I was only superficially worried about Prudence, to whose complete downfall I was now resigned, but I was very anxious to steer Angela off somewhere and try out kissing her. The trouble with Angela was that she was such a sweet-natured girl, forever volunteering to run messages for everybody and forever combing the kids’ hair, even backing me into a corner and having a lash at my cowslick. She was not the sort of person you envisaged having any trouble kissing once you could corner her.
A few minutes after four Constable Ramsbottom put in an appearance with his portable typewriter under his arm. He took a much dimmer view of Prudence’s absence than any of us had. He took me aside and somehow or other Angela came too.
‘Fa-har be it from me to hinterfere,’ he said, ‘and fa-har be it from me to cause your mother unnecessary wo-horry, but Oi feel that under the soikumstances inquiries should be hinstigated.’
I concurred listlessly. I would not have imagined there was room for Angela and me as well as the policeman in his tiny Austin seven, but we managed. He put us in the back seat. From there his shoulders looked incredibly broad. He had not driven more than a few hundred yards when we saw the butcher boy, Herman, standing on a corner. I never found out if he had another name, or whether that was his Christian or surname.
‘There’s Herman,’ cried Angela, and the Austin squeaked to a halt. When Herman saw Angela waving at him from the little car he leapt about three feet into the air and banged his knees together with a loud clonk. He shambled across the road to us wearing a vacuous smile which the sight of the driver distorted without vanquishing. No, he had no idea where Prudence was. I watched him through the back window as we drove off. He
stood in the middle of the road gaping after us. He stood perfectly still, but I continued to keep him under observation as we got further away. I was determined to keep my eyes on him until he was out of sight. Just as we rounded a long bend, which finally cut off my rear view, I got my reward. I distinctly saw him rising up in the air. I turned around with a sigh.
Being driven around your own town in the back seat of a cop’s car is not like seeing the sights in a neighbour’s car, or jogging around in your own car. The whole town looks different. People look different. I saw Les Wilson walking along and he stared straight at the little car, but, although I nearly banged my head through the celluloid side curtain, he looked away without seeing me. As we jolted and creaked across the main street I saw Salter the Sensational leaning against the wall of the Federal Hotel. He looked about seven feet tall. He had the green suit on, but he was holding his coat together at the throat so I am unable to say about the bow tie. I shivered. Angela said ‘What’s wrong?’
I said ‘That man, I’ll tell you about him after.’
‘What man?’ said Angela. I looked, but Salter had disappeared.
‘
Mistykeist
,’ I muttered. ‘Oh nothing, Angela. I’ll tell you after.’
We parked outside the Hillview private boardinghouse, a big two-storeyed place with tennis courts.
‘Oi do not perceive the racing vehicle,’ remarked Constable Ramsbottom. Apparently he knew all about the insurance agent, where he was domiciled and everything. Apparently he knew all about the Waller’s Home Remedy man too, because the next stop was the Jubilee Hotel, an establishment which had had its
liquor licence taken off it and was now just a cheap accommodation house, a flop. The Waller firm van was parked outside, but Constable Ramsbottom emerged from the Jubilee without having accomplished anything, a fact obvious by the conversation of the garrulous old dame who accompanied him as far as the door.
‘Tony Quin,’ I suggested to him, as he squeezed through the driver’s door.
‘Yus,’ said our stalwart chauffeur. ‘However, Oi am disinclined to approach the Quin family until Oi have more hinformation. Perhaps yourself, or Miss Potroz—?’
‘Sure,’ we concurred.
So this was where Prudence worked. The large, white house appeared to be empty.
Angela and I prowled around the velvet lawns and the scrubbed verandahs knocking on doors and French windows until we were suddenly confronted by a character who looked like an aged Bertie Wooster. His mouth hung open, and when he had finally told us what we wanted to know—information liberally punctuated with ‘gads’ and ‘what what’s’—it fell open again as if the most amazing point of the whole conversation was that he had taken any part in it. He was wearing a smoking jacket and a cravat.
I was shaking my head at Len Ramsbottom and trying to open the back door of the Austin for Angela when the white sports-job roared up and stopped. Tony Quin ran across the road, nodded at us and went up the path into the grounds of his house. Prudence came across the road much more slowly. The motor was still running in the white roadster and, behind the steering wheel, toothbrush moustache was staring straight ahead.
Len Ramsbottom emerged from the Austin; and Prudence, who was going to speak to me and Angela, stopped dead. Now she really did have a dirty face and her hair was windblown into a wild disarray which, in Prudence’s case, only enhanced her beauty. When she stood still in the middle of the lane looking surprised and dismayed, the wind, which, although gentle enough, had a real bite in it, whipped her thin, inadequate dress back between her glowing legs. It was the wind local jesters spoke of as the ‘lazy’ wind—sooner go through you than around you. Through us all it went on its ruthless way, but the army of dry leaves it shepherded, shilly-shallied reluctantly and clung to Len Ramsbottom’s coat and my shirt and Angela’s hair. Joyfully the fluttering leaves swooped from us to Prudence. The motor stalled in the white roadster and the smoke ceased to spurt from the exhausts. In the sudden quiet the branches of the trees, which hung over the lane on both sides, creaked and strained. Unseen in the fathomless greyness of the sky a bird sang. The starter whirred and the motor throbbed again. Under cover of this sound Prudence addressed us and it was now manifest that she was flouncing angry. I realise now that Prudence must have been a lot deeper than we had allowed for and also deeply unhappy; in fact, as miserable as hell. It grieves me to be obliged to record what she said.
‘Are yuh looking fuh me?’ she demanded to know. ‘Are yuh all out to make muh life a misery? Am I a baby, or something? Can’t I take a single step without muh family and the whole police force setting out after me like a pack uv bloodhounds? Can’t I even go fuh a ride in a car without being hounded down and made a fool of? So help muh God, I can’t! Yud think I was a bloody criminal. Hounded down! Hounded down! Questions
alla time. Where yuh been? Whatcha bin doing? You wait, Neddy Poindexter, and you too, Len Ramsbottom. Make a fool outa me, would yuh, in front of people that make me feel like I amount to something, and don’t just sleep in a corner like a mangy old dog? All you wanna do is make me out a laughing-stock in front of people that make me feel I am somebody.’
She glared at us and I saw her clench her fingers. It occurred to me she might be on the verge of weeping.
‘Yes, SOMEBODY,’ she shouted above the sound of the engine. ‘Not just a FRIGGIN’ GHOST.’
The use of this frightful word on those dewy lips right out in the middle of the road put the stopper on things altogether. Len Ramsbottom wedged himself into his bug of a car and, set-faced, drove off and left Angela and me standing in the gutter.
Prudence stared after the little car and it seemed to me her rage had evaporated. She looked at Angela and me and the only word I can think of to describe her glance is ‘imploring’. Then she looked down the lane again, stuck out her tongue, and fled back to the roadster.
In the empty lane Angela and I looked at each other, big-eyed. I removed a leaf from her hair. It had been annoying me for some time.
‘Just can’t think what musta got into Prudence,’ I said. ‘If yuh ask me, she’s gone nuts. If yuh told me she’d yell out a word like that right out in the middle uv the road, I wouldn’t have believed it. If there’s one word that Ma simply won’t tolerate at home, it’s that word Prudence yelled out right in the middle uv the road. Ma ud skin her. Ma goes crook enough if she hears Pop or Uncle Athol say that when they’re boozed up, let alone
Prudence. Right out in the middle of the road. Phew!’
‘I dunno what you mean,’ complained Angela. ‘Prudence didn’t say hello to me either. She was funny.’
We set off for home. The footpath was so narrow we had to walk single file, me first.
One night during the following week I was lying awake on my back in the bed by the window and I heard a locomotive, hauling freight from the hinterland to the coast, bellow thrice. I heard a short squabble between cats in the junk in the yard. I heard a hedgehog snort. I heard night-birds cry as they passed quickly on high. Soon the moon began to hurt my eyes. When I turned over on my left side I could hear my heart beating. I pressed my lips against Josephine McClinton’s and the kapok of the ragged pillow tickled my nose. I arose, wheeling gracefully into the airy nothingness of sleep. The nothingness about me turned into a whirling tunnel. My astral self braced itself for the launching signal, but I was curiously drained, apathetic. Suddenly I became afraid. Afraid of sleep? No, of death! I could feel my skin tautening over my cheek-bones and my blood running cold. The few cells of my brain still unnumbed began
to fight like blazes. Jesus, this was no sleep; Josephine was a corpse; I was dying in her blackening arms, falling down a well forever.
These ideas are unpleasant to say the least. I will not go so far as to say I sat bolt upright, but I will allow I propped myself up on one elbow. I must have either been asleep or so close it makes no difference, because a heterogeneous collection of faces receded through the darkness at sickening velocity. I picked out a leering Josephine McClinton among the collection of awful faces. Others I am unable to identify, mainly because most of them appeared to have been defunct for two or three million years. I must have had nerves of steel in those days because only a strangled scream escaped my lips.
When first I heard the running footsteps they seemed as if they must belong to the same nightmare. Surely no one fled pellmell down Smythe Street at this late hour. Whose fleet footsteps rang so loudly in the moon-haunted, wintry night? But they were real enough. They skidded into our yard. The board on the verandah creaked. Our back door flew open.
‘Neddy, Neddy, are yuh ‘wake?’
‘Yeah, waz wrong?’
Prudence came in and pulled on the light. She saw the open window and jerked the light off again.
‘Shut the window,’ she whimpered. I complied, which involved removing a flat piece of board which I employed to hold the lower sash open.
‘Draw yuh curtain.’
There was no curtain, but by standing up in bed I reached the bottom of the sagging, torn blind and drew it down. In the electric light Prudence looked distraught.
‘Neddy,’ she said, ‘that awful man. I’ve never been so scared in all muh life. I nearly dropped dead uv fright and that’s fuh sure.’
‘What man? Who?’
‘Neddy,’ said Prudence, ‘Uh reckon I’m a lucky girl to be here with yuh alive right now. Uh reckon I jus’ nearly had my throat cut by a bloody, great knife yuh could skin a nelephant with.’
‘Salter the Sensational,’ I said aghast. Prudence nodded and blew out a lot of air.
‘Boy,’ she said. ‘Yuh not gunna find me wandering the streets at night after this. Not without a bodyguard. Even then yuh won’t catch me coming along Smythe Street after dark after this, no sir. Not fuh little Prudence.’
‘Willyuh tell me what happened! Will you please
continue
?’
‘Well,’ said Pru, ‘they asted me to stay on late at the house tonight, ‘cause Mr and Mrs Quin’s having a party, see. Tony was gunna bring me home, but his Ma went crook and said I’d be OK. I was a big girl, this wasn’t Port somewhere or other.’
‘Port Sigh-eed,’ I said.
‘Thas right,’ said Prudence, bestowing on me a flicker of admiration. ‘Thas the place she said awright. Wherever the hell it might be. Well, looky, I get just a little way along Smythe Street and y’know that old garage where there’s never a car, but only bags of cement and firewood and stuff?’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
‘Well, I never like walkin’ past there much at night, it’s so dark, and I always jump off the footpath out onto the road until I get past, not that I ever really thought there ever would be anyone hiding in there, but boy—’ she shuddered.
‘Go on, go on,’ I pressed, agog.
‘Well, I nearly didn’t bother to jump out on the road tonight.
I hate to think what ud happened if I hadn’t, boy.’ She shuddered again. ‘Lucky I jumped out on the road because just as I did I saw that face.’
Now it was my turn to shudder. I looked at our shadows on the torn blind.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I’m going over to muh own bed. Herbert can sleep here tonight, I’ve had this.’
When I had moved over to the bed against the wall, Prudence resumed. ‘Well, when I saw that face looking at me I nearly jumped outa muh skin I got such a norful fright.’
‘Where was he—in the shed?’
‘Yeah, but hang on, yuh ain’t heard nothin’ yet. Next thing I hear a voice sorta whisper,
Proo-oo-dence
,
Proo-oo-dence
, y’know that sorta soft voice,
Proo-oo-dence
,
Proo-oo-dence
—’
‘Shut up,’ I said terrified. ‘Go on, go on.’
‘Well, say I was too scared to run, but I musta sorta kept on walking sideways and I see this big, long shadow coming out of the shed reaching out to me,
Proo-oo-dence
,
Proo-oo-dence
, and I let out one yell tuh wake the dead and took to muh scrapers. And how! Muh hair was standing on end, boy.’
‘Shee-whit!’ I said.
‘Yuh can say that again,’ said Prudence.
‘Look here,’ I said. ‘This is worse than you think. This Salter must be laying for us because we laughed at him. Oh boy, I don’t like this. Not a weird character like that with that knife.’
‘Maybe it’s only me,’ said Prudence. ‘Maybe he’s only laying for me. Maybe he’s a sex-oh.’
We gawked at each other.
‘I don’t like this so much,’ I said.
‘Oh, I just love it,’ said Prudence. ‘I think it’s just dandy
having a nice man like Mr Salter waiting in a shed for me night after night with a bloody, great knife, saying,
Proo-oo-dence
,
Proo-oo-dence
—’
‘Shut up,’ I hissed.
We sat for a while and then I said, ‘Maybe yuh better tell the police.’
‘An’ I damn’ well would too,’ said Prudence. ‘But look at what I went and did on Sunday. How can I? Gee, I’ve mucked things up, Neddy.’
It was my private fear that Prudence had mucked things up all right, just like Winnie and Connie had, but at least they had been older and had got married. All week it had been breaking my heart, seeing Ma pottering happily around not knowing what happened on Sunday. When I thought of what was going to happen when Ma found out Prudence was in the family way to an insurance agent with a toothbrush moustache and her only just sixteen and everything—well I just refused to let myself think about it. It did not bear thinking about. And it made me feel almost ill to think of Prudence actually knowing what ‘you-know’ felt like. It was the first time since Sunday we had even spoken and this looked like a chance to get the inside story.
‘Look, Pru,’ I began.
‘What?’
‘Well, y’know you were pretty funny on Sunday. What did yuh do?’
‘Nothin’,’ said Pru.
‘Oh hell. Yuh musta.’
‘Well, if yuh wanna really know,’ said Pru, and my heart sank with the same sort of frightened thrill you can get on a swing.
‘Go on,’ I insisted.
‘It isn’t any of yuh business, Neddy.’
‘Don’t sound so grown up,’ I said angrily. ‘It is so my business.”
‘Well, if yuh must know, nothing did happen—but by golly it nearly did.’
‘Haw, haw,’ I tried to jeer.
‘No, it didn’t, Neddy. We went out to that pub on the cliffs and Norman went and got a bottle of wine and we cleaned it up out in the sandhills. Then he tried to get a bit fresh.’
‘What about young Quin?’ I said hoarsely.
‘Norman let him take the car for a spin.’
‘Haw, haw,’ I said. ‘And nothing happened, I s’pose out there in those lonely sandhills? Is that what you’re trying to tell me, Pru?’
‘Well, yuh know wine,’ said Prudence. She looked so pretty, it made me feel sick. Now I was getting that sitting in the hay feeling. With sickening clarity, I saw the scene in those desolate sandhills. Wine! You-know! Pru! With those eyelashes! Sometimes I think passion can be compared to a magnifying glass with a lens in direct ratio to blood heat, or specific gravity, or whatever it is that nature has evolved to ensure the propagation of the species. Under her dress, her slim thighs became an acre of pulsating mystery.
‘Yes,’ I said flatly. I knew that she intended to say something further, and if I could have dragged her tongue to a standstill with a handbrake I would have done so. I did not think I would be able to endure what I thought she was going to say.
‘Well, if yuh
must
know,’ she burst out, ‘I let him. But nothing happened. Don’t ask me why. All I know is I’m damn’ glad it didn’t. It’s no credit to me. I’m mighty ashamed of muhself,
and speshly what I said to Len Ramsbottom. He’s worth six of Norman, flash car and all.’
She began to weep.
‘Look Prudence,’ I said, and took her by the arm. ‘Look dear, you go and tell ole Constable Ramsbottom all about this Salter the Sensational business and tell him yuh awful sorry about Sunday. Don’t cry, Pru. Yuh go and see old Len Ramsbottom and betcha everything’ll be apples.’
‘Yuh reckon it might be?’ Prudence sobbed.
‘Course it will,’ I said. ‘You just wait and see. Ole Len’s a pretty good guy for a cop. You just see. Everything’ll be apples.’
I felt pretty mean to Les Wilson, sicking her on to another guy in this way, but whadda hell? Les never had a show anyway. The way I had it figured, if he had failed to make the grade sporting that pith helmet, he never would.
As Prudence whispered goodnight at the door, her eyes bestowed on me a glance of melting gratitude. I squinted back. In the dark once more, it occurred to me that being in the inside bed like this for a change must be a bit like having a holiday. It was hard to believe that the wriggling witch-doctor on the seldom-drawn blind was only the shadow of our old karaka tree.
That the advice I had given Prudence was sound, was borne out on Monday night by the sporadic clatter of a typewriter in our kitchen. Lessons had resumed.
‘What did Len say about Salter the Sensational?’ I asked Prudence the next day. Now he was Len! Well, we had a railroad man in the family, why not a cop? The more I reflected on it, the more I liked it. I anticipated a sense of power and reflected glory that would certainly never be generated by my
sister drinking wine in the sandhills with an insurance agent who sported a seven-a-side moustache, even if he did own a white racing car.
‘He’s gunna find out zactly who he is and keep an eye on him,’ Prudence informed me. ‘I’m not to worry about it. In the meantime I’m to come home through town and up Winchester Street. He’s nice, eh, Neddy? Isn’t he a well-built joker?’
‘So’s a nelephant,’ I said, mentally giving up tobacco. ‘What did he say about Sunday? What’d he say about that awful word you yelled out right in the middle uv the road?’
‘Oh, shut up,’ said Prudence. ‘Shut up, shut up. I’ll never drink wine again, so help me.’ She had turned the colour of wine. ‘He was wonderful, Neddy.’
‘He let you off, huh?’
‘Yeah,’ she lowered her wonderful eyelashes.
‘So,’ I accused. ‘He got fresh too, huh?’
‘He did
not
get fresh,’ said Pru, but the wine-colour deepened.
‘Looks like we gunna have a cop in the family,’ I sneered. Prudence tossed her head and stalked away. First thing in the morning she looked ever so slightly round-shouldered.
‘As well as a railroad man,’ I shouted after her, and set off to school with the more objectionable side of my nature positively purring.
That evening just on nightfall, Leonard Ramsbottom, actuated more, I should guess, by the inner radiance of reunion and infatuation than a sense of duty, took it into his head to escort Prudence home, personally. After sitting outside the Quin home in his Austin seven for half an hour or so he decided to inquire within. It was all most unfortunate.
Mrs Quin had driven Tony out to visit a country relative; and, when she had telephoned to say they were staying for tea, her husband, the aged Wooster type whom Angela and I had encountered on our call, had seized the opportunity of pumping a few smooth and rare old liqueurs out of decanters on the sideboard, into my sister. I have no doubt that Prudence tells no more than the truth when she avers she only agreed to sip the drinks because, after all, he
was
Mr Quin and in her eyes the Quins were all that was above reproach, personified. According to Prudence, if Leonard Ramsbottom had been a moment later he would have seen Mr Quin recoiling across the room with his face well slapped, but as a malign fate would have it, this was not the spectacle that greeted the eyes of that stalwart of the Force, as he arrived at the open French windows of the twilit dining-room. So, dazed with surprise at the turn things had taken, and also, no doubt, a little bemused with the deceptive authority of a venerable cognac or two, Prudence appeared to be standing, placidly co-operative, balloon glass in hand, while an elderly roué undid her blouse. In a blind burst of rage, which no amount of training in restraint was in time to control, Leonard Ramsbottom leapt across the threshold and gave Mr Quin such an almighty shove that he went flying across the room and there was a great shattering of objects d’art and crystalware, etcetera. He then raised his hand to smack Prudence across the face, but a return to sanity arrested the blow in mid-air. Availing herself of the opportunity, Prudence smacked
his
face.
Desperately she began to button up her blouse. ‘Look, Len,’ she gasped.
‘Look nothing,’ snapped the outraged young constable.
‘You’re a harlot!’ And with those harsh words, vanished into the gathering dusk. He reappeared an instant later, but it was too gloomy to observe how stricken and woebegone she looked; so, unmollified, he said: ‘In moi hopinion, this story of men lurking in doorways is a prefabrication and, more likely, just wishful thinking. You’re a harlot.’
This time he
did
go. And so, a moment later, did Prudence, never more to darken those august portals.