“In a week or two. He’ll come up on the night mail. I wanted him to fly, but he said he preferred the train.”

“Patsy and I will meet him,” Jims offered eagerly, then his face fell. “Oh! We don’t know what he looks like!”

“No,” said Fee. “I’ll meet him myself. On my own. I’m not in my dotage yet; I can still drive to Gilly.”

“Mum’s right,” said Meggie firmly, forestalling a chorus of protests from her brothers. “Let Mum meet him on her own. She’s the one ought to see him first.”

“Well, I have work to do,” said Fee gruffly, getting up and moving toward her desk.

The five brothers rose as one man. “And I reckon it’s our bed-time,” said Bob, yawning elaborately. He smiled shyly at Cardinal Ralph. “It will be like old times, to have you saying Mass for us in the morning.”

Meggie folded her knitting, put it away, got up. “I’ll say good night, too, Ralph.”

“Good night, Meggie.” His eyes followed her as she went out of the room, then turned to Fee’s hunched back. “Good night, Fee.”

“I beg your pardon? Did you say something?”

“I said good night.”

“Oh! Good night, Ralph.”

He didn’t want to go upstairs so soon after Meggie. “I’m going for a walk before I turn in, I think. Do you know something, Fee?”

“No.” Her voice was absent.

“You don’t fool me for a minute.”

She snorted with laughter, an eerie sound. “Don’t I? I wonder about that.”

Late, and the stars. The southern stars, wheeling across the heavens. He had lost his hold upon them forever, though they were still there, too distant to warm, too remote to comfort. Closer to God, Who was a wisp between them. For a long time he stood looking up, listening to the wind in the trees, smiling.

Reluctant to be near Fee, he used the flight of stairs at the far end of the house; the lamp over her desk still burned and he could see her bent silhouette there, working. Poor Fee. How much she must dread going to bed, though perhaps when Frank came home it would be easier. Perhaps.

At the top of the stairs silence met him thickly; a crystal lamp on a narrow hall table shed a dim pool of light for the comfort of nocturnal wanderers, flickering as the night breeze billowed the curtains inward around the window next to it. He passed it by, his feet on the heavy carpeting making no sound.

Meggie’s door was wide open, more light welling through it; blocking the rays for a moment, he shut her door behind him and locked it. She had donned a loose wrapper and was sitting in a chair by the window looking out across the invisible Home Paddock, but her head turned to watch him walk to the bed, sit on its edge. Slowly she got up and came to him.

“Here, I’ll help you get your boots off. That’s the reason I never wear knee ones myself. I can’t get them off without a jack, and a jack ruins good boots.”

“Did you wear that color deliberately, Meggie?”

“Ashes of roses?” She smiled. “It’s always been my favorite color. It doesn’t clash with my hair.”

He put one foot on her backside while she pulled a boot off, then changed it for the bare foot.

“Were you so sure I’d come to you, Meggie?”

“I told you. On Drogheda you’re mine. Had you not come to me, I’d have gone to you, make no mistake.” She drew his shirt over his head, and for a moment her hand rested with luxurious sensitivity on his bare back, then she went across to the lamp and turned it out, while he draped his clothes over a chair back. He could hear her moving about, shedding her wrapper. And tomorrow morning I’ll say Mass. But that’s tomorrow morning, and the magic has long gone. There is still the night, and Meggie. I have wanted her. She, too, is a sacrament.

* * *

Dane was disappointed. “I thought you’d wear a red soutane!” he said.

“Sometimes I do, Dane, but only within the walls of the palace. Outside it, I wear a black soutane with a red sash, like this.”

“Do you really have a palace?”

“Yes.”

“Is it full of chandeliers?”

“Yes, but so is Drogheda.”

“Oh, Drogheda!” said Dane in disgust. “I’ll bet ours are little ones compared to yours. I’d love to see your palace, and you in a red soutane.”

Cardinal Ralph smiled. “Who knows, Dane? Perhaps one day you will.”

The boy had a curious expression always at the back of his eyes; a distant look. When he turned during the Mass, Cardinal Ralph saw it reinforced, but he didn’t recognize it, only felt its familiarity. No man sees himself in a mirror as he really is, nor any woman.

* * *

Luddie and Anne Mueller were due in for Christmas, as indeed they were every year. The big house was full of light-hearted people, looking forward to the best Christmas in years; Minnie and Cat sang tunelessly as they worked, Mrs. Smith’s plump face was wreathed in smiles, Meggie relinquished Dane to Cardinal Ralph without comment, and Fee seemed much happier, less glued to her desk. The men seized upon any excuse to make it back in each night, for after a late dinner the drawing room buzzed with conversation, and Mrs. Smith had taken to preparing a bedtime supper snack of melted cheese on toast, hot buttered crumpets and raisin scones. Cardinal Ralph protested that so much good food would make him fat, but after three days of Drogheda air, Drogheda people and Drogheda food, he seemed to be shedding the rather gaunt, haggard look he had worn when he arrived.

The fourth day came in very hot. Cardinal Ralph had gone with Dane to bring in a mob of sheep, Justine sulked alone in the pepper tree, and Meggie lounged on a cushioned cane settee on the veranda. Her bones felt limp, glutted, and she was very happy. A woman can live without it quite well for years at a stretch, but it was nice, when it was the one man. When she was with Ralph every part of her came alive except that part which belonged to Dane; the trouble was, when she was with Dane every part of her came alive except that which belonged to Ralph. Only when both of them were present in her world simultaneously, as now, did she feel utterly complete. Well, it stood to reason. Dane was her son, but Ralph was her man.

Yet one thing marred her happiness; Ralph hadn’t seen. So her mouth remained closed upon her secret. If he couldn’t see it for himself, why should she tell him? What had he ever done, to earn the telling? That he could think for a moment she had gone back to Luke willingly was the last straw. He didn’t deserve to be told, if he could think that of her. Sometimes she felt Fee’s pale, ironic eyes upon her, and she would stare back, unperturbed. Fee understood, she really did. Understood the half-hate, the resentment, the desire to pay back the lonely years. Off chasing rainbows, that was Ralph de Bricassart; and why should she gift him with the most exquisite rainbow of all, his son? Let him be deprived. Let him suffer, never knowing he suffered.

The phone rang its Drogheda code; Meggie listened idly, then realizing her mother must be elsewhere, she got up reluctantly and went to answer it.

“Mrs. Fiona Cleary, please,” said a man’s voice.

When Meggie called her name, Fee returned to take the receiver. “Fiona Cleary speaking,” she said, and as she stood listening the color faded gradually from her face, making it look as it had looked in the days after Paddy and Stu died; tiny and vulnerable. “Thank you,” she said, and hung up.

“What is it, Mum?”

“Frank’s been released. He’s coming up on the night mail this afternoon.” She looked at her watch. “I must leave soon; it’s after two.”

“Let me come with you,” Meggie offered, so filled with her own happiness she couldn’t bear to see her mother disappointed; she sensed that this meeting couldn’t be pure joy for Fee.

“No, Meggie, I’ll be all right. You take care of things here, and hold dinner until I get back.”

“Isn’t it wonderful, Mum? Frank’s coming home in time for Christmas!”

“Yes,” said Fee, “it is wonderful.”

* * *

No one traveled on the night mail these days if they could fly, so by the time it had huffed the six hundred miles from Sydney, dropping its mostly second-class passengers at this small town or that, few people were left to be disgorged in Gilly.

The stationmaster had a nodding acquaintance with Mrs. Cleary but would never have dreamed of engaging her in conversation, so he just watched her descend the wooden steps from the overhead footbridge, and left her alone to stand stiffly on the high platform. She was a stylish old girl, he thought; up-to-date dress and hat, high-heeled shoes, too. Good figure, not many lines on her face really for an old girl; just went to show what the easy life of a grazier could do for a woman.

So that on the surface Frank recognized his mother more quickly than she did him, though her heart knew him at once. He was fifty-two years old, and the years of his absence were those which had carried him from youth to middle age. The man who stood in the Gilly sunset was too thin, gaunt almost, very pale; his hair was cropped halfway up his head, he wore shapeless clothes which hung on a frame still hinting at power for all its small size, and his well-shaped hands were clamped on the brim of a grey felt hat. He wasn’t stooped or ill-looking, but he stood helplessly twisting that hat between his hands and seemed not to expect anyone to meet him, nor to know what next he ought to do.

Fee, controlled, walked briskly down the platform.

“Hello, Frank,” she said.

He lifted the eyes which used to flash and sparkle so, set now in the face of an aging man. Not Frank’s eyes at all. Exhausted, patient, intensely weary. But as they absorbed the sight of Fee an extraordinary expression came into them, wounded, utterly defenseless, filled with the appeal of a dying man.