* * *
It was Neville that tripped her. Not intentionally of course; not in the sense of thinking, I’m going to knock her down. It was a reflex action. Almost as though the magic cyclone bolt had electrified his arm, causing it to lunge after her, to give her ankle the lightest of taps. In fact if Neville had played any real, conscious part in it, he wasn’t aware of it! Still, the action had brought Afsoon’s brief run to an end in the worst of all possible places - face down in the centre of a thicket of giant saw-toothed bromeliads.
It was an old and tangled thicket, more like a small forest of fleshy, flat spikes each cruelly edged, top to bottom, with hundreds of needle-sharp teeth. Undisturbed, as they were before she fell in, the spikes stood almost to ‘Soon’s shoulders, and crowded together so thickly that not even the magic cyclone bolt could’ve found space between them. Many fearful and furtive things, small and slippery things, did live in there - too elusive to be caught by the slashing edges. For a soft-bodied little girl, however, falling amongst the giant brom’s was like falling into ten dozen upright soft bladed saws.
She was in, far in, with blood puckering from a dozen cuts on her face and arms, even before she realised her run had ended. Her first sense was of plant life moving around her, crowding tighter and closer, a cold, blind, seeking thing. One of her fists had plunged into a slimy water-filled core and she felt the fibrous flesh sucking and slurping at her, taking the measure of her animal warmth. She tried to lift herself, achieving nothing but the slide of her fist, deeper down, down toward the dark rot below.
Her other hand was in no better straits, caught beneath her body, locked between her weight and the broken, bitter serrations of the spikes. When she tried to free it, her head dipped, falling nearer the stink of decay at the plant’s centre and a blade made yet another small careful incision in her face. Around her, the spikes of neighbouring plants vibrated, seeming to sense the blood, to turn their sharp edges toward her.
She gave in to stillness then. Even while green frogs jumped onto her back and burrupped querulously from all sides; even while tiny lizards scrabbled up her arms and spiders the size of golf balls danced on her shoulders, tangling themselves in the dark web of her hair. Even with them, she dared not move because, with every twitch, every spasm, every breath and groan, the saws drew deeper into her flesh, like the nails of a many-armed demon determined to drain her body of its blood. Even she could smell it, feel it, edging out from her throat, her arms and her chest.
In the darkness, Neville was agog. In times past he’d been cut himself by brom’s - little brom’s in the Home Country gardens. Slashing filthy wounds that took an age to heal. To see the terrifying jungle of giant starlit fingers bending over ‘Soon’s still body, and to know it was a thing he’d caused brought a great wrenching sob into his throat.
“Oh no oh no oh no!” He touched her leg and her muscles tensed beneath his hand. But she didn’t answer. “I’m sorry ‘Soon! I . . . ! I didn’t mean . . . !”
He heard her begin then, softly to cry and felt himself, pathetically, miserably, uselessly joining in; just softly. As though there was nothing else a person could do but blubber while flesh-hating plants absorbed their friend. As though tears were any kind of answer to the terrors of the jungle that surrounded him in his own neighbourhood. Then, somehow, the Ragged Man’s voice was there again: “Ye know what that is, doncha? All that horribleness? That’s fear! Not theirs! Never theirs! It’s yours!”
I am afraid! I am! I just make everything worse! It isn’t any use!
“Don’t let it be hopeless, Nev’. Don’t let that happen. There’s a lot riding on you now.”
What could he do? What could he do? He could run to Rahimi Island and fetch Riff! That’s what he could do!
But if he did that, ‘Soon’d be alone and trapped in the dark, in the Duchy! Maybe with a Mongolovian wolf or pirates or a Thing hoping to sniff her out!
So what else, then? What else?
He held up the magic cyclone bolt, felt it trembling in his hands. Even it was crying out for some action to take place. Anything but this Neville the Less stillness!
If only he was someone else, he wept! If he was Beau the Bum, he knew what he’d do - step out into the open with the bolt and shout for the wolf to come and get it! If he was even little Robert, he would run to the Duke’s door and pound on it and demand help - despite it being the place where a shotgun had just been fired and where Ava was clearly imprisoned and where, if the wolf wasn’t in the yard, it must surely be waiting. If he was the Quiet Man, Neville the More, he would . . . !
And that was when the petrol rags exploded in Home Country and the scream of Shoomba reached out for him and the smoke began to rise and Hayley’s Ute with its big engine began to burn away its tires on the bitumen. And that was also when the Duke’s back door slammed open and the new agony of Ava’s blinded eye was howled into the night. And the brilliant white of the Duke’s headlamp gave birth to a whole new universe of darting shadows; all emanating from that one central figure - the gnomish, frantically twisted, shotgun wielding form of the Duke himself.
Neville’s knees gave way and he dropped to the ground like a jellied cracker. “Please, please, please!” he whimpered, whether to himself or to ‘Soon or to the panting, disoriented Duke of Daisley or even to the placid voice of the Ragged Man, even he could not have said. “Stop! Stop it, stop it, stop it!”
At first the Duke’s light shifted wildly, right to left, left to right, twice, three times, without pausing; darting back and forth as the Duke staggered in circles, like a broken spindle, making small wounded sounds.
Then the pistol shots and, in the space of a quarter of a minute, the Duke’s drunken lurching stilled. Neville peeped ahead and saw him wipe blood from his face. He saw rather than heard the man speak a reminder to himself before forcing the light into a measured, methodical, purposeful sweep of the yard. That’s when Neville knew for sure that they would be found. And when they were . . . everything would end.
The last act that Neville would know on this fraught evening began to unfold. The Terrier-of-Death herself, alive but terribly damaged, limped into the circle of visibility. She carried one leg high against her chest and twisted her head at a pained angle, to see from her one whole eye. In Home Country, the shooting ended, the cries ended and the smoke drifted away. In the back street, motor sounds and the scree of wood and rubber on bitumen faded away into the distance. The night became, very quickly, almost clean again. Except for this one last act.
The circle of the Duke’s light locked on Ava, seeming for a moment to be all that kept her upright. Something inaudible, some challenge was uttered by the Duke. Ava’s lips parted, her teeth came into view and a snarl escaped her. And slowly, surely the Duke raised the shotgun.
A voice - the smallest of voices, came from the darkness.
“Do’t hurt her, Bister Duke!”
The light jerked, the shotgun wavered, the cocked hammer fell and the pressure of that fall lifted Neville the Less to his feet. He began to run, the magic cyclone bolt raised high above his head. Without any invitation at all the madness of ‘Thing’ had entered him and something within had surely, finally broken. He aimed to kill. He closed in rapidly and swung to kill. The Duke’s headlamp went out and, in the sudden darkness and silence he surely hoped he had killed.
Tempering
He had fallen. Cracked his head again somehow. But it wasn’t important. He remembered ‘Soon, impaled on the giant brom’s, Ava, crippled and torn; and Robert! The flame from the muzzle blast, reaching out. He opened his eyes.
“Ahaa!” said a too familiar voice. “Look who’s with us again!”
A scrabbling of tiny feet through his hair, across his forehead. Something black, looking in at him. Then it ran off, clacking merrily.
He sat up. He was in a boat, at sea. The little mock-up refugee boat made by Riff. Ragged Immigration Pastor Major Mann worked languidly at the oars while the f
ugitive white duck sat comfortably on his lap. The duck quacked welcomingly and Neville couldn’t think what to say in response.
“Well,” continued the Ragged Man happily. “Your timing hasn’t always been the greatest, mate, but it’s spot on just now! We were only talking about how things went back there! Bit of the unexpected, we reckoned, which o’ course is the only thing ye really can expect. ‘Cause hey! It’s never really a plan is it! We were trying to think of a name for it. ‘War of the Folly’ we thought - though that’s a bit like saying the same thing twice, I guess. Anyhow, whadju think? Surprised? Pleased? Turned upside down and shaken?”
The sea stretched away on all sides. There looked to be a storm on the horizon, yet the oars dipped lazily - no place to be in any great hurry.
“Robert?” he said.
“Robert? Oh-ho yeah! Who-da guessed he’d cop that eh? Not me, I didn’t, no way! All kinds of strange misperceptions in that little guy. Just shows to go you! Whadda ye reckon though, you think he’d be disappointed? In the way it finished up? Think he’d do it differently if he had a do-over? Not that it generally works that way o’ course!”
“He was right, wasn’t he? We should’ve just asked?”
“Mm. Maybe. He was just asking at the end though, wasn’t he! An’ ye saw how that went!”
“What about ‘Soon?”
“Oh, sorry! You missed the whole ending didn’cha! Well, in a nutshell, she’s prob’ly gonna be okay . . . eventually. Ava too. Riff and Raff - might well pull through, thanks to your ol’ man. He’s a heck of a shot, you know! Could easily’ve let that big ol’ Thing have its way, but he fought a good fight there. Inside himself, I mean.
“Your ol’ mate Shoomba . . . touch ‘n’ go there. A little more ‘touched’ than go, prob’ly, but maybe it was always thus. Missus Hughes - reckon she might never come out’ve her house again. Mister Hughes - might never see again - might never want to see again for that matter. Your dad - won’t be getting his hero medal back, that’s for sure; though there’s those know he should. Your mum - let’s just say she’ll never doubt the invisible world again! Who’s left? Oh, Beau the Bum and Hayley; and Cookie, of course - all blind lucky to’ve kept out of the line of fire. As it were. This time. Anyways, anyone else?”
“The Duke? Did I kill the Duke?”
“Kill him? No no no! He’ll be picking bits of that headlamp out of his cranium ‘til the cows come home and his crazy ideas are so scrambled they might never come home. But nope. Close, but no cigar. Did you want to kill him?”
Neville didn’t really know if what he’d felt was equivalent to ‘wanting’ to kill someone. He remembered feeling that he must, should, ought to, was obliged to - kill the Duke. That somehow everything - all the terrible feeling would be solved if the Duke was gone. But really, all he’d wanted was for everyone to stop fighting and hurting.
“I don’t know. I guess . . . there was ‘Soon . . . and Ava . . . and Robert! And all the noise and the wolf! And I just thought . . . he seemed to be one making it most awful.”
“Right. Right. I getcha. Wasn’t him alone though, ye know. An’ it wouldna helped if ye’d killed him. There’s a bit o’ the ol’ Duke in just about everyone, I reckon. Nasty ol’ ‘Thing’ waiting to get free. Which ninety-nine times out’ve a hundred doesn’t achieve anything but the makin’ of life more miserable for everyone. Hey but speaking of the wolf, you should see her now! Looks a regular pirate’s dog - one-eyed, cheeky limp. Looks great!”
“Ava? You mean Ava?”
“Who else? Closest thing to a wolf in this entire country! She’s cock o’ the neighbourhood now! ‘Specially with Terrible Bill gone!”
“Good. She’d like that. And ‘Soon? She’s really okay?”
“She will be, mate. She’s workin’ on some nifty new scars. Plus she’s missin’ a friend. But she’ll heal. I guess if I had to put money on anyone makin’ it through, I’d put it on her.”
“Because she’s a witch? And an Amazon?”
Ragged Immigration Pastor Major Mann waggled his eyebrows impressively. “On the outside, Nev’. In the same way that Ava’s a Terrier-of-Death on the outside and a full-on carer on the inside. And Robert Hughes was a pray-er on the outside but a full-grown try-er on the inside. Outside’s just a cloak, mate. Inside’s where the Things live - an’ not all Things’re bad ye know! That girl’s got a Thing for leadin’ with her heart. I reckon her feet will learn to follow.”
“Even if Riff and Raff have been . . . ?”
Neville found himself suddenly crying. Deeply sobbing, as though the pipeline to a well of grief had suddenly burst in his chest. All those people. Robert, who might’ve had a previous life as a jelly sandwich, but had believed that asking for the right thing should be enough; Riff, who’d fought and killed pirates and settled in a new country, believing that wanting to live in peace should be enough; the beautiful Parisa who’d also fought, even though her hands were like silk and her name meant ‘like a fairy’ - believing that loving her children should be enough; Missus Hughes, who’d been born again only to die again, despite believing that learning enough prayers to catch the ear of God should be enough. Maybe Shoomba too, for whom stories and secrets and desires beyond telling were never enough. Maybe even the Quiet Man, whose mind had gone off to live with a boy whose arms had been exploded away, because there was no way of explaining, let alone atoning.
“All them good intentions,” Ragged Man murmured. “An’ still it comes to this. Bafflin’ innit?”
Neville put his head on his arms and let the tears fall into the bottom of the boat ‘til it seemed they sloshed about his feet and would have to be bucketed out. Maybe that was what the sea was - just tears, bucketed out of a myriad of little boats full of crying people. He felt the scorpions scuttle across him and was faintly aware of their urgent hissing and of the Ragged Man’s answer to them.
“I know. I know. We’re getting there.”
He raised his head. Ragged Immigration Pastor Major Mann was no longer rowing. The oars rested across his lap, the white duck had nestled into his arms and the scorpions were perched on his shoulders. All were watching Neville.
“Ye know,” said the man, “there’s not generally any do-overs. But that don’t mean it’s outta the question. Jus’ takes a small group o’ really good try-ers to keep it a worthwhile proposition.”
“What d’yu mean?”
“Well,” the man said, “I mean there’s still a chance that someday someone’s gonna figure out how make a better ending. An’ I wanna find out, as bad as anyone does, what that ending is. Now you . . . you got a fine imagination, did you know that? An’ a fine imagination’s better than any three hundred and one ordinary fact-riddled brains working separately, I can promise you that!”
“Imagination?”
“Sure. Just for example, you could imagine a better ending than this, couldn’t ye? Maybe even a way or two that ol’ cart coulda been kept on the rails? Assuming that imagining such a thing is what you’d like to do, of course!”
Ragged Immigration Pastor Major Mann winked conspiratorially, the two scorpions clacked with hilarity and the duck blinked at him hopefully. Neville sniffled, feeling curiously provoked.
“I think something bad happened to me,” he said. “To my head.”
“Well the butt of that shotgun cracked you a good one - cracked your head-bone wide open in fact. Just about the same time the magic cyclone bolt was crunching through the Duke’s headlamp. But that’s not really the point here, is it?”
“It isn’t?”
“No sir, it is not!”
“Am I dead too?” asked Neville the Less.
“Dead? What’s that, bein’ dead? When ye get right down to it, what’s that? Anyone know for sure?”
“I never imagined it would be like this!”
“Well there you go, you see? Endless surprises. What I’m sayin’ is, I reckon a whole world could be filled with what you never yet imagined
. Fact is, I’m counting on it.”
“So if I’m dead?”
“Dunno! I guess if you’re dead, you got us! And all this!” He waved his hand at the vast expanse of water and sky.
“And if I’m not dead?”
“Then you’re back there, Nev’.” He pointed at the distant storm which flashed lightning. “With the whole caboodle; the ‘known’ an,’ most of all, the ‘unknown’. And all the ways it could be better. And. . . just sayin’ . . . a whole heap o’ ways it could be worse.”
“So am I there or am I here?”
“Beats me,” the man snorted. “Up to you I guess.” The scorpions clacked and the duck quacked a little honk of so-it-is. “What do you think?”
Neville fell into a reverie. The duck went for a swim. Ragged Immigration Pastor Major Mann lay back and pulled his hat over his eyes while the scorpions busied themselves with a little clapping game that had them patting pincers, left to right, right to left.
Eventually Neville said, “Would it be the same? If I went back?”
“Would you like it to be the same?” the man asked, peeping from under his hat.
“No.”
“Well, you’d have to find a way to make it different then, wouldn’t you!”
“What if I couldn’t?”
“What if you could?”
“I’m afraid.”
“Big whoop! Everyone’s afraid, Nev’. That’s what this whole horrible insult has all been about. Fear is the one big bad ‘Thing’ that’s scrabbling around in everyone’s Under.” He lifted the white duck out of the water and handed it to Neville, who took it into his lap. It settled, then quacked expectantly.
Neville thought for awhile longer, then said, “Okay.”
* * *
“Nev’, I know this is hard for you,” Mum is saying. “But. . . ! But . . .!” And he knows she’s about to give up on him; “There’s just a Bigger Picture happening, Nev’. One that . . . it wouldn’t be fair for you to have to think about.”
“It’s the war, isn’t it!” he whispers and his mother, suddenly sobbing into her hands, flees from him, into the kitchen.
“It’s definitely the war!” he says to the room, which is empty of anyone who can think what to say.
Later though, when they meet in the kitchen, he tries a different tack.
“What is a war, anyhow?”
“Oh Nev’! You don’t have to worry about that. It couldn’t happen here! But it’s a thing that happens because people get so frightened and confused by one another - by things they don’t understand about one another. And then they get mad because stuff just isn’t how they think it should be and they decide to hit out. Because hitting out’s easier than . . . easier than almost anything. Hitting and hitting and being more and more frightened. That’s what war is.”
“But why couldn’t it happen here? Don’t people get frightened and confused here?”
“Yes, of course they do. It’s just that . . . we don’t hit here.”
“The Quiet Man does. He’s a soldier.”
“Yes. And you see where that’s got him?” And suddenly she’s angry, bending to him, clasping his shoulders roughly and staring into his eyes. “Promise me you’ll never be a soldier!” she demands, shaking him hard. “Right now and for all time! Promise me that when you grow up, you’ll never fight or hurt or kill or hate or . . . be the kind of person who . . . can’t look for another way!”
There’s no more. She pulls his face against her breasts, holding him tightly there where he most loves to be, even though the sweet baby powder scent of her always makes his head swim. Then she pushes him away and goes instead to the sink, to splash water on her face. Afterwards, as though she’s forgotten him entirely, she falls into a reverie, gazing out across the neighbouring yards. Neville waits, wishing she’d come back to him and hold him again. She doesn’t. But eventually she draws a deep breath and lets his name slip slowly, pleadingly out.
“Nevertheless.”
# # #
Written in sadness for all those whose lives have been touched and damaged by war.
Jewish folklore suggests that the world’s survival rests on the shoulders of 36 ‘righteous people’. So long as each generation produces no fewer than these 36 hidden saints (Lamed Vav Tzadikim, in Yiddish) the wrath of God will be withheld. They are consistently humble people who aren’t aware of their own status or importance. I have pictured Neville as being one of these and his final choice as being proof thereof.
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