A Family Madness by Thomas Keneally Read Free Book Online

their sins.
    â€œIt should be the new direction,” Doig whispered. “Ask the person you’ve wronged. In some cases absolution’s the easy way out.”
    â€œThere’s no way I could tell Gina,” said Delaney, though he feared others would.
    â€œTell me if this is none of my business,” said Doig.
    Indeed he was nothing like the old-style priests who thundered, “How many times? Was she married or single?” and whose right to know was absolute. Some people thought they got their cheap thrills that way, but in fact the poor old buggers must have been bored stupid, a lifetime listening to people’s sexual small change fall on the confessional floor. Knowing, since they weren’t fools, that none of the big operators ever came near a confessional. But never saying to any transgressor, “Tell me if this is none of my business.”
    Doig continued. “I imagine this was a casual encounter. I mean, almost accidental?”
    â€œIt was the team holiday. Hawaii.”
    Doig smiled. “I see. I’ve been there. Even the priests up there smoke pot. You know, according to some writers it’s our serious love we get damned for. Occasional follies are too mean to count for much. But you know that; you’re an intelligent fellow. I wonder why you felt you had to mention it. I could still have given you the traditional absolution.” That was another thing Delaney’s parents disliked—Doig used terms like “traditional absolution” as if there were no real absolution, even though in the past people had thought there was.
    â€œSo that’s not the issue. What’s really worrying you about all this, Delaney?”
    Delaney managed to say it; in fact a childhood in which his mother had forced him to the confessional had prepared him to say it. “It was practically public, and I can’t stand that. I really can’t stand it. It was what I was smoking. I mean, doing it in front of other people.…”
    â€œYou’d hate Gina to know that.”
    â€œGod, I couldn’t take it. I let the others see me letting her down. You know.”
    â€œBeasts of the farmyard,” murmured Father Doig.
    â€œYes,” said Delaney. “That’s about right, Andrew.”
    â€œIt’s common now, Terry. The video revolution. Group rutting.” It was as well the saints weren’t still in their niches to hear such things. “Look, Terry, this was a risk you took, wasn’t it? And one Gina took. Your going away to a fleshpot like Hawaii with the boys of Penrith’s third grade. And you were a casualty of that risk. But you learned something, eh? That you aren’t quite as cat private as you thought you were. So that in the future you’ll go forth armed. There’s the security problem, I understand that. If ever anyone is vicious enough to tell Gina, please feel you can both come to me for counseling.”
    Delaney nodded. He did not quite feel the lightness that followed old-style confession, but Doig wasn’t a bad fellow and was compassionate, even if something of a smart alec. He understood the real world at least, the world in which with very little warning alien women unzipped your fly.
    â€œWould you like,” Father Doig asked, “the traditional absolution?”

5
    The moonlit picnic table was at Easter piled with hubcaps stacked like pie dishes, and a young man, tall and blond, sat at the table with Kabbel.
    â€œLook, my friends,” Kabbel called as Stanton and Delaney emerged from the lane. “This is the security business for you!” His boys had found the personnel of a new operation from Parramatta stealing hubcabs from the Audi-Subaru agency down the road. There were rumors they were doing it all up and down the highway. “This crowd goes in to the manager in the morning with the hubcaps and says, ‘We were passing and saw hoodlums levering off your hubcaps. It