The True Story of Spit MacPhee (22 page)

Edward Quayle put his stubby fingers together and said, ‘In fact it is really the story of a remarkable old man, who, by extraordinary courage and agonising self-control, was able to take care of a very young boy under very great difficulties when he himself was suffering the excruciating misery of pain and disorientation.’

‘Is it important about the grandfather, Mr Quayle? Does it matter now?’ the judge said.

‘Yes, it does, your honour, because Fyfe MacPhee was not a vagabond. He was an old soldier who fought with an Argyll regiment at Ypres and Lille, and suffered very severe head wounds in 1917. I was lucky enough to be able to trace some of his records from an old cap badge we found in the ashes of the boiler, and as far as I can make out he was invalided to Canada in 1917 and given a silver plate to cover the deep gash in his cranium, a very doubtful operation but the best they could do at the time to protect the exposed parts of his brain.’

Spit could take no more of it and he leapt to his feet and shouted, ‘My grandfather wasn’t mad, I don’t care what you say.’

‘Of course he wasn’t mad,’ Edward Quayle said sharply. ‘Nobody is saying that he was mad, so sit still young man. Sit still, and we will do our best for him.’

As Spit sat down again he was blushing this time. He realised that he had spoken out of turn, and Judge Laker pointed his pencil at him and said, ‘Any more out of you, Spit, and you’ll leave the court.’ The judge turned then to Edward Quayle and said in a wearied voice, ‘I still ask you, Mr Quayle, is all this so important?’

‘Let me finish, your honour. I assure you it is all relevant. The point is that Fyfe MacPhee had been a watch and clock repairer in Edinburgh before the war, and he at least had a trade when the war ended. Bringing his wife and son to Australia he lived in Melbourne for several years, where his wife died, and where his son also became a watch and clock repairer.’

‘We know something of that from Mr Strapp,’ Judge Laker said.

‘Yes, but what you don’t know is that when he walked into this town, fifteen years ago, the pressure of that silver plate on his brain was already so severe that it caused him to behave the way he did. He wasn’t mad. He wasn’t a vagabond. He was a perfectly sane man trying to discipline a damaged brain. And, as Doctor Stevens will confirm, he was always in frightful pain, which sometimes was so noisy in his head and so heavy on his rationality that only shouting and talking to himself, and even a degree of wild fantasy could help him to survive the noise or blot it out. That was the real reason for his peculiar behaviour. He was an old soldier suffering terribly from his wounds. But plenty of people in this town will confirm that he was the best watch repairer we had, and though the way he lived was an inevitable part of his suffering, he believed like an old soldier that he had to isolate himself to some extent so that he did not soak the rest of us with his unpredictable behaviour and his need for noisy, distorted relief.’

‘Are you absolutely sure of all this, Mr Quayle?’ the judge said, clearly troubled by the story. Judge Laker was an old soldier himself; and didn’t old soldiers always bleed for other old soldiers suffering the agony of their terrible wounds?

‘Yes, your honour. And if my learned friend opposite or his clients really had Spit MacPhee’s interest at heart, they too would have tried to find out some of the reasons …’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake – isn’t that going a bit too far, your honour?’ Mr Strapp said.

‘I agree, Mr Strapp,’ the judge said. ‘Stick to your own case, Mr Quayle and let Mr Strapp fail in his own way.’

‘I’m only concerned with the truth, your honour, and in this boy’s story it seems to be all suffering and tragedy, because his father was killed in a fire in Bendigo and his mother badly burned, and that is when Spit MacPhee first came to St Helen to live with his grandfather. That is when his grandfather built those extensions to the boiler and brought home Spit’s mother, veiled as we all know from head to toe because her burns were so bad that she wanted to hide them.’

‘Surely that is when she needed the help Mrs Arbuckle offered her,’ Judge Laker said.

‘No, sir. She did not want anyone to see her or help her. She was a tragic, dying woman, and though Mrs Betty Arbuckle did offer to help her, a kind act, Mrs Arbuckle showed little awareness of what this lady was suffering, and why she needed privacy. Mrs MacPhee simply needed to be left alone for the last few months of her life with her son …’

Grace, listening to the story as Edward Quayle was telling it felt pained and sickened by her own lack of interest in how horrible it must have been for Spit and his family. She looked across the room at Betty Arbuckle who had taken off her ugly hat and was now in tears. Betty, in distress, looked more beautiful than ever, but Grace didn’t feel like tears. She felt angry. When Tom touched her arm gently and said, ‘There’s your husband,’ she looked at the door and saw Jack sitting erect on a bench just inside it, soldierly and cold, as if he wanted to be as far removed from this as possible.

‘How long has he been there?’ she whispered to Tom.

‘Since my father started talking,’ Tom said.

‘He heard everything?’ she said.

‘He must have,’ Tom said.

There was a jug of water on the table near Edward Quayle and he poured some of it into a glass and took a sip before going on. ‘You see, your honour, when young Mrs MacPhee died, Fyfe was already suffering so much from his head wound that, according to Doctor Stevens, he must have survived on sheer willpower in order to look after his grandson. And in living with his grandfather, Spit, who was six then seven and then eight and nine, shared the shouting and the apparent quarrelling and the wandering, and the river at the door. Far from vagabondage, it was an education in self-sufficiency that Spit MacPhee was getting from his grandfather because Fyfe MacPhee was never sure, from day to day, how long he could function with the agony and the pain and the terrible moments of his uncontrollable behaviour. Eventually it came to its end in the tragic affair of the fire. Fyfe MacPhee didn’t know what he was doing, and later he tried to drown himself as the only solution left, fearing as he always did that in his moment of total mental loss he would do what he had just done – not harm his grandson but commit some foolish act that might seriously affect his life.’

‘Where did he die, Mr Quayle?’ the judge asked. ‘I have forgotten.’

‘In the local hospital, your honour. And I think it is safe to say that he died of exhaustion, trying desperately to keep alive for his grandson’s sake.’

‘But surely life in that boiler must have been rather hard on the boy?’ the judge said.

‘Not at all, sir. It was an admirable little house. Spit MacPhee had a room to himself, a comfortable bed, plenty to eat, and a devoted guardian to protect him. In fact Fyfe MacPhee was an orderly man by nature. He kept a fine garden, and though his house was painted in fantastic colours, no doubt as a reflection of his suffering, it was always neat and clean.’

Judge Laker held up his hand like a policeman as if that was the only way to stop Edward Quayle. ‘Just a minute, Mr Quayle. Just a minute,’ he said. ‘Now, calmly, not in passion but in cold blood – can you justify that story of insults and attacks on Mrs Arbuckle? Weren’t they true?’

‘Yes, your honour. The lady made her approaches in good heart, but to Spit and his grandfather they were threats to their perfectly decent domestic life. It is well known to everybody in this town that Mrs Arbuckle had her mind set on sending Spit off to a Boys Home in Bendigo, even from the beginning. And that is what inspired such a violent response from both of them.’

‘So there were some primitive imperfections in their behaviour after all,’ the judge said, ‘which, I might say, is putting it mildly.’

‘There were many imperfections in that household by the river, just as there are imperfections in any household in this town,’ Edward Quayle said angrily. ‘But lack of affection and attention and care were not among them. If Fyfe MacPhee was loud and sometimes aggressive and negligent about his responsibilities, then his failure, for instance, to give the boy some Christian instruction was simply a reflection of his own condition rather than a slip in his morals. The proof is that Spit MacPhee is an honest boy. Everybody in this town knows that. He has never been accused of stealing or, in normal life, of insulting or hurting anybody. If he has had fights at school, they were usually to defend his grandfather against other boys who called him mad. And that is the true story of Spit MacPhee, your honour; not that farrago of ridiculous nonsense from Mr Strapp. The difference has to be understood if there is to be a fair judgement in this case.’

‘You’re at it again, Mr Quayle.’

‘I know, your honour. But I mean no disrespect to yourself or the court.’

‘All right. You have given us the background, you have told us a moving story of the boy and his grandfather, but you haven’t yet made a case for your client, have you?’

‘I was about to come to that.’

‘Time is not on your side, Mr Quayle.’

‘I beg your pardon, your honour, but it is important …’

‘In that case,’ Judge Laker interrupted, ‘I think we had better adjourn for five minutes so that you can catch your breath. But then we will deal with this matter speedily and objectively. In fact I need to remove myself for a few minutes from the influence of your presumptions, Mr Quayle.’

Judge Laker stood up and walked out, and as Edward Quayle leaned back and rubbed an eye thoughtfully, Grace asked Tom what it meant.

‘It means,’ Tom said, ‘that Judge Laker has gone into the back room to have his morning tot of brandy.’

‘That’s enough, Tom,’ Edward Quayle said sharply. He leaned forward. ‘I want you to do something,’ he said to his son. ‘Go over to the bench at the back and tell Mr Tree that I need him up here for the boy’s sake. And don’t take No for an answer.’

‘Do you want me to do it?’ Grace said.

‘No, no. He might resist you on principle. Moreover if there is to be any resentment it had better be against me rather than you. We shall need the semblance at least of a united family up here for what I am about to do. So tell him that if he resists and refuses to come up here I shall pack up and leave the court and abandon the case.’

‘But he won’t come, Mr Quayle,’ Grace said quickly.

‘I think he will, Mrs Tree. In any case, Tom, you tell him that I mean what I say.’

Grace watched Tom Quayle approach her husband. She saw Tom bend over and talk to him. She noticed the slight stiffening of Jack’s back, and his face become set. And though she expected the worst, for some strange reason which she could not fathom Jack stood up and followed Tom.

‘What on earth did you do to him, Mr Quayle?’ Grace said quietly.

‘Nothing,’ Edward Quayle said, and added drily, ‘Old soldiers, Mrs Tree. They are all old soldiers, and as you know, old soldiers never die.’

When Judge Laker returned, Edward Quayle was quick to begin again. ‘We now have Mr Tree with us so I shall proceed …’

‘Your honour,’ Mr Strapp said. ‘It looks as if Mr Quayle is going to go on
ad-infinitum.
Surely there has to be a time limit to this?’

‘So far,’ Edward Quayle said, ‘I have had to waste time correcting the false impression of Fyfe MacPhee and his grandson given in this court by my honourable friend, so I haven’t had a chance yet to put our proper case.’

‘That’s one way of putting it,’ the judge said. ‘So do get on with it.’

‘I shall be brief,’ Edward Quayle said, ‘even though more amplification would help. But I’ll skip the rest and come to the point of our appeal. Mrs Tree is a Roman Catholic and Mrs Arbuckle is an Evangelical Protestant. That is an issue, I admit, but our case is based not on religion but on the difference between Mrs Arbuckle’s idea of bringing up a boy and Mrs Tree’s. No more nor less than that.’

‘No more nor less, Mr Quayle?’

‘Well, it seems to me, your honour, that in this case religion should have nothing to do with it. And even if it was crucial I would have to point out that there are Protestants and Protestants, and Catholics and Catholics. In other words, in both sects there is dogma and bigotry. There is hostility and hate. There are differences about what is good and what is evil, what is salvation and what is damnation. But what on earth has religious dogma and bigotry, or even the honest differences in faith got to do with fathering and mothering this boy? I refuse therefore, for the sake of this boy, to get involved in an insoluble historical argument which has been going on for four hundred years and may go on for another four hundred years.’

Judge Laker raised his hand again. ‘Thank heaven for that,’ he said. ‘I was all prepared for you to give us a remarkable defence of the Catholic faith from your well known Berkleyian belief in the Reformation.’

‘Sir,’ Edward Quayle said, controlling his temper, ‘I would gladly do that for you, but I am afraid it would be wasted here. Instead I turn to Mr and Mrs Tree as human beings, not as Catholics or Protestants. They are, like Mr and Mrs Arbuckle, a very respectable family in this town. Mr Tree is the Secretary of the Returned Soldiers’ League and is an old soldier himself. The Trees have a ten-year-old daughter, Sadie, who is sitting there next to Spit MacPhee. Stand up Sadie,’ Edward Quayle said.

Sadie stood up, head down, eyes down.

‘Lift your head up, Sadie,’ Edward Quayle said, ‘and tell us what you think of your friend Spit MacPhee. It’s quite important what you think of him because you are one of the nicest and cleverest girls in St Helen, and are highly thought of, so what do you say about Spit MacPhee?’

Sadie kept her head down. ‘He’s all right,’ she said.

‘It would be awful if this court took Spit away from you and your family, wouldn’t it?’

Sadie nodded.

‘So how would you feel about that, Sadie?’

‘I’d be sick,’ Sadie said, and lifting her head she said, ‘It wouldn’t be fair.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, your honour,’ Mr Strapp shouted. ‘This is going a bit too far.’

‘I quite agree,’ Judge Laker said. ‘So just make your statement, Mr Quayle, and leave the histrionics till later.’