The Complete Stories of Alan Marshall

by Alan Marshall

  Mr Johnston received this information with startled indignation. He had just created himself a councillor and the feeling of power he had thus acquired remained with him just long enough to give force to his reaction. ‘Get out of the shop,’ he said savagely, thrusting his head towards Curly as if it were a weapon.

  But Curly was already on his way to the door. Mr Johnston stared after him, his feeling of power quite gone.

  The reaction of Mr Salisbury to Curly’s whispered revelation was one of astonishment. He was so honourable. He was so certain of the right track. He knew so much about sex. After this long time it was incredible; all that was in the past.

  ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed in bewilderment.

  Mr Simpson, after Curly finished speaking, suddenly realised with great clarity that the idea of a postmaster on his salary having a mistress was ridiculous and impossible. He felt he was surrounded by lying people out to ruin him. Here he was confronted by one of them, a man who would go around telling his friends, his enemies, everyone, that he was the father of Edna Green’s baby.

  ‘If you as much as mention . . .’ he began savagely, but Curly had gone.

  Mr Simpson, Mr Carpenter, Mr Johnston and Mr Salisbury came to breakfast in their Sunday suits next morning. This extraordinary departure from custom had an irritating effect on their wives who were suddenly reminded of their wedding days by these relics of past pride and promise. The dark blue suits bought for that occasion seemed to have shrunk upon the men they had married, squeezing from them the rich full life their appearance had once promised.

  ‘Why are you wearing your Sunday suit today?’ each asked her husband.

  Mr Carpenter explained he had an appointment with an important Melbourne agent; Mr Johnston had to meet a wealthy customer, he told his wife. Mr Simpson and Mr Salisbury were also meeting men they wished to impress. It was going to be a busy day for all of them.

  Yet none of them left for work with the optimism and confidence a day of such appointments would have usually created in them. They were downcast and irritable and waited in their offices for the opening of the courthouse at ten o’clock with feelings of despair.

  Edna was also waiting. She stood before the courtroom door impatient for it to open yet dreading the sound of it being unlocked. She was carrying the baby, now six months old, and she stood there clasping him close to her and feeling that in all the world only he needed her. In the tumble and sway of thought that held her motionless beside the heavy door, vague pleas for help struggled upward through this formless milling and poised captive behind her closed lips.

  Once she said aloud, ‘please love me,’ then hearing her voice she glanced around her with sudden fear, feeling she may have been overheard.

  Mr Carpenter, Mr Johnston, Mr Salisbury and Mr Simpson were standing on the edge of the pavement and could not possibly have heard her. Among the casually clad people collected there the four Sunday-suited men introduced a funereal note. They had greeted each other with pretended surprise, each striving to conceal the burden of guilt each felt he alone was bearing.

  ‘There’s a few interesting cases today,’ observed Mr Johnston speaking down as if to pupils. ‘I really shouldn’t be here but these local squabbles are really an entertainment.’

  Mr Carpenter was doubtful about their entertainment value. He felt that people standing trial for whatever offence, should be pitied. Mr Simpson and Mr Salisbury didn’t agree with this.

  ‘All these cases are really slices of life,’ said Mr Salisbury.

  ‘That’s so,’ said Mr Carpenter.

  They all imagined they were demonstrating a common interest with those surrounding them, but their Sunday suits removed them from these people waiting out of curiosity or in search of entertainment just as effectively as did the loneliness of their solitary sufferings.

  Curly awaited the opening of the door with no such despair. He had created a confidence independent of facts. This he clung to tenaciously. He paced the kerb with the nervous tension of a racehorse within sound of a baying crowd. He kept away from the group. Every now and then he paused and looked at the door. When it opened he sprang forward and quickly mounted the steps where on the entrance level Edna had bent to pick up her bag. He paused to allow her to enter.

  She did not look at him. She raised the baby to her shoulder from where, as she walked through the doorway, it looked back at Curly walking behind them.

  The baby had curly hair and brown eyes and looked steadily at the young man with an expression that suggested he had stolen it from this follower, such was the resemblance between them. Curly, looking into those eyes, was suddenly robbed of purpose. For a moment he was incapable of any emotion other than a hunger for this child so obviously his son. This love kindled in a flash of recognition, grew to immense proportions as he gazed. It quickened his breathing, became almost a pain then rolled within him transforming itself into anger and determination. He suddenly felt the victim of a plot to deprive him of his son, a plot in which Edna played no part.

  He moved quickly up beside her. ‘Here!’ he said. ‘Wait a minute!’ He spoke in the tone of one taking full responsibility for a situation that demanded resolution. ‘We’re not going on with this; he’s mine. Come on.’

  He kept looking at the baby as he spoke, moved by a sense of fatherhood, a longing to shelter and protect him.

  ‘We’ll fix this up all right. Come on over to your lawyer.’

  He raised his head and for the first time looked at her face. ‘It’s all right,’ he said gruffly, disturbed by the expression it bore. Everything will be all right. Don’t worry.’ Her face regained its composure. He took her arm.

  The lawyer shuffling papers at a table before the entrance of the magistrate looked up at the couple in front of him.

  ‘Look!’ said Curly not waiting for him to speak. ‘We’ve talked it over. She wants to drop the charge. It’s my baby. I’m marrying her.’

  The lawyer looked surprised. He rubbed his chin with a nicotine-stained finger while he mourned the loss of prepared eloquence.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Curly. ‘Ask her.’

  ‘Is that your intention, Miss Green—to drop the charge?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You are quite satisfied with his offer of marriage?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Sit down over there. I’ll tell the magistrate you are dropping the charge, that this man has admitted parentage and that you intend getting married.’

  Mr Simpson, Mr Johnston, Mr Salisbury and Mr Carpenter had already seated themselves. They awaited their destruction, laced and bound with a last desperate dignity. Case followed case but their expressions remained unaltered.

  When, finally, Edna’s lawyer announced she had dropped the charge and the magistrate had dismissed the case their relief for a moment deprived them of strength. But it returned as they rose, bringing with it a heightened sense of the day’s beauty. The street they faced from the courthouse steps was wide and spacious and comforting in its promise of security. They thought of Edna with kindliness.

  She followed Curly down the steps as he strode ahead of her carrying the baby. There was a flush on her cheeks and shyness in her eyes.

  Curly passed the four Sunday-suited men without a glance. But Edna looked at them—proud now.

  ‘Good morning, Edna.’

  They all greeted her.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Salisbury. Good morning, Mr Johnston. Good morning, Mr Carpenter. Good morning, Mr Simpson,’ said Edna.

  She followed Curly down the street, her head up.

  ‘I’m glad he did the right thing by her,’ said Mr Carpenter.

  ‘I suppose he did,’ said Mr Johnston. ‘You never know with people like that.’

  ‘I’m sure it will turn out all right for both of them,’ said Mr Simpson.

  ‘She’s a girl you can trust.’

  ‘Well, she’s on the right track anyway,’ said Mr Salisbury.

 
Singing to God

  She was standing on a box in one of Sydney’s side streets. A small group of people surrounded her, their upturned faces flushed from neon lights. It was a cold night and some wore shabby overcoats; but she had no overcoat, only a blue, woollen jumper above her grey, flannel frock.

  She was a thin woman, with a smile that contained no mirth. Yet it wasn’t an unpleasant smile. It gave one the impression of having been born of some astonishment experienced a long time ago; and the astonishment had never left her. Her eyes were wide open, a little distraught, as if she saw in the darkness beyond the group things that she did not understand.

  I went over. I took out my notebook to record some impressions. I stood beside a man who glanced at the notebook in my hand. The self-satisfied thrust of his feet to the earth was in keeping with the smug expression.

  ‘Are you a writer?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘I thought so,’ he said and he turned to his companion. ‘I can always tell ’em,’ he told him.

  ‘Besides Paul, who are the other ones, the mighty ones?’ cried the woman from the box.

  She waited for an answer. A fat man with puffed, unshaven cheeks who was standing directly before her in front of the group spat contemptuously. ‘Ah, keep quiet!’ he said disgustedly.

  ‘You are full of drink, brother,’ said the preacher.

  The words galvanised the man into sudden action. He snatched off his hat and threw it to the ground.

  ‘Who said that?’ he cried, and staggered sideways as if an attack upon him was an imminent thing.

  ‘Go ahead, lass,’ said a large woman, dismissing, on behalf of us all, this unimportant digression. ‘Yer’a great speaker. God bless ya.’

  This woman was very tall. She frequently turned and smiled benignantly on those behind her. Her powerful arms were folded across large breasts that lolled heavily upon her chest. Occasionally she nodded her head to selected ones as if confirming the arguments of the speaker.

  ‘You see, dear people,’ the preacher continued, ‘if you accept God’s word he writes your name down in the Lamb’s book of God.’

  ‘Hell, he must have a lot of pencils!’ said the drunk.

  This flippant remark expanded the big woman’s nostrils in the manner of a horse scenting battle.

  ‘I’ll hit him, s’elp me God I will,’ she informed us.

  ‘Hey!’ she addressed the man. ‘I’m big and powerful, you know. When I hit you’ll stay hit. I’ll slap you down, son. Shut up!’

  This aggressive remark momentarily sobered the man, who exclaimed in astonishment, ‘Well, PU go to buggery!’ He gazed contemplatively at the ground, adjusting himself to this sudden revelation into woman’s complexity. He fumbled for his pipe and, finding it, thrust it aggressively between his teeth.

  ‘Smoking is a curse, brothers,’ cried the preacher, pointing at the man. ‘Smoking and drink. Ah, people!’ she continued, clasping her hands in front of her. ‘You love your smoke better than you love God.’

  ‘Jesus would’ve smoked,’ announced the drunk in justification of the habit.

  The preacher, stung by this sacrilege, drew herself indignantly erect.

  ‘My God, smoke—never,’ she cried.

  ‘Good on ya, lass,’ cried the big woman.

  ‘Didn’t Jesus make wine come from the rock?’ demanded the drunk.

  ‘Do keep quiet, sir,’ pleaded the preacher.

  ‘Shut up, you,’ growled the big woman making a threatening movement towards the man. She reached over and grabbed his tattered felt hat. She threw it to the ground where, a few minutes before, it had had the significance of a gauntlet.

  Her action gave her the greatest satisfaction. She laughed in a manner that included, and made us, all a party to the deed. At the same time she subjected us to a leisured survey that forestalled criticism.

  ‘You with the cigarette,’ cried the preacher pointing at me. ‘Where will you go when you die?’

  I hastily removed the cigarette and wilted under the impact of many eyes.

  ‘I will save you,’ she promised me at the top of her voice.

  The drunk with great difficulty raised his leg and pointed the tattered boot towards the woman. ‘You old Jesus-chasers couldn’t save the sole of me boot,’ he cried.

  ‘Jesus will give you the crown of life,’ screamed the preacher exultantly.

  A one-armed man, upon whose hollow cheeks the fluff and dirt of his last sleeping place still clung to the covering of stubble, pushed forward and called out wildly:

  ‘For Christ’s sake take my life and be done with it! What’s the good of it to me.’

  ‘God said . . .’ went on the preacher.

  ‘He didn’t say not to have a smoke,’ interrupted the drunk.

  ‘. . . That the rich with their silver and gold are going to burn,’ she shrieked.

  ‘Listen to me,’ began the man with one arm.

  ‘Go ’way will you,’ growled the big woman who moved towards him as she spoke. ‘You’re only a lunatic.’

  The man raised his one arm defensively and backed into the crowd.

  ‘God can make a man of you, sir,’ called the preacher as he turned away from her.

  ‘Do ya reckon,’ he replied sarcastically over his shoulder.

  A small woman, her face loosely wrapped in an excess of leathery skin, touched my arm and said, gently, ‘Give me half a cigarette.’

  I held a packet towards her. As she drew the white cigarette out she muttered fervently:

  ‘I wish you luck. I’ll ask the good old Saviour to give you a go. My old Saviour . . . I wish you luck. I’ll pray for you.’

  She raised her eyes heavenwards and lowered them again. The one-armed man bumped her roughly as he forced his way through the group. She turned on him swiftly.

  ‘I hope everything you do hurts you, s’elp me God I do,’ she said savagely.

  ‘Why, it’s only nineteen hundred years since he was here,’ shouted the drunk in answer to a declaration from the preacher.

  ‘You know why he’s not here,’ she answered triumphantly. ‘He’s choosing a bride in his own image and the bride will be sealed.’

  This statement convulsed the drunk with mirth. He slapped his thigh and doubled up as if in pain. He staggered with laughter; then he suddenly straightened, feeling that the reason for his reaction was lost on those behind him. He faced them and, with one hand in the air, kept repeating:

  ‘Didja hear that! Oh, my God, didja hear that!’

  The woman on the box started to sway hypnotically. ‘Let your sins go. Let them go,’ she cried; then, with sudden power, she raised her voice to a scream, ‘We’re all dying. Everyone here is dying.’

  This dire prophecy jerked the drunk from a temporary abstraction. He looked at the preacher with his mouth open; then he turned to me and said, fearfully, ‘There’s something. There must be.’

  ‘Come to me all ye that labour,’ cried the preacher.

  ‘By God I’m feeling queer! I can see the light!’ announced the drunk to those around him.

  ‘Grace is the favourite of God.’

  The large woman who had moved so that she stood beside me bent to my ear and remarked:

  ‘Grace Darling wrote a book, you know.’

  ‘Did she!’ I answered.

  ‘You are a writer, eh?’

  ‘I do a little.’

  Her face assumed a conspiratorial expression. She opened a window in her eyes; then they narrowed and she whispered, ‘Like to come with me tonight?’

  ‘No thank you,’ I said.

  Her expression immediately changed, as if she had suddenly closed the window; and she exclaimed, with an air of dismissal, ‘Forget it.’

  ‘So you are a writer,’ she went on with a change of attitude. ‘So am I. Have you ever read “Tess of the Storm Country”?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wrote that.’

  ‘Very good, too,’ I said.

&
nbsp; The preacher had finished her tirade and had left the soap box. She looked spent.

  The big woman placed her arm around the preacher’s drooping shoulders and said, ‘What us three ought to do is to worship God on our own—meet of a night, like, and do some worshipping where there ain’t nobody drunk, or that.’

  She was interrupted by the drunk, who touched her shoulder and whispered, ‘Like a drink? I gotta bottle.’

  ‘Got any money?’ asked the woman over her shoulder, her arm still clasping the preacher.

  ‘I got a coupla bob.’

  ‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’

  She again turned to us and continued, ‘Just the three of us, singing to God.’

  ‘Have you been saved?’ the preacher asked me.

  ‘Come on,’ demanded the drunk, becoming impatient.

  ‘I think I have been,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ said the big woman. She patted the preacher on the shoulder. ‘You did a good job, lass; God bless you.’

  She took the drunk’s arm possessively and with confident steps piloted him away into the shadows of the little street.

  Festival and Other Stories

  When a Man Kills, He Runs

  In talking to old men whose experiences I feel would be valuable to me in writing, I am often amazed at the mass of words they use to convey their thoughts, the unnecessary and boring words that obscure personality and knowledge. Listening to them is like washing for gold. As you swirl the water in the dish nothing is revealed but sand. Sometimes in this sand shines a speck of gold. You grasp this glittering speck, the presence of which suddenly gives value to the sand, the revealing mark that illuminates their tale.

  I remember one such remark.

  I was driving along a rutted track on my way to a deserted mining field. The fragrant breath of the bush rose from the frail grasses and from the blossom on the thorny acacias that skirted the track. The caravan lurched behind my car like a drunken man. A long trail of dust marked my descent into the valley. Where I had passed it hung poised a moment then moved in languid coils through the trees, softening their stark outlines and giving them the appearance of ghosts.