The Brothers Craft

by Peter Corris

  Hawke had brought a canteen with him. He drank and passed it to Bright. Then he looked into the shelter. 'What a place to die,' he said.

  Bright decapped the canteen and felt control and professionalism returning. He crouched and moved in under the rock ledge. 'Mustn't touch anything,' he said. 'I can see a gun on the ground here. And one, no, two bottles. There's some oilcloth or something and bits of leather. I'd say belts, boots . . .'

  Hawke was at his shoulder. 'They look almost exactly the same. The two of them. Funny, that.'

  Bright pointed at the skeleton on the left. 'This one's got a hole in the skull.' He giggled, then clamped his mouth shut.

  'What?' Hawke said.

  'I was thinking we might never know which is which.'

  Hawke pointed: 'This one took two spears in the legs. See, the heads're still there near the thigh bones.'

  'What's that?' Bright said. He pointed at the almost smooth rock at the back of the recess. He moved forward, taking care not to disturb the bones.

  Hawke's eyes were better. 'It's an arrow scratched on the rock. Pointing down.'

  There was an area about thirty centimetres square between the two skulls. The sandy covering was loose and slightly lumpy. 'There's something buried here,' Bright said. He poked at the coarse grains.

  'Shouldn't you wait for the camera?' Hawke said.

  Bright's fingers were digging, scraping at the sand. 'Bugger the camera. I've got to know now.' He scratched the dry sand away. A few centimetres below the surface he felt something smooth and hard. He removed the sand more gently and uncovered a flat object wrapped in oilcloth. He pulled it free and felt it carefully. 'A book. A notebook?' He scrambled back, almost knocking Hawke over. Out in the light he sat down against the right side of the shelter and drew in several deep breaths. Then he carefully lifted the first layer of the dry oilcloth which cracked away and came free in his hand. Several more layers did the same but then the cloth remained intact. He slid out a notebook, bound in heavy vinyl and apparently intact.

  'Take it easy,' Hawke said.

  Bright opened the notebook. The cover fell loose away from the spine. 'Binding glue's dried out,' Bright said. 'Probably every page'll be loose. This'll need kid glove treatment.'

  'What is it?' Hawke said.

  'It's written here on the first page,' Bright said. 'Clear as day. It's Richard Craft's journal.'

  31

  The Journal of Richard Craft

  ENTRY ONE

  This journal is being written in a rock shelter at some point in the eastern reaches of the Gibson Desert. I am unsure of the exact date but it is late April or perhaps early May in the year 1960. Beside me, on the floor of the cave, lies my brother, Basil Craft. He has two grievous spear wounds which are infected and must soon kill him. There is nothing I can do to save him, even if I wished to do so. And I do not. Nor do I wish to save myself. This is my account of my life and that of my brother, also an account of our deaths as well as my last will and testament.

  This notebook contains more than 200 pages. I have a small supply of ballpoint pens and a little food and water. Not much of those, and very little strength. My mind is clear most of the time. I will try to complete the journal before my life ebbs away. It will be an interesting race, between a story and a life. I have lived almost fifty years—four pages per year, perhaps one day for each of my decades. But it is laughable to think of my life in terms so neat. There has been nothing measured, nothing orderly in the lives of Basil and Richard Craft.

  I was born in London in 1913, two years after my brother. Our father was a preacher who changed his religious allegiance more often than he changed his clothes. He was a Scot, Alexander Craft. Basil's fantasies that the family name had once been Kraft and that there were warrior surgeons and men of science in our lineage were just that, fantasies. Craft was a corruption of Croft. The family was Scots and poor but our father managed to acquire a rudimentary education. He was a fluent and persuasive speaker on religious and financial subjects. He talked his way into a succession of minor ecclesiastical jobs—verger here, sexton there, preacher, caretaker, even gravedigger.

  'I like working for God,' he used to say. 'I like doing good every day.'

  In fact he did good for himself and no-one else. He wheedled loans from Baptist artisans, sold supposedly antique Bibles to Methodist miners' wives, charged for purifying water, consecrating objects, exorcising evil spirits. He moved through the villages of England, Scotland and Wales as a silver-tongued charlatan, confidence man and parasite for forty years. At times my mother, who was of gypsy stock and a mysterious, withdrawn woman, Basil and I would accompany father when his role was that of a solid family man. More often we remained in London in a plain but decent house in Whitechapel which was but one of several properties my father had managed to acquire through his abilities as a liar, a cheat and a speculator.

  My brother and I were natural scholars. Our schooling was sometimes interrupted by our father's excursions, but we easily held our own with our contemporaries in the various schools we attended. I am being modest; we far outstripped them. Basil especially had an extraordinary memory and ear. He absorbed knowledge like a sponge, checked it with our father who was a loquacious, encyclopaedic autodidact, and passed much of it on to me. We read omnivorously. Basil learned to speak Gaelic and the Romany language fluently. I acquired only a smattering of these but Whitechapel was a polyglot place and I learned French, German and Yiddish there, although not to the same standard as Basil.

  'You've mastered a language,' my father said, 'when you can use it to get a woman to go to bed with you and a man to lend you money.'

  Basil was to test this dictum and find it wanting. Basil's proposition was, 'You've mastered a language when you can tell that someone speaking to you in it is lying'.

  Lying was my father's stock in trade. Basil went one better—he did not even acknowledge the existence of any kind of truth. To Basil, everything, every message received and transmitted by the senses and the brain, was manipulable. From a very early age, Basil was quite mad. As to the cause of his madness, I can only speculate. The combination of his father's genes with those of my mother? An unhappy coupling of a totally ruthless and self-seeking nature with one so secretive and withdrawn that it scarcely seemed to be designed for this world at all?

  At times Basil appeared to think, and certainly behaved, as if he had invented the whole of human society and could move through it as he chose, bending it to his will. He possessed the most extraordinary physical and mental force. He was never clumsy; economical in all effort, he achieved maximum effectiveness. He was never ill, had perfect teeth and no physical defects at all. I was and perhaps still am, a poor imitation of my brother. While we shared many characteristics and abilities, mine were not harnessed to a ruthless force. He led, I followed haplessly.

  My father had high hopes for Basil. He saw him, I think, as a political leader, manipulating the affairs of nations and amassing great wealth. Certainly, Basil devoted much time to the study of the lives of great men—soldiers, scientists, politicians, but especially explorers. If Basil believed in anything, it was in the physical reality of the planet earth. The solidity and realness of mountains, lakes and deserts fascinated him. He believed he could change lives, families, institutions; he did not believe that he could move mountains. He did believe, however, that to cross a desert or climb a mountain was to conquer it in some way, to own it. This became one of the great obsessions of his life.

  Basil's interest in exploration shaped my own educational development. At Oxford, I studied geography. But I must not get ahead of myself.

  My father was shot and killed when Basil was fifteen and I thirteen. The coroner's verdict was 'death by misadventure'. Basil, young as he was, made persistent enquiries until he discovered the facts which were, briefly, that a clergyman who had discovered Alexander Craft in his wife's bed had blown his head off with a double-barrelled shotgun.

  'Effective, I should
say,' was Basil's only comment.

  The affair had been discreetly handled by the local authorities who had contrived to make the death appear an accident. For a time I thought Basil was contemplating some form of revenge but this was not the case. Although I had seen many instances of Basil's cruelty over the years—bullying, torturing, extorting money and favours—his response to our father's killing exhibited for the first time his true nature. First, as I say, he found out what had happened, made sure of his ground. Then he blackmailed the clergyman for considerable sums of money. Lastly, he seduced the clergyman's young daughter.

  'I put things to rights,' was how he accounted for these actions.

  Also at this time the fearsome bonds that held me to Basil were forged and made plain to both of us. Despite all his amorality and ruthlessness, I loved my brother deeply. I feared for him, feared what crimes he might commit, and I pledged myself to try to moderate his behaviour if I could, to protect him from himself. As well, I discovered that a quirk of my nature made me Basil's slave. When I was only thirteen and unaware of any sexual feelings apart from vague stirrings that expressed themselves in nocturnal emissions, Basil took me on the train to the village in Kent where our father had died. He conducted me to the clergyman's house and managed to induce the daughter to come out. A pretty girl of about fourteen, she went with us to the woods, where Basil had sexual intercourse with her. I became wildly excited and pleaded to be allowed to follow suit. Basil teased me, offered me other girls of our acquaintance, but I was fixated on this child who had given herself to my brother. After more teasing Basil gave me permission and instruction.

  From that day to this I have been unable to interest myself sexually in any woman whom my brother has not first taken. Worse, I am powerfully attracted to Basil's sexual partners, whether willing or unwilling, and whatever their race, colour or habits. I have rutted with women who, if I could view them objectively, I would find disgusting. And I have been indifferent to fine women who have shown me affection and concern. All attempts to circumvent this obsession—through the hiring of prostitutes, to the use of drugs and psychological therapies—proved unavailing. I know that men who suffer from simple impotence go through hell, I doubt that their hells could be worse than mine.

  I could tell when Basil had had a woman and when he had not. It was like an extra, ghastly sense about which I was never mistaken. Love, unnecessary to Basil, was impossible for me though I cared deeply about some of the women in our lives, one in particular. When Basil perceived this he had only to make a new conquest and introduce me to her to deflect and entrap me. There is yet another strange aspect to this perversion (not too strong a word) of mine, and I will come to it in due course. Suffice it to say here that Basil held and manipulated me and many others for more than forty years.

  My father's affairs were in extraordinarily good order for a man who had conducted such a shamelessly exploitative and egocentric life. He left an estate of several thousand pounds in the form of shares, securities, cash and property. I had never seen him display any affection towards our mother but years later Basil told me that they were deeply attached.

  'In what way?' I asked him.

  'Sex,' he said.

  I shuddered when I heard this for I feared that Basil might commit incest for the novelty of it and draw me inexorably into the same sin. But he did not. 'Don't you remember, Dick?' he said.

  'Remember what?'

  'How we watched when they fucked. I must have been about five so you would have been three. Highly entertaining.'

  I did not remember and attempts by analysts to get me to recall the event have failed. Did Basil's reaction to it shape his sexual appetites? And did my burying of the experience shape mine? Who can say? There is another possibility which has only just occurred to me—that Basil was lying. He moans and raves in his sleep. It is too late to ask him now.

  My father's will provided my mother with a respectable annuity and set aside a large sum to be employed exclusively for the education of my brother and myself. The solicitor who executed the will said that it had been my father's intention to take the matter of our education in hand when Basil reached sixteen and I fourteen. Now the duty fell to him. 'Alexander Craft believed in the carrot and the stick,' the solicitor told us solemnly. 'This trust fund is set up so that while you pursue your educations you will be amply provided for and, if you attain a satisfactory standard, you will be rewarded. Otherwise, nothing comes to you.'

  'What is a satsifactory standard, sir?' Basil asked. He could toady with the best of them.

  'Admission to Oxford University.'

  'Admission?' Basil said. 'Not graduation?'

  The solicitor shook his head. 'Your father did not believe in diplomas. He did believe in environments, associations, influences.'

  'So we could go to Oxford and have a jolly good time and still get the money?' I asked.

  The solicitor frowned. 'Yes.'

  Basil laughed. 'Don't you see, Dick? Dad was a cunning old bird. We'll have to work so bloody hard at a school and a crammer's to get into Oxford that we'll probably go on working, just out of habit. Anyway, he's half right. It's the people you meet at places like Oxford that matter, not what you learn. Although . . .'

  It was rare to hear an indecisive note in Basil's voice. 'What, Basil?' I asked.

  'I do have a fancy to be a doctor.'

  'Excellent,' the solicitor said.

  I was not so sure.

  Basil and I were both enrolled in the Middlesex Academy, an eccentric institution with a reputation for turning out brilliant scholars and total reprobates. The choice was my father's, expressed in his will, and, for Basil, it was precisely right. He excelled at everything, including games. His memory, facility for languages, his energy and powers of concentration all guaranteed him success. My own achievements were less spectacular and without Basil's coaching I doubt that I could have performed as well as I did. Through our school years Basil was generous with his time and help. He also continued his sexual adventures with the predictable results for me. Basil bound me even tighter to him in these years.

  It was at this time that Basil concocted the family history which he elaborated over the years and, I think, finally came to believe in himself. He was an avid reader of German philosophers and inevitably credited us with a German ancestor. He was an anti-Semite and anticipated Adolf Hitler, whom he was to admire, in despising groups such as the gypsies. Consequently, our mother, in reality Lalla Farr, became Elizabeth Marion Bedford—all three names suggesting rich, traditional English roots.

  Basil went up to Walsingham in 1929 to study medicine. I followed two years later, reading languages and geography. Our time at Oxford coincided for only one term, the Michaelmas term of 1931. Again, Basil was a great success. He rowed in the university eight that won the head of the river in 1930. He won inter-varsity wrestling tournaments. He debated and appeared in theatrical productions. Like our father, he was a consummate actor. He made friends, did exceptionally well in Moderations and seemed set for a brilliant career as a researcher. His student papers on genetics were deemed brilliant.

  By the time I came up, however, Basil's star was somewhat in decline. His academic work remained of the highest standard and his prospects for a fellowship were good. But his opinions had caused him to lose friends and to attract unfavourable notice in some quarters. Oxford was not the radical place Cambridge became in those years, but there were influential left-wingers and fellow travellers about. Basil's social, political and scientific views were extremely reactionary: he abhorred all forms of socialism, believed in a political dictatorship coupled with monarchy, sterilisation of the physically and mentally unfit, capital punishment and the free interplay of economic forces. The only areas of life where he held what might be called 'enlightened' views were religion and sex. But it would be a mistake to so characterise them.

  Basil was an outright rationalist who believed that all religion was a sham—a device by which the priests
had initially gained power over the populace and, subsequently, an effective instrument of what he called 'crowd control'. He approved of this function of religion but had the utmost contempt for those who took the precepts of any of the major religions seriously. On sex his views were apparently liberal, but in fact the reverse. He advocated the right of anyone to go to bed with whomsoever they pleased, but he regarded pleasure in sex primarily a male preserve.

  'For a respectable woman to enjoy a fuck is a miracle,' he told me once. 'Such miracles, unlike the Biblical kind, do happen, but no-one should count on them.'

  He supported contraception and abortion. He detested male and female homosexuals whom he described as 'retarded slime', worse than Jews and gypsies. He had a horror of venereal disease and took great care to protect himself from it. He once expressed the view that all people so infected should be 'put down'. This became another strand in the rope that bound me to him.

  'You're a lucky man, Dick,' he said. 'You know that any woman I've been with is pox free. And since you don't usually go with any other kind your protection is complete.'

  Basil affected not to know of the extent of my sexual disability. He would occasionally express amazement at my lack of interest in a woman prior to his seduction of her and my passionate attachment thereafter. We did not discuss the matter but he knew!

  In 1931 occurred the first of the mistakes Basil made in the pursuit of . . . whatever it was he sought. After all this time I am still unable to say what his ultimate goal was, although there are ghastly signposts aplenty along the way. Basil was at that time vice-president of the university Geographical Society and a member of an expedition to the Outer Hebrides. This was a difficult undertaking, not for the faint-hearted, and Basil proved himself resourceful and courageous at every step. He erred, however, in attempting to drive other members of the party to perform similar feats of courage and endurance.