangoes into the water with her. Truth to tell, that was the most logical place to eat mangoes other than a bathtub; they just ran juice. Since her tiny beach lay within the lagoon, the sea was mirror calm and quite free of currents, very shallow. All of which she loved, because she couldn’t swim a stroke. But in water so salty it seemed almost to hold her up, she began to experiment; when she could float for ten seconds at a time she was delighted. The sensation of being freed from the pull of the earth made her long to be able to move as easily as a fish.

So if she mourned her lack of company, it was only because she would have liked to have someone to teach her to swim. Other than that, being on her own was wonderful. How right Anne had been! All her life there had been people in the house. To have no one was such a relief, so utterly peaceful. She wasn’t lonely at all; she didn’t miss Anne or Luddie or Justine or Luke, and for the first time in three years she didn’t yearn for Drogheda. Old Rob never disturbed her solitude, just chugged far enough down the road each sunset to make sure her friendly wave from the veranda wasn’t a signal of distress, turned the car and puttered off again, his surprisingly pretty Missus grimly riding shotgun. Once he phoned her to say he was taking the other couple in residence out in his glass-bottomed boat, and would she like to come along?

It was like having a ticket of admission to a whole new planet, peering through the glass down into that teeming, exquisitely fragile world, where delicate forms were buoyed and bolstered by the loving intimacy of water. Live coral, she discovered, wasn’t garishly hued from dyes the way it was in the souvenir counter of the store. It was soft pink or beige or blue-grey, and around every knob and branch wavered a marvelous rainbow of color, like a visible aura. Great anemones twelve inches wide fluttered fringes of blue or red or orange or purple tentacles; white fluted clams as big as rocks beckoned unwary explorers to take a look inside with tantalizing glimpses of colorful, restless things through feathery lips; red lace fans swayed in water winds; bright-green ribbons of weed danced loose and drifting. Not one of the four in the boat would have been in the least surprised to see a mermaid: a gleam of polished breast, a twisting glitter of tail, lazily spinning clouds of hair, an alluring smile taunting the siren’s spell to sailors. But the fish! Like living jewels they darted in thousands upon thousands, round like Chinese lanterns, slender like bullets, raimented in colors which glowed with life and the light-splitting quality water imparts, some on fire with scales of gold and scarlet, some cool and silvery blue, some swimming rag bags gaudier than parrots. There were needle-nosed garfish pug-nosed toadfish, fanged barracuda, a cavernous-mawed grouper lurking half seen in a grotto, and once a sleek grey nurse shark which seemed to take forever to pass silently beneath them.

“But don’t worry,” said Rob. “We’re too far south here for sea wasps, so if anything on the Reef is going to kill you, it’s most likely to be a stonefish. Never go walking on the coral without your shoes.”

Yes, Meggie was glad she went. But she didn’t yearn to go again, or make friends with the couple Rob brought along. She immersed herself in the sea, and walked, and lay in the sun. Curiously enough, she didn’t even miss having books to read, for there always seemed to be something interesting to watch.

She had taken Rob’s advice and stopped wearing clothes. At first she had tended to behave like a rabbit catching whiffs of dingo on the breeze, bolting for cover if a twig cracked or a coconut fell like a cannonball from a palm. But after several days of patent solitude she really began to feel no one would come near her, that indeed it was as Rob said, a completely private domain. Shyness was wasted. And walking the tracks, lying in the sand, paddling in that warm salty water, she began to feel like an animal born and brought up in a cage, suddenly let loose in a gentle, sunny, spacious and welcoming world.

Away from Fee, her brothers, Luke, the unsparing, unthinking domination of her whole life, Meggie discovered pure leisure; a whole kaleidoscope of thought patterns wove and unwove novel designs in her mind. For the first time in her life she wasn’t keeping her conscious self absorbed in work thoughts of one description or another. Surprised, she realized that keeping physically busy is the most effective blockade against totally mental activity human beings can erect.

Years ago Father Ralph had asked her what she thought about, and she had answered: Daddy and Mum, Bob, Jack, Hughie, Stu, the little boys, Frank, Drogheda, the house, work, the rainfall. She hadn’t said him, but he was at the top of the list, always. Now add to those Justine, Luke, Luddie and Anne, the cane, homesickness, the rainfall. And always, of course, the lifesaving release she found in books. But it had all come and gone in such tangled, unrelated clumps and chains; no opportunity, no training to enable her to sit down quietly and think out who exactly was Meggie Cleary, Meggie O’Neill? What did she want? What did she think she was put on this earth for? She mourned the lack of training, for that was an omission no amount of time on her own could ever rectify. However, here was the time, the peace, the laziness of idle physical well-being; she could lie on the sand and try.

Well, there was Ralph. A wry, despairing laugh. Not a good place to start, but in a sense Ralph was like God; everything began and ended with him. Since the day he had knelt in the sunset dust of the Gilly station yard to take her between his hands, there had been Ralph, and though she never saw him again as long as she lived, it seemed likely that her last thought this side of the grave would be of him. How frightening, that one person could mean so much, so many things.

What had she said to Anne? That her wants and needs were quite ordinary—a husband, children, a home of her own. Someone to love. It didn’t seem much to ask; after all, most women had the lot. But how many of the women who had them were truly content? Meggie thought she would be, because for her they were so hard to come by.

Accept it, Meggie Cleary. Meggie O’Neill. The someone you want is Ralph de Bricassart, and you just can’t have him. Yet as a man he seems to have ruined you for anyone else. All right, then. Assume that a man and the someone to love can’t occur. It will have to be children to love, and the love you receive will have to come from those children. Which in turn means Luke, and Luke’s children.

Oh, dear God, dear God! No, not dear God! What’s God ever done for me, except deprive me of Ralph? We’re not too fond of each other, God and I. And do You know something, God? You don’t frighten me the way You used to. How much I feared You, Your punishment! All my life I’ve trodden the straight and narrow, from fear of You. And what’s it got me? Not one scrap more than if I’d broken every rule in Your book. You’re a fraud, God, a demon of fear. You treat us like children, dangling punishment. But You don’t frighten me anymore. Because it isn’t Ralph I ought to be hating, it’s You. It’s all Your fault, not poor Ralph’s. He’s just living in fear of You, the way I always have. That he could love You is something I can’t understand. I don’t see what there is about You to love.

Yet how can I stop loving a man who loves God? No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to do it. He’s the moon, and I’m crying for it. Well, you’ve just got to stop crying for it, Meggie O’Neill, that’s all there is to it. You’re going to have to content yourself with Luke, and Luke’s children. By hook or by crook you’re going to wean Luke from the wretched sugar, and live with him out where there aren’t even any trees. You’re going to tell the Gilly bank manager that your future income stays in your own name, and you’re going to use it to have the comforts and conveniences in your treeless home that Luke won’t think to provide for you. You’re going to use it to educate Luke’s children properly, and make sure they never want.

And that’s all there is to be said about it, Meggie O’Neill. I’m Meggie O’Neill, not Meggie de Bricassart. It even sounds silly, Meggie de Bricassart. I’d have to be Meghann de Bricassart, and I’ve always hated Meghann. Oh, will I ever stop regretting that they’re not Ralph’s children? That’s the question, isn’t it? Say it to yourself, over and over again: Your life is your own, Meggie O’Neill, and you’re not going to waste it dreaming of a man and children you can never have.

There! That’s telling yourself! No use thinking of what’s past, what must be buried. The future’s the thing, and the future belongs to Luke, to Luke’s children. It doesn’t belong to Ralph de Bricassart. He is the past.

Meggie rolled over in the sand and wept as she hadn’t wept since she was three years old: noisy wails, with only the crabs and the birds to hear her desolation.

Anne Mueller had chosen Matlock Island deliberately, planning to send Luke there as soon as she could. The moment Meggie was on her way she sent Luke a telegram saying Meggie needed him desperately, please to come. By nature she wasn’t given to interfering in other people’s lives, but she loved and pitied Meggie, and adored the difficult, capricious scrap Meggie had borne and Luke fathered. Justine must have a home, and both her parents. It would hurt to see her go away, but better that than the present situation.

Luke arrived two days later. He was on his way to the CSR in Sydney, so it didn’t cost him much time to go out of his way. Time he saw the baby; if it had been a boy he would have come when it was born, but news of a girl had disappointed him badly. If Meggie insisted on having children, let them at least be capable of carrying on the Kynuna station one day. Girls were no flaming use at all; they just ate a man out of house and home and when they were grown up they went and worked for someone else instead of staying put like boys to help their old father in his last years.

“How’s Meg?” he asked as he came up onto the front veranda. “Not sick, I hope?”

“You hope. No, she’s not sick. I’ll tell you in a minute. But first come and see your beautiful daughter.”

He stared down at the baby, amused and interested but not emotionally moved, Anne thought.

“She’s got the queerest eyes I’ve ever seen,” he said, “I wonder whose they are?”

“Meggie says as far as she knows no one in her family.”

“Nor mine. She’s a throwback, the funny little thing, Doesn’t look too happy, does she?”

“How could she look happy?” Anne snapped, hanging on to her temper grimly. “She’s never seen her father, she has no real home and not much likelihood of one before she’s grown up if you go on the way you are!”

“I’m saving, Anne!” he protested.

“Rubbish! I know how much money you’ve got. Friends of mine in Charters Towers send me the local paper from time to time, so I’ve seen the ads for western properties a lot closer in than Kynuna, and a lot more fertile. There’s a Depression on, Luke! You could pick up a beauty of a place for a lot less by far than the amount you have in the bank, and you know it.”

“Now that’s just it! There’s a Depression on, and west of the ranges a bloody terrible drought from Junee to the Isa. It’s in its second year and there’s no rain at all, not a drop. Right now I’ll bet Drogheda’s hurting, so what do you think it’s like out around Winton and Blackall? No, I reckon I ought to wait.”

“Wait until the price of land goes up in a good wet season? Come off it, Luke! Now’s the time to buy! With Meggie’s assured two thousand a year, you can wait out a ten-year drought! Just don’t stock the place. Live on Meggie’s two thousand a year until the rains come, then put your stock on.”

“I’m not ready to leave the sugar yet,” he said, stubbornly, still staring at his daughter’s strange light eyes.

“And that’s the truth at last, isn’t it? Why don’t you admit it, Luke? You don’t want to be married, you’d rather live the way you are at the moment, hard, among men, working your innards out, just like one out of every two Australian men I’ve ever known! What is it about this frigging country, that its men prefer being with other men to having a home life with their wives and children? If the bachelor’s life is what they truly want, why on earth do they try marriage at all? Do you know how many deserted wives there are in Dunny alone, scraping an existence and trying to rear their children without fathers? Oh, he’s just off in the sugar, he’ll be back, you know, it’s only for a little while. Hah! And every mail they’re there hanging over the front gate waiting for the postie, hoping the bastard’s sent them a little money. And mostly he hasn’t, sometimes he has—not enough, but something to keep things going!”

She was trembling with rage, her gentle brown eyes sparking. “You know, I read in the Brisbane Mail that Australia has the highest percentage of deserted wives in the civilized world? It’s the only thing we beat every other country at—isn’t that a record to be proud of!”

“Go easy, Anne! I haven’t deserted Meg; she’s safe and she’s not starving. What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m sick of the way you treat your wife, that’s what! For the love of God, Luke, grow up, shoulder your responsibilities for a while! You’ve got a wife and baby! You should be making a home for them—be a husband and a father, not a bloody stranger!”

“I will, I will! But I can’t yet; I’ve got to carry on in the sugar for a couple more years just to make sure. I don’t want to say I’m living off Meg, which is what I’d be doing until things got better.”

Anne lifted her lip contemptuously. “Oh, bullshit! You married her for her money, didn’t you?”

A dark-red flush stained his brown face. He wouldn’t look at her. “I admit the money helped, but I married her because I liked her better than anyone else.”

“You liked her! What about loving her?”

“Love! What’s love? Nothing but a figment of women’s imagination, that’s all.” He turned away from the crib and those unsettling eyes, not sure someone with eyes like that couldn’t understand what was being said. “And if you’ve quite finished telling me off, where’s Meg?”

“She wasn’t well. I sent her away for a while. Oh, don’t panic! Not on your money. I was hoping I could persuade you to join her, but I see that’s impossible.”

“Out of the question. Arne and I are on our way to Sydney tonight.”

“What shall I tell Meggie when she comes back?”

He shrugged, dying to get away. “I don’t care. Oh, tell her to hang on a while longer. Now that she’s gone ahead with the family business, I wouldn’t mind a son.”

Leaning against the wall for support, Anne bent over the wicker basket and lifted the baby up, then managed to shuffle to the bed and sit down. Luke made no move to help her, or take the baby; he looked rather frightened of his daughter.

“Go away, Luke! You don’t deserve what you’ve got. I’m sick of the sight of you. Go back to bloody Arne, and the flaming sugar, and the backbreak!”

At the door he paused. “What did she call it? I’ve forgotten its name.”

“Justine, Justine, Justine!”

“Bloody stupid name,” he said, and went out.

Anne put Justine on the bed and burst into tears. God damn all men but Luddie, God damn them! Was it the soft, sentimental, almost womanish streak in Luddie made him capable of loving? Was Luke right? Was it just a figment of women’s imaginations? Or was it something only women were able to feel, or men with a little woman in them? No woman could ever hold Luke, no woman ever had. What he wanted no woman could ever give him.

But by the next day she had calmed down, no longer feeling she had tried for nothing. A postcard from Meggie had come that morning, waxing enthusiastic about Matlock Island and how well she was. Something good had come out of it. Meggie was feeling better. She would come back as the monsoons diminished and be able to face her life. But Anne resolved not to tell her about Luke.

So Nancy, short for Annunziata, carried Justine out onto the front veranda, while Anne hobbled out with the baby’s wants in a little basket between her teeth; clean diaper, tin of powder and toys. She settled in a cane chair, took the baby from Nancy and began to feed her from the bottle of Lactogen Nancy had warmed. It was very pleasant, life was very pleasant; she had done her best to make Luke see sense, and if she had failed, at least it meant Meggie and Justine would remain at Himmelhoch a while longer. She had no doubt that eventually Meggie would realize there was no hope of salvaging her relationship with Luke, and would then return to Drogheda. But Anne dreaded the day.

A red English sports car roared off the Dunny road and up the long, hilly drive; it was new and expensive, its bonnet strapped down with leather, its silver exhausts and scarlet paintwork glittering. For a while she didn’t recognize the man who vaulted over the low door, for he wore the North Queensland uniform of a pair of shorts and nothing else. My word, what a beautiful bloke! she thought, watching him appreciatively and with a twinge of memory as he took the steps two at a time. I wish Luddie wouldn’t eat so much; he could do with a bit of this chap’s condition. Now, he’s no chicken—look at those marvelous silver temples—but I’ve never seen a cane cutter in better nick.

When the calm, aloof eyes looked into hers, she realized who he was.

“My God!” she said, and dropped the baby’s bottle.

He retrieved it, handed it to her and leaned against the veranda railing, facing her: “It’s all right. The teat didn’t strike the ground; you can feed her with it.”

The baby was just beginning a deprived quiver. Anne stuck the rubber in her mouth and got enough breath back to speak. “Well, Your Grace, this is a surprise!” Her eyes slid over him, amused. “I must say you don’t exactly look like an archbishop. Not that you ever did, even in the proper togs. I always imagine archbishops of any religious denomination to be fat and self-satisfied.”

“At the moment I’m not an archbishop, only a priest on a well-earned holiday, so you can call me Ralph. Is this the little thing caused Meggie so much trouble when I was here last? May I have her? I think I can manage to hold the bottle at the appropriate angle.”

He settled into a chair alongside Anne, took baby and bottle and continued to feed her, his legs crossed casually.

“Did Meggie name her Justine?”

“Yes.”

“I like it. Good Lord, look at the color of her hair! Her grandfather all over.”

“That’s what Meggie says. I hope the poor little mite doesn’t come out in a million freckles later on, but I think she will.”

“Well, Meggie’s sort of a redhead and she isn’t a bit freckled. Though Meggie’s skin is a different color and texture, more opaque.” He put the empty bottle down, sat the baby bolt upright on his knee, facing him, bent her forward in a salaam and began rhythmically rubbing her back hard. “Among my other duties I have to visit Catholic orphanages, so I’m quite deedy with babies. Mother Gonzaga at my favorite infants’ home always says this is the only way to burp a baby. Holding it over one’s shoulder doesn’t flex the body forward enough, the wind can’t escape so easily, and when it does come up there’s usually lots of milk as well. This way the baby’s bent in the middle, which corks the milk in while it lets the gas escape.” As if to prove his point, Justine gave several huge eructations but held her gorge. He laughed, rubbed again, and when nothing further happened settled her in the crook of his arm comfortably. “What fabulously exotic eyes! Magnificent, aren’t they? Trust Meggie to have an unusual baby.”

“Not to change the subject, but what a father you’d have made, Father.”

“I like babies and children, I always have. It’s much easier for me to enjoy them, since I don’t have any of the unpleasant duties fathers do.”

“No, it’s because you’re like Luddie. You’ve got a bit of woman in you.”

Apparently Justine, normally so isolationist, returned his liking; she had gone to sleep. Ralph settled her more snugly and pulled a packet of Capstans from his shorts pocket.

“Here, give them to me. I’ll light one for you.”

“Where’s Meggie?” he asked, taking a lit cigarette from her. “Thank you. I’m sorry, please take one for yourself.”

“She’s not here. She never really got over the bad time she had when Justine was born, and The Wet seemed to be the last straw. So Luddie and I sent her away for two months. She’ll be back around the first of March; another seven weeks to go.”

The moment Anne spoke she was aware of the change in him; as if the whole of his purpose had suddenly evaporated, and the promise of some very special pleasure.

He drew a long breath. “This is the second time I’ve come to say goodbye and not found her…. Athens, and now again. I was away for a year then and it might have been a lot longer; I didn’t know at the time. I had never visited Drogheda since Paddy and Stu died, yet when it came I found I couldn’t leave Australia without seeing Meggie. And she’d married, gone away. I wanted to come after her, but I knew it wouldn’t have been fair to her or to Luke. This time I came because I knew I couldn’t harm what isn’t there.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Rome, to the Vatican. Cardinal di Contini-Verchese has taken over the duties of Cardinal Monteverdi, who died not long ago. And he’s asked for me, as I knew he would. It’s a great compliment, but more than that. I cannot refuse to go.”

“How long will you be away?”

“Oh, a very long time, I think. There are war rumbles in Europe, though it seems so far away up here. The Church in Rome needs every diplomat she has, and thanks to Cardinal di Contini-Verchese I’m classified as a diplomat. Mussolini is closely allied to Hitler, birds of a feather, and somehow the Vatican has to reconcile two opposing ideologies, Catholicism and Fascism. It won’t be easy. I speak German very well, learned Greek when I was in Athens and Italian when I was in Rome. I also speak French and Spanish fluently.” He sighed. “I’ve always had a talent for languages, and I cultivated it deliberately. It was inevitable that I would be transferred.”

“Well, Your Grace, unless you’re sailing tomorrow you can still see Meggie.”

The words popped out before Anne let herself stop to think; why shouldn’t Meggie see him once before he went away, especially if, as he seemed to think, he was going to be away a very long time?

His head turned toward her. Those beautiful, distant blue eyes were very intelligent and very hard to fool. Oh, yes, he was a born diplomat! He knew exactly what she was saying, and every reason at the back of her mind. Anne found herself hanging breathlessly on his answer, but for a long time he said nothing, just sat staring out over the emerald cane toward the brimming river, with the baby forgotten in the crook of his arm. Fascinated, she stared at his profile—the curve of eyelid, the straight nose, the secretive mouth, the determined chin. What forces was he marshaling while he contemplated the view? What complicated balances of love, desire, duty, expediency, will power, longing, did he weigh in his mind, and which against which? His hand lifted the cigarette to his lips; Anne saw the fingers tremble and soundlessly let go her breath. He was not indifferent, then.

For perhaps ten minutes he said nothing; Anne lit him another Capstan, handed it to him in place of the burned-out stub. It, too, he smoked down steadiliy, not once lifting his gaze from the far mountains and the monsoon clouds lowering the sky.

“Where is she?” he asked then in a perfectly normal voice, throwing the second stub over the veranda railing after the first.

And on what she answered depended his decision; it was her turn to think. Was one right to push other human beings on a course which led one knew not where, or to what? Her loyalty was all to Meggie; she didn’t honestly care an iota what happened to this man. In his way he was no better than Luke. Off after some male thing with never the time or the inclination to put a woman ahead of it, running and clutching at some dream which probably only existed in has addled head. No more substance than the smoke from the mill dissipating itself in the heavy, molasses-laden air. But it was what he wanted, and he would spend himself and his life in chasing it.

He hadn’t lost his good sense, no matter what Meggie meant to him. Not even for her—and Anne was beginning to believe he loved Meggie more than anything except that strange ideal—would he jeopardize the chance of grasping what he wanted in his hands one day. No, not even for her. So if she answered that Meggie was in some crowded resort hotel where he might be recognized, he wouldn’t go. No one knew better than he that he wasn’t the sort who could become anonymous in a crowd. She licked her lips, found her voice.

“Meggie’s in a cottage on Matlock Island.”

“On where?”

“Matlock Island. It’s a resort just off Whitsunday Passage, and it’s specially designed for privacy. Besides, at this time of the year there’s hardly a soul on it.” She couldn’t resist adding, “Don’t worry, no one will see you!”

“How reassuring.” Very gently he eased the sleeping baby out of his arms, handed her to Anne. “Thank you,” he said, going to the steps. Then he turned back, in his eyes a rather pathetic appeal. “You’re quite wrong,” he said. “I just want to see her, no more than that. I shall never involve Meggie in anything which might endanger her immortal soul.”

“Or your own, eh? Then you’d better go as Luke O’Neill; he’s expected. That way you’ll be sure to create no scandal, for Meggie or for yourself.”

“And what if Luke turns up?’

“There’s no chance of that. He’s gone to Sydney and he won’t be back until March. The only way he could have known Meggie was on Matlock is through me, and I didn’t tell him, Your Grace.”

“Does Meggie expect Luke?”

Anne smiled wryly. “Oh, dear me, no.”

“I shan’t harm her,” he insisted. “I just want to see her for a little while, that’s all.”

“I’m well aware of it, Your Grace. But the fact remains that you’d harm her a great deal less if you wanted more,” said Anne.

When old Rob’s car came sputtering along the road Meggie was at her station on the cottage veranda, hand raised in the signal that everything was fine and she needed nothing. He stopped in the usual spot to reverse, but before he did so a man in shorts, shirt and sandals sprang out of the car, suitcase in hand.

“Hooroo, Mr. O’Neill!” Rob yelled as he went.

But never again would Meggie mistake them, Luke O’Neill and Ralph de Bricassart. That wasn’t Luke; even at the distance and in the fast-fading light she wasn’t deceived. She stood dumbly and waited while he walked down the road toward her, Ralph de Bricassart. He had decided he wanted her after all. There could be no other reason for his joining her in a place like this, calling himself Luke O’Neill.

Nothing in her seemed to be functioning, not legs or mind or heart. This was Ralph come to claim her, why couldn’t she feel? Why wasn’t she running down the road to his arms, so utterly glad to see him nothing else mattered? This was Ralph, and he was all she had ever wanted out of living; hadn’t she just spent more than a week trying to get that fact out of her mind? God damn him, God damn him! Why the hell did he have to come when she was finally beginning to get him out of her thoughts, if not out of her heart? Oh, it was all going to start again! Stunned, sweating, angry, she stood woodenly waiting, watching that graceful form grow larger.

“Hello, Ralph,” she said through clenched teeth, not looking at him.

“Hello, Meggie.”

“Bring your case inside. Would you like a hot cup of tea?” As she spoke she led the way into the living room, still not looking at him.

“That would be nice,” he said, as stilted as she.

He followed her into the kitchen and watched while she plugged in an electric jug, filled the teapot from a little hot-water geyser over the sink, and busied herself getting cups and saucers down from a cupboard. When she handed him the big five-pound tin of Arnotts biscuits he took a couple of handfuls of cookies out of it and put them on a plate. The jug boiled, she emptied the hot water out of the teapot, spooned loose tea into it and filled it with bubbling water. While she carried the cookie plate and the teapot, he followed with the cups and saucers, back into the living room.

The three rooms had been built alongside each other, the bedroom opening off one side of the living room and the kitchen off the other, with the bathroom beyond it. This meant the house had two verandas, one facing the road and the other the beach. Which in turn meant they each had somewhere excusable to look without having to look at each other. Full darkness had fallen with tropical suddenness, but the air through the wide-open sliding doors was filled with the lapping of water, the distant surf on the reef, the coming and going of the warm soft wind.

They drank the tea in silence, though neither could eat a biscuit, and the silence stretched on after the tea was finished, he shifting his gaze to her and she keeping hers steadfastly on the breezy antics of a baby palm outside the road-veranda doors.

“What’s the matter, Meggie?” he asked, so gently and tenderly her heart knocked frantically, and seemed to die from the pain of it, the old query of the grown man to the little girl. He hadn’t come to Matlock to see the woman at all. He had come to see the child. It was the child he loved, not the woman. The woman he had hated from the moment she came into being.

Round and up came her eyes to his, amazed, outraged, furious; even now, even now! Time suspended, she stared at him so, and he was forced to see, breath caught astounded, the grown woman in those glass-clear eyes. Meggie’s eyes. Oh, God, Meggie’s eyes!

He had meant what he said to Anne Mueller; he just wanted to see her, nothing more. Though he loved her, he hadn’t come to be her lover. Only to see her, talk to her, be her friend, sleep on the living room couch while he tried once more to unearth the taproot of that eternal fascination she possessed for him, thinking that if only he could see it fully exposed, he might gain the spiritual means to eradicate it.

It had been hard to adjust to a Meggie with breasts, a waist, hips; but he had done it because when he looked into her eyes, there like the pool of light in a sanctuary lamp shone his Meggie. A mind and a spirit whose pulls he had never been free from since first meeting her, still unchanged inside that distressingly changed body; but while he could see proof of their continued existence in her eyes, he could accept the altered body, discipline his attraction to it.

And, visiting his own wishes and dreams upon her, he had never doubted she wanted to do the same until she had turned on him like a goaded cat, at Justine’s birth. Even then, after the anger and hurt died in him, he had attributed her behavior to the pain she had gone through, spiritual more than physical. Now, seeing her at last as she was, he could pinpoint to a second the moment when she had shed the lenses of childhood, donned the lenses of a woman: that interlude in the Drogheda cemetery after Mary Carson’s birthday party. When he had explained to her why he couldn’t show her any special attention, because people might deem him interested in her as a man. She had looked at him with something in her eyes he had not understood, then looked away, and when she turned back the expression was gone. From that time, he saw now, she had thought of him in a different light; she hadn’t kissed him in a passing weakness when she had kissed him, then gone back to thinking of him in the old way, as he had her. He had perpetuated his illusions, nurtured them, tucked them into his unchanging way of life as best he could, worn them like a hair shirt. While all the time she had furnished her love for him with woman’s objects.

Admit it, he had physically wanted her from the time of their first kiss, but the want had never plagued him the way his love for her had; seeing them as separate and distinct, not facets of the same thing. She, poor misunderstood creature, had never succumbed to this particular folly.

At that moment, had there been any way he could have got off Matlock Island, he would have fled from her like Orestes from the Eumenides. But he couldn’t quit the island, and he did have the courage to remain in her presence rather than senselessly walk the night. What can I do, how can I possibly make reparation? I do love her! And if I love her, it has to be because of the way she is now, not because of a juvenile way station along her road. It’s womanly things I’ve always loved in her; the bearing of the burden. So, Ralph de Bricassart, take off your blinkers, see her as she really is, not as she was long ago. Sixteen years ago, sixteen long incredible years…I am forty-four and she is twenty-six; neither of us is a child, but I am by far the more immature.

You took it for granted the minute I stepped out of Rob’s car, isn’t that so, Meggie? You assumed I had given in at last. And before you even had time to get your breath back I had to show you how wrong you were. I ripped the fabric of your delusion apart as if it had been a dirty old rag. Oh, Meggie! What have I done to you? How could I have been so blind, so utterly self-centered? I’ve accomplished nothing in coming to see you, unless it is to cut you into little pieces. All these years we’ve been loving at cross-purposes.

Still she was looking into his eyes, her own filling with shame, humiliation, but as the expressions flew across his face to the final one of despairing pity she seemed to realize the magnitude of her mistake, the horror of it. And more than that: the fact that he knew her mistake.

Go, run! Run, Meggie, get out of here with the scrap of pride he’s left you! The instant she thought it she acted on it, she was up out of her chair and fleeing.

Before she could reach the veranda he caught her, the impetus of her flight spinning her round against him so hard he staggered. It didn’t matter, any of it, the grueling battle to retain his soul’s integrity, the long pressing down of will upon desire; in moments he had gone lifetimes. All that power held dormant, sleeping, only needing the detonation of a touch to trigger a chaos in which mind was subservient to passion, mind’s will extinguished in body’s will.

Up slid her arms around his neck, his across her back, spasmed; he bent his head, groped with his mouth for hers, found it. Her mouth, no longer an unwanted, unwelcome memory but real; her arms about him as if she couldn’t bear to let him go; the way she seemed to lose even the feel of her bones; how dark she was like the night, tangled memory and desire, unwanted memory and unwelcome desire. The years he must have longed for this, longed for her and denied her power, kept himself even from the thought of her as a woman!

Did he carry her to the bed, or did they walk? He thought he must have carried her, but he could not be sure; only that she was there upon it, he was there upon it, her skin under his hands, his skin under hers. Oh, God! My Meggie, my Meggie! How could they rear me from infancy to think you profanation?

Time ceased to tick and began to flow, washed over him until it had no meaning, only a depth of dimension more real than real time. He could feel her yet he did not feel her, not as a separate entity; wanting to make her finally and forever a part of himself, a graft which was himself, not a symbiosis which acknowledged her as distinct. Never again would he not know the up-thrusts of breasts and belly and buttocks; the folds and crevices in between. Truly she was made for him, for he had made her; for sixteen years he had shaped and molded her without knowing that he did, let alone why he did. And he forgot that he had ever given her away, that another man had shown her the end of what he had begun for himself, had always intended for himself, for she was his downfall, his rose; his creation. It was a dream from which he would never again awaken, not as long as he was a man, with a man’s body. Oh, dear God! I know, I know! I know why I kept her as an idea and a child within me for so long after she had grown beyond both, but why does it have to be learned like this?

Because at last he understood that what he had aimed to be was not a man. Not a man, never a man; something far greater, something beyond the fate of a mere man. Yet after all his fate was here under his hands, struck quivering and alight with him, her man. A man, forever a man. Dear Lord, couldst Thou not have kept this from me? I am a man, I can never be God; it was a delusion, that life in search of godhead. Are we all the same, we priests, yearning to be God? We abjure the one act which irrefutably proves us men.

He wrapped his arms about her and looked down with eyes full of tears at the still, faintly lit face, watched its rosebud mouth drop open, gasp, become a helpless O of astonished pleasure. Her arms and legs were round him, living ropes which bound him to her, silkily, sleekly tormented him; he put his chin into her shoulder and his cheek against the softness of hers, gave himself over to the maddening, exasperating drive of a man grappling with fate. His mind reeled, slipped, became utterly dark and blindingly bright; for one moment he was within the sun, then the brilliance faded, grew grey, and went out. This was being a man. He could be no more. But that was not the source of the pain. The pain was in the final moment, the finite moment, the empty, desolate realization: ecstasy is fleeting. He couldn’t bear to let her go, not now that he had her; he had made her for himself. So he clung to her like a drowning man to a spar in a lonely sea, and soon, buoyant, rising again on a tide grown quickly familiar, he succumbed to the inscrutable fate which is a man’s.

What was sleep? Meggie wondered. A blessing, a respite from life, an echo of death, a demanding nuisance? Whatever it was, he had yielded himself to it, and lay with his arm over her and his head beside her shoulder, possessive even in it. She was tired, too, but she would not let herself sleep. Somehow she felt if she relaxed her grasp on consciousness he might not be there when she picked it up again. Later she could sleep, after he was awake and the secretive, beautiful mouth uttered its first words. What would he say to her? Would he regret it? Had she been a pleasure to him worth what he had abandoned? So many years he had fought it, made her fight it with him; she could hardly make herself believe he had lain down his arms at last, but there had been things he had said in the night and in the midst of his pain which blotted out his long denial of her.

She was supremely happy, happier than she could remember ever being. From the moment he had pulled her back from the door it had been a body poem, a thing of arms and hands and skin and utter pleasure. I was made for him, and only for him…. That’s why I felt so little with Luke! Borne out beyond the limits of endurance on her body’s tide, all she could think was that to give him everything she could was more necessary to her than life itself. He must never regret it, never. Oh, his pain! There had been moments when she seemed actually to feel it as if it had been her own. Which only contributed to her happiness; there was some justice in his pain.

He was awake. She looked down into his eyes and saw the same love in their blueness which had warmed her, given her purpose since childhood; and with it a great, shadowed fatigue. Not a weariness of the body, but a weariness of the soul.

He was thinking that in all his life he had never woken in the same bed as another person; it was in a way more intimate than the sexual act preceding it, a deliberate indication of emotional ties, a cleaving to her. Light and empty as the air so alluringly full of marine tang and sun-soaked vegetation, he drifted for a while on the wings of a different kind of freedom: the relief of relinquishing his mandate to fight her, the peace of losing a long, incredibly bloody war and finding the surrender far sweeter than the battles. Ah, but I gave you a good fight, my Meggie! Yet in the end it isn’t your fragments I must glue together, but the dismembered chunks of myself.

You were put in my life to show me how false, how presumptuous is the pride of a priest of my kind; like Lucifer I aspired to that which is God’s alone, and like Lucifer, I fell. I had the chastity, the obedience, even the poverty before Mary Carson. But until this morning I have never known humility. Dear Lord, if she meant nothing to me it would be easier to bear, but sometimes I think I love her far more than I do Thee, and that, too, is a part of Thy punishment. Her I do not doubt; Thou? A trick, a phantom, a jest. How can I love a jest? And yet, I do.

“If I could get the energy together, I’d go for a swim and then make breakfast,” he said, desperate for something to say, and felt her smile against his chest.

“Go for the swim part, I’ll make the breakfast. And there’s no need to put anything on here. No one comes.”

“Truly paradise!” He swung his legs off the bed, sat up and stretched. “It’s a beautiful morning. I wonder if that’s an omen.”

Already the pain of parting; just because he had left the bed; she lay watching him as he walked to the sliding doors giving onto the beach, stepped outside and paused. He turned, held out his hand.

“Come with me? We can get breakfast together.”

The tide was in, the reef covered, the early sun hot but the restless summer wind cool; coarse grass sent feelers down onto the crumbling, unsandlike sand, where crabs and insects scuttled after pickings.

“I feel as if I’ve never seen the world before,” he said, staring.

Meggie clutched at his hand; she felt visited, and found this sunny aftermath more incomprehensible than the night’s dreamy reality. Her eyes rested on him, aching. It was time out of mind, a different world.

So she said, “Not this world. How could you? This is our world, for as long as it lasts.”

“What’s Luke like?” he asked, over breakfast.

She put her head on one side, considering. “Not as much like you physically as I used to think, because in those days I missed you more, I hadn’t got used to doing without you. I believe I married him because he reminded me of you. At any rate, I had made up my mind to marry someone, and he stood head and shoulders above the rest. I don’t mean in worthiness, or niceness, or any of the things women are supposed to find desirable in a husband. Just in some way I can’t put a finger on. Except perhaps that he is like you. He doesn’t need women, either.”

His face twisted. “Is that how you see me, Meggie?”

“Truthfully? I think so. I’ll never understand why, but I think so. There’s something in Luke and in you which believes that needing a woman is a weakness. I don’t mean to sleep with; I mean to need, really need.”

“And accepting that, you can still want us?”

She shrugged, smiled with a trace of pity. “Oh, Ralph! I don’t say it isn’t important, and it’s certainly caused me a lot of unhappiness, but it is the way things are. I’d be a fool to waste myself trying to eradicate it, when it can’t be eradicated. The best I can do is exploit the weakness, not ignore its existence. Because I want and need, too. And apparently I want and need people like you and Luke, or I wouldn’t have spent myself over the pair of you the way I have. I’d have married a good, kind, simple man like my father, someone who did want and need me. But there’s a streak of Samson in every man, I think. It’s just that in men like you and Luke, it’s more pronounced.”

He didn’t seem at all insulted; he was smiling. “My wise Meggie!”

“That’s not wisdom, Ralph. Just common sense. I’m not a very wise person at all, you know that. But look at my brothers. I doubt the older ones at any rate will ever get married, or have girlfriends even. They’re terribly shy, they’re frightened of the power a woman might have over them, and they’re quite wrapped up in Mum.”

Day followed day, and night followed night. Even the heavy summer rains were beautiful, to be walked in naked and listened to on the iron roof, as warm and full of caresses as the sun. And when the sun was out they walked too, lazed on the beach, swam; for he was teaching her to swim.

Sometimes when he didn’t know he was being watched Meggie would look at him and try desperately to imprint his face upon her brain’s core, remembering how in spite of the love she had borne Frank, with the passing of the years his image had dimmed, the look of him. There were the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the stunning silver wings in that black hair, the long hard body which had kept the slenderness and tautness of youth, yet had set a little, lost elasticity. And he would turn to find her watching him, a look in his eyes of haunted grief, a doomed look. She understood the implicit message, or thought she did; he must go, back to the Church and his duties. Never again with the same spirit, perhaps, but more able to serve. For only those who have slipped and fallen know the vicissitudes of the way.

One day, when the sun had gone down far enough to bloody the sea and stain the coral sand a hazy yellow, he turned to her as they lay on the beach.

“Meggie, I’ve never been so happy, or so unhappy.”

“I know, Ralph.”

“I believe you do. Is it why I love you? You’re not much out of the ordinary way, Meggie, and yet you aren’t ordinary at all. Did I sense it, all those years ago? I must have, I suppose. My passion for titian hair! Little did I know where it would lead me. I love you, Meggie.”

“Are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow. I must. My ship sails for Genoa in less than a week.”

“Genoa?”

“Rome, actually. For a long time, perhaps the rest of my life. I don’t know.”

“Don’t worry, Ralph, I’ll let you go without any fuss. My time is almost up, too. I’m leaving Luke, I’m going home to Drogheda.”

“Oh, my dear! Not because of this, because of me?”

“No, of course not,” she lied. “I’d made up my mind before you arrived. Luke doesn’t want me or need me, he won’t miss me in the slightest. But I need a home, somewhere of my own, and I think now that Drogheda is always going to be that place. It isn’t right that poor Justine should grow up in a house where I’m the servant, though I know Anne and Luddie don’t think of me like a servant. But it’s how I think of myself, and how Justine will think of me when she’s old enough to understand she hasn’t a normal sort of home. In a way she never will enjoy that, but I must do as much for her as I can. So I’m going back to Drogheda.”

“I’ll write to you, Meggie.”

“No, don’t. Do you think I need letters, after this? I don’t want anything between us which might endanger you, fall into the hands of unscrupulous people. So no letters. If you’re ever in Australia it would be natural and normal of you to visit Drogheda, though I’m warning you, Ralph, to think before you do. There are only two places in the world where you belong to me ahead of God—here on Matlock, and on Drogheda.”

He pulled her into his arms and held her, stroking her bright hair. “Meggie, I wish with all my heart I could marry you, never be apart from you again. I don’t want to leave you…. And in a way I’ll never be free of you again. I wish I hadn’t come to Matlock. But we can’t change what we are, and perhaps it’s just as well. I know things about myself I would never have known or faced if I hadn’t come. It’s better to contend with the known than the unknown. I love you. I always have, and I always will. Remember it.”

The next day Rob appeared for the first time since he had dropped Ralph, and waited patiently while they said their farewells. Obviously not a couple of newly-weds, for he’d come later than she and was leaving first. Not illicit lovers, either. They were married; it was written all over them. But they were fond of each other, very fond indeed. Like him and his Missus; a big difference in age, and that made for a good marriage.

“Goodbye, Meggie.”

“Goodbye, Ralph. Take care of yourself.”

“I will. And you.”

He bent to kiss her; in spite of her resolution she clung to him, but when he plucked her hands from around his neck she put them stiffly behind her and kept them there.

He got into the car and sat while Rob reversed, then stared ahead through the windscreen without once looking back at her. It was a rare man who could do that, Rob reflected, without ever having heard of Orpheus. They drove in silence through the rain forest and came at last to the sea side of Matlock, and the long jetty. As they shook hands Rob looked into his face, wondering. He had never seen eyes so human, or so sad. The aloofness has passed from Archbishop Ralph’s gaze forever.

When Meggie came back to Himmelhoch Anne knew at once she would lose her. Yes, it was the same Meggie—but so much more, somehow. Whatever Archbishop Ralph might have told himself before he went to Matlock, on Matlock things had gone Meggie’s way at last, not his. About time, too.

She took Justine into her arms as if she only now understood what having Justine meant, and stood rocking the little thing while she looked around the room, smiling. Her eyes met Anne’s, so alive, so shining with emotion that Anne felt her own eyes fill with reciprocal tears of that same joy.

“I can’t thank you enough, Anne.”

“Pish, for what?”

“For sending Ralph. You must have known it would mean I’d leave Luke, so I thank you just that much more, dear. Oh, you have no idea what it did for me! I had made up my mind I was going to stay with Luke, you know. Now I’m going back to Drogheda, and I’m never going to leave it again.”

“I hate to see you go and especially I hate to see Justine go, but I’m glad for both of you, Meggie. Luke will never give you anything but unhappiness.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“Back from the CSR. He’s cutting near Ingham.”

“I’ll have to go and see him, tell him. And, much as I loathe the idea, sleep with him.”

“What?”

The eyes shone. “I’m two weeks overdue, and I’m never a day overdue. The only other time I was, Justine was starting. I’m pregnant, Anne, I know I am!”

“My God!” Anne gasped at Meggie as if she had never seen her before; and perhaps she had not. She licked her lips and stammered, “It could be a false alarm.”

But Meggie shook her head positively. “Oh, no. I’m pregnant. There are some things one just knows.”

“A nice pickle if you are,” Anne muttered.

“Oh, Anne, don’t be blind! Don’t you see what this means? I can never have Ralph, I’ve always known I could never have Ralph. But I have, I have!” She laughed, gripping Justine so hard Anne was frightened the baby would scream, but strangely she did not. “I’ve got the part of Ralph the Church can never have, the part of him which carries on from generation to generation. Through me he’ll continue to live, because I know it’s going to be a son! And that son will have sons, and they’ll have sons—I’ll beat God yet. I’ve loved Ralph since I was ten years old, and I suppose I’ll still be loving him if I live to be a hundred. But he isn’t mine, where his child will be. Mine, Anne, mine!”

“Oh, Meggie!” Anne said helplessly.

The passion died, the exhilaration; she became once more familiar Meggie, quiet and sweet but with the faint thread of iron, the capacity to bear much. Only now Anne trod carefully, wondering just what she had done in sending Ralph de Bricassart to Matlock Island. Was it possible for anyone to change this much? Anne didn’t think so. It must have been there all the time, so well hidden its presence was rarely suspected. There was far more than a faint thread of iron in Meggie; she was solid steel.

“Meggie, if you love me at all, please remember something for me?”

The grey eyes crinkled at the corners. “I’ll try!”

“I’ve picked up most of Luddie’s tomes over the years, when I’ve run out of my own books. Especially the ones with the ancient Greek stories, because they fascinate me. They say the Greeks have a word for everything, and that there’s no human situation the Greeks didn’t describe.”

“I know. I’ve read some of Luddie’s books, too.”

“Then don’t you remember? The Greeks say it’s a sin against the gods to love something beyond all reason. And do you remember that they say when someone is loved so, the Gods become jealous, and strike the object down in the very fullness of its flower? There’s a lesson in it, Meggie. It’s profane to love too much.”

“Profane, Anne, that’s the key word! I shan’t love Ralph’s baby profanely, but with the purity of the Blessed Mother herself.”

Anne’s brown eyes were very sad. “Ah, but did she love purely? The object of her love was struck down in the very fullness of His flower, wasn’t He?”

Meggie put Justine in her cot. “What must be, must be. Ralph I can’t have, his baby I can. I feel…oh, as if there’s a purpose to my life after all! That’s been the worst thing about these three and a half years, Anne. I was beginning to think there was no purpose to my life.” She smiled briskly, decisively. “I’m going to protect this child in every way I can, no matter what the cost to myself. And the first thing is that no one, including Luke, shall ever imply it has no right to the only name I’m at liberty to give it. The very thought of sleeping with Luke makes me ill, but I’ll do it. I’d sleep with the Devil himself if it could help this baby’s future. Then I’m going home to Drogheda, and I hope I never see Luke again.” She turned from the cot. “Will you and Luddie come to see us? Drogheda always has room for friends.”

“Once a year, for as many years as you’ll have us. Luddie and I want to see Justine grow up.”

Only the thought of Ralph’s baby kept Meggie’s sagging courage up as the little rail motor rocked and jolted the long miles to Ingham. Had it not been for the new life she was sure was growing in her, getting into a bed with Luke ever again would have been the ultimate sin against herself; but for Ralph’s baby she would indeed have entered into a contract with the Devil.

From a practical viewpoint it wasn’t going to be easy either, she knew that. But she had laid her plans with what foresight she could, and with Luddie’s aid, oddly enough. It hadn’t been possible to conceal much from him; he was too shrewd, and too deeply in Anne’s confidence. He had looked at Meggie sadly, shaken his head, and then proceeded to give her some excellent advice. The actual aim of her mission hadn’t been mentioned, of course, but Luddie was as adept at adding two and two as most people who read massive tomes.

“You won’t want to have to tell Luke you’re leaving him when he’s worn out after the cane,” said Luddie delicately. “Much better if you catch him in a good mood, isn’t it? Best thing is, see him on a Saturday night or a Sunday after it’s been his week cooking. The grapevine says Luke’s the best cook on the cutting circuit—learned to cook when he was low man on the shearing totem pole, and shearers are much fussier eaters than cutters. Means cooking doesn’t upset him, you know. Probably finds it as easy as falling off a log. That’s the speed, then, Meggie. You slap the news on him when he’s feeling real good after a week in the barracks kitchen.”

It seemed to Meggie lately that she had gone a long way from blushing days; she looked at Luddie steadily without going the least bit pink.

“Could you find out which week Luke cooks, Luddie? Or is there any way I could find out, if you can’t?”

“Oh, she’s apples,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve got my branches on the old grapevine. I’ll find out.”

It was mid Saturday afternoon when Meggie checked into the Ingham pub that looked the most respectable. All North Queensland towns were famous for one thing: they had pubs on all four corners of every block. She put her small case in her room, then made her way back to the unlovely foyer to find a telephone. There was a Rugby League football team in town for a pre-season training match, and the corridors were full of half-naked, wholly drunk players who greeted her appearance with cheers and affectionate pats on the back and behind. By the time she got the use of the phone she was shaking with fright; everything about this venture seemed to be an ordeal. But through the din and the looming drunken faces she managed to call Braun’s, the farm where Luke’s gang was cutting, and ask that a message be relayed to him that his wife was in Ingham, wanting to see him. Seeing her fear, the publican walked back to her room with her, and waited until he heard her turn the key.

Meggie leaned against the door, limp with relief; if it meant she didn’t eat again until she was back in Dunny, she wasn’t venturing to the dining room. Luckily the publican had put her right next to the women’s bathroom, so she ought to be able to make that journey when necessary. The moment she thought her legs would hold her up she wobbled to the bed and sat on it, her head bowed, looking at her quivering hands.

All the way down she had thought about the best way of going about it, and everything in her cried, Quickly, quickly! Until coming to live at Himmelhoch she had never read a description of a seduction, and even now, armed with several such recountings, she wasn’t confident of her ability to go about one herself. But that was what she had to do, for she knew once she started to talk to Luke it would be all over. Her tongue itched to tell him what she really thought of him. But more than that, the desire to be back on Drogheda with Ralph’s baby made safe consumed her.

Shivering in the sultry sugary air she took off her clothes and lay down on the bed, eyes closed, willing herself not to think beyond the expediency of making Ralph’s baby safe.

The footballers didn’t worry Luke at all when he entered the pub alone at nine o’clock; by then most of them were insensible, and the few still on their feet were too far gone to notice anything farther away than their beer glasses.

Luddie had been exactly right; at the end of his week’s stint as cook Luke was rested, eager for a change and oozing goodwill. When Braun’s young son had brought Meggie’s message down to the barracks he was just washing the last of the supper dishes and planning to cycle into Ingham, join Arne and the blokes on their customary Saturday-night binge. The prospect of Meggie was a very agreeable alternative; ever since that holiday on the Atherton he had found himself wanting her occasionally in spite of his physical exhaustion. Only his horror of starting her off on the let’s-settle-down-in-our-own-home cry had kept him away from Himmelhoch whenever he was near Dunny. But now she had come to him, and he was not at all averse to a night in bed. So he finished the dishes in a hurry, and was lucky enough to be picked up by a truck after he had pedaled a scant half mile. But as he walked his bike the three blocks from where his ride had dropped him to the pub where Meggie was staying, some of his anticipation flattened. All the chemist shops were closed, and he didn’t have any French letters. He stopped, stared in a window full of moth-eaten, heat-stippled chocolates and dead blowflies, then shrugged. Well, he’d just have to take his chances. It would only be tonight, and if there was a baby, with any luck it would be a boy this time.

Meggie jumped nervously when she heard his knock, got off the bed and padded over to the door.

“Who is it?” she called.

“Luke,” came his voice.

She turned the key, opened the door a tiny way, and stepped behind it as Luke pushed it wider. The moment he was inside she slammed it shut, and stood looking at him. He looked at her; at the breasts which were bigger, rounder, more enticing than ever, the nipples no longer pale pink but a rich dark red from the baby. If he had been in need of stimuli they were more than adequate; he reached out to pick her up, and carried her to the bed.

By daylight she still hadn’t spoken a word, though her touch had welcomed him to a pitch of fevered want he had never before experienced. Now she lay moved away from him, and curiously divorced from him.

He stretched luxuriously, yawned, cleared his throat. “What brings you down to Ingham, Meg?” he asked.

Her head turned; she regarded him with wide, contemptuous eyes.

“Well, what brings you here?” he repeated, nettled.

No reply, only the same steady, stinging gaze, as if she couldn’t be bothered answering. Which was ridiculous, after the night.

Her lips opened; she smiled. “I came to tell you I’m going home to Drogheda,” she said.

For a moment he didn’t believe her, then he looked at her face more closely and saw she meant it, all right. “Why?” he asked.

“I told you what would happen if you didn’t take me to Sydney,” she said.

His astonishment was absolutely genuine. “But, Meg! That’s flaming eighteen months ago! And I gave you a holiday! Four bloody expensive weeks on the Atherton! I couldn’t afford to take you to Sydney on top of that!”

“You’ve been to Sydney twice since then, both times without me,” she said stubbornly. “I can understand the first time, since I was expecting Justine, but heaven knows I could have done with a holiday away from The Wet this last January.”

“Oh, Christ!”

“What a skinflint you are, Luke,” she went on gently. “Twenty thousand pounds you’ve had from me, money that’s rightfully mine, and yet you begrudge the few measly pounds it would have cost you to take me to Sydney. You and your money! You make me sick.”

“I haven’t touched it,” he said feebly. “It’s there, every penny of it, and more besides.”

“Yes, that’s right. Sitting in the bank, where it always will. You haven’t any intention of spending it, have you? You want to adore it, like a golden calf. Admit it, Luke, you’re a miser. And what an unforgivable idiot you are into the bargain! To treat your wife and daughter the way you wouldn’t dream of treating a pair of dogs, to ignore their existences, let alone their needs! You complacent, conceited, self-centered bastard!”

White-faced, trembling, he searched for speech; to have Meg turn on him, especially after the night, was like being bitten to death by a butterfly. The injustice of her accusations appalled him, but there didn’t seem to be any way he could make her understand the purity of his motives. Womanlike, she saw only the obvious; she just couldn’t appreciate the grand design at back of it all.

So he said, “Oh, Meg!” in tones of bewilderment, despair, resignation. “I’ve never ill-treated you,” he added. “No, I definitely haven’t! There’s no one could say I was cruel to you. No one! You’ve had enough to eat, a roof over your head, you’ve been warm—”

“Oh, yes,” she interrupted. “That’s one thing I’ll grant you. I’ve never been warmer in my life.” She shook her head, laughed. “What’s the use? It’s like talking to a brick wall.”

“I might say the same!”

“By all means do,” said Meggie icily, getting off the bed and slipping on her panties. “I’m not going to divorce you,” she said. “I don’t want to marry again. If you want a divorce, you know where to find me. Technically speaking, I’m the one at fault, aren’t I? I’m deserting you—or at least that’s the way the courts in this country will see it. You and the judge can cry on each other’s shoulders about the perfidies and ingratitude of women.”

“I never deserted you,” he maintained.

“You can keep my twenty thousand pounds, Luke. But not another penny do you ever get from me. My future income I’m going to use to support Justine, and perhaps another child if I’m lucky.”

“So that’s it!” he said. “All you were after was another bloody baby, wasn’t it? That’s why you came down here—a swan song, a little present from me for you to take back to Drogheda with you! Another bloody baby, not me! It never was me, was it? To you I’m just a breeder! Christ, what a have!”

“That’s all most men are to most women,” she said maliciously. “You bring out the worst in me, Luke, in more ways than you’ll ever understand. Be of good cheer! I’ve earned you more money in the last three and a half years than the sugar has. If there is another child, it’s none of your concern. As of this minute I never want to see you again, not as long as I live.”

She was into her clothes. As she picked up her handbag and the little case by the door she turned back, her hand on the knob.

“Let me give you a little word of advice, Luke. In case you ever get yourself another woman, when you’re too old and too tired to give yourself to the cane any more. You can’t kiss for toffee. You open your mouth too wide, you swallow a woman whole like a python. Saliva’s fine, but not a deluge of it.” She wiped her hand viciously across her mouth. “You make me want to be sick! Luke O’Neill, the great I-am! You’re a nothing!”

After she had gone he sat on the edge of the bed staring at the closed door for a long while. Then he shrugged and started to dress. Not a long procedure, in North Queensland. Just a pair of shorts. If he hurried he could get a ride back to the barracks with Arne and the blokes. Good old Arne. Dear old mate. A man was a fool. Sex was one thing, but a man’s mates were quite another.