The Promise Ese (17) Hector felt emboldened into acting the beaten lover, full of pathos and wistful charm. Green as speckled jade, her eyes in the sunlight. He saw Emily shaking the hands of elderly benefactors then he felt rather than witnessed the vivacity that was Katherine Hunts. He wanted them both. Why was it people embodied only fragments of individual perfections? Why did each woman contain elements but none the whole kaboodle? Polygamy one answer. His grand new Southern civilization – Swiftian. Many wives and many husbands each with tags expostulating their traits, where one collected sets of tickets to trade in for the multiplicious being. Katherine’s burning for happiness, Moony's spongy, earthy comfy simplicity, Em's pervading airiness and the watery mystery of the She combined in a batter of ambrosial cake the like the world had never tasted. The air, the heat, the cream, the colour. He told Katherine. “I’ll tell you what. I make the perfect body, using various parts, you can infuse into it the perfect soul.” she said, leaning closer. “Of course it will have to be a man.’ The notion interested her but the last thing she wanted was to have him waylaying her with interesting talk. “I have to go. You see him,” she pointed to her monumental shape of husband. “Neither of us will be standing so proudly in a hundred years. I will be a skeleton. I have made him a god, not the God because I don’t believe, but the potent god of the ancients.” She kissed Hector on either cheek in the french fashion . He hung there strangely, silent then suddenly delved into a pocket and brought forth his shard of starry glass. His eye fuzzed as he peered through the groove-rays of starlight. She was real. He thought it might have been fun to have some input from the statue, but he couldn’t even induce a ghost – shows how sane he was and how insane, overwrought, edgy before. “What is that?” she asked. “It’s my other compass,” he answered. “I’ve looked through this into mirrors and seen the direction I must take. It’s also a navigational tool.” She twirled it about in her fingers. “Its very sharp.” “Are you au fait with red-indian lore, Katherine, we must be blood-brothers. My life has been a turmoil – you know the begging rounds and the disappointments. I…many men have implored you to save them from self-harm, misery – am I right?” “Not too many.” She gestured towards the statue. “If only he could have loved himself and been happy within himself. Life is wonderful, I’ve told you…I tell everyone.” She sighed. “It’s working. You see how young I look..” “Well…” she smiled a rapacious smile. It gnawed at the earnest resolve of the stony-faced Captain Hunt. Two wasps buzzed about him. “There exists a much-documented ritual in the annals of red-indian lore,” Hector narrated, shaking, fiercely determined, “so sayeth my man Morris – a bonding ritual. We mingle our blood and become brothers. Do you dare? It’s not mucky. Just like this…” He sliced gingerly into his right index finger-tip until a drop of ruby blood arose. She looked horrified. “What?” “Now you do the same.” “Oh no, strange man, my fingers – I need them.” “Please, Kate, please. It will be a blessing. A good luck token for your life with the hon. G. Cochrane.” “Oh, only…” She teetered at the mouth of compliance before taking the dive, rotating his rough glass to the scissor-edge and, unflinching, cutting delicately like a surgeon into her pink finger, the left index. “Now do we touch them together?” They pressed their fingers like a cantilever, as though it was the secret sign of the triangle. Hector revelled in Masonic hanky-panky. Katherine thrilled slightly. “But now we must include my lion Richard. You agree? A triad of three sides, a triangle has three perfect angles.” She shunted Hector to the lofty statue and reached up to the toe of its boot. “As far as I can reach…now…” They stamped their bleeding fingers onto the marble. “I don’t believe it Rabbit,” he blurted, bouncing boyishly. “The curse that has dogged me, the red stain.” “Of shame.” She steadied him. “Of course you have felt ashamed for years.” “Ah, ridiculous.” “Yes, now see how ridiculous we seem to passers-by. Bind up your finger.” Ever practical, she made a cotton handkerchief shell for her own wound, while Hector, speechless yet emotionally swollen bandaged his finger clumsily in the huge handkerchief that gushed from his clothes. The wasps hovered over the spot of fresh blood. Children slapped their rubber-ball against the block base. People throughout the park seemed to double-up with laughter. The sunlight’s intensity vibrated with waves of adulatory insects. The sun itself blurted its beams. Budding leaves were twitching pennants and the grass a carpet of flower-petals crushed under many feet and over-poweringly fragrant. Ducks on the pond strutted like regatta yachts burst from ice-prisons. “I knew, I knew it would work.” His voice jiggled. He put away the glass and perched on the bench, his trembling subsiding into placid, peaceful, solid happiness. Katherine sat beside him, calmly clasped his hands and said: “This is as it must always be – brothers. That judgmental thing of Solomon was not the real you. Its Huck Finn stuff, this polar exploration business. It’s the fun part that got most of you through. The fun…mm…now why not go home and give some to your dear wife…those special kisses.” He snapped out of his euphoria, her patronizing tone having dumped reality upon him and thought more soberly of the many forms of madness. Chapter 2 Mac edged into the office ante-chamber where Hector was perusing an assortment of newspapers. Some shelves behind him overflowed chaotically with Antarctic flotsam yet the Bosses eyes were clear-sighted, having adopted the distant, hawkish, all seeing attitude of an horizon watcher. As the voyage drew nearer London and land drifted from range. Mac hated to impress obstacles within the vision but Lady Hickox De Lune would not be denied. Her high heels told a story. She shuffled her feet impatiently. Mac elbowed the information, her introduction towards the man seated on the camp-bed. As soon as it broke through his horizon he jumped up and raced to the doorway in order to behold her feline shape – big! What of Morris? Away, thank Christ…. “Clara!” “Fat, am I not? Its not what you think…” How did she know what he was thinking? He was thinking she looked pregnant “Well if its not, you have been eating whole buffalo.” “That’s my little baby.” She moulded the cloth of her coat about the bump and kissed Hector on the nose. Mac sighed loudly, went into the ante-room himself and drew the curtain on the unanticipated complication. So Ms de Lune had been lurking in the depths throughout. And all the hullabaloo about being ‘free at last’ was mere fantasy on the Bosses behalf. His expeditions began as bids to untangle a mess of strangulating wires then turned to escapes with cutters from the wires like briars. “Edgar if it’s a boy, the lovely Edgar from Lear...” Mac over heard her rather flat twang lilting with love and Hectors mixed tones speeding up. “I can’t be certain whether he suspects or not,” she said jerkily as he demolished her screen of joy and pride. ‘He’ll bloody well know for sure when he sees it. Babies resemble their parents.” “Ours may not. Hec, darling, I thought you’d be pleased” “You mustn’t call me that in public.” “But we aren’t in public”. “Mr Mackintosh is listening.” His voice cried into the office annex. “Make tea, Mr Mackintosh.” * * * “I know, we can flee to South America,” he said. ‘What, live in some cheap hotel and eat nothing but rice’ “The people over there were good to me in 1916. I’ll resume the speaking circuit. You can play golf and a nurse can teach the baby to speak Spanish. In fact we can buy a ranch and eat suckling pig, if food is what bothers you and dress up for the carnival. As good as a ball. You’ll miss not going to balls, but the English society is as puffed up as it is here. They gossip and play cards.” He fingered his keepsake compass which he carried about in an opposite pocket to his star which he needed to maintain contact with even if it tore his pants. “ Where’s Hickox anyway?” “Shifting all our souvenirs into the Mayfair place. God we went everywhere except to your South or the far North for that matter, but Japan, is as exotic as the poisonous fish they prefer, as exotic as an ice floe, I’ll wager. We saw their geese dancing and scores of shrines. It’s Madama Butterfly to a tee with geishas gummed up with paint clack-clacking and serious little men.’ He stared out the window. “Don’t you want to hear about our travels all over the world, Hec? We could have done the same together if circumstances had been different. By the way, Pat wants his money back. He loaned you something for that letter.” “He gave me the money, that was my understanding.” Just a few days before, the sundering of the Hunt hex had exhilarated him. Now…now his arm hurt, his throat felt tight, delightedly he could feel the star’s razor teeth biting into his palm. “No Clara – no I am going to toss it all aside, all your concerns. Even if I am the legitimate father, this is not my child. It’s Hickox’s. He pays for it. I’m sure he wants to marry you. I’ve taken Walter of your hands. I’ll have him write the commentary for my next movie. The south sea islands, this time with natives dancing and tits wobbling.” He raised his eyes. “By God I’ll not have you spoiling things, my dove…” Shouts of invective began to splutter from him. Grudging, sticky, tangled in wire, flailing shouts. “Why are you here? Do you want Emily to play midwife? Did Hickox send you? There’s probably a pasty-faced detective lounging below the window ‘casing the joint’ Oh my, its mud sucking me down…” Clara sat stock still. “Hector,” she said quietly. “Come and feel our baby moving.” He balanced his star-glass on her full belly. “I see he has black hair, most babies do.” “How can you tell?” “This glass is a magic porthole.” “Hec, dear, are you alright…?” * * * “Em, are you still there? That little chink of light through the blinds has made a picture on the wall. It’s a cross. The shadow of our mast as we crashed through the pack. It’s a quiz. It is supposed to mean something to me.” He laughed. “Oh, its where I’ll be hanging, my gibbet, so he says.’ Hector shut his eyes, to see his inner world, a blaze of swirling pearly colours. “Now he wants me to give something to you, money, so we must go in for the lottery. I can tell you the winning number, write it down, now he is changing into a woman, I don’t believe it. He says the He’s a She so there you are.” Snippets of conversation like so many telephone calls assailed him, chattering groves of supine skeletons sounding from their tombs. Their bones chattering. Fitful voices and one rising on a crest. One almighty chatterbox. “Ask him to leave you. It’s lunch-time.’ “He likes talking with me. Do you not think it’s a spirit, Em dearest heart, a spirit of good fortune, my genie.”? Chattering, always chattering with the indecipherable burble of an audience. Hector covered his ears. “No I think it’s a silly illusion, as the doctor said, a figment of the imagination. I wish you would argue with it, order it to go away.” “He agrees with whatever I say. He is now.” ‘Such affability.” “So the chatter couldn’t be coming from me. I’m argumentative by nature…It must be someone else inside my body or otherwise I am communicating with another person, sending thought messages across great distances. Ghosts are asking for my help, to get through. I’m the operator.” “I’ll bet the main one doesn’t speak unless you have requested it to, unless you have asked for its opinion.” “Yes” “Well isn’t that what the doctor said? An autonomous spirit would talk anytime. It would butt in.’ ‘It threatens to kill me, you know. “Well that must be awful for you.” “And it has no wish to accompany us on the voyage, so it will be very lonely, no comforts…” “Darling, what about your men, your good friends and the scouts and just think, you were looking forward to seeing the island again – all that black rock and the waving tussocks.” “It sounds exciting...but… ‘Not as exciting as speaking with Captain Hunt in your head? Oh come now.” Epilogue. ‘My Darling little Gwennie, Rovale is a very nice holiday place for me. I have spent many hours in the garden sitting and observing the nature around me. Ants, for instance are infinitely fascinating creatures. They troop up the legs of the afternoon tea trolley and sometimes up my legs which leads in to my exercise period at which the other patients gawp. They shake their legs all day so think I am behaving perfectly normally. Some of the patients walk around the garden in a elliptical orbit then hang on the crossbar of the fence and haul themselves up and down so their arms become quite muscular, then they lie on the grass and talk pleasantly to themselves. Some of them have children and are missing them like me. It is especially sad to see mothers shut in here and they cry for their babies. But I should be out soon and free to join ‘Destiny’ at Buenos Aires if it makes the crossing. From day one I am informed, the engines caused trouble. On day two our scout took ill, the worst case of ‘mal de mer’ my experienced crewmen had ever seen, worse than green at the gills, rather a sickly sallowness all over. He has had to be dropped of at the nearest port. As far as my symptoms go, that means the signs of lunacy…everyone is considered a lunatic here …the rather friendly and amusing voice in my head exploded into a roar and then vanished. I think it was annoyed by my recalcitrance. It got stroppy and shrill just like the real Captain Hunt when I shouted at him for setting our tent on fire. But I have learnt some important things from it. Do you remember meeting Lady Hunt once, the sculptress. She has recently married a Member of Parliament. Her war memorial which I modelled for is now set in concrete at the town of Ross in Tasmania (near Australia). The photographs she sent are a little blurred but its cussed look is certainly me. I’m sure all soldiers look that gloomy when the shells are threatening to annihilate them, crush them. I have even met soldiers here with unusual faces who continue to look gloomy as though there are shells raining on the roof of the hospital. Anyway I jest about the photographs. In the end she asked another man to model for her, the famous Colonel Pink whose face is angelic and noble looking. Make sure Percy has enough to eat. The food in here is pig-swill apart from the afternoon tea cakes. Often patient’s friends bring one in. Ask mother to let you bake my next one, will you? Then you can go to Antarctica as cook. Please don’t tell any of your schoolchums about me, my dear little girl, because they may tell their own mothers and fathers and adults don’t always understand these things. I may need these very same adults to help with an expedition one day, and if they think you Pa was mad, it might put them off. Don’t stop writing. All your dear thoughts are helping me to get better. One day I will see New Georgia and that will make me young again and you will see it too. Lady Hunt writes that the Tasmanian mountains have similar grassy patches and snow on their tips, but at the moment the southern summer is so beautiful….’ THE PROMISE E*S*E East. Chapter 1 As he drifted off to sleep, nerves in his head seemed to crack like the petrified timbers of some ancient vessel. Then he recalled his own ship, her death, the brittle planking snapping as they say Hunt's arm snapped when it was first moved. Like the shots that finished the ponies, he wondered if his nerves would sort of 'go off' or if the relentless slow pressure would relax and he could sleep comfortably. Carpenter felt a little cold, one of the few times since he had resumed the civilized lifestyle that his renewed prominence demanded. Of course it wouldn't last much longer. He would awake one day to infamy, or irrelevancy instead of the kind of fame adventuring had awarded. Then all the warping boards would deform from seaworthy to worthless, to embarrassment to decay. The fate of all old wood was to rot. But still the London cold was of a particular nature. Cruel not clean. It roughed him up a bit.
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