The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [27]
Catherine: “His parish priest, God alone knows what the man thought he was doing for his parishioners. Nothing, to be brief. But he certainly scared Paul terribly. This Father Rowley somehow finds out about Paul and the library and Egypt. And only now does he take an interest in the family. One less of his flock taken by drink or sin, you would think, rather a success, this studious boy? No: he informs Paul’s mother that her son is learning about Satan and paganism at the library, and must be kept away from these books and this place. I can scarcely believe she knew what the man meant, or even which snivelling, unhealthy son was which. But in front of the priest, she duly forbids Paul to mess around any more with books or libraries. He was fourteen, I think, when he came that very day to me with a bag of his belongings, told me the story about the priest and the one about the dog, wept like a child. I comforted him. He was a boy and I pitied him. But then he was trying to embrace me, as a man embraces a woman.
“I had a difficult task, Mr. Ferrell, and you should judge me fairly. I was shocked, of course. Things had been terribly misunderstood in the heart of a very confused, very lonely boy. He offered up words of love and devotion, most of which were last used for wooing in ancient Egypt. Picture a young man trying to win the heart of a woman a dozen years his senior by telling her that her neck is like a goose’s. He told me his loins would burst, that I was his horned sundisk, his turquoise cow, that the colours of my flesh were stolen from Horus and painted by I-can’t-remember-which-one. I know, it is laughable. Go ahead and laugh, Mr. Ferrell, it is funny, I do understand that. But then, oh, it was a strange moment, and I am proud that I did not laugh in his face. Perhaps I should have, but this was only minutes after he had howled about his poor murdered dog, you will recall. So I did the right thing, I would say so even now.”
(Ronald: “She killed us both, that very instant. If I’d been there, I’d’ve whipped the little Romeo black and blue and sent him home to the priest.”)
“I told him that if he truly, truly loved me, then he should serve me and the causes that mattered to me. I told him he could keep his job at the library, all the privileges he had there, his books and tracing papers and notebooks. No one could take that away from him. I told him a friend of ours would give him a bed, as long as he needed it, and we would make sure he continued in school. And in return, Paul would serve me by serving the cause. He would study what I gave him, he would come to our meetings, he would do as he was told by his superiors, and his natural talents—which were plentiful—would see him out, would make him a leader and a help to people who needed his help, right here in Australia. And as for what he kept calling his ‘love’ for me, well, I admit I simply said that when he was twenty-one we would see. I mean, really, it was obviously a little boy’s temporary affection towards a substitute mother, and given something else to see of the world, it would pass. I was just using the tools I had for his own good.”
Macy, I am doing my best to present this woman’s crimes in her own words, as best I can reconstruct them. She admitted openly that she used her uncommon beauty and the boy’s natural affections to force him into working for Bolshevism, and then never told his family where he was. And she was proud of what she’d done, remained convinced that the fate that befell her had been a “class crime,” rather than precisely what she deserved for