He drew up with me on his new bike and I jumped on the bar.
“That’ll save you being late,” he said into my ear.
We were scarcely a hundred yards down the road when we got a puncture. He left the bike at the nearest house and came back to me.
“We’d better run,” I said. But it was no good; Squid never hurried to school—his mother claimed it gave him constipation.
He drew up with me, his head bobbing below the level of my eyes.
“We’re going t’ be a bit late anyhow,” he said composedly.
“It’s test morning,” I reminded him.
“Yeah,” he replied staring straight ahead. “Yeah.” He thought seriously about this. “We’ll get somethink on the produc’s of France, I bet.”
I looked at him quickly, but his face was innocent.
“I didn’t know the products of France last exam,” I said.
“You’ll know ’em for certain this time then.”
I made a sickly, noncommittal sound.
“Square root is what gets me,” he said with a touch of anxiety. “How d’ y’ do it again?”
“Listen,” I answered quickly, “we’d better walk faster.”
We had only reached the top of Benson’s Hill about half a mile from the school. Across the bush we could see the building itself, a sight to clutch the heart. We were only entering the bush when the sound of the bell drifted up to us.
“There it goes,” I exclaimed, breaking into a run. I realized then that it was better to come in ten minutes late with Squid than five minutes late without him. I dropped back.
Squid said casually, “Mr Moloney’s giving the strap like a threshing machine these days, don’t you reckon?”
“You don’t get it much,” I retorted. “I daresay your mother’s told him about your freckles.”
He looked hurt. “No,” he said. “No, I just think things out carefully.”
“You’d better start thinking now,” I burst out.
He was silent for some time, walking slowly. He said then, “My stomach feels crook.”
“Well?”
“I reckon I might double up with pain an’ you might have t’ help me back home.”
I clutched at this idea quickly. “What about after that?”
“My mother would give you a note: ‘Dear Mr Moloney, My son Birdwood was took bad with gastro-somethink an’ Charlie Reeve had t’ help him back home. I’m sure, Mr Moloney, you will excuse Charlie for his—his thoughtful—’”
“Would she do it?”
“If I asked her she would.”
I could see no other course. “You’d better get doubled up,” I said.
Instead he sat in a patch of grass and began to turn up onion weeds for Christmas puddings. “I don’t see why we got t’ hurry.”
I stood undecidedly, waiting for him to do something. From where we were we could see Donnelly’s paddock on the edge of the town. There I noticed something that was to change our whole day. Strung out in the paddock were the coloured vans of Perry’s circus complete with elephant, horses, donkeys and a cage of lions.
I said nothing, but Squid saw me staring and got quickly to his feet. He gave a despairing cry. “That’s Perry Brothers. Look, y’ can see their elephant—the one that turned a hundred an’ two last time they was here.”
He gazed at me distractedly. “I can’t hardly believe it. They’re not due till next month.” He added threateningly, “I can’t be took sick today. We better start running.”
We started half-heartedly.
“You could fall over,” I said. “I could help you to school—”
“No,” he panted, “your ideas would only get a feller inter trouble.”
Even at this stage we might have been spared—Moloney might have had mercy on us; we might even have got to the circus. Instead, fate came along in the form of a camel. It stood beside a sheoak, feeding on the branches. I caught Squid’s arm.
“A camel.”
“Where?”
“By the sheoak.”
He stopped. “It’s a dromedary.”
“What’s the difference anyhow?”
“It’s got a saddle on, so it must be a dromedary. Listen, it’s Perry Brothers’ dromedary.”
“Well, let’s clear out before someone comes for it,” I said.
“No,” he answered. “No.” He was reaching a Napoleonic decision. “What we do is take the dromedary t’ Perry Brothers’ an’ Perry Brothers will see old Moloney—”
“You can if you want to.”
“What’ll you do?”
I could find no answer to this. I felt like knocking his freckled face off his shoulders. I stood undecidedly while he strode towards the camel.
“I’ll come, then,” I said.
We reached the sheoak where the camel stood dribbling greenly, surveying us with contemptuous eyes. It was a moth-eaten animal and it stank. Squid picked up its nose-line.
“Now we get it to lie down. I saw how to do it at last year’s circus. Then we ride it.”
“I don’t want to ride it,” I exclaimed.
“Well, I’m going to—there’s nothink to it.”
I looked round wildly, hoping for a miracle.
“Hooshta!” cried Squid with authority. He said to me, “That’s telling it to lie down in Arab.”
The camel roared in our faces with a foul breath, its neck striking like a snake.
“We’d better leave it.”
“They always grizzle. The circus man said they’re never happy, not even when you’re feeding them.”
“Hooshta!”
It darted its head at us, baring yellow teeth.
“Listen, let’s go home.”
“Hooshta!”
The camel dropped reluctantly to its knees. Squid’s face was shining triumphantly.
“I’m not going to ride it.”
He ignored me. As the camel subsided he climbed into the double saddle. As he sat there, the expression on his face reminded me of Rudolph Valentino.
“See you at school,” he said carelessly.
The camel was moving to get up. I ran over to it and leapt up behind him.
The affair of Perry’s camel was talked of for years round Kananook. I was always named as the main culprit. The truth was that I was only held in the saddle by a kind of paralysis. Squid was full of wild cries. He put his school cap on backwards and had a dirty handkerchief caught under the peak of it as a neck-cloth. Sometimes he clapped his hand up as a shield to his eyes and stared into the distance. There wasn’t much doubt about what lay in the distance for it was obvious that the camel intended heading for the town.
I don’t know when it was that I realized all wasn’t well with Squid. After we had been swinging like a pair of metronomes for ten minutes I said faintly, “It’s going to take us through the main street! What are we going to do?”
We were by this time approaching the sign WELCOME TO KANANOOK A GOOD REXONA TOWN.
“I dunno,” said Squid in a hollow voice.
“You what?”
“I don’t feel well.”
He tried to lean on the neck of the camel, but it was too far off to be of comfort to him.
“I thought we’d given up the idea of you being sick?
“I can’t help it—I feel crook in the stummick.”
“Well, what do we do?”
“Don’t talk,” he begged.
At that point in our journey we engaged with our first townsman. The Presbyterian minister appeared in his buggy. The horse was moving with a sort of side-step, its ears twitching and its nostrils agape. For a moment it stopped and shivered all over, then emitting a sound I’d never heard from a horse, it wheeled round and was gone. Behind it the buggy scarcely touched the gro
und and Mr Wetherby scarcely touched the seat.
I prodded Squid. “We’ve killed Mr Wetherby.”
“I’m glad,” he moaned.
“You’ve got to do something.”
“I’m going to jump off.”
“You can’t leave me.”
“Ah, shut up,” he wailed.
In the paddock by the local dairy I caught sight of cows performing an unmatronly dance, hind legs in the air, tails streaming out behind. At that moment Squid half fell, half jumped off. Scarcely pausing in its stride the camel kicked him into the roadside grass.
Any idea I had of following him was cut short when I heard him scream, “I’m dead!”
Alone I looked down the main street. Already horses were rearing up and men were trying to quieten them. I huddled miserably behind the neck of the camel. Outside the Pier Hotel I saw old Charlie Rolls fall on his knees at the edge of the gutter and assume an attitude of prayer. Ahead of me, lining the centre of the road, were loaves of bread. The baker’s cart, with its door open, was travelling fast about a furlong in front of me. The camel advanced relentlessly, only pausing at Sam Yick’s to eat most of Sam’s display of Jonathans.
This journey through the town was one of the most depressing events of my childhood. Several tradespeople began pursuing us on foot, and the camel, by some fearful instinct, headed towards the school—in fact, its last act was to eat the top off old Moloney’s favourite liquidambar.
This brought everyone tumbling out of the classrooms, while behind me were the ranks of the tradespeople. There were cries of, “Mr Moloney, Charlie Reeve has come to school on a camel.”
Moloney burst out of his office and strode through the ranks, his face unbelievable.
“So you ride to school on a camel, Reeve? By heavens, when I’ve finished with you, you will stand in the stirrups for a week! Get off that animal immediately!”
My voice came from a long way off. “It kicks, sir.”
“So shall I—get off.”
I slid miserably to the ground. A murmur passed through the tradespeople. This heralded the arrival of my father from his office. I felt a moment of deepened shame, remembering his sleepless nights and the worry at home. I heard him exclaim, “What’s the meaning of this?”
I waved my hand in the direction of the camel in a way intended to be explanatory.
My father said coldly, “Mr Moloney, I leave him to you. I shall see him myself tonight.”
With that he turned and strode away, looking neither right nor left, as if he had been caught in the street in his underpants. I was frog-marched then through the ranks of spectators, Mr Moloney breathing viciously in my ear.
So ended the affair of the camel—except that Squid had a week off from school after “a most unfortunate fall which has quite upset him”. By this time my belief in justice was dead.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
For days after the camel business I might as well have been in jail. No one at home spoke to me; I was ordered to chop wood enough for weeks ahead; I was not allowed over to Johnno’s, even though Johnno had had nothing to do with the affair. It was of no use trying to shift blame on to Squid. I had “misled him” and that was that. At school old Moloney did all he could to embarrass me. We were studying Arabia so he made a point of asking me for authoritative opinions on the use of camels and the life of Bedouins.
At home it was Grandfather who eventually had me reinstated. One afternoon when I came in from school he was feeling slightly better and asked for someone to read to him.
“You had better go in and make yourself useful,” said my mother coldly.
I stepped into the dim room, nearly tripping over Gyp who had crept in and was studying Grandfather mournfully. Grandfather himself reminded me more than ever of the picture of Hudson adrift in the Arctic. His beard and hands were on the turned-down sheet, his hands fidgeting impatiently. He was muttering truculently to himself and eyed me sourly.
When he spoke there was more of a burr to his speech than I had ever heard.
“There’s nae much that a man forced t’ lie in his bed kin find consolation in,” he said aloud. “Forced!” he repeated, glaring at me.
I stood there uneasily, saying nothing.
“Does she suppose I’m just goin’ t’ lie here?”
“Who?” I asked.
“Your mother—who else? Does she propose that I lie here till the breath has gone out o’ me?”
“Of course not,” I said quickly.
“‘O’ course not,’ ye say, but I’m damn’ sure that’s what she’s aboot. Listen”—he pinned me with his eye—“let non’ of ye imagine that when God calls me I’ll be lyin’ in bed.”
I did not know what to answer to this. I stood there fidgeting while he held me at the rapier point of his eye. “What could I read?” I asked.
He didn’t answer me, but began a muttering tirade from which I could only pick up my mother’s name and Dr Stuart’s and the words “slow poison”—this addressed to his medicine bottles, which were kept out of his reach in case he hurled them through the window.
After a few minutes he seemed to remember why I was there.
“Read to me from the scrapbook,” he ordered.
This was a book of newspaper clippings covering the wrecks that had occurred during his years in the pilot service. I had looked through it in the days before I could read, and even then had found that it cast a frightening spell over me. There were photographs of ships disappearing under the waves and others of four-masters like the Holyhead helpless on the rocks. When I had first begun reading as a child a vision of the Rip had formed in my mind—a kind of hell of waters swirling over drowned men. I had never quite lost the picture; in fact, I had only to read of the Cheviot, for instance—about her back breaking and the people trapped as her bows sank—for this picture to come back to me.
So I read from the scrapbook to Grandfather while the room grew darker. Outside the wind was rising and the sound of the sea was coming in at the open window.
“Read aboot the Alert.”
This was another that had haunted me: the storm and the attempts to launch the Queenscliff lifeboat and the failure to save more than one man of fourteen.
I was reading about it when my mother came in with his tea. Grandfather looked at the plate and exclaimed, “Pap—nothing but damned pap!”
I left my mother trying to persuade him to eat it and went into the living-room to light the fire.
I was spoken to more favourably that night. It was a Monday again and not only had I read to Grandfather, I had also passed old Moloney’s test for the first time.
We ate when Grandfather had been settled, but in the middle of the meal there was a shout from him. My mother and father hurried to his room. He declared he was sailing through the Rip and could make no progress; the ship was drifting towards the Corsair Rock.
They quietened him and came back to the table.
“I don’t know how long this can go on,” said my father frowning at his plate.
My mother said tiredly, “There’s nothing more I can do.”
A few days after this Grandfather took a turn for the worse and they had to begin all-night watches again. At six in the morning I would be called in and while dawn crawled to the windows I would sit listening in the cold to his quick breathing, feeling more alone than if I had been in the middle of the bush. On one of these mornings I became aware in the half light that he was watching me.
“And what d’ they teach ye at school aboot evolution?” he demanded.
“Not much,” I answered evasively.
“But what?”
I saw there was no avoiding the subject. “That we had the same ancestors as the apes—” I began.
“Moloney teaches ye this?”
“Not that we are descended from apes,” I sai
d. “Only that we had the same—”
But he was taking no notice of me. “What could ye expect from a man whose father was a bog-struttin’ Irish peasant . . . .” His sentence ended in mutterings. I could only recognize the words, “. . . better that Darwin’d had a mill-stone roon’ his neck an’ been drooned i’ the depths o’ the sea.”
In a few moments he was breathing heavily again and loneliness returned to me. An hour later I heard my mother get up and begin breaking sticks for the fire and filling kettles and setting the table. Presently there would be warmth in the kitchen and I could sit at the stove holding the toasting fork.
“There was the Alert,” said Grandfather suddenly.
I said nothing, not knowing whether he was awake, or talking in his sleep.
“Ye hear me?”
“Yes,” I said. “The Alert—”
“If they could ha’ launched the Queenscliff boat, they’d ha’ saved them, but in that sea there was nae hope.”
My mother came in with a cup of tea. She said quietly, “That was a great help. You had better get ready for school.”
As Grandfather deteriorated he became more and more determined to get out of bed, and it was almost impossible between the three of us to keep watch over him. At about this time Aunt Ruby turned up. Perhaps I should say who she was and why she had been the centre of family wrangling. She was the widow of my mother’s eldest brother; in fact, my father always declared she had killed Uncle Bert through neglect. She would have countered this by shaking her head sorrowfully and declaring that poor dear Bert had lacked the faith to make him whole. My father would blow up when this was said and Aunt Ruby would release cascades of tears. No one could turn on tears or hysterics more rapidly than she could.
She was a short, plump woman with golden hair—rather tarnished-looking—and a pale face. She had protuberant eyes which went well with her capacity for pushing herself into other people’s affairs.
As widow of the eldest son, she expected to inherit “Thermopylae” and was always ingratiating with “Pops” as she called Grandfather—a terrible name for a retired sea captain.
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