The Soul Stone, a Novel by Brad Collis

The Soul Stone By Brad Collis The Soul Stone By Brad Collis Copyright © 2009 First published in Australia in 1993 by Hodder & Stoughton (Australia) Pty Ltd. ISBN 0 340 58452 1 (Out of print) This ebook, a re-edited version of the original book, is being made available by the author at no cost. However, the work remains protected by copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission of the author. (email: [email protected]) Chapter One Brother Wheatley pumped his arms above his head; his face red with exertion as he followed the score on an iron music stand. Here in the resonance of the old hall it was easy to create angels, but he had little faith in the boys’ ability to achieve the same ethereal qualities in a radio studio. Walls lined with split egg cartons was not a comforting measure of technology. The smooth, ominous tip of a leather strap, stitched in layers until it was an inch thick, protruded from the deep pocket of his cassock. Brother Wheatley relied on a far more tangible weapon of inspiration. To help and guide and comfort us, and lead us in our prayer . Simon Bradbury – a bony, earnest boy in grey serge; in awe of God, clerics and their leather straps, desperate to please, tried to follow the pumping arms of Brother Wheatley. Being in the choir was a heartfelt prayer unexpectedly answered. Each night he had sung the songs to himself; had mouthed the words until he dreamed them in fitful sleeps. In two days the choir would be at the radio station recording for the Religious Program; an hour of sectarianism every Sunday morning before the football. Simon had written excitedly to his parents to tell them to listen. Barely ten and already Simon lived on the fringe of his two worlds. He was a boarder. He was separated already from the farm; from his home, and at the end of every school day he separated from friends who bicycled away to streets noisy with neighbours and familiar faces. 1 The song reached its climax. Simon filled his lungs for a final ebullient lunge. Every sinew in his skinny neck quivered as he thrust his face towards the darkened beams above—and broke the hymn apart with a nerve-taught squawk. Two rows of pinched cheeks and tingling flanks held their collective breath. Simon lowered his gaze and offered, without inquisition, the confession expected. The cleric rounded on the boy. "Out," he shouted and pointed to the distant door. Simon squeezed through the front rank, clambered blindly down the stage steps, across the cavernous hall to the heavy wooden door. Two dozen pairs of dispassionate eyes followed his retreat. Drawing back the iron bolt, he slid through a gap in the door and out into the wintry playground. Simon didn’t sing on the radio. On the day of the taping, Brother Wheatley anointed him overseer of a work detail dispatched to the nearby presbytery. It meant escaping the classroom for half a day, although the gesture did little to lift Simon’s gloom. His teacher tried to make light of the banishment. “Not everybody can be a singer,” he had said, ruffling Simon’s hair. When Simon didn’t respond the teacher lifted his chin. “Disappointments make us stronger—perhaps God has plans for Simon Bradbury that don’t require him to sing on the wireless!” Then, his mind already elsewhere, he thrust a shed key into the boy’s hand and ordered him away. Simon armed his navvies with garden tools and led them along a back lane, past the picket fence behind the brothers’ house, to the presbytery. His own hands were empty. “Hey, Bradbury what are you going to do?” called one of the boys pointedly. “Pick flowers,” suggested another. The group snickered. 2 “Who’s your girlfriend, Bradbury?” “Sister Veronica,” shouted a boy whose stick-like legs and stretched neck stuck out like pink stems from his hand- me-down clothes. They laughed. Simon thrust out his jaw and confronted the tormentors. “Get fucked.” They whooped with delight. “You’ll get six.” “Bare bum,” sang another. “Bare bum,” they began to chant. Brother Harris had been in the army. Korea, an older boy once confided. They didn’t know where Korea was, but there had been a war. They knew that. Brother Harris still cut his hair like a soldier and discipline was his dogma. Every morning he inspected the school; ranks of undernourished Christian soldiers standing stiff and anxious on the handball courts. Anything less than a ruler-edged part from forehead to crown was enough to get you called out to the front. Cold fingers fumbled with buckle and buttons; trembling hands pushed baggy shorts until they dropped into a puddle of cloth around black, buffed shoes. On the order to bend, some boys closed their eyes. Some turned away with fear or shame—but some faced the parade with the hatred of embittered men. “—Lower … !” A hand pushing on the neck. Then the waiting—everyone watching the small white bottom, waiting to see it burn; waiting for Brother Harris’s arm to rise and for the strap to come swishing down. Simon stomped along the path, swallowing hard. Someone would tell, he knew that much. At the presbytery there were lawns to cut, hedges to trim and cobbled paths and loamy rose beds full of worms and dead thorns to weed. On any other day Simon would have been glad to be on the detail. He liked the feel and sight of his skin grimy with earth. He enjoyed the opportunity to demonstrate his farm-learned proficiency with tools. But 3 his mind this day was elsewhere. The unfairness gnawed at his heart. He had desperately wanted to sing—to stand in front of a microphone; to be on the radio, anonymous in a chorus of voices but on the radio nonetheless. He sat on the wall banging his heels against its granite flanks, almost daring God to descend personally to punish him for his recalcitrance. It was a challenge God did not allow to pass. Simon felt his ear being tweaked before he was even aware of Father MacNamara’s presence. “Nothing to do young man?” the priest demanded. His voice still held a hint Gaelic. A man in his late thirties, Father MacNamara enjoyed the swagger of authority his position conferred. The church in the early 1960s was a powerful institution, and Father MacNamara was an ambitious young executive. He was popular, but jaunty and glib among people whose lives he could control by invoking powers beyond their comprehension. “There aren’t enough tools Father,” said the boy, cowering under the man’s gaze. “Pretty poor planning isn’t it? Who’s in charge?” He clenched his fists into his sides and faced the others who had stopped to indulge in their classmate’s discomfort. All eyes turned to Simon. The priest encouraged him off the wall with a sharp tug to Simon’s ear. “Good,” he said, with a smile. “Candlesticks need polishing.” Simon followed Father MacNamara’s flowing black skirt past the workers, whose downturned faces hid their treacherous grins. Together, the priest gliding and the boy stumbling, they disappeared through the doorway of the darkened sacristy. Twin wooden wardrobes dominated the small room. They shone in the dull light; the legacy of conscientious oiling and polishing by generations of nuns, called from the shallows of adolescent prayer to become the housewives of the church. 4 Against one wall an enamel washbasin was set into a wooden bench. No amount of rubbing could remove the brown rust tracing a miniature river from the base of the brass tap to the green, oxidized sinkhole. An old leather chair with thick armrests filled one corner. Beside it a shelved wall-unit stood. In its centre was a recess half hidden by a partially pulled back green cloth. A key protruded from the lock of a small cubicle. The room was redolent of mysterious odours and perfumes; waxes, wood oils, and the lingering presence of incense. Simon’s eyes were wide with wonder. Father MacNamara watched the boy thoughtfully, surprised by the unexpected intensity with which he was devouring the room’s details. “Not been in the sacristy before?” The boy faced the priest and looked at him anew. There were unearthly powers in this room and Father MacNamara was the diviner. A line from a book, he couldn’t remember which, came to him, “an instrument of God”. It was standing before him. “No Father,” the boy responded. “Hmm!” The priest looked as though he was about to say more but appeared to change his mind. Instead he swung open the cupboard beneath the sink and withdrew a fistful of rags and a stained tin of Brasso. He handed them to Simon. Simon followed the priest onto a sea of red carpet. He looked from the main altar, rising high above the carpeted steps to his left, to his customary place among the benches and their hard kneeling boards. He became aware of a contrast. The altar was a place of order. The body of the church, on the other hand, looked disturbed; the empty pews caught in dust-speckled shafts of window light like chopped water below a longboat’s oars. He became conscious for the first time of two distinct worlds.

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