by Nevil Shute
I tried to find out a little more about Stevie in the half hour that I was in the bar before I could withdraw without offence, but I did not get very far. He was much older than most of the men present, and he had been in the Gulf Country for as long as they could remember. There was a tradition, backed by the pilot of the air ambulance, that Stevie had served in the Royal Flying Corps in the 1914-1918 war, and that he had been a pilot. He was known to have been manager of Wonamboola station some time in the Twenties, probably soon after that war, but nobody was old enough to remember that time personally. Since then he had gone steadily downhill. He had worked as a saddler and as a cook on various stations at various times; nobody in the bar that night knew his surname and nobody knew of any relatives that he might have. He was now unemployable, but he had a pension of some kind that he drew from the post office. He lived with an old Chinaman called Liang Shih who ran a market garden ten or twelve miles out of town, and he helped in the garden in return for his keep. These two men lived alone. Stevie never had any money in his pocket because his habit was to go straight from the post office to the hotel and drink his pension before going home, but when his clothes became indecent Sergeant Donovan of the mounted police would wait for him outside the post office and take him to the store and make him buy a new pair of pants before releasing him to the bar.
I knew a little bit about Liang Shih, because he was the only source of fresh vegetables in Landsborough. At that time I had not seen his house, though I saw plenty of it later on. He had his garden between two long waterholes on rather a remote part of Dorset Downs station, about fifteen miles from the homestead. The waterholes were really part of a river that ran only in the wet season and joined the Dorset River lower down; in the dry the land between these waterholes was very fertile and adjacent to permanent water for irrigation. Here Liang Shih cultivated two or three acres of land and on it he grew every kind of vegetable in great profusion; he had an old iron windmill to pump water, and he worked from dawn till dark. He had a house built on a little rising knoll of ground near by, above the level of the floods. Twice a week, on Monday and Thursday, he would drive into town in a two-wheeled cart drawn by an old horse to sell his vegetables, and then he would go straight back home. He did not drink at all.
I met Stevie next morning in the street as I was on my way to the hospital. The bar did not open until ten o’clock, and he was looking pretty bad; his hair was matted, his eyes bloodshot, and his hand shaking. Clearly he had slept out somewhere, because his shirt and trousers were dirty with earth, and there was a little hen manure on his left shoulder.
I stopped by him, and said, “I got on Black Joke, like you told me to.”
He mouthed his dry lips, and said, “Good on you. They told me last night in the hotel. You’re Roger, aren’t you?”
“That’s right,” I assured him. “I’m Roger, and you’re Stevie.”
“Got a drink in your place, cobber?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t,” I said. “I don’t keep it in the vicarage.” I paused, and then I said, because his distress was evident, “The bar opens at ten.”
“Too long,” he muttered. “The last one, he was better than this bloody chap. He’d give you a drink any time. This mugger, he’s scared of the bloody policeman.”
“I tell you what,” I said. “Go up to my place, the first house this side of the church, and have a shower and wash your shirt and pants. They’ll be dry before ten, and it’ll pass the time. I’ve got to go up to the hospital, but I’ll be back by then, and I’ll shout you a drink for Black Joke.”
“It might pass the time, at that,” he said. “Up by the church?”
“That’s right,” I said. “You’ll find soap and everything up there. A razor, if you want to use it. I’ll be back before ten, and then we’ll come back here and have a beer.”
I went up to the hospital — I forget what for, or who the patients were. I didn’t stay long in the wards; I call them wards for courtesy, though they were no more than three bedrooms with two beds in each. When I was ready to go Sister Finlay asked me to stay for a cup of tea; they usually gave me morning tea when I went to the hospital.
I went into the sitting room where Nurse Templeton was pouring out. There were only the two of them to staff the little place. “I mustn’t stay long,” I said. “I’ve got Stevie up in my house waiting for me.”
“For Heaven’s sake!” said Sister Finlay. “What’s he doing there?”
“Having a bath,” I replied.
Nurse Templeton looked up, giggling. “He usually has that here.”
“Do you see a lot of him?” I asked.
“Do we not!” said Sister Finlay, sighing a little. “He’s a horrible old man. He gets drunk or gets in a fight, or just falls down and hurts himself, and then he comes to us and we have to patch him up. Last time he went to sleep in Jeff Cumming’s yard behind the house, and Jeff’s dog came and bit him in the arm.”
“Sister would have bitten him herself, only he smelt too bad,” said Templeton. “Here’s your tea, Mr. Hargreaves.”
“I made him go and have a bath before I dressed his arm,” the sister said. “Templeton washed his clothes and turned him out spruce as a soldier. But he didn’t stay that way.”
“He’s a bit of a nuisance, is he?”
She nodded. “He’d be all right if it wasn’t for the drink. It’s not as if he was a vicious man. But the drink’s got him now, and he’s got to have it. That, or something else.”
“Something else?”
She said, “He lives out in the bush, with that Chinaman who brings in vegetables. Out on Dorset Downs.”
“I know. I ought to go out there some time and visit them.”
She glanced at me, and hesitated. “I don’t know that they’re very Christian, Mr. Hargreaves,” she said at last. “I think you ought to know that, if you’re thinking of going there. I don’t know about Stevie, but Liang Shih’s a Hindoo or a Buddhist or something, and there’s an idol stuck up in a sort of niche in the wall.” She hesitated again. “It’s none of my business, but I wouldn’t like you to get a surprise.”
I smiled. “Thanks for the tip. Is Stevie a Buddhist, too?”
She laughed. “Oh — him! I shouldn’t think he’s anything, except a Beerist.” She paused, and then she said, “Sergeant Donovan took me out there with a party one day when they were shooting duck on the waterholes, and we looked in and called on them. Stevie was sober, and he looked ever so much better — quite respectable. The Sergeant says it’s only when he gets some money and comes into town he gets like this. He’s all right living with Liang Shih out in the bush.”
I left the hospital soon after that and went back to the vicarage. Stevie had washed himself and he had made an attempt to shave, but he had cut himself and given it up; he was now sitting on the rotten verandah steps with my towel around his waist while his shirt and trousers, newly washed, hung in the sun over the rail. Clothes dry in ten minutes in North Queensland, in the dry.
“I had a shower,” he said. “My word, I’m crook today.” He licked his dry lips. “You got a whiskey, cobber?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t,” I replied. “I don’t keep anything up here. The hotel will be open in ten minutes.” I paused. “Going out to the track today?”
“Suppose so,” he said listlessly. “I done my money, so I won’t be betting.” He reached for his shirt and trousers and began to clothe his skinny, scarred body.
“That was a good tip you gave me yesterday,” I remarked. “What made you think that Black Joke was in the running against Frenzy?”
“Aw, something was bound to happen in the last race,” he said. “Nothing hadn’t happened up till then, but something was bound to happen. I knew that three nights ago, out in the bush. I know when something’s going to happen — I do, cobber.” He rambled on as he pulled his dirty boots on his bare feet. “Pisspot Stevie,” he said resentfully. “That’s what they call me. But I know more ‘n any of
them. I’ll show them all one day. I know more than any of them. Mark my words.”
“Of course you do,” I said. “Come on down to the hotel and I’ll shout a beer, if it’ll clear your head.”
He came forward with alacrity, buttoning his trousers as he came. “I done my money,” he explained ingenuously. “I got to wait now till some other bastard shouts.”
“They tell me you were in the Flying Corps in the first war,” I remarked. “Is that right?”
“Ninth A.I.F. and R.F.C.,” he told me. “That’s what I was. Sergeant Pilot, maternity jacket ‘n all, ‘n wings on it, flying R.E.8s artillery spotting. Armentears, St. Omer, Bethune — I know all them places, ‘n what they look like from on top. I know more than any of them, cobber. Pisspot Stevie!”
He walked down to the hotel. “I’ll stand you one beer and then I’ll have to go,” I told him. “If you’ll take my advice, you’ll go, too.” He did not answer that, and when I left the bar he was deeply involved in rounds of drinks, and looking a lot better, I must say.
I did not see him that day at the races. He was in the bar at tea time, rather drunk, but I avoided getting drawn into the bar that night. I went to the dance later on to put in an appearance for half an hour. The Ladies Committee had done their best to decorate our rather sombre Shire Hall, and they managed to produce an orchestra composed of Mrs. Fraser at the piano, the half caste Miss O’Brian with her violin, and Peter Collins with his cornet. Everybody seemed to be having a good time and I stayed there till about eleven o’clock, when the fight took place.
It happened on the verandah outside the bar of the Post Office Hotel. When I heard about it and got out into the street to try and stop it, it was all over. The police were marching Ted Lawson off to spend the night in the cooler, one on each side of him dragging him along and standing no nonsense; the crowd were putting Stevie, streaming blood, into a utility to take him to the hospital. It seemed that Ted had been very rude to Stevie, calling him Pisspot, and Stevie, very drunk, had hit out at Ted and by a most incredible fluke had knocked him down. Ted was a man of about twenty-five, a ringer on Helena Waters Station, too young by far to hit such an old man. However, they fought on the verandah and with the first blow Ted knocked Stevie out; as he fell he caught his left ear on the edge of the verandah or against a post and tore it half off, which made another job for Sister Finlay. There was nothing much that the parson could do about it till the morning, so I went back to the vicarage and said a prayer before I went to bed for wandering, foolish men.
When I got to the hospital next morning Stevie was just leaving for the hotel. Sister Finlay had put a couple of stitches in his ear and dressed it, and he now wore a large white bandage all around his head. He had little to say to me, and we watched him as he shambled down the hot, dusty road to the town a quarter of a mile away. “I’d like to see him put into a truck and taken out to Dorset Downs, where he belongs,” the sister said. “He’s all right when he’s out there.”
“I could try that,” I said. “One of the men would run him out, if I asked them.”
“He’s got to have the stitches taken out on Sunday,” she replied. “This meeting will be over by then, and he’ll go on his own.”
The police let Ted out of their little gaol about the middle of the morning after giving him a good dressing down for hitting an old man, and Ted came back into circulation rather ashamed of himself. To make amends, for Ted was quite a decent lad, he went straight to find Stevie and to stand him a drink, so that bygones should be bygones. Bygones were still being bygones that afternoon out at the rodeo; Stevie and Ted were firm friends and half drunk, and the name Pisspot was being bandied about in the most amicable way without any offence at all.
That was the last day of the races, and there was a fancy dress dance that night in the Shire Hall at which I had to help in judging the costumes and giving away the prizes. Few of the men had managed to do anything about a fancy dress, but all the girls had attempted it and it had given them a great deal of pleasure; there were two Carmens and four Pierrettes. The prizegiving was not till about half past eleven, and when it was over I was shepherded into the hotel by Jim Maclaren for some refreshment as a reward for my labours.
Ted and Stevie were there, still drinking, still the firmest of friends, and Stevie was singing My Little Grey Home in the West for the entertainment of the company, singing in a cracked voice as many of the words as he could remember, and beating time with one hand. I stood at the other end of the bar drinking the one beer with which I hoped to escape, and chatting to the men. Presently Stevie saw me and made towards me unsteadily, clutching the bar as he came to steady his course.
He came to a standstill before me. “You’re Roger,” he said.
“That’s right,” I replied. “And you’re Stevie.”
He held out his hand. “Put it there, cobber.”
I shook hands with him, and again he held my hand. “He’s the parson,” he told the men. “His name’s Roger.”
I disengaged my hand. “That’s right, Stevie,” said Jim a little wearily. “He’s the parson, and his name is Roger. Now you beat it.”
The old man stood holding on to the bar, swaying a little, his head grotesque in the white bandage. It suddenly occurred to me that he was half asleep. “He’s a good cobber, even if he is the parson,” he said at last. “He’s a good cobber.”
“That’s right,” said Jim patiently. “He’s a good cobber, and he’s the parson. Now you buzz off and leave him be. We’ve got business to talk here.”
“He’s in the wrong job,” said Stevie. There was a long pause, and then he said, “He’s a good cobber, but he’s in the wrong job.”
“Aw, cut it out, Stevie.”
“He believes people go to Heaven when they die,” said Stevie. “Harps and angel’s wings.” He turned to me. “That’s right, cobber?”
“Pretty well,” I said. And beside me, Jack Picton said, “You’re not going to Heaven when you die, Stevie, and if you don’t stop annoying Mr. Hargreaves I’ll dot you one and bust the other ear.”
I put a hand upon Jack’s arm. “He’s right — he’s doing no one any harm.” To Stevie I said, “I don’t know if you’ll go to Heaven, but I do know that it’s time you went to bed, with that ear. Where are you sleeping, Stevie?”
There was no answer. One of the men said, “He hasn’t got a bed, Mr. Hargreaves. He just sleeps around, any place he fancies.”
I turned to Mr. Roberts behind the bar. “Got a spare bed, Bill? He should sleep somewhere on a bed tonight, with that bandage.”
“That’s right,” said the innkeeper. “There’s a spare bed on the back verandah. He can sleep on that.”
I turned to the men. “Let’s take him up there.”
Jim and Jack Picton grasped Stevie by each arm and marched him out into the back yard; I followed them. They stopped there in the still moonlight for a certain purpose, and then they took him up the outside stairs to the back verandah and deposited him upon the vacant bed. “Now see here, Stevie,” said Jim Maclaren. “The parson’s got you this bed, and you’ve got to stay up here and sleep on it. If I see you downstairs again tonight I’ll break your bloody neck.”
“Let’s take his boots off,” I said.
We took his boots off and dropped them down beside the bed and pushed him down on it. Jim said, “Want a blanket, Stevie? You’d better have a blanket. Here, take this.” He threw one over the old man. “Now just you stay there. Nobody’s shouting you another drink tonight, and if you come downstairs again I’ll break your neck. That’s straight. I will.”
“Harps and angel’s wings,” the old man muttered. “That’s no way to talk.”
Jim laughed shortly. “Come on down, Mr. Hargreaves. He’s right now.”
“I could tell you things,” Stevie said from the semi-darkness of the bed. “I could tell you better’n that, but you wouldn’t believe me.” There was a pause, and then he muttered, “Pisspot Stevie. Nobody beli
eves what Pisspot Stevie says.”
I said in a low tone to Jim Maclaren, “I’ll stay up here till he goes off to sleep. He won’t be long. I’ll see you downstairs later.” It was a subterfuge, of course. I wanted to avoid going back with Jim to the bar.
“All right, Mr. Hargreaves.” He went clattering down the stairs with the other men, laughing and talking, and their voices died away into the bar. It was very still on the verandah after they had gone. Half of the verandah was in brilliant, silvery moonlight, half in deep black shadow, hiding the beds. Under the deep blue sky a flying fox or two wheeled silently round the hotel in the light of the moon.
“I could tell you things,” the old man muttered from the darkness. “You think I told you something when I said Black Joke, but that ain’t nothing. I could tell you things.”
“What could you tell me?” I asked quietly.
“Being born again,” he muttered sleepily. “All you think about is harps and angel’s wings, but Liang’s a Buddhist, ‘n he knows. Old Liang, he knows, all right. He tol’ me all about it. He knows.”
It was somewhat dangerous, but the night was quiet, and I wanted to explore the depths of this old man. “What does Liang know?” I asked.
“About another chance,” he muttered. “About being born again, ‘n always another chance of doing better next time. I know. I got the most beautiful dreams, ‘n more and more the older that I get. Soon I’ll be living next time more ‘n this time. That’s a mystery, that is.” There was a long, long pause; I thought that he had gone to sleep, but then he said again, “A mystery. Liang says it’s right, ‘n no one ever dies. Just slide off into the next time, into the dream.”
