It's beautiful, the Australian landscape where Meggie settles as a young woman, but it's neither a gentle nor an easy life. With brothers, but no sisters, and a somewhat withdrawn mother, Meggie has to make her own way and find out about life on her own. There are men around, of course, plenty of men, but no maps for Meggie in this uncharted territory.

And then she finds her first real friend, confidant, adviser and love. This is all wrapped up in the person of one man, a man who, in spite of his good intentions for her, will spoil her for all other men and make them seem inferior by comparison

Although this novel was written thirty years ago, it is a story about a Catholic middle class almost fifty years before that. So when the novel was set, the love of a girl for a celibate Catholic priest would have been so forbidden as to be fantastical. it were talked about, thought about at all, it would have been at best as a silly crush that would undoubtedly fade away before anyone got hurt. That either one of them should act on their passion was unthinkable a girl who would wilfully distract one of God's chosen vessels from the path of righteousness? A priest who would give in to temptation and break his vows? There were no words strong enough to describe their folly and their sin.

Remember, Colleen McCullough was writing this in the 1970s, and even though to many readers that may seem a long time ago, it was a very different era to the twenties and thirties. The 1960s had left their mark. This was the decade of change, when Women's Liberation began, when people decided to **** **** Not War, and when a young and classless society had decided that it was tired of standing back to let the Establishment run things. The Thorn Birds was published in the same year as The Women's Room!

We were in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, when Rome had begun to open up a few tantalising areas for discussion: such as allowing the laity to be consulted about how their Church was run; such as the priest actually facing the congregation rather than loftily standing with his back to the ordinary people. Not enough, not nearly enough of course, but at least the possibility of change had been admitted and the possibility of questioning had begun.

Here was the first popular novel where the heroine knows that there is no other man for her except the priest, and that one day she will get him. And we know it too. And we are with Meggie every step of the way. The issues are not avoided. There is no skating over the implications, no avoiding the consequences. We know they will get together and it's not so much a question of if but when. It gives the story an almost unbearable sense of urgency. Every time Ralph de Bricassart has to be in the area the hairs stand up on the back of our necks. Will it be this time?

There are so many other questions: does Mary Carson, the jealous old relative who owns Drogheda, really know of the attraction between them or is she such a sad and bitter old woman that she sees rivals and stumbling blocks everywhere? Is she so poisoned by her own failure to get anywhere with the handsome young priest that she invents enemies where none exist? Does Meggie's mother Fiona suspect much earlier than we thought? And if so, why does she stay so strangely silent about it?

The rationale - or lack of it - in trying to maintain a celibate clergy is faced and not skirted around. But this was never a battle between Meggie and the rules of the Church. The war is in Ralph de Bricassart's soul because he wants everything to be the love of her life and to be a Prince of the Church as well - he wants them both. And Meggie will find out that Mother Church is a much more dangerous rival than any other flesh-and-blood woman might have been. Any ordinary woman she could have beaten hands down. But the power of the Church...

So she must make her own deal. She finds what we would call 'an Irish solution to an Irish problem'. Not wholly satisfactory of course. What compromise ever is? But it lets her get on well enough with her life.

There will always be those who say that the man-made law refusing the normal fulfilment of a happy married life to some of Christ's pastors is so ludicrous that we should not dignify it with all this interest, particularly since the past thirty years have unveiled somany scandals, so much hypocrisy and such well-documented cover-ups. But I have always been of a sunny and optimistic temperament and I believe that the laws on clerical celibacy are in their last throes. I feel sure that when The Thorn Birds is sixty years old, rather than a mere thirty, married Catholic clergy will be the norm. We may even have seen the day when the supreme pontiff can kiss his wife on the steps of St Peter's in Rome.

Or, better still, when the new Pope can kiss her husband. By then the story will need a seriously updated introduction to explain what all the fuss was about in the bad old days.

[PART-1]

1915-1917

[1]

On December 8th, 1915, Meggie Cleary had her fourth birthday After the breakfast dishes were put away her mother silently ****** 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 behaviour, 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 ensuing 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 separ ated, 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 ***** 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 spumed 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 light-blue 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 moncy 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 falled down and she loh-loh-lost all the pretty widdle puh-puh-pearls in it! They all falled in the gruh gruh-grass and I can't find 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 see.

Meggie watched her eldest brother adoringly while he picked among the grass blades, holding up each pearl as he found it; then she remembered how delicate Agnes's skin must be, how easily it must burn, and bent her attention to clothing the doll. There did not seem to be any real injury. Her hair was tangled and loose, her arms and legs dirty where the boys had pushed and pulled at them, but everything still worked. A tortoise-shell comb nestled above each of Meggie's ears; she tugged at one until it came free, and began to comb Agnes's hair, which was genuine human hair, skillfully knotted onto a base of glue and gauze, and bleached until it was the color of gilded straw.

She was yanking inexpertly at a large knot when the dreadful thing happened. Off came the hair, all of it, dangling in a tousled