Bony and the Black Virgin

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “That subject, however, lies between you and me, Eric, because there is that which influences both of us. The other matter, the matter of the death of those two men, is a matter of the State, and I am a servant of the State, sworn to uphold its laws. You will be held for murder.”

  “All right, Bony.” Eric smiled again. “You have been astonishingly understanding, but only ninety per cent so. What Lottee and I have is something which even public opinion must not be allowed to shadow. It goes so deep that even you haven’t grasped it. It is so high that we can attain it only through death. When I tell you that Lottee and I have slept together for many nights, and that both of us are virgins this day, you can make up that ten per cent deficiency.”

  “It explains much,” admitted Bony. “It makes me regret that I ... and Sergeant Mawby ... have to do our duty.”

  “There is a way open for us, and relief from regret for you,” Eric said. “All right, Lottee, take over.”

  Lottee stood in the doorway to Eric’s bedroom, to which she must have gained access through the open window. She was then behind both Eric and Sergeant Mawby. Until she spoke, neither Mawby nor John Downer knew she was there, and Bony now realized how close was she with Eric, and he with her. A few moments before, when Eric sat with closed eyes, she was telling she had come. Doubtless, she had warned him of danger, and had told him she was leaving L’Albert to join him.

  She had the men covered with a .32 Winchester repeating rifle. She could see Bony observing her, and he saw that she wasn’t menacing him in particular. Eric sat unmoving. Bony said:

  “Sergeant Mawby, you will remove your right hand from your revolver, and place it on the table with the left hand ... until I countermand this order.” Amazement was enthroned on Mawby’s face. He obeyed, and Lottee said:

  “Thank you, Inspector. I don’t want to shoot anyone.”

  Keeping her back to the wall, she slipped to the veranda doorway, where Mawby and old John and Bony could see her, and her rifle. “Eric, please go out the back door and up the veranda steps to come behind me.”

  “Damnation! What is this, Inspector? You aiding and abetting,” growled Mawby, fury heightening his apparent unleashed strength.

  “I have not yet completed my assignment, Sergeant. Until I do, I shall not permit you to commit suicide.”

  “Good advice, Sarge,” snapped Downer. “Lottee’s the kind that can’t miss. Against her principles. Lottee, point that gun somewhere else, to make sure you don’t kill anyone.”

  “I shan’t miss, Mr Downer,” she said. Eric appeared behind her, taller than she, and with the light of the zealot blazing in his eyes. Again the girl spoke: “It is time for us to go to another country.”

  She wore only white shorts. The dilly-bag of crimson silk divided her breasts. She was sweetly beautiful and her eyes glowed like black opal. Bony felt himself being drawn down from his ivory tower of vanity and achievement by this Power against which he had so long fought, and drops of moisture were gathering on his forehead.

  The girl’s ego dominated them, hedged them about. Even Mawby’s anger was subdued by it so that he waited on events with resignation.

  “Ever since we were small children, Eric has belonged to me, and I have belonged to him,” Lottee said. “It has come from the trees and the sandy places, and all the wild things, this loving which binds us. I have never struggled against it. Eric has, but it was too strong for him.

  “All the Inspector said about the secret camp and Eric coming there for me is true. We had the little hidey-house built ready for us. We planned to stay there, sleep together, and be sure that our love was stronger than just mating. Then we were going to be married white-feller-fashion in Mindee church. And we were strong too. I was no black girl to lie down for a plug of tobacco, Mr Downer.

  “No, you let me talk now. We had been in our hidey-house for many days and nights, when one morning early I went to the well for water. I passed close to the shed, and then a stranger white-man jumped at me and threw me down and raped me. And then he laughed, and I could have killed a dozen men. I killed him with a tyre lever that was in the shed. When he was dead he was covered with blood, and so was I.

  “I ran to the trough and lay down in it, and I pressed the ball valve so that water gushed over me and on along the trough to spill over and take his filthy blood with it. After a while I got out and lay down beside the trough. I think I went unconscious. I must have. I woke up, and there was Brandt looking down at me, and his eyes said what the other man’s eyes had said. I stood up and he made a grab for me, and suddenly I knew I still had the tyre lever. And I killed him, too.”

  The low, vibrant voice stopped, when the ticking clock became noise. Bony waited for the voice to speak again, for it was the mother voice he had never known and always longed to hear.

  “We planned to make it look like Brandt killed the stranger and then ran away. We burned our hidey-house and wiped out tracks. We had to leave the dogs tied up because they would have followed us, and Tonto was told to come and let them go.

  “When Eric left in his truck to go back to Mindee, I found I’d lost my marriage hair, and then when Eric saw it clutched in the stranger’s hand, and he knew his father saw it too, he took the hair from his mother’s Treasure Chest, and took the watch to make it look like robbery. I’ll be leaving my dilly-bag on the veranda, and you’ll find the watch and hair in it.

  “That’s all, except one thing. Dusty and Nuggety and mother took me into the bush, and I was made good again, black-feller fashion, with fire-heated gibbers. I did not scream. Pain gave me back my virginity.

  “Then we planned what we are going to do now, if those murders were ever found out. We can’t let you part us. One of us would surely die, and the other would always be only a half. In the Spirit we shall dwell in the trunk of a tree, as all black-fellers do.”

  “No!” shouted John. “No!”

  The lovers vanished and the door slammed shut.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  A Tree shall Receive Them

  “THEY’LL BE after my car,” growled Mawby. “Do I sit like this all day?”

  “Patience often has saved a man his life,” Bony averred, and lit a cigarette with fingers which trembled. “Those two aren’t petty thieves, Mawby. We shall never see their like.”

  Old John lurched to his feet and made for the veranda door. Bony let him go, knowing he would not be shot. He and Mawby followed him out to the veranda rail.

  The lovers were walking down the slope of waving grass, the blue heeler trotting beside Eric. His arm was about Lottee’s waist, and Lottee continually looked back over a shoulder, the rifle ready in her hand. Before them the red-legged waterhens rose in fluttering clouds to swirl about them like black confetti.

  When the ‘escapees’ were beyond Mrs Downer’s grave, the sergeant made no use of the steps to reach the ground. Eric went on down to the boat, and the girl aimed her rifle at the running man. Sand and grass spurted upwards a yard to Mawby’s left, and he went to ground as a chased fox into its hole.

  “The gal ain’t aiming to kill him, Bony,” groaned old John. “But if he makes her she will.” He shouted: “Come back here, you fool!”

  Another bullet spurted dangerously close when the sergeant made his next rush, ending behind a corner post of the graveyard. Bony could see Eric’s head and shoulders above the low shore dunes. He was standing in the boat and calling to Lottee. Arrowheads of ducks were flashing low above the man and the girl who was running to join him. Fleets of pelicans and swans were now off the water and gaining height. The ‘confetti’ appeared to be following the lovers, and Sergeant Mawby looked to be running into it.

  Now the boat could be seen from the veranda. Eric was standing facing the bow and paddling Indian-fashion, with Lottee crouched at the stern, and training her weapon on the dunes where Mawby would appear. Neither Bony nor John looked at the approaching car racing up from the Crossing. Old John went down the steps, and ran towards the L
ake.

  On Mawby reaching the shore dunes and gallantly standing upright, the boat was four hundred yards from the shore. Bony could see him firing his revolver into the air, but dimly heard the reports, and the sergeant’s voice not at all, such was the birds’ commotion.

  The car stopped with brakes complaining, and Mawby came running up the slope, passing old John and taking no notice of him. From the car emerged Robin Pointer and Constable Sefton, and they stood looking at the boat beyond the cloud of waterhens. Sefton received Mawby’s wrath.

  “What the hell you doing here? I left you to keep an eye on the abos. Go on, say it.”

  Sefton, tall and rangy, bore the explosion by indicating Robin and shrugging, and Robin raced up the steps to Bony.

  “I had to come. I made Sef. bring me, as father wouldn’t let me drive. What are they doing out there? What’s it mean?”

  Bony neither spoke nor turned to her, standing erect with his dark hands whitened by the grip on the veranda rail. The boat was a long way out. On the dune John Downer stood with the dog sitting beside him. What he was shouting they could not hear, although momentarily the waterhens were settling, and he was becoming ever more clearly seen.

  A thousand yards from the shore, Eric swung the oar about his head and flung it far away. He stooped to Lottee and took the rifle and flung it away too. Again he stooped to do something to the bottom of the boat.

  Bony knew that the last strand was severed. He, who stood between two races and sometimes bridged them with his sympathetic heart, exulted in the ideal which this event would enthrone in his memory for ever.

  The man and the woman stood in the boat and embraced, their feet spread four-square to maintain balance. The water birds skittered on the water about them, and a fleet of pelicans passed above them, circled and became water borne beyond them.

  Those on the veranda could see the boat settling, and in a frenzy Robin clutched Bony’s arm, and cried out:

  “What are they doing?”

  Sefton answered for Bony:

  “Better not look, Robin. Eric’s pulled out the plug.”

  The moments passed, and, had there been doubt, now there was none. Again Robin shook Bony’s arm, and this time whispered:

  “Bony! Look! They’ll be drowned. Why? Eric! Why Eric?”

  When he turned to her she shrank from the bleakness of his eyes.

  “You said something, Robin?”

  “I did. What are they going to do?”

  “Give the lie to your picture ‘Never the Twain shall Meet’.”

  The boat disappeared, and for a moment the man and the woman appeared to be standing on the water. Robin turned from Bony to Sefton, and the tall policeman slipped an arm about her, and pressed her face into his uniform shirt. Swiftly the lovers sank, still fast in that embrace. The birds were drawing in above them. The man and the dog were motionless on the dune.

  Somewhere a tree stood waiting with its branches wide.