4

Jas

Jasenka Delaney studied herself in the full-length bedroom mirror. The crow’s feet around her eyes were getting worse. Sydney sun was going to add many more. Call them laugh lines, they remained undesirable. The Jane Fonda workout didn’t get rid of wrinkles. Concentrate on what she could influence. She pulled at the lapels of the black jacket she was trying over her slip. It fitted fine. Thank God she brought the jacket. She almost did not. You can wear a black dress anywhere, as they said of Jackie O, but the jacket not necessarily. The jacket was funereal for a wine launch, for a funeral it was perfect.

She stood side-on, checked her tummy, no unacceptable bulge. Not bad for a woman of a certain age. She rummaged in her jewellery purse and lifted out the silver cross on a thin silver chain. She clipped the clasp behind her neck, the cross sat well just above her cleavage. She decided it was appropriate. Alain wore a chunkier silver cross. She was sure he was Catholic, but that was not sufficient grounds to ask him to accompany them to the funeral.

She glanced at the prone figure of her husband sprawled out on the distressed marital bed, honking as he had all night like a goose with a blocked bill. Her twisting and turning had kicked off most of the bed clothes in the night -- before she abandoned the bed and its impossibly noisy fellow occupant.

After several exciting days in Alain’s stimulating company, she was going to a funeral with her sleep-loud and daytime dull-boot husband. She had given him over the last few days several serves for his indifference and unsupportive behaviour from the word go. The funeral was an unfortunate distraction from why they were here, but unavoidable since her husband told Mira about her brother’s death. Jas gave him a spray for the way he sprung it on her at the cocktail party. He adopted the puzzled look he increasingly wore, as if life itself was a puzzle. It probably was. Big mistake marrying someone that much older. Last night she asked him why he bothered to come. He looked predictably puzzled. She told him in no uncertain terms he was not even trying to contribute. Puzzled look. She had gone a tad too far when she said it would have been better if he had stayed at home, and better still if he checked into an old folks’ home -- where he would be right at home, pun intended. He was a witless study in puzzlement.

Earlier in the evening she was provoked enough by his obvious indifference to the launch to stomp away from him at the cocktail party and tell Marty her husband was as useless as a chocolate teapot. It just came out, the phrase her father liked to use about idle orchard labourers. Marty laughed, suggested a glass hammer. She looked blank.

‘One-armed paperhanger?’

She got it. ‘Very funny,’ she said.

She told him her husband wanted to go off to a funeral for this despicable lowlife he and their older daughter had visited. Turned out he was her daughter-in-law’s criminal brother.

Marty looked at Michelle, confided Frankie might have lived like a down-and-out, but that would be so Yucca O’Toole could not claim any further debt from him. Marty said they were both going to the funeral and the will-reading.

That got her attention. ‘You think he left much this O’Toole character did not grab?’

Marty said from what he had heard Frankie was sick but not brain-dead.

This was when Daniel blurted Frankie was really Mira’s brother Ante. Mira began shrieking hysterically, all but beating her breasts, blaming everybody for preventing her seeing her dying brother and keeping her in the dark. At which stage thankfully the guests had gone. Mira drained one of the Vukovich bottles and was starting on a second when Jas summoned the hotel doctor, who prescribed Valium. Mira gave her sex a bad name as hysterical and unable to cope.

Jas did contemplate asking for some of the drug for herself, and a double dose for her husband, in the hope he might sleep without snoring. She soon wished she had. In the underactive marital bed, she had wriggled while her husband snored. Jabbing him in the side several times achieved only a momentary silence. There was not the option of the spare room he occupied at home. It had seemed too much trouble to rouse him, hence the retreat to the sitting room couch.

It seemed seconds later she was roused by a rap on the door. She staggered down the passageway in her slip, hauled open the door ready to give the hotel staffer a sharp enquiry about whether he or she could read ‘Do not disturb’. The staffer was invisible under a mound of clothes, gasping that Mr Webber sent a choice of funeral garments. She told him to dump the clothes and leave, and next time ring first. He obeyed and fled the shutting door.

There was nothing there for her. She chose a baggy old black suit for her husband, woke him up with a sharp jab she should have employed last night and sent him with the clothes next door to Mira and Matt. And tell them she would see them in the restaurant when she was ready.

Matt, she figured, would need several strong coffees, having also overindulged. He tended to follow his wife’s lead, unlike Daniel. Her husband used to in earlier, better days. Now he noodled about in a vague state, unable to apply himself. Useless as tits on a bull, her father would have said, but of course she would not employ such a vulgar phrase, at least not in company.

Meantime their daughters were going off the rails. She perhaps should have paid them more attention. The problem was the family business they would eventually inherit a good dollop of was requiring more and more of her time. If Alice and Maria pitched in or were at least supportive it would make a difference. They were taking their stance from their father. Mira and Matt were with her all the way, but her daughters were indifferent. She could have coped with that, if Alice had not wilfully ended her academic career with this stupid protesting, as if she could possibly make a difference.

Maria was steady in what was once her father’s and her occupation. Just like her sister, once Maria crossed the Ditch the steadiness went out the window. And like her sister, it was proving disastrous. Jas couldn’t credit what her husband reported, Maria making an exhibition of herself walking around Australia’s most popular beach virtually naked. She cringed at the thought of Maria literally exposed in the lurid Australian tabloids. So far she had managed to avoid sighting these rags, the Hilton desk displayed the broadsheets. It was scandalous her daughter’s bottom was photographed, it was unthinkable if her face had been, that would have ended her career.

This was the Maria of her early teens, exhibitionist extraordinaire. It was incredibly thoughtless of her to flaunt herself so shamelessly on a Sydney beach at the exact juncture when the family business was taking off in the city. If this behaviour of one of the Vukovich Vineyards clan got out, no matter how totally peripheral Maria was to the business, it would sink their Australian plans. The dream publicity of Dame Kiri and their family on the Opera House steps, which made the broadsheets and a short clip on the ABC, would be wiped out by this nightmare. Even the broadsheets would carry the story. Australia would be a lost cause.

She pressed fingers to her temples. Australia gone. Maybe not Europe?

If or, rather, when Alain found out, he was broad-minded enough to deliver a Gallic shrug. She picked up indications of his French approach to the opposite sex. He had not deliberately bumped into or pressed against her; he was not that crude. He had once turned abruptly straight into her. They were momentarily hard against each other and she blushed at the impression he was already hard. She could not rid her mind of the flattening of her breasts and flashing on them both in a naked embrace. She was no better than Maria.

At the time he was apologetic, checking if she took offence. She had not. She told herself he was too important to get off-side with, even more so now as a European lifeline if Australia went belly up. She did not want to admit to herself it was more than that. Was it all in her head, a silly woman well into middle-age and sinking in a limp marriage?

She examined herself more closely in the mirror. Was this an examination of her conscience? Had she committed a sin of omission, or was it one of commission by reliving that momentary and clearly accidental embrace? Not even an embrace. She had no proof he was flirting, and yet this briefest of contacts was flattering. She was unable to stop her subconscious reliving the incident again and again, which surely meant she had not consciously sinned in thought, word or deed. It was no doubt triggered by no intimacy from her husband in a long time. He was not fulfilling his marital responsibilities. He was past it.

She took a deep breath, patted at the barrettes holding her long hair in place behind her head. It was mostly her own original black. Her father’s hair remained black in his late sixties, unlike her husband’s. Maria had inherited her thick black hair but not much else. She had to face it, her daughters were adults, they had free will, it was their choice to behave badly. She must expunge her own suspect thoughts, which were, the Church instructed, as compromising as word and deed. She made a quick Sign of the Cross. Please God her daughters did not ruin all the punishing work getting their wines into Australia and, with Alain’s confident backing, Europe.

She remembered Ante as the arrogant teenage heir to the growing Vukovich fortune. His father was a nasty piece of work, and the son was cut from the same cloth. She was little more than a teen herself when Dally Valley was agog at Ante stabbing Matt and shooting through, the police worse than useless at finding him. She sighed, leaned into the mirror to modify the already restrained eyeshadow. How did Jane Fonda look so good at her age?

How had she missed for so long how useless her husband was? He was one of the bumbling cops, and that was when he had a meaningful job. Pity Daniel didn’t have some of Ante’s get up and go, even if it was decidedly anti-social. It was no surprise to learn that Ante reinvented himself as a Sydney villain. Last night he got more toasts in death than he ever got in life from his sister and her husband he so nearly killed.

Marty herded the reduced family down to the hotel forecourt. They were minus her daughters – Maria had gone walkabout and Ali was supposed to see them at the funeral. A huge, red wine-coloured British Royals sort of car was waiting. It lacked the famous Rolls Royce flying lady emblem on the bonnet, which meant it was not a Rolls, but something similar. Jas was impressed, thinking that if their wine was a hit abroad, then they could entertain flasher cars to replace the ancient Morris her husband was so inexplicably attached to and the beaten-up Holden Matt and Mira used. Best not count those chickens before they hatch.

As Marty held the front door open for her, Jas was surprised Michelle Chanel was at the wheel. Surely not in high heels? No, barefoot, the high heels lying on the floor. She too had her hair piled up, but in a sort of topknot bun, encircled in what was probably a real diamond tiara type of barrette. Matching necklace and stunning earrings. Black sheath dress, of course, arms bare and smooth as Nestlé milk chocolate. She wouldn’t know the rule about women using a head covering in Catholic churches. Her fiancée couldn’t tell her, he was a Jew. At least he was in a dark blue velvet jacket, reasonably subdued.

‘You like it, doll?’

‘Eh?’ she said, irritated that this woman addressed her as ‘doll’, and the further irritation of Daniel cramming in next to her when there was plenty of room in the back. Why did men have to sit in the front? Marty shut the door with the faintest of thuds.

Michelle waved her long glistening black fingernails. ‘You like my headpiece?’

‘Oh,’ she said, flushing. ‘I didn’t mean to stare. It is rather nice.’

‘Can we get going?’ Mira croaked in a voice that was husky from too much of their product. Large opaque brown sunglasses a match for those Ali habitually wore. Jas would have welcomed a pair. She shunted her husband against the door and tilted the passenger sun visor. She slid open the embedded vanity mirror to check her makeup. Mira was sitting up straight, like a wan Mafia widow in those violent Godfather movies, recently bereaved by violent executions being driven to the obligatory cemetery scene. Except of course Matt was beside her. And Marty on the other side of her, the sole mafioso survivor of the machinegunning. Jas slid the mirror cover shut on such idle thoughts. Michelle said it was ‘no prob’ in response to Mira’s request, easing out of the forecourt crescent.

Matt was saying there was no hurry, the service was not going to start without them. Not a very sensitive remark. Probably nervous, like all of them.

Marty was wondering how many would be there. Another aimless, airhead remark. Nobody answered. Nobody knew. Jas noted how competent Michelle was at handling the big lump of a car, whilst informing them that they were crossing her old stomping ground. Nobody asked for details. Jas for one did not ever want to know.

Jas closed her eyes, welcoming the cool albeit stale breeze from the air conditioning. The car purred a little louder as she was pressed into the seat, opening her eyes as they surged effortlessly up a steep hill. She closed her eyes again, tuning out Michelle’s commentary. She opened her eyes as they came to a stop.

They were in a tidy suburban street, the sign outside for St Brigid’s Catholic Church. It didn’t look to her much like a church, a rather boxy, two-storey structure of modest proportions. Nothing wooden cottage Gothic, like many churches back home. Its lower storey reminded her of the volcanic bricks used in Auckland’s inner suburbs for walls and pavement edges. It was not the rough uniformly black basalt of Auckland. These bricks were black in the centre, circumscribed in beige. She supposed it was quarried from the immediate area, which was called The Rocks. The upper storey had to be an add-on, it was larger blocks painted a creamy beige. Across the road was a long building that looked like a warehouse converted to retail shops. There were trees framing the structure, and trees planted along a pleasant suburban street of terraced brick houses in good nick. The trees were spindly and had the desiccated foliage she was getting used to, more sage than fresh Kiwi green.

Jas peered through the windscreen. Upstairs had to be the St Brigid’s School identified on the plaque next to the side entrance.

‘C’mon, lovey,’ Michelle said, patting her on the thigh. Jas jerked and nudged her husband. She ignored his helping hand. They walked straight into a modest church of plain pews and the usual statues, Holy Mary, Mother of God, in blue and white on the right of the humble altar, Jesus exposing His Sacred Heart on the left. The Stations of the Cross were standard friezes framed in wooden spires, the Gothic style brought inside. The overhead butcher fans were turning, which was a blessed relief.

As she paused to put a scarf over her head, she noticed a man at the back in an absurd shiny green suit and silver hair swept back like that loud-mouthed new Australian prime minister Matt told her was known as the Silver Bodgie. Despite his head held high, he was the size of a schoolboy next to the two huge men with pock-marked faces and shoulders barely contained under sharkskin grey suits. As she passed this unsavoury group, she heard him hiss something at the two men and they removed grey plastic pork-pie hats, revealing blotchy pink heads that looked like they had been shorn with blunt sheep shears. Bodgie boy ruled that little roost.

The journalist Ali apparently worked with was here on his own, his cerise suit looking decidedly grubby. Wearing it two days running was bad enough, but it was so rumpled it looked as if he had slept in it. He probably had, given the amount of their wine he had consumed. It did not augur well if he was going to write about their company. He had been civil, but journalists were not the most trustworthy people. She said a quick prayer her older daughter would not stoop again to the yellow journalism level. He had his head down, checking something in his notebook.

Mira was also tying her scarf under her chin, like they were Princess Anne and the Queen, further trapping heat. Michelle in absurdly high heels minced up the nave, a model on a catwalk. Marty was trying to catch up, a dresser with an accessory she had forgotten. She took a front left seat and Jas noted her removing a large hankie from her big black glossy handbag. She unfurled what proved to be a beautiful black lace scarf she draped over her head. She sat up straight, looking like a noble Spanish senorita, whatever was the female equivalent of a Don. She did know about head coverings. Thinking she did not was an unkind thought, a venial sin. Judge not that ye be not judged.

The usual warbling low-volume organ music started as a pudgy young priest emerged around the flower-laden coffin. He checked who Mira and Matt were and directed them into the front right pew. Jas slipped in next to Mira, Daniel following. Not many mourners. A few small groups of raddled looking women with too much maquillage, their hair piled up in poor imitation of Michelle, indecently short dresses and dangerously high heels. In contrast a group of nuns bent in prayer at the front of the side aisle, a dark blue and almost invisible penumbra beyond the flickering light of the several large altar candles.

‘Is that Father Petrus?’ she asked Matt.

‘No,’ he whispered. ‘Father Larkin. His assistant.’

‘Curate,’ she corrected.

‘Welcome,’ Fr Larkin said in the high, immature voice Jas would expect of a choir boy. He was looking a little disappointed as he cast his gaze around the sparsely populated church. Not much for the collection plate.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We are gathered here for the funeral mass for …’ He checked his notes. ‘Mr Francis Xavier Frankuvich. Whilst I have not personally observed him at church here, my venerable colleague Father Petrus and I have visited him at his home during his final days on earth. We are here to pray for the repose of his immortal soul. Father Petrus will be conducting the mass and I will assist.’

The priest disappeared behind the huge mound of mostly white flowers swamping the coffin. The organ music ceased as he returned with a quivering old priest, who waved away his assistant as he slowly ascended the steps to the altar. Jas thought he would be having his own funeral before too long. The black chasuble shrouded his bent body and with his bald head she was strangely reminded of a raven she chanced upon in a Gisborne vineyard. Black as sin and much larger than a magpie, an unsettling encounter, for it as much as her, its wings flapping and for a moment flailing before it escaped.

The priest had his hands spread, his body shaking as he faced the coffin, delivering in an unexpectedly strong, deep voice Requiem aeternam. Jas felt the old thrill of a Latin Mass. At Oratia Father O’Connor stuck religiously to the new orthodoxy, never saying Mass in Latin. She missed the mysterious comfort of Latin words she never understood. Latin was no longer taught by the nuns when she went to school. Her dated missal ran Latin on the left, the translation on the right, and she tried to read the Latin as well as the English. She knew the All Souls Day Mass for the Dead, translating the priest’s Latin to herself:

‘Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him.’

She blessed herself as the priest bowed before the altar: In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sanctus.

She murmured Amen.

Introibo ad altare Dei.

Father Petrus delivered the Confiteor and the Kyrie and Gloria plain chants, Jas joining Father Larkin in the Latin responses. The latter delivered Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians in English, the familiar words ‘in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, the dead shall rise incorruptible.’ Mira was sobbing.

`Oh death, where is thy sting?’

Father Petrus noisily cleared his throat. Father Larkin took his cue and left the altar, returning to place a lectern in front of his colleague. Not a moment too soon. The old priest grabbed either side of the wooden platform. It looked as if he would topple over and take the lectern with him. He steadied himself and the lectern as his colleague advanced and then retreated.

‘Due to my condition,’ the old priest said in a deep voice at such vigorous odds with his trembling body, ‘my brother in Christ will conduct the burial service at the graveyard. There will be an opportunity then -- or perhaps when you convene afterwards at a hostelry – to talk about the departed. In lieu of a sermon …’ He paused.

Jas guessed he had lost the plot. It appeared his assistant feared so, for he was approaching him. He was waved away.

‘In lieu of a sermon,’ the old priest repeated, ‘I will say a few words about the departed. It is not for us to judge this man who was once notorious for his connection with a house of ill repute and other unwholesome activities. God will be his judge.’

‘No need,’ said a voice from the back of the chapel in a loud stage whisper. ‘We sorted him.’

Michelle was on her feet. Jas swivelled on the pew. The bodgie and his two droogs were smirking. Alice was kneeling behind them, head down, hands clasped. Jas had not seen her arrive, typical of the way she suddenly appeared, and just as quickly disappeared. A line from a sixties pop song came to mind: ‘Creeping like a nun.’

There was an adolescent period when Alice was thinking of becoming a bride of Christ. The careers adviser at Baradene confided that her daughter had asked about the Carmelites in Mt Albert Road. Jas had balked at Alice entering a silent order, she wanted to see her achieve academic distinction and then be seen at the likes of the Glen Eden tennis club, where Jas had been treasurer before the wine demanded all her time. She did not encourage either the school’s enthusiasm or her daughter’s and the subject lapsed. Now look at what happened. Writing about Sydney prostitutes and consorting with agitators, her academic career down the gurgler. And she was not thriving exactly. She was a wraith. Was she anorexic? As her mother could she have been more supportive? Now it was too late.

‘I remind you,’ Father Petrus said sternly, ‘we are in God’s

house. I further remind you of Mary Magdalene’s story from the New Testament. She was a fallen woman, yet Christ forgave her sins and she anointed His feet and wiped them with her hair. All who repent sincerely will be saved. Jesus said there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 just men who need not repent. Father Larkin and I visited Mr Frankuvich on his deathbed and ministered the sacraments. He passed off this mortal coil at peace with his Maker and his soul eased. As you will learn when the will is read, he saw fit to leave an extremely generous bequest to our Marist order. As our Good Lord advised, he has given away his riches to the poor, using the conduit of our ministry.’

‘Fuckin Frankie!’ the bodgie cursed. Jas turned as the crash of a pew cleared the way for the bodgie and his hulking assistants to stomp out of the church.

Michelle had her hands on her hips, glaring after them. ‘Good riddance,’ she said. ‘Sorry, Father, O’Toole has no respect.’

Mira was restraining Matt from going after them, her husband was agreeing with Marty agreeing with Michelle, the cluster of modern Mary Magdalenes were on their feet and exchanging indignant remarks, the nuns were bent into a protective scrum. Father Petrus was teetering, and Father Larkin reached him in time to steady both him and the lectern. He helped the old priest to a chair beside the altar and returned to the lectern.

‘Please be seated,’ he said. ‘We will continue with the Gospel of St John: And they that have done good things shall come forth unto the resurrection of life, but they that have done evil …’

Mira’s intensified sobbing drowned out the Gospel’s conclusion. Matt had his arm around her shoulders. Jas could hear the women behind her exchanging whispered opinions. None of them knew how to behave at a solemn Mass. It was for the best Maria was not there. She might have been no better behaved.

Jas kneeled and rested her elbows on the back of the pew in front, closed her eyes, her hands clasped in prayer, and concentrated on the successive rituals of the Mass. She translated in her head the old priest’s Credo, bowed her head as the young priest rang the bells for the consecration of the Host and the wine. Jas shivered involuntarily at the elevation of the Host.

She was settling. There were no more unseemly interruptions. She was pleasantly surprised the old priest continued to make a more than fair fist of chanting the longer prayers like the Pater Noster. His rote memory did not let him down.

Jas was the only one apart from the nuns to go to the altar and take communion.

Jas was kneeling in prayer and resisting fingering out the fragment of the Body of Christ stuck to the roof of her mouth when Father Larkin began St John’s Last Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God …’

Daniel leaned down and confided this was his favourite bit of the Mass. She frowned. Did he mean because it was the end? She missed a few sentences, hearing ‘and the Light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth not.’

She had never understood this Gospel, but she loved it. She flicked a glance up at Daniel, praying he was not being cynical, praying she was not being cynical about him.

The organ music had started again, two men in dark suits were wheeling the coffin down the nave, the assembly standing. Jas could not face the burial, having to mix with and perhaps talk to those women. She told Daniel to go on with the others, she would stay awhile. He looked uncertain, said he still had not had a chance to confront Larkin about this relation nonsense, he would do at the will reading. She had no idea what he meant. He shrugged, said the old priest was obviously gaga, they would not get any sense out of him. She could have told him he was not making any sense to her, but she needed peace and quiet, not more confusion. She told him she would get a taxi, ignoring the looks she was getting from across the aisle. Michelle shrugged and led the exodus.

The exception of course was Alice, who was engaged in an intense conversation with the curate. She had not taken communion. She probably wanted to confess some ridiculous thought or word, unlikely a deed, that she felt prevented her receiving the Body of Christ. She had always been too literal and naïve for her own good. Australia did seem to have made her a little more worldly, at least by association, writing about that prostitute and flatting with the dodgy Yank. Either could be preying on her conscience. Unfortunately, Australia had encouraged her younger sister to make herself a public scandal. What had she done to deserve daughters develop at the extremes of introvert and extrovert? Had she failed in her maternal duty? Or was it her husband always indulging them?

A heavy hand was on her shoulder. ‘My child? Are you unwell? Is something troubling you?’

She had not moved from the kneeling position, fingers clasped. She could smell the scent of extinguished candles, but no incense, that was not used at the Mass for the Dead. The old priest was doing his raven crouch, leaning on her shoulder, his arm quivering. Any moment he would fall over.

‘Thank you, no,’ she said, standing, ready to steady him if required.

‘You obviously knew the deceased?’

‘Not really. My husband did.’

‘And he was?’

‘Daniel Delaney.’

The old priest smacked his forehead, and now he was wobbling. She caught his arm, said it was her turn to ask if he was unwell?

He snorted. ‘All the time, it’s a condition of age. But no, I just remembered something. I keep forgetting things. Now, what was it? Ah yes, I must talk to you about Michael.’ Didn’t he mean Frankie, the name by which he surely knew Ante Vukovich? Make allowances, he was obviously losing the plot.

‘Take a seat, Father,’ she said.

‘No, I have a better idea. Let’s go into the sacristy. I have some reasonable wine.’

She followed him. She was hoping to convert his wine to water, she had no desire to drink alcohol at this hour with another priest who drank too much.

She helped him haul off the chasuble, undid the rope and pulled off the billowing alb.

‘Better,’ he wheezed, pointing to a corduroy-covered easy chair of a mossy green you never saw now, took its twin the other side of a gleaming occasional table with a beautifully embroidered linen mat. He poured two generous glasses, she accepted one of them.

‘A beaker of the warm Antipodean south, eh?’

He clinked glasses rather too hard. He took a deep draught, she sipped. It seemed rude to go to the basin for a glass of water.

‘Would you like a wine biscuit?’

‘I’m not hungry,’ she said. ‘Nice wine.’

He smiled, rearranging a tuatara’s worth of facial wrinkles. She involuntarily checked her make-up. He gulped again and waved the bottle at her, mercifully the remaining wine swirling but staying in the bottle. She declined a refill, having scarcely touched the red wine, which at the best of times did not agree with her.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Wine has improved in recent times, rather like the wine Jesus provided at the Marriage Feast at Cana.’

She resisted the comment that she wouldn’t know. She tried to avoid her eyes straying to his excessive nose and ear hair, to his bald head covered with cancerous looking red blotches, like those NASA maps of Mars, worse than the badly shaved heads of those two thugs. ‘What have you remembered, Father?’

‘Mrs Delaney, yes?’

She said she was, the priest frowning.

‘Michael?’ she prompted.

‘Mary Delaney,’ he said. ‘That would be your husband’s mother.’

It was her turn to frown. ‘Yes. But why do you ask?’

He put down his glass. ‘I only have the one wine or I fall asleep. Sad story. I promised Mr Frankuvich I would tell your family. His proviso that it was when he was gone. Assuredly he has, and I fear I will not be long following him. Do not be alarmed, Mrs Delaney. That part was not under the seal of confession. As I said, he has gifted the church a most generous bequest, the condition that your family learn about Michael.’

‘Michael?’

‘Yes. It is a little difficult. I was not sure how to broach the subject. Your remaining in church seemed an opportunity. Not necessarily heaven-sent, but suitable.’

She took another sip, wishing he would get on with it. She couldn’t put up much longer with the sight of white hairs sprouting out of his nostrils and his ears. You’d think the nuns might tend to this.

‘Many moons ago your … sorry, his mother.’ He belched. ‘Pardon me. We had a member of our flock, a young man. He, um, strayed. No, that was later. Your mother Mary, she arrived in, er, extremis.’

‘Dying?’

‘No, the opposite.’ He waited.

‘Pregnant?’

‘Quite so. Indeed, she, um, had the baby instanter.’ He again pulled a white handkerchief out of a cassock pocket and dabbed at his face. ‘This heat. Yes, so Mary Delaney delivered her baby in the hallway. Most unfortunate. Thank the Lord for the good teaching sisters.’

‘Are you talking about Daniel? You said Michael.’

‘Yes, yes, Michael. That is the name we christened him. Mrs Delaney left him in our care and returned to her husband in New Zealand.’

Jas took a gulp of the wine. ‘My husband, if I am getting this right, he has a brother in Sydney. I assume his father is the father in question?’

The priest examined the threadbare red carpet. ‘No, alas, not so. Mrs Delaney arrived here in the company of a local man I knew. Irish extraction. His ancestors were sent out for rebellion against the Crown. Mo McBride was his name. Maurice. He claimed he inherited the convict stain. I knew Mo. He was active at night around the Rocks. When it had a reputation.’

‘Let me see if I have this right. My husband’s mother had a child here by another man. A criminal. And he did a runner. She dumped the baby on you and also did a bunk.’

‘Yes,’ the old priest said. ‘I suppose you could put it that way.’

‘Do you recall how he came to meet Mrs Delaney?’

‘Not really. She did tell me he wanted to take her with him to Ireland to redress some ancient wrong done to the family. He did not say how he had tracked her down, but I suppose he had a degree of criminal cunning. I think he had come back here to fund his planned travel to Ireland. I sought no details.’

‘You said the family? Dan’s mother has the maiden name McBride. Is she related to this Maurice McBride? Is she a close relation?’

The priest kept his eyes on the floor. His face reddened. He had blundered. He should have realised she would know her husband’s mother’s maiden name. She had picked up on his foolishness. Why would anyone think this man would go to New Zealand and persuade a married woman there to go with him to Sydney and then to Ireland, unless there was some personal connection? God forgive him.

‘The seal of confession does not apply, she did not at first seek that. She did say how unhappy she was in her marriage. She said her husband drank heavily and associated with street women. I do not, I am sorry, recall if they were first or second cousins.’

Jas glared at him. ‘In the eyes of the Church it would be incest, yes?’

‘No,’ he said, waving vaguely, aware he was about to contradict himself. ‘I do not think they were first cousins. Whatever the case, she could not keep the child. My superior left me to provide spiritual comfort to the new young mother.’ He took a deep breath, one hand gripping the other, an attempt to moderate the shaking. ‘I offered her religious consolation. We prayed together. She took my advice to return to her husband and throw herself on his mercy.’

‘This is appalling.’

‘Yes. I am afraid it is. However, in the eyes of the Church they were and always would be united in the bonds of holy matrimony, in sickness and in health, till death do them part.’

She shook her head, overwhelmed, unable to make any sort of comment.

‘I am sure you understand,’ he pleaded. ‘We couldn’t look after an infant. We persuaded a Catholic couple, the Bradys, to adopt him. They had not been blessed with children. She welcomed the infant. Mr Brady was not so happy. But by then the papers had been issued and Michael Brady was his name.’

‘Do you know where he is?’

‘Where Michael is?’ he stalled. ‘Um, no. There was apparently a falling out with his adopted father. When he was about 15. Michael ended up on the streets. Mrs Brady came to us for help, but we never found him.’

Jas was beginning to see where this was going. ‘Frankie?’

The priest nodded, keeping his eyes downcast. ‘Yes, Michael worked for Frankie, I regret to say. Frankie did repent. But sadly, we never found out what happened to Michael after he fled again, this time from that den of iniquity. We have prayed for him. Alas, our prayers have not been answered. Not yet. Where there’s life …’

‘If he is alive.’

‘We think he is.’

‘Evidence?’ she snapped, unable to restrain her irritation.

‘Frankie told me some details under the seal of confession.’

‘That you cannot reveal.’

‘Frankie did say Michael was alive and living a born-again life.’

‘Fundamentalist Christian?’

‘He said that it was up to you to find out what sort of life.’ Jas had heard her husband sounding off often enough about Frankie when he was Ante Vukovich. How malign he was. Did Frankie think confession would absolve him if he knew something about Daniel’s unknown brother and did not reveal it as he was about to meet his Maker? This was all so unsettling. Daniel always talked about his mother as if she was a saint. It was going to be a terrible blow to him. But if it was true, there was a relation somewhere in Australia not just a half-brother to Daniel, but also some kind of step-uncle to her children. Did they have the right to know?

They did have the right, distressing as it would be. Mira drank a bottle and a half of wine when she learned her brother had been alive while she was here, that he had met Daniel and Alice, yet he would not attempt any reconciliation on his deathbed with his own flesh and blood. That to Jas was itself a significant sin.

‘It is truly shocking news,’ Father Petrus said feebly. ‘We can pray together -- if you wish?’

Jas felt tears prickling. She shook her head, trying to regain composure. She was unsure why she was upset. Was it because his sympathy was empty and useless, or came when she felt vulnerable? Was it a delayed reaction to all these tensions in her private and professional life? She couldn’t stop herself sobbing. He took her hand in both of his and told her to let herself grieve.

‘Sorry,’ she said, using her other hand to extract a tissue from the jacket pocket. ‘I don’t usually, um, break down.’

‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘we have to. As I said, there is more rejoicing over one sinner repenting.’

She dabbed at her nose and eyes. ‘No, Father. It is not Ante or Frankie or whatever he calls himself. It is everything. My daughters. My husband. The wine company. Me.’

He held on to her hand. She found it comforting. He said nothing. Perhaps he sought comfort too. He had lived most of his life with this dreadful secret.

She stifled sniffles with the tissue. ‘I have been … preoccupied. I have not been …’ She paused. What was she trying to say? The old priest waited silently. She could smell candles and the lingering scent of the funeral flowers. Her nose had cleared. Her mind had not. She felt hot and bothered and hoped she was not blushing. ‘Sorry, father, I mustn’t waste your time with my … anxieties.’

The priest sighed. ‘My job definition is listening to people talk about their concerns. And I have nothing but time, God willing for a little while longer.’

She tried to swallow and clear her throat. ‘Yes. Thank you. I have not talked about my life for a long time. I have been too busy.’ She felt idiotic, burdening this already burdened old priest with her domestic woes, on top of his own confession about Daniel’s mother, idiotic that she had been too busy to address the issues in her family.

He poured wine into both their glasses. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘I think we need it. Wine is beneficial in moments of crisis. Our Lord thought so at Cana.’

She sipped. It did help. She felt like there was an easing of the coiled spring inside her.

‘Would you like to talk about what is troubling you in your personal life?’

She surprised herself by saying she did, but then could not think of the words. He sat there alongside her, took a mouthful of wine, coughed as it went down the wrong way. He spluttered wine over the front of his cassock, banged at his chest, hauled out a handkerchief to pat himself down. She blushed with embarrassment for putting him in this situation. This would not do. She sat up straight, cleared her throat, avoided more wine in case she too could not swallow it.

‘It’s everything. I am worried about my daughters going off the rails since they came here. I find my husband increasingly, well, no help. We have come here …’ She held up the glass of wine. ‘Hoping to establish our wine. It has taken so much time and effort and resources, and now we have these other problems. I’m not sure I should talk about these things.’ She knew she was rambling. ‘I judge everybody. Nothing is going right. One of my daughters has a friend who has disappeared. My other daughter had an unfortunate incident at the beach. I won’t go into details. My husband is, well, I suppose detached. Oh, the whole thing is a mess. And we came here with such …’

She felt silly. She was not making any sense. She had contemplated sleeping with Alain. Daniel’s mother had slept with her cousin, a woman who had always been painted by her son as a saint, never a sinner. Yet she herself had already sinned in thought, if not in deed. She needed confession. Adultery. Greed. Contempt. Uncharitable in thought, word and deed. Her head was spinning. She could not ask for confession from a man who was dealing with his own long withheld confession. She stood abruptly, announced she had to go.

‘I will pray for you,’ he said. ‘Come back when you are ready. The Road to Damascus is not always a sudden revelation.’

Was he talking about her or himself? Perhaps both. She suppressed the unworthy thought that he would know all about the Road to Damascus, that he could surely have done more for Mary Delaney and her child than abandon them into the care of an unsuitable family. She murmured thanks and stumbled out of the chapel.

Her chest was so tight that she found it hard to breathe. Her temples throbbed and her sinuses ached. Was this an asthma attack? She had never had one, but she could never forget staying up night after night nursing Maria while she struggled to breathe. In the morning she would leave Maria sleeping soundly and face her own struggle to do her job without falling asleep and become the laughingstock of her male police colleagues by confirming the weaker sex was not up to a real man’s job. She got that anyway. She had come to resent her younger daughter threatening her own health and career and Daniel had done the ‘mothering’ of Maria. Another in the long catalogue of sins accumulated on her Road to Damascus. St Paul had the excuse of persecuting immigrant intruders, while she had wilfully sinned and hidden from her own conscience behind a façade of her own making as a pious Catholic mother.

She was sweaty, light-headed, about to faint, like the only time she donated blood. She had to get a grip. Daniel had to discover the truth. Somebody said the truth will set you free. He needed to be freed from his excessive mother love and the trauma she had previously thought only related to his experiences in a concentration camp. She now knew it ran deeper. He had lost his faith in his mother’s Catholic past because of the way Christian Germany murdered Jews and the Pope looked the other way. He came across cynical about his father’s faith in a socialist future because of the corruption of socialist regimes. He had no regard for capitalism, which exploited the weak and rewarded the strong.

Daniel’s only commitment was to his family, and she recognised that she had dented his faith in his family. His lethargy sprang from his disillusionment. Did his issues go deeper? Was he in danger of surrendering to what the Church said was the greatest of all sins, the sin of despair, the sin against the Holy Ghost? If he felt he had lost his one solid belief, in his family, would he despair and contemplate suicide? His immortal soul would be lost for all eternity. No! She must do everything she could to rescue him. Could she help him? Being a loving wife might be a start.

It was some distraction stepping into the harsh sunlight. She closed her eyes against the intense Australian glare, which seemed to magnify her dire thoughts about her husband’s condition. Were these thoughts to be embraced? There was no sudden Road to Damascus revelation like St Paul experienced when he was knocked off his horse by a visitation from Jesus. A modern interpretation would be that this was a parable or story that dramatised the need for change.

Yes, she did appreciate how badly she had behaved towards her family. She looked both ways, could see no taxi. She took a deep breath and felt some easing of her chest. There was much to consider.

Another sin was thinking ill of the dead, of Ante Vukovich. He had tried to kill Matt, he had likely run down his own sister. He escaped and enjoyed a second criminal career in Sydney steering vulnerable women and worse, vulnerable youth, into being the lewd playthings of lecherous men. God had forgiven him because he confessed his sins; she struggled to forgive such a sustained catalogue of depravity, a lifetime of doing harm unto others which only ended when he did terminal harm to himself. God was all-merciful, but his victims surely could not be expected to wish that Ante Vukovich rest in peace? She believed in earthly justice as much as heavenly mercy. That was why she had joined the police.

She walked down the quiet main street pondering Ante’s useless and destructive life. What indeed doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul? She knew she had to do better before she did worse. She wanted to get off this carousel of greed and contempt, lust and vanity, and no doubt a few other subsets of the Seven Deadly Sins. She had to stop judging those around her in the worst terms. She could not simply make an act of contrition like Ante Vukovich and be forgiven her sins and ascend to heaven. She still lived on earth and had family and business responsibilities.

Her one clear thought was she must not revert to her habitual and usually uncharitable judgments. She had over time become a poor wife and mother, distracted by material temptations, indifferent to the lives of those nearest and surely still dearest. That was the lesson of today. Perhaps this could after all be her Road to Damascus? She could start by not stressing about hair nostrils and her husband snoring.

She raised a hand and the taxi pulled in, thank God. She was in danger of being late for the will reading her husband thought so important. She had to be careful what she told him Father Petrus had revealed, it was going to be a massive shock.