Babbicam

by Rod Madocks

  Goodbye my sweetest love from one who will ever love you the same.

  John Lee

  And Katie’s tender, passionate and strong-minded reply to the flaky, insincere-sounding words of Lee—

  My dearest love,

  Your letter to hand which has caused me the greatest pain and grief. What can you mean by telling me one time you will leave me and then writing to me to know if I wish to break off our engagement? I cannot make it out. As you are so undecided about what you intend to do for the future, are you also undecided about me? I tell you now the same as I told you before, our engagement shall not be broken off with my consent. As regards what you intend in the future, if it was to be your lot to break stones in the street I will not say no. Have pity on me and think how dearly I love you. Perhaps if I loved you less you might have valued me a little more. As to my getting another chance anyway, do you think I want anyone better than the one I love? If you knew how you were deceived, you would never mention it. Why not have told me last night when you mentioned about going away? There is one thing I wish particularly to know, that is do you think I wish you to marry me before you see your way clear? I am prepared to battle my way until you see fit to make me your wife. I will never be the one to mind waiting for you, Jack. I think if we part you will be the cause of grieving me to death. After what you said to me on Sunday I never dreamt of your writing me in the same strain as your last letter was written. But I freely forgive you but at the same time will not give you up. My mother will naturally come to your mind. Would to God it had been my funeral you went to instead of hers. Then I should never had got your letter. And you would never had written it. She was my only friend but I have always depended upon you to be something more than a friend to me. You have been my friend in all my troubles and helped me to bear them better than I could else. I should much like to see you as I have something to say which cannot be written. Grant my last request by coming down tomorrow evening

  My fondest and truest love and believe me ever your true love

  Katie Farmer

  Spool Two

  Consequences

  Babbacombe, November 1884

  —I went back to Grafton Terrace after delivering the post the following evening. Katie sent Ernest out for some penny sweets. She told me how she found my letter in her hallway. Her cat had brought in a pigeon and killed it. Its blood had got on the letter. She sat on my knee as she recounted this scene. I was stirred by it and we made up. Katie had crumbled my wish to get free of her. I had become as weak as a worm.

  Doctor Kaiser: When is this, Mister Lee? I’m not sure where we have got to.

  —It was a few days in November before the whole thing went bust. I ran into the busybody chimney sweep, George Russell, about then. He was walking up to Wellswood with a lantern. He asked me how’s the old woman was keepin’, I said something mazy like I wished I could push her off a cliff. It was a foolish thing to say but it got rid of him. That last week is all smudged in my mind. I know we got a big delivery of Alexandra oil, it made my little room and my clothes stink of the stuff. Harrington told me that the younger Fey sister, Sarah, was dying of poisoning in her innards. Doctor Chilcote was not likely to save her and her sister Mary Ann was fair out of her head with grief. I took it as a warning.

  Doctor Kaiser: A warning of what?

  —Of the terrible business that was about to jump out. That last Friday the 14th November dawned with a flat sea and a red sky. It put me in mind of what they said in the navy, evening grey and morning red makes the sailor shake his head. The mewies came ashore all morning flying fast and low inland, I remember that. Sails moved west to Brixham as the fishing fleet took shelter. We kept hearing the rattling of the capstan as the seiners were dragged up high over the shingle. I overheard the Necks saying that the Fey girl was dead. They always got to hear bad news first. Miss Keyse wanted to go to Marychurch after luncheon. I helped her go up to Weymouth’s for cakes and to Bardle’s the stationers for writing paper. The ole dumman took her time choosing the right type of paper and paid out her money coin by coin in a careful way. She passed the time with a few gentlefolk who greeted her in Fore Street then as slowly we made our way home.

  The Last Time

  That’s Lee’s description of his last hours with the old lady. I’ve got this image of them returning from St Marychurch and standing there for the last time on the crest of the Babbacombe bluffs, looking out to sea, with the old mistress leaning on her stick, her hair flying in the wind by the empty bandstand, her servant just a dark shape behind her. Maybe it didn’t happen like that but that picture of them fixes in my mind.

  I keep telling myself to stay ahead of goodbyes, I want to anticipate them and roll through them like some winter season you’ve already survived. I keep thinking of that last night with Kimmie. She never told me she was going to go. I guess she was worried that I’d freak out. She spent the last evening strumming songs on her guitar. I realize now she was playing them especially for me. Later, I came back to the apartment after attending a poetry reading and found she had gone. Maybe we just remember stuff backwards, inventing, always inventing some explanation for why bad stuff happens.

  Spool Two

  The Storm

  Babbacombe, 13th November 1884

  —Evening came on. Miss Keyse kept tapping the glass in the hall, and it was falling like a shot bird. We all knew a storm was coming. I lay on my bunk a lot. At five of the clock Lizzie went to bed saying she was poorly. Rain began scammeling in the down pipe of the great water cask beyond the nursery door, and the thatch began to drip. Miss Keyse, in a mob cap and wrapped in a shawl, allowed a small fire in the parlor. She sat at her desk all evening writing her diary in the lamplight. I went out to get more coal for the range. A strong westerly was bringing dead branches down in the woods and the sea was boiling out in the bay. Three of us servants ate supper in the kitchen, Jane had fried up some leavings in a skillet.

  Doctor Kaiser: Anything unusual happen?

  [indistinct answer from Lee]

  Doctor Kaiser: Did you see her again?

  —One time Miss Keyse came out from the parlor and asked where Lizzie was. Jayne said that she had gone to bayd with a woman’s malady. The storm pressed on, blowing smoke back down the chimneys. I ran down to Grafton Terrace to see Kate and was back an hour later. The last of the Glen’s life played itself out for a few hours more. Prayers were called at ten thirty, we came together in the cold dining room and faced the mistress, her face all pinched up and her spectacles shining. She read out the prayers, raising her voice against the sound of the sea and wind. The prayers, they seemed fitting as if she had chosen them special. Particularly that one about lighten our darkness and defending against all perils and dangers of the night. We said amen and parted with no further words. After an hour Jane pulled the downstairs shutters to and bolted the front door, conservatory door and the kitchen door. I listened to the clinking as she took the house keys off the sideboard in the hall and carried them upstairs to her mistress’ bedroom. Eliza filled a hot water bottle for the Missis. Someone rattled the bolt to the nursery door—probably Eliza. At midnight cocoa was on the nib ready for the ole dumman to take to bed later. Still Jane scuffled about tidying things, for an age it seemed. Once she came into the pantry to take out a candle and some matches, an’ I kept my eyes shut as if asleep. She shuffled out again. Miss Keyse made no sound, she stayed at her desk in the cold parlor with the dead fire. At the last I heard Jane calling to the mistress, “’Tis twenty to one, Miss Keyse, Good night.” I listened to those last rustlings of the household and to the rising thunder of the sea. I lay full dressed under the blankets, nerving myself for what was to come.

  From Whose Bourn

  How Kaiser did get it all out of him? It’s like a tap being turned each time the recording loop winds round. There is a gasping urgency in the recordings here and the memories seem to really stress him. There are gaps and the frequent clacking of the on/off button. There
are hoarse, scratchy sounds. Could they signify heavy breathing or tears? Lee seems to jump forward and back, his mind sticks on some events. I’ve had to work hard to get it all down right. I feel I have to finish up this job before getting on with my life. Sometimes I wish he’d just spit out what really happened and give us the money shot. I’m not big on this ‘closure’ business in general. I don’t think people really want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved or their dramas, distractions and stories resolved; their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left then? Just a big fat zero, blankness. What would Lee have been if not for being thrown into the fire like this? A forgotten, know-nothing hick—that’s what. Lee is sneaky though. He protests a lot about the shit situation he’s fallen into but he won’t stick to the chronological. He jumps all over. Maybe he feels he has the right to deceive us, after all, how many bad cards can a guy get? Here’s the kick in the crotch card, John, followed by the shot at dawn one. He is a premium class, grade one, bad luck story so far but that experience gives him special qualifications. He’s a survivor, someone back from the brink of death. He has peered round the curtain, just about bought the farm, nearly got a pine condo and crossed the bar. Hell, he’s checked out and goddamn come back. He has had a ‘near death experience’ in more ways than one.

  Spool Three

  The Hangman Mr Berry comes calling

  Exeter Prison, February 23rd 1885

  —I told Mister Bennet about my dream at dawn on the day set for my hanging. I told him that I dreamed the time had come and I was taken to the hanging place, the rope squirmed at my neck but nothing happened. He seemed discomforted by my account but kept on laying out my breakfast. Told me to think no more on’t. They were trying to keep things clear and calm for me and everything moving forward all purposeful-like I suppose. Those warders, Bennet, Halse and Tom Snow, they’d become like family, waiting with me and tending me for nineteen days. I felt warm about them and grateful for their company.

  Doctor Kaiser: You’ve jumped on now. When was this?

  —It was the day they set to do me in. Strange thing isn’t it? Bet you’ve never had a patient who was supposed to be dead already?

  Doctor Kaiser: You mean you had received the death sentence?

  [break in the recording]

  —You’ve got it. If you had been reading the papers sixty year ago you’d know that I was due for the jerk that day. It was a Monday like any other for most folks. Spring was around the corner, I could hear the birds singing more loudly in Norny Park beyond the prison walls. First it had been weeks, then days, then only hours were left. Those last two hours are printed on my mind. They fussed with my breakfast. Their boots creaked as they moved. For some reason I fixed on the fat neck of Warder Halse. Curious to think of that neck living on and me not. And the spiders scuttling along the walls, they’d still live longer than me. I had settled in my mind that I would be gone at the stroke of eight yet I felt somehow untouched. In my head there rang a voice that said: I have done no wrong and all will be set right. Besides, my dream on that last night had surely told me that there was nothing to fear. All the arrangements going on around me were surely flummery, a shadow play to frighten children. I sat to breakfast. Prison enamelware with its blue government arrow. I tapped at it with a tea spoon and it gave forth a solid clunk. So solid and real. I found my breakfast hard to swallow. I kept on jumping up and pacing around. All the warders kept hopping up also every time I did that.

  “All right, boy, it will be all right,” Tom Bennet kept saying. He told me that the Reverend Pitkin would be along presently. I laughed and told him to spare him the trouble, I was alright, happy even in a way to see all events come to this pass. By the breakfast table lay a pile of letters that I had written the previous night. Those were my goodbye notes. To my Ma, I had written that I was prepared for my home above, the Lord would give me strength to meet my doom which I deserved for not opening my mouth. To Millie, I had said that I would meet her in heaven. I said the truth will come out after I was dead. They had not told six words truth. That is the servants and that lovely stepsister who carried her character with her. I also asked her to forgive Lizzie. I did forgive her myself. It was my fault. I ought to have opened my mouth before. Goodbye, goodbye forever in this world. To Katie, I put that I deserved hanging for being foolish enough to let things go.

  The papers were all piled. In them were my words, some regrets, and hints of the truth. To my mind then the truth no longer mattered. It was all too late. What did it matter anymore, I thought? My innards kept cramping. They had a new-fangled water closet in the cell. I’d never seen one of those before. Kept on flushing it to see my waste hasting out and down the pipes to freedom. I kept on thinking of what Pitkin had said to me that last night. You remember him from my previous time in Exeter?

  Doctor Kaiser: Sure, the prison chaplain.

  —That’s him. He said to me, “You are on the brink of eternity.” Back he came to have another go at me. Barrett asked if I was ready for him. I joked that was he ready for me? The warders shook their heads and looked frit. To them, I must have seemed an unaccountable lad, behaving as if there was naught on my conscience. They had heard me laughing to myself in my cell. Maybe they wondered if I would try to fight them when the time came.

  Pitkin had been disputing for my soul for a good while now. He often came to my cell when I was there in prison a year before. You remember it was he to whom Miss Keyse had first written asking after my progress. Back he came to pester me in my last moments. A fidgety man, his peepers skittering behind spectacles. He waved to the warders to leave and took out a prayer book. He wanted me to pray but I would not kneel or bend before him. He went on anyway reading from his black book, went on about God’s wrath lying hard on me and for me to get a right understanding. He tried to weaken me, waving that prayer book and asking me to repent and confess the crime. I was tired of him afflicting me. I said that I had nothing to confess, I had finished with this world. I wanted to think about the things of the next. He said that was pride, a form of pride. I must confess, he kept on saying. I called to Barrett to say the Reverend was done and in the end he took himself away.

  The warders tried not to stare at me too much. They must have been curious to see a man who was soon to melt in quicklime. Some of them were there four years before when Annie Tooke went shrieking down the blocks to be hung—now that had been a bad job by all accounts. I’ve told you about her before, haven’t I? [No evident response from Doctor Kaiser] I had decided already to be no such trouble to them. The prison was very still that morning. There was no prisoner movement on the day of an execution. I sat back on my bed although I felt the need to pace about, and kept on pressing a finger to my neck to feel the blood knocking away steady as a clock. The three warders sat around me. They no longer played brag like they used to. Now they were quiet and solemn like men listening to a sermon at Sunday meeting. I had said to Mister Barrett that I did not know how this had all come to pass. He told me that the world’s a forest where all lose their way but each by a different path they go astray. I liked that. The world a forest. Each by a different path. My path had been a special one indeed. The Ladywell had been right. I was the talk of the nation. I felt a power over these humble warders for I was a chosen man. They knew not how they would meet their fate. At least I knew it and lived with my sentence like a man. I knew and did not know. It is hard to put into words but I somehow felt I was going to go through a change that day but I could not call it ‘death’. I felt a bigger man for it. I was special and my nature would see me through. It gave me a power over all that tried to push their will on me.

  Doctor Kaiser: How did you spend your last hours?

  —Time really gnawed at me at the end. I watched the warders clearing breakfast things and folding blankets. I saw a shaft of light slanting through the high cell window. I wondered why I had I never really appreciated the light. Down that ladder of light seemed to come all the ghosts: Granf
er, his knuckled old hand gripping his hammer; Miss Keyse staring through cobwebs of hair; Mary Ann Fey, blue and dripping. I stood up, trying to shake the spirits off me. There would be time enough for them when I was cold. The warders remained sunk in their tasks. The light coming into the cell held everything in the one moment. It was as if I could slip through that light. I kept thinking how I’d tell Ma, I had a dream I could not be hanged. The door swung wide open and Chaplain Pitkin entered my cell in full robes. A bell began tolling somewhere. It was three minutes to eight. All my roads had led to that moment, all my paths through the forest. Many feet now sounded in the corridor. They came to a halt then they all poured in and the warders stood up and straightened their tunics. First there is a solidly-built man I had never seen before. He wore a sandy chinstrap beard; his dark eyes were like stones; there was neither pity nor blame in them. In a soft Yorkshire voice he said, “Poor fellow, I must do my duty.” It was the executioner James Berry come for me. Governor Cowtan sprung forward and insisted on shaking my hand. For a foolish moment there was a sort of tussle between Cowtan and Berry. Then Berry took control, binding my elbows and wrists to a broad buckled belt. He murmured words to me I could only half hear. He said, “Time is a passing, you will give me no trouble, lad?” I smiled at him and shook my head.

  Fever

  I’ve thought I’ve been riding comfortably with John Lee. I’d just about had a line on him. Got him fixed in my mind. This transcription business is a chore but I’d found a tight rhythm and was getting it done. I used to work through the afternoons and into the night then go to an eatery, mainly Scottie’s—I never cook you see. I can’t manage all the mess. Then later, I’d drop into the convenience store off Main on my way back to pick up candy or snacks for the next day. I’d noticed a cool girl in Picks—that convenience store. Her name badge read ‘Jenna’. I thought she was really friendly to me but I never said more than a few words to her at first though I hung around a good deal. One night I saw that the owner had pasted a staff list on the wall next the cash register. I saw a ‘Jenna Neidecker’ listed. I took a risk and asked her if she was any relation to the poet from Black Hawk Island. She was real pleased that I had recognized the name. She said Lorine Neidecker was her great aunt or something. I told Jenna I was a poet also and she said that was awesome. That’s about all I managed before I began to get sick. It built up over a day or so. A grinding headache started. I thought at first it was too much computer time then a fever built. I found myself sweating and woozy and all I could do was lie down. I began having weird dreams that sharpened into hallucinations. I kept seeing a picture that was rerunning all the time. It was of grasses blowing in the wind and something glinting there by the roadside then there popped up a pair of blue eyes staring out of a waxy face. Those eyes were as hard as diamonds. Holy crap! I had the thought it was John Lee creeping up on me. I got up, determined to crawl away from my haunted apartment. Wobbled, all shaky, to Picks. There was Jenna giving me a sweet smile, I asked her if she sold any Advil or something. That’s the last I could remember.