The True Story of Spit MacPhee (11 page)

Ben had been so rarely disobedient that this was a new experience for him too. He had lived his life unable and unwanting to escape obedience, or the moral guidance of his forceful mother. Moreover he was afraid of all violence, so that in character he should have missed his meal rather than taken a hiding. But Spit’s offhand acceptance of a hiding, together with a new hope in a friendship restored, gave Ben enough courage to say, ‘I’d sooner the hiding than miss my lunch.’

Betty Arbuckle, in her Australian way, was not without a sense of humour, and she also knew her son. ‘Are you sure you want to be brave?’ she said to him.

Ben kept his eyes down, knowing that if he looked up at his mother he would collapse.

‘You’re a very bad influence, Spit,’ Betty said calmly, ‘and you won’t like it,’ she said to her son. She called Frank and told him to get the strap.

‘I thought they were going to do without their dinner,’ Frank said to her.

‘They decided to take a hiding, so we’ll have to make it clear to Ben that he must not be led astray. And we have to show Spit that he can’t lead others into temptation. You’ve got to learn not to be wicked,’ she said to Spit.

‘What’s wicked about it?’ Spit protested. ‘I was just …’

‘Please don’t answer back,’ Betty Arbuckle told him in her troubled voice. ‘And don’t shout at me like a navvy. You’ll have to change your awful ways, Spit, and I’m only thankful that Joannie’s not here to see what you’ve done to Ben.’

Frank Arbuckle had his razor strop in hand, a long double layer of leather with a metal hook at one end and a thickened handle of leather at the other. It was gashed with the cuts of a mishandled razor, and oily with lubricants like old Fyfe’s own strop. Spit looked at it, judged its effectiveness, looked closely too at Frank Arbuckle who seemed unhappy and nervous, and decided that it was bolder to bend over willingly and submit rather than struggle and make it difficult.

‘Bend over the chair, Spit,’ Frank said.

Spit did so without hesitation, but Frank’s first blow surprised him with the force because he had forgotten that Frank Arbuckle had a lot to remember him by. Spit had made too much trouble for him with the water mains to be easily forgiven, and Frank was not going to let this opportunity pass. In Frank Arbuckle’s delayed punishment Spit felt the strop scour his flesh:
one, two, three, four …

‘How many, Bet?’ Frank Arbuckle said. ‘Is that enough?’

‘I don’t know, Frank. Give him at least half a dozen, so that he learns his lesson.’ Betty was firm, but she wouldn’t watch.

Spit flinched each time but he bore the half dozen successfully, though he knew that one or two more could have wrecked his determination not to cry out. As he straightened up he caught sight of Ben’s face, and though he said loudly, ‘You didn’t hurt me,’ Ben was unconvinced, and after two blows from his father he was in tears.

‘I told you, Ben,’ Betty Arbuckle said, almost in tears herself. ‘I
told
you. And it’s for your own good because you must not be tempted.’

Spit watched the blows, and though they were serious enough they were not as forceful as the ones he had taken on his own backside. But since it was simply a matter of an eye for an eye now, Spit didn’t mind Ben’s milder punishment because he knew that at the first opportunity he would block a water valve again.

What puzzled Spit was Betty Arbuckle’s concern over dinner that he should get enough to eat. She offered him more potatoes and peas, and encouraged him to eat. She was a good cook, better than Spit’s grandfather, and better than Spit himself who knew how to roast a leg of lamb. She was lavish with the bread and butter pudding, which normally Spit would not have looked at. He did not like milk. But he had to admit that Betty Arbuckle had made a delicious pudding of it. A cup of hot, sweet tea and Spit was satisfied, waiting now for Ben who was a slow and careful eater.

When Ben had finished, Betty Arbuckle gave them both a small square of torn white cloth, part of an old sheet, and she told Spit to wipe his hands and his mouth clean before she thanked the Lord for what they had received.

Spit followed Ben’s example, and though he knew that grace was usually said before a meal rather than after it he listened as Betty Arbuckle thanked the Lord Jesus for His benefice, for His grace abounding and for His harvest of good for their bodies’ health. He didn’t bend his head or close his eyes, like Ben, but he watched Betty Arbuckle, fingers tightly laced together, her head held high in some secret esteem, her eyes closed, and Spit saw a beautiful woman in a moment of ecstasy. He could remember his mother, but only in confusion – his mother with an unblemished face and then his mother with the disfigured face which she had tried to hide from him, although he had seen it enough to remember it. After her death his only contact with women had been his business affairs at back doors, or an exchange of greetings, or lately his friendship with Sadie and her mother. But it was this woman whom he had insulted and punished, and who had punished him in return and threatened him, and who now had a veto on everything he did – it was this one who puzzled him with her conventions for sin and her begging appeals to the Lord to save her from wickedness. She fascinated him and frightened him, and he wished his grandfather would get better, even if he couldn’t re-build the boiler. He wished above all that he could run away, because he knew for sure now that Betty Arbuckle’s determination to do what was best for him would sooner or later end in the Boys Home in Bendigo, and he didn’t know how he was going to escape that.

He decided in self-defence and as a temporary measure to do as he was told. He managed to get through the rest of the day helping Ben in the garden, mowing the lawn and trimming the already trimmed hedges. The interior walls of Betty Arbuckle’s small house were bare of anything from floor to ceiling, because to Betty a picture on a wall was a wicked indulgence. Yet her garden plot was a gem, as if in suppressing her own temporal beauty she had to protect its equal in nature with roses, violets, pansies, zinnias, lilies, dahlias, little vines, passionfruit, and a neat lawn. It was one of the loveliest gardens in St Helen, and Spit liked it.

At night, sitting next to Ben’s sister, Joannie, who moved a few inches away from him because she whispered to him, ‘You smell,’ he had to repeat the words of the grace after the meal, and before Betty Arbuckle put him down in the hard but comfortable little bed made of an old door with a mattress on fruit boxes, she insisted that he say, as a fledgling in prayer, that now he lay himself down to sleep he must pray the Lord his soul to keep, and if he should die before he was awake, he pray the Lord his soul to take.

He could accept that, but what was still difficult for him were clothes and the socks and the boots he would have to put on in the morning if he was going to be allowed to see his grandfather.

‘We have to begin right, Spit,’ Betty Arbuckle said in a kindly way. ‘So, starting today, you won’t be running around like an African heathen any more.’

Spit had never worn boots and grey woollen socks in his life and he felt like a stranger to himself as he set out for the hospital next morning, his borrowed boots hitting the dirt pavement like horses’ hoofs. He didn’t mind the pants and the smock now, but the boots did something to him because he felt that as long as he wore them he was being tricked and betrayed.

‘They’re after you, Spit,’ he muttered to himself as he clumped noisily into the hospital, almost into the arms of Sister Campbell.

‘Good heavens, Spit. What have you got on your feet?’ she said.

‘Ben Arbuckle’s old boots,’ he said.

‘Well take them off. It’s too hot to walk around in boots. Did Betty Arbuckle tell you to wear them?’

Spit nodded.

‘Oh heavens,’ she said. ‘Then leave them on, but she ought to have known better. Come on. We’ve put your grandfather in the little room outside in the garden which we usually have for fever patients.’

She led Spit through the hospital, out through the shaded verandah which was covered in bougainvillea and where there were three patients who said, ‘Hello, Spit.’ He went on through the back garden of fruit trees and vines to where there was a neat, green, wooden shed with a corrugated iron roof sheltered by two big gums.

At the door Sister Campbell, who was efficient and crisp because nurses were supposed to be efficient and crisp, stopped Spit before going in.

‘Don’t look too long at your grandfather,’ she told him. ‘It’s better not to remember him this way. He won’t know you, so it’s no use trying to get a reply from him. Just don’t expect … don’t expect too much, will you?’

‘No,’ Spit said boldly, ‘I’m not going to ask him anything.’

‘Still …’

Sister Campbell opened the door, and inside it was dark, but she didn’t open the blinds. By the light from the door Spit could see the bed, and his grandfather’s face on a pillow.

‘We’ve given him something,’ Sister Campbell said, ‘so he isn’t strapped down any more.’

As his eyes became accustomed to the dim, almost dusty light Spit saw that his grandfather seemed to be in a very deep sleep. His tension was gone, and though his face now was grey and unshaven, it seemed finally freed from the pain of his life.

‘Is he better?’ Spit said in a whisper.

Sister Campbell shook her head. ‘No. But at least he’s not suffering any more.’

‘When will he wake up?’

‘Not today, maybe not tomorrow.’

‘How is he going to eat?’ Spit whispered again.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ Sister Campbell said.

Spit watched his grandfather breathing. It was thin, light, fragile and transparent breathing, simply in-and-out, in-and-out, and he knew that it was the most his grandfather could manage. There was nothing else left of him.

‘I suppose he’s going to die, isn’t he?’ Spit said simply, although he looked up at Sister Campbell wanting a denial.

‘Let’s go outside,’ Sister Campbell said, and she took him out into the sunlight. ‘You know more than anybody how much your grandfather has suffered, Spit.’

‘I know all that,’ he said aggressively.

‘You know that he really couldn’t stand it much longer.’

‘Dr Stevens told me all that.’

‘Yes, but now we’ve given him something to stop the pain, Spit. It’ll help, but he may never wake up again. He has suffered too much, more than a human being can stand, so now it’s better that he doesn’t have to suffer all that pain any more. He’s an old man and it’s time he was spared any more pain.’

‘He’s not so old,’ Spit protested.

‘Then he’s lived a long, hard life, if you like. But it’s over now, Spit, and there’s nothing we can do about it. We just want him to quietly go to sleep.’

‘You mean he’ll never wake up at all?’

‘No. He’ll never wake up again.’

‘Why? Can’t you do something?’

Sister Campbell shook her head and Spit shooed away a fly that was bothering him.

‘I didn’t want you to know any of this, Spit, but since they did it to you anyway it’s best you know now that he’s going to slip away from us very peacefully.’

‘Can I come back this afternoon?’ Spit asked.

‘Of course. But for heaven’s sake take those boots off and I’ll tell Betty Arbuckle to let you go around barefoot.’

‘It’s all right,’ Spit said and this time he walked right around the hospital garden to get out. Once on the street he clip-clopped in his boots through the town and down the slope to the river, where he sat on the mud steps near the boiler, dangling his feet in the water which he sometimes did for relief. This time he remembered too late that he still had Ben’s boots and woollen socks on. He was like that when Sadie Tree found him.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Sadie said to him.

‘Nothing,’ Spit replied.

‘You’ve got those awful boots all wet,’ she pointed out.

‘I know that,’ he said. ‘I forgot.’

‘Did you get into trouble yesterday?’

‘Yes, we both got a hiding.’

‘She’ll give you another one when she sees those boots,’ Sadie said.

‘No she won’t. They’ll be dry by then,’ he said.

‘Have you seen your grandfather?’ Sadie asked, squatting down near him.

Spit dabbled his feet and nodded.

‘Is he all right? Is he better?’

Spit didn’t say anything but lay back with the sun on his face.

‘Is he getting better?’ she said again.

‘They gave him something,’ Spit said, and for a while they were silent. ‘He’s asleep.’

‘What are you going to do now?’ Sadie asked then.

‘I don’t know,’ Spit said. ‘I suppose I’ll have to go back to Ben’s place.’

‘I wish you could stay with us,’ Sadie said.

Spit got up and stamped his squelching boots. ‘Listen to them,’ he said, and Sadie laughed as the water squirted through the lace holes. ‘I’m going to look at my crayfish drums,’ he told her. ‘Do you want to come?’

Sadie followed him, and when Spit pulled out the first drum and found a large crayfish in it he didn’t know what to do with it. ‘You can have it if you like,’ Spit told her.

‘I can’t carry it, it’ll nip me.’

They were standing under a willow tree that drooped over the river, and Spit pulled off a long, thin, supple branch of the weeping limbs and tied it gingerly around the crayfish’s big claws. Then, wrapping it tight in a bundle of more willow and leaves, he went on to the next drum and the next, until it was time for Sadie to go home for lunch.

‘Aren’t you going up to Ben’s place for your dinner?’ Sadie said.

Spit was hungry but he knew that he couldn’t face Betty Arbuckle or Ben or Joannie or Frank Arbuckle, even to satisfy his hunger. They were too much of a confirmation in the flesh that he would soon be on his own, and he didn’t want that confirmed now. In fact he wanted it denied, and the only denial he had was here, where his life had been and where he wanted it to go on.

‘I’m not going back there till tonight,’ Spit said.

‘What about your dinner?’

‘I’ll get some of the tomatoes left in the garden.’

‘I’ll bring you back some bread and butter,’ Sadie said as she took the wrapped-up crayfish from Spit and walked up the slope. But when she came back after lunch with two jam sandwiches Spit had gone. She guessed that he was somewhere up river, so she walked around the Point, along the edge of the Italian pea farm and found Spit sitting under Mr Walker’s mulberry tree on the river bank, eating mulberries and cutting out one of his little sailing boats.