Free A River Town by Thomas Keneally Page A

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 doorthen. 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 andsaid, “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