The interview had shaken me to the core, so I did not take the lift back to the studio, but went out through the paper store and down the length of the factory to the fire-escape steps at the rear of the building. It was no use the detective telling me I was not involved, because I was involved. I was involved in the awful plausibilities of the situation, and I could feel around me the disintegration of everything that I had taken to be secure. I knew that I would have to get a grip on myself before facing the others in the studio, so I trod the circling iron gratings of the steps one by one, very slowly, the way old Steiner and Richter always climbed them, and with every hesitant step another question would assail me. Should I have reported to old Mr Klebendorf? What should I tell Joe Denton? Were they even now calling Young Joe down to question him, too? And there were more abstract questions that were more terrifying. Would the detectives also go to my home to ask my parents about me? Would the newspapers report the fact that they had come to talk to me? … ‘Detectives of the CIB who are investigating the Jessica Murder to-day questioned David Meredith, aged 17, an art student who was a friend of the murdered girl. Meredith, who works as a lithographic apprentice with a city printing firm, is believed to have harboured a grudge against Jessica, police allege, because he was secretly in love with her and …’ The imagined possibilities filled me with horror.
Perhaps even now they were suspicious because I had been evasive in my answers. Might it not have been simpler just to have told them that Sam and Jess had been very devoted to each other? … that Sam himself was a gentle, kindly, whimsical sort of person who wouldn’t have hurt a fly, who would be utterly incapable of raping or strangling? But there had been this panic of denial … that was it, the panic … it was this that had jolted me … this sense of being invaded and struck down by some blind and heedless force. I was aware of a shape of unsolicited disaster that imperilled me everywhere – at home, at work, in all the securities I had established, in my own soul. And they wanted to tell me that I was not involved!
My ordeal was not yet over.
There was an undisguised curiosity in all their faces when I got back to the studio, and Joe Denton said, ‘What was it? Were you on the mat?’
‘No, Mr Denton.’ I shook my head. ‘As a matter of fact, it was a detective. From Russell Street.’ This made them all sit up. ‘They’re just checking with some of the Life Class students on Sam Burlington.’
‘But why pick on you?’
‘Ask me another,’ I said, and shrugged. ‘I suppose they just took some names at random from the students’ book, and they’re checking around them.’
‘That sounds pretty hit-and-miss, I must say. What did you tell them?’
‘Well, what could I tell them, Mr Denton? I just said I thought Sam Burlington was a pretty decent sort of a chap. And I said the girl was his … well, you know, they were very fond of each other and all that. I said I didn’t think he would do a thing like that to her.’
‘Well, he jolly well wouldn’t, either!’ said Young Joe loyally. ‘There’s something pretty fishy about all this, if you ask me. It couldn’t have been Sam.’
‘Yes, well it’s up to the police to find that out, isn’t it?’ his father said, and that seemed to close the subject.
But about half an hour later the telephone rang on Joe Denton’s desk, and he took off the receiver and said, ‘Who? Yes, he’s here. Half a mo.’ He pushed the telephone to one side. ‘David, it’s for you,’ he said, in a tone of faint surprise.
I moved in behind his stool with a sinking heart.
The voice was thinned down and faraway, but I recognized the brisk, growly tone: ‘Ha! is that you, Meredith? Brewster here. Brewster of the Post. I’m ringing you up, Meredith, because a thought has just occurred to me. How would you feel about dashing off a quick feature for us?’
‘About what, Mr Brewster?’ I asked nervously, acutely conscious of the fact that Joe Denton was only six inches away from me and that his stippling pen was quite motionless in his fingers and that there was not a sound in all the big studio.
‘Well, I know you are a student up at this art school. You’re in the Life Class, isn’t that so? Well, this is the point. I realize this may seem rather off your familiar beat, but it mightn’t be at all a bad thing for you to get your teeth into something altogether different. Are you there, Meredith?’
‘Yes – yes, I’m listening, sir.’
‘Briefly, then, you must be perfectly aware of the enormous public interest which this terrible Jessica Wray thing has stirred up. Not so much the crime itself, which is a matter for the policeroundsman. I am thinking of the whole question of how you young art students live, your nude models, bohemian parties, your attitudes to moral values, all that sort of thing. This has suddenly become a subject of immense public concern. Nice subject for you to have a stab at. Am I getting through to you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You should keep it absolutely impartial, you know. We don’t want to jump into sensation for sensation’s sake, in the way, I am very much afraid, some of our reptile contemporaries have done. Frankly, I can’t really believe you youngsters are as despicable as people are trying to make out. There must be work done, dedication, a sense of purpose, genuine beliefs. Give us all that. Let us try to get to the truth of the picture, eh? Don’t you think a good, balanced, colourful twelve hundred words from you could make a really excellent feature? It would have to be rather a rush order, though, Meredith. We should need the copy by six tomorrow afternoon at the latest. Now did you get all that?’
‘Yes. Yes, I did. But – but I don’t think I’d be able to do it for you, Mr Brewster. Not in the time.’
‘Ah, that is disappointing. Most disappointing. Hmmm. Let me think, now. Well … at a pinch we could give you until, say, nine tomorrow night.’
‘I still couldn’t do it, sir, I’m sorry. You see, we’ve had some rush orders here and we’re all working overtime to get them out. I’m sorry about this, Mr Brewster.’
‘Well, your work comes first, of course. Naturally. Although it’s a great shame, really.
You see, the trouble is that this particular feature is dead if it’s not pegged to the news. Well, never mind, it was a thought. I dare say we can get one of the staff writers to tackle something. Deadlines are deadlines in this business, eh? Bye for now, boy.’
I put the receiver down and Joe Denton gave me a slow sideways look and said, ‘And what, may I ask, was that all about? And what’s this business of us all working overtime on rush orders? We’re slacker than we’ve been for months, and you know it.’
‘Oh, I just said that, Mr Denton,’ I said flushing. ‘I had to think of something to say. It was the man at the Post, the magazine editor I write things for. He wanted me to do an article for them in a hurry.’
‘What about?’
‘Well … as a matter of fact, it … it’s tied up with the murder story. He wanted me to write an article about the way art students live and all that sort of thing.’
Joe Denton took up his stippling pen and tested it on the back of his hand. Below the knuckles the skin was covered with a mass of fine black pen marks like a mat of tiny hairs.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘you really seem to be becoming quite a figure in the case, don’t you?’
The final turn of the screw came next day, when the post brought the curious stilted letter of Jack’s that I have already mentioned. It was written in a round, careful, copy-book hand – not a childish calligraphy, more the mastered meticulousness of an account-keeper or a public scrivener – on a sheet of faint-ruled paper torn from an exercise-book.
Dear David,
I take up my pen to write to you in connection with this trouble your friend Samuel Burlington has found himself in. I have been very shocked to read what they have been saying in all the newspapers. It is a very sad and awful thing about that girl we met because she seemed to me to be a nice person and there weren’t any hard feelings in that direction that I
could make out.
Your friend Sam struck me as a rather peculiar young fellow but he was decent enough and he was very kind to you on that occasion when you were up against it and both of us know that he is not the sort of chap who could do a dirty thing like that. I would have written to him myself to tell him this but I cannot remember the address. Anyway I know you will be seeing him to cheer him up and give him moral support, because he will need all his friends at a difficult time like this, so I would be very much obliged if you could just tell him of my sincere feelings in the matter. He may not remember me of course but it might help him to know that even a fellow he hardly knows is staunchly and loyally on his side.
Generally speaking life up here is pretty good. There is a nice girl who looks after the three kiddies because the man who owns the property is a widower and I have been going steady with her for about six months. A sheila called Sheila!!! We take the buggy every Saturday and get into Dimboola which is a fairish sort of town and we either go and see a picture if something good is on or attend one of the Old Time Nights at the Mechanics Institute.
I am becoming quite an expert at the polka and the valetta and the parma waltz and the Highland schottease (is that how you spell it?) and of course the old favourites like the barn dance and things like that.
Please give my best regards to Mum and Dad and the rest of them. And don’t forget to tell Sam Burlington when you next see him that your brother Jack is on his side. I will lay down my pen now with kindest regards,
I remain,
Yours sincerely,
Your affectionate bro.
Jack
But it was not until the following Saturday that I went to see Sam. As far as the Jessica Murder Case was concerned he had dropped out of interest the day before.
Just after dusk on the Thursday evening, a twelve-year-old schoolgirl had been attacked and assaulted in the same park not fifty yards away from where Jess had been murdered. The newspapers were full of a new sensation: sexual maniac at large? In all the excitement of the new hue-and-cry, the story of Sam’s exoneration hardly received any attention. In fact I think the Morning Post was the only newspaper to publish the item, and even then it was buried away in an obscure paragraph at the end of all the rest:
Selwyn Grant, an employee on the switchboard at St Kilda telephone exchange, yesterday testified that on the night of the Jessica Murder he monitored a call made from a public call-box to the number listed for Samuel Burlington at 12.34 a.m. Grant was to begin his annual holidays at the end of the shift. Inadvertently he wrote the data on a slip of paper, which he put into his pocket, intending to enter it in the log before knocking off. He forgot to do so. The following afternoon he left with a party of friends to spend a week camping and trout-fishing. It was some days before he saw a newspaper, and remembered the report which he had overlooked. He communicated the information to police at Buxton when he visited the township to buy provisions, and Russell Street CIB was informed accordingly.
I called on Sam in the middle of the afternoon on the day after this appeared. It was between acts of the No, No, Nanette! matinée, and there were crowds of people laughing and chatting around the lobby of the theatre, but otherwise the street had a forlorn, emptied-out, Saturday afternoon look, and the surgeries and office buildings were closed, and chaff and bits of theatre programmes were blowing along the gutters.
I was appalled at the change that had taken place in Sam. I felt about him something of what I had felt about the street outside – he looked shrunken, forlorn and emptied-out, drained of busy-ness and importance. He was like this from the moment I set eyes on him, as if my knock on the door had frightened him.
At intervals during my visit he would make an attempt to rally, but it didn’t really work. He was dispirited and uneasy, yet I felt he was appreciative of my call. ‘Thanks, Stunsail,’ he said with a kind of twisty little smile. ‘None of the others have bothered to look me up. Only you. Isn’t that funny?’
He was very restless, but there was no quickness in his movements any more, and no … well, no light inside him, if I can put it that way. The studio seemed different, too. It looked drab and artificial, like a backdrop from a failed stage-play. The portrait of Jess had vanished, and other things seemed to have gone as well, although I could not quite identify what they had been. Everything had changed, anyway …
He sailed from Australia three weeks later – it was months before I even knew he had gone – and he never went back. Well, I have never been back either, if it comes to that, but perhaps the ties that so precariously bind us to our alien world are not of the same weight and substance. What I do know is that in some queerly special way we are both tied inextricably to the events of that long-ago time in Melbourne. The things that happened in that week were to go on having a profound effect on both of us, more directly on Sam, of course (he never painted again, for instance), but perhaps more insidious and more finally damaging on me. It’s always hard to tell with these things, though.
When I saw him last year he was pottering around among his rose-bushes in that same slow, rather spiritless way, a bald, paunchy little man in pale, washed-out Provençal farmer’s clothes and a battered straw hat. He is doing well enough with his cut flowers for the Paris market, but he is still a bachelor and I think lonely. He has a passion for operatic music, which gives him an interest.
We sat in the courtyard and drank some of his own wine, which was a bit sharp but pleasant enough, and reminisced about this and that. The place he has is small and austere and rather beautiful in its way, of grey stone, with a little pointed tower and an arched Romanesque gateway and the poisonous-looking blue stain of the vine spray splashed on white-washed walls, and the walls are low so that you can sit on them and look down over the rose gardens and across the speckled landscape to the hills. I had the impression that he never would go back to Australia. The man who killed Jess was never apprehended, you see, and I think there is some terrible worm of stark terror that keeps crawling around in his brain, behind that bald, brown, ordinary little face with the hurt bulging eyes and the sunken jowls.
When I was taking my leave of him, he squeezed my arm and grinned, and for the flash of an instant, gone almost before it could be recognized, the old Sam was there. ‘You’re wearing pretty well, old Stunsail,’ he said affectionately. ‘Much better than I am.’ He glanced ruefully at his paunch. ‘Well, tant pis. It’s the way it happens to us. You know, life’s a pretty funny business when you come to think of it. I remember a talk I once had with that brother of yours. I told him then that you were the only one of us who had the right idea.’ He squeezed my arm again. The air was sodden with the smell of roses. ‘Well, good for you, Stunsail,’ he said warmly. ‘Good for you!’
9
It was after that week of the Jessica Wray case that I began to become a master of dissimulation. Among his aphorisms Kafka quoted a phrase that seems to have greatly haunted and intrigued him – ‘but then he returned to his work as if nothing had happened’ – and I suppose this can be applied to me. Kafka was acutely aware, of course, of the boundless field of conjecture and implication involved in the statement.
Mother, whom I loved, and my father, whom I still detested, knew virtually nothing of what I was doing. I imagine that to them I had become a queer, separate kind of creature, too puzzling to be understood and by this time too removed from their ways and views to be prudently corrected. I used to do everything in my power to preserve this sense of isolation. I lived, if I may employ a cliché, a life of my own, and this was not disturbed until Jack returned from the Wimmera with his sheila called Sheila.
They arrived at the house unannounced fairly early one Sunday morning, having come down from Dimboola on the night train. Jack looked brown and hard and grown-up, and thinner than he had been, and there was a vaguely anxious careworn look about him which I did not understand at first. Sheila Delaney was an exceedingly pretty girl, but she seemed rather pale and ill, and it was not until
I heard why they had come to Melbourne that I saw the reason for Jack’s expression and the sick look she had.
She had just recovered – in fact was still recovering – from a severe attack of double pneumonia, and since Jack had lost his job on the farm because of a sudden sharp slump in wheat prices, he had decided to bring her home so that Mother could look after her.
We never suspected at that time – and, anyway, the fact would have been lost sight of in the angry tumult that almost immediately was to follow – that the sudden fall in wheat prices and the loss of Jack’s employment were the first hint of the disaster that was coming. There was much dust in the air in that year of gorgeous sunsets, and not many people realized that the dust was half the world’s security blowing away …
I must tell first about Sheila Delaney. She was Roman Catholic and an orphan. Her Irish father had been killed at the Gallipoli landing when she was a child of seven, and her mother had died two years before she met Jack in the Wimmera. She was about the same age as Jack, a month or two older, perhaps, I can’t remember, but she had had a good convent education and was well-read and well-spoken and obviously better educated than Jack. She was slim and yet rather rounded and womanly with it, and not very tall, and although there was a quality of quietness about her she could be bold, too, in a way. I should try to explain this. Perhaps it was something Irish in her, but she insisted on being accepted as she was, and not as people thought she should be. It was this aspect of her character, I think, even more than her religion, that riled Dad almost beyond endurance. (One saw this later, when in the face of his obstinate injustices, she refused, just as stubbornly, to move even an inch towards placating him.)
She had a pretty rather pointed little face with short, jet-black, soft-curling hair and the bluest eyes – very Irish, in fact, that face of hers – and she would look very squarely at everybody and not appear diffident or downcast. She would smoke her cigarettes, or take a glass or two of beer, in front of anyone without seeming to be brazen or trying to prove something; she had the prettiest legs, and she wore very short tight skirts and she would sit with her legs crossed and parts of her bare thighs showing, and she wore thin blouses that were always cut rather low, and all this may or may not have been intentional – for she was well aware of her own strong sexuality – but I know she had a way of disconcerting me and of driving Dad almost to a point of distraction. She was very much in love with Jack. And he with her.
My Brother Jack Page 17
