The Promise Ese (51)
“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….’
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