Riverslake

by T. A. G. Hungerford

“Randy———”

  “What?”

  “About that stink in the kitchen today. You must’ve thought I was a beaut, not sticking with you.”

  “It’s your business, Kerry,” Randolph said. “I did what I wanted to do—I didn’t expect you or anybody else to stick with me.”

  “Still, you would’ve wanted me to.” Murdoch spoke with dubious obstinacy, arguing against what he wanted to believe. “I wanted to, too.”

  Randolph did not answer him, and they walked a long way in silence. Randolph was thinking of the night when they walked down the same road with Radinski from Mama Kasnik’s party. Not so long ago, but it seemed a long time. He looked about him, but would never have recognized it as the same road. Then the poplars on either side had lifted bare boughs into the night sky without even keeping back the pale light of the stars. Now they were in full leaf, dense pillars of black that enclosed the echoing road in a tunnel of whispering shadow; when the leaves turned, rustling gently in the light wind, the moon added an edge of silver to each one until every tree seemed to be hung with spangles in the darkness. At one end of the tunnel, behind them, the lights of Kingston enclosed the shadows, and at the other end, over the brow of Riverslake hill, the camp glowed softly against the sky.

  “I couldn’t, Randy,” Murdoch said at length. “Even if I wanted to, and I did, I couldn’t.”

  “That’s all over, Kerry,” Randolph said, almost impatiently. The thing is over; he wanted to put it behind him, and to forget it, but Murdoch kept the embarrassment and the disgust of the moment fresh in his mind. “As I said, it’s your business. I think just as much of you as I ever did.”

  “It’s different for you,” Murdoch went on doggedly. “You’ll move on, and when you get sick of the whole damned show, you can go back to teaching.”

  “Like hell, I can!”

  “Yes, you can. But I’m in this racket for good—unless a war comes along and gets me out of it. I know nothing else, and I’m too damned old now to learn anything else. I couldn’t afford to get the name of scab, Randy. You know that. Wherever I went, it’d follow me—no, it’d go ahead of me, and there wouldn’t be a construction job in Australia where it wouldn’t be known. Nobody’d want to give me a job, because the rest of the blokes on it would jack up.” He laughed shortly. “You see how it is, don’t you?”

  “You’re the only one who’s kicking the cat, Kerry,” Randolph said more gently. He was touched by Murdoch’s perplexity. “I told you it made no difference to me, and I meant it. I’m sloping soon, but I won’t forget you, wherever I go, and I’ll always be glad to meet you again, wherever it is.”

  “Make that go double,” Murdoch said. “Dinkum, Bob.”

  When they reached the camp it was still fairly early—by Riverslake standards. Lights shone from many of the huts, and the recreation hut was still well patronized. As they walked by it, on the way to their own huts, they could hear the thud of slippered feet as someone played ping-pong, and the murmur of the men playing cards and gossiping round the fire. The bulk of the mess and the kitchen loomed up in front of them and Murdoch stopped and put a hand on Randolph’s arm.

  “Look,” he said, pointing towards the boiler-room, where a thick shaft of light divided the darkness. “There’s someone in there with the Dummy, isn’t there? It looks like Bellairs!”

  “It looks like a yike of some sort, too!” Randolph suggested grimly. In the hot light of the interior of the hunchback’s little shed, they could see two figures, the Dummy standing rigid, with one arm outstretched and pointing at the door, and the hulking shape of Bellairs facing him. On a box between them, curled on an old jacket, the ginger cat watched them, its gaze moving interestedly from one to the other.

  “Come on,” Randolph said, “we’ll go over and see what that bloody ape’s up to.”

  As they started towards the boiler-room Bellairs stooped clumsily, grabbed the cat by the loose hair on its back and flung it savagely. A moment later there was a hair-tingling animal scream of agony.

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” Murdoch shouted, his face stiffened and his voice thin with horror. “He’s thrown Tiger into the furnace!”

  Together they began to run. As they did so, Bellairs looked over his shoulder, disturbed by the pounding of their feet on the gravel. He turned and shambled quickly out of the shed and disappeared into the darkness.

  His movement seemed to release a spring in the hunchback, who had been standing rigid in the middle of the floor. His hideous mouth churned out a flood of half-words, half-grunts, half-screams as he flung himself at the furnace.

  “He’ll go after the cat!” Randolph grunted. He felt almost physically sick with the horror of Bellairs’s action. As he spoke, Radinski, whom until then they had not seen, darted from a corner of the shed and grabbed the screaming hunchback, holding him from the open door of the furnace. When Randolph and Murdoch burst into the shed he was standing in the middle of the floor, the red glow of the flames dancing across his rigid face. The hunchback hung from his arms like a tattered rag doll, an obscene little creature whose limbs twitched spasmodically and whose hideous scarlet mouth whimpered and snarled and wept. The vile stink of burning flesh and hair was heavy on the air.

  “For God’s sake, Felix,” Randolph panted, “what happened? What the hell happened?”

  The Pole stared back at him for a moment in silence, his blue eyes blank with terror and disgust. A great sob burst from his chest as Murdoch took the hunchback from his arms.

  “What happened?” Murdoch asked quietly. “Here, sit down on this box and get your breath.” He sat the Dummy on a second box, with his twisted back to the wall, and turned to slam the door of the furnace, viciously. “Hell, that’s a vile stink!”

  “I am here, I talk with Dummy!” Radinski burst out suddenly, his voice passionate with hatred and indignation. “We talk for cat, for kitchen, for ot’er t’ings. We not hurt somebody. Mister, this man come, talk crook for me—ah, Gott! Speak for me I am spy, speak for me, I go for police, in jail. Mister, I am not spy! I am not, not, not!” He buried his face in his hands, rocking backwards and forwards on his widely planted feet.

  Randolph walked across from the door and took him by the shoulders, shaking them. His dark eyes were troubled with pity.

  “Felix,” he said sharply, “of course you’re not a spy—and nobody’s going to take you to the police! That man’s not good—he’s sick in the head, you understand—verrückt?”

  Radinski took his clenched fists away from his eyes. He looked at Randolph, incredulous horror filling his eyes.

  “Mister,” he said in a low voice, “is devil, this man. Is big devil.”

  “Why did he—why did he throw Tiger into the furnace?” Murdoch demanded, and the eyes of all of them sought the iron door behind which they knew the flames roared. “What the hell did he do that for?”

  “Dummy go crook for him,” Radinski explained. “He say for me, ‘You are spy, bastard!’ Dummy tell him for get out from here. He make for kill cat. Ah, Gott!”

  “Stay here, Felix,” Randolph told him. “You watch the Dummy. We’ll go and see Mister bloody Bellairs. Come on, Kerry!” He swung round and strode towards the recreation hut, where he thought Bellairs most likely to be.

  The Pole watched them go. Quiet descended on the shed, except for the whimpering of the hunchback, who still sagged against the wall where Murdoch had planted him. Radinski turned jerkily and looked down at him. Then he walked out of the boiler-room into the darkness, moving mechanically, like a man in a dream. The night enfolded him, that should have been a comfort, but it had a thousand eyes to pry and a thousand tongues to shout after him. Behind every lighted window that he passed men were crouched laughing at him because Murdoch had stolen his girl, calling him spy; in every shadow, the small ones that fell from the trees and the huts, and the bigger ones that were the rounded bulk of Ainslie
and Black Mountain, and the great vast shadow of the night that stretched across this vast and incomprehensible land, Bellairs hid with his mad blue eyes and his vile tongue and his stench of beer and sweat.

  Ah! Radinski thought, stopping abruptly. I will go to Marika. Ah, God, to Marika!

  But Marika was out with Murdoch—Mama Kasnik had told him that. He began to walk again, quickly and with jerky steps. Then to run, and then, restraint falling from him in his horror and despair and hatred, he flung himself through the night towards the safety and the seclusion of his room, to his mother and his brothers who were dead, and to the only happiness he had ever known, which was dead too. Men stared at him and shouted after him as he ran, but what they said was drowned beneath the thunderous beating of his own bewildered heart.

  When Randolph reached the recreation hut he swung back the door and stood in the opening, Murdoch crowding at his shoulder. There was something strange about the place. He realized in a moment that it was the silence that enfolded everything in it. When they had passed only ten minutes before, the hum and clatter of the noise that came from it had surrounded it like a tangible barrier; now, though it was still full of men, there was scarcely a sound to be heard. The ping-pong players had stopped their game and were leaning against the table, card players held cards and money in their hands as though suddenly paralysed, and on the seats round the walls men sat in rigid concentration.

  “What’s up, for God’s sake?” Murdoch demanded softly.

  “Quiet.” Randolph’s gaze followed that of a man seated just inside the door. It travelled half-way down the hut to a group, some of them standing, some sitting, that occupied a cleared space of floor beside the disused fireplace. “Look—there’s Bellairs!”

  “He must’ve raced straight back inside!” Murdoch muttered.

  “Something’s cooking, by the look of things.”

  In the cleared space round the fire-place Bellairs and some of his cronies, the man Jerry amongst them, were seated at a table. It was scattered with cards and coins and notes, but nobody was playing. Carmichael stood a couple of feet away, his eyes on Bellairs; the glance of every man at the table was on him.

  “You’ve had your time here, Bellairs,” he said scathingly, just as Murdoch and Randolph slipped through the door. “I saw what you did just now, you foul swine. You’re getting out of Riverslake, before you go on a stretcher.”

  “You know what you can do!” Bellairs remarked coarsely, leaning back in his chair. He sent a sneering grin round the room, then returned his scrutiny to the manager’s face. “This rec. room’s for the men. It’s you who ought’a get out, and damn smart, or you might go out on a stretcher!”

  “Yeah, get going, you mug!” A voice called from a far corner of the room. “Get back to the office and count the bloody blankets!”

  A laugh greeted this sally, not of amusement, but of derision. Fortified by some muttered conversation and the scraping of boots and chairs, it eddied amongst the men seated around the walls of the room like a small, hostile wind. Randolph looked round casually. Anything might happen in a mob like this.

  Carmichael did not take his glance off Bellairs. A thin smile creased his lips, but travelled no further.

  “When I’m ready I’ll go,” he announced clearly. The words carried to the farthest corners of the room, the quiet purpose in them stilling the wind of hostility almost to a whisper. “First, I’ll do what I came here to do. Get out, Bellairs.”

  “And who the hell’s going to make me?” Bellairs demanded with a sneer. He lolled back in his chair, one hand holding five cards passive on the table. The rest of his big body, his long legs stretched in front of him, was tensed inside his grimy clothes. “Since when’ve you took over from the coppers?”

  “Took over?” A little man echoed him from just in front of Murdoch. “He never took over—he’s always been a bloody copper, the cow!”

  “Shut up!” Murdoch snarled softly, but with such concentrated venom that the little man did no more than throw him a startled glance over his shoulder.

  “Never mind about who’s a copper, Bellairs,” Carmichael said grimly. “You’ve made a brothel of this place for long enough. You did the Balt over the other night—everybody knows that. But this is different. You can get out, or take what’s coming.”

  “What did ’e do, Carmichael?” A voice demanded from the side of the hall. “What’ve you been up to, Red?”

  “Never mind what he’s been up to,” Carmichael answered, without taking his eyes off Bellairs. “He’s getting out.”

  “But what’s ’e done?”

  Carmichael ignored the demand for an explanation.

  “Get up, Bellairs,” he ordered quietly. “Get up, and get out!”

  Bellairs sat still in his chair, the mocking grin still fixed on his mouth. He knew that he was in what might turn out to be a sticky spot, but relied on the men’s hostility to Carmichael to turn events in his own favour. A low rustle of hostility awoke again and eddied around the room until a single voice caught all its wavering strands in a single protest.

  “Look here, Carmichael. You better beat it. This is our joint—you can’t bust in here just as you like!”

  “I’ll bust in any place I like, when I like,” Carmichael replied coldly. “Make no mistake about that!”

  “Like hell, you will!”

  Murdoch, his eyes on the manager’s face, knew that Carmichael would never make any explanation of his presence. He knew too that things were on the verge of taking an ugly turn. He took a deep breath and looked round him.

  “Bellairs threw the Dummy’s cat into the furnace just now,” he blurted. As he said the words, the horror of the deed scalded him afresh, and his anger rose in him like lava. “We saw it———” he nodded to Randolph—“and so did Carmichael, by the look of things.” He took a pace forward and glared directly at Bellairs, whose eyes had turned to him while he spoke. “That’s what I come in here for, Bellairs. Come outside, you motherless bastard, and have a go at someone who can smack back!”

  “You skinny runt———” Bellairs began, but quickly switched his attention away from Murdoch. A big man in frayed khaki shorts and mud-caked boots had risen from his chair. He stood staring from Murdoch to Bellairs, his hands hanging slackly at his side.

  “Bellairs did what?” he demanded incredulously. “What did you say he did?”

  “You heard,” Murdoch said. “He hurled Tiger into the furnace in the boiler-room.”

  “For Christ’s sake!”

  Half a dozen men had sprung to their feet. They stood looking from Murdoch to Bellairs and back again.

  “You dirty bastard, Bellairs!”

  “The Dummy—that poor little coot!”

  “Run that animal out of the camp—he’s not fit to live with the bloody Balts, even!”

  Several of them began to advance purposefully on the group round the fire-place. Bellairs looked round at them insolently, the sneer on his brutish face deepening into hatred. Randolph, watching him closely, saw the cards drop from the hand that lay across the table. Bellairs’s thick fingers clenched into an ugly knot.

  “You dingo bastards!” he snarled. “Come in a mob—there’s not a man amongst you that could put me out by myself!”

  “I can, Bellairs.” Carmichael, who had not moved, spread his arms, motioned the others back. “You can have him after me. Get up, you swine. I’ll give you what the Dummy and his cat couldn’t!”

  Almost before he had finished speaking, Bellairs shot out of his chair, moving with agility amazing in a man of his bulk. He did not swing his fist, but his great boot—straight at Carmichael’s groin.

  It was a deadly blow, and was intended to finish the fight before it started. But it went wide—not too wide, but what should have laid the manager in a writhing heap on the floor only grazed his thigh, on the outside, and added p
ain to his anger. Bellairs was off balance from the futile kick. Carmichael closed on him and ripped punch after punch into his beer-flabby belly before he could regain his footing. He smothered up, covering his chest and belly and head in his great arms, not attempting to hit back. His breath rasped in agonized sobs through his clenched teeth.

  Carmichael stood back quietly. For a moment, but only for a moment, Randolph could feel a twinge of strange pity for Bellairs. He stood a full minute, motionless in the circle of yellow light and silence, then slowly uncovered his twisted face and heaving chest. He looked round groggily, still crouched like a stricken tree, searching the faces round the walls. If he looked for help or encouragement he saw none. He turned back to the man confronting him, still winded, only able to gasp and bite his lips.

  “Remember what I said, Bellairs,” Carmichael said softly, his hands weaving across and across in front of his body. “That’s a taste of what you’ll cop if you stay around Riverslake. And when I get tired of it someone else will take over.” He stopped talking and measured Bellairs with his eyes. “What I just gave you was for the Dummy. This is for myself. I don’t like you, you dirty bastard.”

  He swung a killing punch flush into the dazed face in front of him. Bellairs’s gross features flattened under the impact, and his head jerked back sickeningly. He still stood erect, however, with his arms, half paralysed, feeling instinctively for a position of guard in front of his body. Carmichael knocked them down with an open hand; he sank one fist to the wrist into Bellairs’s soft belly and upper-cut him brutally as he sagged.

  It was enough. In dead silence, with every eye in the hut fastened on him, Bellairs crumpled sideways with a curious slowness, and spun against the table at which he had been playing cards. It had happened so quickly that the onlookers were taken by surprise; any one of them would have bet next week’s pay that even if Bellairs had not beaten Carmichael, he would have extended him to a bloody brawl in which neither would have been the winner. The spindly table collapsed, and in a welter of cards and small change, Bellairs rolled from the knees of one of his cronies to the feet of the man who had thrashed him. There he lay still. Carmichael rolled him over contemptuously on his back with one foot and stared for a moment into his ruined face.