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Copyright © Carmel Bird 2004. All rights reserved.

My Beloved is Mine and I am His

The Taking of the Photograph – December 1953 – Country Town – New South Wales

Seventeen children squint into the Australian sun, and they are fixed there forever in the doorway of the country school. Big boys and girls of thirteen and fourteen down to little ones of six. Most of the children look strong and healthy, hopeful, quizzical, innocent. All are trying their best to please the photographer, their teacher Mr Anthony, trying to hold still, to smile, to obey. The part-time assistant Miss Fitzpatrick has shepherded the children into lines, bunched them up outside the battered double doors, told them to straighten their clothes, hold still. It is a black and white picture.

Now is the end of the year – for some it is the end of an era – the beginning of the Christmas holidays. Long hot lazy days under the gums and willows beside the winding river. Visits from cousins, visits to grandparents, presents in red cellophane, crinkly – crêpe paper chains across the mantelpiece, pudding, steamy, spicy, filled with boiled money, swimming in cream, roast goose, gravy, cherries, lemonade. All this information crams itself into the photograph as church services and Christmas carols and gleaming brass vases filled with waving poppies and soft red gum tips quiver just outside the frame. So beautiful, Silent Night, Holy Night. Santa Claus and sprigs of holly bejeweled with gleaming scarlet berries.

Standing in the back row, happily leaning together, obediently smiling and squinting into the light are Moira and Patricia. Moira’s head is slightly tilted to the side; Patricia looks straight into the camera, trusting, steady brown eyes under a severe brown fringe of hair. These two good friends will enjoy the bright days by the snaking river, stretched out in the sun, swimming, laughing, riding bikes, playing tennis. But they know, in the photograph, that at the end of the summer everything will change. Yes, it is the end of an era. You can read all this in their faces, fixed forever in black and white and shades of grey.

Moira will stay on the farm and go by bus every day to the Convent of the Sacred Heart. But Patricia, the cleverest girl in the group, has won a scholarship to a Church of England school far far away in a large country town. She will live at the church hostel and go to school with girls from all over the place. Scary but exciting. As they all squint into the light of the future, the shutter clicks. The photograph is captive in the small black box. Mr Anthony laughs and Miss Fitzpatrick claps her hands and the seventeen children scatter, most of them scurrying into the shade of the pepper trees. Patricia stays a quiet moment to say goodbye and thank you. Mr Anthony and Miss Fitzpatrick smile, and nod goodbye and good luck.

The little ones took home their paintings, the big boys took their woodwork – pencil cases and crumb trays. Donald Murfett made a jewel-box for his mother. The big girls took their embroidery, coarse white stitching on scarlet linen squares. Moira won the embroidery prize, her work the image of a butterfly with the text: ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. Patricia had done a spindly scorpion with the words: ‘You cannot hurt anybody without receiving greater hurt.’ Miss Fitzpatrick had tried to talk her out of it – what about a nice kitten?

Mr Anthony pressed into Patricia’s hand a book, a copy of the poems of Robert Browning, a goodbye gift. Patricia was surprised and a little embarrassed and bewildered.

Later she thanked him in a Christmas card, a picture of young people in long dark coats and fur caps and muffs skating on blue ice.

To the surprise of many, Miss Fitzpatrick and Mr Anthony were married in late January. The whole school went to the wedding in the white wooden Catholic church which was decorated with dreaming white arum lilies, clouds of pink roses, and green crêpe paper. Four small girls solemn in green and pink, and the priest stiff and gleaming in cream and gold, all edged in fine glittering scarlet, bowing and muttering in the sing-song salvation melodies of Latin. Bernadette Mary in yards of icy lace took Edward James in his dark brown suit and deep dark burgundy tie to be her lawful wedded husband, and Patricia and Moira wept tears of wonder and excitement and joy. Moira’s mother played the organ, Sylvia Cotsford with her wild red hair flaming and flying all over everywhere sang ‘Ave Maria’. Glorious. The congregation sang ‘Where there is charity and love, there the God of love abides.’ Confetti from here to kingdom come, and wagging tongues wittered and wiggled about the state of Bernadette’s waistline, but nothing ever came of it. She had twins two years later, and several other babies down the track.

At home was Patricia’s small bedroom at the back of the house, the bedroom she shared with her much older sister until Shirley went to Sydney to study for a stenographer. The room was dark, set underneath the shadowy dusty row of pine trees. Patricia stretched out on the bed, lying on the quilt her granny made long long ago, and tried to think of the future. Her own future. All her very own. She could not imagine it. The poems of Browning in their green suede cover lay on the chest of drawers beside her bed, the red and white scorpion was still in her schoolbag. She ran the palms of her hands across the lovely rough woolly surface of the quilt – it was what is known as a ‘wagga’, a patchwork of knitted woollen scraps, with a filling of old woollen clothing, heavy and cozy and so comforting, smelling of home and the past and sweet dark nights. The colours were muted, greens and purples and browns, stitched together by candlelight with love.

Can I take Wagga with me to Hightower – she asked her mother – please? But her mother said no, people would not understand. You have to learn to fit in with the others.

But I love him, truly. Why can’t I take him with me? I have always had Wagga, ever since I can remember. Why can’t I though? He’s mine anyhow. Wagga is mine.

Her mother sighed. Patricia was such a child in many ways.

Because – because people would make fun of you, Patricia. You have to think of that you know. And there will be blankets at the hostel. Regulation. They will be regulation.

Patricia’s eyes filled for a moment with tears, but then she looked away. When her gaze came back to her mother it was steady brown again, perhaps even a little harder.

Moira Looks at the Old Photograph – 2003

Moira, a respectable widow and grandmother and retired member of the Shire Council, Vice-President of the Regional Catholic Family Society, winner more than once of the landscape painting section of the Art Club, searched through her photo albums until she came to the picture Mr Anthony took at the end of 1953. The year before Patricia went off to Hightower. It was strange, and sad, Moira always thought, the way Patricia wrote her one letter from her new school – and then nothing. Blank. She did not answer Moira’s letters after that, and before very long Moira stopped writing. In the holidays Moira brought home new friends, and she hardly ever saw Patricia. When Patricia came home in disgrace after nearly three years, the bond was broken. Moira’s family didn’t want her to have anything to do with Patricia any more. Christian charity was one thing, but mixing with a bad type of girl was quite another. Patricia had been caught with boys and expelled from Hightower, so she was no longer fit company for a nice girl. Moira courted Vincent Hazelwood from the general store, and eventually they married. Things had worked out for Moira; they had not worked out for Patricia.

Patricia’s father died. Her mother went to live with relatives in South Australia . Patricia went to Sydney , did part of the training for nursing, married Kevin Shelby who used to beat her up, had three children, separated from Kevin who later drank himself to death. Where did that leave Patricia? Heaven knows.

Moira had the school picture on the table when Patricia arrived for the visit. Moira did not know what to expect, did not know why Patricia wanted to see her after all these years. She felt quite awkward. There was a great poignancy to the photo, its grey tones just as crisp and telling – more telling in fact – as they had been all that long time ago. Moira remembered Mr Anthony, Miss Fitzpatrick, the way they fussed about getting everyone to stand up tight against each other in the doorway.

I need to talk to somebody, Moira – Patricia said. I have never had anybody to talk to. Ever, really. I have bottled everything up, for all these years, and I can’t think of anybody I can trust. Except I thought of you. One night, one night I thought of you, and now I hope I can come and see you, perhaps, and I can talk to you, and you will listen. Perhaps Could it be that Patricia was ill, terminally ill, dying, lost and lonely and dying. That was the only thing Moira could think of really, that Patricia must be ill and frightened and lonely and in need of an old, old friend. Where there is charity and love.

The steady brown eyes, a hint of tears, under the same fringe, but grey. The voice was firm and sweet, the same voice. There was something eerie about that voice.

I thought I could talk to you, she said, I thought I could talk to you, Moira, and you would listen and you would understand.

What Moira Might Say

The photo is fifty years old. All that time. Can that be right? Fifty years! Fifty years and when she wanted somebody to talk to Patricia thought of me. Over the years I have sometimes thought of her, I have even imagined, sometimes, talking to her. About this and that. But now it was not going to be this and that, I could tell. Something was very serious, and the past was coming back, coming out of its silent shadow-cupboard – what do they say – skeletons in the cupboard? She rang out of the blue, right out of the blue, and I knew her voice straight away, just like I knew her walk. I looked out the loungeroom window and I saw her at the gate. She stopped for a second as if she was getting her breath, or getting up her courage, or adjusting her mind – or something – and then she kind of swung through the gate the way she used to, almost, and came slowly but purposefully up the path. It is quite a distance from the gate to the front porch, and the path, yellow concrete, winds and curves – Vin’s father put that path in probably sixty years ago now, more probably, and it isn’t even hardly cracked. After all this time. Patricia slowed down as she got closer, she seemed to peer down every now and then as if she wanted to look at the petunias. I am proud of the petunias this year, huge pink and purple ones, and all blooming at once. Huge. I love petunias. I seem to remember that Patricia used to like them too. Or does my memory play tricks on me? She was wearing a green overcoat, olive green, straight with no waist, and time was stopped or you might say suspended for a while so I could look at Patricia in her old-fashioned overcoat, moving along the yellow winding path. Towards me. I was standing at the window watching her, considering. She looked, I thought, somehow beautiful in the overcoat, making her steady silent way towards me. The world was silent and standing still, as Patricia, wearing a coat that reminded me of – her mother – came drifting, that’s what it was, drifting like in a dream, up the front path to the door. She looked thinner than I had expected, and her neat black shoes were very soft and fashionable. Elegant. Elegant shoes and good stockings. A large brown shoulder bag, saggy and comfortable, worn, trustworthy. It was Patricia. She came up onto the porch and I lost sight of her. The bell rang, deengle-dongle-deee and I found I could not bring myself to move from the window. I looked out onto the path, looked at the petunias all huge and pink and purple, soft and frilly in the sunlight beside the path, and the path was empty, and Patricia was at the door, waiting innocently for me to open it for her. I took a few deep breaths – I was nervous after all these years – and then I went out into the hall and opened the door. Hello. Patricia.

Patricia and Moira Hazelwood Meet for the First Time in Fifty Years

The bell has rung and Patricia steps back from the welcome mat which has a design of red roses wreathed around the edge. It seems wrong to stand on those roses. Her shoulders are held proudly back, yet her face is deeply suffused with sorrow, pain, anguish, memories of hurt. Every single step that has brought her to this doorway is present in her memory as she stands there, every moment present in sharp detail and relief.

Some memories are like hallucinations.

She remembers the day her mother and father left her at the hostel and Mrs Cutler came forward smiling and held out her hands in welcome, and took her up the stairs to the dormitory where the narrow beds were covered with their regulation blankets and their regulation brown and orange and green striped counterpanes, squared at the corners and rubbed thin in places. Then her mother and father had dissolved, her mother’s blue straw hat, small and neat with darker blue flowers, her father’s gaberdine overcoat and tartan scarf, smelling of pipe tobacco, like custard, gone. Her mother’s hands moved lightly across Patricia’s face, and then they were gone. Gone forever. The other girls came, and they all put their things into the drawers and wardrobes, shyly, slyly looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes. There were eight girls at the hostel, all from either Form One or Form Two. Many more girls boarded at the school.

Mrs Cutler was so bright and friendly, the long fluff of her pink bunnywool bolero fuzzing around her in a softly moving halo, and so jolly, and soon it was time to go down to afternoon tea and guess who was waiting there in the big study beside the fireplace – Father Cutler himself! Lawrence Cutler beaming and throwing out his arms and crying: ‘Welcome, girls, welcome to our home! Lorraine and I will be your hosts, and you will be our guests! May we all enjoy health and happiness and do lots and lots of homework!’ There was laughter and his voice was full of exclamation marks. He stood by the fireplace, there were lazy electric logs glowing eerily in the hearth, and Father Cutler shone, he shone in the firelight and he shone from within. No heat came from the fire, but in the winter heat would be turned on. Father Cutler was a gleaming, glowing, shining, lightning rod of joy and welcome and goodness. The two tiny Cutler girls, Georgina and Annabelle, in pastel smocked dresses, stood quietly and obediently by their mother, sucking their thumbs. Scones and blackberry jam and cream and raspberry cordial. You may call me Mother Lorraine, said Mrs Cutler. Then a prayer of hope and blessing, and a new life had begun.

This was the last thing Patricia had expected, this cozy family affair of scones and cream beside the flickering lifeless fire.

She remembers the church services and the sound of Father Cutler’s voice, a voice like a storyteller of ancient times, a voice like an angel or a prophet. The girls would flock around him in the stone archway after the Eucharist, and he would laugh and joke and be there, firmly on the gravel path, in loco parentis. There were classes in church doctrine where the girls were taught in a group, sitting around on the leather sofa, on the tapestry armchairs, on the skin rug on the floor before the fire.

Is this a fox skin rug, Father Cutler?

It is, actually.

Oh, it’s lovely.

In fact I shot the critters myself. Had them made into a rug.

It’s a lot of foxes!

Yes, yes it is a lot of foxes.

And Father Cutler glows by the red and purple logs, smiles and beams and talks softly and thoughtfully. The eyes of all the girls around him tell him he is already beloved – he is good, kind, adored, believed, trusted. And Lorraine brings in milk and shortbread and stays to join in the fun of Doctrine and Scripture. They all love to discuss miracles – loaves and fishes as well as other quite Catholic-sounding stories about rose petals and apparitions. They have Confirmation Classes, are being prepared to wear white dresses and veils and receive the Holy Ghost when Bishop Stonycroft comes. The young Bishop and his wife are celebrities, he a tall imposing smooth-talking confident man in his towering mitre and billowing cope, she a small twittering moth of a woman in brilliant pinks and peacock blues, silk from Thailand, and with an astonishing array of perky and elaborate hats covered in flowers and feathers and sequins and curly rolls of fine straw. The episcopal couple whirl through the town, the school, the hostel, the church. Everyone feels very honored, especially the young people who receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. May He guide and comfort you always. Bishop Stonycroft performs the Laying on of Hands.

Father is a great believer in having incense and lots of candles burning in the church, and he hears the Confessions of his flock who all honor, trust and adore him. He would take the girls in pairs up to the top of the bushfire lookout tower – no it is not dangerous ladies – and show them the vast sweep of the landscape, out out to the end of nowhere, one hand on the shoulder of each girl.

Look at that, ladies. Look at God’s gorgeous world. And he would recite some verses by Gerard Manley Hopkins. ‘I caught this morning morning’s minion.’

Patricia remembers also the individual tutorials each girl had with Father Cutler. She felt so important sitting there beside him deep in the leather undulations of the sofa, brown and warm. In the evening, parchment lampshades cast a holy-scholarly glow on the books they read. Poetry books and the Bible.

‘My beloved is mine and I am his, he feedeth among the lilies.’

You love the Song of Solomon don’t you Patricia?

Yes Father.

‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart’ – beautiful, is it not?

And when Patricia said in a soft and nervous voice that yes it was beautiful, Father Cutler put his own beautiful hand, the hand that blessed the bread and wine, the hand that would one day slip the Body of Christ between her lips at the Communion rail, the hand that buttered scones and passed them one by one and bit by bit into her mouth, he put his hand on her hand, very lightly, and he smiled his halo smile and he looked into her eyes. She knew she was his favourite, his very own chosen acolyte and favourite. There was a deep and spiritual secrecy about this fact. It made her warm and delicious deep inside.

And time went on, and life in the hostel became more and more sweet and beautiful. One evening early – it was a soft and yellow twilight – as Father and Patricia were sitting on the sofa discussing the life of Saint Elizabeth and placing the petals of a rose in pale pink patterns on the low table, Father took both her hands in his and he placed his face very close to hers and looked deep down into her eyes so that he was looking into her heart, and he said:

You know that Lorraine is a good woman, don’t you?

Patricia was surprised. Yes, I know.

She is like a mother to all you girls, and she does her very best to be a good wife to me.

There was a sizzling silence in the study. Patricia found it hard to know what she was supposed to say. She said nothing.

Yes, she does her best, but the truth is, Pittie-Pat, the truth is that Lorraine does not in fact fulfil my needs.

The silence sizzles on.

She has asked me to ask you if you would do some things for me, to help her, if you understand.

Lawrence Cutler was quite certain the plain fourteen-year-old girl from her little country town did not understand. Her steady silence told him that, but he continued.

We must lock the study door now, see, I am locking the study door, and we are going to have a small glass of wine, and I am going to play some quiet and delightful music. Listen to the harp and to the little flutes, listen.

As the music wove its delicate spell, and the wine began to work its warmth in Patricia’s blood, Lawrence gently removed her tie, her shirt, his tie, his shirt, her skirt, his trousers, their underwear, until they stood by the fire in their socks, his black, hers white, and he lifted her up, his body was astonishing-white and muscular-lovely, and he placed her on the wild surface of the tawny fox skin rug, and he kissed her and fondled her and when she was moist and pink and open, he slowly – and this was delicious – he whispered to her that he had been sent not only by Lorraine but also by God to teach her how to reach a state of spiritual ecstasy. So with those holy hands, beautiful hands from the altar, hands that blessed brides and babies and also blessed dead people, he stroked her and rocked her until she was filled with sudden warmth and light and music. And then he moved himself inside her, and they were One, he said they were One, on the fox skin rug in the study in the late twilight.

He removed their socks and flung them across the room with a laugh.

Foxes in soxes and this little piggy went to market.

You are perfect, and filled with the love of God, and I love you with all my heart, Pittie-Pat. This is of course our finest sacred secret, never to be shared. Stand up now. Wiggle your toes into the fur of the naughty naughty little foxes. Foxes in soxes. Do you want to see my hunting rifle? I can show it to you if you like.

He giggled.

And she stood and nodded, breathless with her own ecstasy of initiation, her breasts hot and hard again in his hands as he stood again behind her and pushed into her again. There was a little blood which Lawrence wiped away with his own white linen handkerchief. Then he kissed the handkerchief. And then he burnt it in the flame of a candle, letting the ash fall onto the deep russet surface of the fox skin rug. He smiled. From a slender cupboard beside the fireplace the priest took his hunting rifle. Such things were not strange to Patricia. She was a country girl. But the naked man with the rifle which he pointed at her in jest – that was strange. Strange and thrilling too.

It became a ritual – the love-making on the fox skin rug and then the revelation of the rifle in the cupboard, like a warning to little foxes.

One day we will truly be together and I will marry you and you will have my child and we will live in Paradise . Lorraine is very pleased with how things are going, and she has agreed. It is even possible that you will have a child quite soon – that would be wonderful. I sense that I have put into you the spirit of our child.

What would happen about school?

They will be completely understanding. Paradise is the realm of the blessed. Your belly is as a sheaf of wheat.

In fact Lawrence was careful to protect the sheaf of wheat from any danger of fertilization, but Patricia did not realise this.

In church Lawrence wore the most shimmering and elaborate vestments, moved beneath the stiff embroidered chasubles like a magnificent chess-piece on secret wheels. Sometimes he wore a grey suit and his collar, and other times he wore a swinging black cassock with a leather belt, like a fantastic medieval monk. He always stood out in a crowd.

During the holidays when Patricia went home to her parents she began receiving letters in square cream envelopes, letters written in powerful square black handwriting, letters from Lawrence . She would collect the family mail from the post office herself, vigilant and helpful. The walk to the post office was filled with breathless anticipation; the walk home a slow and blissful pilgrimage to the shrine in her bedroom where she kept a photograph, so innocent, of herself and three other girls on the steps of the hostel with Father Cutler. She kept the letters in an old leather bag, in the hollow of the pine tree outside her bedroom window. Dust and insects and spiders could get in, but the eyes that pry out secrets never gazed upon the Letters that Lawrence Wrote to Patricia.

Dear Patricia, I miss you very much. My own dearest love, I long to hold you in my arms, to feel your sweet soft breasts against my body. I long to lie with you, to lie all night long beside the Shalimar, Your longing, loving, lost and wandering Lawrence . Write to me. I must hear that you are true to me. I drink your juices. Loving sacred kisses, kisses all over your peaches and cream. We will make a holy child together, and we will walk together forever in the fields of Almighty God.

Patricia did not, as it happened, conceive a child. The one who conceived was Lorraine , and Patricia was shocked. She had done the work and now Lorraine was getting all the attention, getting fat.

Mrs Cutler’s expecting! Look at her stomach! The girls whispered to each other in excited fascination. Imagine Father and Mrs Cutler doing that and getting another baby.

The visits to the study stopped. Suddenly. And one Sunday Father preached a sermon about how God moves in mysterious ways, and how our hopes and dreams and prayers are sometimes answered in ways that we could not have expected. Patricia wept. She could no longer eat. Her school work suffered. The sacred trust was never broken; she never spoke a word. Would Lorraine die in childbirth? Was that it? Patricia dared not pray for such a wicked thing. Lorraine did not die. Patricia then wished that she herself might die.

When baby Cornelius was born, the girls at the hostel were beside themselves with excitement, twittering and cooing, and knitting bootees. Can I hold him, Mrs Cutler? Can I watch him have his bath? Can I give him his bottle? It was a world of baby powder and washing on the line and crying in the night. Patricia could not bring herself to make a fuss of Cornelius. Oh, she said, I’ve seen plenty of babies. I’ve got heaps of cousins. I hate babies, actually, can’t stand them. Cornelius cried and cried. It got to the point where Patricia could bear it all no longer, and she crept out of the hostel one night and walked into town where she ran into Barry, a boy from the church, and another boy, Brian.

You’re out late.

I had to do a message for Mrs Cutler.

Want to go for a ride?

So Patricia hopped into the front of the pickup between them and they drove off towards the bushfire tower. They parked near the tower, but did not get out of the pickup. They shared two cigarettes between the three of them, drank some warm beer that was under the seat. The boys burped and swore and put their arms around her. She was feeling dizzy and ill.

Somebody said you did it with the rev.

Barry said this right into Patricia’s ear, and Brian threw back his head and laughed.

Not her, he said. Not this one. Don’t be stupid. Do you do it? Who with? With us yeah? You wanna root, don’t you? You do?

She was wet and excited and she let them tear away her pants and each one very inexpertly pushed inside her, strong, swift, hot, thrilling, meaningless and exhilarating. The pickup and the boys smelt utterly filthy like fish and mushrooms and drains and petrol and stale pee and dead things, and she liked it.

So what was your message for Mrs Cutler? You want a message for Mrs Cutler? We’ll do a message for the silly old bag. Tell her we want to give her a message out at the old fire tower one of these old nights.

Patricia felt calm and pleased. She laughed with them and said OK, I’ll tell her that. Will that be all?

They liked her sense of humour very much, and they laughed.

Then they drove her back to the hostel and she crept in the back kitchen door, her whole body in disarray, her feet bare, a strong smell of the night’s startling activities clinging to her, moving with her.

Suddenly the lights went on and there was Father. He was standing by the kitchen table, white and stiff and wild-eyed. The hunting rifle lay diagonally across the bare white surface of the table. Was he going to kill her?

You have been with those boys. Don’t lie to me. You have been with boys. This is an utter betrayal of my trust in you, of your parents’ trust in you, of the love of God. You have betrayed God, Patricia, and you can no longer remain under this roof. You will go upstairs, and my wife will assist you with your packing. You will remain in the kitchen tonight, and tomorrow you will be on the first train home. Your parents and Hightower will be informed. You have disgraced your family, you have disgraced yourself. You have forfeited your scholarship – there are girls who would give their eye teeth for that scholarship. Girls who would give their right arm. You Are Nothing But a Slut. If you think you can bring your wicked filthy ways in here among pure young women you have another think coming. And his voice rose to a shriek, then fell to a whisper. Wicked, wicked, he whispered, his head quivering from side to side in little jerky spurts. Wicked, wicked. And, almost inaudible now – slut, sinful, sinful whore.

He picked up the rifle and followed her to the door, to where Lorraine was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Lawrence pointed the rifle at Patricia’s head, and then at her ankles and she began to mount the staircase, Lorraine following her. Lawrence remained at the bottom of the stairs, the rifle pointed, and Cornelius began to holler from the nursery. A lusty, haunting, terrible banshee wail.

In a trance of obedience and a kind of lucid appreciation of what had to be done, Patricia packed her case while Mother Lorraine stood beside her looking out the window into the dark sky, while the other girls stared in silent amazement from their beds. Father stood in the kitchen doorway, silent, and Patricia sat at the kitchen table. Lorraine made her wash and dress and then she made her eat some toast and drink a cup of cocoa. Patricia could barely swallow. From Lorraine she could feel a sympathy, a warmth and kindness and sorrow. But she could not cry. She felt that the lack of tears made Lawrence even more angry, if that was possible. She wished he would shoot her dead, there at the kitchen table, so it would all be over. Lorraine drove her to the station when it was time, and that was the end of Patricia’s career at Hightower School .

Her parents took the word – of course they did – of Father Cutler. They curled back into their shame, afraid of the daughter who was now disgraced. In due course Patricia went to work at the local post office where every day she suffered the stares and comments of people she used to know. Patricia Calley who won a scholarship to high-brow Hightower School and slipped up on her own high opinion of herself and came home in disgrace. Pride comes before a fall. They peered at her for signs of pregnancy. Patricia could bear it no longer and finally she went to Sydney to study nursing. Her sister had long since married and gone to live in Far North Queensland. Patricia kept very much to herself, until she met Kevin, had the children, and time went on.

Strange to say – or is it – she never stopped praying to God for a reunion with Lawrence Cutler. She kept a file of newspaper clippings which told the story of his glamorous career from Rural Dean to Precentor to Bishop. He and his wife Lorraine (pictured) had six children. His popularity and importance were legendary. He beamed from the pages of newspapers and glossy magazines, met the Queen, entertained Prince Charles and Princess Diana. The Princess stood beside him in a bright green silk dress with a matching hat and shoes, smiling serenely into the camera.

There came a time, however, some twenty years after she left Hightower, that Patricia found herself one morning sitting down at the kitchen table and writing a letter to Lawrence . Her life, she said, was so disastrous, Kevin so abusive, her children so distant and unloving, herself so lost – she was turning to him for any advice or assistance he could give her. He had once given her life meaning; what was his advice? She felt moved by a greater power to write this letter, still further moved to post it to the Diocesan Office. One week later she received a letter bearing a bishop’s crest, and there, on the envelope, was the square black definite handwriting of Lawrence Cutler, Bishop Cutler. The shock of the sight of it made her faint, weak with a kind of fear, and dizzy with renewed desire, with gratitude to a God who listened to her, who answered her prayers at last. Please God let him write to me, let him answer my letter, let him long for me the way I long for him. Let us be together. Let it be perfect. Twenty years God listened, and when He deemed her worthy, He answered her prayers.

I shall rescue you from your life of torment. The time is coming, dear one, when we shall be together. The years have passed and nothing between us has changed. Those years dissolve to nothing, like snow. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and the time for our union is fast approaching. Please do me the loving honor of responding to my humble letter, to my fierce protestation of eternal and undying love. If I have ever hurt you, it was in the furnace of the fire of my passion for you. This is the will of God.

Patricia answered the letter with joy in her heart, and they exchanged many thrilling and poetic letters back and forth, back and forth. Then they arranged to meet. She left Kevin and moved into a small rented house where Lawrence came to visit her, and from where they journeyed out into the countryside in Lawrence ’s luxurious car, taking a picnic basket and a rug and incredible bottles of chilled French champagne and gourmet sandwiches. Strawberries in green glass dishes and blobs of luscious cream. Frolic and romp. Beneath a tree, beside a stream, dangerously public, lost in a world of their own romantic dreams, so many years since life had parted them, they were joined in love. It was like music, and it continued on for eight whole years – years of strange and secret bliss. He gave her books and flowers and jewelry and perfume. And the fox skin rug. Then Lawrence one day brought with him three large suitcases, arriving at the house in the middle of the breathless afternoon.

I have left Lorraine . She understands completely, and wants only the best for us, for you and me. I have written to the Primate, resigned from the Epsicopate, given it all up. We are what matters now. God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform – and Lawrence said a Latin blessing.

Then he giggled hysterically. Patricia wept with joy and a kind of frantic disbelief.

If God had listened to Patricia’s prayers, He had moved in a most un-mysterious way. The reality of all this was very clearly contained in three large leather suitcases. It was now time, Lawrence said, for them to have a child. She would carry his son and suckle him and nourish him with her body.

For several weeks they lived this story, their love-making tender and frequently concentrated on the sacred task of conception. Patricia and the Bishop and the child-to-be. But then late one morning there was a most undiscreet knock at the door, and there stood three clergymen in rigid bright black suits and shiny shiny collars. Sunglasses, yes, three big black pairs of mirrored sunglasses. There was something farcical about it all, and Patricia felt a deep and terrible choking hysteria mounting in her breast. They would not take no for an answer, these three men. There was no argument. Lawrence must return with them to the Cathedral – they had a small private plane waiting at the airstrip. Archbishop Stonycroft wished to see Lawrence as soon as possible in his office. Amazed, Patricia saw him shrink before them, and he took his suitcases, and within the hour, he was gone. It was a silent parting, like the spiriting away of one bewitched. Lawrence was collected like a disobedient child and taken home to mother.

Patricia, numb, cold, empty, sat on a chair in the back garden and allowed large tears to flow unchecked down her face as she stared, stupid, up at the sky. A few fluffy clouds drifting like feathers. Was she looking for the plane? She saw it anyway, and she could not restrain herself from attempting a feeble little wave as Lawrence and the Mafia flew out of her afternoon into that feathery sky.

He would be back.

He did not come back.

She was pregnant.

She wrote to him.

He did not answer this time.

She lost the baby.

Still he did not come.

The doctor said it would have been her last child.

Betrayed by her body.

Betrayed by Lawrence .

And betrayed by God.

Kevin died.

Patricia decided to ‘get on with her life’.

But life refused. She was almost destroyed, all but destroyed, destroyed by love, betrayed, again betrayed. She could not see where she went wrong. Somehow, God got it wrong. They were star-crossed lovers, star-crossed. She would sit at the kitchen table and open the old leather bag and place the letters, in their envelopes, on the table, and read them over, sometimes in order from beginning to end, sometimes at random. Her letters from him. Photographs. One by one she would kiss them. The letters lay on the grey laminex table, all of them on their thick cream paper with the bold square confident black writing my dearest heart’s darling my holy sacred sweetheart juiceball sugarlips creamy cuntlips milky thighs I want to drown inside you split you open and stay up inside you forever and die inside you stuck inside you die with me my heart’s bright angel.

Patricia mended the fraying fabric of the fox skin rug – using a strong curved needle she stitched the rug with thick linen thread.

With nobody to talk to, nobody with whom she could discuss the story which to her was simple, to others surely incomprehensible, Patricia made up her mind to take the letters, the proof of love, the proof of the meaning of her whole life, to the only kind of authority she knew. She went to the Archbishop, the same man who had once been Bishop Stonycroft who had performed the Laying on of Hands. Patricia took the bag of letters to Archbishop Stonycroft.

It was a time when people all over the world were coming forward with stories of ancient sexual abuse by priests – people of fifty, sixty, seventy years of age were speaking out about the men who took their childhood innocence. There were questions of apology, questions of financial compensation, questions of truth and lies.

Sir, madam, we do not believe you when you say these holy men have done these wicked things, you are deluded, malicious, mad, mad, mad.

But gradually the curtains were parted, the little black demon was out of the box, the cat was out of the bag, the jig was up!

All over, Father This-That-and-The-Other.

And the gates of the prison clanged behind them and the word ‘pedophile’ was hissed and breathed and shouted and splashed across the papers and the TV screens. And the more you looked the more you found, and the higher up you went the worse it got. Everywhere in vestries and confessionals and deaneries and parish offices and episcopal palaces people were at work mopping up and trying to contain the flood of narrative that came spilling out from every nasty nook and cranny of every quiet sacred monastery garden and each and every sorry sandstone convent wall.

Your story does not really have the ring of truth, Mrs Shelby. I am sorry, but this is speculation and fabrication of the highest order. These letters are not evidence, I am sorry to have to tell you. They mean nothing whatsover. I am sorry you have been put to this trouble. Bluster, bluster, pop, pop, pop, bluster. The cold grey of the Archbishop’s eyes was sharp as tempered steel, set in the smooth smooth shaven baby pudge of his smug bland boneless face. It occurred to him to have the woman murdered in her sleep. Steal the letters, buy the letters, and silence the woman forever. For the sake of everything that is holy, for the sake of the Anglican Communion, for the sake of Heaven, for Heaven’s sake.

Patricia, who had learned, if nothing else, patience over years, sensed that her time was coming, and she persevered in hope. Dogged hope.

The woman is a dog. Nothing but a stupid, whingeing, lying, braying hound of the worst possible filthy kind. Stupid crazy bitch. Somebody get those ridiculous bloody letters the idiot wrote to her and destroy them, for Christ’s sake. My God, where was his brain? Maniac. He always was a bit of a maniac, by all accounts.

But it really was too late.

Patricia was, at last, winning. The tide had turned. Stonycroft made a public statement in which he personally blamed Patricia for what had ‘befallen’ Lawrence Cutler. The Press Pounced. No, no, Patricia was not to blame!! – Lawrence was to blame. Lawrence was guilty. Lawrence had, apart from anything else, had carnal knowledge of a minor in his care. Carnal Knowledge of a Minor. Old-fashioned words came tumbling out of radios in cars, burbled out of TVs and pottered righteously around kitchens. They swam deleriously across the Internet. It was a crime. The Bishop Lawrence Cutler had committed a dreadful dreadful crime. A sin too.

And silly Stonycroft had misread the temper of the times. Archbishop Stonycroft was disgraced and Bishop Cutler was not simply disgraced, but – oh strange delicious and archaic word – defrocked. All his lovely satin and embroidered chasubles twined with golden thread and decorated with vine leaves and lavish crucifixes of handsome Christs with long sorrowful hands were sent back to the dress-up box and put away forever. No more getting about in long black skirts, Lawrence . No more cassock no more surplice no more holy incense in the damp mysterious vestry. It is over now. You have been undressed in public, defrocked, defrocked. The word rang in Lawrence ’s brain with a horrible jagged note. Something unthinkably ridiculous had happened and he was no longer himself. With his incredibly loyal wife, he went to live in retirement, a private citizen. Why, ask many thoughtful and wondering people, why is he not in prison with all the other priestly pedophiles? And the only answer is a shrug, a raised eyebrow, a hand gesture of helpless questioning defeat.

Some memories are like hallucinations.

When Patricia takes off her coat Moira sees she is wearing a dress of muted greens and purples and browns. The mouth of the leather bag opens and the soft square cream envelopes – stamped, addressed, sealed, signed, delivered – shuffle and slither forward onto the polished surface of the dining room table.

Something Else Moira Might Say

I can’t really understand why he is not in jail, Patricia.

And Patricia Says as She Puts the Bag of Letters on the Table Beside the Old Photograph

Well, what good would that do anyway. I would just like him to say he is sorry for what he has done, what he has caused in my life, all the heartache. Here are the letters. I don’t know what I am going to do with them now. I just don’t know. I am keeping them, I think, because I hope that one day before he dies he will come to me and he will say he is sorry now and he is back. We will sit down together and we will read the letters, and we will be together. I will say to him – yes, Lawrence , I will take you to myself, after everything, because you have told me you are sorry, I will take you back. And he will say it is the will of God, and the love of God will succour us, and we will be at one, at peace. Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm. For love is strong as death. This is the truth.

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