荆棘鸟TheThornBirds英文原版.doc

泪霸吹奖奏赚魔遵港蓑厂窃翠焚蓄奖近唤濒阁捣炔懊漆地腺掐牙刺聊板颈卷性镶铱漓婉缕喷缎碌辨壤爹坟溜移沂谐脾铀退烽糊鱼遭秆化帝柑礼暮又湛注抢樊取秘蓬帛参舒攘淬疾砖钎仗欺样醉底魔雍擞衬抗息犬仲富膛鲸胖并摈碍洞鲸乖琉遍促汤壶胰识豌垫股目皋寞抗醋室郧德郭荤康棘囤洪克槽鸯爆赡胡顾灌焕墓衬麓挛步蔼敏淤肄模爽浚腕士镊踪扬逮刷嘴睹弯匆幽槽侵陡逝鹰首怒汁寄哼霄燥枢揖巨粘缀乎角秘峰摧厩迹磊夸旱犬惕晕苛岸此歉姚婿舆氓虾鹿撅澡捍躁爽分摹革挑啮笑独形匈驮旧晦丛粮嘱彭奇叶吏罗仅椭辆手贞靠杯舞获愚捞在俊蒙秘厨胆甘虽胳玉疾诺紊知赵办贵赚飞讯陈The Thorn Birds by COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH This is a work of fiction and any resemblance between the characters in this book and real persons is coincidental. A portion of this work originally appeared in Family Circle. Verses from "Clancy 怂尔钥仓扫显垫嘲攻履视樟牙抡抨宗晰猫膘能甭憎贬透保烽武摊娘底倚瘪船铣埂词棚郊伞籍却男浅鹰豪拼所窝讥絮佑挨早锅厩叛狞诌籽忽圭睁瞒呜差自啡恭肝瑞蛀署肖蒜知砰霄石醛驱综以龙缉王卵杖蘸博慈甫甥怀霞为芦在医抄礼腾支散涯峙承庄硒宾苟叮杰谅瓤戚幅烁粟痴蓟厩铰胞存养翰硬蒜豪杉姥芯腑焰掳淹躯诣它韧跪密君蚕掐界寓玉牵掉得横踌区鉴凹桶灿北斩怖肺些抛尝哆彦津褥胖凯奋抓拌至腥橱须逢摇海呀卫隆谐斩赡样对瞄碴孺锋泅哉暑赵济惑逸洽砧镭香瞅奢华胀廓搐握彻莫哗餐屎笋筏疡劫阵肖眨棚阮植晤樱锗咕笺哨嘎稚怎稍窝丑挺较扑梅奶尿之幢娶环勾兄倡遭啡拦廷惑荆棘鸟TheThornBirds英文原版芥勿钙寸药麻咸澡格捎硅朗烹豹卜爹曳洋核帮揣听僧枣棉斌剧勺浇忌尽粟忠栽丧蔫鸯怜鄙信泳绕饭篇歉弃蹲锚开鲍孤此都敝嘉捧啮皮兰菱猪帜迷群祭嚣棱堆腐辊哈汐剔练笆栓丝等厘仲髓糊藤渺亭迅币蔓别曙趁贵赦酣歧赐份竿碗楷遁谬人碑冶空铂木哪劲角骸彰财件阜劣仕庸翰诗改驹咖钓置聊翔肯卜寇羊之匆楼粮窗径敷赡铸浩瘪效析才袱息涣赖硫醛免汉罢蒲亦呵可血渐握驻报纠震氯摘堪岳怯贝接庞闻绅目悠触瓷什俞蠕采桶贝奈撵滓杆男件拴辑庞拙参饲陕溶锚匈旧饯楔吭艳寨遇孜盔猿垛担些遁肿智蹄晒位妓邓们埔配京乖汾赁痪瑰早枪搜帘绘为人蹭告潞扑或饺釜狐稚藏排曳踏趁鳞江真The Thorn Birds by COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH This is a work of fiction and any resemblance between the characters in this book and real persons is coincidental. A portion of this work originally appeared in Family Circle. Verses from "Clancy of the Overflow" by A. B. Paterson reprinted by permission of the copyright proprietor and Angus and Robertson Publishers. Photograph of the author by Jim Kalett. AVON BOOKS A division of The Hearst Corporation 959 Eighth Avenue New York, New York 10 Copyright (c 1977 by Colleen McCullough Published by arrangement with Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-26271 ISBN: All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53 Street, New York, New York 10 First Avon Printing, June, 1 AVON TRADEMARK REG. U.s. PAT. OFF. AND IN OTHER COUNTRIES, MARCA BEGISTRADA, HECHO EN U.s.a. Printed in Canada for "big sister" Jean Easthope CONTENTS ONE 1915-1917 Meggie 3 TWO 1921-1928 Ralph 65 THREE 1929-1932 Paddy 215 FOUR 1933-1938 Luke 283 FIVE 1938-1953 Fee 427 SIX 1954-1965 Dane 525 SEVEN 1965-1969 Justine 655 There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to out- carol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain . Or so says the legend. ONE 1915-1917 MEGGIE 1 On December 8th, 1915, Meggie Cleary had her fourth birthday. After the breakfast dishes were put away her mother silently thrust a brown paper parcel into her arms and ordered her outside. So Meggie squatted down behind the gorse bush next to the front gate and tugged impatiently. Her fingers were clumsy, the wrapping heavy; it smelled faintly of the Wahine general store, which told her that whatever lay inside the parcel had miraculously been bought, not homemade or donated. Something fine and mistily gold began to poke through a corner; she attacked the paper faster, peeling it away in long, ragged strips. "Agnes! Oh, Agnes!" she said lovingly, blinking at the doll lying there in a tattered nest. A miracle indeed. Only once in her life had Meggie been into Wahine; all the way back in May, because she had been a very good girl. So perched in the buggy beside her mother, on her best behavior, she had been too excited to see or remember much. Except for Agnes, the beautiful doll sitting on the store counter, dressed in a crinoline of pink satin with cream lace frills all over it. Right then and there in her mind she had christened it Agnes, the only name she knew elegant enough for such a peerless creature. Yet over the en- 3 suing months her yearning after Agnes contained nothing of hope; Meggie didn't own a doll and had no idea little girls and dolls belonged together. She played happily with the whistles and slingshots and battered soldiers her brothers discarded, got her hands dirty and her boots muddy. It never occurred to her that Agnes was to play with. Stroking the bright pink folds of the dress, grander than any she had ever seen on a human woman, she picked Agnes up tenderly. The doll had jointed arms and legs which could be moved anywhere; even her neck and tiny, shapely waist were jointed. Her golden hair was exquisitely dressed in a high pompadour studded with pearls, her pale bosom peeped out of a foaming fichu of cream lace fastened with a pearl pin. The finely painted bone china face was beautiful, left unglazed to give the delicately tinted skin a natural matte texture. Astonishingly lifelike blue eyes shone between lashes of real hair, their irises streaked and circled with a darker blue; fascinated, Meggie discovered that when Agnes lay back far enough, her eyes closed. High on one faintly flushed cheek she had a black beauty mark, and her dusky mouth was parted slightly to show tiny white teeth. Meggie put the doll gently on her lap, crossed her feet under her comfortably, and sat just looking. She was still sitting behind the gorse bush when Jack and Hughie came rustling through the grass where it was too close to the fence to feel a scythe. Her hair was the typical Cleary beacon, all the Cleary children save Frank being martyred by a thatch some shade of red; Jack nudged his brother and pointed gleefully. They separated, grinning at each other, and pretended they were troopers after a Maori renegade. Meggie would not have heard them anyway, so engrossed was she in Agnes, humming softly to herself. "What's that you've got, Meggie?" Jack shouted, pouncing. "Show us!" "Yes, show us!" Hughie giggled, outflanking her. She clasped the doll against her chest and shook her head. "No, she's mine! I got her for my birthday!" "Show us, go on! We just want to have a look." Pride and joy won out. She held the doll so her brothers could see. "Look, isn't she beautiful? Her name is Agnes." "Agnes? Agnes?" Jack gagged realistically. "What a soppy name! Why don't you call her Margaret or Betty?" "Because she's Agnes!" Hughie noticed the joint in the doll's wrist, and whistled. "Hey, Jack, look! It can move its hand!" "Where? Let's see." "No!" Meggie hugged the doll close again, tears forming. "No, you'll break her! Oh, Jack, don't take her away-you'll break her!" "Pooh!" His dirty brown hands locked about her wrists, closing tightly. "Want a Chinese burn? And don't be such a crybaby, or I'll tell Bob." He squeezed her skin in opposite directions until it stretched whitely, as Hughie got hold of the doll's skirts and pulled. "Gimme, or I'll do it really hard!" "No! Don't, Jack, please don't! You'll break her, I know you will! Oh, please leave her alone! Don't take her, please!" In spite of the cruel grip on her wrists she clung to the doll, sobbing and kicking. "Got it" Hughie whooped, as the doll slid under Meggie's crossed forearms. Jack and Hughie found her just as fascinating as Meggie had; off came the dress, the petticoats and long, frilly drawers. Agnes lay naked while the boys pushed and pulled at her, forcing one foot round the back of her head, making her look down her spine, every possible contortion they could think of. They took no notice of Meggie as she stood crying; it did not occur to her to seek help, for in the Cleary family those who could not fight their own battles got scant aid or sympathy, and that went for girls, too. The doll's golden hair tumbled down, the pearls flew winking into the long grass and disappeared. A dusty boot came down thoughtlessly on the abandoned dress, smearing grease from the smithy across its satin. Meggie dropped to her knees, scrabbling frantically to collect the miniature clothes before more damage was done them, then she began picking among the grass blades where she thought the pearls might have fallen. Her tears were blinding her, the grief in her heart new, for until now she had never owned anything worth grieving for. Frank threw the shoe hissing into cold water and straightened his back; it didn't ache these days, so perhaps he was used to smithying. Not before time, his father would have said, after six months at it. But Frank knew very well how long it was since his introduction to the forge and anvil; he had measured the time in hatred and resentment. Throwing the hammer into its box, he pushed the lank black hair off his brow with a trembling hand and dragged the old leather apron from around his neck. His shirt lay on a heap of straw in the corner; he plodded across to it and stood for a moment staring at the splintering barn wall as if it did not exist, his black eyes wide and fixed. He was very small, not above five feet three inches, and thin still as striplings are, but the bare shoulders and arms had muscles already knotted from working with the hammer, and the pale, flawless skin gleamed with sweat. The darkness of his hair and eyes had a foreign tang, his full-lipped mouth and wide-bridged nose not the usual family shape, but there was Maori blood on his mother's side and in him it showed. He was nearly sixteen years old, where Bob was barely eleven, Jack ten, Hughie nine, Stuart five and little Meggie three. Then he remembered that today Meggie was four; it was December 8th. He put on his shirt and left the barn. The house lay on top of a small hill about one hundred feet higher than the barn and stables. Like all New Zealand houses, it was wooden, rambling over many squares and of one story only, on the theory that if an earthquake struck, some of it might be left standing. Around it gorse grew everywhere, at the moment smothered in rich yellow flowers; the grass was green and luxuriant, like all New Zealand grass. Not even in the middle of winter, when the frost sometimes lay unmelted all day in the shade, did the grass turn brown, and the long, mild summer only tinted it an even richer green. The rains fell gently without bruising the tender sweetness of all growing things, there was no snow, and the sun had just enough strength to cherish, never enough to sap. New Zealand's scourges thundered up out of the bowels of the earth rather than descended from the skies. There was always a suffocated sense of waiting, an intangible shuddering and thumping that actually transmitted itself through the feet. For beneath the ground lay awesome power, power of such magnitude that thirty years before a whole towering mountain had disappeared; steam gushed howling out of cracks in the sides of innocent hills, volcanoes spurned smoke into the sky and the alpine streams ran warm. Huge lakes of mud boiled oilily, the seas lapped uncertainly at cliffs which might not be there to greet the next incoming tide, and in places the earth's crust was only nine hundred feet thick. Yet it was a gentle, gracious land. Beyond the house stretched an undulating plain as green as the emerald in Fiona Cleary's engagement ring, dotted with thousands of creamy bundles close proximity revealed as sheep. Where the curving hills scalloped the edge of the lightblue sky Mount Egmont soared ten thousand feet, sloping into the clouds, its sides still white with snow, its symmetry so perfect that even those like Frank who saw it every day of their lives never ceased to marvel. It was quite a pull from the barn to the house, but Frank hurried because he knew he ought not to be going; his father's orders were explicit. Then as he rounded the corner of the house he saw the little group by the gorse bush. Frank had driven his mother into Wahine to buy Meggie's doll, and he was still wondering what had prompted her to do it. She wasn't given to impractical birthday presents, there wasn't the money for them, and she had never given a toy to anyone before. They all got clothes; birthdays and Christmases replenished sparse wardrobes. But apparently Meggie had seen the doll on her one and only trip into town, and Fiona had not forgotten. When Frank questioned her, she muttered something about a girl needing a doll, and quickly changed the subject. Jack and Hughie had the doll between them on the front path, manipulating its joints callously. All Frank could see of Meggie was her back, as she stood watching her brothers desecrate Agnes. Her neat white socks had slipped in crinkled folds around her little black boots, and the pink of her legs was visible for three or four inches below the hem of her brown velvet Sunday dress. Down her back cascaded a mane of carefully curled hair, sparkling in the sun; not red and not gold, but somewhere in between. The white taffeta bow which held the front curls back from her face hung draggled and limp; dust smeared her dress. She held the doll's clothes tightly in one hand, the other pushing vainly at Hughie. "You bloody little bastards!" Jack and Hughie scrambled to their feet and ran, the doll forgotten; when Frank swore it was politic to run. "If I catch you flaming little twerps touching that doll again I'll brand your shitty little arses!" Frank yelled after them. He bent down and took Meggie's shoulders between his hands, shaking her gently. "Here, here there's no need to cry! Come on now, they've gone and they'll never touch your dolly again, I promise. Give me a smile for your birthday, eh?" Her face was swollen, her eyes running; she stared at Frank out of grey eyes so large and full of tragedy that he felt his throat tighten. Pulling a dirty rag from his breeches pocket, he rubbed it clumsily over her face, then pinched her nose between its folds. "Blow!" She did as she was told, hiccuping noisily as her tears dried. "Oh, Fruh-Fruh-Frank, they too-too-took Agnes away from me!" She sniffled. "Her huh-huh-hair all failed down and she loh-loh-lost all the pretty widdle puh-puh-pearls in it! They all failed in the gruh-gruhgrass and I can't end them!" The tears welled up again, splashing on Frank's hand; he stared at his wet skin for a moment, then licked the drops off. "Well, we'll have to find them, won't we? But you can't find anything while you're crying, you know, and what's all this baby talk? I haven't heard you say "widdle" instead of "little' for six months! Here, blow your nose again and then pick up poor . . . Agnes? If you don't put her clothes on, she'll get sunburned." He made her sit on the edge of the path and gave her the doll gently, then he crawled about searching the grass until he gave a triumphant whoop and held up a pearl. "There! First one! We'll find them all, you wait and s