Prowlers

by Maurice Gee

  Adams: All right. Tell me about him.

  Papps: He was self-important. There’s nothing wrong with that, most of us are. He was chasing a knighthood and never got one. All he ever got was an OBE.

  Adams: Poor thing.

  Papps: He did a lot for Jessop, in the footpath and drainage way. And of course, he started the Institute. But he was…switch that thing off.

  ‘I’m not in the gossip business.’

  ‘I remember what you said, though. I made some notes when I got home.’

  ‘You did not. What did I say?’

  ‘Lomax was a randy little stoat.’ She grinned. ‘So what? All men are randy little stoats.’

  ‘That sounds like chapter and verse.’

  ‘What if it is? It’s still true.’

  I told her to tear up her notes or she’d get no more interviews from me. I even threatened to tear the transcript up, and I put it on the sun-deck rail and held my finger ready to flick it into the river – where Archie Penfold had at last hooked a trout.

  ‘Go ahead,’ she said, ‘it’s only a carbon.’

  ‘Why is it always gossip and scandal you people want instead of facts.’

  ‘Aren’t they facts? That Alfred Lomax was screwing his office girl?’

  ‘Don’t speak like that. It’s got nothing to do with the history of the Institute.’

  ‘How do you know? It might have been because of that he set up the trust. So people would remember him as more than a randy stoat. What did you say his wife died of?’

  ‘Mortification.’

  ‘And then he got a housekeeper and started screwing her.’

  ‘That’s enough! Go away!’

  Instead she leaned over the rail and shouted at Archie, ‘Throw it back. Go and torture your patients.’ She was burning with anger and he was suitable object. I saw the black O of his mouth. I’ll have to tell him when he calls that this Harpy has nothing to do with me.

  She sat down. ‘You men aren’t happy unless you’re killing something.’

  ‘Chapter and verse.’

  ‘Alfred Lomax killed his wife.’

  ‘She died of complications following childbirth. She was too old. You’re not to take any of this down.’

  ‘I can remember.’

  ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘You’re not the only one I’ve been talking to. And whenever you come to anything real you all say, “Switch that off.” Then you dish out the dirt.’

  ‘What dirt?’

  ‘Who wasn’t up to his job. Who pinched his research from someone else. Or stuck his name on someone else’s paper.’

  ‘Did they say that about me?’

  She wouldn’t answer.

  ‘We were really pretty tame at the Institute.’

  ‘The only decent one was Pearl Winwood.’

  ‘Have you talked to her? She was a very pretty girl.’

  Kate made a sound like tearing paper. ‘That’s all you ever say, you old men. Not, she was good at her job. Just, she was pretty. Well-developed frontally, one of you said.’

  ‘Percy Trigg.’

  ‘You sit in your chairs sniggering, playing your little sex games in your head…’

  ‘Did Percy try something? Give your bum a pat, eh? He drove Pearl Winwood out.’

  ‘Did he? I’ll remember. I’ll ask her.’

  ‘She won’t talk. Pearl’s a lady.’

  I was well aware of what I was saying. I wanted to punish her for a number of things: Archie, the stories she’d heard about me, my slopped tea, her ugly language. But what a marvellous pragmatist she is. She looked at me a moment, with lip turned back, and the points of her eye-teeth grating together. (Cave-woman eye-teeth, beetle-crackers.) Then she took my tea and poured it in my lap. It was only lukewarm. She doesn’t make a good cup, which I must tell her. She shouldered her bag and stamped out of my house. The sundeck trembled.

  I begin to like Kate Adams very much.

  7

  I’ve read through the transcript and it’s accurate as far as it goes. How far is that? An infant step, except that infancy is a natural time and these are unnatural exchanges.

  Adams: When did you first get interested in science?

  Papps: As a schoolboy.

  Adams: Primary? Secondary?

  Papps: Oh, primary first. Then secondary.

  Adams: Was the teaching good?

  Papps: Yes, very. At primary, at Jessop Main School, we had a man called Thomas Ogier. He was very gifted as a teacher.

  Adams: Didn’t you just have nature study then?

  Papps: Tup Ogier went a lot further than that.

  Adams: Yes, I see. How is Ogier spelled?

  Their spelling is atrocious. O, I said, and g and i and e and r. And Tup had made his brief appearance in my life. I can’t let it go at that.

  One Saturday afternoon he took the four of us across to the school and gave us a lesson in blowpipe analysis. He was trying to get Phil interested in science in the hope that he’d go to College and make some use of ‘that good brain up there’. ‘Sir, sir,’ I cried, ‘can I come?’ Irene and Kitty said, ‘Me too?’ But only I had really heard the words. Blowpipe analysis. It meant equipment and techniques and procedures, it meant taking apart, finding out, putting names. I trembled as I walked along behind. Remember too: I had seen a black moon rising. Remember I had pooped my pants.

  We went into the lab and Tup sat on a stool behind the bench while we lined up on the other side. But the pedagogical arrangement did not suit him. ‘No, no, come here. Round here. Now, when we analyse minerals there are two ways. There’s a wet way and a dry way. With wet we use reagents in solution – things like hydrochloric acid. I’ll show you that another day. Right now I want to demonstrate the dry way. It’s more fun.’ I remember that little speech word for word. It had terms I understood instinctively, that never needed any explanation – analyse, reagent – and a name, hydrochloric acid, strange to me, that fell into my mind with a splash and rattled like an egg boiling in a pot. I remember too that I was offended. Did Tup think I was here for fun?

  ‘Here’s our equipment. Bunsen’s burner. Although there are portable lamps for use in the field. And our little friend the blowpipe. You blow in here, the air comes out here, bends the flame, carries it over the assay. What do you think this bulge in the centre is for?’ He expected no answer, but Kitty said, ‘To make you blow harder?’

  ‘No, Kitty, you don’t blow hard, you blow steadily. Anyone else?’

  I knew. First it was intuitive, then it was logical. There was a humming in my mind, part power, part joy. ‘Sir, it traps the moisture in your breath. So it won’t spoil the experiment.’

  Tup was startled; by the answer, by my dogmatic tone. ‘Have you been reading in my Rutley, Papps?’

  ‘No, sir. But moisture would change things. Wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it would.’ He blew through the pipe. ‘That’s dry air coming out. It’s not easy. You needn’t think it’s easy, young Papps.’

  I knew it would be easy for me. Tup explained that the blast of air must be continuous. You kept your cheeks puffed out and used them like a bagpipes and breathed in through your nose at the same time. He lit the burner and put his watch on the desk. ‘Time me. Two minutes is enough. I’ll do the oxidizing flame. You don’t know what that is, Papps, by any chance?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You put the nozzle in the flame. All the air gets burned. Watch.’

  I watched. The others timed him. I saw the flame bend over, make a curtsey. Inside the transparent cone a cone of blue, which kept itself abased though its colour was proud and pure. It never trembled. I shot a look of admiration at Tup, who brought this about. Red-faced, ugly, he winked at me.

  ‘Two minutes, sir,’ Kitty sang.

  Tup stopped blowing. The flame stood up, stood apart. She and I had a dialogue.

  ‘You see, I’m not even panting. That’s because I breathed normally. I could have gone on for five minu
tes if I’d wanted.’ He ran the mouthpiece under the tap and dried it on his handkerchief – unclean. Irene made a face at Kitty. ‘Now, Phil. See what you can do.’

  The flame did a ragged dance. It lay down, sprang up, lay down. Phil watched it, cross-eyed. A gluey sound came from his nose as he tried to breathe. ‘I could do it, sir, if I practised.’

  ‘Try again.’ Tup was anxious for him. Love, of a paternal kind, had got in. He was, I think, confused by a desire to do Phil’s part, he willed him excellence, his cheeks inflated as Phil’s inflated, his eyes too went cross-eyed, and orders came for the flame to lie steady. She knew none of it. She waited for me.

  ‘Well, well, that was better. Rome wasn’t built in a day, Phil.’

  ‘It’s just, I’ve got a cold sir.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Here, blow your nose. Give it a minute or two. Kitty, you try.’

  Kitty washed the mouthpiece and dried it on her sleeve. She did better than Phil. The flame made little trembles, dips and bows, but she controlled it. And having done that, wasn’t interested any more. Kitty was a magpie, collected shiny things; bits of information, mental and physical skills; but was always moving off in some new direction. She was scatty, she was sharp, she was everywhere – and comes together later, points in one direction, a creature of great mass, Cyclopean. Now, in the lab, she sees that she can make the blowpipe work if she wants, and knowing that, stops wanting and is ready to go away.

  Irene, scarcely touching the mouthpiece with her lips, has a turn. She’s no good. The flame hops about, it evades her. Irene had a narrow nose, and narrow passages no doubt, and suffered all her life from allergies and sinus infections. She could not breathe in and blow out at the same time. She made another face and put the blowpipe down.

  It was my turn. But Tup said, ‘Just a minute, Papps. Have another go, Phil.’

  I didn’t mind. I could wait. I even smiled as Phil made his attempt and did it better. He gave me the blowpipe and I stuck it in my armpit, made it clean. Tup knew what was coming. He would have liked to stop me; but in another way had seen my measure and was in a state of expectation.

  I put the mouthpiece to my lips and put the nozzle in the flame and swelled my rubber cheeks, and looked, I suppose, like one of Aristophanes’ comic slaves, but my ugliness was beside the point. The flame surrendered. She surrendered. She gave herself to me. Pale blue, and clothed in her transparency, she lay down. She lay as still as stone, as hot as suns, as cold as ice, and breathing through my nose I possessed her. You think it’s funny? I overstate the case? You think that, Kate? An ugly boy blowing through a pipe into a Bunsen burner flame – and speaking, in his old age, of surrender, possession. I don’t care. I have special knowledge. My beginnings were my high point in science. I’ve been through troughs and I’ve stood on peaks, and earned a comic handle to my name, but in Tup Ogier’s lab, on that Saturday afternoon, I knew the consummating moment.

  ‘That’s enough, Papps.’

  Yes, that’s enough. I’ll say no more, as the funny man advises on TV. I gave Tup the blowpipe and stepped back and stood in a corner. Phil had another turn, and carried on his wrestling match with me, and I watched him with indifference. It had nothing to do with winning. I began to pity him at last. The flame would not recognize him, danced away.

  ‘No, Phil, you breathe in, you blow out. Two actions going on side by side.’ But he could not break himself apart and put himself together. That would mean turning aside, that would mean delays, and he was headlong, and interested only in things that lay in his path. I saw the moment he gave me Tup in his lab, flames and pipes, as not worth having. I saw the change of colour in his eyes, saw him shrug, saw him turn aside. He turned surrender into victory, and went away and got on with his proper business. The girls had gone already. Tup and I were left alone.

  ‘Well, well, Papps. Had enough?’

  ‘No sir.’

  He ran his finger along the ragged top of his ear. He only did that when he had lost. He went to the window and watched Phil cross the playground, and he sighed; but I showed no mercy.

  ‘You said there was another sort of flame, sir.’

  ‘Yes, yes. You’re a greedy sort of fellow, aren’t you, Papps?’

  He showed me how to make the reducing flame. I did not like her as much as the oxidizing. I liked, if you’ll excuse me, penetration. I was happiest when the nozzle was in. But I made the flame perfectly. The prolonged steady blast was no trouble; and no laboratory skill has ever troubled me.

  ‘Sir, can we do some minerals?’

  ‘Why not? Why not?’

  I had begun to interest him. When he had forgotten Phil on that afternoon he set himself to see how far he could stretch me. He began to be excited. I stayed calm. My only fear was that he would stop. But he began to be like a man stacking boxes – another one, another, and still the tower held.

  We reduced metallic oxides on charcoal blocks. We made a borax bead. And when Tup turned to the blackboard behind him and wrote Na2B4O7.10H2O, I closed my eyes, I nearly fainted. This was taking apart. This was naming. We took up iron and copper on the bead and tested them and the flame went green and red and blue. He told me why. The why was as beautiful as the colour. The why and the colour became one.

  ‘Good heavens, five o’clock. Your parents will be wondering where you are.’

  We stood side by side in the boys’ lavatory and peed together on the slimy wall. ‘Urine is mainly urea. That’s a crystalline body,’ Tup said. ‘There’s also sodium chloride and uric acid. And other things. Hippuric acid. Various pigments. Chemistry, you see, is everywhere.’

  We walked across the cricket pitch to the gate. ‘Would you like to do some more, Noel?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Phil might like to come along too.’

  ‘I don’t think so, sir.’

  ‘No? Well, perhaps not. Remind me on Monday after school. We’ll make some microcosmic salt.’

  I dreamed in bed of microcosmic salt. The words rattled like dice in a box and wouldn’t come out. I’ve no doubt I was tossing and groaning, but I slept easily when the oxidizing flame came into my dream. Edgar Le Grice also came, and held his black coat out to smother me, and behind him squat red flames gulped and sucked. He turned into the black moon, gleamed like coal. My blue reclining flame licked at him. It made him spit and crackle and leak grease. It turned him white and crumbled him to ashes. With cheeks swelled out, and breathing through my nose, I blew him away.

  8

  Dear Mr Papps,

  Excuse me for not calling you Sir Noel but I couldn’t do that and keep a straight face. I’d like to call you Noel and think I should as you’re my great uncle or whatever, but you still haven’t invited me to, have you?

  I suppose I’ve put your back up now – as if I hadn’t done that already! – but actually I’m writing to say I’m sorry for that business with the tea. Sorry! Sorry! But I did enjoy it, especially the look on your face. You looked as if you were going to throw a mental, as the kids say. Anyhow, I hope it doesn’t mean I can’t come again because I haven’t finished with you yet. I’ve finished with the Lomax, just about. One interview to go, with Royce Lomax, and it’s all wrapped up. Then it can sit in a butterbox until someone comes along in forty years and does a centennial history of the place – and tells the world how marvellous you all are. In my opinion you were a scungy lot, with a few exceptions.

  I’ve got a new project, not PEP, all my own, and that’s what I want to see you about. I need your help. I suppose I can call? Yes? OK. I’ll come on Friday. I hope you didn’t get scalded down there.

  Luv,

  Kate.

  Help meaning money, no doubt. She’s not getting anything from me. And she’s not getting any more information. I know what her project is, I’ve been waiting for someone to dream it up – my biography. The answer’s no. Why should I give myself away to some Tom Dick or Kate who thinks my life is simply a career? If there’s something to say about me I�
�ll say it myself. I’ll tell my own lies and my own truth. Who for? That stops me short. There has to be one other besides myself. She – ah yes, she – burns it for me, page by page, in the fireplace in the livingroom, while I sip milk and whisky, new-born.

  Is it my biography, Kate? The answer’s no. If you mind your manners I’ll let you do the burning.

  You’ll get nothing useful from Royce Lomax. The man’s a wimp, to use one of your terms. You’ll get a lot of palaver, that’s all. Sweaty little fellow, he sweats words, and none of them stand up to be looked at, they slide away like jelly on a plate. The last time we spoke, three or four years ago – I was stupid enough to go to his exhibition and saw hills like worms, lakes like livers and kidneys, trees like penises, caves like eyes – he told me his work owed a lot to primitive animism, and geomorphology, and some Chinese system or superstition (I forget the name), some hierarchy of powers in the earth that were either benevolent or malign, according to the angle, physical and mental, of one’s approach. There were red stickers going up all around us, but he sweated because he was afraid people were buying for the wrong reasons – for the penises I suppose – and he told me he’d like to give me a painting because I’d been Irene’s best man-friend. No, I said, I didn’t have room in my house for pictures, too many books; but I should have taken one. They sell for two or three thousand dollars today.

  Irene’s mother died when Royce was born. I see what a curious sentence that is. But Irene’s the Lomax I’m concerned with. There she stands with Kitty, with Rhona, with Ruth: a quartet of women conversing at the centre of my life. The men circle round – Phil Dockery, Tup Ogier, and the rest – and sometimes I don’t have a central place. Irene settled there with as much authority as a new particle joining an atom.

  Kitty brought her in one afternoon and Irene sat at our piano without invitation and started to play. I looked up from my homework, then stood up, and Mum came from the kitchen and listened in the doorway, with a potato half peeled in her hand. Irene played – without music, that impressed me! – ‘The Harmonious Blacksmith’; a very hard piece, my mother said later. I moved so that I could see her hands. I would have done better to turn my back and be impressed by Handel, not Irene. I could not connect her skill with ribboned curls, narrow nose, stuck-up voice, skinny Reen. She was changed. When she played another piece with crossovers in it I made a little squeak of ecstasy.