on the harbour shebeens and sure enough 1 found what I had been
seeking in the ‘Pot o’ Gold’.
It was a tough, snug, secret place; the wine and food were of the
best; there were brass lamps giving off a haze of golden smoke. The
Pot was never noisy; fights were brought under control and drunks
were rolled away into the alley. The customers were mainly hardbitten sailor women plus the younger gals and pretty-boys who frequent such places. I sang for my supper, avoiding the embrace of
some brawny arms, and came at last to my goal. For the crowd
thinned out after midnight and there, queening it in a deep alcove,
was a trader captain on shore leave.
‘Tall and fine with hair of flame,’ the old song had it, but the
words stuck in my throat. Even for the ‘Pot o’ Gold’ Vera Swift was
an ugly customer, bulky and grey-haired. When she smiled her
hard grey eyes sunk into cushions of fat. She had frightened Hilo
Hill when she was in her prime, now she frightened me. She had
the power of command and a bunch of shipmates and shore toadies
to do her bidding.
I sang the most sentimental and flattering of all the ballads that
mentioned her by name. It is called ‘Brave Hearts’ and goes to the
ancient tune o f ‘Derry’, a popular air in these parts. Jup Star him self wrote the words but he will not own to it.
‘The years are long since last we kissed and parted,
Good shipmates all who sailed into the west,
The day will dawn when all our seas are charted,
O then, brave hearts, the Seahawk’s crew may rest.’
A few sailors wept and a few pretended to weep for Cap Swift’s
benefit. She herself gave a sigh and threw me a piece of silver; I
caught it and, for once, did exactly the right thing. I gave the
money back and saw her fingers close greedily over the coin.
‘Captain,’ I said, ‘a few words!’
H er voice was mellow at this hour of night.
‘W hat d’ye want, sweetheart? This is ancient history.’
/ hi' ballad o f H ilo H ill
127
I had my answer ready.
‘The anniversary of’your sailing, Captain. It comes up in twenty
days. We’re planning new ballads for Gline and your good self.’
She moved a hand and suddenly a bench emptied so that I could
sit at her side. I would sooner have cosied up to those mighty
wonders the Vail than to this old sea-monster but I gritted my
teeth. I ran a short, standard interview and Cap Swift answered
promptly. Her eyes were cold and watchful. I did not dare bring the
conversation around to a lost seaman named Hilo Hill. I could picture her swooping like a seahawk on the least hint of his survival. I consulted my tattered jocca scroll and said:
‘Nan Born was cook then, and came with you on the cutter?’
‘Second cook,’ said the Captain, ‘the cook was a man named Hill.’
‘H a . . . yes,’ I ran a finger shakily down the scroll. ‘He was
missed from the beach, Captain, along with Kettle, Kelly and
Adma. What became of these poor souls, Captain, missing
between wreck and rescue?’
The Captain’s wine beaker rocked just a little as she set it down.
‘I’ve thought about it,’ she said. ‘Too much was wrong on the
beach. Gline was in command still but he was a sick man. I tended
to him as best I could and rounded up food and shelter. I fancy that
some of these shipmates never reached the beach at all, they did in
fact drown in the wreck and were falsely reported alive. Who could
be sure in that place, full of mist and the phantoms of disease?
Then again, perhaps they struck inland . . . ’
‘Were there boats?’ I asked. ‘Could any have taken a boat?’
The hawk swooped. Captain Swift’s big hand clasped down with
a savage grip . . . not on my wrist, she was more crafty than that.
She gripped the slender neck of my guitar as if she would snap it
like a twig.
‘W’ho might have done that?’ she asked softly, ‘which one of these
missing persons might have stolen a boat?’
‘None that I know of, Captain,’ I brought out, ‘but there was an
interview . . . ’
‘Where? W hat did it say?’
‘At City Hall. Two of the missing, Kettle and Adma, were last
seen beside a boat.’
‘Ah, those two,’ she said. ‘The smaller boats were not seaworthy.
Perhaps they made off, poor gals, and came down to delfmhome, as
the saying goes. They drowned. Don’t quote me, child. I’ve no true
notion of how they died.’
128
Cherry Wilder
Another thing,’ I went on quickly. ‘The plan to refloat the
Seahawk . . . ?’
‘You’re well up in this history, little one,’ she said, smiling at last.
‘A real newsferret Ju p Star has made of you. Yes, there was some
talk of refloating the Seahawk. She hung on the rocky tip of the
point, only two, three hundred metres from our wretched beach.
Might have been a world away, in those waters and in our weakened
state. / knew at any rate, that it was death to approach her. So my
plan was to patch up the cutter.’
H er plan had worked; she had the air of one whose plans worked.
But it had been too late to save their Captain, Hal Gline. I was as
certain as I could be that Hilo Hill had taken a boat after some falling out with Vera Swift on that dreadful beach, long ago. I made my escape from the ‘Pot o’ Gold’ without probing any further. I
understood a part of his lifelong fear.
A spell of cold and rainy weather kept us indoors at the Songfabrik
with the hatches battened down. I was sent for one night to go to
Moon Lane. Hilo Hill was dying. A pneumonia had taken hold
and the doctor Ruby had called could do no more for the old man.
He lay at last in a big bed in an upstairs room, his face sharp and
brown against the pillows. Dag Raam was there, sitting patiently at
a corner of the bed when I stole in with my guitar and someone I
took for a nurse but who was a female intern . . . Ruby had spared
no expense.
Now she was tired, poor lady, from watching, and Rayner led her
off to get some sleep. Hilo drew breath painfully but his head
seemed as clear as it had ever been. He m urm ured in two languages. I played a soft refrain and his eyes found me and knew me.
When the intern came to stop my music, Hilo turned to Dag
Raam.
‘This time?’he wheezed softly. ‘This time at last, Dag-boy?’
The Captain would not lie to him or pretend to misunderstand
the question.
‘It seems so, Hilo,’ he replied.
Hilo fixed his gaze on the hovering intern.
‘Step out a moment, gal,’ he said. ‘I have something to say to these
folk.’
She went off when we promised not to tire him. He fell back into
silence when the intern had gone and we waited. Then, fighting for
I hr ballad o f H ilo H ilt
129
his breath, he began to speak.
'On the beach,’ he said, 'the fifteenth day after the wreck. 1 saw
Vera Swift, second mate, kill our Captain, Hal Gline. He lay apart
in a rough shelter of canvas; 1 had
extra food hidden . . . 1
brought him a little. He was injured but strong in heart, trying to
keep command. As I came up through the bushes I heard him
groan. Vera Swift lay across his body, her hands over his mouth,
her elbow pressed into his throat. What I had heard was his death
sound. She saw me and gave chase. She carried a knife, she was
every way faster and stronger than I was. I was stricken with a
mortal fear. I knew she would never let me live or come to the camp
again. I took to the swamp forest. She hunted me again at night; 1
thought I heard her calling my name. I saw a chance, stole the longboat early in the morning and took off west, beyond Gline’s cape.’
So it came out, with many pauses for breath but absolutely clear.
Dag Raam and I said nothing; we did not even exchange glances.
Hilo lay still, then cocked an eye at the guitar again and I played the
songs of the Rhomary land and the chants of the Gnai, far into the
night. The intern came back and Rayner came to sit beside his
grandfather.
Dag Raam spoke to the old man once and said:
'Hilo, you have come a long way. You have come all around this
world.’
‘Seems so, Dag-boy,’ said Hilo, very faint. ‘I took the long way
home.’
Then he Spoke no more except in his other language and toward
morning, with a grey dawn breaking over the Long Portage, he was
gone. We went out of his room and down through the quiet, creaking house. Rayner let his mother sleep. Dag Raam said to me:
‘This will make no ballad, Cat Kells.’
‘1 know it.’
I went out with Rayner Mack into the rainwashed garden and
looked up to the sky, the sale camp of Ha-hwoo-dgai, and hoped
indeed that Hilo Hill had come there. I might have chanted again
but I could not. All my songs were sung.
Everything changes and sometimes more quickly than we have
time to reckon on. Soon after the old man’s death Ruby Mack sold
up her great house and sent her son to Rhomary to complete his
schooling. She planned to live modestly in the town but a doctor,
newly arrived in Derry, was smitten with the handsome widow and
they married. Now she lives on Medicine Hill, still in the best part
130
Cherry Wilder
of town.
Rayner took to spending his holidays in Rhomary; he did not
care for his stepfather. We exchanged letters for about a year. If
there is anything more popular than a newsballad it is a love song
but, you see, I do not even have this to offer. The balladmaker did
not fly off with the handsome silverwing; I felt regret, for there
might have been more in it than a summer’s dreaming.
What was the truth of the story? Nothing can be proved now.
Hilo is dead and, in any case, he was not much of a witness. It is all
a m atter of belief. I believe he told the tale as plainly as he could. I
believe it fell out on the beach in the Red Ocean as he told it. More
than that I believe in the ocean he crossed, in the floating islands
and in Palmland. I believe there is a race of lizard-folk living far to
the west of the Rhom ary land, and they call themselves the Gnai-
na-gada, the Children of the Broken Snake.
There is one scene left, one last verse in my ballad. Hilo Hill was
buried beside his wife Janie in the cemetery of Derry town, on a
headland overlooking the sea. A plain stone marks his grave; there
are no dates, only the name Willem Hill and the words ‘Home from
sea, a common inscription in this place. I go there sometimes in
summer and sing a chant for him; no other balladmaker has ever
got wind of the story. One summer’s day as I climbed up between
the stones carrying my guitar and my string of climbing lilies, I saw
that someone was there ahead of me.
I wanted to run as Hilo had gone running through the swamp
forest but my curiosity was greater than my fear. I came up warily
and stared across the gravestones at the hulking figure. She sat on
the ground, face and body drooping; her eyes were not to be
fathomed.
‘The little ferret,’ said Vera Swift. ‘I might have guessed. Who lies
in this grave?’
‘You knew him. Hilo Hill,’
‘That cannot be.’
‘He is dead now,’ I said. ‘There will be no ballads written.’
‘Damn right there won’t,’ she said. ‘Hilo Hill died long ago, d’ye
hear me?’
‘Aye, aye Captain.’
The ghost of a smile crossed her sad, cruel face. She could see
plainly that I was afraid of her although we were alone and she was
The ballad o jH ilo H ill
131
no longer fleet of foot.
‘Tell me . . . she ordered.
So I told the tale of the old man, his return, his strange ways, his
stories of the Green Ocean and of the Gnai. When I had done Cap
Swift sighed harshly:
‘You think he really did it?’
‘I do, Captain. I’m sure of it.’
‘He told you more . . .’
‘He was afraid of you. Afraid for his life . . .’
‘We were all in fear of our lives,’ she burst out, ‘and I was answer-
able for us all. I needed Hilo Hill, his cache of food, the longboat he
stole. He was a fool to take off . . .’
She reached out and laid a hand on the gravestone as if she spoke
to the dead as well as the living.
‘Hal Gline was a worthy Captain,’ she said, ‘but the wreck had
made him mad. There were forty souls on the beach and not one
would have survived if he had had his way. He was crippled and in
pain; his judgem ent was gone; he did not know how badly we were
holding. His plan was to refloat the Seahawk; he would not hear of
rescue or return.’
She stirred and I was ready to fly off but her voice came, sullen
and defeated.
‘Seventeen years . . . what is there left? To sail the Red Ocean as I
do and store up credits? I might have raised an expedition a
hundred times, to push further west, to cross Gline’s new ocean . . .
it is all there, I have seen it, Hilo spelled it out very clear. Yet the
past holds me back.’
Vera Swift passed a hand over her face as if she would wipe away
the traces of age and authority.
‘Gline was mad,’ she said. ‘All sea captains become a little mad, in
time.’
She heaved herself up and walked away down the hill without a
backward glance. Again it was a question of belief; she had made
no real admissions. I laid the string of lilies on Hilo’s grave; I
missed the old man very keenly at that moment. I longed for one
more session by the garden house; I missed Rayner Mack, my
handsome lad. I thought of old age and of youth; I held fast to the
moment and played a chant of the Gnai, a chant for the healing of
wounds. I still had my music and it would last a lifetime. The place
was hot and still; brown lizards came out to sun themselves upon
the sailors’ graves.
The elixir operon
©
DAVID FOSTER
1
I remember clearl
y the day I first asked myself the question, what’s
it all for? Up till then I’d gone on as most of us do, never questioning my existence or the job I was brought up to do, or the pounding through my flesh of the 0 2 and the C 0 2 — no, I just did as I was
asked, and if I was thirsty I drank, and if I was hungry I helped
myself.
It’s a hard life here on the bronchial wall. Exchange goes on
twenty-four hours a day. It’s a frontier life: invasions that leave the
place swarming with police, and invaders impersonating police;
I’ve known winds destroy entire walls. No sooner are things back to
normal, than war breaks out, or there’s an earthquake: we often die
as fast as we’re reborn.
Even so, one day the environment took a turn for the worse. I’m
not saying we hadn’t known invasions; it’s a hazard of frontier life.
They don’t supply us with so many channels for nothing. No, we’d
seen invaders and we’d known casualties, but nothing the cops, our
channel-cruising macrophage and lymphocyte forces, couldn’t
handle. As we used to say to one another: hang in there on the cliff
face, sister, and strive for the common good. W hat the common
good was, we never knew and never asked.
This particular day, late in the month it was, the void turned
suddenly filthy, and all sorts of foreign material started settling
132
7 'he elixir operon
133
down. ‘Hey!’ I shouted to leeward. A passing lympho put out a call,
and that’s when the trouble really began.
(A word on police procedure. Lymphocytes turn killer, or churn
out ‘twigs’, in response to a threat. Twigs are scripts with the
enemy’s name written on them. So invaders are either eaten whole
by killer lymphos, mackas and grannies, or immobilised by twigs
then blasted apart.)
In the first place, along with the usual heterocyclic tar babes and
lolly wraps (you never saw trash so thick), I saw some classy stuff in
transit. W hat grabbed my attention and commanded my respect
were the positive terminals. I thought they might have been neurotransmitters. True, I’d never before seen a script come in on the wind like an illegal immigrant.
Whatever it was, it said never a word, just eased on by, cool and
Strange Attractors (1985) Page 18