Year of the Beast Read online

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  Festival of the Id

  Melbourne, October, 1917

  Chapter 1.

  Chapter 2.

  Chapter 3.

  Chapter 4.

  PART TWO

  The Milhaus Case

  November, 1917

  Chapter 5.

  Chapter 6.

  Chapter 7.

  Chapter 8.

  Chapter 9.

  Chapter 10.

  Chapter 11.

  Chapter 12.

  Chapter 13.

  Chapter 14.

  Chapter 15.

  PART THREE

  A Separate Peace

  December 20th, 1917 – March, 1918

  Chapter 16.

  Chapter 17.

  Chapter 18.

  Chapter 19.

  Chapter 20.

  Chapter 21.

  Chapter 22.

  PART FOUR

  The Beast Withdraws

  Melbourne, November 12th, 1918

  Chapter 23.

  EPILOGUE

  Paris, December, 1977

  Notes for a Novel

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Praise

  Also by Steven Carroll

  Copyright

  Part One

  Festival of the Id

  Melbourne, October, 1917

  1.

  Tall, that’s how she looks. But she’s not. It’s the bearing. And the face: the broad forehead, strong jaw and dark eyes that miss nothing. Hers is not a face that the age calls beautiful. The favoured look is the English rose: clear skin, pink cheeks, cultivated and deferring. The best the garden has. But Maryanne is no English rose. Rather, her face is strong. Skin, swarthy. What another age might call striking – and in a way that suggests an intelligence that does not withdraw from male company or defer to it. But this is not another age. Nor is it her age: she is one of those who have arrived ahead of her times.

  All the same, it is the age she has been thrown into. A particular place. A particular time. A nasty one. Ugly. Brutish. The very worst of humanity on display. And the prime minister, who looms up from a street poster she passes on her walk home, pointing his finger accusingly at her or anybody else in range, the very sight and symbol of the times: the prime minister, someone she can only think of, whenever she thinks of him at all, as a giant wart on thin legs. A thought that gives her passing amusement. One that Maryanne will repeat later to her sister, for she is known as a bit of a wag. Striking, yes. Serious too. But with a comic eye for exaggeration. Always on the brink of an observation that tells people she’s watching. And imagination: possibly too much of it.

  It’s not just her face and bearing that are striking, though. So is her belly. It is round and swollen, seven months pregnant, the baby only a couple of months from falling into the world. And what a world to be falling into. She has just stepped off her tram and is moving slowly, labouring towards the corner of Elizabeth and Bourke streets. The centre of the city on a grey spring day: late afternoon, slipping into twilight. Dust, whipped up by gusts of wind, stinging her eyes. Spring! Ratty spring. She pauses before the intersection. Her heart sinks. Normally thick with carriages, trams and the occasional motor car, it is now thick with people. Clouds in the sky swirl; on the ground the crowd sways. This way and that: a single organism, with thousands of arms, legs and eyes, emitting a continuous hum. A giant thing. A beast. All those faces, eyes, mouths, hats, ears, arms and legs surrendering themselves to this thing they have become. This mass. This agglomeration, now still, now swaying, and all the time emitting a continuous hum and occasionally erupting into a roar as if the beast were suddenly stirred for action. Or wounded. A groan that subsides into a hum, then erupts into a roar.

  It is as if some fantastic metamorphosis is taking place in front of her. And a storybook beast is coming to life before her eyes. As if each of those faces has reached into the depths of its darkness and brought forth the beast that lurks there. Always lurks there, waiting patiently. Sometimes years, sometimes centuries. But always there. And now, its hour come, the beast roars, groans and writhes into life. The very worst of humanity has risen and become this collective thing to which each of those massed faces gives the gift of its darkness, so that the beast may slouch into life and the world hear its groans. For it has waited a long time, brooding in its cave, alone and forgotten, but always there. And now, its moment come, the world will pay.

  Maryanne stands at the edge of the crowd, staring at the intersection. Is she the only one who can see it? She stands apart. Proud, removed. Seven months pregnant, as erect as anyone can be with a belly like that, pausing at the edge of the crowd, wondering how on earth she will make her way through it. Her home is on the other side. And so she will enter the crowd, pass through it without surrendering to it, if only to glimpse the beast from the centre of its black heart.

  The Town Hall clock points towards six. Night will fall. She moves forward, entering the crowd. A large banner hangs from a building on the corner: a dark ‘Yes’ written across it stands out against a rising sun, while a wounded soldier on some foreign battlefield reaches out his hand for help. Brother … She doesn’t read it the way she might a newspaper article or a book. She simply takes it in at a glance. Just another part of the swirling, swaying spectacle.

  A soldier, an officer, is standing on the back of a truck draped in Union Jacks. The soldier’s lips are moving. His mouth is opening and closing, but his words are lost in the continuous hum of the crowd. As she moves forward in laboured steps the crowd makes way. But they eye her suspiciously, as if knowing instinctively that she is not one of them and that she stands apart: moving through the crowd, but removed from it. Proud all right, just a bit too bloody proud. The beast, with its unerring nose for these things, has sniffed her out. But they part for her all the same. The beast has retained at least this much of its former life. And it is only as she nears the soldier who is addressing the crowd that she hears his words. They are yelled, blasted out into the crowd. Volley after volley. He could almost be speaking a foreign language. Or no language at all. Just a series of howls and grunts: each howl, each grunt, a variation on the previous one or a repetition of it, and all of them exploding into the crowd with an immediacy that makes ordinary words of reason seem weak. For this is a place without reason. And, every so often, the soldier raises his fist as the sounds he emits rise to a crescendo and the crowd erupts: the beast roars, groans, then settles back into a grumbling, continuous hum.

  Just then the crowd surges towards the truck and she is carried with it. At its mercy. Her feet barely touching the ground. The officer continues, his utterances hurled into the crowd, but suddenly nobody is listening or even looking. And Maryanne is no sooner thrown to the front by the crowd than the crowd stops, and through a rare gap in the mass of bodies she sees two, maybe three, men rolling round on the bared street. A man’s nose, like a burst drainpipe, spurts blood into the air. Police and soldiers appear as the crowd closes around the scene. She is stuck, can move neither forward nor back. And for the first time since entering the crowd she feels afraid because she has lost the power to choose where her feet can go. And pleas are useless for no one will hear or care. The mob has taken her feet and voice from her. And, at this moment, she is not standing apart from it. She is no longer removed from the beast, but just one more part of it: one more pair of arms and legs. But just as quickly as the crowd closed around the fight, it parts, and a man in overalls staggers past directly in front of her, what’s left of his nose spilling blood. The crowd steps back, he makes his way towards the intersection and the Town Hall, and Maryanne, in his wake, follows.

  The man disappears into the m
ob, half of which jeers and laughs at him, the other half taking him in. She is suddenly standing near the steps of the Post Office. And it is then, faintly at first, that she hears singing floating across the crowd towards her. Singing? It can’t be. But it is. And as she approaches the steps she sees them, above the crowd on the highest steps of the Post Office, a heavenly choir. In full voice. But barely audible above the beast. And as she pushes and pleads her way towards them – old women, young women, all women, a women’s church choir in full voice – she hears the hymn itself. The words float out across the crowd: ‘Thou rushing wind,’ they sing, ‘that art so strong.’ The crowd behind her erupts. The song is lost.

  Reluctantly, men and women part for her and she is concentrated on leaving the crowd behind when she looks to the opposite corner and sees, standing on a makeshift platform, in top hat and black suit, the unmistakable figure of Archbishop Mannix himself. There is a gust of wind; he holds his hat. It is almost like watching a statue move. Mannix. And as much as she is drained by the effort of crossing through the crowd and as much as she wants only to leave it behind her, she is drawn to the tall, top-hatted man in a black suit who is about to address the beast assembled on the other side of the intersection: two assemblies, one beast. Behind Mannix another women’s choir booms into full voice: ‘In gladness let us sing …’ For a moment, the booming, unified voice of the choir conquers the noise of the crowd: ‘Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia …’ But just as this choir begins, the other on the steps of the Post Office bursts into the sound or simply lifts its voice in response: ‘Oh, thou rushing wind …’ And for the time it takes to complete the hymns, it seems to Maryanne, looking from one to the other, that these opposing choirs are doing battle. Hurling their holy choruses at each other, volley after volley.

  In front of the Town Hall the soldier is still addressing the crowd from the back of the truck; booing, cheers and hooting mingle in the air. The beast roars and writhes. The choirs each rise to their crescendo, climax, then subside into silence. The air is strangely still. The spring wind stops and listens. Mannix begins.

  The clear, crisp voice of Ireland carries across the gathered heads towards her. Unimpeded. As if the street were a church and they were all listening to Sunday’s sermon. But they’re not. And the lull is short lived. On the steps of the Town Hall behind her she hears voices calling out in the name of the dead. Vote ‘Yes’, the dead call. Vote ‘Yes’. An egg is thrown. A stone. Another. A fight breaks out beside her and she flees, rushing forward away from it as the police part the scene, swinging truncheons. Mannix’s words are lost for a moment. And because the crowd, like her, has rushed forward to avoid the fight, she has been swept closer to Mannix. His top hat sits firmly on his head. He barely moves. He is calm. The still point of the swirling crowd, which is soon subdued once again. The clear, crisp voice of Ireland is not raised, but she hears it well enough. A church voice; no, a cathedral voice. And she moves closer, drawn more by the voice than the words, in a kind of thrall. Then he does raise his voice and, suddenly, there is passion in it. He is talking of mothers and children, and death and war, and at one point he seems to be speaking to her alone. Their eyes, she is sure, lock. And for that moment she is not just some nameless part of the crowd, but once again stands apart from it, discernible from it, and the words that reach her of mothers and sons and death become personal: heard by the crowd, but addressed to her. Behind him, behind the choir now standing silently to attention, a giant banner bearing a giant red ‘No’ lifts in the breeze, dripping blood. But it is a blur, like the hum all around her. His eyes, she is sure, his eyes clear as his voice, remain fixed on her. She could swear she can see the whites of them and the black pupils. Intense. Fixed. And for a moment it is like staring into the eyes of God himself: all-seeing, allknowing. The God from whom there are no secrets. The God to whom you can’t lie. He knows! Fallen woman! She is exposed, bulging with her sin. Shame sweeps over her, and the sputtered cries of the day, hurled out into the crowd from one side to the other – duty, blood, death, Hun, mercy, war, loyalty, victory – all fade from hearing, and the sins of the world are suddenly concentrated in her. Wars don’t matter, or ruined countries or bloodied fields. Only this matters. This shame that sweeps over her, telling her that the burden of sin is hers alone, and that she is bulging with all that is wrong in the world. And the whole bloody nightmare thousands of miles away is nothing to this.

  She turns sharply from Mannix, from the judgement and the sentence in his eyes, and moves away from the crowd, which still writhes in all its black triumph. Men and women make way for her, but suspiciously and accusingly, as if they too know. As if everybody does.

  She is once more standing apart. Looking back. On the edge of some awful force. And, for a moment, it is like watching history, possessed by the devil of the very worst in everyone, work itself out: the sum total of the crowd, the place and the hour – the beast they have all given birth to – slouching towards its moment.

  ***

  Then she is free. She can breathe. The city has opened up. The streets are clear. The October evening is falling. Twilight is upon her. Shadows are forming. The day is cooling. Behind her, a window smashes. Yelling and curses follow. The pubs are closing and drunks are spilling onto the streets. Enemies will clash; friendships long and deep will be broken, never to be repaired, in these days of the beast. YES to conscription, and NO. NO and YES. Duty and death. Blood and sacrifice. In the distance the choirs start up again, faintly audible, hurling hymns at each other from opposite sides of the street: In gladness let us sing … Thou rushing wind …

  She walks away from it all, a laboured walk up the hill to parliament. The air is purer and clearer and she breathes deeply, as if, in the midst of the beast, she had been suffocating and hadn’t known it. The noise of the crowd behind her subsides, then slowly fades altogether. When she finally reaches the parliament she stops. The lights are on. Is the Wart inside? Possibly. The country’s good is decided in there by the likes of the Wart. The building glows in the evening light like a touch of something out of ancient Greece or Rome. Impressive, yes – on the outside. She smiles to herself, leaves it at that and moves on. North, where the dome of the Exhibition Building is visible not too far away towards her suburb. The grey clouds have parted for the first time all day, and the setting sun, a giant egg-yolk, melts onto the rooftops and trees and over the dome itself. Somewhere, children are playing in the last of the light.

  Children. Until a year ago she was a teacher at the Catholic school that she attended as a student: in the junior school, the lowest of all. Like her sister, Katherine, she’d finished school. Went as far as she could go. And not just finished school, but was very good at her work. Good enough to be offered the job of an assistant: cleaning blackboards, filling inkwells, standing on yard duty. All the things nobody else wanted to do. And she did this until she was old enough to take her own class. She wasn’t qualified, and still isn’t. But nobody cared. She certainly didn’t. And she can still see herself when she first started. Impossibly young. Thrilled. Her own class. There were forty-seven of them. Either they mastered her, or she mastered them. So, every day, she beat them into submission, hating herself for it, for it was mutually degrading. But eventually she won. They were hers, she had them. Beaten brats every one. And every class after that bent to her will. But the effort was so great she could no longer feel or muster the thrill of first stepping into the class. She had beaten them into submission and they feared her. That was the price of respect.

  But Maryanne no longer teaches, and she doesn’t miss it. She stops on the edge of a park next to parliament and pauses: the scene is soothing, silent, apart from the tinkle of children. Then the clear, crisp voice of Ireland comes back to her. And the eyes. All-knowing. The God from whom there are no secrets … Odd. She’s been leaving her religion for years. Strange how these things creep up on you, catch you, and before you know it you’re the all-believing girl you once were, trembling under the all
-seeing eyes of a God you don’t believe in any more. Shadows gather. The last of the day’s light retreats. A couple, passing beneath a street lamp, nods. Here, at least, all is still and calm. A world at peace. Almost happy.

  She moves on to a tree-lined street. Over her shoulder and out of sight, in a distant part of the sky, a silver jet glides through the air, shining in the last of the light. It slows, seems to hover, then prepares to touch down in another age. Another country: where night is becoming morning, autumn turning into winter. The son of the child she carries sits in that silver capsule as it prepares to land, staring out the window with pen and notepad on his lap, gazing back upon the scene: a woman, swollen belly, makes her way along a tree-lined street in the last of a spring day. She looks tall, but she’s not. It’s her bearing. A woman, swollen belly, makes her way along a tree-lined street in the October twilight; a story begins …

  She enters a small street that leads into the cluttered suburb she calls home and has called home all her life. The streets are closed in, the air dusk-thick. The grimy neighbourhood she calls home is deserted. Except for two boys who rush through a crossing in front of her. Then rush back. Their arms, which are wings, are outstretched. They are aeroplanes. They weave, they roll, they swoop. Rat-a-tat-tat sounds shatter the quiet stillness of the evening. She pauses, staring at them. This playing at war. So old. Ancient. This urge to kill and die. They play at war, and then they grow up and stride off to war as if they are still playing.

  In the half-light they circle each other, dodging this way and that down the street. Wild boys. The father gone to a never-ending war, the wife left holding a baby girl who is only just walking. They are in front of her one minute, and flown into the night the next.

  The house in which she grew up, and in which her parents died, one after the other, is not far now. Home. A refuge of sorts. Her life has been lived in this rectangle of land that calls itself a suburb. It is both home and alien, her neighbourhood: row upon row of workers’ cottages, small and dark.