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?