Wake In Fright (15 page)

Grant went blindly back to the semitrailer, shaking with humiliation. Bad enough to beg, but to be treated with that blasted, disinterested contempt, God damn it all! He sat down on a suitcase, trembling bodily.

Then, after a moment, what did it matter? This was all the price to be paid for folly, and it wouldn’t last for ever.

He explored under the canvas of the trailer and found plenty of space alongside rows of crates piled one on top of the other. Packing the rifle back in one suitcase, he pushed the two of them under the canvas and climbed in after them.

Inside he pulled out some of his older clothes and fashioned a pillow, then stretched out on the wooden floor.

It was very hot and stuffy, but he was past caring.

A mildly sick pain in his stomach reminded him that he had not eaten for several hours and he sat up again to ferret the half-rabbit out of the suitcase.

The smell assailed him as he unwrapped it; meat spoiled quickly in that climate, and being wrapped in a shirt in a suitcase had not helped stay the processes of decay.

He gnawed at it a little, but it was too sickening and finally he ejected it under the flap of the canvas.

Could a man live for four or five days without food? He had better try to buy half a loaf of bread with his remaining sevenpence.

He seemed to be lying there for hours, listening to the steady noise made by the men drinking in the half a dozen hotels within earshot, the mechanical voices and constant gunshots from the theatre, the thud of horses’ hooves on the road outside, the growl and clatter of the occasional car or truck, the disembodied voices of people walking, scraps of conversation, flat and removed from their context, and then at last the sound of the door of the semitrailer opening and shutting.

A voice, slightly slurred: ‘Are you in there?’

‘Yes, thanks,’ called Grant.

Nothing more.

The engine clanked into life, the gear engaged, the vehicle shuddered and they were on the road.

At first the movement was soothing, then uncomfortable, and within an hour every jolt jarred against his bones; but he was moving, moving east towards the sea, towards Sydney and perhaps even towards Robyn. But Robyn was a fleeting thought he did not feel qualified to entertain.

After much experimenting he found that the best way to lie was on the flat of his back with his hands clasped behind
his head. He wondered how long it would be before the driver stopped to sleep. He knew that transport drivers performed prodigious feats of endurance to cover vast distances with only snatches of sleep. This man had probably only come from Bundanyabba that afternoon and he might travel another three or four hundred miles before stopping. The semitrailer seemed to be moving extremely quickly for so cumbersome a vehicle.

Now that the problem of getting to Sydney had been satisfactorily overcome he had better think about what he would do when he got there.

It wasn’t all that hopeless really, he supposed.The semitrailer was based at Wyton, so it might well go straight there. He could leave his cases somewhere and walk to a friend’s place at Double Bay where he could quite decently borrow a pound or two. Then he would go to his uncle and explain that he was in difficulties; there would be no need to be strictly accurate after all. His uncle would give him food and lodging temporarily and he could get some sort of work. Perhaps there might even be pleasure left for him in his vacation.

If only he didn’t feel so damned sick. And there were so many things. He felt stained; he needed to rid himself of something that had penetrated since he had gone to Bundanyabba. He wanted something like the confessional that Roman Catholics had.

Still, that would pass. He had achieved his escape from Bundanyabba. He was on his way to Sydney, and a bath and a good night’s sleep and a decent meal would make things a lot simpler, probably.

Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if he had never gone near the Two-up school; or better if he had not gone back the second time? He might have been with Robyn now, walking somewhere, somewhere cool, by the sea.

Sleep advanced on Grant with many and fearsome dreams which made him start upright, knocking his head on the crates. But gradually he settled down into a sort of fitful coma from which he burst occasionally, oppressed by an awful sense of despair.

And finally he slipped into a glittering, bright dream that was not about anything much except that it all seemed very clean and sunny, just a great area of innocent light.

And through that light a voice from a long way off, then closer and closer:

‘All right. You’re here! Hey, inside there! You’re here!’

Grant awoke to the darkness, confused. An urgent need to understand the voice conflicted with his inability to orientate himself. Then as his thoughts settled into order, despairing fear set in.

Frantically he clawed aside the canvas. The man was
standing in front of him. God! get out of the way, where was he?

It was a wide street.

With street lamps.

And shops, many shops on either side.

Grant stared and stared and knew he must go mad.

He was in the main street of Bundanyabba.

From a great emptiness that seemed to have engulfed him Grant heard his own voice saying, very gently: ‘You know, I thought you were going to Sydney.’

‘Dunno why.’

Grant pointed to the sign on the door of the driving cabin.

‘That was where I bought it, never took it off. I run between ‘Londa and The Yabba.’

‘But you said you were going to Sydney. Why did you say you were going to Sydney?’ What did it matter, anyway?

‘I never said anything about Sydney,’ said the driver, climbing back into the cabin, ‘you said you wanted to go through to the city—well, this is a city isn’t it, mate?’

The door of the cabin closed.

‘Anyway,’ added the driver, as he started the engine, ‘the trip didn’t cost you anything.’

‘That’s not exactly the point,’ said Grant softly as the truck pulled away leaving him standing beside his suitcases in the middle of Bundanyabba.

He watched the truck until it turned around a corner, vaguely surprised that he was not so much upset as utterly devoid of any sensation apart from this impression of emptiness.

After all, this was the end. Perhaps there was nothing more to fear.

With no idea of where he was going he picked up his suitcases and began walking once more down the street.

It was very late and the only activity was around the hotels.

Thoughts came to Grant now as a series of stunning impossibilities. He could not go on walking for ever. But there was nowhere for him to stop. He could not stay in Bundanyabba for five weeks. He could not leave Bundanyabba without any money or supplies, not even ammunition for the rifle. The whole thing was just a morass of hopelessness. There was nothing he could do.

He just walked and walked until sheer fatigue made him stop. He was somewhere near the eastern end of the main street, opposite some sort of park.

The park offered escape from the street, so he turned and went into it, walking over the dried roots of grass until he came to a tree. Then he put his cases down and sat with his back against the tree and looked at the stars. For a long while he sat with his head back, looking at the stars, wondering at their remoteness, marvelling that they, unchanged, should still be part of his world, which was shattered.

And then after a long time his mind went back to the things that had happened to him, and he almost smiled at the enormous absurdity of it all.

But what was so fantastic was that there had been no element of necessity about it all. It was as though he had deliberately set about destroying himself; and yet one thing had seemed to lead to the next.

But he needn’t have done any of it.

He shook his head, then let it fall back against the rough bark of the tree and closed his eyes to the stars.

He needn’t have done any of it. He hadn’t had to play Two-up. And when he had won, nothing forced him to go back. He need not have got drunk with Tim Hynes; there had not even been any point in that. And even though he had been drunk he had decided of his own volition to seduce Janette Hynes—to try to seduce Janette Hynes.

He need not have gone shooting with the miners, not that
there had been anything in that as such; but there was no reason why he should have got drunk again and gone on the orgy of killing. And if he had not done that there would not be the echo of horror in his mind about what followed.

Strange, now, he did not mind thinking about anything. Perhaps because nothing mattered, now; it was all finished, there was nothing he could do.

Of course there had come a point where decision was not involved. The business of the bursts of light in the night and the foulness he suspected went with them had not had much to do with his decisions, except that what he had done earlier had led to them.

Everything had led to something else. There had been no necessity about any of it, but each event had carried within it the seed of the next.

Chance had played some part, that ridiculous business with the semitrailer had hardly been a matter of his choosing; and yet even that would not have happened had he not been wrecked by drink.

At almost every stage of his personal little tragedy he could remember a point of decision where he could have made it otherwise.

And now here he was, with sevenpence, a rifle and no ammunition, and several boxes of matches. And he was sick
and weak and would have been in despair if any emotion could have penetrated the cloud of emptiness or nothingness that surrounded him.

And all he was going to do was sit here and wait, and if nothing happened he would probably die, and so what?

He put his hands in his pockets and let himself slide down until he was lying almost flat.

Then his right hand encountered a small cylindrical object, hard and cool. He felt around it. It was a cartridge, he must have missed it when he gave the others to the driver in the hotel. He took it out and sat up to examine it. He had one cartridge.

It looked a harmless little piece of metal in the light of the stars, but it could be used to kill.

Why not to kill John Grant?

Other people killed themselves. It had been done.

It would be a solution to the immediate problem and would intercept any problems he might have in the future.

Why not?

He looked at the cartridge and rolled it around in his fingers. It was very small.

Why not?

Anyway, he would think about it for a while, get out the rifle and load it, see how the proposition looked then.

The precise operation of assembling the rifle was comforting in a way. He put the cartridge into the breech and pushed the bolt home.

With the loaded weapon across his knees he thought: this could be used to remove John Grant from Bundanyabba and Tiboonda and himself for ever.

All he had to do was point it at his head and pull the trigger.

He reversed the rifle and put the muzzle against his forehead. It was quite cool, cool and hard.

But he could not reach the trigger comfortably this way. He experimented with his finger. He would have to push the trigger, not pull it.

Many suicides—suicides, the word had a chilling quality— put the muzzle in their mouth. He tried it that way. The taste of gunmetal was quite distinct. But this way the bullet would tear up through his palate, burning and gouging. He took the muzzle out of his mouth.

Through the heart? He tried pointing the rifle at his body, but it was almost impossible to reach the trigger that way.

In any case, it seemed better in some way to shoot himself through the head, more necessarily final.

And his head did not seem so vulnerable.

That was a foolish thought.

He cradled the rifle in his arms. It was held by some that suicide was an evil thing. Catholics argued that it meant damnation. What precisely did they mean by damnation? He preferred the pantheistic ‘now he is part of the loveliness which once he made more lovely’.Was that how it went? Anyway he had not made anything more lovely. Quite the reverse.

Chesterton used to say that the great wrong in suicide was that it destroyed one’s whole world. All right, he didn’t mind destroying the whole world, not at all.

Even Robyn?

But Robyn was a dream, a white-skirted dream. Whether he killed himself or not, Robyn was in another world.

Another world? Supposing he precipitated himself into some other life. But the cold stars assured him there was no other life.

The fact was he could either kill himself or not kill himself. He simply had to make the decision.

There was another point of decision. He could either do it or not do it, and from that decision would flow the consequences. But there would be no consequences if he killed himself. There would be nothing.

Probably there would be nothing. A lot of people had
argued that there was something after death. And what if that something were unpleasant for suicides? But since he had never believed it to be wrong to commit suicide how could he suffer for it?

This was nonsense. Where had the suggestion of suffering come from? Suffering was here and now. If he killed himself he would be dead and that was an end to it.

But the question of decision? Was this the one act that absolved man from all the consequences and responsibilities of his own decisions. Of course it was. If he killed himself he would be dead, and that was an end to it.

He drew back the bolt of the rifle until he heard the double click which meant it was cocked.

Now it needed only the slightest pressure of his finger and John Grant would come to an end and his troubles would be over.

It was strange that he was so reluctant to kill himself. It was quite a good idea really.There would be no pain, just oblivion, for ever, he supposed. It would be quite reasonable to kill oneself just to find out what happened then. So it must be all the more reasonable to kill oneself to solve a problem.

He seemed to be advancing arguments to himself to justify suiciding. Well, it didn’t hurt to think about it awhile.

But damn it all! there was nothing else to do; tomorrow offered no hope.

Was the problem sufficiently grave to warrant this? Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow for five weeks in the heat of Bundanyabba with no money and no food and nowhere to go, and then a year in Tiboonda…yes, it was grave. And besides, the John Grant he had once been was a soiled miserable creature now.

He rested the muzzle against his head, holding the barrel in both hands, the butt on the ground.

He was really sick to death of himself, he wanted to be rid of John Grant.

And why should John Grant not be got rid of?

To hell with it! If it suited him he would suicide.

And it did suit him. His hands clenched on the barrel. Get it over with! Do it! Make the decision! Push the bloody trigger!

But first, just one moment to wish it were otherwise, that he might have been a little more like the man he once thought he was. And just one moment to think of Robyn and the sea.

The emptiness evaporated and pain flooded around. He felt the tears burning his eyes and spilling down his cheeks and he did not know whether he meant to do it or not, but
Oh God life was a mess and, sobbing, he reached out and pushed the trigger.

THE IMPACT WAS DREADFUL

and then just nothing.