by Robert Gott
Peter Gilbert went upstairs to help Mother pack, and forgetting for the moment that I needed Brian on side, I asked him, a bit peevishly, why he thought it wasn’t worth mentioning that Mother had taken a lover.
‘I wasn’t sure you’d approve,’ he said.
‘I’m not a prude, Brian.’
‘No, but you can be a bit priggish, and besides, it’s Mother’s business, and if she wanted you to know before now she’d have told you herself. It wasn’t my place to gossip about her private life.’
‘The fact that our mother is conducting an affair isn’t gossip Brian. It’s news. There is a difference.’
Brian shrugged. ‘Anyway, now you know.’
Further consideration of my mother’s private life would have to wait. There were more urgent matters to be addressed. I told Brian that when Mother and Gilbert came down with the luggage he should say that he wanted to stay and talk to me. He agreed, thinking, no doubt, that we’d be discussing the Order of the Shining Knights and what our next move would be. After Peter Gilbert had helped Mother into his car, and after I assured her that I’d thank Clutterbuck profusely for his hospitality, he drove her home to Garton Street, and the stains which she’d set about removing immediately. At the front gate of Clutterbuck’s house I told Brian that I had a straightforward but demanding job for him.
‘You’ll never have been asked to do anything like this before. It’s not dangerous; it’s Army Intelligence at its most obtuse, but it’s terribly, terribly important. Are you up for it?’
‘Of course. If it’s not dangerous, how hard could it be?’
I told him exactly what he’d be required to do. He baulked, and wanted to know what posing naked for a posse of old ladies had to do with Army Intelligence, and why I couldn’t do it if it was so bloody hush hush and important. I was able to tell him, with pleasing truthfulness, that I had in fact already done it. And that the only reason I wasn’t doing it again was on account of Paul Clutterbuck’s fiancée being among the art students — the only one under the age of fifty. I hadn’t known her at the time, but now that I’d met her, she might think it odd if I turned up again in her class.
‘I don’t know whether she’s involved in the Knights or not,’ I lied, ‘but I don’t want her expressing any suspicions about me to Clutterbuck.’
Maintaining my policy of holding small bits of information back, I told Brian that her name was Nigella, but didn’t tell him that she was the sister of my contact in Army Intelligence, the man he knew of only as Jim.
‘Mother met Nigella at lunch today,’ I said. ‘I’m sure she’ll confirm that she’s Clutterbuck’s fiancée. I want you to take careful note of who else is in that drawing class. I’m sure it’s a front for something.’
‘What if this Nigella woman twigs that I’m your brother?’
‘Why would she? We don’t look that much alike and you’ll use a false name.’
‘And speak, maybe, with a slight foreign accent.’
Brian’s Boy’s Own sense of adventure bubbled over and it was evident that I wouldn’t have to tempt him with payment.
‘I could be Ziggy Swiebodsinski, a Polish-Jewish émigré, living in Carlton. I can do that accent perfectly.’
It was true. Brian could do a vowel perfect Polish accent. His closest friend growing up had been the son of one of the Jewish families who’d moved to Carlton in the twenties.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘That’s a good idea. Even if Nigella thinks she sees a family resemblance the accent will throw her off.’
‘So what am I looking for?’
‘I’m not sure, but pay particular attention to the woman who owns the house you’ll be going to. Her name is Lady Bailey. I’m pretty sure she’s a fifth columnist of some sort.’
Brian swallowed this nonsense hungrily, so that by the time we’d finished talking he couldn’t wait to get to the house in East Melbourne, introduce himself as my replacement, and tear his clothes off. I almost felt guilty about gulling him so effectively. Almost.
Like the changing of the guard, Brian had barely left when Clutterbuck arrived home. He was excited about something but said it was the sort of thing that would appeal more to Brian than to me, so it was a pity Brian was in custody. When I said that he’d been released Clutterbuck seemed taken aback for a moment, then said that he wanted to contact him urgently.
‘I’ve got something that’ll take his mind off his troubles. A bit of fun.’
‘Is it anything to do with the Knights?’
‘You’re more than welcome to join us, Will, you know that.’
I waved his invitation away, but changed my mind when I realised that whatever Clutterbuck’s plans with the Knights were, they would involve lawlessness of some kind, and if Brian was to be a part of it, he might be at risk either of injury or arrest, or disabling drunkenness. Any or all of these possibilities threatened his ability to stand in for me the next day. He’d need a chaperone, and if this meant tagging along at whatever vulgar entertainment had been planned, then so be it.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m curious enough to find out what your idea of a good night out is to join you.’
He lifted his eyes and widened them in exaggerated surprise.
‘We’re honoured,’ he said facetiously. ‘Perhaps you’ll enjoy it so much you’ll want to fight the good fight after all.’
‘I think you know, Paul, that your idea of the good fight and my idea of the good fight are not quite the same thing.’
With the infuriating condescension of the blindly committed he said, ‘One day, Will, you’ll come to understand who the real enemy is.’
I was about to say something about despising his methods but I had to preserve the illusion that I didn’t know about them.
‘We’re meeting here at nine o’clock. Just a few of us, and we’re just going to take it from there.’
That colourless expression wasn’t being used to indicate an evening of backgammon. I was nervous about what I might be getting into, but was confident that the evening’s entertainment wasn’t to be the assassination of Archbishop Mannix. I knew that that was as yet only a vague plan, or rather a vague notion that might never go beyond the bravado given expression in a dark, run-down house in Brunswick. I imagined that the night’s excitement would amount to daubing slogans on a church or presbytery wall. I could tolerate being witness to that, so long as I wasn’t asked to take part in the vandalism. Brian, on the other hand, would be quite willing to enter into it with gusto, partly because he knew it would strengthen his ties to the Knights and to Clutterbuck, and partly because the whole Army Intelligence exercise had uncovered in him a real pleasure in transgression.
When I rang Brian to tell him that the Knights were to be engaged in what for them passed as a social event, he was eager to join in. He was less enthusiastic about my coming along, as if my mere presence would put a dampener on his fun. I pointed out that the presence of someone they didn’t fully trust might act as a brake on their actions and prevent anyone from going too far. They wouldn’t want a witness to anything seriously illegal or criminal. It would also give us both some idea about the kind of people we were dealing with. I suspected it would confirm my belief that the Order of the Shining Knights was all ugly, adolescent, secret-society talk, and no action. I believed that they’d do something minor and silly, and probably unpleasant, and then talk about it for weeks afterwards as if it had threatened the fabric of society.
At nine o’clock, in Clutterbuck’s living room, six men, including me, were fortifying themselves with whisky. Ronnie Oakpate limped back and forth and, as always, resembled an angry, deformed pongid; Crocker spoke to Clutterbuck, and Crocker’s small head bobbed forward and backwards on his absurdly broad shoulders; Brian was talking to a man I’d never seen before — a man who bore an uncanny resemblance to Herr Goebbe
ls. He was wiry and rat-like, and smoothed his hair continually in response to an obsessive vanity which must have told him that it had shifted in some unflattering way between swipes. He had the air of a man who’d spent his childhood torturing small animals. Clutterbuck was resplendent in his American serviceman’s uniform. He looked even more fiercely well-groomed than he usually did, and I caught the waft of an expensive cologne. I idly wondered whether Oakpate might be encouraged to splash some on himself, or maybe gargle with it.
Nobody spoke to me, reinforcing their sense of me as an outsider. If they seriously resented my presence, though, they were disciplining their expression of it, being content to ignore me.
Both Brian and I were still in the dark about the nature of the night’s program. I approached Brian and the poor-man’s Goebbels and tried to insinuate myself into their conversation. In keeping with the role Brian was playing he reluctantly and dismissively introduced me to his cadaverous new chum, whose name was MacGregor, and who spoke, unexpectedly, with a Scottish burr.
I was rescued from the awkwardness of making small talk by Clutterbuck’s announcement that it was time to be on our way. I couldn’t miss the shiver of excitement that passed through Clutterbuck’s three acolytes, and I suddenly began to feel that I’d made a terrible mistake in deciding to be involved in this. The charge in the air was too electric to have been generated by an impending bout of graffiti writing. Something of a very different order was in the wind.
We filed out into Bayles Street, now dark under a cloud-covered sky. Clutterbuck had a partly masked torch which we followed like overgrown moths. No instructions were given but it was understood that we were to proceed in silence — up Bayles Street towards Royal Parade, along which an occasional car travelled. When we reached it we turned left, and crossed Degraves Street. A pool of nausea in the pit of my stomach began to bubble and plop as I realised we were headed towards St. Carthage’s Catholic church.
Unusually for a church, it was built right up to the pavement, with no forecourt. Its front door, closed and locked, was just a few feet from the traffic. We stopped, and Clutterbuck switched off his torch. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small, glass bottle which he passed to MacGregor. He knelt before MacGregor and threw his head back. MacGregor pulled the stopper from the bottle and slowly poured its dark contents onto Clutterbuck’s face, so that it ran in rivulets from his forehead down onto his cheeks and into the collar of his uniform. He kept pouring until Clutterbuck’s features were all but obscured. The torch was shone briefly onto Clutterbuck’s face and I couldn’t disguise my sharp intake of breath at the sight of so much blood. MacGregor nodded with satisfaction. Clutterbuck stood, and in the dim light I saw his perfect teeth revealed in what could only have been a smile. I was sure that Brian was as alarmed as I was about what was going to happen next. Clutterbuck’s bloodied face wasn’t for our benefit.
A narrow walkway separated the church from the double-storeyed terrace on its left. Clutterbuck pushed open the terrace’s iron gate and knocked urgently on the door. When it wasn’t immediately opened he hammered again. This time I heard the click of the locked being disengaged and it opened. There was the faintest of lights from deep in the house, sufficient to palely illuminate the gory face that confronted the priest who’d answered the knock.
‘Please, Father,’ said Clutterbuck in an American accent, ‘I’ve been cut up real bad.’
He fell forward against the door jam, almost into the priest’s arms. It looked, from where I was standing, as if the priest was trying to hold Clutterbuck up. In one deft movement, Clutterbuck was behind him, his forearm pressed into his throat, gagging any sound.
‘That thing pressing in your back isn’t my cock, Father, it’s a gun, so don’t get excited. Now you just do what I tell you or bits of your spine will end up on the other side of Royal Parade. Have you got a key to the church on you?’
The priest must have nodded because Clutterbuck shoved him towards us. As they came closer I could see that the priest was a young man, perhaps in his late twenties, and his eyes were wide with uncomprehending fear. There was nothing of the stoic martyr about him — he was just a young bloke scared out of his wits. Oakpate, Crocker and MacGregor were careful to keep their faces turned away. Neither Brian nor I thought to do the same until it was too late. Even though it was dark, the priest could probably have made out our features. Clutterbuck propelled him swiftly towards the door of the church, and in a matter of seconds it had been opened and we were all inside, with the heavy door closed behind us. Clutterbuck pushed the young priest roughly up the aisle, his cassock making a flapping noise that was strangely amplified by the space. We followed dumbly.
On either side of the small interior were five tall windows of clear glass which gathered all the available light and dispersed it thinly through the church. This light died when it reached the wooden ceiling so that I couldn’t tell how high it rose above us. The only other light was the red, flickering candle of the sanctuary lamp hanging above the altar, before which Clutterbuck had unceremoniously dumped the priest. Clutterbuck must have struck him because he lay quite still. Oakpate, Crocker and MacGregor each came forward and delivered a brutal kick to the priest’s body. Without waiting to be prompted, Brian did the same, although I’m certain his kick didn’t land forcefully. Each of the others had been accompanied by a sickening thud. There was no noise from Brian’s blow. No one commented on this — they were obviously too wrapped up in the exhilaration of their violence to notice.
Clutterbuck stood back from the prone form at the foot of the altar. I thought he was preparing to land his own kick. Until this evening I’d have thought that he’d be disdainful of committing violence himself. That sort of savagery was best left to underlings.
‘This meeting of the Order of the Shining Knights is now in session,’ he said, ‘and we have here a very special guest — a man in a dress.’
He leaned down and rolled the priest onto his back. The priest groaned and instinctively rolled onto his side and drew his knees up to his chest. Clutterbuck repeated his action, placed his foot on the priest’s chest and told him that if he moved again, he’d put a bullet through his left eye, the specificity of the threat making it somehow more potent.
‘Blindfold him,’ said Crocker from the shadows. Clutterbuck grabbed the hem of the priest’s cassock and tore from it a strip of cloth with which he bound his eyes. He then lifted another part of the cassock and using it as a rag, wiped his face clean. Now Crocker, Oakpate and MacGregor came forward and stood around the priest, who so far hadn’t uttered a sound, apart from moans and whimpers. Oakpate giggled and said, ‘Should I piss on him?’
‘I wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire,’ Clutterbuck said. ‘How about you, Brian?’
‘Waste of piss.’
The hollow acoustic in the church disguised the lack of conviction in Brian’s voice.
A sudden burst of brilliant moonlight feebly illuminated the two narrow, stained-glass windows in the wall behind the altar. I looked up at the subtle change in intensity of the light. The window on the left was a representation of St Carthage — whoever he was — and the one on the right was of St Therese, of whom I’d vaguely heard. I was concentrating on the windows because the spectacle of Clutterbuck and his cronies standing over the injured body of the young priest was becoming unbearable. I wanted to flee but I couldn’t leave Brian alone in a situation like this. I also wanted the priest to say something, to protest at this outrage, but he remained dumbly terrified, unless of course one of those kicks had so wounded him that speech was impossible.
‘What’ll we do with him?’ MacGregor asked.
In response, Clutterbuck held out his hand to Oakpate who produced from his coat a flask. Clutterbuck took it and emptied its contents onto the priest’s garments.
‘Auto da fé,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the Order, Brian. If you’ll
do the honours.’
He gave Brian a box of matches and no further instructions were necessary. It was clear that Brian was expected to put a match to whatever inflammable liquid had been splashed over the cassock. The priest knew now what was imminent, and he made an attempt to stand. He was pummelled back to the ground and a handkerchief was unnecessarily stuffed into his mouth.
I was paralysed with horror. There wasn’t sufficient light to see the expression on Brian’s face clearly. It’s a big leap from schoolteacher to priest burner, and he must have been in turmoil. Would carrying out this atrocity — and it was something from which he’d never recover — serve the greater good of preventing the assassination of Archbishop Mannix? If he refused he would have no further access to the Order of the Shining Knights. If he struck a match he would be their creature forever — we would all be witnesses. Was this the case with each of the others? Had each of them committed a grave crime under watchful eyes?
I had slipped into a kind of anaesthetised reverie, retreating from the reality before me. I was brought out of it by the scrape of a match along the striking board and the flare of bright fire at its tip. Brian’s face was lit for a moment with the brilliance of a klieg lamp and he was staring down at the priest fiercely, as if he was blaming the young man for putting him in this impossible position. He then dropped the match onto the wet cassock and I cried out, expecting the ‘woomph’ of exploding gasoline. There was no ‘woomph.’
The cassock became decorated with flickering tongues of blue fire, and there was the smell of burning cotton. The priest began ripping the cassock from his body and nobody stopped him. By the time he’d thrown it to the floor the flames had burnt themselves out. Clutterbuck had made a poor choice of combustible liquid. The priest now stood, blindfolded still, and with the handkerchief still in his mouth, shivering, despite his black woollen trousers and white shirt. Clutterbuck removed the gag, and maintaining his American accent, said, ‘You make a crappy martyr, buddy.’