Four Fires by Bryce Courtenay Page B

then. You're all mine from the selfsame womb I wouldn't want it any different. A wog, a Septic Tank and three
    generation Aussies whose ancestors came here from Ireland as convicts and whose father seems determined to keep up the family tradition.'
    We took turns giving her a hug and then Nancy patted her great belly. 'All of them blokes were needed to make you lot, the mighty Maloneys, and I thank God he gave you to me because if it had been left to Father Crosby, Lord knows where you would have been.'
    'Why's that?' Bozo asks.
    'It's why we are collapsed Catholics,' Nancy said. 'With each of you, soon as it was known I was pregnant, Father Crosby came around.
    "Now Nancy," he'd say, "you'll be wanting those taken care of, we've a nice place you can go to have your baby where the nuns will take good care of you and, then, when the wee mite is born, we'll have it adopted
    -by a good Catholic family. There's plenty of good deserving couples the Lord has not seen fit to bless who'll take a healthy child. It's the best thing to do all round, my girl."' Nancy's got his voice down pat, only her voice is a bit deeper than Father Crosby's.
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    'My God!' Mike says, slapping his palm against his forehead. 'I could have been adopted into a rich family and slept in every morning of my life!'
    We all laugh, Mike's a real card when he wants to be.
    'I was having none of that,' Nancy said. 'I wanted each one of you,
    .but the Church wouldn't leave me alone. They put pressure on my parents and said I could even have been excommunicated if I didn't do it their way. But I knew that was crap. I decided then and there the c hurch, not my faith, that's different, but the Church had no room for
    -me and my children. "Where does it say in the Bible that Adam and Eve were married?" I asked Father Crosby.'
    '"To be sure, Nancy O'Shane, Eve was made from Adam's rib, there Was no hanky-panky going on there now." Then he said, "A rib isn't fornication outside of wedlock."
    '"A rib, is that what they called a man's percy in those days, Father?" I said to him.
    '"That's blasphemy, and you'll be punished for that, Nancy God is not mocked!" and he sweeps up the edge of his soutane off. "You'd better come to confession," he shouts out.'
    'Weren't you frightened, Mum?' Sarah asks.
    'Scared out of my wits, but I wasn't going to give you up, darling.
    Then, after you were born and I wasn't struck by lightning nor got leprosy, it was easier to resist the pressure when your brothers came into the world under similar circumstances.'
    'Is that why you didn't send us to the convent?' Sarah asks.
    'It was well known that you were all born out of wedlock and I didn't want the nuns to get at you. They would have, to be sure, and they can be cruel as witches.' Nancy smiles, 'What a lovely bunch of Maloneys you all turned out to be.'
    'But technically we're not all Maloneys,' Mike points out. 'Bozo and me, we're not.'
    'Might as well all be called Maloney, eh?' Nancy says. 'It's a damn sight better than Vincentio Tomasetti or Audry Bozonik, even if the present and rightful owner of the Maloney name isn't this town's most upstanding citizen. Though we mustn't forget he fought and suffered Page 51

    for his country.'
    So there we were back to Tommy's mysterious war. We'd heard Nancy say he'd come back like a drover's dog all prick and ribs and words like 'after all he'd been through' and 'near dead after three years of starvation' but we still knew nothing except that he'd been a prisoner of war under the Japanese in Borneo.
    When on occasions we tried to push her further on the subject, she'd say, 'It's not all his fault. Your father's the way he is because of what happened to him in the war,' and then she'd say no more.
    Sometimes you'd see her eyes close as if she was about to weep or was trying to understand herself what had happened to the nice young bloke who'd gone laughing off to Singapore, promising to return and take care of her and whatever the bun in the