The Day They Shot Edward

by Wendy Scarfe

  ‘I’d rather go with Edward.’

  She pouted. ‘But I need a man to advise me.’

  ‘I’m not a man and I’d like to go with Edward.’

  ‘Oh, very well. Nobody loves me.’ Her head drooped.

  ‘Yes, yes, I do. But …’

  ‘You’d rather go with Edward and abandon me?’

  ‘No … I … yes.’

  ‘Run along with Edward, Matthew.’ And as they closed the kitchen door he caught a word or two of Gran’s: ‘manipulative’, ‘unfair’. A door slammed from inside. He took Edward’s hand. ‘What does man-ip-ul-ative mean?’

  ‘Using other people for your own ends.’

  Using. He used bits of wood to make his puppets, and kerosene tins so that he could walk through the reed beds. He used soap to wash and towels to dry himself. But to use people? It was impossible to use people. And ends. An end was the finish of something. Or was it?

  ‘What are ends?’

  ‘Things people want.’

  ‘Not finishes?’

  ‘Not always.’

  ‘Some ends go on then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then how can they be finishes?’

  ‘You’ll be a lawyer for sure, Matthew.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You question like one.’

  ‘Don’t you like me questioning?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do,’ he ruffled Matthew’s hair.

  ‘Gran does but Mother doesn’t.’

  ‘That would be right.’

  ‘Do you like Mother?’ Matthew saw again the pink on her neck and behind her ears and heard her say ‘Oh’.

  ‘Yes, I like your mother.’

  ‘More than Gran?’

  ‘Differently.’

  ‘More than me?’

  ‘Differently.’

  ‘Can you love people the same and differently?’

  ‘Didn’t I say you’d be a lawyer?’

  ‘Yes. But can you?’

  ‘Yes, you can. Everyone does when they have a family and friends.’

  ‘Mr Werther said musicians like Mr Schubert are loved even when they are dead.’

  ‘Who’s Mr Werther?’

  ‘Our headmaster.’

  ‘A German?’

  ‘Yes. I think so.’

  ‘Poor fellow.’

  ‘How did you know, Edward, that he was a poor fellow?’

  ‘Most Germans who live here these days are poor fellows.’

  ‘Edward?’

  ‘Mmm … mm.’

  ‘Some boys are unkind to Mr Werther.’

  ‘Are they now?’

  ‘They hide behind the fence and throw things at him when he passes and call him “Fat Fritz”. I take his hand and walk with him but sometimes I’m afraid.’

  ‘You do that, Matthew?’

  He nodded.

  ‘That’s a pretty brave thing to do.’

  ‘He told us about Schubert being lonely and only having his Schubertianer to help him. Last time I wanted him to cross the road. The fence there is low and the boys can’t hide but he wouldn’t. He said I should run off home to my gran but I walked to the end of the house with the wall.’

  ‘I see. And when do these boys torment him?’

  ‘After school mostly.’

  ‘I see,’ Edward repeated. ‘Maybe we can do something about that.’

  ‘Could you, Edward?’

  ‘I think so.’

  They reached the end of the garden and collected the rake and wheelbarrow from the woodshed.

  The fowlyard smelt warm and dusty and feathery. A few blowflies buzzed over the kitchen scraps. Half a dozen fowls strutted up and down like parodies of Egyptian dancers, heads poking forward and then retracting like fingers outstretched and withdrawn, outstretched and withdrawn, in constant repetition and rhythm. They lifted their toes in delicate precision and stabbed the ground with quick, bright pecks. Matthew liked their warm, throaty calls. Even outside their cage, when they might fly, they seemed earth-hugging birds, their fat, white, feathery bodies comfortable and motherly.

  He felt inside one of the nesting boxes and his fingers touched the cool, rounded surface of an egg. It fitted his hand. Objects like eggs and round pebbles and oranges all gave him this sense of satisfying completeness. When he was tired or sad he would take a round stone from his box of treasures and hold it until it grew warm in his hand.

  He showed the egg to Edward who grinned. ‘Breakfast?’

  ‘Yes.’ But he cupped his second hand over the first so that the enclosed egg nestled safely. It must be nice for the hen to feel these round, warm shapes under her. He slipped the egg inside his shirt and it slid against his stomach and rested on the tight band of his pants. He turned it so that the shell smoothed across his skin. He felt sorry for the hen. Edward was not looking. He was raking the sand, straw and manure from the corners of the yard. Deftly Matthew replaced the egg in the nest. He would have to collect it eventually but it could stay whole a little longer.

  The lettuces were beginning to heart, outer leaves crusty green, inner leaves paler, delicate, folded in on themselves like eyelids. Beside them tomato bushes slumped and twined on the ground pregnant with green fruit thick-skinned, hard and heavy. Gran was busy. She had a pile of stakes, each she had trimmed to a spike. Now she hammered one into the ground. Whack. She tested its firmness. Whack. Whack. She tested it again. Satisfied, she disentangled a tomato plant, lifted its ungainly branches, searched for and found the central stalk and with a strip of cloth bound it upright to the stake. Loose branches still lolled, bowed by the green tomatoes.

  ‘Help your gran hold the stake, Matthew.’ And Edward took a spade and began alternately spreading the manure between the lettuces and working it in with a hoe.

  Margaret came down the path. ‘Here I am. Here I am. What can the milkmaid do?’

  They all looked up. She wore a gown of dimity cotton, a washed blue with tiny, faded yellow roses sprayed across it. On her head perched an old straw bonnet with a strip of golden ribbon twisted about its crown and under her chin in a huge bow.

  ‘You haven’t worn that since you were eighteen,’ Gran laughed.

  ‘I feel eighteen. Every day was a party day then. What can I do?’

  Edward had stopped hoeing. Matthew holding the stake for Gran saw his smile stretch and tauten as if it might spring off his face. Mother, with mouth slightly open, looked about to swallow it. She tasted her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘I’ll bring the watering can. If it’s not too heavy for me.’ She turned away but her glance sidled towards Edward. ‘You are my honey, honey suckle, I am the bee,’ she sang.

  ‘Gran, should I help Mother?’

  ‘If you like.’ Matthew ran after her. Together they filled the can.

  ‘One, two, three—lift,’ Margaret ordered.

  They heaved, giggling and straining as the water swam over the lip of the can and spurted from the spout, wetting the hem of Margaret’s dress and Matthew’s feet.

  ‘We could empty some out,’ Matthew gasped, his hands purple with the strain.

  ‘Edward, Edward, it’s too heavy for us. Help us, Edward,’ shouted Margaret.

  Gran looked up. ‘Empty some out.’

  ‘I’ll come.’ Edward bounded across the garden, lettuce and tomato beds straddled in one leap. He stood close to Margaret as he reached for the can. Matthew let go the handle but she kept her hand there, Edward’s large hand touching it.

  ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary,’ he said softly, ‘how does your garden grow?’

  ‘With silver bells and cockleshells, kind sir,’ she replied, tilting her eyes at him. ‘But you know I am Margaret.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Perhaps today, as I’m the farmer’s maid,’ she tipped the straw of her bonnet over her cheek so that golden arrows shot through the brim and danced on her face, ‘perhaps today I’ll be Meg. You can all call me Meg.’

  ‘Meg it will be.’ Edward lifted the can. S
he gripped the handle with him and together they strode back to the lettuce patch. His feet spattered with tiny red stains from the earth and water, Matthew trotted after them.

  Gran was still at work, her movements precise and rhythmical. But as Matthew grasped the stake she muttered, ‘Meg, indeed. Milkmaid. What next? Farmer’s help.’ She glanced at Edward now spreading manure while Margaret followed behind him, watering it into the ground. Her mouth puckered and she sighed.

  ‘Did the hens lay any eggs, Matthew?’

  He hesitated, peeked at his mother and Edward, felt again the egg grow warm against his skin. ‘I didn’t look, Gran,’ he lied, and to avoid her eyes took one of the smooth, green tomatoes and let his hand circle its roundness.

  Early that morning Gran had prepared cold meats and salad for lunch. Margaret had cooked a chocolate cake and iced it. She took it out of the safe, put it in the middle of the table, rummaged in the back of a drawer, produced four blue candles and stuck them squarely in the centre of the cake.

  ‘One for each of us—a party day.’

  She reached into the dried fruit jar and took out a dark cherry. She toyed with it a moment, eyes downcast, then stuck it in the centre of the square of candles.

  ‘And that’s for Victor.’ Laughter bubbled out of her. Matthew felt sick.

  The candles when lit would flare together, their elongated tongues stretching and thinning like beaten gold until they dissolved into the air. They could be snuffed and relit in a moment. They were immortal. The dried cherry for Victor was like a clot of stagnant blood. On the tree a cherry dripped crimson life: on the cake it was dead. A crack on one side with whitened edges leered at him. Gran scooped it off the cake.

  ‘Why do you do these things, Margaret?’

  ‘What’s the matter with “these things”?’

  ‘Horrible.’

  ‘Fiddle. It was only a cherry. Now if I’d put a gooseberry …’ and she giggled.

  ‘Margaret!’

  ‘Let her be, Sarah,’ said Edward. ‘She’s Meg today.’ Sarah looked first at Edward and then at Margaret, hot faced with resentment. ‘Yes, yes,’ she laughed, but Matthew knew it was neither a comfortable nor happy laugh. He had heard people laugh like that when they lost their way. They would say, ‘I believe I’m in the wrong street. Can you help me?’ or ‘I took the wrong turn and lost my way. Can anyone be so silly?’ and then they’d laugh like that. You never chuckled with them because it was a private laugh.

  Both women were quiet as they continued to set the table. Edward, catching Matthew’s eye, winked at him but Matthew didn’t know why. Sarah had served an extra dish of food for Victor. She always did this and either she or Margaret took it to him before they sat down. Today she placed everything on a tray but as she went to take it Margaret jumped up.

  ‘I’ll take it, Mother. Let me.’

  ‘Very well. Thank you, Margaret.’

  Edward, Matthew and Sarah sat in silence at the table waiting for her return.

  ‘He’s fine. Said he could manage.’

  She had been subdued going out but returned briskly. She adjusted the sleeves of her dress giving them a little shake as if casting something off. Edward pulled out her chair and she plopped into her seat.

  ‘Hands, Margaret,’ said Gran.

  ‘Oh, bother.’ She jumped up again, lathered soap on her hands at the sink and rinsed them off. Then she sat down again with a sigh. ‘It’s hard to be happy.’

  ‘Not so hard,’ Edward said.

  ‘No,’ Sarah said.

  ‘It’s still a party day,’ Matthew said, and looked at them all hopefully.

  ‘Of course.’ Edward ruffled his hair.

  ‘Of course,’ Sarah said indulgently.

  ‘Yes, a bally party day or a belly one.’ And Margaret put her hands on her stomach and laughed heartily.

  They ate cheerfully. Margaret tucked into her salad. ‘Can’t eat celery delicately can you? It makes such a crunch in a quiet room. I never eat it when I’m out. I much prefer to take a cream cake and flick a few crumbs elegantly off my lips. Then people look at my beautiful mouth. Once ladies used to wear beauty patches to draw attention but a few crumbs will do for me—’.

  ‘Sarah,’ Edward interrupted her, ‘Sarah, would you be able to store a couple of boxes for me?’

  ‘What sort of boxes?’

  ‘Just cardboard ones. I’ll seal them.’

  ‘I’m not interested in their fabric. What’s in them, Edward?’

  ‘A few books, a few papers, private stuff.’

  ‘How private?’

  ‘Letters, documents.’

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘Mother! How can you? Edward’s private letters. ‘They might be from a woman.’ Archly she invited his denial.

  Gran frowned. ‘Not these.’

  Edward looked embarrassed.

  ‘Really, Mother. Look. He’s blushing. How could you embarrass him so? Who is she, Edward?’

  ‘There’s no woman.’

  ‘I don’t know, Edward.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Mother. Of course we can have his old boxes. And we won’t even peek.’

  ‘You shouldn’t ask, Edward.’

  ‘I know—but I’m stumped.’

  ‘Two women, a child and a sick man.’

  ‘I know, Sarah. I’m sorry. It’s just that of late—I’ve wondered—it seems that …’ He hesitated.

  ‘That what?’

  ‘Someone …’ He glanced at Margaret and Matthew. ‘Never mind. Perhaps I’m seeing ghosts—everywhere.’

  ‘Things are getting nastier, Edward?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And less safe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are you both talking about? All this fuss over a couple of boxes. Of course we’ll have them. They can go in the laundry, with the other boxes.’

  ‘No. In Victor’s room.’

  ‘Why Victor’s room?’

  ‘Nobody goes there.’

  ‘Well, for heaven’s sake. I can’t understand either of you.’

  Matthew pulled Edward’s sleeve. ‘Edward, please don’t go into Father’s room.’

  ‘It’s all right, Matthew,’ said Gran. ‘Mother and I go in and out. Edward won’t get sick.’

  ‘But he might disappear.’

  ‘Disappear?’

  ‘You’re all talking in riddles,’ said Margaret impatiently. ‘It’s always like this. We try to be happy, to have a party day, and then you all talk in riddles. Why can’t you all just talk?’ And she burst into tears and rushed out of the room.

  ‘Damn!’ Edward said. ‘Damn!’

  ‘You won’t go into the room, will you, Edward?’

  ‘Do shut up, Matthew. It’s not important. I’ve wrecked the party day and made everyone unhappy.’

  Matthew woke. He needed to go to the lavatory. He could use the white ceramic chamber pot that was always under his bed but he knew that afterwards the window-open-all-day scent of his room would be tainted with the sour, steamy odour of urine and his pyjama pants would have uncomfortable damp patches.

  The night was still. He knew there was no wind, not because of the quiet but because the fuzzy shadows, which leapt like live creatures on a windy night, now slept untroubled in their corners. Their hairy coats roughened the edges of the splinters of moonlight that penetrated the room but did not unroll themselves. He wondered why shadows so sharply defined in sunlight became furry at night; why in daylight they offered friendship and rest while at night they became changelings—strange, mysterious offsprings of darkness.

  One day when he and Gran shopped he had seen a blind man selling shoelaces and trinkets from a tray suspended about his neck. Most people’s faces looked outward on the world but this man’s seemed to stare only inwards. He remembered how later that day he had shut his eyes and groped from his bed to his wardrobe, then to his bookcase. He felt along his books, fingering each jacket, trying to identify one from another. It was impossible. T
here was coolness and warmth, roughness and smoothness, the ironed smell of clean clothes and the used smell of dusty books, but with his eyes shut, his means of identification was no longer there.

  Frightening himself he persisted. He dug into his drawers feeling underpants, singlets, shorts. He tipped his marbles on to his bedspread and rolled the palm of his hand over them. Pictures of them leapt into his mind. But what if he had never seen them, not ever. What then? Really afraid, he opened his eyes and rushed around his room looking at all the things he owned. ‘I know you!’ he shouted over and over, ‘I know you!’ And his eyes clutched at what was different about each of them.

  Tonight there would be shadows in the garden, stringy shadows that stretched from trees along the path and stumpy shadows that clung to shrubs. He saw himself running in a frenzy down the long path to the outhouse. Gran said there was nothing in the night to hurt anyone. Why should there be? But he wished that he could see and know as he could in the daylight.

  He put on his slippers, lifted the latch on the back door and stepped outside. It wasn’t as dark as he had expected. A moon hung like a tossed coin, whilst a few stars bright and cold and wary kept their distance. Day perfumes had been dispersed by wayward breezes and unexpected currents of air. Now night perfumes sank, heavily laden under their own weight.

  Matthew began to hurry. A possum coughed, a dying, congested rattle as if Father had lain down outside to die or sent his ghost still coughing to hemorrhage in the gum tree. When daylight came the blood would run down the grey spikes of leaves and burst into wildly crimson blooms so heavy they could never stand upright on the tree. The shadows of the pittosporum were blacker than anywhere else in the garden. The creamy lanterns of flowers glimmered but threw no light. A moth with mock eyes on its wings flopped against Matthew’s shoulder. He screamed at its soft, sidling touch, brushing sharply with his hand and beginning to run.

  He made it to the outhouse leaving the door open because inside was even darker than the night he feared outside. He lifted the toilet lid gingerly but no spider scuttled across his hand. A few moments later and he was finished. He would run even faster when he returned. The darkness seemed less dense now. In the shadow of the house he thought he saw a woman’s shape. It had no face, merely the lines of a gown faintly luminous. He stopped, half desiring to steal forward, to know, to identify, half wanting to fly inside, to deny what might be there. It might not be a gown. It might be a long white finger, pressed up through the earth, a distortion of some earthly form, changed horribly by death. Ghosts had to be distortions. They weren’t people as he knew them.