In My Father's Den

by Gee, Maurice

  I wrote all that day and late into the night. Nobody came near me. I learned from the radio news that no arrest had been made. The police were following several leads. In bed, I went to sleep quickly. The noise of a car woke me at three o’clock. I heard the sound of my gate being opened. I lay stiff with dread. I tried to stop the noise of my heart and the faint noises my stiffened body drew from the bed. Footsteps sounded on the gravel path. I had no thought of the Wadesville vigilantes. This was the murderer coming for me. The footsteps came on to the porch. Rubbery. Male. There was a heavy thump. And then—I nearly cried out with relief-noise on the gravel again; the gate; the car.

  I kept my blood still. The old house made creaking sounds. A light wind puffed the sacks at the windows. At ten past three I got up and turned on the lights. I fetched the small tomahawk from the hearth in my den and opened the front door. The light made a track across the porch and into the garden. In the centre of it lay a small pile of books and a record.

  Charlie had paid a visit.

  I wasn’t surprised; instead I was angry. It pleased me that he was up in the night. It pleased me that he was grieving. And I was contemptuous that this was the best he could do—dump my presents to Celia back on my porch. I took them into the den. The books carried cautious inscriptions: To Celia Inverarity from Paul Prior. I got my pen. In the first two, Yeats’s Collected Poems and Persuasion, I wrote: With love. But when I came to the third, The New Zealand Sea Shore, I saw the absurdity of what I was doing. I sat in my chair shivering. The sacks puffed in and out, as though the house were breathing. With a small tinkle a piece of glass fell on the window ledge. In the shadows Hope sat demurely on the world with her finger poised at the string of her lyre. After a while I put the record on the player and sat back to listen. It was a gesture at once sentimental and defiant, but both emotions were in a low key. The delicate formal music soothed me further. It was Pergolasi’s Concerto in G for flute and strings. I wondered that a girl so fiery as Celia had had a taste for this sort of music. It came to me that in thinking of her without grief or horror, and playing this concerto to which some gentle part of her had responded, I was conducting a service for her, in place of the one I would not be able to go to.

  I played the recording several times. When I heard the milkman at the gate I went to bed; and later went to sleep, when light began to enter the room and the sacks hung without moving in the stillness of dawn.

  In the afternoon I had a visit from Farnon. He was looking tired. His nose seemed softer, less like a beak. I offered him a cup of tea. He asked me about the cut on my head and the broken windows. I told him what had happened, but he showed little interest.

  “Have you any idea how many blue and green Minis there are in Auckland?”

  The names I had given him had been “checked out”. The fair-haired men in the western suburbs, and dark-haired too, with cars of the right sort had alibis. He had come for another list: the names of all my friends. He still felt there was a clue in me.

  “Why did he stop on the hill, the only place where he could see your house?”

  I wrote down the names of half a dozen people, a little disturbed that I should feel pleasure, however ill-defined, in bringing misfortune to my acquaintance (friends was Farnon’s term).

  He read the list and said, “You don’t seem to be the most popular man in the world. These are all people who know where you live?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about your brother?”

  “He’s got a black Rover.” I saw no reason to have Andrew bothered.

  “All right,” said Farnon grumpily. He thanked me for the tea and went away.

  Late in the afternoon I went to New Lynn to buy provisions. I told myself it was distaste for Wadesville that made me reluctant to enter it again. I bought enough to last several days. On the way home I stopped and looked at my house from the place where the murderer had waited. The roof was cherry red in an afterglow from the setting sun. The walls had a faint pink glow and the paddocks around were emerald green, dotted with rust-red cattle. (I use my mother’s colour-chart.) In this defining light I could almost make out the leaves on the shrubs beside the path. I saw the brown rectangles of the sacks over the windows, and white pebbles on the veranda roof. Closer to me, in the hollow, was the ruin of the old shack where Celia had picked leaves of herb. I saw how she had walked from my house in plain view, gone out of sight behind scrub—on that afternoon it must have had this same pinkish glow—and come out again in her Quaker mini- frock and Crusader’s cap of shining hair only twenty yards away. What had happened then? Had his motive been simply destruction of beauty? of innocence? Had he been simply an unhappy man, or sick; no monster, no evil being? And the happy girl an affront? As simple as that? I could understand his impulse to kill. But not the turning of it to action. That was monstrous, that was evil. I saw it as an amoebic reaching out, ingesting; the excreting of a corpse sucked dry. What sort of life had he taken from hers? How had he grown? What was the gain?

  I turned myself from this sort of indulgence. But I had seen that the killing might have taken place here, not at Cascade Park. If I had waited on my veranda I might have heard it. I got into my car and drove to the edge of the road. This brought the valley into sight. When I was at school I had a teacher who liked to call Wadesville “the garden of Auckland”. Most of the orchards and vineyards are rated out now. I saw their pattern further up the valley. In their place are factories, warehouses, schools, playing fields; and houses, battalion after battalion, drawn up neatly along the sealed streets: brick, tile, weather-board, coloured iron. The creeks seem to have shrunk. The trees have been shaved from their banks. Concrete bridges stand in place of the wooden ones. The largest patch of water I could see was the pool where Charlie and I had launched our canoes. It was pinkish grey. For a moment I thought it was catching some final glow from the sky, then I realized a coloured waste from one of the factories had been fed into it. Just beyond, where Prior’s orchard had been, are the huge fibrolite storage sheds of the Apple and Pear Marketing Board.

  I turned back to my rural corner. It had survived by a quirk of the commercial spirit. The owner of those paddocks calmly fattened his dozen Herefords, watching the price of land go up. I could guess from his smile that sub-division was not far away. And my acre, with its wild back garden and pair of elderly ewes? I would sell too. Wadesville was out of my system.

  But I was not out of Wadesville’s system. Three cars came that night. Two pairs of feet crunched the gravel.

  “Mr. Prior?” said the older man. He was almost six and a half feet tall, with thin shoulders and a belly that protruded suddenly, like a growth. I recognized him as Len Coope, the owner of a failing coffee shop called The Chicken Coope.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “We’re from the Wadesville Action Committee. We’re holding a meeting at Cascade Park.”

  “What’s the Wadesville Action Committee?”

  “We’d like you to come.”

  “I don’t want to come. What is this committee?”

  “We’d like you to come, Mr. Prior.”

  The younger man (my dentist, Wilson) was more direct. “We’re telling you to come,” he said. He took my arm and tried to pull me on to the veranda. I shook myself free.

  “Look,” I protested. At the same time I tried to close the door. Len Coope thrust it open with his shoulder. His eyes began to pop. “Enough mucking about,” he cried. He grabbed a handful of my sleeve and jerked me on to the veranda. Wilson took my other arm and they started to frog-march me to the cars.

  “All right,” I yelled, “just let me change my slippers.”

  “Ha!” Wilson said.

  “Left right, left right,” Len Coope said.

  They put me in the back seat of a car and got in on either side. In convoy we drove to Cascade Park. Lynching, I thought, they’re going to lynch me. In this I was simply rising to the occasion. Some sort of humiliation was more likely. I was less frighte
ned than during Charlie’s visit. Only a week ago one of these men had breathed peppermint down my throat.

  “What’s going to happen?” I said in a voice whose steadiness pleased me.

  There were a dozen cars at the park, lined up with their lights on facing the patch of scrub where Celia’s body had been found. Of the group of men in the space the only one I recognized was Lionel Pinckney, the mayor. He seemed to be making a speech. Wilson got out of the car and Coope prodded me to follow.

  “I warn you again,” came Pinckney’s voice, “if you carry on with this you’ll be breaking the law. It’s on the agenda for the next council meeting. We’ll discuss it then and action will be taken. Will be. That’s a promise. But this sort of thing is no solution. It’s—undemocratic.”

  A man at the back of the group gave a single loud guffaw. The others made no sound. As Wilson and his group brought me forward the man facing Pinckney turned his shoulder to him. “The time for talking’s over.” He beckoned Wilson. “Bring him here.”

  This man was Max Hobhouse, accountant at my bank. His resentment that a schoolteacher should have a private income had grown over the years into a kind of moral disgust. I had taken to writing letters to the Wadesville Gazette. They were prompted partly by conscience, but chiefly, I see now, they emphasized my isolation, which I looked on as a kind of royal state. From the comfort of my den I loosed my shots at Wadesville, like the Sultan who amused himself by picking off his subjects from a turret on his palace walls. Hobhouse replied shot for shot. He wrote short bullet-shaped sentences. In the town’s eyes he slew me again and again. My response was Phoenix-like and Protean. The latter angered him more. I thought now as Wilson led me to him through the car-lights how fitting it was that he should be my tormentor. Barbered, glittering, he faced me. I smiled. I almost said, “So Hobhouse, we meet again.” A second later I was quivering with terror. Several of the men had cans of petrol at their feet: they were going to burn me. Hobhouse was quick, he had my thought by the time I looked back at him from the cans. I saw him almost taste my fear. There was, at once, a look of intense pleasure in his eyes, and a hunger for more.

  “I’ve got a witness,” I cried, and I waved my hand at Pinckney. But then I had control. Common sense told me what was possible. Not burning, not in Wadesville. Not even humiliation—shaved head or nugget on the balls. Hobhouse might try. The others were mustered Rotarians, angry Bowling Club men. Ignoring them, ignoring Pinckney, who had walked away from my claim on him, I said, “All right, Max. Get on with the charade, whatever it is.”

  He watched me for a few seconds, in a kind of querulous disappointment, trying to see how I’d got away. “Get the petrol,” he said loudly. I smiled at him. He turned and went to his car and came back with a can and an armful of rags.

  “You were supposed to be ‘a friend’ of the girl. So we thought you’d like to be present. Don’t try and leave till we tell you.”

  He turned to the men. It was happening quicker than he wanted. “All right, boys. Let’s get started.” As a signal he dropped his rags on the ground and splashed petrol on them. The other men moved off to the edge of the scrub and took positions at intervals along it. They began to soak rags and push them between manuka trunks and into thickets of bracken. The scrub patch faced them like a cornered animal. I was moved by its plight; by its silent, still acceptance. But the men too were quiet, dignified. I began to be on their side as I watched. It seemed like a rite in some primitive religion. It was communal, an action of force, I felt a stirring in my blood. The scrub appeared momentarily as the amoebic creature that had broken Celia. Hobhouse had gone along the path to the clearing where the boys had found her body. As leader he had taken the heart-thrust for himself. When I caught myself thinking this I came to my senses. I put a sneer on my face.

  “What good do they think this will do?” I said to Pinckney.

  He was ten feet away, and moved two more.

  “Taking it out on a patch of scrub. It’s childish.”

  Again he moved.

  “I was brought here against my will,” I said.

  “That’s no business of mine.”

  I listened to the voices of the men quietly giving instructions. The only other noise came from the waterfalls a hundred yards away. On the hill beyond the creek I could see people watching from lighted windows. Why hadn’t they watched like this on Sunday afternoon? I felt I had to talk to someone and I said to Pinckney, “Surely some of those people must have seen the murder.”

  “The police have made inquiries,” he answered stiffly. He went to sit in his car.

  I walked towards the swimming hole. Men were working on the flank of scrub that curved towards the creek. The tent-shaped frame that had held the swings rose out of knee-high bracken. Beyond it were the changing sheds, stripped of most of their corrugated iron. One wall of the Ladies hung out at an angle of forty-five degrees. Nobody swam at the Cascades any more. It was polluted. The sheds would go in the fire. I wondered if Hobhouse had realized that. I turned back. A faint glow came from the middle of the scrub. I saw men along the rim strike matches and throw them towards the hidden rags. Suddenly a dozen fires were burning. Hobhouse came running into the open. He turned twenty yards from the scrub and stood hands on hips to watch it. Some of the fires burned slowly.The scrub was damp. Others suddenly flared and rushed. A light cold wind was blowing. It carried the larger fires into the heart as Hobhouse’s one moved towards the creek. Soon the whole rim was alight. Heavy wet-looking smoke rolled up and vanished into the dark. At the cars the faces of the men were red from the light. Hobhouse’s eyes glowed like embers. Ginger hairs stood out in his black moustache. He had come to stand at my side. From time to time he shouted orders. Several men took sacks down to the swimming hole and brought them back wet to beat out flames that might come through the grass towards the cars. But the wind was holding the main fire in place. The only danger was to a house by the park entrance. A man was hosing its walls.

  Hobhouse glanced at me from time to time. He didn’t need to say anything. I stood feeling miserable, my face hot and my back cold. Soon, far away, I heard a fire siren, and later the sound of an approaching engine.

  “All right, men,” Hobhouse yelled. “We’ve done what we had to do.” They were “boys” no longer, but I hadn’t the spirit to comment. The Wadesville Action Committee left, without offering me a ride home. I was impressed by the discipline that enabled them to leave a fire as spectacular as this. Down by the creek flames were leaping twenty feet into the air. From the damper parts of the scrub smoke coiled up as thick as cream. Children on bicycles rode back and forth, screeching like berserk Redskins. Others with torches of twisted newspaper were starting new fires in the bracken. The engine stopped at the park gates and two firemen appeared, uncoiling a hose. Soon a jet of water arched into the flames. It made no difference that I could see. The firemen extended their hose and saved the changing sheds. For this they were booed. My slippers were soaked, I shook with cold, but I stayed until the flames of the main fire started to die down. There was an extravagance in these events that led me to see my discomfort as a kind of offering to Celia. As I went out the gates I passed Jim and Margaret Beavis strolling down to see what was left of the fire. They smiled at me with embarrassment. Further on, Hobhouse was sitting in his car. He lit a cigarette so I would see his face. I walked across the edge of our “quiet” suburb (it’s still a town to me) and started along Farm Road. I was half-way along when a car came up behind me. The driver leaned across and opened the door. “Jump in.” It was Farnon.

  I got in gratefully. (So much for my offering.) He started again and drove slowly. “All right?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I heard you were down there. What happened?”

  I told him.

  “You could bring a charge.” “What’s the point?”

  “I’ll have something to say to them.” He was angry on behalf of “the scene of the crime”. Now that I thought of
it, I was glad it was burned. We started down towards the hollow.

  “Have you thought she might have been killed there?” I nodded at the place where the woman had seen the Mini.

  “What makes you think that?”

  I told him I had stopped there earlier. “If he was insane, a girl coming up like Celia, looking—” I began to flounder —“happy—beautiful—it could have been an impulse—a sudden attack….”

  “We had a good look. There’s nothing there. No marks. Not a thing.” He was interested though. When we stopped at my gate he turned on the inside light. “I still think you can come up with something. Keep going over it, will you? Everything you’ve ever known about the girl. Everything she’s ever said.”

  “Yes.” I asked about the list I had made.

  “We’re going through it. But I don’t expect anything from that.”

  “What about cars?”

  He smiled. “There’s two men we’ve got with the right sort of car and no alibi. One’s a bloke who quarrelled with his wife and just went out and drove. He’s got black hair. The other one’s a bald homosexual.”

  "Well—”

  “It’s not him. I know where he was.”

  “What do you do then?”

  “We go wider. If that doesn’t work we start again.”

  “You’ll get him.”

  “That’s right. But I’d rather do it quickly.”

  I promised to keep thinking, and he let me out and drove away.

  The next morning Andrew’s wife rang and asked me to dinner. I said yes more eagerly than I would ever have thought possible. After I had put the phone down I got in my car and drove to Waikumete. I parked behind pine trees at the highest point of the road along the back of the reserve. Between two trunks I looked across the acres of white headstones and crosses to the crematorium. Away to the right, among trees, stood the old brick building where my father had been cremated more than twenty years before. I wished they were taking Celia there.