A View
of the Mechanics Institute
In the morning, a rare cloudless sky. After breakfast Jenna
packed a light picnic lunch and they went for a walk. They had
found a way down to the shore from the rear of the cottage, a
narrow rocky path almost overgrown with bramble. It meandered
across the cliff-top for about a hundred metres and then dropped
steeply away to a shingle beach. Before they began the descent
Jenna paused and looked back at the cottage and, a little further
distant, Mr Kedgwick's neat brick bungalow.
'I can see Mr Kedgwick,' she
said. She rested her fingers lightly on Russell's arm. 'He's
watching us through a pair of binoculars.'
Russell looked round. Mr
Kedgwick was standing on his back porch. He continued observing
them through his binoculars though he must have been aware he had
been seen.
'How rude,' Jenna said. 'And
so open about it.'
'He used to be a coastguard,'
Russell reminded her. 'I expect he likes to keep his hand in.'
Jenna waved, flapping her arms
like a child trying to catch the attention of a watchful
parent.
'You'll fall if you're not
careful,' he warned her.
She lowered her arms. 'He
hasn't moved,' she said. 'Why do you think he finds us so
interesting?'
Russell looked down at the
shingle cove. The beach was deserted; infant waves were sucking at
the shore. Outside the heads there was a light swell.
'We're tourists,' he said.
'Perhaps we're doing something stupid.'
Jenna laughed.
'Of course! What could be more
stupid in this country than going on a picnic in April!'
They left the small hamper on a rock and explored the shore for
interesting stones and shells. The day grew warmer; the breeze
dropped. Before lunch, Jenna wanted to swim.
'You're mad,' Russell told
her. 'The water's freezing.'
She looked out to sea, only
half-believing.
'It'll be okay,' she said.
She stripped off, dropping her
clothes carelessly in a heap beside him. He watched her walk to
the edge. She stood a moment, uncertain.
'Go for it!' he cried.
She plunged in and struck out
at once towards the razor-backed headland across the bay. Some
metres out she turned and waved. Without thinking, he looked
behind, searching the cliff path and the grassy slopes above the
cove for Mr Kedgwick with his binoculars.
Watching her swim in the calm
sea, he imagined her, for the moment, drowned. He considered the
sequence of events: the search, the body, questioning by
officials, the drive back to London and Godfrey's ponderous
presence. Each step he carefully mapped out in his head with a
cool detachment that kept the sequence safely aloof from reality.
Not until he came to the part where the remains were returned to
Australia did he feel his breath shorten.
When he was small Russell used
to imagine his parents had been killed in a car smash and he was
sent off to live with some frightful relative that Hal had dug up.
Years later, Jenna assured him that all children fantasised about
being orphans. She didn't think he had been unusually morbid.
He continued watching as she
struck leisurely out across the bay again. He remembered how, when
his father did die - in the autumn of 1985 - he had thought things
would change. Not just Rachel's life and his relationship with
her, but everything that touched him; marriage and parenthood,
friendships, even the city he lived in - or at least his attitude
to it. He had never lost anyone close before, just the dogs and
white mice of childhood, and there was a girl he had taken out
once who was killed some years after in a motorcycle accident. It
seemed inconceivable that Hal could slip from his world and leave
nothing but an empty space: the urge to reorder his life, to make
things new, caught him by surprise.
In the event he did nothing.
He got used to Hal's absence, allowed for it rather than filled it
with something else. If Russell missed him, it was on those rare
mornings waking from uneasy dreams filled with his father's living
presence.
He was always careful to say
nothing of these dreams to Jenna. She was suspicious of the way
people sentimentalised their dead. She hated the way failings were
indulged, excused as something cosily idiosyncratic.
She believed it was
dishonest.
'It's how people cope,' he
argued once.
'It's how they forget,' she
said.
He thought it was a reaction
to memories of her own father who had died when she was sixteen.
She rarely talked of him, even in passing, though she sometimes
mentioned her mother in desultory conversations about childhood
experiences.
She had a sister too who
married an American student and went with him to live in San
Francisco. They phoned each other occasionally but rarely had much
to say. 'She's quite a bit older than me,' Jenna revealed early
on. 'We've got nothing in common.' Her sister was less tactful. In
a letter once, she wrote waspishly, 'I feel for that bloke of
yours, you know, having to put up with your shitty moods.'
Jenna's silences (her shitty moods) rarely lasted more than a few
hours, a day at the most, though after the night of the assault
they became more frequent. Sometimes they made Russell bitter.
One night, not long before
they came away, he noted that she had hardly spoken over dinner.
Earlier she had seemed quite calm, almost somnambulant as she set
out the plates and cutlery. He asked, as was customary, what sort
of day she'd had but afterwards couldn't remember what it was she
had replied - if indeed she had replied at all.
Perhaps it was Adrian's
prattling that had distracted him. He had seen an expensive pair
of runners he was keen to buy and was angling for paid work around
the house to help him save the money. Russell wasn't really aware
of Jenna's silence until after Adrian had left the room.
'You're quiet,' he said. He
had begun to clear the table. 'Something up?'
'No,' She kept her eyes down,
rinsing the plates under the running hot water with an almost
finicky care. 'Just thinking.'
'Well think aloud,' he
said
'It's nothing.'
He began stacking the dishes
on the benchtop beside the sink; plates first, then bowls, wine
glasses, assorted cups and saucers, Adrian's colourful mug: a
compact arrangement of domestic artefacts that Jenna once said
reminded her of the cheap crockery store at the Saturday
market.
When he had finished, he said
mildly:
'How can nothing be so
interesting it robs you of conversation at the dinner table?'
Russell didn't reflect on any of this. They'd had their spats
before; they kept them private, no one noticed: not even
Adrian.
Adrian, of course, was younger
then.
In some ways he was still slow
for his age. He wasn't backward; in fact he was quite bright,
academically, but there was something perennially child-like about
him. He reminded Russell, not of himself at his age, but a fellow
he'd sat next to in class, a clever studious boy, despised for his
cleverness.
Adrian's school reports hinted
at similar peer rejection: not popular in class; must join in
more; lacks effective communication skills. Russell had spoken
to him about it but the boy was difficult to draw out. He had his
particular friends in class, Russell knew that, reserved types
like himself. 'Your son is one of the non-aligned,' his school
counsellor told Russell once soberly. Adrian was more direct.
'Those other guys,' he said, 'they're just hicks. They're
boring.'
He was closer to his mother
than to Russell. When she began working full-time for the City
Council Adrian used to wait out in the street for her after
school. If it were raining he called in on a neighbour or sat
under the bus shelter at the top of the street. He never liked
being in the house on his own.
When he was small they
couldn't go out in the garden without him tagging along. Jenna
called him her shadow for the way he clung to her skirts. They
wondered at the time if it was something to do with the house. It
was old by local standards, built towards the end of the last
century for a prominent businessman. Rachel always said it gave
her the spooks but it never stopped her calling. Jenna said she'd
had her eye on the place since before they were married. It had
lain empty for a year or so but was in sound repair. When they
became aware of Adrian's phobia Rachel wanted to call in a
psychic, a crony of hers, to see if the house was 'unfriendly'.
Jenna (sensibly, in Russell's view) refused.
Adrian had no problem with the
house as long as there was someone else there. He simply didn't
like being left on his own.
The first time Jenna and
Russell went on holiday without him he stayed with his
grandmother. Rachel told Russell afterwards he didn't much like
being on his own at her place either. She was cross with him
because he'd stopped her from going to a soiree at the golf club
one night.
'He was sick,' she said,
'physically sick at the thought that I'd go out without him. I
just didn't know what to do.'
She waited until Jenna was out
of hearing and then told Russell she thought it was time he took
Adrian to see a specialist on child behaviour. 'It's not natural,'
she said, 'afraid of being on his own at his age.' Russell told
her he'd grow out of it.
The night of the assault he'd
left the boy asleep while he picked Jenna up from the police
station. He hadn't intended to go. Jenna phoned about
eleven-thirty, just when he was beginning to fear something had
happened to her.
She was a little facetious;
she was 'helping the police with their inquiries', and was
expecting a ride home later in a squad car. He waited about an
hour and a half and then went to fetch her.
Before he left he checked on
Adrian: he was sound asleep. Russell didn't think he'd wake before
they returned but he left the hall and kitchen lights on, and the
radio tuned in to late night jazz with the volume turned down low.
He scribbled a quick note: gone to pick up your mother, back
shortly, and left it on the kitchen table.
Jenna saw the lights as they
drove up the side of the house. 'You left Adrian on his own,' she
said accusingly.
Russell was agitated and
answered sharply.
'What did you expect me to do?
Call Rachel, at this hour?'
'I told you I'd get a lift
home.'
'I might've waited all
night.'
She gave him a curious pitying
look. Perhaps she thought he wouldn't see her in the dark, but the
sky was clear and there was the pale light from the kitchen
window. Despite the freezing air, his hands and cheeks felt as if
they were ablaze. To point out that it was the first she had
spoken of Adrian since he picked her up would have been cruel. He
was still only partly aware of what she had been through that
night. When they went inside she noted the message on the kitchen
table and the radio switched on though the station had gone off
the air. She didn't say anything but there was that look on her
face still.
The day after the assault Adrian came to see Russell at work.
Russell wasn't entirely surprised to see him though he was in fact
a rare visitor, despite the high school being only a block away.
His usual appearance would be in the afternoon on his way home,
sometimes with a friend (more often on his own) just to kill time
if he knew Jenna would be working late. He was never disruptive
but his presence always made Russell feel uneasy. He was the sort
of child who could seem intrusive simply by being there. All the
same, Russell was reluctant to discourage him: the visits were so
infrequent anyway, and there was always the thought that the boy
might want to talk something over with him, something private,
better discussed on neutral ground away from home.
Russell didn't have to ask why
he was there that day, slightly dishevelled, his face flushed with
excitement. He could hear him already, telling his classmates,
their heads pushed forward to catch every gruesome detail, 'My old
girl saw some guy knifed last night...'
It was midday. Adrian opened
his lunchbox and perching himself on a corner of a desk, unpeeled
a banana. Russell pushed his newspaper aside.
'All right, mate?'
'Sure.'
'Your mother told you..?'
He nodded. Russell saw he was
mistaken about the boy's appearance. It had come on to rain and it
was the run from the school gates that had brought the colour to
his cheeks. Finishing his banana, he swept a hand carelessly
through his hair and a few tiny drops of water splashed some
papers behind him on the desk.
'What did she say?' Russell
asked presently.
Adrian pursed his lips
thoughtfully, an exaggerated gesture that made him look slightly
ridiculous.
'There was a fight.'
'A fight?'
'Yeah. These two guys were
fighting and one of them had a knife. He stabbed the other guy and
took off. Mum went to Roe's to call an ambulance. She saw
everything.' He hesitated for a moment and then shot Russell a
suspicious glance. 'Didn't she tell you?'
'Of course she did, We talked
about it last night when she got back from the police
station.'
'The cops got her to identify
the guy with the knife.'
For the first time there was
an edge of genuine excitement to his voice but his eyes had begun
to wander. He was looking hungrily at a piece of pie Russell had
brought for lunch.
'You can have it if you
want.'
He picked it up gingerly and
started to eat with the kind of deliberation normally associated
with the very old. A ragged line of crumbs began to appear down
his shirt front.
'The man she identified,'
Russell asked, 'did she say who it was?'
Adrian laughed suddenly, and
then fell silent.
'An abo.'
'An Aborigine, a black. Don't
call them abos, it isn't nice.'
'The guys at school call them
coons or boongs.'
'If your mother heard you use
words like that,' Russell said, 'she'd thump your ear.'
'Yeah.' Adrian pushed the last
of the pie into his mouth. Russell couldn't say he seemed
particularly concerned.
* * *
He'd slept, he had no idea how long. He'd closed his eyes, just
for a second, he thought, and then woken with a start. He had to
think where he was.
Jenna was coming up the beach.
It was the sound of her feet crunching the shingle that had woken
him. She knelt heavily beside her crumpled clothes and tugged a
towel from the bag. Her bare shoulders were pinkish, freckled.
There were tiny scars around her neck where a bad season's sun
cancers had been removed.
'How was it?'
'Fine.'
'Just fine?'
He couldn't see her face,
buried under the folds of the towel. She rubbed vigorously at her
hair for a few seconds and then slipped the towel across her back,
wrapping herself in it, her fingers deftly tucking a loose corner
under her arm.
Her eyes shone. 'Just
fine.'
'It looks cold.'
'It's all right once you're
in. You should try it.'
He stood up and walked a short
way down the beach. He had this image of Jenna coming out of the
sea, quite unself-consciously naked as if she had just stepped out
of the shower. He wished he'd kept his eyes open.
Glancing quickly across the
headlands, he said, 'Old Kedgwick might've been watching you.
Through his binoculars.'
She laughed as he looked
round. 'I'd forgotten about that.'
She was on her feet, tying her
hair back with a rubber band. There was a trickle of water running
down the inside of her leg. Russell was struck by its meandering
course, like a slug's trail.
Jenna was watching him
closely.
'What's the matter? Something
on your mind?'
'I was just wondering how long
it was since we made love against the bathroom door.'
She laughed, uncertainly.
'The things you remember!'
During the weeks after the assault on Dr Christie Russell noticed
a change in Adrian's behaviour. Jenna noticed it too; he became
quieter, more reflective. They'd catch him sometimes observing
them silently across the table during a meal. If Russell asked him
what was up he'd simply shrug, lower his eyes and continue eating.
Russell found it curious at first, then vaguely unsettling,
finally irritating. He guessed it had something to do with Jenna's
'bad night', but he didn't know how to approach him about it.
Then the boy came to him.
He thought his mother was
cracking up. 'She keeps getting these cranky moods,' he said.
'It's a mother's prerogative
to get cranky,' Russell told him. He said she'd probably be less
cranky if he did more around the house, tidied his room, washed
the dishes once in a while.
'It's not like that,' Adrian
said. He sucked hard on his gums, testy, a little impatient. 'It's
since she saw that guy knifed. She's different.'
'It upset her,' Russell said
evenly, 'seeing something like that. What did you expect?'
'She says things.'
'It's just till the case comes
up. Things'll be back to normal after that, you'll see.'
Adrian looked away. A moth
blundering around inside a lampshade had distracted him. 'But that
won't be for ages yet.'
Russell picked up a newspaper.
The self-pitying whine made him blunt, unfeeling.
'Well it's no good moaning
about it.'
Adrian flinched and swung
round.
'You don't see!' he said
fiercely. 'You just don't see!'
* * *
'The last time we made love against the bathroom door,' Russell
recalled, 'we were interrupted. It was Adrian, remember? He
must've been about nine or ten, shaking the latch, yelling, "Let
me in ! Let me in! I wanna pee!"'
Jenna smiled. 'I
remember.'
'Something went out of our sex
life after that,' Russell said.
'What was that?'
'Spontaneity.'
They had settled down to a
light lunch; buttered bread, tomatoes, spring onions, pieces of
fruit. Jenna was buttoning her shirt.
'Are you cold?'
'A little. The sun's going in.
The weather changes so quickly.'
'Do you want my sweater?'
She shook her head. She seemed
preoccupied, eating with little appetite. Presently she said, 'Our
sex life was never spontaneous. It was always calculated, even
before we were married.'
'Do you think so?'
She gave him a curious
look.
'Don't you?'
'Well what do you mean by
calculated?' he asked.
She didn't answer. She'd gone
cold on the subject, or was afraid of it, knowing how the examined
life could disappoint as much as illuminate.
She stood up, brushed out her
skirt.
'I'm going for a walk.'
'Do you want me to come?'
'No.' She began moving
away.
'We might find a cave,' he
called out. 'We could do something spontaneous!'
She laughed without
turning.
'See! You're working it out
already!'
She walked to the water's edge
and stood for a moment with her back to him. Out to sea, rolling
and dipping in the swell, a fishing boat was returning with the
night's catch, a ragged trail of gulls in its wake.
Jenna returned a little way up
the beach. She had her head down, her hands clasped in front of
her, so like a penitent child he was afraid to look at her.
'I wasn't criticising,
particularly.'
'I know,' he said.
He thought she wanted to say
something else but she walked off without speaking. He hadn't
looked at her once.
When she was out of sight he
rifled through the bag for the heavy envelope he kept William's
letters in. Jenna was annoyed that he'd brought them. Earlier,
seeing him pack them in the side pocket, she complained, 'You're
becoming a bore with those fucking letters.'
* * *
June 1867 - You remember the tall gin we had in our care a
while back, the one who caused us so much heartbreak. She was
sighted recently by our neighbour, Mr Kingsley, who was visiting a
relative at Timbarra Station on the Tableland. Mr Kingsley relates
that, among the blacks there, he saw a very tall gin being
measured by a pair of scoundrelly timber-getters. It was our Polly
Longstockings, of that I am sure, though it is a pitiful state, by
all accounts, to which she has fallen. According to Mr Kingsley,
those two 'gentlemen', so free with the measuring tape, had an
easy task - she was wearing not a stitch of clothing, not the
flimsiest garment to interfere with the accuracy of their
work...
(There was news too of Matthew Gunn. He had been speared by blacks
in a fracas on the upper reaches of the river before Easter and
had died of his wounds. William noted, it was inevitable his
impetuousness would bring him to a sorry end. He learned
afterwards that Gunn had kept a native wife who had since returned
to her own people. His must have been a somewhat confused
sensibility, William observed, a remark Jenna seized on with
glee. 'Confused sensibility! Condescending little toad!')
December 1867 - I have heard further accounts of that gin who
lived with us, the one called Polly Longstockings. She is
cohabiting with an adventurer named Richard Canty. This Canty, I
am told, has trained to be a school master, but does not practise
his profession. I have heard nothing else of him save he likes to
talk radical politics when he has the grog inside him. The couple
have set up house at a place the natives call Mar-lin-gar-bar, on
the upper reaches of the river. They seem a most unconventional
match, apart from the mix of colour, though Mowbray says, in other
respects, it is a marriage made in heaven, between a mute and a
chatterbox...
May 1868 - Mowbray called yesterday with news of a libellous
document that is being circulated locally. Its Author purports to
be the gin Polly Longstockings, who was in our charge. The claim
is preposterous as the girl is unquestionably illiterate. When she
was with us Arabella often read to her, children's stories and
such the like, but the girl herself I never once saw lift a book,
save to stare goggle-eyed at the illustrations. This document,
according to Mowbray (who has not yet had the opportunity to read
the nonsense for himself), is supposedly an account of the
killings carried out by Matthew Gunn three years ago. I need not
remind you that this ungrateful gin owes her life to my unguarded
intervention. Mowbray describes the Account as colourful, by which I take it to be somewhat loose with the truth. There is
mention of Arabella and myself also in which - for all our
kindnesses and good intentions - we are shown in the most
uncharitable light. It is quite outrageous. Arabella, you can
understand, is most distressed. Undoubtedly this fiction is the
work of that charlatan Canty, who is trying to make a name for
himself hereabouts as a champion of the much-abused Aboriginals.
Mowbray says I should sue, but I will read the document for myself
before I take legal advice. It is not for me to further this
rogue's questionable career by acting in haste. The Account is so
extraordinary I can't believe anyone of consequence is
taking it seriously...
* * *
A month or so before they left Australia Russell sent Godfrey a
postcard. Jenna selected one at a newsagent, a view of the
recently restored Mechanics Institute. Russell had been thinking
of a more popular view of the city square with the flame trees in
bloom but Jenna reminded him that the terrace which housed the
Mechanics Institute was called Dyson Mansions. The name could
still be read quite clearly on the restored facade, just to the
right of the Institute entrance.
Russell hadn't a clue which
particular Dyson the building was named after - or even if it was,
in fact, named after one of his Dysons. Hal would have
known though Russell couldn't recall that he had ever drawn his
attention to the place. Why should he? Russell had never shown
much interest in his father's studies; conversely, Hal had never
cared much to share them.
With anyone.
Even the dry, carefully
researched monograph of his great-grandfather, which might have
found a readership among the more historically-minded denizens of
the city, he refused to publish. He did, however, lodge a
photocopy with the municipal library.
Reading William's letters,
Russell kept thinking how much more lively Hal's monograph would
have been if he had known about Polly Longstockings.
Jenna was curious to know why
he hadn't.
* * *
November 1868 - Forgive the delay in answering your letter.
This wretched business of the gin's Account preoccupies me. I have
enclosed a copy so that you might see for yourself that it is
filled with lies and misunderstanding. I cannot believe that it is
the work of the gin, though it is cunningly written in simple
child-like prose, realistic enough to confound the unwary. The
document, you can see, is a rough job, hand-printed - anonymously,
you can be sure - and privately distributed by Canty's
sympathisers. It is estimated that there are several dozen copies
in circulation. It has not had the effect locally its Author would
have sought, but the contents - in particular, the deceitful
references to Arabella and myself - have caused us both much pain.
Mowbray says we should ignore it; he says it was News for a Day in
town - for its novelty rather than its intelligence - and is now
largely forgotten about. He assures me no one hereabouts is taking
it seriously. On his advice, however, I have written a letter to
the Sydney Morning Herald, as he understands some copies of the
document have been sent to influential members of the Colonial
Administration. To my knowledge there has been as yet no official
response. Mowbray thinks it unlikely the matter will be taken
further as an investigation would be costly, and at this late
stage of little value. The killing of blacks is unfortunate but
necessary where the protection of property is concerned. Such
incidents are reckoned to be on the decline anyway, so it would
seem punitive measures, for all their brutality, have had the
desired effect. As for this mischievous document, its lies must be
refuted, its misunderstandings set right, hence my letter to the
Sydney Morning Herald. It is unfortunate Matthew Gunn is no longer
with us to make his own defence, but Mowbray says his reputation
was such that there is little in this so-called Account that could
further blacken it. If I protest then it is for my own sake, and
Arabella's, lest future generations, who might stumble across this
damning document and know nothing of its origins, misconstrue our
good intentions as exploitation...
* * *
Russell remembered Hal showing him the monograph. It was a
Sunday afternoon, Jenna was with Rachel in the garden. Hal
beckoned him into his study. There was an odd look on his face
which Russell described later to Jenna as a sort of sheepish
pride. 'Bit of a dull boy, our William, I'm afraid,' Hal said,
sounding neither surprised nor particularly sorry. 'No skeletons
rattling in the closet here.'
It was a spare work, a dozen
or so spaciously typed pages, the bare life of a man who had
selected and farmed two or three hundred scrubby acres of river
country from the mid 1860s till his death in 1901, the year of
Federation.
Russell read the work more out
of a sense of duty than of any particular interest. Had the spirit
of Polly Longstockings haunted the pages, or that of the
troublesome Richard Canty, he might have been more enthused.
Instead he noted dates, names, tables of figures, references to
Crown Land Acts: a terrain as arid as the land that William had
striven to cultivate. He made a success of it of sorts, dying
contentedly in his own bed at the age of eighty, owing - as Hal
put - not a sou to a soul. His sons, alas (theirs, curiously, was
a bloodline dominated by males) were built of less sturdy stuff.
When the property was finally sold - to a pastoral company after
the First World War - the Dysons had already begun to drift away.
Some settled the slopes and valleys to the west: others discovered
new lives as hoteliers, clerks, motor mechanics in the coastal
towns and cities to the east.
'The ubiquitous Dysons,' Hal
used to say with a dry cough. 'There are none so famous as the
common-named.' During the thirties, one Dyson, a distant cousin of
Hal's father, achieved rare prominence by serving a short term as
city mayor: his portrait hung in the civic chambers along side
those of other city fathers. To Hal, he was always 'the
rogue'.
Reading William's letters,
Russell warmed to this man, his ancestor: he was grateful for the
flesh those yellowing pages put around Hal's dry archival bones.
He read them as Marcus in London might have read them, with some
amusement, a little sadness and anger, lingering disquiet at the
uncertainties. Of course, he had Hal's monograph and the judgement
of history to attest to William's survival.
For Marcus, there was one last
letter.
* * *
March 1869 - In town last week I was brought face to face,
through a mutual acquaintance, with Richard Canty, Author of the
so-called gin's Account. He is a striking fellow, about 30 years,
tall and ginger-haired with a full beard. He was surprisingly
courteous, and listened quietly while I gave him my mind about
that fraudulent document, full of lies and concoctions enough to
damage a man's reputation, if ever it had been taken half
seriously. He made no apology, but insisted that it was the gin's
Own Story, and that he for one had been persuaded of the truth of
it. Her Own Story, I echoed (permit me, brother, a little
dramatisation), and how did she convey this interesting tale? In
Sign Language? For it is well known that the gin can neither write
nor speak for herself. He agreed that she could not write, and
then made the curious charge that her command of the English
language was as good, if not better, than any Irishman's, and that
if I had never heard her make use of it, it was because for all
the months she was in my care I had forbidden her to do so. I confess I was so taken aback by this extraordinary statement I
was quite unable to answer it. Mr Crozier, our mutual
acquaintance, gave a little embarrassed cough, and Canty made his
escape. I reflected afterwards that it was odd, given my
inhumanity, that this particular outrage - as monstrous as all the
others of which I had been accused - had not been mentioned in the
gin's Own Story. Mr Crozier, laughing, agreed that it was indeed
strange. I asked if he knew for certain whether Canty and the gin
were still cohabiting, and he replied that he did not. Needless to
say, I have said nothing of this latest charge to Arabella, for
though it is easily laughed at, I fear the injustice of the
earlier accusations has severely affected her sense of humour...
* * *
The afternoon had begun to draw in. Russell lay on the shingle,
drowsy, his eyes closed. Listening for Jenna's return, he heard
only the sea, and the gulls' cries, and the stiffening breeze
whistling through fissures in the cliff face.
Earlier, he had watched Jenna
climb the grassy knoll of the headland to the north. There was a
cairn or obelisk of some sort at the summit where she paused and
looked around. He waited for a moment and then raised his arm,
gesturing to catch her attention, but already she was looking
away. Returning to William's letters, he glanced up again a minute
or so later, expecting to see her striking out along the ridge
towards the point. She was nowhere to be seen.
Later he grew restless.
Finding a stick, he probed some rock pools for crabs and molluscs.
Tiring of that, he started to follow the track Jenna had taken up
to the headland, but, thinking he might miss her if she came back
by a different path, he returned to the beach. He poured a cup of
tepid coffee from the flask, and waited.
Again he slept, waking to feel
the chill of the surrendering day. Looking up at the headland, he
saw a movement. Jenna, he thought, at last! Jumping to his feet,
he limbered up a little. The figure on the headland was still
there. He looked again, more closely. It was the obelisk,
shimmering in the late afternoon light.
At first he was angry. He
thought back to the conversation they'd had earlier and tried to
remember what had been said that might have upset her. He was
certain by now that she'd gone back to the cottage without him. He
waited a moment longer and then packed the bag and hamper. The
light was fading.
Picking his way up the cliff
path, he grew anxious. The cottage was in darkness. He emptied the
bag and the hamper, and turned on the radio. He occupied himself
with small matters. Along the lane, Mr Kedgwick had set a fire in
the grate: thick smoke rose from the chimney, there was the smell
of paraffin.
How long should he wait before
moving? He was sure if he waited she would soon come. He kept his
head. He cut sandwiches for tea, listening for her tired tread on
the path. Night fell, and he was listening still.
The Lizard | Panatellas | A View of the Mechanics
Institute | Disinterested Bystanders | The Finding of Solitude | Unfinished Business | Table of Contents