perverse fiction of George’s own? But then how could the story have gained credibility in the first place, and why should Owdon acknowledge the boy to be his? These were all mysteries. And I realized how sketchy was my knowledge of the precious clan into which I had precipitated myself.
But one thing was clear. The arrival of Hippias had set George some obscure problem. This might not have been evident to everybody, but circumstances had obliged me to make some study of the man, and I could sense that he felt himself in the presence of certain imponderables amid which he was cautiously feeling his way. Moreover he was rattled – a state of mind I never expected to live to see George experience. He was sitting back now, looking through his claret at the candles on the corner of the table near him – and I could see that he was reviewing his handling of Mervyn and Timmy a few moments before and by no means approving of it. But presently he looked down the table with a confident eye. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘my memory is bad. But all these things may come back to me. So tell me more, my dear Hippias, about this Dismal Swamp.’
‘Dismal Swamp?’ said Hippias blankly.
6
Well, that was queer. It was a second before I at all got the hang of it. And then I remembered how George had said ‘Denzell?’ in just the same blank way a few minutes before. That plainly enough had been a sort of manifesto, an announcement that George didn’t intend to be disturbed by Hippias and his pesterings, and that in any trouble there might be over those distant dealings in land he felt quite secure of having the upper hand. And now Hippias appeared to be saying that he didn’t after all care a damn about Dismal Swamp either. But what sense could there be in so sudden a change of front?
Gerard evidently saw none. He was looking at his father in perplexity. And immediately Hippias hedged, as if feeling that too obvious a shift of position was undesirable. ‘We’ll give it a rest,’ he said. ‘Papers to unpack, and all that.’ He turned to Bevis. ‘Kangaroo? They’re swell enough. But if you want excitement you have to go for buffalo. You can stand in the middle of a sizeable plain, you know, and see nothing and believe you’re feeling a slight earthquake. But it’s a herd of those fellows over the horizon, and before you can say Jack Robinson they’re coming down on you. General idea is that the Australian Bush is a dull place for a sportsman–’
‘No, no,’ said Bevis. He was apparently anxious to dissociate himself from so drastic an aspersion as this. ‘Impression is that there’s no scenery or tourists’ stuff scattered about. But I’ve always understood a fellow could have a very fair spin with a gun. Trout, too, I’ve been told.’
Gerard joined in. ‘There are trout in Tasmania. And they’re in streams that don’t belong to anyone in particular.’
‘Is that so?’ Bevis was civil but shocked. ‘What an extraordinary state of affairs. Though for that matter I’ve been told that in Kenya–’
‘But quite often,’ interrupted Lucy, ‘there is nobody in particular. The Shropshire Mortimer’s have cousins in a place called the Flinders Ranges. And they say that there is nobody in particular within hundreds of miles of them. Nobody, that is to say, except ordinary colonials.’
Gerard put down his knife and fork, and I could see that he was quite quickly learning to be less annoyed than amused by talk of this sort. ‘But we are all ordinary colonials,’ he said. ‘Except of course those of us who are indigenous and black.’
‘Black?’ said Lucy. ‘I thought that was Africa.’
At this Joyleen felt she must take a hand. ‘There aren’t many blacks,’ she said defensively. ‘Or not any longer. They were protected, and that sort of thing, so that now there are very few of them left. They are quite horrid, of course, and particularly the children.’
Gerard opened his mouth and
Gary Pullin Liisa Ladouceur
The Broken Wheel (v3.1)[htm]