Hill of Grace Read online

  (Just the same, one of William Webb’s old secretaries made a sighting. She returned to her office with the others and typed up a memo which later appeared on every notice board around the works. Like one of Lilli’s personals, it didn’t pull punches, describing form, shape and general appearance. Bob Drummond asked for them to be taken down but Nathan said he didn’t care.)

  Walking home with Bob that first night, Nathan felt a thaw which extended beyond his fingers and toes. Bob said, ‘If you give it, you gotta take it,’ describing how Phil, his son, had mastered the art. ‘This one time, he got me good. I couldn’t afford to get power into the shed, so when I used to come home at night, I’d drive the car in until this tennis ball, hanging from the roof, touched the windscreen.’ He smiled, remembering. ‘So this one night, I’m slowly edging the car in and, crash, right into the back wall. Got out, scratched me head, couldn’t work it out. Turns out Phil had moved the ball six inches forward.’

  He kept walking, smiling. ‘Never got it repaired. Use the shed for me wheelchairs now.’

  Another story, Nathan guessed, as they walked on under crows balancing on power lines and someone somewhere starting up a Hoovermatic.

  Chapter Seven

  Pastor Henry’s was a surplus government house from the twenties, red brick and crumbling, painted white here and there to cover up the salt damp. As William made his way up the driveway, he noticed horehound growing between cracks and through a hedge of camellia which grew below the kitchen window.

  Pastor Henry had let things go. Piles of empty bottles, themselves overgrown, lay smashed beside a mountain of old newspapers smelling cat-pissy and soaked by the rain. Cracks from the driveway extended up the walls, revealing mortar and wiring Henry didn’t give much thought to. Without the touch of a Bluma or Mary Hicks his life had become a domestic disaster, in counterpoint to the surplus homemaker magazines which Edna Hermann, his cleaner, had gathered from Dr Scholz’s waiting room and left on his phone table.

  William knocked on the door. Henry led him into the living room and it was all just as he’d suspected.

  Earlier that morning, at church, the Elders had avoided him like the plague, walking away as he approached, cutting short conversations.

  And then Gunther Fritschle had come up to him and said, ‘We’d like you to come to a meeting tonight, at Pastor Hoffmann’s.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Seven perhaps?’

  Walking away.

  William knew what it was about of course. People who should have known better, choosing to bury their heads in the sand, following protocol in the established Prussian way. As he saw the Elders sitting in a row in the living-room, he imagined them with spiked army helmets, sent in service of the Kaiser. He sat down and Edna, finishing her cleaning, put a shot of something red and syrupy in front of him. ‘How’s Bruno?’ he asked, in a scene from a Hollywood film which was going from bad to worse. ‘That’s something altogether different,’ she replied – a bad sign no matter how you looked at it.

  Edna was dismissed and Pastor Henry began. ‘The Elders have made a decision, William.’

  William looked along the row: Gunther, the old school Lutheran who saw him as some sort of heretic. Ron Rohwer, the droning, flat baritone who still saw Luther’s translation of the Bible as an act of God. Trevor Streim, with his fetish for the perfect kegel pin, scratching his chin and watching a daddy-long-legs crawl across a spot on the front window Edna could never reach. And then there was Julius Rechner’s brother, Franz, and a shop-keeper from Angaston he’d never said more than twenty words to. As well as Rohrlach, a Vactric vacuum salesman, as slippery as a bucket of squid, having worked his way up through the Langmeil hierarchy with favours on much-reduced terms.

  ‘They … we, would like you to stop talking about your dates,’ said Henry.

  Although he knew it was coming, William was still surprised. ‘My dates are all correct,’ he said.

  Ron Rohwer shook his head.

  ‘Let me finish,’ Henry continued. ‘I believe people are entitled to their own opinions … frankly, I’d be quite happy if it was March twenty-one. Only, there’s no one else saying this, William. I’m no academic – ’

  ‘Cruden’s Concordance – ’ ‘I know about Cruden’s, and the Bible, still … the Elders are the government of the church.’

  ‘Christ is.’

  ‘William …’

  There was silence as William looked at the row of Elders accusingly. Edna, listening from the kitchen, happy to see her Bruno vindicated, tried to remember the exact words to tell him later. ‘I shan’t stop talking about it,’ William said, ‘because it’s the truth. The Bible isn’t a static book.’

  ‘Neither is it a book of spells, of hocus-pocus,’ Ron replied.

  Henry turned on him. ‘Ron, please.’

  ‘No, this is the real issue, Pastor Henry. William has put himself above the word of Christ.’

  ‘I have not.’

  ‘You have.’

  ‘I bet this was all your idea.’

  Henry stood up. ‘Please … this is what we were trying to avoid. It’s not a school yard. Everyone gets their turn.’ Sitting down he looked at the ground and then back at William. ‘Nonetheless, a vote was taken, William.’

  ‘I shan’t stop.’

  ‘Joan of Arc,’ Ron whispered.

  ‘I haven’t stolen your pulpit, Henry. I just tell those who ask, who listen.’

  ‘William, it’s out of my hands.’ Henry moved a dead, potted aspidistra which had been sitting on his smoker’s stand since before the war, and said, ‘William, I’ve got a whole congregation to think about.’

  ‘Exactly why you should be listening.’

  ‘I’m not not listening. Cripes … who wants to say something?

  It’s you fellas started it.’

  Gunther opened a well-worn Bible to Matthew and read, ‘“Of that day and hour knoweth no man – ”’

  ‘Gunther,’ Henry interrupted, ‘we’ve covered that. Maybe if we could stick to personal impressions.’

  Gunther closed his Bible and pondered. ‘You’re an honest man, William, a hard worker, but we’ve had these problems before.’

  Referring to the schism last century between the moderate Pastor Fritzsche and the fire-and-brimstone founder of their church and town, Pastor Kavel. Kavel was obsessed with the End, Fritzsche with growing the perfect cucumber, building the perfect fachwerk and being happy for the here and now. Valley Lutherans were bent one way or the other; this would dictate the church they’d worship in and even the people they’d acknowledge in the street. Families were split and communities divided over this very question. Some ended up moving interstate, one family even to America.

  Gunther, whose father had been friends with Kavel, retold a story the moderates had used to ridicule them, completely untrue, told and re-told, becoming a gospel of its own. ‘They said that my father had a vision of a giant, bloodied, fire-breathing Mephistopheles walking across the Kaiserstuhl on a wet and windy August night. He went and asked a blacksmith to make a tremendous chain which would hold the Devil for a thousand years. Later, Kavel and his followers took the chain and climbed the Kaiserstuhl in search of the Devil. But all that happened was it rained and they went home wet.’

  Ron Rohwer opened his eyes, having heard the story at least forty times before. He wasn’t so interested in the past as the future, he explained. There were better ways of teaching people about Christ and his eventual return. Take last year’s musical production for example, going on to remind them of the twenty minute show which had been purchased from an American evangelical group. Apparently they knew how to get the punters in. He recalled the scene where all of the kiddies bowed down at the feet of a crucified Christ:

  Walking in the shadows of your disciples,

  Sheltered from the hot, burning sun;

  I can go anywhere with you beside me,

  Now we’ve got the Romans on the run …

  Ron as directo
r, drilling the kids every night, clapping and singing along in an attempt to resurrect Mrs Fox’s forever slow tempos. ‘Remember,’ he asked, ‘when the stone was rolled back from the mouth of the cave?’ He continued singing, smiling:

  We’re all feelin’ fine,

  It’s resurrection time;

  Raise your voices higher,

  And praise the new Messiah!

  William slipped back in Henry’s recliner and shook his head. ‘If that’s all the Bible means to you.’ Box steps and cheesy grins, Mickey Mouse ears narrowly avoided.

  ‘You’re not Nostradamus,’ said Gunther.

  ‘He was mostly wrong,’ the vacuum salesman offered.

  Gunther sat forward. ‘He foresaw Hitler.’

  ‘Rot. He could have meant anyone.’

  William stood, refusing his sherry. ‘I shall say what I want to who I want.’

  The other Elders were glad they’d avoided their turn. ‘Just as well,’ Henry said afterwards, ‘it wouldn’t have made any difference.’

  William walked home angry, misunderstood, starting to see his church as a puritanical dictatorship of one view and one view only, like the society he’d seen described by the newsreel footage at the Institute during the war. Pastor Henry was a shambles, a man of God without God, a spineless jellyfish like the ones he’d pass through his fingers on their camping trips to Port Elliot – sitting on the end of the jetty with Bluma, Nathan and Arthur, contemplating God’s creation in its infinite beauty and complexity, something only understood by those who thought about such things.

  Yes, Wilhelm Muller, still tackling the riddle of Revelations. He looked at the stars and saw a code there too but guessed it would take another William Miller to read it.

  The next morning William was up a ladder, pruning a golden elm which each year exploded vine-like branches into the atmosphere. Why Anthelm had ever planted it was beyond him, but there it was, easier to prune than chop down, and it did give some decent shade in summer. Suddenly Pastor Henry was beneath him, steadying the ladder and asking, ‘Why do you bother pruning it?’

  William answered in the fewest possible words. ‘Pruning is a habit. Like cutting toe nails.’

  He heard Henry laugh – ‘Last year when we had the washing of feet …’ – and dropped a branch in the pastor’s direction. ‘I should get you to do my garden, cape honeysuckle everywhere, and next door’s lantana.’

  ‘Sarsaparilla vine will ruin everything.’

  William felt Henry let go of the ladder and looked down to see the pastor bent over sniffing a scentless paperbark.

  ‘My mother was hopeless. Rosemary everywhere. Although she did manage to grow a weeping fig.’

  ‘Henry, you’re not going to talk me around with plumbagos and bottlebrush. Just like Pastor Fielke used to do. Fire you up with every piece of rubbish under God’s sun, then, watch out.’

  Henry cowered from another branch but this time it was nowhere near him. ‘They came to me, William. I told them there was no risk of a … fracture, but they insisted.’

  William climbed down and moved his ladder. ‘There was some business between Rohwer’s father and mine.’

  ‘It wasn’t just Ron.’

  William stopped and looked at him for the first time. ‘He’s in everybody’s ear.’

  ‘Well … like I said.’

  ‘Henry, don’t be so diplomatic. What do you think?’

  Henry took the pruning shears and mounted the ladder. ‘I can see their concerns. Thinking about that picnic we had on the Kaiserstuhl … thirty-six, thirty-seven?’

  ‘No, it was during the war.’

  ‘Remember the fall-out?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘People would like to see us look – ’

  ‘Henry, focus … Jesus is listening. What’s he think of what you’re saying?’

  Henry reached over for a branch and almost fell. William steadied the ladder, wondering if he was up to any job. Now Henry was peering down at him. ‘William, I’ve got nothing to hide from Jesus.’ Stopping short of saying what he’d given up for the Christian faith compared to William. ‘Maybe it was thirty-nine … anyway, it seems like we’ve only just put it behind us.’

  ‘It wasn’t an issue, Henry.’

  Referring to the episode that began with a picnic service they’d had high on the Kaiserstuhl. Henry had led them up there like a budget Moses, surveying a spot with the best view of the valley. Picnics were laid out and enjoyed and children played. After lunch the men made a ring of stones for seating and Henry attempted to inspire his open-air congregation with a Bergpredigt, a sermon on a hill about the sermon on the mount. Jesus was invoked on the breeze which blew over them and a morning hymn was sung in praise of Creation.

  And then Henry began. Holding up the periodical Joseph’s Best Paper, he proceeded to slander the godless dogs who’d criticised (in language oozing sarcasm) the Barossa Lutherans for ‘book burning’. In reality, this ‘censorship’ had just been a comment he’d made in a sermon a few weeks earlier, criticising Lawrence, Joyce and others. In defiance, Joseph’s Best Paper was burnt and the smoke blown, by a hundred wheezing lungs, back towards the whore of Babylon which was Adelaide. Unfortunately for Henry, there’d been a spy among them. The cover of the next issue of the magazine featured a line drawing of their picnic, complete with Henry as Goebbels and a camp-looking D.H. Lawrence being boiled alive in a pot of sauerkraut as an unmistakable Picasso was beaten to death with sticks of mettwurst. The main article contained fictional episodes from the picnic, including book burnings of the periodical, Hitler sympathisers cursing the English in Barossa Deutsch and men in lederhosen whacking each other on the bottom with Lutheran Bibles.

  The editors were warned by censors about the dangers of hysteria, the risk of defamation and general insensitivity towards German Australians. But by then the damage was done. Letters were written to newspapers, signatures gathered and German companies boycotted. Day by day Pastor Henry descended further into a Hades of his own creation – a hot, steamy place where even God himself couldn’t venture and so-called ‘intellectuals’ played the role of horned devils.

  Henry outlined his position in a letter to the papers but no one believed his pleas of innocence. A Fritz was a Fritz. In the end only time saved him. His job was never in question as the Elders of Langmeil supported him – a debt he could never repay. Church leaders voiced their support for the King, Union Jacks flew down Murray Street and when the trucks with their new street signs arrived no one said a thing.

  Henry prayed publicly in English with his head bowed.

  He looked down from the golden elm, covering his heart with his pruning shears. ‘I learnt, sometimes it’s better to keep things in here.’

  William nodded. ‘You were nailed up like Jesus. You didn’t say anything wrong. God heard what you said. The bookworms will rot in Hell.’

  ‘It wasn’t what I said, but when I said it. Anyway, the Presbyterians banned the same books.’

  ‘God walks with some of them too.’

  ‘If I had my time over, William.’

  William pointed towards the middle of the canopy. ‘You would’ve said the same thing.’

  ‘No.’ Henry stepped on a branch to reach the centre. ‘All I ask, William, is that you keep your dates in your study. I don’t care if the world beats a path to your door. Even if you’re right, which would be good. I could avoid the worst of old age.’

  ‘The middle branch … This is the good news, Henry. I can’t lock it in my study. And if the bookworms and Rohwers of the world – ’

  Henry reached just beyond his balance. ‘You don’t hear a word – ’ Slipping, coming to rest with blunt branches in his ribs, a bleeding scratch down the length of his neck. ‘William …’

  ‘Henry, careful.’

  Henry freed himself and climbed down, handing back the pruning shears and shaking his head. ‘I hope you’re right.’

  William shrugged. ‘I can finish off if you like.
’

  What Rose Drummond called ‘chow mein’ was cooked in her near-new Namco pressure cooker, whistling steam every minute or so in tribute to Saigons never seen and Shanghais never tasted. As Nathan buttered bread she explained how it was the latest thing: carrots, peas and top-grade mince, doused with Keen’s curry and covered with as much cabbage as a Namco could hold, steamed down and served with bowls of rice beside slices of Kraft cheese on ‘continental bread’.

  ‘My dad would never eat this,’ he commented, thinking how chow mein was the Joe Aronson of the mouth.

  ‘And what do your people eat?’ Rose asked, breaking off a piece of fig nougat and placing it beside him, immersing her hands in water the temperature of molten steel and scrubbing Bob’s ashtrays lovingly as her favourite pittosporum rustled gently outside the window.

  ‘Pickled pig is big. Ham, bacon, pork. Bruno, next door, does the killing for Dad.’

  Describing the beast tied up by the back legs and strung up from the myrtle beside his old swing. Squealing and then calming, as its throat was cut and blood went everywhere, spraying out over Bluma’s vegetables and into the Santa Anna William hardly ever mowed with his blunt and rusty hand-mower. ‘Then Bruno cuts it up and takes some for his efforts, including the blood.’

  Rose turned and frowned.

  ‘Blutwurst, a sausage you wouldn’t give your worst enemy. Then Mum’s out with a knife and the Saxa – salted, pickled, and Dad carrying the jars into the cellar. Although it fries up okay, I suppose.’ Going on to explain how anything tasted good besides his mum’s pickled turnips.

  ‘I could try some of these meals, if you like.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Drummond, it’s not something I’ll miss. Apart from the custard cake.’

  ‘Ah – ’

  ‘Which is already taken care of.’

  Rose then told him about her day at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, where she went most days as a volunteer visitor – ‘talking the legs off any poor soul who’s willing to listen to me’ – beside a fellow volunteer called Terese, a newly arrived New Australian with a dozen words of English but no confidence to use them. Rose generally sent her to the cafeteria on errands. ‘“Give them this piece of paper and they’ll know,” I’ll say as I scribble. “Turf Virginia, ten pack, ten shillings … now, you know how much change to bring back?”’ Other times she’d try to draw Terese into the conversation. ‘Now, Terese, tell us about your village – Vienna, wasn’t it?’