We leaned there on the truck for a long time and never spoke a single word, just let the gloom of the place seep into our bones. I think I must have been nearly asleep when I heard Pop say, ‘Well, Jimmy Coleman! Fancy you coming across us like this. I’m a glad man to see yuh, Jim Coleman. If someone hadn’t come along and spoken to a man soon in his current perdicment I don’t know what I’d uh done.’
Jim Coleman is my brother-in-law who had to get married to Constance. What a stroke of luck he was the guard on the train that was getting made-up down the line apiece. Wonders will never cease! And, of course, it was not long before he suggested we slip along and get into the guard’s van and make home that way. It gladdened my heart to hear Jim Coleman come to light with that suggestion. Apart from being glad because it was a way of getting home, it was also going to be a new experience. I had never been on a train before.
‘Looks like you’ll hafta come back through the week, Pop,’ Jim Coleman said after he had pushed his cap back and scratched around in his skimpy, red hair. ‘If yuh kin raise a couple of tyres I’ll see if I kin smuggle yuh back on the early goods some morning.’
‘Yuh’ll never guess who’s sitting out there in the carriage,’ Jim Coleman continued when we had scrambled up into the van. ‘There’s a Mrs Breece and her niece and, stone the crows, if she isn’t the aunt as well of this poor girl that’s gone and got her throat cut. She’s getting the kid away from it all for a while, she told me. You could’ve knocked me down with a pick-axe when she told me she was this Daphne Moran’s aunt.’
‘Yuh mean the girl that’s been murdered down in the city?’ I cried excitedly.
‘Sssh,’ said Jim Coleman. ‘Yeah, that’s who. Now look Ned, if yuh don’t make yuhself too conspicyus, you kin go out on the platform and just have a bit of a peep into the carriage. Once we get going yuh kin stay there if yuh like, but for Chrissake don’t get blown off and don’t start playing with that wheel because that’s the brake.’
Pop stretched out on a pile of half-filled sacks.
‘I’m a weary, disillusioned man, Jim Coleman, and it’ll take more than the proxy of two cellyberrities to stir me from this here pile of sacks. If the Queen of Sheba was out there in her birthday suit I wouldn’t budge an inch unless I thought she knew where there was a pile of five-fifty twenty-ones a giraffe couldn’t look over without straining his tonsils.’
A large truck, turning off the main highway into one of the narrow roads which shoot away and vanish like arrows aimed at the eternal haze of the backblocks, drew up at the crossroads a few hundred yards from the Te Rotiha railway station. When the truck rolled off on its way to the distant hills, it left a tall, gaunt man standing motionless beside the dusty road; for all the world, in the rays of the declining sun, like a scarecrow, strayed from the cloud-shadowed field. The shadow he cast heightened the impression of a scarecrow for, under his arm, he carried a cardboard box and this gave great width, in silhouette, to the shoulders of his flapping suit coat, as if his arms were spread. He topped the six-foot mark by three or four inches and was thin to the point of emaciation. He was hatless and balding. His suit, of some dark cloth, was old, crumpled, streaked with dust. The man looked derelict, like a person who has slept under a
tree with a handkerchief over his face. That his grimy shirt was held together at the neck by a black bow tie was ridiculous, but some power emanating in and projected from the sunken eyes would have silenced derision. After some moments spent, apparently, in contemplation, he began to walk down the rough road to the smoke-blackened buildings in the hollow.
If a railway junction can also be a whistle stop then Te Rotiha, twelve miles inland from Klynham, is both. Unless carrying passengers bound for Klynham or the coastal town of Oporenho, the express trains thunder contemptuously through Te Rotiha taking the curving track which hurtles towards the hills. There are only a pub and a grocery store to mark the existence of Te Rotiha to passing motorists, but the railway station is kept reasonably busy most of the time. There is always freight to and from the coast to be handled, and, to the station’s own stockyards, come daily consignments of cattle and sheep, dog-harried, lowing and bleating their way beneath umbrellas of dust along the lonely country roads. Even on this day, Sunday, the station displayed some signs of activity.
A youth wearing a peaked cap on the back of his head was seated behind the desk in the station office. He was day-dreaming and gave a violent start as a shadow fell across the desk. His mouth fell open at the sight of the freak-ugly face with its great jutting nose looming so near the top of the open doorway. In long, slow strides the gaunt stranger gathered his own shadow into an inky pool at his feet in front of the office desk.
The youth pointed out the ancient carriage standing on a back line to the lanky and mysterious-looking traveller who, without a word of thanks, stalked away and stepped down from the platform. He picked his way across the railway lines, the
sound of the clinkers crushing beneath his feet ringing out clearly in this sleepy hollow.
‘Now who the dickens is he?’ muttered the youth. ‘Something weird about that rooster. Cop that bow tie. Another of ole McDermott’s scrubcutters packed up and going off on a spree, I s’pose. They’re all the same. Work out there in the sticks till they’ve got a wad that ud choke a bull and then wham—on the piss for a month. Whadda life.’
Passengers who change trains at Te Rotiha for the coast soon learn to hate the place. Mrs Breece and her twelve-year-old niece, Lynette, were fortunate that their introduction to Te Rotiha only involved a wait in the two-hour category and that it was passed in mild, early autumn sunshine. Even then, Lynette, normally a most patient and well-mannered child, began to fidget and find the delay interminable. Her supply of chocolate was exhausted. She had read all her comics again and again. The excitement of travelling had palled on her during the six-hour journey from the city and this long wait seemed to Lynette to be just about the last straw. She had been confined to her bed for some days with a fever and now she was tired and her head ached. Her aunt was no company for she fell asleep again almost as soon as Lynette managed to wake her, though how she managed to sleep propped up in a corner like that was beyond her young niece’s understanding. Even when a wagon was shunted, with a resounding and shuddering crash, into the carriage they were trapped in, Mrs Breece only mumbled something and fell asleep again.
The carriage to which they had been directed to take their baggage and find seats was also the last straw in Lynette’s opinion. After the crowded express with its deep, red leather seats,
to be alone in this antediluvian carriage which featured narrow bench seats, as hard as those in a city tram, running the full length of each side, was a decided change for the worse. It impressed on Lynette just how far she was from home and to just what sort of Indian country she was being taken. On top of her other troubles she was already becoming homesick.
Every time the freight wagons crashed against the carriage, Lynette hoped that at last the train was made up and action was imminent, but soon she again heard the engine tooting at the far end of the yard, its puffing and hissing sounding maddeningly distant. At intervals a peaked cap passed along under the windows. The windows all refused to open. Lynette tried them all. She was frightened to leave her seat for long because whenever a wagon crashed into the carriage the jar was sufficiently violent to have sent her flying. A sheep regarded her from behind the wire fence on the top of the embankment behind the stockyards. Lynette put her tongue out at the sheep. Having ascertained that her aunt was still asleep, she put her thumb against her snub nose and extended five fingers at the lugubrious animal. She made the same gesture at the top of the cap the next time it passed beneath her window.
Time went by and Lynette became so bored and angry that, when a door creaked open and they were joined by another passenger, she could have cheered. Although she had been reared in city streets which abounded in unusual-looking characters, her eyes became round as she studied the newcomer. He looked as tall as a lamp post and carried about the same amount of fat. His dishevelled dark suit of clothes hung limply around his bony structure. He was so thin, so gaunt, he looked as if he might belong to the walking dead. In spite of the censor’s ruling,
Lynette had recently seen not one, but an entire series of films about the walking dead and considered herself an authority on the subject.
‘A zombie,’ she breathed. It was frightening, but it was an improvement on that sheep. She had moved too far along the seat to be able to nudge her aunt. The stranger’s only luggage was a cardboard box which he placed on the seat. When he sat down himself he put one leg up on the opposite seat quite effortlessly. It was the longest and skinniest leg Lynette had ever seen. With claw-like hands he fumbled for a moment at the base of his scrawny neck and then rested the back of his balding head against the window. He looked very weary. Lynette now perceived he was wearing a black bow tie and still her wonder grew. However, to her deep disappointment the stranger showed the same infuriating capacity for sleep as her aunt. Within a moment or two she was caught in a crossfire of snores from opposite ends of the compartment.
Even in sleep, however, the newcomer provided diversion. At intervals a shuddering groan escaped him. His legs twitched convulsively. It was obvious he was in the grip of a nightmare. Lynette who was a kind-hearted child felt that maybe she should awaken him. She knew what nightmares were like and was always glad when her father or mother woke her up. It seemed an awful cheek to wake up a perfect stranger, but a particularly harrowing groan convinced her that her duty was obvious. She arose and approached the ragged bundle of clothes and bones which heaved and sighed so unhappily.
At close range he looked more like a zombie than ever. His nose was enormous, like a beak. It was a nose roughly pitted all over and blue in colour. It says much for Lynette that she felt
more sorry for its owner than nauseated. It also says much for her that she finally plucked up enough courage to reach out with the intention of shaking him by the shoulder.
With a bubbling cry the sleeper’s mouth opened wide, revealing that he was entirely toothless and giving him the appearance, especially with the great curving nose above the mouth, of a dying eagle. The claw-like hands began to clutch at the air about him, as if to strangle the ghosts besetting his slumber. There was something horrible about those writhing fingers. Terrified, Lynette shrank back along the carriage.
Abruptly he awoke. His eyes jerked to where Lynette stood watching him, her hand pressed against her mouth.
‘Hello,’ Lynette finally managed to quaver. She tried to smile.
He began to wipe the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his coat.
‘You’ve had a nawful nightmare,’ Lynette decided to persevere.
The stranger dropped his arms across his knees and the lump in his throat above the bow tie flew up and down.
‘At our house,’ said Lynette, ‘we always wake people up when we know they’re having a nawful nightmare. It’s having things like cheese for supper that give ‘em to you, y’know. Have you been eating cheese?’
‘And how did you know I’ve been having a nightmare mer love? Bin gabblin’ away in mer sleep, I have no doubt.’
The gummy cavern from which the hoarse voice emerged fascinated and repelled Lynette, but she felt pleased to have struck up a conversation at last even with an apparition such as this.
‘No, but you sure have been moaning and groaning away to yourself something awful.’
‘Well then, it’s time I took mer medersin. Mer doctor would
be angry if he found I wasn’t being a good boy and taking mer medersin at the recommended, appropriated intervals.’
Lynette’s laugh tinkled along the carriage. The man opened his cardboard box and produced a squat bottle.
‘Don’t you want a spoon?’ Lynette asked, greatly concerned as the bottle was tilted at the patient’s mouth. ‘My, but you’re running a risk, not measuring it out.’
‘Long experience mer love—long experience. Man gets to know just what’s the right dose, mer love.’
‘You must have a good doctor,’ observed Lynette, seating herself within a few feet of her strange companion, but on the opposite seat. ‘You look as if you’re feeling better right away.’
‘I am, mer love.’
Lynette watched the deep lines around the mouth in the gaunt face deepen into gullies. It occurred to her that he was smiling at her.
‘Why do you wear that funny tie?’ she asked; but at that moment the train jerked into motion and it was a line of inquiry she neglected to pursue. Twenty or so wagons ahead of the solitary passenger-coach with its three occupants, the engine bellowed angrily. The long train creaked and shuddered. Soon the bracken and fern-clad walls of the long cutting just out of Te Rotiha dwindled to barbed-wire fences. Across rolling farmland, with its homesteads and haystacks and shelter belts of pine and macrocarpa the train, ironically referred to as the 4.30, lumbered coastward. The countryside was already becoming gloomy.
Searching her mind for some conversational gambit to keep her intriguing fellow traveller from falling asleep again (his chin was slumped down on his chest) Lynette hit upon an idea. Steadying herself against the edge of the long seat, she made her
way down the length of carriage to the corner where her aunt slept. From her aunt’s knitting basket she abstracted a rolled-up copy of a city newspaper’s morning edition. She had amused herself earlier on, by reading the headlines upside down and back to front, but her aunt had refused to hand her the paper.
‘It’s horrible, Lynette,’ she had said. ‘It’s not fit to be read by little girls who’ve been sick. Read your comics, dear, and think of the nice holiday by the sea we’re going to have. The last time you went to Oporenho you weren’t knee high to a grasshopper, and you’ve forgotten what it’s like to have the beach at your back doorstep.’
Place of honour on the front page of the paper had been allotted to a photograph of a smiling Daphne Moran, Lynette’s own second cousin. Beneath black, arresting headlines summarising the progress made in the search for the slayer, ran the second-day story of the young theatre usherette who had vanished and whose ravished, nude body had been discovered the following day by boys sailing boats on a pond. The body had been semi-submerged in a weed-choked corner of the pond. Daphne Moran’s throat had been cut.
Despite their relationship, Lynette had hardly known Daphne Moran at all. Her childish mind was scarcely able fully to grasp the stark horror of what had occurred and her excitement at being even remotely associated with such a sensational event far outweighed any feeling of grief. That her relationship to the murdered girl made her a mighty important person was a suspicion that Lynette had had confirmed by the veiled conversation between her aunt and the guard earlier on in the journey. It had been veiled but it had not fooled Lynette one little bit. The guard’s eyes had nearly popped out of his head when he had
found out who they were. First the illness which had confined her to the sick-room and now this trip to the seaside had outwitted Lynette’s hopes of cashing-in on her reflected notoriety; but seeing her chance now, she took it.
The guard saved her the chore of actually re-awakening the tall, scarecrow-like man in the corner. When the door of the carriage opened to admit the guard, the sudden cyclone of black smoke and cold air and roar of the wheels which entered along with him awakened even her aunt.
Lynette had known for some time that the guard had been standing on the platform of their carriage. She had been just able to discern his shape through the soot-grimed glass panels of the door. She had carefully opened up her newspaper and then folded it again, so that she could thrust the picture of Daphne Moran under the man’s very eyes. Now she dropped the paper on the seat beside him and stumbled back to her aunt’s end of the coach.
‘Sit down, Lynette,’ said her aunt. ‘Heavens, girl, don’t run all over the place the moment I doze off.’
The guard lit one of the dome-shaped oil lamps in the roof and then stood over the huddled figure of the strange man who fumbled for money to purchase his ticket. Then he descended swayingly on Lynette and her aunt, pausing on the way to open the glass and ignite the wicks of two more lamps.