Hill of Grace (5 page)

Eventually they returned to Adelaide and the Keswick barracks, confiscating some books from William's study and letting him know they'd be watching him. In the form of mail censorship and a not-so-subtle, on and off, personal surveillance by two men in an old Ford.

William traversed the rows, up and back, and even as the light began to fade he kept on with the whip. Eventually the animal just stopped and he left it there, refusing to unharness it, feed, water or even acknowledge it. After he'd washed up and eaten tea he returned to the horse and stood beside it. ‘Tomorrow,' he whispered, making his way back across the muddy furrows.

As the cold of another early May night set in, Bluma watched as William stoked the oven in their black kitchen and returned to his Bible and scrapbook and other documents laid out on the table. Soon she retired to his study, the only other room in the house apart from their bedroom, with a
Weekly
full of ideas for the spring bride. As she marvelled at endless miles of lace and white organdie (she'd been all in black, according to the
Lutheran
tradition), Nathan sat at her feet with a copy of
Macbeth
.

‘Surely this one's Bruno,' she said, looking at the husband of a confetti-covered bride running through Trafalgar Square.

‘Bruno's never been to London,' Nathan smiled. ‘I doubt Bruno's ever got past Gawler.'

‘And here . . .' Another groom in her magazine, the splitting image of Mussolini, with glasses, but nonetheless . . . After which they immersed themselves in their own separate thoughts.

William welcomed Arthur, Joshua and Bruno and, a little later, Seymour Hicks with his hearse parked beside their smoke-house. Coffee was prepared and cake consumed and William opened with a devotion. ‘“And I saw an angel come down from Heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit.”'

Bruno smiled at Joshua and said, ‘Willy shouldn't be bothered with his seeding this year.'

‘Or the harvest,' Joshua smiled.

William stopped and half-smiled himself. ‘Bruno, you'd have us believe no one will need food.'

Bruno shrugged. ‘Maybe we won't. Who's to say who'll make the grade?'

But this was something William refused to enter into. He went on to finish Revelations chapter twenty, explaining how Satan, escaped from his prison, was deceiving Seymour with his automobile and even Pastor Henry with his fundraiser film night.

Which was the greater of two evils? Shoeless orphans or the devil invited into Langmeil itself? Arthur was warned off an electric lathe and, as for the Anglicans with their Guy Fawkes,
these
were the fires which would come down out of Heaven to devour them.

Luckily, Premier Playford had kept the sin of gambling at bay, but knowing the temperament of the average Australian, that too would have its day. Already had: lotto coupons in the papers, a new pool table in the Tanunda Hotel. In William's scheme of things even the new hot dog machine in the Black and White Cafe was a sign.

At which point he opened his scrapbook – to the accompaniment of moans and Bruno thumping the table. ‘William, put it away.'

But William couldn't be stopped. The signs were there. The mare standing like a statue in the middle of his field, their children in defiance of them (although Nathan wasn't mentioned by name), fossils which the newspapers said were a million years old, chromosomes, genes, meaningless gabble set down by scientists who'd lost their way under the influence of the devil Darwin.

‘William,' Bruno continued, ‘this is Bible study, not your sermon.'

William waved his Bible about in the air then read: ‘“And I saw the beast, and the Kings of the earth, and their armies gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse . . .”' He looked at every man in the group. ‘Who is the man on the horse?'

‘The Saviour?' Seymour offered. Grabbing the lifeline, William looked to Joshua, who replied, ‘I don't think the false prophet was worried about a hot dog machine.'

‘Nonetheless,' William observed, unimpressed.

‘I told you, William,' Joshua continued, ‘people will laugh at you.'

But just then Bluma emerged from William's study, breaking the spell. Bluma cut the men a plate of pickled pig, set it adrift on a sea of pickled cabbage, then filled some of Arthur's wooden goblets (a present for their anniversary last year) with some of William's 1948 shiraz. As they ate she opened the back door and strolled into the moonlight. The night was cold and crisp, the stillness broken only by rustling leaves. Spying the mare in the distance, its shoulders sagging under the weight of the harnessed plough, she walked over and unharnessed the beast and led it to an empty paddock. As she ran her hand across the horse's neck and shoulders, a nervous twinge shot down its leg.

Inside, Joshua had taken a newspaper as the starting point for their discussion. By the end it was generally agreed, even by William, that the sale of Holden's five hundredth FX was not a sign of the End, that the flooding of Lake Eyre was just the flooding of Lake Eyre and that Bradman hadn't claimed any Christ-like properties. Then William started flicking through his old, worn copy of the
Augsburg Confession
, the central tenet of the Lutheran faith. He stopped at article seventeen: ‘“The Lord Christ will return on the last day for judgement and will raise up all the dead, to give eternal life and everlasting joy to believers . . .”'

The document went on to reject the ungodly men and devils and Baptists and Jews, not necessarily in that order. Then it explained how, after the End of Days (which William knew was just around the corner), Christ would rule over them on earth for a thousand years of bliss. Peace amongst men. A giant bonfire on which would be placed a million rolls of celluloid and a thousand hot dog machines. And in this Millennialist time men would flock to pay homage to William for the vision he'd shown – they would drink his shiraz and massage the calluses on his feet.

William himself would have Christ over for tea. Jesus would discuss the perfect seed mix and the tragedy of the
Titanic
.

Weeks passed and the rhythms of the valley flowed like the water which had mostly deserted Jacob's Creek. William helped a distant cousin clear the last three gum trees from his property and lost a night's sleep keeping watch over Arthur's Hereford cow as it struggled with a breach birth. On the Kaiserstuhl and its sister hills, sitting bald and velvet in a long line, dead grasses dropped their seed onto hard, lifeless soil.

It was before dawn and William was walking through a dark landscape which had no thoughts of admitting the sun. Birds here and there were starting in on their business and a few chimneys had started to smoke off towards Menge's Hill. A girl's voice somewhere taunted someone with gibberish but mostly William heard only a sleepy hush, broken by the rustling of callitris and breezes down from the ranges, skimming the plains. In a moment of transcendence, William felt it was only him in the landscape with God, in His various manifestations: orchids, a still pool in the trunk of a fallen tree. He felt as though nothing else in the world existed. Not scrapbooks, or dill pickles. Not Baume or Bluma's white-work. Even memories of his forebears were like skins shed in the grasses of a Tanunda morning.

And in this state, he stretched out his hand to walk beside God, in the same way he had walked as a child with his mother down the main street of Tanunda. Oblivious to direction and purpose. No one speaking. Just the shedding of more and more layers until there was nothing but spirit – neighbours witnessing a naked Miller dragging his feet through a dew wet carpet of sorrel.

He passed like this most of the way toward Angaston, toward Henschke's Hill of Grace vineyard. Gnadenberg was ready for the harvest – a mistake, William believed, seeing as there was still plenty of sun left to warm the sugars and finish the flavours of near-perfect grapes. But if that's what the Henschkes wanted, he would oblige. The extra money for a few days of picking would offset any shortfall in his own vintage. There was still talk of lino, or a new suit for Nathan, but the art of being prudential was something they'd all thank him for one day.

The Hill of Grace was a valley of grace, the fog still clearing as William, before any of the other pickers arrived, started filling a wicker basket and delivering the grapes to a German wagon. As the sun inched its way over the horizon the steeple of Gnadenberg church cast a long shadow down into the valley, across the rows of vines which had been growing there happily for nearly a hundred years. Bunches of grapes hung as heavy as ram's balls in expectation of another perfect harvest. The soil, according to Henschke, was as giving as the love of God himself – in fact, there was no way to make bad wine from Gnadenberg's miraculous vines.

As William looked out over the sea of vines he stopped to breathe, slowly, and think how, apart from Presbyterians and collar rot, his life had reached a stage of calmness and resolution, full of familiar smells and tastes and people with their bearable imperfections – like Bruno's Glen Miller records, broadcast the length of Langmeil Road every few weeks. And in this moment of clarity, the bells of Gnadenberg sounded in his ear. Bells unlike Langmeil's. Rung more consonantly than Bruno or Ian, with their complete lack of rhythm. Bells which echoed down through the valley, resonating through every grape and every sod of turf, dying out to nothing in the far distance beyond Graetztown Corner.

And at that moment God spoke to William. Not a white-bearded God of the sky, heralded by MGM-movie musical fanfares and Pears-print angels, but the God of a single white arum lily, growing between his legs. And as he bent down to touch it the lily spoke to him. Its words were in the form of ether, rising up out of the earth, venting through the copper-rich soil into the atmosphere of a clear Barossa morning. The ether entered his nostrils and filled his lungs and attached itself to every blood cell in his body, feeding every organ with the good news of Christ's return.

William sat on the earth and, through habit, looked up at the sky. ‘What is it?' he asked. But the baritone of a younger Tauber or Lanza didn't reply. Instead he had to search for the vibrations, like Brahms hammering away after a lost melody. Like extracting teeth through sheer will-power.

But then the voice returned, whispering his name, ‘William Miller . . .'

Farm Day was State Fair minus Shirley Jones, show tunes replaced by folk songs, choreography by thigh-slapping, love interests by love interests and a decent-white-folks-in-the-middle-of-harvest feel by the Gemutlichkeit of a hundred squealing pigs.

The day started with Joan Lavner, daughter of the fortified wine Lavners, being crowned the Daughter of Bacchus pageant queen for the third year running. This caused some friction with Bruno's eldest grand-daughter, Christina (Lilli's sister) who, most agreed, had the higher cheekbones and broader forehead.

As William finished yarding the last of his stock display, the Tanunda Brass Band played the German and then the Australian national anthem, dying in the end around the
Long to reign over
us
phrase, in a flurry of misfingered notes.

Bruno approached and handed William a piece of Stinkerkaese, a cheese made from curdled skim milk, and a beer in a coffee mug. As they looked around, William provided a narration that was of little interest to Bruno. ‘The merino,' he began, ‘is a wonderful animal . . . but not suited to the valley.' He rubbed his hands over the horns of Arthur's ram, explaining how the high rainfall would always rot their feet. ‘Leave them for Ceduna,' he smiled, unsure of where Ceduna was.

They passed giant pigs, weighing as much as small trucks, wallowing in the mud of Tanunda oval mid football season, contemplating a future of slit throats and pickled pork. Cattle, again, selected to show off the breeding and husbandry skills of their owners: an Angus steer extruding shit like Bernard Zwar's sausage machine, a Hereford heifer with shoulders as broad as Himmler's archetypal superman and a couple of dried-up Friesians, destined for the abattoir if not purchased by four p.m.

There were goats and Tukidale sheep, chooks and chicks for the town kids to hold, an Alpaca, which was apparently the next big thing, and Shetland pony rides for a penny a piece.

‘Have you noticed Nathan and Lilli?' William asked, as Bruno skirted around a minefield of pats which would never bother William himself.

‘Lilli is alert up here,' Bruno replied, tapping his head and thinking of his grand-daughter. ‘And so is Nathan.'

‘Of course.'

‘She reads everything: newspapers and timetables, the labels on jam jars.'

Going on to explain how this was the age-old dilemma of fathers and sons, and to a lesser extent, mothers and daughters:

children outgrowing their nest in more than a physical way.

‘Could they come to us to discuss their music?' Bruno continued.

‘I can't think of what Nathan listens to.'

‘He listens.'

William thought, I've done my best, but what good's that when someone else comes along and launches their waif of a child into the world to spoil everything for everybody else. ‘Bruno,' he began, ‘I understand Lilli is . . .'

Bruno scowled, reading his thoughts. ‘William, we didn't create the times, but we have to live in them.'

William was silent, agreeing with him completely, imagining Lilli as a low-cut Sophia Loren, dragging Nathan into a mire which could only end in one thing – disrespect. The wood-oven-fired love of family replaced with grins and sarcasm, a culture as dried-up and worthless as the two doomed Friesians.

‘Anyway,' William said, patting a Romney ewe, ‘things will sort themselves out.'

‘Kids,' Bruno replied, slapping him on the shoulder. William looked at him but in the end chose to keep the peace with his neighbour.

As the Tanunda Brass Band continued playing, Joshua came running down the hill towards William's stock display, taking him under the arm and saying to Bruno, ‘Can you watch the animals?'