Best Australian Short Stories

by Douglas Stewart

  THE RECTOR’S WIFE TEMPTS THE BISHOP WITH A BREW OF NYPPE

  SEVERAL BROWN birds, mere specks in an infinitely blue sky, were telling an inattentive heaven what a lark it is to be a lark, while, below them, the tide of Parramatta High street bustled and flowed, as lively as a Scottish burn in autumn.

  Everyone for miles around had come to town. The same people were exchanging greetings with diminishing ardour as they met in shop after shop, every lamp-post was decorated with a nag’s head held to it by looped hide, the medley of vehicles quite blocked the road, clarences, barouches, phaetons, landaus, drays, carts, and Dr Phantom’s Hyde Park, neatly drawn up beside the kerb outside the chemist’s, his groom (whom he designated Second Murderer) sitting in it bolt upright with folded arms and eyes fixed on space and a spine like a ramrod, and, next to him, the Coachman (designated First Murderer) whose deportment was equally correct.

  The cockades on their hats were new. They had something to live up to; for one thing, they felt the power of Miss Juliet McCree’s sparkling eyes; she was a critic on style whose opinion they valued, and the Vicarage buckboard was drawn into the sidewalk contingent to the Doctor’s piebald Waler. For another thing, Miss Aminta Wirraway, in a stunning pelisse, had stopped—a mere instant—to curtsey to Dr Phantom and to thank him (in a reproachful voice) for the return of a pink lawn Irish handkerchief “taken in mistake for his own”.

  The lane beside the chemist’s had, besides a row of pepper-trees, a spreading camphor-laurel round which scores of Green Fanny and Blue Fanny butterflies were fanning the air, and these did nothing to detract from the charming picture Miss Aminta made as, quite bewitching in olive-green and burgundy, colours that went so perfectly with the curtains of the Hyde Park that they might have been designed for riding in it, she lingered on—a mere fraction of time—to say her few shy words.

  “Have you ever known anyone who owned a butterfly?” Juliet McCree asked Dr Phantom as, together, they watched Miss Aminta’s elegance, still pursued by butterflies, being as it were, “rubbed out” by scores of rustic figures.

  Dr Phantom’s level and deliberate gaze met hers, as long, perhaps, as a lacewing settles on a daisy.

  “No.”

  “When you blush,” Juliet noted, in an interested aside, “the red starts just above your stock, and when I blush it begins on my cheek-bones and then goes right through.”

  The observation did not disturb the flow of her main discourse which she resumed immediately, while Dr Phantom’s roving eye followed a flight of starlings bent on keeping a rendezvous on the King’s School lawn. He did not care for children, but, finding Juliet waiting there, he had on coming out of the chemist’s, stopped to inquire after her “grandfather’s lumbago”. In asking after the Vicar one picked on any complaint that came handy; he had them all.

  “The story about the ravens feeding Elisha and that other one about the widow’s cruse should never have been written; they have done a lot of harm. They give people such wrong ideas.”

  Juliet, who was standing in the gutter, holding her horse’s head, took a fresh twist in the reins.

  “Look at poor Grandpapa,” she continued, her eyes very bright under her “reed” straw hat (from China), if people did not believe in miracles no one would expect him to live on £90 a year and keep his son’s widow and her children—Donalblain and me. Everyone seems to think—and I am certain those stories are to blame for it—that the holier a man is the less he should have to eat, and the shabbier his clothes ought to be, and the more hungry children he ought to feed, and the harder he and his wife ought to work, however old they may be, and give pennies to beggars, and have no other pleasures because being holy is enough reward for anyone, as of course it ought to be.”

  Dr Phantom made no answer. Still, he lingered, his glance tracing the course of a pigeon very high up and as white as snow. It looked like something straight out of Paradise. He felt extremely happy, and he thought, “The earth must be like a pear that has one perfect moment, and this is that moment; the sky has never been so blue, the sun has never been so beneficent, the air has never been so soft, or the trees so golden.”

  “And you know perfectly well that in any rich household a loaf of bread cuts into eight slices—eight thick slices, for what use are thin ones ?—but at the Vicarage it has to be cut into twelve at least.”

  Dr Phantom looked directly into Juliet’s orange-tawny eyes and then withdrew his glance; he made no comment.

  “Then—hasty pudding! Have you ever had hasty pudding for breakfast, week in, week out?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not. I suppose you don’t even know what it’s made of ?”

  “No.”

  “Flour and water—just that. Of course sometimes you have a spoonful of milk with it, or a taste of brown sugar, and of course there is simply no one cleverer than Grandmama in making help-ings go round! A casket of molasses is very good for growing child-ren—no one denies it—and there is enough nourishment in it to last a month at least. Don’t you think molasses is very good for growing children?”

  “Yes.”

  “And have you ever eaten “‘choke dog’?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, well that is quite good really. It is made of beef suet and currants and it has a thick sauce made of flour, and when the lemons happen to be ripe it has a lemon flavouring. And a ‘Lady Belmore’ is quite appetising, too, and it is made of rice and currants boiled in a pudding cloth, and it has some thin sauce with it, and when it is nicest it is made of arrowroot, and the pattern of the china comes through on your plate, which is interesting really. Only Donalblain, who is four, does not care for it much.”

  Juliet with a caressing pat, restrained her horse from biting the nose of the piebald Waler.

  “Grandmama thinks the way clothes wear out is a perfect pest, and even the ravens did not bring Elisha a new suit.”

  She gave Dr Phantom the full benefit of her lively regard.

  “Of course, you understand I am not criticizing God in any way?” “Oh, no, of course not.”

  “Here comes Grandpapa. He will give you a tract. You could let me have it back, sometime, if the pages are not dog-eared.”

  The Reverend Phineas McCree (BA. of Trinity College, Cambridge) at eighty-four was getting a little past his work. So benevolent a countenance as his made many of his parishioners feel reassured about heaven and earth merely by looking at his white woolly hair, his bright blue eyes, his nobly hooked Roman—or Wellington—nos; his red, tremulous mouth; but he supplemented this unconscious influence by an eleemosynary distribution of texts, for he had some difficulty nowadays in speaking; the words did not come easily off his tongue.

  Some people thought that he should retire, but, they asked themselves, if he gave up his parish who would feed him and his dependants? It was wiser and more comfortable to beg the question.

  Dr Phantom, therefore, was not surprised when Mr McCree, making his way towards him by very slow degrees, simply handed him a text without speaking, and then turned away to tackle the difficult ascent of three steps that looked like flattened soup ladles, which made entry into the buckboard easy on a Lucus a non lucendo principle.

  Handing his groom the leaflet, which bore the title “Is Your Soul A Social Success?” Dr Phantom set himself the task of hoisting the Vicar up, wondering, meanwhile, who would assist him down again.

  Juliet had already seated herself in the driver’s seat, her whip set at the correct angle, the reins smartly assembled. She looked quite enchanting.

  Indeed, she caught the eye of the Governor himself. He was, at that moment, trotting past, helter-skelter, with a great clattering of hooves, as he was driving tandem in his London curricle.

  His Excellency was a descendant of King Charles the Second—as indeed who is not?—and whenever he appeared in Parramatta all women between the ages of sixteen and sixty would withdraw into hiding until he had passed.

  With predatory smiles creasing his
distinctly “Caroline”, rubicund, yet swarthy, face, he was about to pull up beside Juliet when the A.D.C.-in-Waiting leant across to say urgently. “That is Miss Juliet McCree, the granddaughter of the Vicar of Mallow’s Marsh, and she is twelve years old”—and clucked twice (to the horses).

  “She is a personable girl for her age,” commented Sir Charles, as he acknowledged salutes from Dr Phantom and the Vicar and the small crowd that had quickly gathered, and he moved off reluctantly with a spectacular display of horsemanship.

  Dr Phantom stood a moment looking into the crown of his beaver hat, then he said, briskly, “Good morning, Vicar, goodbye, Miss Juliet! I have to return two baskets in the direction of Dural and Hornsby Junction.”

  Getting nimbly into his Hyde Park he was bowled gallantly away, with four curtains fluttering in the wind of his passage. Meanwhile, running across the road from the grocer’s, Miss Loveday Boisragon detained Juliet to ask after her Grandmother’s liqueur.

  “Indeed, Aunt Loveday, it is brewing nicely, thank you. Dear Grandmama manages to keep the lid on with three flat-irons. The Churchwardens are taking a great interest in it, and Mr McWhistle has donated—very kindly—two gallons of French brandy and a hogshead of Jamaica rum. The recipe is written in a faint hand in faded ink and it has been difficult to decipher it, but we think the ingredients and quantities are correct.”

  “And what, dear child, are they?”

  “Oh, walnut rinds, oat-malt, beans, fir and birch-tree tops, and three handfuls each of Rosa solia and Carduus benedictus. There are two handfuls each of burnet, bctony, marjoram, avens, elder- flowers and bruised cardamom seeds. Then there is a handful of wild thyme. And ten new-laid eggs. Grandmama has yet to add watercress and a generous rasping of horse-radish. Of course the chief things are the milk of two dozen coconuts, three gallons of French brandy and double that quantity of rum. My great-grandpapa, as you know, was a nabob in Calcutta, and we found the recipe in a box of his. There is a note in his handwriting saying ‘This brew is bettered by the addition of a pound of ginger, some sassafras, madder, red sanders and Enula campana: We shall put those in. Another postscript says, ‘This Nyppe is strong enough to make a cat speak.’”

  “Do you call it Nyppe?”

  “The name for it, Grandmama thinks, is `Nyppa Wine’ or wine made from a tree. But she is adding various other things, such as brook-lime and wild parsley, and she thinks it will be more of a liqueur, really.”

  “I ho-pe,” Mr McCree began, in his slow articulation, to which his hearers listened with reverent looks, “that the concoction with bib-beady bub-bubbles winking to the b-brim, will eh-cheer the d-dear Bishop! He c-comes on a p-pastoral visit next month.”

  Mr McCree looked triumphant.

  “Good-bye, dear Aunt Loveday!”

  With great judgment Juliet achieved the feat of turning the buckboard in its own length, and, feeling very grand, she whipped the young draught-horse in the shafts to a majestic trot, and the Vicar, bowing this way and that, like Royalty, and sometimes stopping to hand out a text (he had given Miss Loveday Boisragon a pamphlet on “Lessons to be Learnt from the Construction of the Ark”), was borne westwards along the dusty road on which, five miles away, the Vicarage and village of Mallow’s Marsh was situated.

  In a community where news is so scarce it is not to be thought that information about Mrs McCree’s liqueur would not leak out; the Vicarage during the subsequent weeks was besieged by callers; one almost expected straw to be laid down on the road.

  Even the Governor, with his dashing A.D.C., rode over one Monday morning, when Tabitha the housemaid, Cook Teresa, Mrs Cog the laundress, and Abigail the Orphan, who, while learning the laver’s art, assisted Mrs Cog with the washing, were pegging clothes on a line.

  When, therefore, he visited the laundry, where a large earthen cauldron reposed itself beside the copper, His Excellency was flapped in the face by wet sheets and caressed by other garments, about the ownership and uses of which it would be profane to guess.

  Mrs McCree, who at once locked Tabitha, Abigail the Orphan, Cook Teresa and even Mrs Cog securely in the linen cupboard, and was herself closely attended by the Vicar, on affording Sir Charles the privilege of a sight of the cauldron which contained the now golden-tinted liqueur, produced, from a box kept on the copper, a wine-glass and a toddy-spoon, and ladled him out a sup or two of the so-famous “Nyppe”.

  “It is not yet mature, Sir, of course.” Mrs McCree was complacent. “But it will give you an idea of the flavour. Tough red sanders, Enula campana, ginger and sassafras have still to be added—and a third quart, I think, of French brandy—its bouquet, I flatter myself, is unique.”

  Sir Charles bent his head and sipped.

  A look of extreme and ineffable joy ran like sunlight over his face.

  “My dear lady!” he ejaculated.

  He sipped, he savoured.

  Ecstasy succeeded astonishment.

  His eyes shut, with the look of a man in a trance, he tasted, he rolled the Nyppe round his tongue.

  He finished the glass.

  He stood, vibrating, almost locking his gaze in that of Mrs McCree, his expression one of utter unbelief.

  He was then understood to say something like “Shend mesheveral bottlesh”—“Gimme onemorsh”—and the two outdoor menservants and the A.D.C. having assisted His Excellency into the saddle, and handed the horse’s bridle first to His Excellency, then to the A.D.C., he was led home by back ways, ecstatically, deliriously happy.

  But he was as helpless as a new-born babe.

  Mrs McCree with a quiet smile went indoors to let the four maids out of the linen cupboard, and having done so, she put her feet up on the drawing-room sofa and engaged herself, with a somewhat mystic air, in the perusal of a book (perhaps Crockford) which gave lists of Deans, archdeacons, canons and prebends of cathedrals, their pay, emoluments, residences, perquisites and privileges, their precedence at banquets and royal levees, and their titles.

  The Bishop was expected in about three weeks’ time.

  As a girl Mrs McCree had lived on the Picton Hills not far from the Razorbacks, and this morning, in the intervals of her reading, her eyes looked through her drawing-room windows and lingered on those blue, authoritative ranges. She remembered them in her childhood to have been thatched with trees, now they were denuded; the buff grasses clothing them were intersected with many red channels in which the rains of autumn were accustomed to pelt downwards.

  “As a girl,” she mused, “I used to look across to Mallow’s Marsh and watch the thick mists rising at sunrise from the green fields, and the roads that led, I fancied, to the sea, to cities, to a wider life than I had known.”

  She dropped Crockford on to the threadbare carpet.

  “It is true that I adored my home, that there was no one in it that I did not love, no simple everyday happening that I did not value and enjoy. The first apple-blossom! Never shall I forget seeing that! The stunted violets that come before the big ones—never shall I forget how sweet their scent used to be! Ike, the gardener, sitting in the moonlight practising ‘Cherry Ripe’ on a penny whistle! How mysterious and beautiful it seemed, how clear the faltering notes were! Never, never shall I cease to value those memories! But I imagined that elsewhere I should know a more wonderful life! And here I am at fifty-five looking at two minute, bare churches, one with cows feeding in the churchyard, one with two old horses grappling with the tough yellow grass—the wife of a poor parson trying to live on £90 a year!”

  Mrs McCree looked searchingly round the room.

  She critically regarded the two owls mounted as fire-screens that stood on either end of the mantelpiece, the silhouettes of her great- grandparents, grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts—so many soldiers, so many sailors, all idealists, no moneymakers; the two teasets in her china cupboard, one patterned with raised strawberries and their leaves, in a china like pumice-stone, the other sprawled with marsh-mallows and having blue bird-bolts on the back of e
ach cup and saucer. She carefully examined the dessert service, imitating fig-leaves, the glass paper-weight enclosing a cottage on which snow fell if one shook it. Her treasures! Oh, well! They were very sweet, really.

  The tapestry covering the Empire chairs was, however, “shrill”; the worn carpet had belonged to her Aunt Martha.

  Heaving herself up, Mrs McCree walked to the window, the better to see the hills of her youth.

  “Lovely still! Lovely, always!”

  “Other people,” she told herself, “get more out of life than I seem to have done. What defect in my character has landed me here? What was my weakness? What was my mistake? My apparent freedom has been an illusion! I have had no real, no personal choice in any important crisis. My parents refused my first offer of marriage without even telling me of it—what gay adventures might not that young husband have given me?

  “And why on earth did I marry Phineas?

  “A poor parson nearly thirty years older than myself?

  “Why? Why? Because he looked so woebegone! Because I felt sorry for him! Yes! That was why—I just gave myself away, body and soul, out of charity!”

  Another thought struck her. “But was even this marriage entered into of my own free will? At home, as money grew short, I was an extra mouth to feed, I was a burden from an economic standpoint, it was necessary to lighten the family of such a drag! It was a question of having to get rid of me! Oh, I see that! It was taken for granted that I must say ‘Yes’. I realized that at the time. Daughters must marry. So I did.”

  Mrs McCree turned away from the dazzling light.

  “My fault has been—generosity! I gave all I had to give—and it has never been enough!

  “Thirty years spent in this cramped house. Well, I shall end all this! The consequences? The consequences! I just don’t care! I shall make the Bishop tipsy with my wonderful Nyppa wine, my miraculous liqueur! Yes! I shall! Even if I can’t make him give Phineas a deanery! Even if he won’t make him an Archdeacon! Or a Canon! (There are several Canons over eighty in the Sydney diocese.) He might at least add twenty pounds a year to his stipend.”