The Godson

by Robert G. Barrett

  ‘Mr Norton,’ said the figure.

  Les looked up from his purchases. ‘Oh. G’day Benny,’ he replied quietly. ‘How’s things?’

  ‘Very good, Mr Norton. Actually this is good bumping into you like this. It saves me a trip out to the farm.’

  Norton looked quizzically at his old landlord. ‘Why? What’s up?’

  ‘Oh nothing. Just that some English people were in town today, inquiring about purchasing Cedar Glen. I’d like to bring them out to inspect the property on Wednesday. You and your friend wouldn’t mind?’ Norton shook his head. ‘Good.’

  ‘English blokes, you say, Benny?’

  ‘Yes. Three nice gentlemen. Interested in investing in property around this area.’

  Norton nodded despondently. He wasn’t really in the mood for talking to anyone, least of all Benny Rabinski. ‘Yeah, righto. I’ll see you on Wednesday, Benny. So long.’

  ‘Goodbye Mr Norton.’

  The bottle shop was open. Les got a bottle of OP rum. He passed a fruit shop on the way home, and he got some more Coca Cola, a capsicum and some garlic. Before long he was back at Cedar Glen.

  Peregrine was still in his dressing gown, sitting in the barbecue area sipping a bottle of champagne.

  ‘You’re up and about, mate,’ said Les, placing what he’d just bought on the table. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Still absolutely wretched,’ replied Peregrine. ‘I just got sick of laying in my room.’

  ‘Yeah, well you’ll be okay in the morning. I got all the goodies right here.’

  Peregrine gave the bandages and that a scant look. ‘You got young Alison away all right?’

  ‘Yeah. Two o’clock train. Right on time.’

  ‘Young would be the correct word there, too. My God, Les. How old was she?’

  Norton got a Becks from the fridge. ‘Well, she tried to tell me she was fifteen, but I went through her bag while she was asleep and found her school bus pass. She’s fourteen.’

  ‘Fourteen! Good Lord. Have you no shame, man? That’s absolutely disgraceful.’

  ‘Ohh, I wouldn’t say that,’ grinned Les. ‘I had a pretty good night actually. Anyway you needn’t talk. What about those two schoolgirls you had back in your room at Coffs Harbour? And nothing less than an orgy too, I might add.’

  ‘They weren’t jolly fourteen.’

  ‘Yeah? So you tell me.’ Norton took a good sip of beer. ‘Anyway, get into that champagne, Pezz. I want you nice and drunk tonight. You hungry?’

  Peregrine shook his head. ‘I still don’t think I could eat a thing.’

  ‘Well I’m going to barbecue myself a steak while I have a few beers. Then I’ll fix up your back.’

  Norton got his barbecue together, giving Peregrine a bit of a rundown on what happened the night before, encouraging the Englishman to get stuck into his bottle of Veuve Clicquot at the same time. While he did Peregrine told Les how Colleen drove him home, but he was entirely too ill to do any business, so she left, saying she’d call around through the week. When Peregrine had finished the champagne, Les started applying him liberally with OP rum and Coke. The Englishman complained bitterly, stating that he wasn’t a midshipman on Nelson’s flagship, but after a while he got the taste for it and they began sliding down a bit more easily. He watched with mild amusement as Les chopped up the garlic and the capsicum, then screwed up his face in disbelief when Les pushed the plate of it over in front of him.

  ‘And just what on earth is that?’ demanded the Englishman.

  ‘That,’ smiled Norton, ‘is garlic, nature’s antibiotic. That will help to kill any germs and shit in your system. The green thing is a capsicum. It’s packed with vitamin C. That’ll build up your resistance. Wash it down as it is with rum and Coke.’

  ‘Oh, bloody wonderful. Then what’s next? You dance around me with your face painted, rattling bones and chanting to keep away the evil spirits?’

  ‘No. I keep filling you full of rum then I rug you up and put you to bed with six sleeping pills under your belt. You won’t move for ten hours, sweating like a pig with all the rum and vitamins racing around in your system.’

  ‘Oh, good God.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Norton. ‘But that’s not all. I cover your back in black-zinc and that draws all the poison and inflammation out of you. Mate, you won’t know yourself in the morning. You’ll sweat the fever away, the poison’ll all be gone, and you’ll wake up with a horn a foot long.’

  ‘Oh good God,’ repeated Peregrine, taking a slurp of rum and Coke. ‘Why me? Why bloody me?’

  ‘Why?’ asked Les. ‘Because I think you’re such a wonderful chap. Isn’t that what you told me?’ Les pushed the plate of diced garlic and capsicum under Peregrine’s face. ‘Now, come on. Be a good boy and eat your din-dins. I’m going to put a steak on.’

  Over the sound of the radio and Peregrine’s complaints Les may have just faintly heard the two cars coming slowly down the road in the distance. If he did, he didn’t take any notice. Hidden by the house and trees, he certainly didn’t see them pull up at the front gate or see the six dark-haired men get out.

  ‘So, this is where they’re holed up, is it?’ said Liam. ‘Sure and it looks peaceful enough.’

  The others gathered around. Patrick handed him a pair of binoculars. Logan checked the lock and chain on the front gate.

  ‘There’s no security system,’ he said. ‘And that lock’s nothing. I could fairly bite it off with my teeth.’

  Liam took the binoculars while Robert and Brendan checked the road. ‘It’s nothing but a big wooden house,’ he said, running them over the property. There’s a set of stables to the right and some sort of a shed behind that old bridge there. This driveway goes right up to the house.’ Liam held the binoculars on the smoke coming up from the rear of the house. ‘Looks like someone’s out there having a barbecue or something.’

  ‘Do you want to go in now?’ asked Patrick.

  ‘No,’ replied Liam. He peered through the binoculars a little longer then put them down. ‘No. We’ll come back when it’s dark, as we planned. Around eight-thirty. I’m assuming this Norton fellow will have a gun with him, so we’ll get the jump on him. In the meantime, we can go and test our own guns. Give you lads a chance to get the hang of these bullpups.’

  ‘Where are you thinking of going?’ asked Brendan.

  ‘Remember that rattling old bridge we crossed over on the way out here? We’ll find a spot near that. It sounded like a machine gun going off when we drove over it. No one around will notice a thing. We’ll rest there when we’re finished. I don’t want to go back into town. The less people that see us up here the better. We’ve thermos flasks of coffee in the car.’ He took another look at the house and a malevolent smile creased his face. ‘Just one man and that English bastard. Dead easy.’ He turned to the others. ‘We should be out of here well before ten. Back in Sydney by lunchtime tomorrow, and on the four o’clock plane back to Belfast.’ He winked at Logan Colbain. ‘Dead easy.’

  ‘Aye,’ smiled Logan. ‘Dead easy.’

  Getting on for six, Les was sitting on a Gosser watching Peregrine who was blind, dribbling drunk on OP rum. He’d managed to get down the diced capsicum, but he’d refused to eat the raw garlic, until Les promised him that if he didn’t swallow it he’d force it down his throat like one of those pate de fois gras geese.

  ‘So how are you feeling now, Pezz?’

  ‘Drunk.’

  ‘Good. ’Cause now comes the best part. Take off your dressing gown.’

  ‘I’m not taking off anything,’ replied Peregrine, full of OP rum.

  ‘Peregrine. Take the fuckin’ thing off, or I’ll rip it off your back.’

  ‘Brute,’ sulked Peregrine.

  The inflammation had spread a little further across Peregrine’s back, but at least the head was out and there was no more poison going into his blood stream. Les removed the band-aid and gave the hole a prod. He got the safety pin from his first-aid kit an
d poured rum over the point.

  ‘Hey, Peregrine,’ said Les. ‘What’s that over there?’

  ‘Huh?’

  Les forced Peregrine against the back of the chair and quickly jabbed ten or so puncture wounds in the inflammation, squeezing open the hole at the same time. Peregrine howled in protest at the pain.

  ‘Good God, man?’ he almost sobbed. ‘What are you doing to me?’

  ‘Just putting in a few more holes to help drain the poison away. You’ll live.’ Les watched it bleed for a while, then wiped the blood away with a piece of cotton wool splashed with methylated spirits.

  ‘Oh, you rotten monster!’ howled Peregrine. ‘God that hurt.’

  ‘I’m sure it did,’ replied Norton. ‘That looks bloody sore. I’m glad it’s you and not me. But mate, you’ve got to be cruel to be kind.’

  Les scooped enough Icthyol out of the jar to liberally cover the inflammation then placed a wad of cotton wool on top. He then covered that with a bandage and stuck the lot down securely with elastoplast.

  ‘There you go, mate,’ he smiled, giving Peregrine a pat on the shoulder. ‘Put your dressing gown back on.’

  Peregrine was almost in tears as he winced his way back into his dressing gown. ‘Now kindly leave me alone, you bloody great oaf.’

  ‘I know you didn’t mean that,’ grinned Norton. ‘You love me. Now throw these down your screech.’ He took the six Normisons from the small packet the chemist had given him and handed them to Peregrine.

  ‘What are these?’

  ‘I told you. Sleeping tablets.’

  ‘Six of them?’

  ‘They’re only mild. Come on, get them down. Then you can take a couple of painkillers before you go to bed.’

  Peregrine swallowed the sleeping tablets with a glass of rum and Coke. ‘God, this is primitive,’ he slurred.

  ‘Yeah, I got to agree with you there,’ said Les. ‘But you’ll feel heaps better in the morning.’ He made the Englishman another rum and Coke and got himself another beer. Well, I reckon another fifteen minutes or so and those pills should start working, thought Les, checking his watch as he smiled at Peregrine staring moodily into his drink.

  Peregrine took a mouthful then morosely shoved it out on the table in front of him. ‘God, I wish my Stephanie was here.’

  ‘Your girl back in England?’ replied Les. ‘Well I’m sorry but she ain’t mate. There’s just me. Stephanie doesn’t even know where you are.’

  ‘She knows where I am.’

  Les took a mouthful of beer and looked at Peregrine over the bottle. ‘How would she know where you are?’

  ‘I sent her a card.’

  Les thought for a moment. ‘That was at Coffs Harbour. When you weren’t exactly being faithful to her, I might add.’

  ‘I sent her a card from Yurriki.’ Peregrine gave a drunken laugh. ‘I sent them all a card.’

  ‘You sent her a card from Yurriki. When?’

  Peregrine had to think for a moment. ‘Friday before last.’

  Les had to laugh. ‘Well she’d be bloody lucky to get it by now. In fact, knowing Australia Post, she’d be bloody lucky if she ever gets the thing at all.’

  ‘Oh, she’s got it all right. I had it especially couriered.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘When one has absolutely scads of money, old boy,’ replied Peregrine, ‘it’s amazing just what one can do.’

  Peregrine explained the deal he’d worked out with the local postmaster’s son and his courier service. Actually he’d been meaning to send more, but they never seemed to get into Yurriki during the day. And when they did he had other things on his mind. When he’d finished Les did a little adding and subtracting of the days in his mind. He wasn’t real rapt in the end result.

  ‘You’re a bloody dill, Peregrine,’ he said seriously. ‘If she or any of your mates start telling people where you are, and the bloody IRA find out, it’d take them five minutes to send someone up here. They might even fly out themselves. Jesus, Peregrine, I wish you’d use your head at times.’

  ‘Oh, bloody stupid Irish. Bugger the Irish. Half the time those paddys wouldn’t know what day it is.’

  ‘Yeah? Don’t you believe it,’ said Les. ‘Where did you send the card? The boutique? Her place? Where?’

  But it was too late. In Peregrine’s weakened state and drunk on rum, the Normisons started taking effect quicker than Norton had expected. The Englishman’s face suddenly started to look like one huge smile button. He grinned at Norton, raised his glass then started to slump down in his seat.

  ‘Cheers, Les,’ he mumbled. The glass fell out of his hand and he pitched forward onto the table.

  ‘Peregrine.’ Les gave his shoulder a shake. ‘Peregrine.’ Norton was wasting his time. Sir Peregrine Normanhurst III was completely out of it.

  Shit! Norton cursed to himself. He looked at Peregrine face down on the table snoring. Oh well. He picked the Englishman up over his shoulder, carried him up to his room and placed him gently on his bed.

  Les removed his dressing gown then rugged him up in all the clothes he could find: pullovers, jackets, tracksuit pants. There was an extra couple of blankets near the bed so he threw them over him as well. I reckon that should make him sweat, thought Les. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t dissolve. I’d hate to smell his breath in the morning. Oh well. Goodnight, sweet prince. He turned off the light and left Peregrine dead to the world with Portrait Of A Chinaman by Ernest Norman Toejam for company.

  Back in the barbecue area over a fresh beer, Les began to think he may have overreacted a bit to the postcards. Even if the Irish did find out where he was, they wouldn’t get out here that quickly. Then there was Peregrine’s cousin Lewis to take into account. Still, maybe towards the end of next week, things could be a bit different. I’d better slip into Yurriki and ring Eddie. Les looked at his watch. I’ll wait till seven. He usually goes out with Lindy and the kids on Sunday afternoon.

  ‘GOD, BUT THESE are a good weapon, Liam,’ said Robert, holding the still-smoking bullpup to his shoulder. ‘You can scarcely miss with them, once you get the knack of it.’

  ‘Aye,’ replied Liam. ‘It was truly decent of the British army to let us have them. We’ll see that they’re put to good use.’

  It was a delightful little spot they’d chosen to test fire the bullpups. A quiet bend in the river with the water flowing past, no houses, plenty of trees and a few hundred metres away the rattling of any cars going over the old bridge covered the staccato blast of the sub-machine guns.

  ‘Here,’ said Liam. ‘Have one more shot then we’ll clean them and start loading some magazines.’

  He tossed a piece of wood mid-stream. Robert sighted on it and pressed the trigger. There was a flash of flame, a chattering bang and the piece of wood disintegrated in a spray of water and a shower of splinters and bark.

  ‘Nice shooting,’ said Tom Mooney.

  Robert nodded in acknowledgement and brought the weapon down. ‘How can you miss?’ he smiled. ‘I certainly prefer these to the AK-47s. They’re lighter too.’

  ‘Good,’ said Tom. ‘Now you other lads know what to do? Magazine in here. Safety catch here. Cocking mechanism here. Now let’s start loading those magazines.’

  ‘Then we’ll get a bit of rest,’ said Liam, ‘before we go out and visit our British friend and his Aussie mate.’

  The six Irishmen walked back to their separate cars and started cleaning their weapons.

  * * *

  THERE WAS A scattering of people in and around the hotel, but apart from that Yurriki was like a ghost town when Norton pulled up outside the town’s only phone-box around seven. He rattled some coins into the slot. Eddie answered.

  ‘Les, how are you, mate?’ he said at the sound of Norton’s voice. ‘I only just walked in the door.’

  ‘Not bad,’ replied Les. ‘Still hanging in up here.’

  ‘Good on you. How’s his nibs?’

  ‘He’s all right. He got bit by a tic
k and I put him to bed early.’

  Eddie laughed momentarily. ‘Listen mate. I’ve got a bit of bad news for you. And for Peregrine.’

  ‘Yeah? What’s that?’

  ‘His cousin Lewis got blown up by a landmine in Ireland. He’s all right. But the army’s going to have to send another team in to get that Frayne brother and his mates.’

  ‘Shit! That’s nice.’

  ‘Yeah. So you might have to stay up there another week or so. Can you handle it?’

  Les thought moodily for a moment then smiled. An extra week at Cedar Glen. He could get young Alison to join him. He’d pay her to take the time off work. Yeah, he could handle it all right. Don’t know about Peregrine. But that Colleen reckons she’s coming back out. Sweet.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to, Eddie,’ replied Les.

  ‘Yeah. But I reckon they’ll get that shit sorted out in Ireland before long. If they don’t, I’ll bloody well go over and do it myself.’

  ‘I reckon you would,’ chuckled Les. ‘Listen, Eddie. There’s a couple of things I’ve got to tell you.’

  Les told Eddie about how Peregrine had the postcards couriered to Stephanie and his mates in London. He also mentioned about the three blokes inquiring about buying Cedar Glen. The place was on the market, but it just struck him as curious that they were English.

  ‘Jesus! The stupid prick,’ cursed Eddie. ‘He still thinks this is all a lark. Fuck him.’

  ‘Yeah. But we’d only been here a day. He mightn’t have been thinking.’

  ‘Does he ever? The fuckin’ goose. Anyway, don’t worry about it. But if anything looks a bit suss up there, or you’re a bit uneasy about anything, give me or Price a yell straight away.’

  ‘Okay.’

  They chatted for a while longer then Les hung up telling Eddie he’d ring him every day from now on. He sat thinking in the car for a few moments then drove back to Cedar Glen.

  Les was right earlier when he said it would be a quiet and lonely night on the farm. As he sat in the barbecue area sipping a beer he found his thoughts constantly drifting back to Alison. Jesus, wouldn’t it be grouse to have her out there with him right now? He was even missing Peregrine for someone to have a mag to. He fiddled with the radio dial to try and find some better music. Anyway, look on the bright side. Another two weeks in the fresh, clean air and Alison was a big chance to come down for the weekend. Things weren’t all that bad. It was just the mood he was in. He finished his beer and switched to bourbon and Coke. A bloody TV would go well though.