by Jean Devanny
Mrs. Curdy had at first been rather disgusted with her young mistress’s tastes, but time so inclined her towards the girl, who seemed literally all sunshine and goodness, that she grew to love even her “absurd whimsies,” as she called Margaret’s unconventionalities.
Little Harry knew the two old men who made his mother laugh so and also delighted in their company. Did they not produce all sorts of queer toys from the pockets of their old dungaree trousers? Harry’s nursery contained every toy Taihape’s general stores could produce, and some more that had come all the way from “Granma’s” in Wellington; but the arrival of Old Bill and George with some furry monstrosity concocted by liquor-inflamed fancy sent the excitable little chap into frenzies of delight that no costly manufactured mechanism could produce.
Barry and Margaret, by the way, often marvelled at the child’s preference for simplicity. In the little ditch running through the kitchen garden he had gathered all the old tins and boxes he could find, and from this dented rubbish even the most complex manufactured toys could not long keep him. Trains which rushed around little circular railways and blew real whistles were most engrossing—for a few minutes. Margaret would shortly find the new joy deserted and Harry out at his ditch with his old boxes and tins lined up, pushing them along with his hand and “pip-pipping” himself for a whistle.
He relished the company of Old George and Bill, and always shrank from the well-dressed and cultured who often stayed at the homestead. Tutaki was his big hero, on a par with his Dad, but the two old rabbitters came next.
Several times Margaret had expostulated with Old Bill and George regarding their week-end debauchery, but to no purpose beyond that of keeping them away from her for some time afterwards. Saturday nights and Sundays they drank and quarrelled fiercely or waxed affectionate as was their way.
One Sunday evening Barry, Margaret and Tutaki were sitting at late tea, dawdling over it as was their way. They were discussing the pros and cons of a world tour Barry proposed taking his wife on when their children were old enough to leave. Margaret had sensibly remarked that they might never get away if the family was going to be a consideration, as goodness only knew when the family was going to stop growing. Barry had admitted that that was something of a poser, but he didn’t see— And there stopped. And then Margaret had said decidedly: “Well, the family will have to stop growing, that’s all, because I am determined to go round the world. I want to go to the Islands first, among all the brown folk, Jimmy’s race. I want to go to New Guinea and see the head-hunters of the interior. (You need not laugh, Jimmy. I know they still exist, because I have just read a book of Beatrice Grimshaw’s.) And then to California. The sunny land; movie land. I’ll go to Hollywood and see all those infamous actresses and men-things that dance around them. I want— What’s the matter outside?”
She had been facing the big French windows that opened on to the shrubbery separating the house from the yard. Through the close shrubs she had obscurely seen a lot of men running to a certain point. Always inquisitive, she pushed back her chair and went to the window. The two men followed her. A confused babble of voices came to them.
“Must be something up. Let’s have a look,” said Barry. He unfastened the window and all three stepped outside and walked round to the front in order to get to the yard without pushing through the shrubs.
All the men around the place were gathered excitedly in a knot about one central figure who was holding forth loudly in a maudlin sort of way. “So help me Gawd I done it. George arst me ter do it, so I had ter. Yer can see that, can’t yer?”
“Why, it’s Old Bill!” exclaimed Barry. “Sunday, too. It’s not often—” But the group had seen their “boss” and all turned towards him.
“What’s up, Potts?” called Barry. Big Potts detached himself from the group and came quickly across the yard. The whole bunch then strung out behind him, Old Bill following dejectedly in the rear.
“Blamed if I know, Boss. Old Bill here reckons that he’s killed George. Cut his head off with an axe.” Potts laughed gingerly. Sundry half-hearted cackles came from here and there, following suit.
“What! Killed George! You’re joking—or he is.”
“Dunno. He says Old George laid down on the floor and arst him to cut his head off, and he went and got the axe and did it.” Potts laughed again. “Beg pardon, Missis, but I can’t help laughing, somehow. It seems so blamed funny, even if it is true.”
Barry looked at his wife perplexed; at Tutaki who was grinning broadly. “It can’t be true, Barry,” said Margaret. She giggled herself, a trifle hysterically, and clutched at his arm. “It can’t be true. He couldn’t cut his head off.”
“Come here, Bill,” Messenger called. Old Bill shuffled across to him. He was dressed in a flannel shirt and dungaree trousers. His long blonde moustaches drooped dejectedly; his hair was unkempt; his eyes bloodshot, and he stank vilely of stale spirits.
“Oh, Bill!” Margaret murmured and shrank back. She had not seen Old Bill at week-ends before. She had taken care, on Barry’s advice, not to. He did not notice her at all. He looked bewildered, lost.
“What’s this nonsense you are talking, Bill?” Barry asked sharply. “Where’s George?”
Bill’s old head shook painfully. He lifted up one hand and gesticulated aimlessly with it. “It was this ‘ere way, Barry,” he said. “George, ‘e ‘ad the dingbats. ‘Ad ‘em bad. Yer know, Barry, as how me an’ George ‘as always been friends ever since yer were a kid so ‘igh. (He indicated a foot or so from the ground.) I never meant ter do ol’ George any harm. He arst me to do it.”
“What! To cut his head off?”
“Yes; I never meant ter hurt ‘im. If I’d been sober I’d have known the axe was blunt. I ‘ad ter chop ‘im a lot. Poor ol’ George! He’d never drunk in week-days before.” And Bill began to cry. Big tears rolled out of his bloodshot eyes and hung trembling in the creases of his cheeks. He made no attempt to wipe them away.
The men all stood around uncomfortably. Barry looked around them all and saw that their incredulity, like his own, was turning to realisation of the truth of Old Bill’s self-accusation. Margaret realised it, too, all of a sudden. “It is true,” she half whispered agitatedly. “It is true, Barry. He has cut Old George’s head off.”
“There is certainly something in it,” he answered decidedly. “Hurry, men, with your horses. We’ll go over and see about this. Jimmy, will you take Old Bill into the men’s quarters and give him a stiff whiskey. Come in, Margaret. This is a terrible thing if it is true.”
Margaret followed him in, the prey to most extraordinary sensations. How to take this? She liked Old George. Old Bill, too. One murdered, the other the murderer. Nonsense! Bill a murderer! She laughed immoderately as her imagination conjured up the death scene.
Mrs. Curdy thought her a bit crazy. “I don’t see much to laugh at,” she said sensibly. “It will be a hanging matter for Old Bill if it is true.”
Margaret sobered up. “What! Hang Old Bill! But that would be a crime. A ridiculous crime. Why, they loved each other. Bill did it out of kindness. He said the axe was blunt.” And off she went again in a paroxysm of laughter.
Old established customs will not easily brook interference. Old George had been ailing: he had felt himself to be breaking up. Uncertainty regarding his habitual abstention from liquor during weekdays had troubled him for some time. His body felt the need of stimulants. But until this week-end he had not had the courage to respond to its querulous demands, not the courage to break away before his mate. But this week a severe cold had attacked him and given him an excuse. Then wet weather had confined him to the hut. What solace failing health, illness and dejection found in that bottled good cheer! Old George forgot his principles entirely. Bill shook his head dolefully over him and muttered incessantly. By Friday of that week George’s cold had disappeared—burnt out, but in its place was a raging unquenchable thirst, such as he had not felt since the halcyon days of his youth.
The mailcart replenished his failing store unsought. The apt cunning of Taihape’s hotel-keeper, long inured to back-blocks men’s customs and circumstantial needs, saw to that. When Bill came home in the evening he reviled his mate’s condition with prolonged and loud obscenity. George, looking like nothing so much as a walrus in an advanced stage of senile decay, lay on his bunk in a coma. Revilings did not reach him.
His poor old brain could not stand this treatment. On Saturday fanciful shapes began to creep gingerly within his ken; not particularly disagreeable shapes at first, only slightly awesome to Old George because of their formlessness. Their vagaries interested him so much as to keep him awake now. At least, he believed so, not being fit to take cognisance of his own ravelled nerves and general disorder. He swore profusely each time a shape eluded him. On the verge of giving forth some really definite image the thing would vanish utterly, leaving him an exasperated wreck. Ill-humour made him truculent. Well, he would fool them yet; only let him gather strength enough to get off his bunk and they would see whether they could make a fool of Old George in his own hut. He chuckled morosely at each repetition of recourse to the bottle on the makeshift table beside his bunk. His empty stomach groaned aloud. Violent pains began to assail his weakened frame. He fancied that his head was puffing out like little Harry’s toy balloons. So real was this illusion that he violently whistled the breath out of his poor body in an effort to stop the inflation. But to no purpose. He struggled upwards to a sitting posture and reached for the cracked mirror hanging by a nail to the wall above the table.
He did not expect to see more than a small section of his face, for by now his head was filling up the room, knocking against the walls, tapping at the roof. Great was his surprise to find his head the same size as ever. “Funny,” he muttered, and turning the mirror over gazed at the back of it, finding childish interest in the fact that the parts of the glass where the mercury was scratched off gave back no image of himself.
Poor dilapidated body! Poor emasculated soul! Making of its entrance into nothingness a passage of terror through a self-adduced hell! The dim, formless shapes became in time real enough, and with the assumption of definite form came also repulsive aspect. Terrifying menace came and lurked evilly about the hut. The prostrate man in vain sought relief from the scorching intensity of eyes which grew in number and size as the hours crept by and seemed to possess a rending quality as painful to him as the tearing of his flesh by redhot pincers. He thought he felt that those eyes of flame did eat at the flesh and bones of his bosom until they laid bare to his gaze his own soul-essence, a palpitating, leaden-hued mass occupying the cavity beneath the ribs.
Then hands came out of space, skeleton arms extended febrile fingers and raked at his soul-essence with long pointed nails. He knew that they searched for his sins. And Old George, whose only crime had been committed against himself, imagined that all the sins of the race lay at his door. And so long was the list that the enumeration and sorting of them by those hideous talons must go on from then through all eternity. In doleful agony he watched them tear each sin from that quivering mass and tabulate it upon space to the accompaniment of maniacal laughter issuing from unseen lips.
Poor Old George had forsaken the world of bottled spirits for a realm of monstrous imagery. The blonde Bill, coming in for tea, found him shrieking wildly the while he battled with a ferocious rooster that beat at him with its wings, clawed at him with heavy spurs and crowed defiance while coveting his eyes.
Old Bill was greatly upset. Here was a catastrophe indeed! He shook George to a kind of semi-consciousness and blackguarded him with obscene tenderness. He poured some raw spirits down the parched throat, and soon had George crying upon his neck, lamenting loudly: “Not for thirty years have I had ‘em, Bill. Gawd! But I been in hell!” And Bill soothed him roughly.
Now Old Bill was also faced with a dilemma. This was Saturday night. Did George’s need demand that he also break faith with custom? He was ten years younger than George, hale and hearty yet, not unduly weighted by his fifty odd years. Dejectedly he counted the pros and cons as he cooked a bite for tea, and he sighed as he decided in favour of renunciation. He put a couple of frizzled sausages on a tin plate and took them to George. “Come on, yer ol’ son-of-a-gun, yer belly’s empty. Get this across yer guts. That’ll soon salt the dingbats.”
George gulped them down almost whole and recovered himself for an hour or two, becoming almost cheerful. Which was bad for Bill’s resolution. For George, becoming cheerful, insisted on him regaling himself in his usual week-end manner. He climbed off his bunk with rheumy joints creaking and himself mixed a hot whiskey and proffered it to Bill. The latter’s eyes loved it; his throat furred up with desire for it; he put out a hand and then drew back. “What if yer get the dingbats again?” he queried suspiciously, standing before George with bowed shoulders and clenched hands held behind him.
George’s puffed lips essayed a laugh, nearly succeeding. “I tell yer I’m better now. Yer needn’t get boozed, anyhow. What’s a drink? Take it.”
“Er well— Mind yer, I don’t like it. Yer knows how I like it once I’ve had it.” He took the enamel pint mug and sublimely buried his nose in its contents. Thereafter, for an hour or two, they made merry. Bill and the bottle only parted company when George’s thirst required attention, with the natural result that while Bill slept the sleep of the moderately drunken, Old George again descended, this time with vivid and unmagnanimous ease, into the well of perdition.
Straining eyeballs searched the darkness. The myriad tortures he endured did penance for all mankind. What was that swift patter and clank of iron all round converging towards him? What the surge around his bunk? Climbing, flowing over its side, on top of him. Rabbits! Rabbits, thousands of them, millions of them, stripped of their furry skins, pinkish flesh closing in on him, and each with a trap clenched tightly to some part of it. Here a leg dragged from its socket, there two limbs cut nearly in two with blood-drops trailing around. Rabbits without their skins and in the devilish jaws of the trap. And something else! What? The man’s heart almost burst with terror. For each rabbit had a soul: a misty wraith accompanying it which gazed on George with eyes filled with the accumulated agony of all the rabbits he had slaughtered. The skinned things heaped upon him: he felt their bodies all warm. He felt the nip of sharp little teeth setting to to flay him alive. His madness whirled about him. Some way of escape there was. If he could only remember what it was he had to do in order to escape! What was it he had done to escape the nightmares of childhood? Ah! He had it. He had prayed. He had prayed to God to protect him. He prayed now. So fervently that God in His uttermost heaven must surely have lent His ear.
The rabbits departed. Sure enough they left him alone and conscious in the cool dark.
“Bill! Bill!” he croaked, sobbing for breath, shaking horribly with the terror not yet gone. Poor Bill’s drunken stupor heeded him not. In another minute he felt a fresh horror impending. He shrieked aloud, again and again. “Gawd! Gawd!”
And God came to him, but in what unfriendly guise. A vast resplendent figure came into the hut carrying what looked like twelve hat-boxes. Old George’s bowels turned to water within him, for he knew what was within those boxes. Each one contained an individual enemy—an enemy he had thought nasty horrid things about, that he had not dared to put into words. The apparition paused beside his bed and gazed at him with flat, contemptuous eyes. He put the boxes down, then out of each one in turn he lifted its occupant and confronted Old George with him. And with virulent scorn each one thundered forth the secret wickedness of George’s inmost thoughts regarding him, the thunderous tones being accompanied by an issue of flame which belched into the victim’s face and sizzled his flesh.
Of a sudden Old George was galvanised into action. To get away! Away from those frightful enemies! He leapt from his bunk, tore open the door and rushed outside. Away, anywhere, from that dread Presence. Up over the hills the pitiful figure tore, terror and p
ain lending wings to his feet and fortitude to his ailing body. But even the fresh night winds brought him no surcease; the cool dark became filled with hot needle points which jocularly jabbed at him, while behind him marched an enormous figure, surmounted by a great red hat, which kept singing horribly to him: “Keep in the middle of the road. Don’t look to the right or to the left, for Satan is a very bad man, and he’ll grab you if he can.”
By and by he fell exhausted, and a merciful insensibility made him its own.
When a remorseful but still maudlin Bill found him in the morning he was still unconscious. Spirits restored him to life, however, and he was able to struggle to the hut. Bill, stupidly shaken, drowned his remorse in the enamel mug, and sat down beside his mate’s bunk, determined to “do his bit” then, anyhow.
George was utterly demoralised. He was like a little child that had been viciously flogged for he knew not what. He was obsessed with the idea that even God had deserted him. Though never a religious man, this notion now that he felt himself to be on the verge of the grave gave him great distress. Bill exerted himself vigorously in efforts to convince the man that it was all a delusion, the “dingbats”; but to no purpose. Old George’s melancholia increased. Bill, distressed and troubled, cried sympathetically.
The climax came about the middle of the afternoon, when George felt another attack impending. He clung to Bill. “I can’t stand it, Bill! Gawd’s truth, I can’t stand it!” he babbled. “I want ter die, sooner. It’s easy to die. I’m an ol’ man, anyhow. If yer a real mate, Bill, yer’ll kill me before it comes on again.”
“Kill yer! Yer talkin’ bloody nonsense, an’ yer know it! ‘Ow can I kill yer?”
Bill looked wildly round the hut. So did George. Nothing in the shape of a lethal weapon could be seen but the wood axe standing in a corner. George’s eyes lit up. “There’s the axe. Yer can cut me head off, Bill. Oh, Gawd! I can see snakes now! They’re crawlin’ in yer whiskers, Bill; comin’ outa yer ears! And crocodiles! Gawd! My Gawd! ‘ave pity!” His eyes nearly bolted out of his head. Sweat poured from him in streams. He sprang up and rushed across the floor to the wood-pile in the corner, grabbed a log of wood and placed it in the middle of the floor. Then he lay down and rested his neck upon it. “Now, Bill,” he urged. “If yer a true mate, do fer me, Bill!”
