Riders in the Chariot (44 page)

The chair creaked on which Mr Hoggett sat. He was very heavy. And hair bursting out of his body.

"I would like to go away, somewhere on a train," Janis said, and turned quick. "Mumma," she said, "let me have me dress. Go on!" she coaxed. "I gotta go out. Anywheres."

"You know what was agreed," the mother replied.

The girl began to protest and twist. She was very pretty underneath her shift.

In the dream in which she sat, and from which her marble must never be allowed to stir, Mrs Godbold could feel the drops of jasmine trickling down. She began, for protection, to think of her own home, or shed, and the white surface of the ironing-table, cleaner than moonlight, not to say more honest, with the bowl from which she sprinkled the clothes. She must pin her mind on all such flat surfaces and safe objects, not on her husband; he was the weakest side of her.

So she fixed her eyes on the floor of Mrs Khalil's kitchen, on a harlequin lino, where much had been trodden in.

The moon has touched her up, Mrs Khalil saw, and for a moment the bawd fell quite genuinely in love with that strong but innocent throat, although, mind you, she was sick of men and women, their hot breath, their double-talk, their slack bodies, and worst of all, their urgent ones. She liked best to lay around with the Sunday papers, a cat against her kidneys.

Mrs Godbold paddled her hand in the grey cat's very nearly contented fur. She no longer blamed her husband, altogether. She blamed herself for understanding. She might have left, indeed, if she had been able to withdraw her feet. But the moonlight lay in sticky pools, even where invisible, smelling of jasmine, and a man's stale body.

Then there was such a to-do, the wooden house was all but knocked sideways, "Don't tell me!" cried Mrs Khalil. "It is that bloody abo again!"

"Arrr, Mumma!" Janis had to draw the line at that.

"Wot abo?" Mr Hoggett was quick to ask.

As if they had not stalled on him enough.

"The only one. Our pet one," moaned Mrs Khalil. "Send it orff, and it will turn up again like washin' day."

"Arr, Mumma, no!"

Janis could have had the belly-ache.

"Is it 'im?" Mr Hoggett was fairly running sweat.

But nobody listened to that gentleman now.

For the screen door was screaming painfully. The boards of the violated house were groaning and recoiling.

He came in. He had a purple bruise where he had fallen on his yellow forehead, somewhere or other. He could not use his body by now, but was directed by a superior will.

"You dirty, drunken bastard!" shouted Mrs Khalil. "Didn't I tellya we was not accepting any further visits?"

He stood, and a smile possessed him.

The bawd would have liked to deliver a piece on blacks, but remembered dimly she had been married to one in all but writing.

"This is no visit. This is a mission," announced the abo.

So surprisingly that Mrs Godbold looked up. She had been half determined to keep her eyes fixed firmly on the lino, in case she might have to witness an indignity which she would not be strong enough to prevent.

"A mission?" shouted Mrs Khalil. "Wot sorta mission, I would liketa know?"

"A mission of love," replied the abo.

And began to laugh happily.

"Love!" cried Mrs Khalil. "You got ideas in yer head. I'm tellin' you! This is a decent place. No love for blacks!"

Janis had grown giggly. She was biting the red stuff off of her nails, and scratching herself.

The black continued to laugh for a little, because he had not yet run down, and because laughter disposed him to resist the roomful of fluctuating furniture.

Then he became grave. He said, "Okay, Mrs Khalil. I will sing and dance for you instead.

"If you will allow me," he added, very reasonable. "And even if you cut up rough. Because I am compelled to."

Many of the words were borrowed, but those could have been the cheaper ones. A certain gravely cultivated tone and assembly of educated phrases were what, it seemed, came natural to him. Even as he rocked, even as his thick tongue tripped over a word here and there, as his fiery breath threatened to burn him up, or he righted himself on the furniture, his eyes were fixed obsessively on some distant standard of honesty and precision. He would never quite lose sight of that--he made it clear--and it was what infuriated some of his audience most. Mr Hoggett, for instance, while affecting the greatest disgust, both for a moral situation, and for the obvious signs of vomit on the abo's pants, was most enraged by a tone of voice, and words that he himself would never have dared use.

"Where did 'e learn it, eh?" he asked. "This one beats the band. So much play-actin', and dawg!"

The black man, who was conscientiously preparing the attitude and frame of mind necessary for his act, paused enough to answer, in a voice that was as long, and straight, and sober as a stick, "I owe everything to the Reverend Timothy Calderon, and his sister, Mrs Pask."

"Waddaya know!" exploded Mrs Khalil.

She could not help but laugh, although she had decided on no account to do so.

The blackfellow, who had at last succeeded in reconciling attitude with balance, now began to sing: "Hi digger, hi digger, My uncle is bigger Than my father, But not as big as Friday night.

Friday is the big shivoo, When the swells begin to swell, And poor Mother has her doubts.

Hi digger, hi digger, The moon has a trigger, Which shoots the buggers down, Whether they want to be hit, Or to pro-cras-tin-ate..."

"Go easy!" interrupted Mrs Khalil. "I don't allow language in my place. Not from clients. If I'm forced ter use a word meself, it's because I got nowhere else ter go."

"Why don't they lock 'im up?" Mr Hoggett complained.

"Why?" asked Mrs Khalil, and answered it easy. "Cos the constable 'imself is in the front room, as always, with my Lurleen."

By this time the black, who had started in a lazy, loving way, only lolling and lurching, as he sowed seed gently with his hands, or took out his heart to present to the different members of the audience, had begun to grow congested. He was darkening over, purpling even. His sandshoes began to beat a faster time. Short, stabbing gestures were aimed, not at another, but inward, rather, at his own breast.

He stamped, and sang faster: "Hi digger, hi digger, Nail it! Nail it!

Nail the difference till it bleeds!

It's the difference, it's the difference That will bleed the best.

Poppies are red, and Crimson Ramblers, But men are reddest When they bleed.

Let 'em! Let 'em!

Le-ehtt..."

So he sang, and stamped, and stamped on a cat or two, which yowled in their turn. Baskets fell, of lingerie, which the sun had hardened into slabs of salt fish. As the abo jumped and raised hell, Mollie Khalil appeared to have started jumping too, or at least her breasts were boiling inside the floral gown.

"Catch 'old of 'im, willya, please! Someone! Mr Hoggett, be a gentleman!"

She had revived herself somewhat, with something, to cope with a situation, and now was holding her side hair, so that the sleeves had fallen back, from rather moister, black-and-whitest armpits.

"Not me!" said her client, though. "I came 'ere for a purpose. Not for a bloody rough-'ouse."

"But the constable!" she had to plead. "He will disturb the constable."

"Okay for Daisy..."

sang the abo. He was stamping mad. And cutting wood. Or breaking sticks.

"Okay for Mrs McWhirter..."

the abo sang, and stamped.

"... and Constable O'Fickle, And Brighta Lamps, To see with, To see see see, And be with...."

Just then Lurleen came in. At one moment, where the shambles of sound fell back, leaving a gulf to be filled, her bare feet were heard squelching over lino. Lurleen was a good bit riper than her sister. She suggested bananas turning black. She was rather messed up. She had the bruised-eyelid look, and some rather dirty pink ribbons just succeeded in keeping the slip attached to her sonsy shoulders.

"I have had it!" she said. "That man has one single thought."

"Waddaya expect? Latin thrown in?"

"No, but conversation. There's some tell about their wives. That's the best kind. You can put the screw on them."

"Did he pay?" the bawd asked. "Don't tell me! He said to chalk it up!" she said.

"I am hungry. What is in the fridge, Mum?" Lurleen asked, but did not bother about an answer.

She went to the fridge and began to eat a sausage, which cold and fat had mottled blue.

"I gotta get Mantovani," she said, and started twiddling the knob.

"Gee, not Mantovani!" Janis hoped.

She herself felt the necessity to writhe, and was threatened instead with sticking-plaster.

Lurleen twiddled the knob. Except for a couple of bruises, she was really honey-coloured.

But now somebody was coming in.

"Waddaya know, Fixer?" Mr Hoggett laughed.

He was enjoying it at last. The little one had decided to plaster herself against his ribs. Inside his cotton singlet, his belly was jumping to answer her.

"The sun rose over the woolshed, The coolabahs stood in a row.

My mother sat in the cow-paddock, And heard the Reverend come...."

the abo recited; he no longer felt inclined to sing, and had retreated far from the present room.

"Arr, Mr Jensen," called the bawd, from the springs of a rusty lounge, where she had extended herself after further revival, "fix me this abo bloke," she invited, "and you are a better man than ever I thought!"

But Fixer Jensen, who was tall, thin, putty-coloured, with his wrinkles pricked out in little black dots, stood and picked his nose as usual. He needed, of course, to get inspired.

He looked at Mrs Godbold. Not that he knew her. But he had not expected exactly to meet a statue in a room.

There one sat.

Fixer said, "Waddaya got 'ere? A party?"

Then he began to laugh.

"It only needs the constable!" he laughed.

Lurleen pouted.

"The constable has gone home," she advised, and was stroking herself to the accompaniment of music, and revolving, in her pink slip.

"Business good, eh?" Fixer asked.

"Not since the Heyetalian cow set up," Mrs Khalil snapped. "Business got donged on the head."

Suddenly the abo fell down.

He lay on the harlequin lino.

He was very quiet, and a little gusher of purple blood had spurted from his mouth.

"That man is sick," said Mrs Khalil, from much farther than the droopy lounge.

"I am not surprised!" laughed Fixer Jensen. "In such a house!"

"Mr Jensen,
please
_!" laughed the owner. "But he is pretty sick," she said, serious, because it could happen to herself--all the things she had read about; she began to push her breasts around.

The abo lay on the harlequin lino.

Mrs Godbold, who had been growing from just that spot for the hours of several years, produced a handkerchief which she had down the front of her dress, and stooped, and wiped the blood away.

"You should go home," she said, altering her voice, although it was some time since she had used it. "Where do y ou live?"

"Along the river at the parson's," he answered. But collected himself. "What do you mean? Now?"

"Of course," she said, gently wiping, speaking for themselves alone.

"Why, in Barranugli. I got a room with Mrs Noonan, at the end of Smith Street."

"Are you comfortable?" she asked. "At home, I mean."

As if he was a human being.

He worked his head about on the lino. He could not answer.

The music had stuck its sticky strips over all the other faces, as if they might break, without it, at any time. Some of them were sleepy. Some were soothed. Still, a hammer could have broken any of them.

"What is your name?" Mrs Godbold asked.

He did not seem to hear that.

He was looking, it was difficult to say, whether at or beyond the gentle woman in the black hat. He held his arm across half his face, not to protect, rather, to see better.

He said, "That is how I want it. The faces must be half turned away, but you still gotta understand what is in the part that is hidden. Now I think I see. I will get it all in time."

In a voice so oblivious and convinced that Ruth Joyner was again sitting in the cathedral of her home town, watching the scaffolding of music as it was erected, herself taking part in the exquisitely complicated operation. Nor had she heard a voice issue with such certainty and authority out of any mouth since the strange gentleman referred to that same music. Now it was the abo on Mrs Khalil's floor.

He was saying, she began again to hear, "When the frosts were over, the Reverend Calderon used to take us down along the river, and Mrs Pask would bring a basket. We used to picnic on the banks. But they would soon be wondering why they had come. I could see that all right. Mrs Pask would begin to remember daffodils. I could see through anything on those days in early spring. I used to roam around on my own when I got tired of sitting with the whites. I would look into holes in the earth. I would feel the real leaves again. Once I came across a nest of red hornets. Hahhh!" He laughed. "I soon shot off, like I had found wings myself! And seven red-hot needles in me!"

When he had finished laughing, he added, "Funny I went and remembered that."

"It was because you was happiest then," she suggested.

"That is not what you remember clearest/' he insisted with some vehemence. "It is the other things."

"I suppose
so
_."

Because she wished to encourage peace of mind, she accepted what she knew, for herself at least, to be only a half-truth.

"Still," she offered, tentatively, "it is the winters I can remember best at Home. Because we children were happiest then. We were more dependent on one another. The other seasons we were running in all directions. Seeing and finding things for ourselves. In winter we held hands, and walked together along the hard roads. I can still hear them ringing." Her eyes shone. "Or we huddled up together, against the fire, to eat chestnuts, and tell tales. We loved one another most in winter. There was nothing to come between us."