Prowlers

by Maurice Gee

  We watched the house and kept to the path and passed the hydraulic ram going thump thump thump. At Bucks Hole Tup took the temperature of the water while we stripped on the shingle fan. ‘Sixty-eight, nice and warm,’ he called. Chicken-scrawny, most of us, white-bummed, with patterns printed by singlets on our backs. But one or two, like Phil, were already men, and stood hands on hips, showing it. A bit of a midget there, I ran for the water, with hand neatly cupped. Later on none of us cared, the water shrank us all to toddler size.

  Tup took Phil and me and several others along the bank to the deep part of the pool and tested us for our diving certificates. He flipped a tobacco tin, hammered flat, into the water. It fluttered like a leaf going down and vanished in the translucent green; and in I went, second, after Phil, and the bottom of the pool was magnified as though I looked at it through Tup’s glass. I went along the gravel like a crab, with puffs of sand springing from my hands. The element enclosing me was death. Meniscus silvery, it bulged and bent. No guarantee of my world still in place. It might have been snuffed out while I was gone. Other things, not people, waited there. I had the tin, and kicked, clawed up fast; and broke into my natural element, and must have looked, with open, haunted eyes and hollow cheeks, like some traveller from the underworld. That, anyway, is my fancy, for I’m not looking straight ahead.

  Tup reached for the tin, but never took it. Two girls came running on the path. They stopped at the shingle fan and stood side on, not to see us naked boys, and cried their messsage at the trees: ‘Sir, come quick. Mrs Le Grice has fallen in the pool.’

  The scramble for clothes then! Tup, with a shout, had gone. ‘Get dressed, all of you. Meet me on the bridge.’ We ran along the path but did not stop. The bridge drummed under our happy feet. We ran through the head-high scrub to Girlies Hole. Tup had Mrs Le Grice lying face down on the grass and was giving her artificial respiration. Water trickled from her mouth and liquid flecked with blood from her English nose. A tiny wax white ear bloomed on her head. Her false teeth lay on the stones as though she had coughed them out.

  ‘Is she still alive, sir?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I told you boys to wait on the bridge.’

  Kitty was kneeling by Mrs Le Grice’s head. She had patted the old lady’s hair into a bun and placed it on the base of her neck. Now she tried to squash a balloon of air caught in her dress but it moved somewhere else. So she took the old lady’s sandshoes off and tipped the water out.

  Tup stopped his counting. ‘Get an ambulance, some of you boys.’

  ‘I sent for one,’ Mrs Beattie said.

  ‘Well, Dockery and Papps, you’d better go up to the house and fetch Le Grice.’

  We went up the path and over the bridge and ran side by side along the road to the gate. A drive curved to the house, a perfect arc, with dust as white as flour in the wheel-ruts. We passed a square of blackberry enclosed in rusty wire, where bits of a tennis net were wrapped about a post. Ripe berries hung in clusters over the walls of a fallen pavilion. The rocking chair was on the house veranda. It was woven seagrass, ravelled like knitting. A doorway opened into a hall where glass tear-drops gleamed on a chandelier. We climbed up and knocked on the jamb.

  ‘Maybe he’s not home.’

  ‘What’s that noise?’

  We jumped from the veranda and walked round the house to the back yard. Edgar Le Grice was sharpening a sickle. He held the blade two-handed, working a treadle with his foot, and sparks streamed from the wheel and ran up his arms. White sparks, black-haired arms. Red tartan shirt. Belt of heavy leather, buckled with brass, and a spike like a dog’s tooth through the hole. His belly and chest were barrel-hard.

  We moved to let him see us. The wheel stopped. He set the sickle down by his feet. We heard him breathing through his nose.

  ‘Your mother fell in Girlies Hole, Mr Le Grice.’

  ‘Mr Ogier’s doing first aid.’

  Le Grice took a step, somehow drunken. He was stunned by the arrival of a moment – but I’m guessing. I must say what he did, which was to run. We followed him like dogs at heel, and he ran with a long limping stride, his feet beating dust from the ground, past the house and tennis court, along the road. We saw an ambulance beyond the bridge, with its doors wide open, and children standing in a group, and Mrs Beattie pushing them away. Ambulance men brought Mrs Le Grice from the path, lying on a stretcher.

  Le Grice shouted, ‘Ma!’

  They slid her in the way my father slid trays into the oven, and waited at the doors as he galloped up. ‘Ma!’ He went up clumsily and banged his head, but did not notice. I could not see Mrs Le Grice but saw his hands reach out and hold her face.

  Tup Ogier came up the path. He held the old lady’s teeth, and offered them. I had been refined and drawn by a kind of osmosis into Edgar Le Grice’s grief. I was outraged, and drew myself away from Tup. One of the ambulance men hooked the teeth on his finger and dropped them in his pocket. They closed the doors and drove away.

  ‘Will she die, sir?’ Kitty asked.

  ‘I don’t know. She’s very ill. But you did very well. You were very brave. Irene too.’

  ‘Everyone into lines now,’ Mrs Beattie said.

  ‘Oh, I think they can make their own way back.’

  We went in a cluster round Kitty and Irene. They had pulled Mrs Le Grice from the pool.

  ‘She just walked into the rapids,’ Kitty said.

  ‘She thought I was Lucy. She called out,’ Irene said.

  The old lady tumbled through the chute and floated into Girlies Hole. She kept raising her head, and giving little bleats like a lamb. Then her face stayed under water. The girls swam up and tried to turn her on her back but a bubble like a pudding in her dress got in the way. So they floated her along, trying to hold her head on one side. Kitty nearly drowned, she said, when the old lady’s hair wrapped round her throat.

  Mrs Beattie tucked up her dress and waded in – ‘up to her bloomers,’ Melva Dyer said – and helped pull Mrs Le Grice to the bank.

  ‘She sicked up.’

  ‘She had dribbles coming out her nose.’

  So the others. Irene and Kitty, knowing their value, kept out of it. If I understand the word right, they’d had a Blyton time.

  Phil’s and mine came in the night. Chronology holds, images fatten up. Here we are, standing on a street corner under a gaslamp, eating pies. We’ve come from helping in the bakehouse, where Dad has made Phil soap his arms up to the shoulder, and put him in an apron and tucked his forelock under a cap, then washed his own hands a second time; and Phil has been neat and small in the presence of food and has worked with his arms at his sides, minimized, not to put the mysteries in danger. Wolfing his pie, he becomes himself, and grabs and gulps the crust I offer him. (He brings no lunch to school but scrounges sandwiches from other boys.) ‘Your old man makes good pies,’ I hear him say. I’m sickened by his open-mouthed chewing, the glue of mince and pastry on his tongue. I don’t really want him as a friend, but the intimacy of our fight won’t go away.

  Wind rumbles in the swollen night. Palms clash their branches in the park and the lamp at the entrance lights up the polished wood of a children’s slide. Beyond the river the dome on Settlers Hill gleams like a head. Tup Ogier is working there tonight, but clouds swelling up from the east will cover Mars and spoil his view.

  ‘Old Tup gave me a look through the telescope. We looked at the moon.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Monday night. We saw the craters. We looked at Mars too. Tup reckons there’s no real canals.’

  Jealousy and rage make me dizzy. Tup is mine. I’m betrayed. Phil is stink-bag Dockery from the Port, with horse shit on his ankles and snot wiped on his arm. I put my hand on the lamppost to keep from falling, but the sky dislocates and turns on its side. There’s an external agent in this: the breaking of glass. I reach out now and tap my tumbler with the paper-knife. A sound, clear as bells; but it’s no good. I want that sharp fracture, icy silence, and I’d like to
throw the tumbler at the fire grate.

  Phil says, ‘Glass!’

  ‘In Lomax’s.’

  We’re threaded on the sound and can’t get off. ‘Come on,’ he says.

  We run down an alley between brick walls. A pile of dirt lies half in the light, with shapeless footprints climbing into the dark. Phil puts his foot in one but I don’t dare. ‘He’s a giant.’ He climbs to the top and puts his head over the wall. ‘Long way down.’

  ‘It might have been a cat.’ I remember the cat, a ginger Tom with yellow eyes and a torn ear. He’s my invention. He burns like a flame, which Phil snuffs out.

  ‘With feet that big? Hey, a broken window.’

  I climb the pile of dirt and look at it. A black hole, a nostril, shows in the pane. ‘Get your cissy shoes off,’ Phil says. I sit on the dirt and take them off and stuff my socks inside.

  Phil straddles the wall and lets himself over. He drops and his feet slap on paving stones. ‘Come on, Papps.’

  I howl silently, dropping down. It’s come into my head I’m on my way to being killed. We cross the cobbles, slinky as cats, and rub along the warehouse wall. Phil puts his head through the broken pane and I squint along the side of his cheek. Blades are poised to slice our throats. Our arteries are delicate and bare.

  The warehouse is a brick shed half as long as a football field, with skylights in the roof, from which starlight and gaslight diffuse through the room. Huge bins, head-high, stand along one wall and sacks of grain are stacked along the other, plump as loaves. At the far end is a loft where empty sacks are stored. No light penetrates, but we see a movement there, and hear the tinny boom of an empty can. We hiss with fear. I see Phil’s tongue come out and wet his lips.

  Edgar Le Grice strikes a match. His red balaclava blooms like a rose. He pulls a piece of rag from his pocket and sets it alight and his hand is on fire; but he doesn’t feel, he looks as if he means to eat the flame. Then he leans down and touches sacks and they spring alive, he’s printed on the ground of his fire. His red round head and black coat make him bird, and down he jumps, or flies, with coat-wings spread and one hand flaming, and lands on sacks by the ladder’s foot. He touches bags of seed and makes them flower. Flame runs along and he lopes with it, keeping pace and yodelling delight. He looms at us in the window. He has no ambulatory motion I can see, and I screech and jump away. Glass has sliced my fingers (not the only time in my life looking through windows makes me bleed), but I don’t feel. I run and Phil runs with me, along the cobbles to the double gates, where we can climb.

  A door opens in a larger door. Le Grice comes into the bay where drays load up. The burning rag is gone from his hand. He jumps from the lip into our path and sends Phil tumbling with a whack of his arm. I scream like a swamp hen as he faces me. I don’t know whether he’s going to wrap me round or break me in pieces. There’s a tearing noise and a stink and my pants fill up.

  Le Grice looms over me. I puzzle him; and perhaps he knows what I’ve done and sees a child and is sorry for me. Just for a moment our eyes meet. A grunt comes from his throat; a twisting – is that grinning? – on his mouth. He puts out his arm and moves me aside. Then he’s running, and back from his detour into normality, for he looks over his shoulder at Lomax’s and raises his arm and yells at the flames. He jumps and catches the top of the wall and hauls himself up. Phil, limping past me as I squat, grabs his leg, but Le Grice scrapes his fingers off with his other boot, and straddles the wall, and looks a last time at the fire gargling in the warehouse. He jumps down and smacks away up the street.

  ‘Come on,’ Phil yells, but I crouch holding my belly and my rubber face signals agony. He climbs the gates and runs to give the alarm.

  What do I do? That warm filthy weight is in my pants, and stink about me; and horror in my brain. I musn’t be found. I see a hose looped over a tap and I run bandy-legged and stick the nozzle in my pants and turn it on full-blast and hose the shit out, front and back. The force of the water nearly tears my penis off – but I’m clean, I’m clean, and nobody knows. I know, of course.

  Men arrive. By that time I’m at the door in the big door, holding my arm against the blast and hosing water on the nearest sacks.

  Tons of grain and seed are lost, but the firemen save the building. Phil and I are heroes. We tell them who it was and police drive out to the farm and arrest Le Grice.

  I’m full of self-importance. But also I have secrets on my mind.

  You see, Kate Adams, why I dislike your language?

  6

  Covered in prickles today, full of temper, all that sticky sweetness washed away – an improvement, I think. This is closer to the real girl. She wore the same blouse and skirt and I asked if they were all the clothes she had. They look as if she found them on a flea-market stall. Her shirt hangs out, giddy-gout, and the sleeve is partly torn from the shoulder, leaving a slit two inches long through which I had the desire to insert my tongue and touch her skin. It looked as if it would taste of salt.

  That’s a strange desire in an old man. I don’t know whether to be proud or ashamed, and I’m pleased there’s scientific curiosity mixed in it.

  She said, with envy and contempt, ‘I see why they call it the dress circle.’ The envy’s natural, the contempt, I suppose, results from lessons. Possessions corrupt and success can never be honest; yet, poor things, they want them all the same.

  She leaned over the rail to watch a man casting for trout in the river. I told her it was Archie Penfold, my doctor. He did the stretch between the bridges every Wednesday, his day off, and hadn’t managed to catch anything yet. ‘It looks all wrong,’ she said; fisherman in river, with houses on wooden piles up the hill and suburb spread out on the other side. And city beyond, with parks and cathedral, and an advertising balloon dipping and bouncing in the wind; and ships in the port, trucks on the reclamation, scallop boats dredging in the bay; and pale blue mountains on the other side, streaked with snow. ‘You can see too much.’

  ‘I’ve got Jessop under a microscope.’

  She wrinkled her nose, questioned the morality of that. ‘The people living here,’ she said, giving a minimal thumb-stab at the ‘circle’, ‘have got too much money. And too much time on their hands.’

  ‘I’m poor,’ I said, and wiped my eye, ‘and I’ve got very little time.’

  She grinned, admiring my act. ‘There’s plenty of life in you.’

  Kate Adams, it’s there, in ample measure, but the difference is, you see, there’s a big hole in the fence and it can bolt away any time it wants. That gives every moment a sharp edge. That makes me want to taste the salt on your skin in a spirit of interest, not desire. It’s something I need to know, or needed to. I don’t now. That’s the old part of being old. The moments have no continuity.

  ‘Come away from that rail or you’ll fall into the river and scare his fish. Show me your transcripts.’

  She sat in the wicker chair and took some typewritten sheets from her sugar sack. A tea ring decorated the title:

  Lomax Institute Archival Project Sir Noel Papps, Director (1955–68), talking with Kate Adams at his home in Jessop, 7 December, 1984.

  ‘I’m not much of a typist.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘The girl at the Institute’s going to make good copies.’

  ‘Quiet,’ I said. ‘Let me read. You can make some tea.’

  Adams: Can we start with biography?

  Papps: Me? I was born in 1902 in Jessop. My father was a baker. My mother was the sixth daughter of a mill-hand at White’s Landing.

  Adams: Yes?

  Papps: Yes what?

  Adams: That’s rather bare. I’d like more detail. What about Papps? It’s German, isn’t it?

  Papps: Originally. But we’re British for a long while now. My great great great-grandfather it must have been, came over from Hanover in the time of the Georges. Paap was his name. P-a-a-p. Somewhere along the line it changed to Papps. My grandfather – he was a furniture maker – em
igrated to New Zealand in the 70s. Came to Jessop. Ran a joinery business. My father didn’t follow him. He baked cakes. Started up on his own at twenty-five. He’d bake all night, then drive his cart over the hill with a contract load of loaves for the shop at White’s Landing. That’s where he met my mother.

  Adams: Interesting.

  Cold ashes. The fires are someone else’s and they’re dead. I started skipping – jumped my mother and father. They’re not mine to fool with; yes, fool, for if I gave more than names and dates I’d be fitting them out in funny hats and paper noses and putting grins on their faces and tears in their eyes. Anyone else I’ll do that to, even if I love them, but George Papps and Dora Papps are pre-existent, and free from the sort of imperialism I’m embarked on now.

  Kate came back and put my tea down. She poured spillage from the saucer into the cup. It seems she can’t move without slopping things.

  ‘Where are you up to?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Alfred Lomax?’

  Adams: You must have been, what? twenty-three when the Lomax Institute started.

  Papps: Yes. I was away at university. I heard about it.

  Adams: Did you know Alfred Lomax? I mean, he was mayor all those years. You must have been aware of him.

  Papps: I was. He had what you’d call a high profile. And his daughter Irene was my sister’s best friend.

  Adams: Kitty?

  Papps: Yes, Kitty.

  Adams: Irene Lomax. She was a sort of pianist, wasn’t she?

  Papps: More than sort. She was superb. She was magical. She should have been world famous. Could have been.

  Adams: What happened?

  Papps: None of your business. And it’s got nothing to do with the Institute. Stick to Lomax.