Tears of the Moon - Di Morrissey [18]
The moon was high and full and a whitewashed church glowed in its light like the Taj Mahal. She switched off the motor and stepped out to fully appreciate the scene. Noticing that the old arched wooden door was ajar she walked over and stepped gingerly inside.
For a moment she blinked, wondering what strange and wonderful world she’d walked into. The whole interior shimmered and gleamed in the milky light that shone through the stained glass windows. Seeing a small table with candles and a box of matches she lit a candle and moved it in an arc.
The glittery silver light came from pearl shells. Thousands of them lined the walls and ceiling, cut into geometric patterns around windows and every available surface. Paintings and murals were framed in the painstaking mosaic of pearl shell. Lily smiled with delight. ‘How beautiful!’ she exclaimed to herself.
The church felt safe, comforting and peaceful. She blew out the candle and returned to the car, drove it close to the side of the little church. Curling up on the back seat she promptly fell asleep.
CHAPTER THREE
The sun began to warm the interior of the car and Lily stirred uncomfortably. At a tap on the window her eyes snapped open and she sat upright.
A man’s head and shoulders were outlined against the early bright light. He rapped insistently again. Lily unrolled the window a Utile way.
‘Guten Morgen,’ he said cheerfully. He was an older man, with badly cropped grey hair sticking up in tufts.
‘Er, good morning,’ said Lily hesitantly.
‘You were sleeping.’
‘Yes, I was.’
He prodded a spotty banana through the window. ‘Would you like to share my breakfast?’
Lily gratefully took the banana, unlocked and opened the car door. ‘I had a bit of an accident and got stuck. This was as far as I got. My name is Lily.’
‘I am Brother William. So you have come to visit us?’
‘I was trying to get further north but figured it was safer to spend the night here than drive back to Broome.’
‘I always took the boat to Broome. I don’t drive no more. My eyes. No good.’ He tapped his face.
‘You went by boat to Broome from here?’
‘Ya, and from Lombadina—’bout 150 kilometres.’
Lily sat beside him on the stone step outside the church and ate the banana while he talked.
‘One time I come back from Broome. So rough, sea like mountains, up and down, took almost one week in the gale. We get to Beagle Bay, but the seas so bad we can’t come in. I get in the lifeboat with three men to row over the surf, almost two kilometres to the shore. But we capsize, go upside down and so we have to swim. The tide comes in at eight nautical miles an hour, it makes the water rise twelve metres or more along this coast. I pray and swim, pray and swim and we make it.’
He grinned at Lily who had been thinking a boat trip to Broome might be easier than the drive. She changed her mind—the sea was undoubtedly just as treacherous. She shook her head in admiration as he finished telling the story.
Looking at the deepness of the wrinkles in his face, Lily realised Brother William was older than she’d first thought. He wore a blue, short-sleeved shirt and loose grey pants held up by a well-worn belt. He looked fit and his eyes, though watery with age, were a vivid blue. His German accent was unmistakable. ‘Do you live here at the mission?’
‘Yah, yah. I live here long time now. This is my church.’ He waved proudly at the little building. ‘You like it?’
Lily beamed. ‘Oh yes. It’s wonderful. Tell me about the pearl shells. They looked so lovely in the moonlight:
The Brother nodded happily. ‘Ya. And in the sunshine. See up there.’ He pointed to the steeple.
Lily gazed up at the tower to where the steeple was fitted with a copper ball on which a cross was mounted. The mother-of-pearl inlay sparkled in