The Scarecrow (9 page)

The stairway up to Mabel Collinson’s studio was as sharp and quivering as a chord on a cool vibraphone. One step inside the doorway, one step along the passage, and bang!—there was the staircase, steep as a fire escape.

The high, narrow, box-like building was as old as the town itself. It was at the very end of the main street, on the dawn side of the elm. Mabel Collinson had lost all but six of her piano pupils through breathing gin fumes and cigarette smoke over them, and, at her lowest ebb, making daring suggestions to adolescent boys. She was a beautiful pianist, and had won an open scholarship when she was ten years old. At thirty-six, her body was still youthful and lovely like that of Dorian Gray, but her face was the tell-tale painting in the attic. She laughed like hell when she lost a pupil because that night there were always midnight footsteps, flask at hip, hauling their way up those
bloody stairs. At ten o’clock one morning when a very frightened Mabel was feeling so ill she thought maybe she was going to die, she fell down those bloody stairs and broke her neck. This is what killed her of course, but actually she died of everything.

When Mabel Collinson played her Lipp piano late at night, her only audience was Sam Finn, the local halfwit. Every night he came and sat, across the road from Mabel’s place, on a gate which opened into a paddock.

The beautiful music entranced him and filled his simple heart with wonder. He hated the loud voices of the few late wayfarers who, heedless of the music, walked home along the middle of the pale road that ran past the old frame building like a stream. When the piano ceased to play and the light went out upstairs, Sam Finn would climb down from the gate and go peacefully back to his little shack and crawl into a brass bedstead beside his syphilitic, methylated-spirit-drinking uncle.

Although on the day of Mabel’s tragic fall Sam Finn gathered in his hazy way that something dreadful had occurred, he felt deeply that it was wrong for the beautiful music to cease and that, accordingly, it would still be somewhere. When the hours passed and still no light appeared upstairs, Sam Finn climbed sadly down from the gate. He knew that when lights went mysteriously out and blinds were drawn, people had often moved to Mr Dabney’s place, so he went on to the funeral parlour.

He stood for a long time in the dark alley between the Federal Hotel and Mr Dabney’s parlour, but, although he strained his ears listening, he could hear no sound of music. There was a light, however. It moved about behind the high, Gothic, richly-dight windows of the chapel like a will-of-the-wisp.

In the end, Sam Finn’s curiosity would be denied no further.
Agile as a monkey, he hauled himself up and stood tiptoe on a window-sill to peer within.

Mabel Collinson had always looked like a goddess to Sam Finn. Whenever he had seen her in the street he had turned and followed her along, making inarticulate sounds and pointing her out to people. One dark afternoon when a fine mist-like rain was falling he had followed her up and down the main street pointing out her nylon-sheathed legs, wobbling on high heels, to grinning shoppers; and that night he had taken off all his clothes and lain in the wet grass behind the gate and let the music of her piano, and the fine rain which still persisted, fall on him like a benediction.

To see her now, her head oddly askew, quite unclothed except for a nightdress pulled up above her breasts, sprawling beside a narrow box in the guttering light of a candle and with a trouserless man, a scarecrow of a man whose great, jutting nose cast a shadow like a cliff, crouching over her, fondling her, was more than Sam Finn could bear. Emitting an animal cry he hammered against the stout glass. Sobbing and snarling, he slid to the ground and began to hammer angrily against the door of the chapel. Upstairs in the Federal Hotel people moved uneasily in their sleep, but even when the clouds drifted on from the chimneypots and the yellow moonlight flooded their room, they did not awaken. No one heard the blood-curdling cry from the building across the alley. Or nearly no one. The timid housemaid at the Federal, with whom Prudence became associated in the days ahead, had an absence of personality which nominates her for this negative description.

Mabel’s mother, who had been married three times since she had been a Mrs Collinson, had an uncanny experience that
night and it lost nothing in the telling. She lived in Sydney, over a thousand miles away across the sea, and had not received news of her daughter’s death. She heard the baby grand piano in her lounge being played and it certainly was not her stepson playing boogie-woogie. It was hard to say just what sort of music it was. The weird melody stopped when, with shivers running up and down her spine, she flung open the lounge door.

‘I know you don’t believe me,’ she wailed on many an occasion from then on, ‘but it was Mabel. I just know it was Mabel. Poor, silly Mabel come back as a ghost to tell me she loved me and was sorry. She used to practise all day until I thought she’d drive me up the wall. I’ll never sleep alone in that place again.’

Sam Finn put up no fight at all. It may well be that his ghost was just as ignorant as the flesh-and-blood Sam and had no idea how to set about a haunting campaign. He had been known to disappear for weeks at a time before, and everyone, including the police, agreed that he must have done it again. It was the full moon, they observed. They recalled that his previous disappearances had always coincided with the full of the moon. Sam Finn’s uncle was secretly relieved as the days passed and Sam remained on the missing list, for he now had the brass bedstead all to himself.

Constable Ramsbottom and a little man from the Pensions Department went and interviewed Sam’s uncle. The tin shack was in a section not far from the railway station. The grass was nearly up to the roof. Around the doorway the grass was greasy with fat and urine. They extracted no information from Sam’s uncle, who leaned in the doorway, red-eyed, but they left something behind. The little man from Pensions was sick. This is why they failed to carry out their duty and search the shack. As it happened it did
not matter. Sam Finn was not there. He was never found.

Out in the pot-holed grass lane behind the railway station they breathed in the blended smell of locomotive smoke and cattle-wagons, as if it were attar-of-roses.

‘Although Oi say this as shouldn’t,’ observed Constable Len, ‘if Oi were Sam Finn Oi would continue to in-ker-rease the distance between moiself and moi last domicile with hevery hour that pah-hasses.’

The account of Mabel Collinson’s fatal accident reached the corner of Smythe and Winchester streets by noon of the same day, but it was long after I recovered from my broken rib that I learned of Sam Finn’s disappearance. In the same way as everyone else, I soon dismissed the information from mind.

The thing I was unable to dismiss from mind was the horrible story that began to circulate around Klynham. Mabel Collinson, such was the burden of the grim tale, had climbed out of her coffin in the night. Everyone wanted to believe it despite their horror. The fact that Charlie Dabney’s consumption of brandy had gone up a bottle a day in his agitation substantiated the story but also undermined it. There was always someone in the whispering group who was inclined to look sceptical. Then came the hysterical letter from Sydney, signed by Mabel Collinson’s mother and addressed to the Mayor of Klynham. The Mayor was seen with Charlie Dabney. People playing euchre forgot whose deal it was.

I tried not to think of Lynch and Co. while I was marooned at home, but as the time approached when return to the workaday world was inevitable I began to get frightened. It was no use deluding myself there was not a strong possibility they were still vengeance bent. Les had made a cautious reconnaissance of
Fitzherbert’s shed and the fowls had gone. There was no sign, he told me, that the shed was being used by the gang. Les himself had, so far, escaped retribution. One thing anyway, I reflected, was that as time passed the chance of the police being informed grew less, and, consequently the hold the gang had on me weakened. I was beginning to build a certain confidence in my own ability to bluff and I mentally took part in many dramatic sessions with the police, and sometimes the headmaster, in judicial capacities, and my glib tongue invariably worsted the Lynchites. Looking at things in the perspective which the long hours of leisure granted to me, I could see that their demands on Prudence had given me a trump card to play, and an ace at that. It put the enemy in a very bad light and made me out a real hero going through the agonies of hell with a stiff upper lip, for his sister’s sake.

As my daydreams got really back into their stride, I frequently thrashed Victor Lynch and sometimes Lynch and D’Arcy Anderson at one and the same time. One afternoon the frenzy of my imagination was such that I stumbled around the room lashing out and flattening nearly the entire Lynch gang, one after the other. After this I lay very still, fearful that I had undone all the good of my enforced inactivity and that my rib was worse than ever. The heavy cold and the long hours in bed had left me as weak as a sparrow. However, I planned to build up a terrific physique in the near future. Josephine McClinton was usually around cheering me on while I was beating up the Lynchites and in a way this always spoiled it because a change came o’er the spirit of my dream as it were, and Josephine and I used to end up being very naughty indeed, which left me miserable and contrite in spite of Herbert’s cheerful advice. According
to Herbert —oh well, there is no need to go into that.

By the time I had been at school a week and nothing desperate had happened, I perked up a lot but I still stayed within sight of the class-room windows at play intervals and, after school, I refrained from wandering down back streets. At the end of the week, on Saturday afternoon, I had the privilege of meeting Chester Montgomery. I had already glimpsed him in the distance riding the bicycle which had a triangular notice fixed under the bar, bearing the legend ‘A. C. Wilson, Family Merchant’. I had soon gleaned that Prudence and he had made each other’s acquaintance at the back door of her employers’, the Quins’, house.

Prudence had Saturday afternoon off and she arrived at home with her bel ami in tow just a few minutes before Les and I departed to view the final episode of ‘The King of Diamonds’. For the record, the character who sat behind a desk in a hood and pulled a lever, which opened a trapdoor in the floor, turned out to be the disinherited brother of Baron Duffelgeim. I do not think I have yet stood in front of a desk, being interviewed, without an uneasy feeling I might suddenly find myself precipitated down into a pit full of crocodiles. Maybe this deep-seated unease of mine was noticeable and prejudiced my interviewers, because I certainly have stood in front of a lot of desks in my time without being conspicuously victorious.

Les had been maybe a teeny bit prejudiced, too, when he described Chester Montgomery, but in the main outline he was fairly near the mark. He was no Fatty Arbuckle or Billy Bunter, or anything like that, but he was no ballet dancer either, especially viewed from the rear. I will not go so far as to say he had a squeaky voice, but it was high-pitched to emanate from a
bloke’s vocal box. He was fairly tall and he did have curly hair, sure enough, which bore out what Prudence had said, but I had to give in that Les was just as correct when he said maybe Chester Montgomery was the politest guy in the world. As far as I was concerned there was no maybe about it. I failed to see how anyone could be more polite without committing suicide in case they were breathing someone else’s air. Chester Montgomery would have sooner fallen off a wobbling bicycle than not wave to somebody on the footpath. He was that sort of person.

When Les and I left for the flicks, Chester was already chopping wood for Ma and saying over his shoulder between chops, ‘No, no, Mrs Poindexter, I’ll pick it up, Mrs Poindexter. I’ll pick it up, Mrs Poindexter.’ Bang, bang. ‘I’ll bring it all in, you just wait there, Mrs Poindexter, in case’—bang—‘there’s any of those chips get to flying around. Nice little tommyhawk you’ve got here, Mrs Poindexter.’ Bang, bang. ‘Whoops. No, I’m all right, thank you very much, only a bit of a cut, Mrs Poindexter.’ Bang, bang. ‘Oops-a-daisy, only a bit of skin, ha, ha. Soon have the old fire going now, Mrs Poindexter. Any time you want any wood cut, Mrs Poindexter. Any time.’

Les opened the gate for me and bowed, but I waved him through. He waved me through. We both bowed.

Then we got stuck going through together, so we had to try again. We kept on doing this until we felt we had diverted Prudence’s attention to us. She was standing on our broken-down L-shaped verandah proudly watching Chester Montgomery wielding the tommyhawk but, in the end, she could not ignore what Les and I were doing any longer. About the fourth or fifth time we got stuck in the gateway she let fly
with a hunk of coal and we took off down Smythe Street laughing our fool heads off. The really funny part was that no one ever used the gate anyway, on account of nearly all the fence being down.

‘A very nice and obliging young man,’ Ma said to me one evening, apropos Chester Montgomery. ‘Don’t yuh scoff like that about him, Eddy, as there are things yuh should know such as “manners maketh the man”. Not that I won’t allow he is a trifle on the palavery side and a bit addicted to over-use of one’s name, but all the same it is a change and a relief to have a man around who is polite enough to treat a lady
like
a lady and not sit guzzling booze, or snoring, while she chops wood and carries water, and never turn a hair, or do a hand’s turn like one or two I could name offhand, yeruncle, Mister Athol Claude Cudby, springing to muh mind at this junchuh.’

‘Please, Natalie,’ said Uncle Athol, who had made an unsteady entrance a sentence or so back. ‘Not in front of guests, Natalie, no never. Not in front of Mr Dabney, Natalie, surely.’

Ma looked out the door angrily, but a little anxiously as well,
because she was sensitive about being overheard doing her block by visitors, especially anyone as important as the local undertaker. There was no one to be seen, but just then the chain pulled in the washhouse and in a moment Mr Dabney emerged doing up his fly. He soon gave up such a complicated task and took out his gold watch to consult it instead.

‘Nothing but booze, booze, booze,’ hissed Ma. ‘A man in his position, inebriated. Disgraceful. With his fly undone. Disgusting. A mortician with a gold watch and a business and nothing but a wretched slave to the bottle.’

‘Sssh,’ said Uncle Athol. ‘I have news for you my dear, good news.’ He tailed off as the chain crashed again, abortively this time, and there appeared a very tall, very thin, sallow individual with deep lines around his mouth and black hair switched back over his balding head. This newcomer was dressed in a two-piece, pin-striped suit of some dark material going green with age, and a soiled white shirt held together at the throat by as natty a little black bow tie as one might ever wish to behold. I emitted a gasp of surprise as I realised this apparition to be no other than the sinister and scarecrow-like figure I had first glimpsed at the Te Rotiha crossroads.

Charlie Dabney was swaying to and fro on his tubby legs and holding up his gold watch at all angles to squint at it, but to the lanky and cadaverous stranger it was but the work of a moment to read the dial and acquaint the owner of the timepiece with the hour of day. For this service he was rewarded with a large cigar, a replica of the unlighted one being chewed by Charlie himself.

‘A dear ole friend of Mr Dabney’s, Natalie,’ Uncle Athol explained nervously and quickly as the visitors approached.

‘Right on tea-time,’ hissed Ma. ‘Yuh and yuh stew bums.’

‘Great Scott, what a wonderful woman,’ proclaimed Charlie Dabney. ‘What a won-der-ful woman. A ministering angel thou. Imagine ole Daniel Herbert cornering a gem of purest ray serene I mean to say, what, what, and ole Charlie still on the shelf, but I’ll tell you something, people—’

‘Are dying to meetcha, Charlie,’ said Uncle Athol. Uncle Athol now looked suitably apologetic at having stolen Charlie Dabney’s thunder in this way.

‘True enough, true enough,’ said Charlie Dabney. ‘Customers never answer ole Charlie back. Satisfaction guaranteed. Everybody potenshul client. Wanyah to meet dear, dear, ole frien’ uh mine, Mrs Dee-aitch, dear old frien’ from way back when. Great Scott I’m a poet and don’t know it.’

‘Hubert Salter,’ said the stranger. ‘De-lighted to make yer acquaintance, Mrs er?’

‘My sister, Mrs Poindexter,’ said Uncle Athol, hastening to fill the conversational gap left by Charlie Dabney, who seemed to have fallen into a reverie. ‘Mr Hubert Salter.’

‘Feel terrible, influctuating on yer like this,’ said the stranger. ‘Very good of yer I’m sure Mrs P., hope yer forgive the influctation.’

‘Not at
tall
, not at
tall
,’ said Ma, thawing out a lot. ‘Quite welcome, I’m sure.’

The stranger adjusted his bow tie lightly.

‘Take a seat, you men,’ said Ma, fussing around. ‘Here Athol, give me a lift out with the table. We’ll have Dad and Herbert home any minute. You’ll be having something to eat, you men, I suppose. Take that end, Eddy.’

‘We bought a beer or two home, Natalie,’ said Uncle Athol,
leaning towards Ma a little and smirking in his ingratiating way. His hands were thrust deep in his trouser pockets, the fingers twiddling with the lining. ‘Feel that the boys might like a quick glass before participating in yuh most excellent repast.’

‘Oh surely,’ said Ma. ‘Tea’s as good as on the table. All day in town and then beer at home, is it? I’m sure yuh friend, Mr Salter, is hungry by now and anxious to partake of something more solid than alcohol in a raw state on an empty stomach.’

The stranger, Mr Salter, fingered his bow tie lightly. ‘Perhaps Mrs P.,’ he said, ‘we might prevail on yer to indulge in a syrup cup with us. To be frank, I have had very little in the way of liquid refreshment, being as I am only a society drinker. I do feel, however, the occasion calls for a glass. With yer permission, of course, and only if yer will condescend to accompany us.’

He touched the end of his tie with the tips of his fingers as if he were lifting a rare butterfly off an even rarer orchid. Ma looked at his bow tie, greatly impressed.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I s’pose—’

Uncle Athol stumbled in with a bag holding half a dozen bottles of beer and dived out again to bring in two flagons of draught ale, by which time the tall stranger had procured a chair for Ma and prevailed on her to seat herself at the head of the table. He lowered her into the chair, gently holding one of her elbows and with his free hand stroking her back soothingly. I wished Les were here to see this performance. It began to look as if Chester Montgomery was only a novice.

‘Take a seat, Mr Dabney,’ I cried, taking the mortician by the arm, for he had begun to rock gently to and fro.

‘What, what,’ said Charlie emerging from his brief perpendicular encounter with Mr Sandman. ‘Great Scott. Wazzat?
Beer! Great Scott, the lights won’t go out all night.’

Pop and Herbert were late rolling home in the old Dennis and, by this time, they had missed a great deal. I ducked out to meet them. The tray of the Dennis was loaded down with junk, as far as I could tell in the early darkness, so it looked like a good haul. There had been the very devil of a rumpus about Herbert not having ever had a job and the upshot had been he agreed to go out with Pop that afternoon. Standing in the feeble glimmer of the headlamps while he guided Pop to steer the Dennis through the junk, Herbert looked as disillusioned as a stadium mouse.

‘Pop, Herbert,’ I gabbled, ‘yuh better come along in and see if we can get this man to do it again. He’s a friend of Mr Dabney’s, but acherly he’s Salter the Sensational. He’s toured the world hundreds of times. I tell yuh he’s got a bow tie and everything. Wait till yuh see this.’

They both looked so sour and sceptical, I lost patience with them and scuttled back indoors again. Just let ‘em wait and see, I thought. Sure enough, I had missed out on another act. Everybody around the table looked flushed and astounded and hysterical, except Salter the Sensational, who was modestly pouring himself some refreshment.

‘Whadud’e do? Whadud’e do?’ I breathed at Ma across the table. She shook her head wordlessly. The stranger put his glass down and put a big, brown, sinewy paw on top of Ma’s hand on the table. With his other hand he touched his bow tie lightly.

‘Yer see, Mrs P.,’ he said, ‘there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in yer philosophical, Horatius. More things, Mrs P., more things.’ His voice sank mysteriously. ‘Many, many, more things.’

The way he said it, made me feel the lights were getting dimmer. This guy was really something. Wait until I told Les about this. No one would believe me, I suppose. Just like Pop and Herbert, the ignorant yokels. They came in just then and even the sight of the beer did not seem to cheer Pop up much.

‘Here’s Pop, Mr Dabney,’ I said.

‘Great Scott,’ mumbled Charlie. ‘Dee-aitch where yuh been? Who’s dead, yuh old scoundrel? Got to keep yuh ear to the ground to make a pound.’

‘Danyel,’ Ma was trying to get a word in. ‘This is your turn to wait for yuh tea. I want yuh to meet Mr Sensational Salter, who has toured the world times without number and performed his feats in places which to the like of us are merely something out of the Arabia Nights. My husband—Mr Salter.’

The wizard, for such without doubt he was, arose with alacrity and, so great was his height, reached clean across the table to shake hands with Pop. Herbert, the clot, had vanished.

‘Yer must join us in a syrup cup,’ said Salter the Sensational. ‘Yer are a dealer, sir, I believe.’ Quick as a flash he touched his bow tie.

‘Thank you. Thank you,’ said Pop, managing to tear his eyes off the bow tie. ‘That is correct, Mr Salter. Thank you, a glass of ale will be extremely acceptable.’ Glug, glug. ‘Possibly I could request yuh to replenish the goblet. You are correct. I am a dealer of long standing in the locality. A dealer, sir, in antiques.’

I guess he was right at that. I was unable to contain myself longer. ‘Do the one with the teapot. Show us the India-rubber man trick, Mr Salter. That’s the best of the lot—’

Salter held up his hand. The others laughed at my youthful enthusiasm. Pop put his hand on top of my head.

‘For yer father, son,’ said the mysterious visitor, ‘I will perform an amazing and dangerous act of skill and daring seldom, if ever, witnesseth beyond the confines of the
mistykeist.
’

I may as well confess that for a long time, years in fact, I did not wake up that he was saying ‘mystic East’. They were favourite words of his, but he brought them out, after a pause, in such a sudden way that they sounded like one strange, outlandish word beyond our ken.

The enthralled hush as Salter the Sensational took up a position in front of the fireplace flushed a still sulking Herbert out of the bedroom. Now he was going to see something!

Slowly, our eyes riveted on him, the tall, gaunt man slipped his hand beneath the lapel of his coat. Dead silence.

The door opened to admit Prudence. She looked around the kitchen in astonishment.

‘What cooks?’ she said, and well she might have asked. ‘Ma,’ she resumed, obviously assuming we were all a bit loofy, and disregarding us accordingly, ‘Chester has asked me to go to the Film Society Club evening with him. It’s a Charlie Chaplin and it’s a real old beaut, he tells me. We get supper up at the rooms and I’ve had some fish and chips, so I’ll just go out without any tea, eh, Ma? OK? Chester’s calling for me just after eight.’

No one said a word because Salter the Sensational had withdrawn his hand from beneath his coat and was pointing straight across the room at Prudence.

‘So,’ he said.

‘So what?’ said Prudence.

‘Pru,’ said Ma, feebly.

‘So,’ said Salter. There ensued a long silence and then he
beckoned her mildly.

‘Come over here, mer dear.’ Prudence did not say anything, but she went slowly across to where the stranger was standing. She looked puzzled. Then she stopped dead with her hands on her hips and her feet apart and the bang of hair in one eye as if to say, ‘I’ll be damned if I’ll go any further.’

Actually she said, ‘Yeah.’

I had known for a long time she had been busy knitting a frock for herself. Tonight, I realised, she was wearing it, but I did not think it made her look as pretty as usual. The shade of wool was unkind to her complexion, but the frock itself, without doubt, did things for her figure. It was skin-tight for one thing and gave one’s imagination a back wind and downhill slope.

Prudence was looking up at the tall man by the mantelpiece and from where I was sitting it looked like a staring-out contest. Salter the Sensational gave his bow tie a gossamer flick.

‘Behold,’ he said, producing from under his coat the longest-bladed knife I have ever seen. It must be remembered this is some time ago, but I am prepared to swear it had a blade nearly a foot long. It caught the light like a mirror. Prudence started to scream, but he was still holding her eye and the scream faded to a gasp. We all gasped. I had my back to Herbert, but my guess is that he gasped too. Probably Herbert’s gasp was the biggest gasp of the lot, would be my guess.

Slowly Salter the Sensational arched over backwards, standing flat-foot and holding the hilt of the knife by a finger and thumb. Under our hypnotised and appalled gaze he lowered that impossible, glittering length of blade down his throat until his thumb touched his lower lip. It would have been possible to
stick a scythe down Ma’s throat, her mouth was open so wide. Prudence spun around towards me with her hands covering her eyes. Over her hair, which tickled my nose, I saw the great man withdraw and triumphantly spin the knife, clean and shiningly bloodless. He looked down in disappointment at Prudence’s turned back. His nose was huge, veined, pock-marked. I avoided looking at his nose. It was a spectacle I felt no desire to contemplate for a long period.

‘Great Scott,’ said Charlie Dabney. ‘At this rate the lights won’t go out all night.’ Now it was his turn to put his hand under his coat and produce something. He placed the bottle on the table and it caught the light in the same way the big knife had.

‘This is my turn,’ Uncle Athol suddenly piped. ‘I’ll swallow that.’ He cackled like an imbecile, but I looked at him with a certain admiration.

Prudence seemed to be settling down on my chest for the night. I put my arms around her. Then we heard the crash. Herbert had apparently been slowly sliding down the door jamb of our bedroom in a dead faint and had just done the last lap in a gallop. Prudence was the last to realise what had happened, not counting Mr Dabney.

‘Where’s that man?’ she whispered to me. I was looking over my shoulder at the soles of my brother’s boots. We pulled them off and got him into bed. A suck at Mr Dabney’s recently produced bottle helped Herbert to co-operate with us.

‘Over my dead body,’ protested Charlie Dabney when, acting on Ma’s instructions, I grabbed the bottle from under his nose. ‘Over my dead body. Great Scott, what’m I saying?
My
dead body. Who’s gunna foot the bill, thas what I wanna know.
My
dead body!’