by Wendy Scarfe
‘Like Clicketty cut off the rooster’s head?’
‘Clicketty?’
‘A friend of ours,’ Gran said, and turned to Matthew. ‘A little like that, darling, but not quite.’
‘Do people always kill things, Gran?’
‘No, no,’ said Mr Werther. ‘This is the music and words of Mr Gilbert and Mr Sullivan. They had a little laugh at the English. That is so, Mrs Keogh?’
‘A very good laugh.’
‘One night perhaps … we could … You enjoy the theatre, Mrs Keogh?’
‘I enjoy theatre very much and my name’s Sarah, Mr Werther.’
‘Then we should take a little excursion. Matthew would like it also—eh, my Schubertianer?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And perhaps a concert also.’
‘What magic, Mr Werther.’
‘Magic indeed, Mrs … Sarah.’
‘A common brawl, nothing but a common brawl. The police chasing him. Heavens, I hope he doesn’t come back here.’ Aghast, Mother sounded panicky.
‘He’s our friend, Margaret—in trouble.’
‘His own fault.’
‘But, Edward? Surely you don’t believe that he’d kill a man?’
‘How should I know? He might. An anarchist might do anything. Everyone says so.’
‘But Edward?’
‘Don’t keep saying ‘But Edward?’ Do you think he might come here?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘For those boxes of his. Can’t we get rid of them?’
‘They’re concealed under that rug.’
‘Regie …’
‘You didn’t tell him about them?’
‘I might have.’
‘Might have? For God’s sake, Margaret. How could you?’
‘He noticed them a long time ago. I said they were Edward’s love letters.’
‘He didn’t believe you?’
‘How should I know? I thought they were love letters.’
‘Three boxes of love letters? Don’t play the fool with me, Margaret.’
‘It’s safer to be a dumb fool than a clever one. No one ever suspects me of anything. We should get rid of them—burn them in the incinerator.’
‘No. We have them in trust.’
‘And if they’re found?’
‘They’ve already been found, Margaret.’
‘But not seen.’
‘No, not seen. Maybe … Let me think.’
‘Well, don’t think too long. Honour doesn’t get you far in this world.’
And as Margaret and Gran’s eyes met, a look of understanding passed between them.
‘Has something awful happened to Edward in Mildura?’ Matthew asked Gran anxiously.
‘No, of course not, darling.’
‘You and Mother were talking.’
‘Saying this and that, darling.’
‘But I heard …’
‘Nothing, Matthew. Nothing for you to worry about.’
But he did worry and that night he dreamed of the boxes again. Mother kept taking pieces of her hair out of the boxes and throwing them into the incinerator. ‘Better get rid of it,’ she said. ‘I’ll never get it dry tonight. There’s too much of it—too much of it.’
He stirred, woke and was glad no flames flickered from the shadows tucked greyly into corners. Then he returned to sleep.
Edward’s voice woke him. He heard him speaking with Gran in the kitchen. He was back. Matthew bounded out of bed and raced to the door. ‘Edward!’ he shouted. ‘Edward!’ But the kitchen was empty. Light from the single bulb glared vacantly, brazen at the centre, murky around the perimeter of the room. He ran into the parlour. Gran was there, standing near the door of his father’s room.
‘Ssh, Matthew, ssh.’
‘I heard Edward.’
‘He’s gone.’
‘But I wanted …’
‘He’s gone, Matthew.’
‘He’ll be back tomorrow?’
‘Maybe.’
Matthew stood desolately. ‘I wanted … Won’t he be back?’
‘I said maybe. Now go back to bed.’ Matthew hesitated. ‘To bed I say.’
Reluctantly he returned to the kitchen. Better go to the lavatory first, he thought unhappily, now he was out of bed. The night was windy. It murmured and rustled and creaked with insinuating voices and stealthy steps. Shadows whisked out of trees and bushes and caught his feet in spidery embraces. Moonlight came and went, erratic, unreal as the fitful feverish images of sick dreams. Matthew ran and shadows licked his heels and fawned in front of him. He wished he had used the pot under his bed. Tonight the urine would have smelt warm, familiar, human.
The outhouse seemed darker than usual. The little pig noses of the Dolichos flowers sniffled in the vine and loose tendrils tapped and lamented against the roof. From the outhouse he could see the kitchen light intruding into the dark garden, splitting apart the immediate shadows, fading to a ghostly vapour where darkness became impenetrable. And there, just on the edge of the shadows, Matthew saw the ghosts.
Edward hadn’t gone. He was there with Mother.
‘Edward!’ he shouted. ‘Edward!’ And he ran towards them.
The kitchen door flung open and Gran rushed out. ‘Matthew, come inside!’ she called, as two men jumped from the shadows and caught his arms. ‘Where’s Kingsley?’ they asked him. ‘Edward Kingsley?’
‘He was here with Mother,’ he announced.
‘No, Matthew. He wasn’t. Let my grandson go. At once.’
Matthew searched about him, bemused, obsessed by his hope.
‘But Edward was here,’ he said. ‘I saw them, Gran. Like before. They weren’t ghosts … were they?’
‘Ghosts,’ one of the men laughed.
‘I thought they were ghosts,’ Matthew said. ‘But they …’
‘You heard him,’ Gran snapped. ‘He thought he saw ghosts.’
‘No, Gran.’
‘Be quiet, Matthew. Be silent!’
‘Perhaps we’ll just come in and ask a few questions about these “ghosts”.’
‘You will not.’ And taking Matthew’s hand firmly Gran dragged him toward her. The men let him go. ‘You’ll not question him about anything.’
‘And how will you stop us?’ They advanced and Matthew realised their threat.
‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ he shouted. ‘Nor does my gran. Go away!’
‘Not yet we won’t. Now let’s all just go inside—quietly.’
Gran, with a warning shake of her head at Matthew, led the way. The kitchen stretched painfully to fit them. Their loud voices assaulted the sleeping areas of quiet domesticity, the recesses where personal possessions asserted privacy and security.
‘Perhaps we’ll just look around.’
‘On whose authority?’
‘On ours.’
‘My daughter’s asleep. You’ll wake her. A recent bereavement, her husband—you have no respect.’
‘We’ll be as quiet as a mouse,’ said one, and punched the other on the shoulder. ‘Quiet as a mouse hiding from the police.’
They opened the parlour door. It was empty, the door to Father’s room closed as always with papers stuffed under the door and tape sealing the gaps.
‘What’s in there?’
‘My son-in-law died in there. The room is sealed, awaiting fumigation. He died from tuberculosis.’
The men glanced uneasily at each other. They prowled around the parlour, running a finger along the sealing tape, peering behind the settee, opening the window, leaning out, listening. The boxes under the rug lay in the corner. One of them picked up a section of the rug. ‘And these?’
‘Private papers.’
‘Yours?’
‘Yes,’ Gran lied.
Matthew startled, glanced at her. They caught the look.
‘Think we’ll have a peek.’
‘No!’ Matthew yelled. ‘No! They’re Edward’s love letters. Mother said that we mustn’t peek.’
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‘Matthew, be silent, please.’
‘All love letters? Three boxes—to your mother?’ And they leered and winked at Matthew.
‘Certainly not.’ Margaret stood in the doorway, chillingly haughty.
‘What is all this? Who are you?’
‘The police, ma’am.’
‘The police at this time of night and in our house? How coarse! Do you usually disturb women in their beds?’
The men looked discomforted. ‘We are looking for Edward Kingsley.’
‘Who?’
‘Edward Kingsley.’
‘Why should he be here?’
‘We were instructed, by our superior.’
‘Then your superior is as coarse as you. Now take yourselves off.’
They hesitated. ‘What’s in that room?’
‘That room!’ Mother’s voice rose hysterically. ‘Ghosts. The ghost of my dead husband, my poor, poor Victor.’ Her head sank sorrowfully. ‘Nothing, nothing but a ghost.’
‘It drips blood,’ Matthew said, ‘and weeps and weeps for things it can’t have.’
‘Is the boy all right?’
‘Quite.’ Gran’s voice was hard.
‘But he did see ghosts, didn’t he? I think we’ll take a look in those boxes first.’
They ripped them open and tipped the contents on the floor. Pamphlets against the war, against conscription, pamphlets with big red print and heavy black letters heaped in a slithering mound. Gran stood very still, holding Matthew’s hand tightly.
‘Great heavens,’ Margaret whispered.
‘Love letters! Well, well, well! OK. Now let’s look in that room.’
‘No,’ Gran said flatly. ‘No.’
‘For God’s sake, Mother, let them look. Then they’ll go.’
‘No,’ Gran said again, and Matthew felt her breathlessness, her fear. If Gran was afraid to open the room there must be something horrible there.
‘No,’ he begged, ‘no, don’t open the door. There’s something in there. People disappear in there into nothing. You’ll let it out.’ He rushed across the room and pulled at the man who wrenched off the tape.
‘No!’ he shrieked. ‘There’s something in there!’
The man pushed him away. ‘That’s what we think, laddie. Something—or someone.’
He dragged the door open. Darkness crouched inside like a blank face which conceals something or nothing. The closed sickly smell of old blood oozed out. The men hesitated at the door, peering inside. ‘Kingsley?’ one said doubtfully, questioningly. ‘Kingsley?’ And as the blank face of darkness took on features he advanced into the room.
‘Kingsley!’ he yelled. Within the room there was a rush of movement. The door to the verandah slammed open. Feet thundered on the path and the two men pounded after.
‘Stop, Kingsley! Police! Stop! Under arrest! Stop! We’ll shoot!’
Gran dropped Matthew’s hand and ran after them. ‘Edward! Wait! Give yourself … Listen. Court case … innocent …’ There was a shot and then another and Gran’s scream, tortured by the wind: ‘No, murderers! No!’
Margaret clutched her hands to her ears and fled to her room.
Matthew rushed into the garden. ‘Gran!’ he shouted, running this way and that. ‘Gran!’
When he found her kneeling on the ground beside Edward he screamed and the dim world of night took flight. Trees wrapped their shadows about themselves and cloaked against the cold lifted up their roots and fled. Clumps of bushes scuttled after them. Stones heaved themselves out of the ground and rolled with frantic rumblings to escape. Flowers rent and torn by his terror whimpered and cringed. The world around him emptied and Edward lay like a mighty statue felled in some desert waste with him, the only living human, to witness his fall.
He screamed again and heard his scream catapult into emptiness. It would go on forever shrieking awake the ghosts of all eternity.
He heard Gran say: ‘I am taking Matthew to see Edward.’
‘You can’t … a body.’ Margaret was shocked. ‘He’s only a little boy. It will be too sad for him.’
But Gran was determined. ‘It’s necessary. He must say goodbye. He must see that Edward is loved, not only by him but by others, that he was worthy of love. He must not go through life associating Edward with incomprehensible evil.’ Margaret opened her mouth to argue but the grief in her mother’s eyes silenced her.
‘Incomprehensible’, the word blundered on Matthew’s tongue, confused, awkward, a mess of stumbling sounds. He was afraid to see Edward. He would prefer to go to his sand house in the dunes. He had gone there the day after Edward’s death.
Mother had snivelled about scandal, holding their heads up, ruin.
‘And Edward?’ Gran sounded desolate. ‘Not even an afterthought for him?’
Margaret flinched, her beautiful face suddenly pinched and white. ‘He brought it on himself, Mother. You know that.’ But Gran ignored her and she retired to her room and drew the blinds. Matthew heard her sobbing.
Men came to the door. Gran spoke to them outside, her voice prickling painfully in the numbness of the house. Edward’s mates sat in the kitchen awkwardly, hats under their chairs. Matthew sat on the settee, a small grey shadow their eyes slid through. Gran poured tea. Suddenly the cup and saucer in her hand clattered like wind shaking a loose window. She sat down and her tears made her look old.
In the sand house he watched the ants. They had found a beetle. It lay on its back, dead. The ants ran to and from its body in a thin undulating trail. They sneaked under its wings and probed its eyes. One balanced on the tip of a frozen leg and weaved back and forth. In comparison with them the beetle was a giant. Yet they fed on it. Matthew snatched up the beetle and shook it. Ants ran up his arm. He clawed them away, squashing them and stamping them into the ground.
‘I hate you!’ he shouted. ‘I hate you! You’re horrible, disgusting, cruel.’ Cradling the beetle in his hands he crouched over its body. When the sand beneath his feet chilled with night shadows he dug a small hole and buried it.
What would Edward look like now that it was day? Would they have dressed him in black like the priest, put him in a little room where people stood around shaking their heads?
Gran would be there but Gran did not always tell the truth. He knew that now. Neither had Edward, nor Mother. They all left things out, important things. Had something been left out now? Something which would frighten him? Something they would never understand? But to see Edward once more. His longing ached all through him. And when Gran told him they should go he nodded, although he felt afraid.
Edward’s body lay on a bier in the centre of a bare wooden hall. Beneath him a deep red flag draped to the floor. Around his body mourners had heaped red roses. Other people were there already. Workingmen in bowyangs and woollen shirts stood a silent moment beside the bier, doffed their caps and went away. A woman in an assortment of poor mismatched clothes touched him lightly on the forehead before laying her rose with the others. They came and went with reverent steps, careful to not shake the hollows of the hall.
His eyes were shut. As if he slept. Matthew had never seen Edward asleep, only pretending to doze on the beach. Perhaps his eyes would pop open as they used to, startling him with their laughing aliveness. He tiptoed to his side and put his hand on his arm.
‘He’s cold, Gran.’
‘Is he, darling? Then we should help him.’
She took off her shawl, laid it across Edward’s chest and tucked it over his arms. ‘There, that will warm him.’
Matthew nodded. ‘Where is he, Gran? Where is Edward?’
‘He’s like Grandfather, like water, like wind, like time. He’s here yet not here. We call it ‘there’ because we can’t understand. Everything that seems to pass is really always here still.’
He saw again the ribbons of lucid water green between pale-shouldered sandbars. They were clear to the floor of the sea. Only soft meshed seaweed stirred there and fish that flicked the sun off their
backs. Edward wasn’t there. How could he be? Nor could he be in the yeasty rush of waves dumping their sand-filled burden on the beach. No one was there. Water and time might be forever but not people.
‘No!’ he cried. ‘No, Gran! Edward isn’t here. Those men shot him. They killed Edward. People always kill things. Edward is dead and I loved him.’
She held him against her, her body warming him like the shawl she had tucked around Edward.
‘Yes, darling, Edward is dead but not the love, never the love.’
Gran planned to attend Edward’s funeral. She looked at Mother. ‘No!’ said Margaret. ‘What point is there in my going? May Goodman has invited me to afternoon tea; just the two of us. It’s a long time since I did anything pleasant. This could be the start of a new life for me.’
‘Then can you take Matthew?’
‘Won’t you?’
‘No. There’ll be thousands there. A huge procession. It’ll be too much of a crush.’
‘I don’t want to take him to May’s. He’ll be bored. Can’t you think of something?’
Gran looked tired. ‘Oh, very well.’
She sent a letter with Matthew to Mr Werther who read it, smiled and said to Matthew: ‘I’ll bring a surprise. That day we’ll have some happiness, eh?’ Matthew smiled back because it was polite.
On the day of the funeral Gran and Margaret dressed silently. George Goodman picked Margaret up in his car. She put a dainty gloved hand in his as he helped her into a seat and waited while she adjusted the scarf about her hat and under her chin. She waved to Matthew and was gone.
Gran dressed in black and pinned a crimson rose to her hat.
Mr Werther appeared carrying his violin case. ‘How will you go?’ he asked. ‘The procession starts at the union building. It is two miles to the cemetery. I could drive—’
‘No. I shall walk,’ Gran said. ‘The Irish have always walked behind their dead. Our poverty, our walking and our dead have united us.’
‘You will be all right?’ Mr Werther looked anxious.
‘Yes, quite all right, thank you. You are a good friend to us.’ Mr Werther looked shy and above the grey of his beard a little pinkness spread like the tentative rosiness of early morning. Gran, at the door, came back and held out her hand. Mr Werther took it in both of his, shaking and patting it. Gran smiled, hugged Matthew and went out.