The Complete Stories of Alan Marshall

by Alan Marshall

  I didn’t like the idea. ‘She’d never stand it, Dick. You’d kill her. You don’t realise how crook she is.’

  Dick was suddenly lost. He looked at the ground with his arms hanging loosely by his sides. Tears began running down his cheeks.

  ‘Don’t I,’ he said, his voice quavering. He reached out and grasped one of the stays on the hood of the car as if to steady himself. ‘All I wanted was a photo of me and her together. We’ve never had a picture took together, Mum’d like it.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll take it. Come on.’

  He opened the front door and I followed him down the passage to a bedroom doorway through which he called, ‘How is she, Aunt Nell?’ before entering.

  I heard a woman’s voice answer, ‘I don’t think she’ll last long, Dick.’ I walked into the room and he introduced me to his aunt. She was a larger woman than her sister but maybe this was because she had not yet begun to shrink with age. She had strong arms and coarse black hair and a deep voice that was surprisingly gentle when she spoke to us.

  ‘I’ve heard Dick speak of you,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He was a mate of mine when we were at school. I’m sorry about Mrs Hookey.’

  ‘We’re all sorry,’ she said looking down at the woman on the bed.

  Mrs Hookey was wearing a pink flannelette nightgown. Her arms were resting by her side. They were thin and mottled and this was the first time I had ever seen them idle. Her eyes were closed but when she realised Dick was in the room she opened them and looked at him. He had lowered his head until it was close to hers so that she could hear him when he spoke to her. He believed she was an immense distance away from him and that her hearing could never bridge it unless he shouted.

  ‘This is Alan, Mum. Remember him? He’s going to take our photo together. I want your photo to remember you by.’

  ‘What next!’ exclaimed Aunt Nell.

  The suggestion that she was going to die brought a faint protest from Mrs Hookey. ‘I’m all right,’ she whispered.

  ‘Of course you are,’ shouted Dick. Then resuming his normal voice which he believed was beyond her range of hearing he said, ‘We’ll have to take it fast while she still understands what we’re doing. Get down to the end of the bed with the camera. I’ll hold her up against me.’

  ‘Careful!’ exclaimed Aunt Nell.

  The bed was an iron one with brass knobs capping the uprights at each corner. I leant over the end and pointed the camera at Mrs Hookey who was lolling in Dick’s arms. He was reclining across the head of the bed with one arm around her back. Her head was resting loosely on his shoulder and her eyes were closed. I thought she might die at any moment and when I caught her image in the viewfinder I called out, ‘Right!’ A ghastly smile changed Dick’s face for a moment. His mother opened a dark eye and turned it on to me in silent acknowledgement of her role. I clicked the shutter.

  ‘Good God,’ exclaimed Aunt Nell.

  Dick lowered his mother gently on the pillow, then kissed her.

  ‘You’ll be all right, Mum,’ he called out loudly.

  I think she tried to smile but I avoided looking at her and hurried out into the passage. In a moment Dick joined me. He was crying again.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ he asked gruffly.

  ‘Yes, I would.’

  We sat in the kitchen and drank it together.

  ‘The saddest thing that can ever happen to a man is to lose his Mum,’ said Dick. ‘It’s a bastard.’

  ‘Yes, it is a bastard,’ I said.

  I developed and printed the photograph but was reluctant to send Dick a copy. It was too cruel a picture. I decided to keep it for a while, then give it to him when he had become adjusted to his mother’s death.

  About a year later I was again visiting the town and I decided to call on Dick. I had the photograph in my hand as I stepped on to the verandah. I had just knocked when I heard a shrill voice berating a neighbour across the back fence.

  ‘Leave my Dick alone. My Dick was never in your yard. He’s never pinched an apple in his life. You lay off him, I’m tellin’ ya.’

  Dick opened the door. His look of astonishment changed to one of recognition.

  ‘Hell! How’re ya goin’, Alan? Come in.’

  I hurriedly put the photograph back in my pocket. ‘Was that your mother’s voice I just heard?’

  ‘Yes, that’s her—still going strong. That last time you were here I thought she’d had it but it only laid her up for six weeks. I tell you, you couldn’t kill Mum with an axe.’

  How I Met General Pau

  My childhood was a happy one until I became the owner of a fat white pony called Dolly who cast upon me such responsibilities and worries that their effect remains with me to the present day.

  Prior to Dolly I had owned a pony called Bobs, a thin, wiry animal with a black dorsal stripe and a thin tail held well away from his rump. He walked like a cat and was just as quick. He shied at a shadow and tossed me many times until my parents, fearing for my safety, sold him and bought Dolly.

  The change from Bobs to Dolly was like being removed from the company of an athlete to the company of a middle-aged spinster. She was completely reliable. She never shied, bolted or propped. A fall from her was never the fault of Dolly but was due to the rider tom-fooling on her back, either by sitting on her facing the tail or by kneeling on the saddle, or by picking up a handkerchief from the ground at a canter. These were the reasons given by my father each time I fell off and I was amazed at their accuracy.

  My first ride on Dolly revealed to me that she was the victim of a deplorable habit. She was a farter. Now I have nothing against a horse farting. As a means of relief I acknowledge a fart’s value, but I have always claimed that two normal farts are enough for any horse. But farting for farting’s sake is something else again and I deplore it.

  My father’s explanation of Dolly’s farting did not attribute it to the expression of a cynical mind but was based on an understanding of the principle of fermentation. The trouble was that Dolly was a gulper—she ate voraciously and swallowed without chewing. This set up such a conflict of gases, liquids and solids in her stomach that the bubbling and gurgling could be heard by placing your ear against her ribs.

  She was not discriminating in her choice of food. She could eat a watermelon or a bunch of grapes with equal greed, a habit that led my father to observe:

  She farteth best who eateth best

  All things both great and small.

  Father had owned several farters, so he said, and had long concluded there was nothing you could do about it. You lived with a farter and accepted him or else you sold him. He suggested I study her farting and learn when she was likely to start and how long she would take to fart herself out. I could then arrange my meeting with people when she was so empty of gas she had nothing more to say.

  She was at her best, fartwise, half an hour or so after a feed. This always coincided with me leaving on my four miles ride to school. At this stage she began farting as soon as I moved off. She would raise her tail and let forth a few explosive bursts before settling down to a rhythm dictated by her gait. If I set off walking no great pressures were exerted on her stomach and the pattern of her farting was conservative and controlled. In such cases a line of regular spaced farts followed me:

  ‘Parp-parp-parp-parp-parp-parp.’

  If I set off at a trot the jerking movement quickened her farting into a more jaunty rhythm and it emerged:

  ‘Parpparpparpparp-parpparpparpparp.’

  A canter brought:

  ‘Partety-parp, parpparp, parpparp. Parpety-parp, parpparp.’

  A gallop inspired an urgent version of the cantering rhythm.

  Her farting was at its most effective when she exerted herself after a period of rest. The tightening of the girth always brought forth a couple of farts. To pull up and talk to anyone was to subject oneself to the prospect of ending the conversation with a volley of farts, ma
king the approach to a farewell a period of tense anticipation.

  Conversations with girls, especially Maggie Mulligan, were rendered painful by my habit of blushing when Dolly raked them with a burst of farts as we moved away.

  I became afraid to stop and talk to anyone, knowing that Dolly’s gurgling stomach seized on moments of immobility to generate more gas for farting.

  The Dolly period of my childhood was thus tinged with grey by embarrassment and humiliation. My close association with the pony made me her accomplice in farting. Indeed such was the bond between us that her farts became my own and were judged accordingly. At various times I was accused of farting at Mrs Jane Bryce-Forbes, Maggie Mulligan, Old Davey Clark, the Shire President, the Conductor of the Noorat Guild Mouth Organ Band and the assembled members of the Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Society.

  This was the position when General Pau came to Camperdown. He came as a guest of the government to lead a recruiting drive for the first World War which was then raging.

  I had read about General Pau in the newspapers. He was a famous French General who had lost an arm in the Franco-Prussian war and when the Great War broke out he was put in charge of the French offensive in Alsace where he distinguished himself in a series of masterly retreats.

  His name inspired a spate of ribald stories among schoolboys who regarded a po as a vessel to be hidden beneath the bed and hardly suitable as a name. I imagined him as being frequently humiliated when introduced to other generals and wondered why the hell he didn’t change it. It was a humiliation I could understand since I too avoided meetings for reasons just as embarrassing to me as his unfortunate name must have been to him.

  The visit of General Pau inspired our local paper into columns of praise that occupied the first two pages of a four-page paper. It spoke of his love of country that had brought him across submarine-infested seas seeking the help of the courageous Australians. We must stop the Kaiser. The future of the world was at stake. It would have said a lot more about him but the last two pages contained the weekly casualty list and had to be included for the sake of the mothers.

  The result of such enthusiastic welcoming was to inspire me with a brand of patriotism that had been nurtured on the books of George A. Henty in which one-armed generals with sword aloft jumped through breeches and proceeded to carve up defending Infidels. It was a heady mixture for a boy conditioned by equine farts and Henty rhetoric.

  So I decided to go and hear General Pau exhorting the vitally alive young men of our district to carry their love of country, like a banner, to meet the machine-gun bullets of the Kaiser.

  Camperdown was fourteen miles from where I lived and the long ride there presented problems that worried my mother and father but didn’t worry me. After some discussion with my father I decided not to take my crutches which would be awkward to carry over twenty-eight miles. It meant I would be in the saddle all day. But since General Pau was to give his address from a platform erected in front of the Shire Office there would be no reason to dismount. The ‘call of nature’, as my mother put it, could be answered on back roads where buggies were few and where I could put into operation, unobserved, a complicated balancing system that had served me well under similar circumstances.

  I set off in the early morning, following my father’s advice to ‘kick her along’ briskly until she had farted herself out, thus ensuring I would make a silent and unobtrusive entry into Camperdown. When I reached there the crowd on Main Street amazed me. It filled the space between the flanking shops and extended for some distance down the street.

  The crowd around the Shire Office was jostling for a position that would bring them close to the platform so I wasted no time. I urged Dolly into the thick of it. I was the only mounted person in the struggle for the centre of the front row and I got it. Here I was standing with men and women jammed around me directly in front of the sacred spot where General Pau would stand. I could now relax and wait for that moment of truth when, facing a real life general, some of the glory promised by G. A. Henty in his description of heroic assaulters of breeches would rub off on me and I would return home transformed.

  His appearance disappointed me. He was a short, shrunken man with grey hair showing at each side of his magnificent peaked cap. One sleeve of his uniform hung empty but the other clothed an arm, anxious and ready to grasp and raise aloft the sword resting in the scabbard by his side.

  Though I felt he was hardly worth a mention by G. A. Henty nevertheless the impressive display of medals on his chest, the gold braid, the riding boots and the grey moustache combined to give him an appearance that I felt sure would have earned Henty approval.

  He mounted the platform with short, purposeful steps followed by the Shire President, the Shire Councillors and a variety of wives who arranged themselves each side of him at distances appropriate to their importance. He was introduced by the Shire President who not only emphasised the importance of General Pau as a war leader but impressed upon us the importance of what he had to say as a recruiting officer. He tried to introduce emotion into his speech but having no son of his own to be recruited the break in his voice when he pleaded for the sons of others to volunteer was not convincing. It did not impress me nor did it impress the courageous woman leaning on Dolly’s rump. She had never been under fire and I hoped to God she never would be.

  When General Pau began his speech we listened, for in his voice we detected the note of authority, the ring of command. He made no plea: he was giving orders. It was his job to so inspire his hearers with noble phrases that the young men in the audience would become convinced that giving their lives for their country was far more rewarding than living for it. Under his eloquence slow death in the mud of Flanders was transformed into dying gloriously on the field of battle and had nothing to do with wasp-swarms of machine-gun bullets stinging bodies hanging limply on barb wire. Indeed it suggested that such deaths were preceded by brass bands, cheers and the kisses of girls. One gathered the impression that death in battle was never permanent and that the slain young men would be given a chance to return and enjoy their glory after they had earned it.

  But I got tired of his talk. He talked far too long and I had a long way to go. I apologised to the woman leaning on Dolly’s rump for disturbing her, and pulled Dolly’s head around so that she pivoted and turned her back on General Pau just as he was delivering his peroration. She raised her tail and farted at him, not one fart but a fusillade of farts that paralysed me. They were king-sized farts delivered with such power and precision that had she been expelling bullets they would have struck General Pau fair on his bemedalled chest.

  With reddened cheeks and bowed head I forced her through a crowd stunned into silence. All I could hear was the voice of Pau and the farting of Dolly. On the outskirts I urged her into a canter:

  Parpety-parp

  parpparp, parpparp

  parpety-parp, parpparp.

  Hairy Legs

  I remember the time when a man’s status was based on the quality of his horse and the price of his buggy. The well-bred horse bestowed upon its owner those qualities of breeding which set it apart and stamped it as an aristocrat amongst its kind. Men of lowly birth were lifted by the ownership of such horses to altitudes of importance they would never otherwise have attained. In keeping with the breeding of their horses they were regarded as well-bred men and could speak to squatters in terms of equality.

  Which brings me to Mrs Jane Bryce-Forbes.

  She was the wife of the local baker but had the formation of a woman of breeding. She walked with an S-bend, the result, so my father said, of whalebone corsets so tightly laced that Sandow himself couldn’t have got another hitch in them. My siter informed me, speaking in whispers, that her underclothes were of the finest calico but heaven forbid that I should ever show an interest in the mysterious back country of Mrs Jane Bryce-Forbes. To me she existed as a dignified exterior and only darkness lay beneath her floor-length, pleated skirt of tweed. The coat of
her tailored costume was lined with silk and trimmed with oriental braid and cream lace. Fountains of lace burst beneath the cuffs and partly concealed her white-gloved hands. A lace collar reinforced with whalebone held her head in a permanent position of disdain.

  But it was her hat that impressed me. It featured a stuffed bird—eyes, beak, legs—the whole bloody lot. I spend an hour with old Mick O’Shaughnessy who had a set of Gould’s bird books but I’m damned if we could track it down. Mick concluded, and I agree with him, that it must have been a bird from some foreign country where birds with red heads and yellow bodies were as common as sparrows are here. That was Mick’s opinion anyway and he knew more about birds than anyone I’ve ever met.

  Mrs Jane Bryce-Forbes’ hat, though evidence of impeccable taste, would never have convinced me of her high breeding unless I had not heard her described in these terms by men whose breeding was undeniable.

  Mr Charles F. Robinson, the owner of the district flour mill, who frequently visited Mr Bryce-Forbes carrying an order book, was once talking to him in my presence. I was standing a few yards away eating a licorice strap and I heard him with my own ears.

  He said, ‘You have a remarkably well-bred wife, Arthur.’ That’s what he said. Arthur, who was badly bred, gave him a look like a crow looking up a hollow log. He was a bit touchy about cracks that suggested his bread was crook. But Mr Robinson didn’t mean anything, I could see that. He had confirmed what I had already felt about Mrs Jane Bryce-Forbes and I told father about it to show him how I understood women.

  He was straightening a stanchion of the wagon at the time and I didn’t quite catch what he said but I think he said, ‘S’help me God!’ Anyway I was disappointed in what he said.

  There was another well-bred man who drove up with an Abbott buggy and pair. He talked to Arthur about land or something. He gave me a penny to sit in the buggy and hold his horses and when he came out he said to me, ‘That’s a fine, stylish looking woman in there. What’s her name?’