A Handicap of the Devil? (2 page)

Very frequent.

Jonathan glanced at his watch and peered down the tracks.
No train in sight
. He had time to ponder the vagaries of his life while he waited miserably for the 5:31 to arrive.
Why is it that trains are never on time when you want them to be and are always on time when you want them to be late?
He wondered if perhaps Murphy's Law really did exist. Mrs. O'Reilly could possibly answer that one.

The railway station was a bleak and horrible place that afternoon as Jonathan contemplated his existence and morosely waited for the 5:31 to appear. He thought bitterly about the similarity between Miss Bloomingdale and his housekeeper. There was not much to compare physically, as Mrs. O'Reilly was slim to the point of anorexia. There was just something similar in the attitudes of the two women. Jonathan thought it was the air of long-suffering martyrdom that they both evinced. In the still blackness of many an insomniac night, he pondered this similarity. On the rare mornings when he sat in the dining room for breakfast—instead of eating on the run—he looked at Mrs. O'Reilly and wondered if she might not be Miss. Bloomingdale's slender sister.

Whether breakfast was consumed sitting or running, it was always the same fare. Slightly burnt vegemite toast and lukewarm tea. For years he had fought for the right to prepare his own breakfast, but Mrs. O'Reilly simply wouldn't hear of it. The ‘getting of breakfast for him’ before he went off to work was her job. It was the sort of thing housekeepers did. Weekend mornings, when Jonathan rose in the early hours to beat Mrs. O'Reilly to it, were blissful. He could indulge himself in two of his chief loves, well-made toast and
hot
tea. On Saturday and Sunday mornings, he went to the kitchen at 4:00 am so he could indulge himself in several slices of toast and at least three cups of tea.

At first, Jonathan had risen at 6, but on the second weekend—when he came down at that hour—he found Mrs. O'Reilly in the kitchen preparing his toast and tea. She was grumbling about a boarder who insisted on getting up early at the weekends. The following weekend, he had risen at 5:45. The weekend after that, there she was in the kitchen once again. And so it had gone in quarter hour stages thereafter, until Mrs. O'Reilly reluctantly admitted defeat when it got to 4:00 am. After that, she had remained in bed as he indulged himself. Often, while he blissfully sipped his tea, he could hear snores from her bedroom along the hall.

He was glad he lived on the upper floor.

Jonathan yawned as he looked down the empty train track, willing the 5:31 to appear. It was late as it so often was. His insomnia was getting worse. It had become so bad that he averaged only a few hours’ sleep a week. He was tired all the time he was out of bed. Jonathan fell asleep on the train going to work. He slept on the train going home. He fell asleep in the locker room at lunchtime and nodded off in the staff cafeteria at morning tea. He even fell asleep at his desk with a regularity that would have surprised Jones P. senior or Jones P. junior, if indeed either of those gentlemen had known the truth. Had the Jones P.'s realised that the thirty-eight and a half hours for which they were paying were being reduced by about 15 hours per week, Jonathan's employment would certainly have been terminated.

Jonathan had taken to wearing extremely dark sunglasses to work under the guise of suffering from conjunctivitis—"I keep picking it up from the rabbits"—and had become expert at sleeping while sitting bolt upright at his computer terminal. He did this while feigning an attitude of the utmost endeavour. His face was frozen into a mask expressing a fixed and intense interest.

Jonathan was jolted out of his reverie as the train came hurtling into the station, streaming water as it came. The train was travelling far too fast, and the first two carriages overshot the station. Going home, Jonathan always travelled in the third carriage from the front. This meant that all of the people who usually travelled in the first two carriages crowded into the third. Although he was standing nearest to the tracks when the train arrived, Jonathan's meek nature asserted itself ... and he deferred to everyone else. He was last to board the very crowded third carriage and had to strap hang.

The train was four minutes and eighteen seconds into its journey when Jonathan fell fast asleep standing up. Not even the jolts and bumps as the train went around bends—or pulled up and pulled away from stations—woke him. The upshot of this was that he did not awaken until someone trod on his foot as they prepared to get off at Blofield station. This was the stop
after
Blofield West, where Jonathan should have alighted.

Jonathan shook himself half awake. He alighted from the train and began the mile-and-a-quarter walk from Blofield station to Mrs. O'Reilly's boarding house. Jonathan was so tired. He was more or less walking in his sleep as he plodded along the footpath of the main road alongside the railway line. The glare of headlights from the never-ending stream of cars going past reflected brilliantly from the wet macadam.

At least the rain had eased off and was only falling lightly. He trudged on, shoulders bowed and head down, trying to keep the rain out of his face and off his glasses. It was no use; his glasses gradually became so bespattered that he could no longer see through them. Jonathan had cleaned them at least a dozen times before the sodden state of his handkerchief meant that he could wipe the moisture from them no more. What a quandary. He couldn't see through them with that much water on them, and yet to take them off was equally impossible. He was so short sighted he could see nothing at all without the glasses.

He paused under a lamppost as the steady stream of traffic passed him.
What to do? Call a taxi? But how?
There was no phone box in sight. Even if he did find one, the chances of it being vandalised were around ninety-eight to one. Jonathan hunched his shoulders, drove his hands deeper into his pockets and walked on.

A house loomed large on the left. Jonathan plucked up his courage and went up the driveway. He found a verandah and pulled his shirttail out from his pants to wipe his glasses clean.

He rang the bell.

The door opened a crack and Jonathan was aware of being observed from within by one unblinking eye, which peered out at him from about the level of his hips. He heard scuttling footsteps within and a door slammed.

"Yo?” The voice seemed to belong to the eye, because it came from approximately the same level.

"Excuse me, could I possibly...?"

"We don't got any, man, so blow."

"Blow?"

"Scoot, vamoose, get lost, vanish.... Like, go away!"

"I'm sorry. All I want to do is use your phone."

"Use the phone?"

"Thank you, yes, to call a taxi. You see I got off at the wrong station and...."

A chain rattled and the door swung open to reveal a one-eyed dwarf.

"Come in, man.” The good eye swept over Jonathan. “We thought you was busting us. You don't look like a cop."

"Thank you very much.” Jonathon stepped inside. “No, I just want to use the phone, if that's alright, thank you."

Jonathan followed the limping, one-eyed dwarf down the hallway toward the living room. “You're limping."

"It's my wooden leg."

"You've got a wooden leg as well as one eye, and you're...?"

"A dwarf.... Yeah."

The dwarf did not have a name as other people have names. His mother was a drug-affected, wandering vagrant. Shortly after his birth, she wrapped him in an old towel and dropped him in a dumpster—expecting him to be compacted by the next rubbish truck that came along—and dumped on the city tip. The dwarf's mother had not even known he was a dwarf. She simply didn't think a baby would fit in any way into her lifestyle, so she did what she thought was best for her. She was off her face on a cocktail of illegal and legal substances at the time, and afterwards, she could never remember what she had done with the fruit of her loins.

The dwarf was saved because of an alert woman. She was riding her pushbike to market—a bag slung over her shoulder to carry the apples and onions she needed. As she passed the dumpster, she heard what she thought was a baby's cry. This was in an alleyway behind the building where the dwarf's mother had given birth on the parquetry floor of the seventh floor toilet. The seventh floor of the building was unoccupied, which meant that nobody used those particular lavatories.... Except the dwarf's mother, of course, who used those loos for reasons other than what they had been designed for.

The woman who needed apples and onions found herself carrying a much more precious bundle in her shopping bag. She put the shopping bag, now containing the dwarf in his bloodied towel, onto the handlebars of her bike and, making soothing noises as she went, rode the half a block to the police station.

It proved impossible to find the dwarf's mother, and he was placed in an orphanage. The staff named him Earnest Jamieson. This was a name he angrily rejected when he was old enough to realise the staff had conferred it upon him. The dwarf insisted on being called just that—the dwarf. Later in life, when he had to sign papers or fill in forms, he found that most people—and all courts—only accepted names bestowed by others. He was forced to resort to the proper name, Earnest Jamieson, and not the sobriquet he had given himself.

The dwarf grew to adulthood with a fairly large chip on his shoulder and a feeling that he wanted to get back at the world. The orphanage was next to a golf course, and the dwarf, along with several other boys, found ways to get over the wall and onto the course. They started a lucrative business selling lost golf balls they ‘found’ in the rough. Some were more ‘lost’ than others.

In all weather, the boys would take off their shoes and socks and wade into the creek, which meandered around the course, feeling for golf balls with their feet in the ooze and slime on the creek bed. The leeches that gathered on their legs as far up as their thighs were burned off with contraband cigarettes. They bought them with money they earned from their trade ... or traded directly with golfers—cigarettes for balls.

The dwarf's love affair with golf came about completely by accident. There was a great deal of banter between the orphan boys and the golfers. Most of it was good-natured, but occasionally there was an edge from some of the nastier members of the golfing fraternity. Much of the nastiness concerned the size and lack of development of the dwarf. Since he already had a set against the world because of the circumstances he found himself in, he tended to bite back.

One fine summer's afternoon, there was a bit of by-play on the second green, a par four with a slight dogleg to the left. The four golfers concerned had played their first shots conservatively and were all placed fairly well where the course diverged to the left. The boys came up from the creek with balls for sale and the banter began.

"Look at the size of this little runt.” The portly, red-faced man sniggered. “Reckon he'd make a decent golf tee."

The dwarf had heard that one so many times he couldn't count them. “Yeah, and you make a pretty good dipstick."

"Sharp little bugger, eh?"

"Sharper than you, dipstick."

"Pity you'll never amount to anything much ... because of your size."

"I can do anything I put my mind to."

"Yeah, right. Bet you're a champion golfer, too?"

"I can play golf."

The other boys looked sharply at the dwarf. They knew this was a lie.

"Yeah, well I bet you couldn't hit a ball onto the green from here, could you?"

"I could so."

"Wanna bet?"

The dwarf, who was the treasurer, counted up the day's takings. “Seven dollars fifty says I can."

"A whole seven fifty? Whooeeee, the stakes are high. Let's see you put your great talent where your mouth is, runt."

The other golfers tried to dissuade their golf partner from taking advantage of the dwarf in this way.

The dwarf's friends also tried to dissuade him. After all, it was their money too. The dwarf promised to reimburse the other boys if he lost. He took the club offered by his antagonist.

The red-faced man dropped a ball onto the fairway. “There you go.” He had a nasty grin. “Do your worst."

The club was far too big. The dwarf took some time to get the feel of it and find where he could grip it to get a decent swing at the ball. He heard the golfer and his friends begin to chuckle as they watched his efforts. Finally, the dwarf was satisfied that he had done as much as he could to master a decent grip. He addressed the ball and adjusted his stance the way he had seen golfers do a million times. Then he hit a beautiful, soaring shot that lobbed on the green and rolled and rolled and rolled—into the hole.

"Aw, no!” The golfer shook his head. “No, that was a fluke."

"No fluke, mister. Pay up."

"You could never do that again in a million years."

"I could get on the green from here every time."

"Bullshit.” The golfer was really annoyed now, and his face was getting redder.

"I could."

"Prove it."

"Double or nothing?"

"You're on."

The dwarf took another ball, adjusted his grip and stance once more and hit a second shot exactly the same as the first. The only difference was that the ball rebounded from the staff of the marker in the hole and finished up less than a foot from it. “Blast. They usually go in from here."

The man's face was by now scarlet. He looked likely to explode, and the dwarf—sensing great violence in the red-faced man—dropped the club and stepped back away from him.

"Fifteen bucks, mate.” The dwarf's voice betrayed no nervousness.

One of the red-faced man's golfing partners smirked at him. “You lost fair and square, pay up.” His other partners were also grinning. Golf is a competitive game.

"Oh, I'll pay alright. Never welched on a bet in my life.” He pulled a twenty from his wallet and dropped it at the dwarf's feet. “Keep the change, Shorty. Anyone who plays those sorts of shots under pressure deserves a reward."