by Peter Corris
I was humiliated by this experience and driven to confess all to Merle, whom I had avoided ever since Pamela Marchant had arrived.
'Yes,' she said. 'It is a plot.'
'What are you talking about?'
'Haven't you noticed how cold he is towards her? He avoids her as you have been avoiding me.'
'Merle, I . . .'
'Don't talk, Richard. I was with him this afternoon. We made love . . . he made love, three times. Come to bed.'
She took me then as she always could, triggering my perversion, my hated dependency. But it was not the same. I was potent but in body only. As I sank into her and felt her legs grip me and our practised movements bring us to climax, my head was filled with a vision of Pamela Marchant's glorious hair. As I orgasmed, I imagined myself clutching handfuls of that red mane and pressing my mouth to her full lips. I lay with Merle, my arms around her, and whereas her lean, sinewy body had previously excited me, now all I wanted was to feel the soft, billowing flesh of Pamela Marchant.
Merle was right, of course. It was a plot. Basil and Pamela played me like a pawn in a monstrous game of chess in which the lives and fates of the children, Merle, all of us, were pieces on the board. And Pamela was much more than Basil's bait on which to keep me hooked, she was his master spy and his counterstroke against Merle. Basil knew that Merle was his enemy and that she was plotting against him. The clinic was a small community like a ship's crew and Basil was its captain. Disloyalty, mutiny, were easily discoverable by an able lieutenant. Pamela quickly gained the confidence of the children through her enthusiastic participation in their activities and her abundant energy. It was almost certainly through them that she learned of the photograph.
Basil's response was ruthless and decisive. He secured the negative and all copies of the picture and arranged for the photographer to be killed in a motor accident. The photograph had been Merle's master stroke and Basil's swift counter threw her into despair. I was useless as an ally, paralysed by my infatuation and ready to do almost anything to ease my torment. Merle told me thai. Basil and Pamela had become lovers but I knew she lied. My pain and frustration told me otherwise. I accused her of trying to manipulate me and she raged, calling me a worm, a thing, a useless impotent creature of my brother's evil will. That was the truth.
'He will destroy you,' she said. 'He will destroy us all.'
'Yes,' I said. 'He has that power.'
Every time we met for the next few days she raged, wept passionately and begged me to help her remove the children, even if it meant defying Basil to his face. She spoke of a pistol and poison. She spoke of burning the clinic to the ground. I tried to talk to her, to plead for time, but she would not listen.
'I despise you,' she said.
'No more than I despise myself.'
One evening, after a bright, beautiful day, I left Merle's room in a mood of black despair. I walked to the lake, perhaps with the idea of drowning myself. I was standing in a thicket by the water's edge when I saw Basil and Pamela emerge from the boatshed. They were pressed close together, laughing, sharing some precious secret. They were lovers now, I was sure of it. I followed them at a distance. Every touch and word they exchanged was a knife in my heart. And yet conflicting emotions warred inside me. Would he give her to me and bind me to him again and release me from the awful agony?
I went to my own room and drank brandy until I was able to sleep. For the next few days I observed more of the same—glances between Basil and Pamela, touches of the hand. I was caught in nightmarish whirlwind of jealousy and hope. I sought out Merle but she refused to speak to me. She was constantly in the company of one or more of the children, using them as a shield. When I was finally able to tear her from her duties and persuade her to talk to me I was astonished to find the change in my feelings for her. I looked into her dark eyes and was struck dumb.
'Well, Richard,' she said. 'You know.'
I stammered, 'What? Yes, they are lovers, but . . .'
'And now you can have her and you will do whatever Basil tells you to do.' She laughed. 'He may even make you my executioner.'
What she said was shocking, but I was beyond listening to words. I was paying attention to my feelings, those instincts that had governed my existence. I felt no sexual desire for Merle. I felt only protective. 'Merle,' I said. 'You're pregnant.'
She stared at me. I had never told her about this aspect of my relationship with my brother. 'How can you know that? I was unsure until yesterday.'
I shook my head. I did not want to tell her and what difference would it make anyway? If anything, it would only serve to increase my infatuation with Pamela Marchant. I reached out to embrace Merle but she stepped back. 'So, Richard. You surprise me. Now I will surprise you. The child is yours.'
I was staggered. This was beyond my experience. I had no way of telling whether she was speaking the truth. I can hardly be blamed, given the circumstances, for my reaction. 'How can you be sure?'
'I know. With Basil, I took precautions. Do you think I would want to bear a child to a monster? With you, I did not. I am carrying your child, Richard, and you are a good man. Forget that woman, that spy, that murderess. And help me.'
I ran from the room and again wandered around in a daze. Everything seemed changed; I was in a different world. The buildings seemed smaller, the lake bigger. The birds seemed to shriek instead of calling softly and the mountains in the distance, usually dark and snow-capped, were looming closer, changing colour, glowing. I had scarcely eaten for several days and had consumed a lot of alcohol. I had scarcely drawn a nicotine-free breath in that time. I was in a state of emotional and chemical shock and not in control of my actions. I went to my room, gulped down more brandy and rushed to Basil's study. The door was ajar and I could hear Merle's voice raised. She accused Basil. He responded mildly, contemptuously. I heard her say, 'With Richard I took precautions, with you I did not' and my brain reeled. I heard nothing more for a few minutes, then a shriek from Merle. I threw open the door and saw her lunging at Basil with a knife. He avoided her easily and struck her with a heavy ruler. He struck her again. I picked up the knife and threw myself at him but I was drunk and completely uncoordinated. I fell and my head hit against the desk and I lost consciousness.
When I regained my senses I was in a narrow bed, constrained by tight sheets and blankets, and I experienced a sensation of movement. My head was bandaged and the first time I opened my eyes, even though there was little direct light, the pain was so intense that I gasped.
'Richard.' Basil's voice was close to my ear and his tone was softer than I had heard it for a very long time.
'Basil?'
I felt his strong hand on my shoulder. 'It's all right, old man. It's all right.'
'Where are we, Basil?'
'In a train. We're leaving a lot of terrible things behind us, Dick.'
'A train? I don't understand. Merle?'
'She's dead.'
I opened my eyes again despite the pain. Basil was sitting beside me, drawing fluid from a rubber-capped bottle into a syringe. He was clean-shaven and pale; he looked older but his fingers on the bottle and syringe were rock steady. 'Basil. The child . . .'
'There is no child, Dick. I'll explain everything later.' He eased back the covering and I felt his fingers on my arm. 'Sleep, Richard.' I felt the prick of the needle. I wanted to protest, to struggle. I called out names; I could hear the words echoing inside my head: Pamela. Merle. Fatah. Horatio . . . I slipped away again into dark, dreamless sleep.
There was a sensation of movement again when I next regained consciousness, but this time it was a gentler action. The bed I was lying in was narrow as before but the covers were loose across me and the room was filled with light. I looked around me and slowly registered the items in the room—the bolted-down table, the double-bunks, the round window admitting a flood of light. I was on a ship at sea. The knowledge filled me with hope and happiness momentarily before memories of the events at the clinic c
ame flooding back. I groaned and felt the dryness in my throat. There was water on the table beside the bunk. I struggled to sit up. I was very weak but my head was no longer bandaged and the light did not hurt my eyes. I poured some water and drank, dimly conscious that this was the first action I had performed for myself in . . . how long? I felt the growth of hair on my face. Many days. The cabin was almost bare apart from a few boxes, a trunk and a briefcase I recognised as my own. I wore silk pyjamas, an article of dress I have never owned—Basil's.
I lay back, my mind seething with questions. I wondered whether I would have the strength to get out of bed and walk to the door. I doubted it. I drank some more water and felt a craving of some kind which I could not identify. I didn't think it was hunger. Then I identified it. Tobacco. I desperately wanted to smoke. I lifted myself off the bed and shuffled to the closet where I found hanging some of the clothes I had been wearing when I'd burst into Basil's study. There were cigarettes and matches in the pocket of my tweed jacket. I sat down at the table and lit a cigarette. The first inhalation made me light-headed and nauseous. The second brought on a need for more water. I drank and smoked and a sense of reality gradually began to steal over me. I needed to know where I was.
I opened the porthole and gazed out at a wide expanse of blue sea which told me nothing. The sun was very bright and hot. I could not see much of the vessel and knew so little about ships anyway that nothing I saw would have been useful. I threw the cigarette end out across the narrow companionway into the water and immediately lit another.
The cabin door opened and Basil entered. 'Well enough to rot your lungs, I see.'
I sat down on the bunk. 'Yes. Where are we?'
Basil shrugged. 'Approaching the canal.'
'Which canal?'
'Suez, of course. We're on our way to Australia, Dick.'
I examined my brother closely. He appeared to have aged ten years since I'd last seen him clearly. He had lost weight and his eyes were sunken in his face. His colour was bad and his hair was lank. He had the beginnings of a beard but most of the long stubble was white. His hands shook as he poured himself a glass of water.
'What's happened to you, Basil?' I said. 'What's happened to everyone?'
Basil then told me an extraordinary story of treachery and, for him, defeat. I had never heard my brother admit defeat before and it was a chastening experience. A normal man might have relished the moment, gloried in his enemy's reverses. One part of me did recognise Basil as an enemy and react in this way, but another part did not. I was in a highly emotional state, devastated over the loss of Merle and confused by the conflicting emotions that had swept over me at the clinic. I listened in silence, smoking and drinking water, as Basil told me of what he saw as Pamela Marchant's treachery.
He confessed that he had recruited her as someone to create a rift between Merle and me. He knew that Merle was working against him and suspected she had enlisted my aid. Every move he and Pamela had made was dedicated to disrupt this and had worked wonderfully.
'We won't speak of this again, Dick,' Basil said. 'I used her against Merle and against you. But I was deceived. She was really in the employ of our masters and when she judged the time was right she moved against us.'
'Us?' I said.
'They took the children. They burnt the clinic. Merle perished in the fire. I managed to save you.'
He was drawn and looked almost beaten. He spoke slowly, without his usual animation. His appearance was the surest evidence that he spoke the truth. Yet there was still a spark in him, a trace of the old confidence as if all was not quite lost. I stared at him and, shockingly for that ravaged face, he gave me a wink. 'But there's life in the old dog yet, Dick, and I'm going to need your help.'
It was the wink that overcame my outrage. Basil had used me as no man ought to use another, let alone his own flesh and blood. But I was half a man without him and we both knew it. I nodded. 'Tell me, Basil.'
'They've promised to restore the children to me if we conduct this one last expedition for them. To Australia. I have agreed.'
My mind flicked back to when I had stood with the blood pounding in my head outside Basil's study. What had he told Merle? What had caused her to attempt to kill him? I could not remember. Perhaps I had never heard. 'Australia,' I said. 'Go on.'
He smiled for the first time. Years seemed to drop away from him and he gripped my shoulder with something like his old strength. 'They can't have it all their own way, Dick. I'm writing a book.'
It is strange to recall this scene as I sit here, writing myself. Basil showed me the ink stain on his finger and I see that now I have just such a stain on my own hand. But this is no book.
38
ENTRY EIGHT
Basil wrote Walking Across the World in a matter of weeks on the boat to Australia. He had an extraordinary memory as I have said, and he relied on it, conversations with me and photographs and other papers he had managed to save from the clinic, to construct his account. It was vivid, readable, and fraudulent. He repeated the family background he had invented for us, and much else besides. There were elements of truth in his accounts of the expeditions but much invention. He mentioned a wife and, as a bizarre joke, gave her the name Pamela. There was, of course, scant mention of his sexual tastes and nothing, of course, about slave-taking. I figured very little in the book. The focus of attention was always on Basil and his surmounting of obstacles and profound observations at moments of triumph. In several chapters he made cryptic references to mysterious forces in the world of international industry and commerce that lay somehow behind our hero's expeditions.
'Well, what d'you think of it?' Basil asked me when I had finished reading the last of the sections of manuscript he gave me almost daily.
I lit a cigarette and tossed the match into the sea. We were on the deck of the freighter Eriksen, a Swedish vessel carrying high-quality timber to Australia. Three passenger cabins had been installed because the captain, a gregarious sort, liked to have non-nautical company on his voyages. On this run, Basil and I were the only passengers and I am afraid Captain Borg got very little out of us as I spent most of the time reading, smoking and brooding and Basil wrote at fever pitch. I drew deeply on the cigarette.
'I would not have credited you with such a fertile imagination, Basil.'
'Hah. I admit that there's a little poetic licence, but the thing's true in spirit.'
'Your masters won't like the veiled references to themselves.'
'True. I'm going to make sure that they see it and understand how circumspect I've been. Of course, a manuscript can undergo vast changes.'
'It sounds dangerous.'
Basil got up. He could seldom sit still for very long. 'It is dangerous, but what would life be without danger, Dick?'
'Peaceful?'
'Damned dull. I understand we reach Fremantle tomorrow. You'll soon be feeling a camel underneath you again. How's that, eh?'
I reached out and grabbed his sleeve. 'Basil, have you got any money?'
'A bit. Why.'
'Sydney and Melbourne are decent-sized cities. You might even be able to practise medicine. We're not so old. A normal life, Basil.'
'To hell with your normal life! What have we Crafts ever known of that? I have a destiny to assume, Dick, and I won't achieve it in grubby GP's rooms in Melbourne.'
He snatched up the sheets of paper and strode away. I stared out at the flat blue-grey sea and tried to draw comfort from the knowledge that I was almost as far as I could get from Europe, Merle, Pamela, and all that pain. I was fully recovered in body and, I told myself, approaching an age when the needs of the flesh would be less, when women could be viewed as companions rather than objects of lust. The thought of being free from my bondage to Basil was like a soft hand being laid on my brow, like a chaste kiss from cool lips.
Suddenly, Basil was looming over me. 'Didn't mean to snarl at you, old man,' he said. 'Could be some good sense in what you say. Australia could be the right
place for my work. I imagine a good British pound and a sound Yankee dollar go a pretty long way out there. Get the children back, buy a farm or something.'
'Yes, Basil,' I said.
'But you still look peaky. The sailors tell me Fremantle's a lively place, sporting ladies and so on. I'll be damned if a couple of swells like us can't do a bit of good for ourselves, eh, Dick?'
From Fremantle, Basil mailed his manuscript to a small publishing house, Carlton Press, in London. He told me that he had 'something on' the director of the company that would ensure his story was published. I wonder if it was? Somehow I doubt it. But I will never know now. We booked into one of the larger hotels in the town and began a carouse that lasted for more than a week.
Basil appeared to completely regain his vigour of mind and body during this debauch. I trailed after him, through the brothels and bars of the town and into apparently respectable houses where all manner of sexual tastes were catered for. How Basil got his entree into these circles—for the demimonde was by no means an apparent feature of the society at large—I never discovered, but he was welcome everywhere for his free spending and high spirits. Gratefully, I bedded several of the women Basil had bestowed his favours on. My partners were the older women but I noted with some dismay that Basil's choice seemed increasingly to fall on ever younger females. I also noted that these girls had no attraction for me. My dependancy remained but was less strong and had undergone change. I still had some hopes for the future.
Arrangements for our expedition had been set in train before we left Europe. This time, Basil was much less the master of his fate. We said goodbye to our hosts and the sporting women and boarded a boat for Roebuck on the coast of Western Australia. A day out of Fremantle, Basil sat down in a deckchair next to mine and pulled a map from his pocket. He unfolded it and showed me the route of the trek.
'From Roebuck south through the Hamersley Range and then across the Gibson Desert, over the MacDonnell Ranges to Alice Springs. Think of it, Dick—a desert and two mountain ranges. It's an undertaking worthy of us.'