My Bones and My Flute E-Book

Edgar Mittelholzer

• Herausgeber: Peepal Tree Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Caribbean Modern Classics
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 423

Beschreibung

A haunting ghost story by the 'first West Indian novelist', Edgar Mittelholzer. Only when he is on board the steamer halfway to their remote destination up river in Guyana does Milton Woodsley realise that there is more to Henry Nevinson's invitation to spend time with his family in their jungle cottage. Milton, an artist, thinks he has been invited to do some paintings for Nevinson, a rich businessman, and possibly be thrust into the company of their daughter, Jessie. But when the Nevinsons mention a flute player that no one else can hear, Woodsley begins to glean that there is more to their stay. Told in Woodsley's sceptical, self-mocking and good-humoured voice, the tension rises as the cottagers' sanity and lives are threatened by psychic manifestations whose source they must discover before it overwhelms them. Mittelholzer subtitled his 1955 novel "A Ghost Story in the Old-fashioned Manner", and there is more than a hint of tongue-in-cheek in this thoroughly entertaining work, though it rises to a pitch of genuine terror and has serious things to say about the need to exorcise the crimes of slavery that still echo into the present in the relationship between the light-brown, upper-class Nevinsons and their black servant, Rayburn. Amongst the barks of baboons, rustles of hidden creatures in the remote Berbice forests, Mittelholzer creates a brilliantly atmospheric setting for his characters and their terrified discovery that this is not a place where they can be at home. Edgar Mittelholzer was born in British Guiana in 1909. He wrote more than twenty novels. He eventually settled in England, where he lived until his death in 1965, a suicide predicted in several of his novels.

Leseprobe

EDGAR MITTELHOLZER

MY BONES AND MY FLUTE

A Ghost Story

In the Old-fashioned Manner

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

THIS story should have been written about twenty years ago, but, for more than one reason, it got shelved. First, it’s not the kind of thing one likes to go hurrying into print, and, secondly, I could never decide exactly what form it should take. I had intended to publish my diary notes as they stood and leave it at that, but Mr. Nevinson thought that this would be most unsatisfactory. My diary style, from a literary point of view, he considered too ragged and undignified for a published book, and, moreover, he was of the opinion that the narrative, as set forth in my diary entries, lacked proper form and shape.

Mrs. Nevinson and Jessie, too, objected to my publishing my diary notes – but on different grounds. According to them, why shouldn’t I do it as a story? Let it be chronological, as in my diary, but “let it be a good thrilling sort of old-fashioned ghost story, with the mystery solved at the end”, as Jessie put it. Her mother agreed with her, and thought that “it would be a shame to publish those scrappy notes in your diary. They’re dull – and so unromantic! Why not write them over and put a lot of atmosphere and excitement into them! You haven’t got to insert anything that didn’t happen, but at least make them readable or don’t publish anything at all.”

Well, I have tried to please all three of them. For Mr. Nevinson – the “dignified”, sonorous prose style (at least, as much so as I could get it) and as much “form and shape” as I could manage; for Jessie “a good thrilling sort of old-fashioned ghost story, with the mystery solved at the end” (though whether the mystery can really be said to have been solved in the end is a matter for serious debate); and for Mrs. Nevinson “a lot of atmosphere and excitement”.

So far as I myself am concerned, I am satisfied that I have made a true record, including nothing that might be attributed to my imagination. I have gone through this work repeatedly with a fine-toothed comb to make quite sure that the factual framework is intact, and while it is true that good taste has compelled me to give fictitious names to the characters involved, that does not make them any the less actual beings who are, even today, very much alive.

MILTON WOODSLEY,

NEW AMSTERDAM, BRITISH GUIANA,

July 1954.

[Publisher’s note: References to the ethnicity of characters in this novel reflect colonial usage. Hence “Indian” signifies someone who is a Guyanese Amerindian rather than someone whose ancestors came as indentured labourers from India, where the then contemporary term would have been East Indian. “Buck” is the other (offensive) term for Amerindian that Mittelholzer uses realistically in dialogue.]

1

We must have been well over half-way to our destination when I received the first hint that there might be some other reason behind Mr. Nevinson’s invitation to me to spend time with him and his family up the Berbice. When the steamer left New Amsterdam the ostensible understanding was that I had been commissioned by Mr. Nevinson’s firm, the Berbice Timber and Balata Company, to paint some pictures depicting jungle scenes which, if satisfactory, would adorn the walls of their head office. That Mr. Nevinson could have had any other motive in wanting to have me accompany him and his wife and daughter into the interior had never for an instant occurred to me – nor, as I realized afterwards, to his wife. His daughter, Jessie, however, seemed to have suspected something; indeed, it is through her, as you will see, that I got this first inkling that things were not what they appeared to be.

At the time of these events – the early nineteen-thirties- the steamer made the trip up the Berbice River only once a week. It left New Amsterdam, the little town at the mouth of the river, every Wednesday morning, arrived at Paradise, the terminus, a hundred and ten miles up, any time between seven and half past seven in the evening, setting out on the return trip for New Amsterdam on the following morning. This meant that once you missed this Thursday morning opportunity you were committed irrevocably to jungle life for at least one full week. Knowing the Nevinsons as I did, however, I had no qualms about this fortnight we had planned to pass at Goed de Vries where the Berbice Timber and Balata Company have their up-river station. The cottage in which we were going to stay would be well-furnished and equipped – of this I had not the slightest doubt – and there would be no effort spared to make me comfortable.

Like myself, Mr. Nevinson comes of an old coloured family. We can both trace our ancestors back to the late eighteenth century, at which time the Nevinsons and the Woodsleys had not yet acquired the strain of negro slave blood that runs in them today. While I myself am of an olive tint, Mr. Nevinson is almost as fair in complexion as a pure white. His father, who was slightly darker, was the managing director of the Hardware Arcade in New Amsterdam, and had twice been Mayor of the town, and his grandfather was the Reverend Mr. Rawle Nevinson, an Anglican priest well known in Berbice for his good work among the lower river districts and for the church he erected at Huisten Rust on the Canje Creek.

Mr. Ralph Nevinson, like his father and grandfather before him, is a cultured man, and so is his wife who is a Groode, another well-known coloured family of Berbice. Mr. Nevinson’s hobby is the collecting of anything relating to the early history of the colony, and as a boy I used to be fascinated with his private museum of relics, Indian and Dutch.

Normally, I think I should have expired from sheer astonishment had the Berbice Timber and Balata Company offered me a commission to paint some pictures for their office, but it was Mr. Nevinson, their managing director, who had put the proposition to me, and that made all the difference. For though he had spent all of his forty-seven years in New Amsterdam (forgetting the two years during the First Great War when he was with the West Indian Regiment in Egypt and Palestine), Mr. Nevinson was no small-town philistine who treated artists with a simpering patronage. In him I knew I had one who genuinely wished me well in my career as an artist. At the time of this narrative my own people had long since given up hope of seeing me “settled in a good, steady job” as an accountant or a Customs officer. After leaving school, I had been put to work as a sales assistant in the Hardware Arcade, Mr. Jack Nevinson, a brother of Mr. Ralph Nevinson, and my father having, between themselves, engineered this. After three months in the gloom of nail barrels and shelves of hinges and hasps and staples, I had been summoned upstairs by Mr. Jack Nevinson, and with much finger-tapping and avuncular smiling on the part of that gentleman, informed that “an opening” had been found for me in the office. I would begin as a junior clerk, and Mr. Jack Nevinson had no doubt that it would only be a matter of time before I rose to a high position in the firm.

Unfortunately, high positions, whether in well-established and illustrious firms or in colonial society, have never quickened my heartbeats. So I thanked Mr. Jack Nevinson and told him I was sorry but that I did not want an office job. I wanted to be a painter. I need not bother to describe the expression on his face as I left his screened-off sanctum and threaded my way between the desks of the outer office toward the stairway.

From that day I was regarded by the respectable people of New Amsterdam as an eccentric crank who would “get nowhere in life”. I became renowned for the bad company I kept; I talked philosophy in barbers’ shops with bus drivers and stevedores and porters – people far beneath me in class; I was a disgrace to my family.

The first one-man show I held was a depressing failure. But on the third day Mr. Ralph Nevinson dropped in and not only congratulated me but bought two pictures. He spoke to me not as the son of a family with which his own family had been friendly for decades, but as one man of the world to another. He made me feel that he and I were equals in a knowledge of humanity. He did not try to recall the days when I used to play with his children in his big Queenstown residence; the good-uncle-to-small-boy patronage in his manner had vanished; he seemed to consider me seriously as a grown-up person, and no fool, either. He invited me to come and see him any time I liked, and added that his bookshelves were always at my disposal.

That was how the friendship began between us – or perhaps I should say acquaintanceship, for no real intimacy ever developed between us. I have never been able to rid myself of a certain awe and respect for people appreciably older than myself, and the great disparity in our ages produced within me a rigid reserve which debarred that camaraderie I might have experienced with a person of my own years. Added to this, too, I was forever conscious that his wife and children considered me a ridiculous figure and something of a social outcast (I had never been very chummy with Jessie and Fred; Ronald, the eldest, used to be my play-companion, but he was in Georgetown now, having been manoeuvred a year before into the Civil Service as a clerk in the Treasury).

Despite my aggressive airs, and a decided pomposity of manner, and the contempt I was forever expressing for “the middle-class philistines” of New Amsterdam, as I called them, I was extremely sensitive, and so much dreaded the scorn and ridicule of Mrs. Nevinson and Jessie and Fred that my visits to their home were extremely infrequent.

Whenever I did call to see Mr. Nevinson, however, the occasion never failed to prove satisfying and enjoyable. Apart from art and philosophy and human beings, we discussed the early history of British Guiana, a subject of which Mr. Nevinson was passionately fond and on which he would readily have gone on talking all night until daybreak (with sundry delvings now and then into old books and letters and manuscripts) had I chosen not to take my departure at a discreet hour. He saw that the subject interested me intensely too, and this must have helped in great measure to strengthen his attachment to me, especially as in a town like New Amsterdam he would have had to do quite a lot of searching to discover another fellow-enthusiast in such matters as slave uprisings in the eighteenth century and the doings of the old Dutch settlers.

It was one morning, ten days before we set out for Goed de Vries, that he telephoned our home and asked me whether I could drop round that evening to see him. There was something important he wanted to discuss with me, he said. “Something I’m sure you’ll be interested in, too,” he added. “It’s just in your line.”

That was the evening on which he put the proposition to me. He sat in his favourite easy chair, behind him a glass case containing Dutch and Indian relics. He was a man of medium height, thickset and with the suggestion of a paunch. His close-cut, rather bristly dark hair was thinning on top and was touched with grey, though in this soft pink light the grey was not obvious. He had a long head, and features that betrayed no trace whatever of the negroid; it was a fine head and one that I had often wanted to do, though, up to now, I had not had the temerity to ask him to pose for me.

His grave grey-brown eyes regarded me with an affectionate humour as he said: “I can see you’re curious, my boy. Well, I won’t keep you waiting” His voice was deep and quiet, and went well, I thought, with the old-book scent of this study and the restful gloom that always lurked in the spaces between these dark mahogany bookcases with their rows of volumes and stacks of yellowed manuscripts and the relics that occupied some shelves – old Dutch jars and Indian goblets and pots and balata ornaments, chunks of masonry from ruined Dutch forts, daggers, and an eighteenth-century horse-pistol, the dented silver flagon reputed to have been the property of Laurens Storm van’s Gravesande, the Directeur-General of Demerary and Essequibo in the middle eighteenth century.

In this study, with whose atmosphere I had been familiar since childhood days, I felt perfectly at ease – and not only at ease but filled with a deep serenity, for, of course, I am a romantic and extremely susceptible to my surroundings. There was a perfumed magic in the soft pink light, and benign jumbies seemed to crouch in the gloomed spaces between the bookcases, watching us as we chatted. I could feel their umber gaze on the side of my face, and their companionable breath was mingled with the cool February night breeze that came in at the open windows. Yes, there was no reason whatever for me to be sceptical of Mr. Nevinson’s project nor for me to look for ulterior motives. The directors of his company, he said, had decided that the head office was in need of repairs and general renovations. The work would soon commence, and the idea had struck him that while they were about it why shouldn’t they make a thorough job of it and acquire a few good pictures to decorate the walls?

“At first, I’d thought of your doing some murals – painting a few things of local interest – familiar scenes, birds, animals and so on – direct on to the walls, but after reflecting a bit I realized this wouldn’t work. The boards we’re going to use won’t take artist’s paints very well. That’s why I thought of your doing a few canvases instead – and we’re in the timber business, so what could be better than a few jungle scenes! You could come up with me on my next visit and see something of the timber-grant and sawmill. Good outing for you, if nothing else.”

A tiny midge was fluttering around the pink-shaded reading-lamp on the desk at my right, and from the Canje Creek came the chug-chug of a motorboat, clear and deliberate on the night air. Already I thought I could sniff the watery vegetable rankness of the jungle, and a shiver of pleasant anticipation ran through me. Without hesitation I told him that I thought it an excellent scheme.

“Nothing would please me better,” I said. “And perhaps we could hunt out some old Dutch ruins and do a bit of nosing around generally for anything interesting in that line,” I added with all the enthusiasm of my twenty-three years.

“You’d like that, would you?”

At the time I attached no significance to it, but afterwards, on reflecting back, I realized that he had said this with a note of eagerness. He even clasped his hands together and leant forward a trifle, smiling at me and nodding.

“Well, certainly, sir! Anything to do with old ruins and relics and such things fascinates me terrifically. I’ve told you that before.”

“Yes, I know. Ah, well. We shall see. When we get up there time enough.”

The rest of the evening we spent in a discussion of practical details, and it was not until I was on my way home that it occurred to me that, for once, we had not plunged into our favourite topic – local history. But again, I thought nothing of this. Not for an instant had it occurred to me that my host might have purposely steered our conversation clear of the subject. I had detected nothing whatever in his manner to make me feel that there might be something troubling him, or that he could be withholding from me information relating to some secret aspect of our proposed trip.

On the Wednesday morning of the following week, the steamer cast off its moorings precisely at seven-thirty. It was a rather grubby little steamer called the Arawana (the name of a local fish). The lower deck, which was second-class, had a perpetual odour of cow-dung, tar and humanity; on this deck every conceivable type of cargo – from ground provisions and fruit to lumber and cattle – is dumped. The lot of second-class passengers is never a happy one on these river steamers. The upper deck, first-class, smells of tar only, and is tolerable, if far from being a sybarite’s conception of paradise. We found a few shaky wicker chairs into which we sank to the accompaniment of loud creakings. And there was a dining-saloon intended evidently for dining and nothing but dining; there was no room in it for moving around. The deck-space was extremely limited, and had there been a large number of passengers – even as many as twenty – conditions would have been definitely uncomfortable, especially as the wicker chairs did not amount to more than ten.

Fortunately, very few people ever travel up the river first-class, and this occasion was no exception. Besides Mr. Nevinson, his wife, Jessie and myself, there were only three other first-class passengers – an Anglican priest and his wife, and a cattle-rancher on the first leg of his long journey to the Rupununi Savannah. The Nevinsons were acquainted with all three of them, but only the Reverend Mr. Lumsden and his wife were known to me; I had met them at the home of my own people whom they not infrequently visited. My people, of course, are staunch Anglicans – as I myself, indeed, used to be in the days before I began to think for myself.

Not being in a mood to participate in polite, trivial conversation, I secluded myself aft with a book from which I occasionally glanced up to observe the passing scenery – bush and more bush, with now and then a lonely homestead to relieve the monotony of green.

No one bothered me – and no one seemed surprised that I had cut myself off from the rest of the company, for, no doubt, it was taken for granted that I was an odd young man who despised respectable society.

At lunch – not at all a bad meal; the ship’s cook evidently knew how to make a good coconut curry – Mr. Nevinson and I exchanged a few murmured commonplaces, and the Reverend Mr. Lumsden smiled at me once with a friendly facetiousness, wagged his head and made a purring comment on the habits of “you bookworms – tut, tut, tut!”

Mrs. Nevinson sat opposite me. At the time of this account, she looked much younger than her forty-four years. Pale olive and shapely, she had a gay, attractive laugh and a most intriguing mole just beneath her right eye. As a small boy I had always welcomed her presence in our home, and, in fact, at ten, I had found myself violently in love with her! She treated me now in the manner of a dutiful aunt and said that she had promised Kate (my mother) to see that I did not neglect my meals. She kept pressing me to help myself to more vegetables, to more rice, to more chicken… “What about some more gravy, Milton? Come, pass your plate…” I responded with pleasant, polite firmness, eating what I wanted and rejecting what I did not want.

After lunch I returned aft with my book, but this time I was not to be left undisturbed. I heard footsteps and glanced up to see Jessie approaching. She stopped near my chair, peered with mild curiosity at the book in my lap and said: “Poems, I suppose.”

I nodded gravely in confirmation. “Yes, poems.”

“I could have bet anything on it.”

I did not rise to offer her my chair, but this in no way discouraged her. My chair stood near a locker in which, I believe, life-belts were stored. She gave me an amused look and seated herself on this locker.

At nineteen she was tall and shapely like her mother. But she had her father’s wide brows, deep-set eyes, arched nose, dimpled chin. In outlook she was vacuous and small-town; tennis, dances and young men were her only interests. I have told her this to her face on so many occasions – to her great amusement – that I know she won’t mind me saying it here. She has never taken me seriously.

“You never get tired of reading, Milton?”

“Never. Did your mother send you here to relieve my loneliness?”

She giggled. “No, I came of my own accord. I felt like taking a walk. This heat is getting more terrible every minute.”

The heat had certainly increased in intensity. The low deckawning, if anything, made it worse. And now that we were far from the coast, there was no wind. The jungle, glittering in the sunshine, reared up in two dense walls on either bank, shutting us in. It had a rigid, listening look as though held in a spell. The river, from a light muddy amber, had turned black and ominous. Already I could envisage myself amid the gloom of hanging vines and prickly-trunked palms, already I could sense in the air a mystery and isolation.

“It rather baffles me why you’ve come on this trip,” I said. “I didn’t think you would consider yourself capable of standing up to a fortnight of jungle life.”

She laughed. “You have a very low opinion of me, I can see. I hear there are a lot of nice Indian boys up the river. I’m going to see if I can catch one. Buck men make good husbands.”

“I see.”

“And in any case, you forget it’s Lent? No dances on. What’s the use of remaining in town?”

“Quite so. I’d forgotten that. Lent. Very appropriate time, I should say, to go into the wilderness.”

She giggled. “But no fasting for me, though, you can bet! I’m looking forward to my labba pepper-pot. But wait! What’s this I’m hearing about your going up to paint pictures for Daddy’s office? Is it true?”

“You’re unusually well informed today.”

“Oh, so that’s how he managed to inveigle you into going up with us?”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow.”

“All right. Never mind.”

I lit a cigarette, watching the smoke shape itself into grey-blue phantoms across the narrow strip of deck before it finally dissolved into the heat-quivering air. Jessie crossed her legs and began to whistle a popular dance tune, tapping her foot against my chair in rhythm.

Looking down past the rail, I could see the water rushing foamily along the side of the vessel. Swell-waves fanned out perpetually toward the bank. The deck throbbed to the monotonous thump of the engines.

“What are you getting at, Jessie?”

She stopped whistling and gave me a mysterious smile. Her flippancy was gone. There was, to my surprise, even a slightly worried frown on her face. I was not accustomed to seeing her look worried.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said slowly, “because it may be only a fancy of mine – but I believe something is on Daddy’s mind.”

“On his mind?”

She nodded. “I mean concerning this trip. For the past two or three weeks he hasn’t been his usual self. Mother thinks he’s overworked, but it isn’t that.”

“What else could it be, then?”

“I don’t know, but I feel it’s something to do with this trip.”

“But isn’t it the custom for him to visit the up-river station once every six months?”

“I know it is – and that’s what set me thinking. He paid his first visit for the year last month. By all rights he shouldn’t be going up there again until June or July.”

“Did he go up to Goed de Vries last month? I didn’t know that.”

“He went up – but he came back to town by the same steamer the next morning. He said that Rayburn the caretaker was down with a bilious attack and the place was in a mess.”

“That seems a pretty good reason to me.”

“Yes, I know. Daddy is very fussy about his comforts, and he hates a dusty or untidy house. But that wasn’t the only reason why he came back to town by the return steamer. Mother believes everything he tells her – but he can’t fool me so easily. Since he came back from that trip last month he’s been nervy and jumpy – and sort of excited inside, as if he has a secret he’s afraid we might discover.”

I smiled. “Are you sure you aren’t allowing your imagination to be influenced by those magazine stories you and your mother devour?”

“It’s no imagination! Why did he ask me to come up with him? It’s true Mother has been up with him on one or two trips, but she’s always had to invite herself. He’s never asked her. But this time he invited both of us. And look at you! He’s gone and asked you, too. If he isn’t afraid of something up the river there why does he want so much company?”

“But afraid of something like what? Spooks?”

“I don’t say that – though I’ve heard them say the sawmill is supposed to be haunted. The men say they’ve seen an old Dutchman walking on the greenheart logs near the winch.”

“Always an old Dutchman, isn’t it?”

“Or a headless slave. Remember those tales Milly, our nurse, used to tell us when we were small, in Daddy’s study?”

“I’ve suffered too many nightmares on their account not to remember them.”

On the lower deck one of the sailors – or it might have been a passenger – was strumming a ukelele and singing in a crude but melodious voice, If you were the only girl in the world.

Jessie began to whistle the tune softly and tap her foot on the deck.

“I’ve heard both your mother and father scolding you about that whistling, Jessie. Not ladylike.”

“Do you think it not ladylike?”

“I didn’t say I did.”

“These are not Victorian times. I’m always telling Mother that.”

“I agree with you in that if in nothing else.”

We fell silent after that – at least I did. Jessie continued to whistle. I dabbed at my forehead and cheeks which were damp with perspiration. The chair creaked as I altered my position slightly, and, somehow, it was as though the rasping screechiness of the sound at once became transposed into a wisp of uneasy mist that curled through my awareness so that I had the inclination to fidget and glance about me. I found myself frowning at the black water. Then my gaze strayed to the trees which hung low over the stream. I began to wonder what might not be lurking in the damp gloom that simmered among that glittering welter of greens. Who knew what odd creatures might not be eyeing us as we rushed by? Tiny, warped insects unknown to entomology. Or some monstrosity that was neither reptile nor bird nor mammal – like the hoatzins near the mouth of the river and on the Canje Creek. Amber orbs in a green flat head…

It came upon me that Jessie had grown silent. She sat with her head tilted at a listening angle, a slight frown on her face. As she became aware of the curiosity in my stare she murmured: “Well, that’s strange. I wonder if he’s going up with us, too.”

“Are you addressing me or speaking to yourself?”

“Don’t you hear that flute? It’s the same one I’ve been hearing for some days now in Queenstown. The fellow who plays it must be on his way up, too.”

“What are you talking about? What flute is this? And who is the fellow that plays it?”

“I don’t know him from Adam, but he must be on the steamer with us. I’m sure it’s the same fellow. Somebody has been playing a flute in Queenstown near our house for the past week or two.”

“And what of that?”

“Nothing – only I’m saying he seems to be travelling up with us. Don’t you hear the flute on the lower deck?”

“I hear a ukelele, but definitely not a flute.”

She laughed. “Don’t be silly, Milton. You, such a keen enthusiast on highbrow music and can’t even recognize a flute when you hear it!”

At this point I observed her father approaching along the deck. He did not come aft, however, but paused amidships at the top of the companionway. I noticed that there was a frown on his face. He was smoking a cigarette, his manner, on the whole, a trifle puzzled and intent; he might have been listening to some conversation taking place at the foot of the companionway, on the lower deck.

Jessie called to him: “Daddy, don’t you hear a flute down there?”

He started and glanced up as though noticing us for the first time. “What did you say? What’s that?” There seemed to be an unusually sharp note in his voice. He began to come towards us, his gaze on Jessie. “What did you ask, Jessie?”

Jessie evidently had not failed to note the tenseness in his manner. She said: “I thought you were going to snap off my head. I was only asking you about the flute down there. Milton swears he can’t hear it.”

He flicked his half-smoked cigarette over the rail, if anything tenser. “Yes, I do hear a flute. Are you hearing it, too?”

“Of course. I’m not deaf.” She looked at me triumphantly. “You see! Dad can hear it too, Milton.”

I sat forward, beginning to be puzzled in earnest now, because I knew perfectly well that there was no such thing as the sound of any flute on the lower deck. Except for that ukelele and the voice singing, there was only the throbbing of the engines and the rushing hiss of the water as it foamed past the steamer, an occasional mumble of conversation: simply the sum of noises that our senses had come to take for granted.

“Mr. Nevinson, are you hearing a flute?”

“Yes, I’m afraid I am – but don’t let it trouble you, my boy. I suppose your ears aren’t attuned to it.” He smiled at Jessie, but I knew that he was being casual with a purpose. I knew that beneath this outward show of nonchalance there was a layer of deep concern and nervousness. “When did you first hear it, Jessie?”

“The flute? A few days ago. A week or so – or perhaps longer. If it’s the same one, of course – and it sounds so to me. Why do you ask?”

“I simply wondered. By the way, young lady, did you borrow a book from my study recently?”

“A book? I should think not. You know I never touch any of your books. I don’t think I’ve even been in your study for months.”

He tweaked her ear. “That’s an exaggeration. Don’t you filch stamps from my desk when you write Fred?”

“Oh, yes, I forgot. I did take a penny stamp from your desk drawer some time early last week. Or the week before. I’m not sure.”

“Which drawer was that? The right-hand one? Can you remember?”

“I think it was the left-hand one. The one you keep a lot of old papers in – with Dutch writing. You generally keep it locked, but, somehow, it was open that day. I found two penny stamps in a little cardboard box.”

“That’s why I can never keep any stamps in the house. What are you reading now, young man? Something philosophical?”

After glancing at the book in my lap, he patted me affectionately on the shoulder and moved off.

Jessie looked at me. “You see what I told you! Are you satisfied now he isn’t himself?”

“For that matter,” I returned, “you aren’t yourself, either. All this talk about an imaginary flute. Are you both dreaming?”

She stared at me. “But how do you mean? Didn’t you hear it?”

“Oh, has it stopped now?”

“About a minute ago. But are you serious, Milton? You really didn’t hear it?”

“I didn’t.”

“But – oh, this is silly. I wasn’t dreaming. I heard it. And it isn’t the first time. I heard it up to yesterday evening before I came downstairs to dinner. It sounded somewhere nearby in the neighbourhood. And Daddy heard it a few minutes ago. He said so. How is it you couldn’t?” She laughed. “You’re trying to pull my leg.”

“Literally, such an occupation would in no way revolt me, but in the figurative sense – well, I’m afraid you’re off the track, Jessie. Honestly, I’m not trying to spoof you. I never heard anything like a flute. That ukelele and the voice down there are all I’ve heard during the past few minutes. There’s been no flute.”

“Seriously? On your word of honour?”

“Seriously. On my word of honour.”

2

It is true that, as I have mentioned, I am a romantic, but under my romanticism I am a strong rationalist, and I can state quite frankly that not for an instant did I believe that any supernatural influences were responsible for the incident I have just described. I was convinced that there must be some natural explanation for the fact that Jessie and her father could hear a flute while I could not, so without delay I told her to sit in my chair and wait until I returned.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’m going down to make inquiries on the lower deck.”

“Let me come with you.”

“I don’t think your mother would like the idea of a respectable young lady like her daughter venturing among the rabble of the lower deck.”

She told me to stop being sarcastic, and accompanied me below.

The second mate and I were already acquainted. He was one of my barber’s shop companions in debate. In reply to my enquiry he said: “A ukelele and a mouth-organ de only instruments we got down here, so far as I know.”

“But what about the passengers? You’re sure none of them have been playing a flute during the past few minutes?”

“No, Mr. Woodsley, not down here. I been here all de time. I woulda hear it. Only Mitchell and his ukelele been playing.”

“But I’m positive I heard a flute,” said Jessie. “My father heard it, too. And it came from down here.”

The second mate smiled and shook his head. “Not down here, Miss. I can swear to dat. Nobody didn’t play no flute on dis deck today. Aubrey, one o’ de deck-hands, got a mouth-organ, and Mitchell dere got his ukelele – and dat’s de only musical instruments I hear on dis boat. None o’ de passengers didn’t play no instrument since we left town dis morning.”

As we returned to the upper deck Jessie said: “Well, that’s the queerest thing I’ve ever known to happen. If it wasn’t a human being who played that flute then it must have been a jumbie, because I did hear it – as plainly as I can hear you speak.” She spoke lightly as though the whole thing were a joke.

“What was the tune?” I asked. “Did you recognize it?”

“It was no particular tune. It was as if the person was practising his notes or something – or it might have been something highbrow.” She gave me a teasing glance. “Like one of those dry-as-dust pieces you like to listen to.”

“I see.”

“Remember there’s a piece you used to play on that portable gramophone Ronald had – something about a faun.”

“Debussy’s L’apres-midi d’un faune?”

“That’s the one. It was a tune like that. A kind of aimless, wandering thing.”

“What about the previous occasions on which you heard it? Was it always the same tuneless, wandering thing?”

“Yes, always the same. I never really paid any attention to it. I heard it coming from somewhere in the neighbourhood, and didn’t think anything of it.”

“You never remarked on it to your mother or father?”

“No. Why should I have? Some violin or piano or saxophone is always making a noise. A flute was nothing so unusual to comment on.”

“That sounds fairly reasonable. And don’t you remember exactly on what day you began to hear it?”

She laughed. “What’s this now? Am I in the witness-box?” But she shook her head. “No, I don’t remember the exact day, but it wasn’t more than two weeks ago, I’m sure.”

“Our place isn’t so far from yours in Queenstown – just around the corner – and I can assure you I’ve heard nothing like a flute during the past few weeks.”

“Well, either you’re deaf or I’m enchanted.”

“No, but joking apart, I’m puzzled, Jessie. You’re not renowned for your brain, it’s true, but I’m sure even you wouldn’t go imagining things like this. And as for your father, I don’t think there’s a more level-headed man in the colony – ”

“Here’s Mother! I wonder if she didn’t hear it, too.”

Mrs. Nevinson approached us, the slight smile on her face widening the nearer she came – the smile which, to myself, I called her drawing-room smile, for she had a way of switching it off and on that was decidedly mechanical. It was an attractive smile but so obviously studied! It was not until she had arrived at where we sat that I observed that there was a slightly troubled light in her eyes despite the smile.

“What mischief are you two up to here?” she said.

“Milton is trying to convert me into a highbrow. We’re discussing flute music.”

“Don’t let her plague you, Milton. I wish you could get her really interested in music. Nowadays everything is this jazz. And Jessie simply laps it up.” She sighed dramatically. Most of her gestures are dramatic. She is one of these people who act, rather than live, their lives, and whose gestures should never be taken literally.

“Jessie, have you said anything to your father to upset him?” she asked.

“To upset him? No. Why?”

“Well, he’s certainly not himself. He wants to make out it’s the heat and that he’s tired, but it doesn’t seem to me a good enough reason why he should settle down alone in the dining-saloon to smoke and look through old papers.”

Jessie shrugged. “I don’t know what it’s all about, but Daddy hasn’t been himself for weeks now – since he came back from Goed de Vries last month. I told you so but you would insist it was overwork.”

“But what should he want to get down in the dumps for because he went up to Goed de Vries? He was only there for a night last month. What could have happened up there to upset him?”

“That’s what I’d like to know myself. Oh, but wait! Have you heard about the latest mystery, Mother? There’s a jumbie-flute on the steamer.”

“A what?”

“Didn’t you hear it? You don’t mean you’re one of the deaf ones!”

After the situation had been explained to her Mrs. Nevinson cried: “That’s utterly impossible, child! You and your father are both dreaming. If there was a flute on the lower deck why didn’t Milton and I and everybody else hear it? And I don’t remember hearing anything like a flute in Queenstown during the past week or so. Old Mr. Culley used to play one, but he’s dead now, and I know of nobody else who has one. What time did you hear it mostly – at night?”

“It wasn’t a nightmare, if that’s what you’re trying to hint,” Jessie said. “I’ve heard that flute at all times of the day and night – and I was very much awake. I’ve heard it in the middle of the morning, I’ve heard it in the afternoon when I was having a bath, and I’ve heard it in the evening. One night late when I was coming home from the Selkirks with Randolph Hart I heard it. We’d just got to the corner of Ferry Street.”

“That would be near where Milton lives. Perhaps it was Milton himself. Milton has such surprising habits. It won’t amaze me to learn he’s a flute-player in secret.”

“Just so,” I murmured. I turned to Jessie as something occurred to me. “Jessie, can you remember if it was constant in pitch – or did it sort of vary – rise and fall with the wind? You know how sounds vary in Queenstown, depending upon the wind.”

Her mother laughed – her gay, roguish laugh which had never failed to quicken my heartbeats (I believe I must still have been in love with her), for though she might have been artificial in her behaviour, Mrs. Nevinson could not be described as lacking in charm. Changing the key of her mood, so to speak, in her characteristic fashion, she gushed: “But, Milton! You don’t mean to tell me you’re taking her seriously about this flute!”

“And why not? Why shouldn’t I? Personally I think it’s a most mysterious incident. I’m sure both Mr. Nevinson and Jessie wouldn’t have imagined hearing a flute on the lower deck.”

“Oh, Lord! I suppose I should have known it without your mentioning it. In many ways you’re exactly like Ralph. Always ready to make a mystery over something so as to give you an excuse to spend days and weeks puzzling over it and delving into old books and papers. Anyway,” she went on, with another grand sigh, “I do hope Ralph won’t keep up this mood for days as he sometimes does. As it is, it’s most embarrassing for me his going into the dining-saloon with those old papers. Mr. Lumsden must feel quite slighted. And poor Mr. Herrick was so eager to talk over the cattle situation with him.”

After she had left us I repeated my unanswered question of a few minutes before regarding the flute, and Jessie replied: “No, I won’t say it varied in pitch with the wind. But now you mention it, something has struck me. During the last two or three days it seemed to have got nearer.”

“Nearer?”

She nodded. “That’s the best way I can describe it. When I began to hear it a week or two ago it seemed to come from a distance – a few streets off. But yesterday and the day before it was much nearer – in fact, it might have been in the next yard.” She looked at me in sudden anxiety and alarm. “I say, Milt, you don’t think there can be anything spooky in it, do you?”

I grunted noncommittally.

She shifted her feet about uneasily. “It’s no joke. I didn’t think anything of it before, but now that Mother and the rest of you say you didn’t hear anything I’m beginning to wonder about it. You don’t think it could be some sort of – some sort of manifestation – isn’t that the word? Something only Daddy and I can sense?”

“I’m afraid I don’t care to express an opinion yet,” I told her, my voice heavy with pomposity, as it often could be in those days.

“But don’t you think there can be some natural explanation?”

“I should hope there is,” I replied. “I always prefer to find a natural explanation before plunging into speculations about the occult. The best thing will be to wait a day or two more and see what happens. Whenever you hear your flute again don’t forget to let me know at once.”

“Ugh. This means I’m always going to be listening for it now. I really hope we’ll be able to explain it. I detest anything ghostly. I’ve never seen a ghost, and I don’t ever want to.”

We sat in silence for a long while, staring at the monotonous greens of the jungle. The heat swirled around us like invisible twining tendrils of silk, and the dull throbbing of the engines beneath the deck produced a drowsiness which I found myself fighting hard to resist. I felt myself possessed with an urge to remain awake and alert. It was as though I could sense something menacing in the still array of green foliage that loomed up on either side of us, and dared not shut my eyes lest I were overwhelmed by some stealthy horror only waiting for an opportunity to pounce.

Suddenly I rose. “I think I’ll go and see what your father is doing in the dining-saloon,” I said, and Jessie rose, too, but did not seem enthusiastic.

When Daddy is in a mood I never go near him,” she said. “You can risk it if you like. I’ll go and talk to Mrs. Lumsden.”

“Your father is not half the ogre you think him,” I told her. “I’m willing to bet he’s in no mood at all. He’s probably bored with the small talk your mother and the church folk have been pouring forth like characters in a Jane Austen novel, and he’s discreetly decided to do a bolt into the dining-saloon. It’s what I would have done myself.”

A minute later I proved myself right, for when I entered the dining-saloon Mr. Nevinson greeted me with a smile, glancing up from a yellowed document spread out before him. “Well, young man! Looking for me?”

“Yes, I came to see what you were doing. Mrs. N. says you’re in a mood, but I didn’t believe it.”

“Nell is generally suspicious of me when I retire to enjoy my own company for a spell. Sit down and let’s talk.”

He spoke as though he had been expecting me, and I felt a grain of curiosity itching its way through me as I drew out a chair and seated myself at the table opposite him. He held out a tin of cigarettes and I accepted one. And then, seeing that there was one already between his lips unlit, I produced my lighter, clicked it alight and pushed it across the table toward him.

To my surprise, he drew back his head with some haste, saying: “Oh, it’s all right, my boy. Don’t trouble. I’ll get it lit in a moment.” He spoke with evident embarrassment, and at the same time swept the manuscript towards him in a swift, protective manner. It fell into his lap, and he retrieved it, folded it in two and slipped it between the leaves of a thick volume lying on the table at his elbow. It was a Dutch-English dictionary that I knew well, for I had often seen it on the desk in his study.

“I’ve been doing a little translating,” he murmured.

For a few minutes we spoke of trifling matters – the heat, the discomfort of travelling on these steamers, the quality of the food we had had at lunch, Mr. and Mrs. Lumsden’s disembarkment in a few minutes’ time at Brave Lands where the Anglican church stood. He seemed to take care not to refer to the manuscript, and I thought it discreet not to ask him a direct question concerning its contents or its origin.

Abruptly, however, he glanced down at the dictionary and said: “It’s really too warm to be doing this sort of thing, but I couldn’t resist the temptation.” He looked across at me. “I’m going to tell you about it before long, and I’m sure you’ll be interested.”

After a pause, he went on: “About this flute, Milton, I know you’re puzzled. I am myself, and, in fact, I meant to talk to you about it, but in the meantime tell me something. I heard you and Jessie went below to inquire after it. Nell mentioned it to me just before you came. Do I understand that Jessie thought it was being played on the lower deck?”

“That’s right, sir. So she said. Wasn’t it there you heard it, too? I saw you standing by the companionway looking down.”

He nodded. “I simply wanted to know. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t looking down the companionway because I thought the sound was coming from below. I was pacing the deck and happened to pause there for a moment.”

“Then you mean you didn’t hear it coming up from the lower deck?”

He shook his head slowly. “ No, Milton. It was up here on the deck – right beside me.”

3

NOW that I look back on it, I realize that his statement did not instil into me half as much dread and dismay as it ought to have done. I think, too, that it is because I had always held him in such deep respect and had so much confidence in him that I did not exclaim or show incredulity. I simply continued to stare at him, puzzled and waiting for him to go on, not doubting for an instant that a perfectly simple explanation was about to follow.

Even when he had come to the end of the astounding story he narrated to me, I somehow did not feel an urge to ridicule him or smile with scepticism. Had you known him as I did you would have agreed, I am sure, that he was the kind of man you would no more have attempted to associate with the fantastic or the occult than you would have thought of attending a play by Bernard Shaw with the expectation of witnessing a pretty little love drama featuring sentimental song-hits.

“Absurd as it may sound,” he said, “I couldn’t risk letting you touch this manuscript, my boy, because there is every likelihood that exactly what has happened to Jessie and me would happen to you. That’s why I drew back so hastily and swept it into my lap when you stretched across to light my cigarette.”