“I found the needle,” I said very quickly, to get it over.
But I was glad to rest. The stack had been broken up, but we managed to find a nest in it. I buried my bottle of milk in the hay for coolness. George placed his carefully at the foot of the stack.
“My old cousin is terribly vague, poor soul. A bit hazy in her head. She hasn’t the least sense of time. If I tell her that I’ve only been gone ten minutes, she’ll believe it.”
I giggled, and looked at him. His face had grown much larger, his lips full, wide, and with a ripe color that appears strange in a man. His brown eyes were abounding as before with some inarticulate plea.
“So you’re going to marry Skinny after all these years?”
“I really don’t know, George.”
“You played him up properly.”
“It isn’t for you to judge. I have my own reasons for what I do.”
“Don’t get sharp,” he said. “I was only funning.” To prove it, he lifted a tuft of hay and brushed my face with it.
“D’you know,” he said next, “I didn’t think you and Skinny treated me very decently in Rhodesia.”
“Well, we were busy, George. And we were younger then; we had a lot to do and see. After all, we could see you any other time, George.”
“A touch of selfishness,” he said.
“I’ll have to be getting along, George.” I made to get down from the stack.
He pulled me back. “Wait, I’ve got something to tell you.”
“O.K., George, tell me.”
“First promise not to tell Kathleen. She wants it kept a secret, so that she can tell you herself.”
“All right. Promise.”
“I’m going to marry Kathleen.”
“But you’re already married.”
Sometimes I heard news of Matilda from the one Rhodesian family with whom I still kept up. They referred to her as “George’s Dark Lady” and of course they did not know he was married to her. She had apparently made a good thing out of George, they said, for she minced around all tarted up, never did a stroke of work, and was always unsettling the respectable colored girls in the neighborhood. According to accounts, she was a living example of the folly of behaving as George did.
“I married Matilda in the Congo,” George was saying.
“It would still be bigamy,” I said.
He was furious when I used that word bigamy. He lifted a handful of hay as if he would throw it in my face, but controlling himself meanwhile he fanned it at me playfully. “I’m not sure that the Congo marriage was valid,” he continued. “Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, it isn’t.”
“You can’t do a thing like that,” I said.
“I need Kathleen. She’s been decent to me. I think we were always meant for each other, me and Kathleen.”
“I’ll have to be going,” I said.
But he put his knee over my ankles, so that I couldn’t move. I sat still and gazed into space.
He tickled my face with a wisp of hay.
“Smile up, Needle,” he said. “Let’s talk like old times.”
“Well?”
“No one knows about my marriage to Matilda except you and me.”
“And Matilda,” I said.
“She’ll keep still so long as she gets her payments. My uncle left an annuity for the purpose, his lawyers see to it”
“Let me go, George.”
“You promised to keep it a secret,” he said. “You promised.”
“Yes, I promised.”
“And now that you’re going to marry Skinny, well be properly coupled off as we should have been years ago. We should have been—but youth!—our youth got in the way, didn’t it?”
“Life got in the way,” I said.
“But everything’s going to be all right now. You’ll keep my secret, won’t you? You promised.” He had released my feet. I edged a little further from him.
I said, “If Kathleen intends to marry you, I shall tell her you’re married.”
“You wouldn’t do a dirty trick like that, Needle. You’re going to be happy with Skinny, you wouldn’t—”
“I must. Kathleen’s my best friend,” I said swiftly.
He looked as if he would murder me and he did. He stuffed hay into my mouth until it could hold no more, kneeling on my body to keep it still, holding both my wrists tight in his huge left hand. I saw the red, full lines of his mouth and the white slit of his teeth last thing on earth. Not another soul passed by as he pressed my body into the stack, as he made a deep nest for me, tearing up the hay to make a groove the length of my corpse, and finally pulling the warm, dry stuff in a mound over this concealment, so natural-looking in a broken haystack. Then George climbed down, took up his bottle of milk, and went his way. I suppose that was why he looked so unwell when I stood, nearly five years later, by the barrow on the Portobello Road and said in easy tones, “Hallo, George!”
The Haystack Murder was one of the notorious crimes of that year. My friends said, “A girl who had everything to live for.” After a search that lasted twenty hours, when my body was found, the evening papers said, “ ‘Needle’ is found: in haystack!”
Kathleen, speaking from that Catholic point of view which takes some getting used to, said, “She was at Confession only the day before she died—wasn’t she lucky?”
The poor byrehand who sold us the milk was grilled for hour after hour by the local police, and later by Scotland Yard. So was George. He admitted walking as far as the haystack with me, but he denied lingering there.
“You hadn’t seen your friend for ten years?” the Inspector asked him.
“That’s right,” said George.
“And you didn’t stop to have a chat?”
“No. We’d arranged to meet later at dinner. My cousin was waiting for the milk; I couldn’t stop.”
The old soul, his cousin, swore that he hadn’t been gone more than ten minutes in all, and she believed it to the day of her death a few months later. There was the microscopic evidence of hay on George’s jacket, of course, but the same evidence was on every man’s jacket in the district that fine harvest year. Unfortunately, the byreman’s hands were even brawnier and mightier than George’s. The marks on my wrists had been done by such hands, so the laboratory charts indicated when my post-mortem was all completed. But the wrist marks weren’t enough to pin down the crime to either man. If I hadn’t been wearing my long-sleeved cardigan, it was said, the bruises might have matched up properly with someone’s fingers.
Kathleen, to prove that George had absolutely no motive, told the police that she was engaged to him. George thought this a little foolish. They checked up on his life in Africa, right back to his living with Matilda. But the marriage didn’t come out—who would think of looking up registers in the Congo? Not that this would have proved a motive.
Just the same, George was relieved when the inquiries were over without the marriage to Matilda being disclosed. He was able to have his nervous breakdown at the same time Kathleen had hers, and they recovered together and got married, long after the police had shifted their inquiries to an Air Force camp five miles from Kathleen’s aunt’s home. Only a lot of excitement and drinks came of those investigations. The Haystack Murder was one of the unsolved crimes that year.
Shortly afterward, the byrehand emigrated to Canada to start afresh, with the help of Skinny who felt sorry for him.
After seeing George taken away home by Kathleen that Saturday on the Portobello Road, I thought that perhaps I might be seeing more of him in similar circumstances. The next Saturday I looked out for him, and at last there he was, without Kathleen, half-worried, half-hopeful.
I dashed his hopes. I said, “Hallo, George!”
He looked in my direction, rooted in the midst of the Bowing market-mongers in that convivial street. I thought to myself, “He looks as if he had a mouthful of hay.” It was the new, bristly, maize-colored beard and mustache surrounding his great mouth which suggeste
d the thought, gay and lyrical as life.
“Hallo, George!” I said again.
I might have been inspired to say more on that agreeable morning, but he didn’t wait. He was away down a side street along another street and down one more, zig-zag, as far and as devious as he could take himself from the Portobello Road.
Nevertheless he was back again next week. Poor Kathleen had brought him in her car. She left it at the top of the street, and got out with him, holding him tight by the arm.
George was haggard. His eyes seemed to have got smaller as if he had been recently in pain. He advanced up the road with Kathleen on his arm, letting himself lurch from side to side with his wife bobbing beside him, as the crowds asserted their rights of way.
“Oh, George!” I said. “You don’t look at all well, George.”
“Look!” said George. “Over there by the hardware barrow. That’s Needle.”
Kathleen was crying. “Come back home, dear,” she said.
“Oh, you don’t look well, George!” I said.
They took him to a nursing home. He was fairly quiet, except on Saturday mornings when they had a hard time of it to keep him indoors and away from the Portobello Road.
But a couple of months later, he did escape. It was a Monday.
They searched for him on the Portobello Road, but actually he had gone off to Kent to the village near the scene of the Haystack Murder. There he went to the police and gave himself up, but they could tell from the way he was talking that there was something wrong with him.
“I saw Needle on the Portobello Road three Saturdays running,” he explained, “and they put me in a private ward but I got away while the nurses were seeing to the new patient. You remember the murder of Needle—well, I did it. Now you know the truth, and that will keep bloody Needle’s mouth shut.”
Dozens of poor mad fellows confess to every murder. The police obtained an ambulance to take him back to the nursing home. He wasn’t there long. Kathleen gave up her shop and devoted herself to looking after him at home. But she found that the Saturday mornings were a strain. He insisted on going to see me on the Portobello Road and would come back to insist that he’d murdered Needle. Once he tried to tell her something about Matilda, but Kathleen was so kind and solicitous, I don’t think he had the courage to remember what he had to say.
Skinny had always been rather reserved with George since the murder. But he was kind to Kathleen. It was he who persuaded them to emigrate to Canada so that George should be well out of reach of the Portobello Road.
George has recovered somewhat in Canada but of course he will never be the old George again, as Kathleen writes to Skinny. ‘That Haystack tragedy did for George,” she writes. “I feel sorrier for George sometimes than I am for poor Needle. But I do often have Masses said for Needle’s soul.”
I doubt if George will ever see me again on the Portobello Road. He broods much over the crumpled snapshot he took of us on the haystack. Kathleen does not like the photograph, I don’t wonder. For my part, I consider it quite a jolly snap, but I don’t think we were any of us so lovely as we look in it, gazing blatantly over the ripe cornfields, Skinny with his humorous expression, I secure in my difference from the rest, Kathleen with her head prettily perched on her hand, each reflecting fearlessly in the face of George’s camera the glory of the world, as if it would never pass.
<
* * * *
OTTMAR BALLEAU X 2
by George Bamber
Sometimes the labels are meaningful. But sometimes— This story is a careful, indeed painstaking. Imaginative extrapolation from the best available data on a major frontier of scientific endeavor; yet it is not science fiction.
Fantasy—subjective fantasy—is its subject matter; but it is not a fantasy.
Once, it might have been a story of daemonic possession; today, if is not.
It mocks certain of our most cherished institutions, with barb-edged humor; but it is hardly true satire.
If utilizes a distinctly alien viewpoint to accomplish an effect of horror; yet it is not really a horror story.
It is “S-F”; first-rate imaginative, speculative fiction. It is also, by the way, another FPS (First Published Story, for future reference)—and again, by an already established writer—this time of radio drama, most notably for the CBS Radio “Suspense” show.
* * * *
March 18, 1960
Ft Lauderdale,
Fla. 12:30 P.M.
Hi Red:
I just finished turning you off the television... but you were already off the air... (Hah, hah! Scared you for a minute!) Seriously, Red, you’re the funniest one they got on the television—hope to see more of you! (Hah, hah!) I never miss a show. People say you’re almost as funny as I am. (Hah!) You’re a lot like me. I say laugh and the world laughs with you; cry and you know what!!! I’m only kidding, Red! I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. You’re too funny. (Hah, hah!)
I just thought I’d write and let you know that everybody out here watches you. Never miss a show. When Red Time comes—(NOT COMMUNIST)—sets go on all over the world. EVERYBODY watches: Mrs. Kennedy, Jerry and Marge at their bar and grill, Mr. and Mrs. Nolan, Dean Rusk... the whole wide world.
I just thought I’d (squeak) write and tell you. If you’re looking for material, I guess you know where to come! (Hah, hah!) That’s right, ME! I’ve got close to 5,832 jokes written. A LAUGH A MINUTE! Could be worth thousands to the right party: YOU! (Hah, hah!) Others have tried to buy! But I won’t sell!!!!! I have them buried (so don’t worry, they’re safe.) I want to give them to you FREE!!! We can save the world!!!!! Write if you’re interested. This could be the turning point of your (hah!) career. Be sure to write:
Mr. Ottmar Balleau,
1365 Oceanway,
Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
SPECIAL DELIVERY
Don’t delay. Send in Today! (Hah, hah!)
Sincerely,
Ottmar Balleau x 2
P.S. Good luck on your next (squeak) show.
P.P.S. I’ll be watching!!!!!
* * * *
March 24, 1960
Ft. Lauderdale,
Fla. 12:30 P.M.
Red:
Excuse the index card. In case I forgot, my return address is:
Mr. Ottmar Balleau x 2,
1365 Oceanway,
Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
Keep smiling!
(Hah, hah!)
Send no money. IMMEDIATELY!!! Reverse the charges.
Ott. Balleau x 2
P.S. Help stamp out DRUNKS! You’re welcome.
* * * *
March 24, 1960
Ft. Lauderdale,
Fla. 6:30 P.M.
Dear Red:
I guess you’re pretty busy. That’s why you haven’t written before this! I’m just letting you know I can (squeak) understand and be patient. You’re probably a very busy man. With all those autographs you have to sign (hah, hah!). And all that easy MONEY you have to count. You movie stars sure have it (squeak) rough. Seriously: MORE POWER TO YOU! I just want you to know I’ll keep (squeak, squeak) waiting. When you find time: ANSWER MY LETTERS AND POST (SQUEAK) CARDS! Pretty smart writing on these index cards. I write all my jokes on them. Here’s one for nothing!!! WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE! (Hah, hah!) You can have that. Say it on your next program. I’ve got to (squeak, squeak) go to work now. Write when you have time! Signing off as the best friend you’ll ever have.
Ott. Balleau x 2
(Hah, hah!)
P.S. Have you figured it out yet?
* * * *
March 25, 1960
Ft. Lauderdale,
Fla. 12:30 P.M.
Red:
There should have been (squeak, squeak) a letter from you today. I went and told everybody you and I were writing each other. They just (squeak) laughed and called me crazy. I wish you would write me, Red. I don’t like to look (squeak) so foolish! Everybody around here laughs
at me. Only it isn’t funny like when they (squeak) laugh at you on the television. It hurts. (Just for a little while—hah, hah!) It would be (squeak), good if I had just one letter from you to show them. Then maybe they wouldn’t laugh. Do what you think is best, Red. You’re the only friend I got. (Squeak.)
How’s the weather in Hollywood? It’s hot as H----- (I said a dirty word) here. (Hah, hah!) Chin up. You can’t live forever! (Hah, hah!)
Please, please write me, Red. I get very lonely with nobody to write to.
The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 7 - [Anthology] Page 14
