The Devil's Making (24 page)

‘When did you separate?'

‘February.'

‘Why was McCrory a bounder?'

Hadley reached down under the porch beside him and pulled out a bottle of cheap rum. He filled his glass and put the bottle back. He took a gulp and puffed at his pipe.

‘It's not relevant to your investigation,' he said.

‘Of course it is. Everything is. If you think he's a bounder perhaps it was you who did him in.'

‘Wish I had. Not enough courage.' Hadley began to sing, in a surprisingly melodious voice:

Come all pretty maidens wherever you be,

Don't love a man before you try him,

Lest you should sing a song with me:

My husband's got no courage in him.

‘The village girls used to sing that, at home. Quite poetic, don't you think? Double meaning of course. My wife said I had no “courage” in that sense, but it was McCrory who put her up to it.'

‘Could you start at the beginning?'

‘If you insist. Go and talk to Annie about it. Then you can make a judgement on who's right. You'll take her side. Everyone's sorry for her. I mean everyone who knows about it, since we're all keeping the separation quiet. But she went on her own.'

‘Yes. But let's start with McCrory.'

‘All right. Annie's family knew Mrs Somerville, and we would go out there from time to time on Sundays. We met the
witchdoctor
– as I call him – out there. Very ingratiating chap. But actually it was Mrs Somerville who suggested that Annie go to see him for medical advice. Isn't it
rotten…
' Hadley looked fiercely at me, ‘the way women get together and discuss intimate matters?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘I dare say because Annie's mother is a total Scotch prude, she wanted to discuss things with another sort of mother.'

‘Another sort?'

‘I think she's immoral, Mrs Somerville. In fact, between you and me, I think she was McCrory's mistress. They were
so
close. But Annie thinks I have a dirty mind. I may have. Admittedly the Somerville girls are pure as pie. If I had only met Aemilia before Annie! Just my luck.'

‘So what happened?' I said, trying to hurry things along.

‘Annie went to see McCrory. He gave her mysterious “treatments,” about which she would not tell me. Then he told her the real trouble was
me,
and that
I
should come for treatment.'

‘Wait a minute. What had
her
trouble originally been?'

‘Female troubles,' said Hadley darkly. ‘Unmentionable. But why not? Our marriage was unconsummated. In spite of much effort. She had some kind of obstruction, it seemed to me. Everything – as it were – was
closed.
During the treatments it
opened.
I thought perhaps he had done surgery on her. But she swore he had not, and indeed there were no signs of such a thing, no blood or bandages. She actually said it was a result of “magnetic passes.” Rubbish! And she had suddenly, after two years of lying with her legs closed, become as lubricious as a rat! And I became useless! Partly because I was worried sick at what he might have done to her.' Hadley stopped.

‘And what was that?'

‘Deflowered her, I imagined. Surgically might have been all right. But I suspected another way.'

‘On what evidence?'

‘None whatsoever, apart from the fact that she was now very definitely opened up.'

‘And you accused her of…'

‘Yes. She's a religious girl. Scotch Presbyterian. The “kirk.” She took a bible and swore on it McCrory had never touched her. He had simply done magnetic passes over her body. These had provoked a crisis in which she cried and cried, and remembered all sorts of things, griefs and pains, from when she was a little girl. She refused to talk in detail about these. But the crisis cured her. And there I was, angry about it. Then McCrory, with whom she discussed me, had the gall to send me a note in which he said that
ejaculatio ante portae
could be cured, and why did I not come for treatment? I wrote him back referring to
ejaculatio ante portas
– correcting his Latin. It means ‘to ejaculate in front of the gates,' and he muddled the cases. You wouldn't understand that. A Peeler doesn't have to know Latin.'

‘What else did you write to him?'

‘That the phenomenon in question was temporary, and that it was none of his business, and I was forbidding my wife to see him. She cried about it. I assumed that if the gates had been closed for two years, and opened in dubious circumstances, it was natural enough for me to become unnerved. Then it turned out she was pregnant! I was furious. I accused her of fornication with McCrory. She swore on the bible again. But she went to see him! Against my express command not to! She wanted to get him to see me here. Which he did. Stood in our parlour, smooth as a cursed ginger tom, and told me, in front of my wife, that I should come to him for treatment for
my
nerves! He also said that medical science had established beyond doubt that impregnation could occur without full penetration. He said my sperm at the “introitus of the vagina” as he put it, had impregnated her. All this in front of Annie! I told him he was a bounder and should leave at once. Then you know what he did?'

‘What?'

‘He tore strips off me for almost an hour. He said I needed what he called a “criticism.” And he gave it to me. He started with a physical description of me. The way I walked, the way I stood “buttocks tight together,” the way my eyes were piercing but my chin and mouth weak and with “the expression of a dissatisfied baby.” Then he went on to the way I wanted to “control” Annie and possess her. He said she was a weak woman, debilitated by her condition, but now she was suddenly stronger I could not tolerate the change. “You're like a dog with a bone,” he said, “pushing it back and forth between his paws, snarling and biting it and letting it go. What would the dog do if the bone suddenly took on a life of its own and began to move? He'd run away with his tail between his legs – like yours is now.” And other elaborate imagery of this sort. He said I was pompous about knowledge, about being a schoolmaster. He said my position gave me an authority which was not natural to me. No doubt I had come to “America,” as he insisted on calling it here, because I could gain the authority of power as a missionary of English civilisation. He said my correcting his Latin was a sign of pedantry and fussiness. Who cared? he said, whether the case was nominative or accusative? I had understood what he meant, hadn't I? He said I should become dried up like an old stick if I did not change my ways. It wasn't enough for me to try and feel alive by drinking too much to get the blood circulating in my body, he said. I was frightened of the idea of the animal magnetism because it was not something I could control. But the only method of changing my ways would be to come to him for treatments. I “owed” it to my wife to do so.'

Hadley reached for his bottle again and filled his glass, his hands trembling. I was reminded of the Irish Rose. I wondered if on balance McCrory had increased or decreased human misery. Anyway drink, in Victoria, was an easy and cheap way out of most dilemmas.

‘After a while I was stunned,' Hadley went on. ‘I just stood there, growing hot and cold by turns. Then he said goodbye and went away. The strange thing was that although I felt as if the sky had fallen on me, and weak as a kitten, that was one moment when I did not feel angry with McCrory. Although some of what he said was too subjective on his part to be accurate, much of it was the painful truth. By itself, I should have survived it, and it even crossed my mind that since he had no illusions about me whatsoever, there was no need for me to put up a show in front of him. I felt free for a moment to be myself, such as I am. I might even have gone to see him for treatments. But in fact – and this is where I'm
really angry…
' Hadley stopped for breath, but his emphasis had been weak. He was indeed a mouse. ‘In fact that bounder had, through his tirade, destroyed my marriage. Annie had been standing there all the while, and she could not bear me. Before McCrory's arrival I had been yelling at her to get out of the house, to go and live with her seducer or go back to her mother. But now it was she who said she would go. She said that although McCrory could not have made her pregnant because he hadn't touched her, she wished a man like him
was
the father of her child. He was in fact the
spiritual
father, she said ravingly. He was ten times the man I was, and so on. So she went back to her mother. And she's still there. Only three hundred yards – three hundred and fifty three paces, to be precise – from this door. She is five months pregnant and she still won't come back. And here I am. Hating that bounder, even though he's finished.'

‘Did you see him after this “criticism”?'

‘No. I've been nursing my wounds.'

I could easily believe it. Hadley seemed to be drowning not only in spirits but in self pity. ‘When did you hear of McCrory's death?'

‘Two days afterwards, from the newspaper. For a moment I felt an irrational sadness. But after that I felt pleased. For one thing, with him dead, Annie's affections may be free to come to me again.'

‘Have you talked to her since then?'

‘No. I'm just waiting.' Hadley took another gulp of rum. However, he was showing no signs of drunkenness.

I could not resist giving him some advice. ‘I think you should get off the bottle and go and see her. Undoubtedly the child is yours.' Not that I wholly believed this.

‘Don't tell me what to do. I can make up my own mind. What if the child
isn't
mine? It's easy for you to say so.'

I felt hopeless. I should leave advice to the McCrorys of this world. I contented myself with asking: ‘Where were you on the afternoon McCrory was killed?'

‘At school of course. Everybody there can tell you that.'

‘Thank you for your help.'

‘I'm sorry the Indian has to swing for it. But I gather McCrory had been tinkering with
his
wife. That's one thing that makes me suspicious again about Annie.'

‘McCrory did
not
tinker with the Indian's wife,' I said sharply. ‘So you can set your mind at rest.'

I went on my way. I did not have the heart to go and question the hapless Annie.

*   *   *

These interviews have made me calmer. I'm on the case again. I realise something: people open themselves to me, they talk to me. I am a good listener. Is this from my mother again? I would always listen to her and she to me. Actually the same was true for my father and me. But there is something more: with all the perpetual fuss about Henry, his conspicuous growing up, his mistakes and rowdiness, I was left free to observe and to listen. I am an observer. And a listener. But I could never talk to others the way they talk to me! Instead I talk to this diary. One day I want to talk to Lukswaas. I have already started. If only Wiladzap was dead! But here I am, working all day to keep him alive. And I want to. Perhaps the outcome of this will be that he is freed and he will go back to the North with Lukswaas and at least they'll be happy together. Perhaps I could take up the courtship of Aemilia. I have known Lukswaas naked – a question of her setting her chilcat aside. How strange it would be to work through the various layers of clothes around Aemilia. The idea excites me. But Lukswaas! What shall I do without her?

17

That evening, dressed in my most elegant clothes, I climbed the shabby staircase to the Windsor Rooms, paid my entrance fee to the massive door attendant who doubled as a ‘chucker-outer,' and stood looking carefully around the dance hall. The orchestra, of piano, accordion, violin and cello, was playing a slow waltz rather listlessly. Nobody was dancing. The girls, brightly dressed in silks and velvets, their hair piled up on their heads in mountains stuck through by a single pin – so that with one tug the hair would fall in abandon – were clustered at several tables. At only one of these a group of men was sitting, three of whom I recognised as respectable citizens. I wandered over to a table at which four girls were sitting, and asked politely if I might join them.

‘Why certainly,' one of them said, with as much poise as if she were in a drawing room.

I pulled a chair out and sat down. A waiter appeared at my elbow and I ordered a magnum of champagne for myself and the ladies. This would cost me almost a week's pay but I had decided it would be necessary. There was a murmur of appreciation, and a couple of the girls who already had drinks in front of them began to finish them off in anticipation.

‘Celebrating a special occasion?' said the woman who had answered previously. She was well-spoken, American, pretty, but very heavily rouged. All of the women were bosomy, the upper halves of their dresses tight over what seemed to be less stiff stays than normal – I knew nothing of the mechanics of women's underclothes. For an instant I thought of Lukswaas and her freedom to be naked under a loose chilcat. The most striking contrast between her and these women at close range was in their artificiality. Waves of flowery scent wafted from them, and all were made up around the eyes, rouged, their lips coloured and set in a trained pouting expression. One was a Negress of no great beauty – her teeth were big – but with agreeable chocolate brown skin and an open, friendly face. The other two were sour-looking beneath a rigid mask of ‘prettiness,' but one of them was relatively plump and maternal. All looked older than Lukswaas. What age was Lukswaas? I found myself thinking. But they were looking at me expectantly.

‘No, I'm not celebrating. I'm Sergeant Hobbes, of the police. I'd like to talk to you for a little while, and since I'd appreciate your answering a few questions, I don't want to make it disagreeable.' There would have been no point in beating around the bush. At least some of the women would have recognised me.