Bliss by Peter Carey Read Free Book Online Page B

waiting for you.'
    'No!' But it was true.
    'Waste, waste, waste.' She said. 'Oh, Vance, it is the only sin that cannot be forgiven.' And he saw, in the wrecked remains of her splendid dark eyes, his mother confront the shining steel orbs of hell.
    It was not the buzzer which brought the Reverend Desmond Pearce but the good man's own blunt brogues, clumping down the hospital verandah as if testing for rot in its ancient planks. His swinging hands were rough, coarse with nicks and scabs, a hint that the saving of souls required something a bit more muscular than his 4PS, which – to get them out of the way here – were Prying, Preaching, Praying, and Pissing-off-when-you're-not-wanted.
    Harry looked up from his cane chair, saw Desmond Pearce's face, and liked it immediately. It was a rugged, pock-marked face with a slightly squashed nose and a crooked grin. His hair was a curling mess and he showed the proper disregard for sartorial elegance which Harry had always seen as a sign of reliability in a person. Neat men always struck him as desperate and ambitious.
    'G'day.'
    'Hello,' Harry smiled, and noted the little gold cross, tucked away where a rotary badge might normally go, on the lapel of the crumpled grey sportscoat.
    'Join you?'
    'Go for your life.' There was something about Desmond Pearce that attracted such slanginess.
    He dragged up a cane chair and sat down, pulling up his grey trousers to reveal footballer's legs and odd socks.
    'What are you in for?'
    'Heart,' Harry grinned. 'How about you?'
    'Armed robbery.'
    They laughed a little.
    'Harry,' Harry said and held out his hand.
    'Des.'
    'The Reverend Des?'
    'You bet.'
    Harry tapped his fingers on his chair.
    'It's a beautiful day,' said Desmond Pearce surveying the sun-filled garden. There was still dew on the course-bladed grass and honey-eaters hung from the fragile branches of a blue-flowered bush. 'And a good place to be sitting too.' He shifted his bulk around in his creaking chair, crossed his legs one way, then the other. 'Odd socks,' he said, leaning forward to take off his coat without uncrossing his legs. 'I've got odd socks.'
    . But Harry wasn't looking at the socks. He was staring intently at Desmond Pearce and making him feel uncomfortable.
    'Well,' Desmond Pearce said, and slapped his big knees. He had only just (four weeks now)·arrived from the country, where he had been very successful. He could talk to men in sales yards and paddocks, in pubs or at the football.
    Harry was still staring.
    'I have a lot of trouble with odd socks,' Des said. 'Sometimes I go to the laundromat with matched pairs and come back with all odd socks. Sometimes I go with all odd socks and come back with pairs.'
    'Have been making a list,' Harry said, 'of religions.'
    'Oh.'
    When you talk to a man in the middle of a paddock, you look off into the distance, or at the ground, you do not stare at him like this.
    'And seeing you are here,' Harry continued, 'I might ... ah ... ask your help.'
    'Ah, yes,' said Pearce with a feeling of inadequacy, not to say dread, in the face of this velvety urbanity.
    'The problem begins,' said Harry, closing his eyes and talking as if the whole thing had nothing to do with him personally, but rather about some character in a much-told story, 'with the high probability that I shall shortly die, mmm?'
    And he smiled a slightly apologetic, but none the less charming, smile.
    Des Pearce was not good with dying.
    'Shall shortly die. Now, I think there is also a likelihood that I will go to Hell and that ... ah, I wish to avoid. But,' he pulled a battered notebook from his dressing-gown pocket and waved it at the clergyman who was beginning to wonder if he wasn't some ratbag atheist out to have some fun, 'but there are a lot of religions.' A pause. That dreadful stare. 'You see my problem.'
    'Well, you've got a bugger of a problem,' he said carefully.
    'I've had fifteen milligrams of Valium, I'm ashamed to say.'
    'And you're not a Christian?'
    'I was,