Office of Innocence by Thomas Keneally

Author:Thomas Keneally
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Contemporary, Fiction
ISBN: 9780754019732
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 2002-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

XV

When the monsignor and Mrs. Flannery had finished with them, it was natural that Darragh should hungrily read the newspaper reports of the death of Kate Heggarty, in the remaining mad expectation that at the end of one of the columns the journalists or Inspector Kearney would come clean and say, “By the way, this is just a sample of what we can do to create realities where there were none, and, far from being strangled, Mrs. Heggarty, on her next day off work, will be found escorting her son, Anthony, up Homebush Road to St. Margaret's Primary School.” Neither Telegraph nor Herald, a Masonic rag according to the monsignor but necessary to buy on large occasions for its war maps and so that a fellow could be annoyed by its acidulous editorials, nor the vacuous afternoon Sun made this admission so desired by Frank Darragh, who was forced to put the print away from him so that his tears did not ruin the page.

But at least the newspapers pleased the monsignor by not mentioning Darragh, and by failing to cast any shadow over the monsignor's financial and sacramental polity of St. Margaret's.

Apart from that, it was a pitiable story, and the newspapers were sympathetic to Mrs. Heggarty, though they did not thoroughly excuse her. There was an editorial in the Telegraph which reminded soldiers' wives that as generous as they might be socially, they must be careful about the people they admitted to their houses in their husbands' absence. Neighbors had seen a man in a brown suit visit Mrs. Heggarty one time in the early evening, and another man in a blue suit arrived from a large car parked around the corner about noon on a recent Saturday. He carried a suitcase like a commercial traveler.

Mrs. Heggarty was well liked by neighbors, the papers said, though they said she did not go round attending tea parties. Her son could say nothing about the male visitor, except that he was strong—“He tossed me for fun,” said Anthony. “He was named Johnny, and brought chocolate with him.” It seemed that sometimes when the visitor was there, Mrs. Stevens minded Anthony.

Darragh's head, for spasms of perhaps twenty seconds at a time, and recurrently through the coming days, was possessed by the image of her face descending, the crown of her honest head exposed to God and to Darragh's gaze, to embrace with her lips the thin rim of a china cup. And somewhere, in Africa or Europe, Private Heggarty woke in his prison camp thinking himself still a man with a wife.

Darragh went to the school to see Anthony, but he was not there. The nuns said he was having some days off with Mrs. Stevens.

The day after her death had been suitably one of neutral weather, and even early, when Darragh went to put on his vestments and say Mass, offering up the bread and the wine that Christ, who knew agony, might extend His mercy to Kate Heggarty, clouds had already canceled sun, and sun the clouds.

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