Babbicam
Page 5
Doctor Kaiser: It sounds like there was lot of tension in the household?
—You could say that, doc. Those nights in the Glen cramped me in like a fox in a snare. I had no money and I was forced to keep to my rooms especially during Lizzie’s disappearances. She often couldn’t be found anywhere between supper-time and prayer-time. If I did go out often as not I’d bump into an unwelcome figure. I might be in the woodshed with Tib the cat or on the terrace watching the doings over at the Cary Arms. Wherever it was, he’d come slinking up—Cornelius Harrison. I’d blast him for his creeping. He’d try and call me “Friend Jan” but I said I was no friend of his. Not no more. He tried to warn me about Gaskin. He wanted to lay aside what had happened between us at the Brownlow place. I’d be all bunched up and ready to fight him but something about him made me as weak as a woman. It seemed like I was always putting my neck on a block for him. Lord knows why. I still can’t understand it now. I noticed once when he made play to help me chop firewood in the wood-shed with the old hatchet that he was click-handed, he favored the left like me. They said in the village one should never trust a dolly paw, a clicky hand, for they are ill-omened. I asked him if he was courting my sister but he just said she was as free as the wind. I was a gert vul anyway to think I’d get a straight answer from him.
Doctor Kaiser: Couldn’t you have just left and got a job elsewhere?
—Oh Lord, doc you really have no idea have you? I’m sorry, I meant no rudeness. The truth was that every door was shut to me. No one would take on a felon with no references. I knew that Miss Keyse would ruin any chance I had of getting away, she liked me at her beck and call. She used to hammer on at me of an evening once she had slopped her way through her food. She would even call me in from the kitchen while my own dinner curdled on the plate. I never could tell what she would come out with next. Farming life in Scotland or showing me advertisements in the paper about ships for Canada. The old witch didn’t know that on two and half shillings a week I could barely get to Plymouth. She also went on about lie-telling. She always said that she could not bear a lie from any of her household. Some nights she’d rant on about all sorts, said she’d seen a strange thickening of the cloud wrack against the moon, said she could not sleep. Thinking of the moon as blood came to her at night. Said she strove so hard to be right she didn’t want no crooked timbers about her. She felt God’s message more clearly in the dark, she said.
She’d keep up these rantings all the while I followed her on the winding track to Babbicam Downs on our weekly shopping trips. She liked to walk. Her humpy back would bob in front of me as she went along surprising lively on her thin legs once she’d set to. I would entertain ideas. What if I thumped her and heaved the dry sack over the cliff? So nasty when her hands twitched over me, straightening my tie, scrubbing at my face with a spittle-wet kerchief. She said I had to be presentable before getting on Fore Street with the milliners, drapers and grocers piling their parcels onto me to carry. The shopkeepers at their doors used to go shaking their heads to see me walking out with her. I guess they thought me a bully boy. Constable Meech used to stop us sometimes and ask if I was going along steady. He’d give me a look to signify he was keeping his eye on me. Miss Keyse didn’t used to like that and she’d go on about how it was so vulgar to have a policeman talking to one on the street. [sound of coughing then a long pause. Footsteps.]
Doctor Kaiser: I think that is enough now we don’t want you getting tired.
—I’ll rest soon enough. Don’t you worry yourself, Doctor. I can hear that spring wind a-knocking at the window there. It’s signaling a coming change. Time for me seems to be a racing to its end. The winter in this bedroom has gone by in a flash and the gulls outside are telling me something. I do not think I will see the summer this year. They say the war is coming to an end, I’ve seen the planes going out to finish pounding the Japs and those munitions trains keep me awake, racketing through each night to the Cudahy yards. They are all racing to an ending just like me. Strange that what went off at Babbicam is more real to me now than these last thirty years in this country. [more coughing]
We used to get spring gales off the sea at Babbicam. and sometimes I’d look out into the wind-tossed woods and fancied to see a figure going through the grounds. I was sure it was Harrington. I’d complain about it to Lizzie. She’d tell me to shush but she would look out the window with a faraway look and a little smile. I could hardly make Lizzie out. She was either flighty or she was burning like a fire. I never knew how I’d find her. I found myself wanting what she had under that servant’s dress though.—indeed, every part of her called to me. I’d make excuses to get up close, trying to help her peel the vegetables, seeing her strong hands pulling the greens apart. She could quickly fly me and yell but in truth I liked all her moods.
I felt as if my heart was threading through a tunnel when I see her flinging back her wet hair after picking crops in the Vine’s garden in the rain, or bending over a tub in the wash house, her bare arms in the light. They say we love those most like us and indeed both of us looked cast from the same mould. The sounds of the sea would follow me, sighing and slapping about the rocks, for the sea had its moods like a woman. At night I’d lie abed thinking of Lizzie only to wake later to the swish swish of a bombazine dress and the creaking of my opening door. I’d had long practice at living with ugliness. In truth, I knew not what I wanted most though. I wanted escape from the dry hands of Miss Keyse. I wanted to know what Cornelius was after. Most of all I wanted to fly like a crazed night moth straight to Lizzie’s flame.
It’s strange now that all feeling is slipping away from me to still think so much of that fearful passion for Lizzie. On Friday nights before prayers she would take a bowl, spread a towel over it, fill it with water and step into it naked and sponge herself down. The spread towel stopped her from slipping and muffled the splashing. She enjoyed that warmth in front of the range. I used to leave the pantry door open and look at her with a mirror. Later I just stood and stared. There was a beaten look somewhere deep down behind her eyes. I thought maybe she would let any man do as he willed with her. Sometimes I’d question her. I tried to dig out of her what was the truth of her and Harrington and that Templer but it was like catching water dealing with her. I’d demand to know the truth from her but she’d always say that a truth spoken before its time was dangerous.
Desire
Lee starts to mention Addie early on in the recordings. She appears to be a woman who is living with him. Maybe his wife. He is often worried that she will be upset by stuff he is saying and she certainly isn’t present during the recordings. Women seem to play such a big part in his life. When I first started to listen to these recordings I began to have the notion that Lee was somehow letting me get the idea of what it was like to really feel something. It was like a sort of gift. He was allowing me into his world. It amazed me how passionate he was about everything. I am such a fuck-up where feelings are concerned. I seem to be so bothered with managing myself that feelings somehow escape me. I do miss Kimmie but she’s vanished, leaving a hole in my life. There’s only emptiness and absence. That’s all I can get a sense of. I’ve got a vid of Kimmie singing one of Katie Scullin’s songs. I still look at it now and then. Kimmie wanted to be a singer herself. She even looked a bit like Katie. Katie Scullin is a big deal round here. She’s from Fort Atkinson herself and performs around all the bars and diner clubs. She does cover songs and some of her own stuff. Kimmie and I used to follow her gigs. She’s got a strong sweet voice sort of like Amy Winehouse, Ann Wilson and Gotye’s Kimbra all rolled into one. That song that Kimmie was singing and strumming along to in the vid was called ‘Sunny Dayz’. I asked her once what it meant to her and she said the song gave her the feeling that she could do whatever she wanted with her life. As soon as she said that I kinda knew that she would leave me sooner or later. She was so much freer than I was.
Spool Two
Return of an Enemy
Babbacombe, F
ebruary 1884
—I caught a smash to the gob. I was on my hands and knees in the dirt. Like a veal calf waiting for the maul. Like a damn beetle with its legs tore off. Then that Bartlet had me again. This time by the neck. Choking me in a cranking grip. I wouldn’t give in though. I kicked out at him ’til the grip went off a bit.
Doctor Kaiser: So you ran into Bartlet again?
—Ess, that’s right. He jumped on me at the Cary Arms, just along from the Glen. I don’t suppose you’ve been in a real fight, doc? Not when the other feller has really meant it? If you had, you’d remember it, all of it, as if it was yesterday. The button-hearted devil Bartlet had been waiting for me in the bar. Heavy-set he was and hard to beat. He’d learned from my previous hammering of him and guarded himself better. He’d started it by shouting that I should clear out and give other fellows a chance of warming the bed of that sister of mine instead of me. That gave the fishermen a big laugh. Then we went at it. They all called out to him to give me a drashing. None were on my side. First in, first blooded. I cracked my fist into his face. He could take a blow though and kept on hooking at me. One caught me. A glancing strike but it hurt. My head rattled like a pot of dry beans. The pub raised a cannibal cheer. The big lump faced me and swung again but I dodged away this time then came back in and caught him with a clappering punch—hard and straight just below his heart. He stripped off his shirt. That signified he meant business.
“Go on, boy,” they all yelled. I saw there was a red mark under his chest. He came at me, hands forward like the nippers on a great big crab. I took a clunk in the innards. Then that smash to the gob. Bartlet’s arms got around my neck and choked me. I took back hold and kicked out. The boot plate went down his shin and splatted his toes. Then I got to work.
I kept on punching him in the same place in his side. I kept away from those big hands. A bruise started up and grew under his chest. He stopped to touch himself then came at me again—Whap! I got another into his side. He gave a groan then. The fishing crews went silent. I think his turnip wits signaled at last that he was in considerable trouble. Whap! Once more, same place. This time the big lump gave out a shrill womany scream then it was over, or it should have been over if all been fair but life is not given to fairness. I was all ready to stamp him flat. I came to finish him off but one of the Stigings crew put out his sea boot and tripped me up. Gasking roared, “Get rid of the mump aid.” They all fell on me, kicking me, slamming me with bar stools then dragging me by my shirt across the floor. Bartlet got back up, hobbled over and joined in. Then they threw me out the door and onto the fish-smeared slip way. I got up to try another go but there was a mob of them now standing at the Cary Arms doors. Bartlet yelled that I was finished and I should crawl away somewhere. My hat came skimming after me. I knew that was it.
I went hirpling into the woods, wet my puffed face in a rock pool and wondered what to do. I was sure I was finished. Bartlet and Harris would go to the Missis and that would be the end. I’d tried to do what they always did in my book, Bear Hunters of the Rocky Mountains. In the book, they struck at their enemies at once and all came right. Everything kept turning out unlucky for me though.
Doctor Kaiser: So, what did you do?
—I crept back to the Glen in the end. I was expecting to see my things slung out on the kitchen step. I’m sure the Missis would not tolerate me fighting quite apart from the bad things Bartlet could say about me. Just as I turned up I saw there was a right bobbery going on. The Necks were running in and out with bowls of water and towels and Lizzie also. Lizzie asked where I’d been and told me the Missis had been taken sudden sick and I needed to run up and fetch Dr Chilcote.
At the doctor’s they at first thought it was me that needed the attention, what with my cuts and bruises. I had to push through the crowd at the poor clinic with their coughs, goitres and yellow faces. Dr Chilcote was fetched when it was made clear that it was Miss Keyse that needed seeing. We rattled back in his trap to Babbicam. Chilcote asked what ailed me, he said I looked winded. I told him it was a fall but he said something about how I always seemed to be looking for trouble. Miss Keyse must have spoken to him about me I expect. I told him that trouble afound me where’ere I went. He told me to never mind. He said that if it is not for bitterness we would not recognize the sweetness in life.
Doctor Kaiser: Then?
—I stood and looked after the trap at the top of the beach track while Chilcote hurried down the cliff path. I stayed all coiled up. I expected the crowd coming up from the Cary Arms at any time. Chilcote eventually came back into view in the dimmet, he told me to cheer up and that my mistress would be fine. Back at the Glen they were giving Miss Keyse a potion for her pained guts. I felt on the edge of a great cliff. I kept thinking of them all kicking and pounding at me. Lizzie came and washed my face and dressed my cuts. She asked what I was going to do, and I told her I must meet my troubles or run and I was not going to run. All of a sudden she got holt of me and we kissed. It was as if we wanted to suck all of the bad past out of each other.
Harris turned up later a knocking on the Glen door and Eliza Neck put on a spider bite smile to see me about to come to ruin. But the Missis sent him away without seeing him.
I was left to stew, fretting about what I was going to do. I had thoughts of burning the whole lot of them. I started to count the paraffin cans at the foot of my bed. It was Lizzie that stopped me. She came back later, her cloak all wet with sea spray, said that Harrington wanted to see me. I was so addled and confused I did not even know how to be angry. She led me to Harrington. He told me he had fixed Bartlet so he wouldn’t be worrying me agin. I wanted to know more. “Got rid,” said Lizzie, laughing. “Got rid,” that’s all they’d say about it.
I felt strangely overthrown. It was a confoundment. I needed to be my own man and now I was depending on Harrington. He already had too much of a hand in my affairs. Also, there was disappointment for a part of me had been looking forward to wiping out the Cary Arms. Lizzie told me to just be thankful and not enquire how Cornelius had dealt with Bartlet. We need to keep our place, she kept saying. Harrington told me to be easy I had kept my silence about his past misdoings at the Brownlows and he would stand by me. Lord, All I could think was I had put my head in the noose again and I knew not what would make me free.
Disappearance
Maybe it’s in the nature of old men to make confessions. A little girl called Georgia Jean Weckler went missing from a farm near here on Highway 12 close to Red Cedar Lake. It was back in 1947. She must have been snatched by someone while getting mail from the mailbox in her farm drive entrance. Volunteer posses combed the woods and slushy bottom lands and they dragged the nearby Wisconsin river but no trace of her was found. Then Buford Sennet, a potato-faced sex offender and murderer, confessed to kidnapping her. A while later he recanted. Searches went on all over again with no result. There was a theory that Ed Gein, the Plainsfield Ghoul, had got her but that was discounted. In the 1970s, another elderly murderer already in jail said he’d taken her and burned her in a field. Again they poked around for her but nothing came of it. A few years ago an old guy said he’d seen her being buried under a Delavan greenhouse and had become perturbed that he had done nothing about it at the time. That was also looked into and eventually discounted. The spotlight came back on Buford Sennet, still rotting in a Wisconsin corrections facility, but he went and died in 2008, buried in Cattaraugus, and that thread died with him. The whole thing flared again recently when an 80 year old tipster told Jefferson County police that he’d seen the little girl in a grave all those years ago. I watched on Channel 3000 news while they showed a backhoe digging up a plot in Janesville. They had squads of police forensic searchers and cadaver dogs and all: but poor little Georgia was not found.
Grandpa once showed me the Weckler place. We stopped in his truck. Everything was as blank as a bubble, just the grasses blowing by the roadside and the water churning like an engine under the Blue River bridge. We watche
d as gulls bobbed about on the water like pieces of Styrofoam. Grandpa said that a family must never get used to losing a kid like that. I got this idea of little Georgia floating like a wraith, merging with those gulls, trying in vain to signal to us where she was hidden.
Not that Lee sounds confessional at the beginning of these recordings. I kept hoping he’d blurt it all out but he’d got his own plans. He sounded not at all contrite—mean and snarly more like. The really bad stuff has yet to happen, all the ingredients were beginning to boil about though. Take his comments about Bartlet. Bartlet was a weird character in the whole Lee story, and I’ve not been able to fully figure it out. He was raised alongside Lee in Abbotskerswell. He is pictured by Lee as a bully and a rival. I sometimes see him as some kind of an unacknowledged feral brother to Lee. He replaced Lee at the Glen during Lee’s years in the Navy and the first prison sentence. Bartlet was there with Millie in 1880 when the Brit heir to the throne, the Prince of Wales visited the Glen and gave a gold coin to each of the servants. Lee mentioned two clashes with Bartlet then there was silence. I’ve not been able to find him in any documents after 1883. You can read a whole lot into that void. Lee seems not to have given a damn whether he was alive or dead. Let’s leave Bartlet to hang around a while longer.