And they had puzzled over the timbers, their shapes and purpose, and in a few moments realized what they were. Puff. Puff. Puff.
And the warm wind seemed to echo: puff. puff. puff.
“And what were they?” Felix could not wait, needs must ask.
“Don’t know if you’ve ever wondered, puff,” the Honourable Minister said, “what the right name of this caye is, puff, puff.”
“Never gave it a thought,” she said, mendaciously. “Gal something, isn’t it?”
How those lovely lips could lie! — Jack’s admiring thought.
The clouds of Three Grommets Cut Shag, or was it Lord Tweedweevil’s Prime Shaved Plug, filled the room. ‘“Gal something,’ just so. Galliards, Gallards, Gallants, Galleons, Gal-this and Gal-that. Eh? What, Mr. Brant? ‘Gal Cut and Run?’ Ah, but that is on the Old Belinda River. Well, not to make a very long matter of it, puff’ puff; the timbers fitted very neatly into an old engine of execution, that is to say, a gibbet, or in other words, a
And Jack and Felix in one gust of breath cried out, “Gallows!."
The matter of why the Gal had Cut and Run, fascinating though it probably was, and for that matter who the Gal was, must needs wait another occasion, as Sheherazade doubtless told the sultan as he sipped his cup of cawwa tinged with ambergrise through his musky-scented moustache. Uncle George realized at once that this was Gallows Caye and that the timbers were those of the gallows, and nought else. They thought of burning them, but they were too damp. So they just reburied them again until they could think of something else, because naturally they didn’t wish the story to get out (“Naturally!”) or the workmen would have downed tools at once. And no one would have stopped at the hotel. And in fact the work on the building scheme alas went no further because the Slump, the Depression, you know, simply destroyed the foreign mahogany market and eventually the caye was sold for half the purchase price to Merchant Henricus Deak who didn’t really want it and did nothing with it whatsoever, and after he died I believe it was the Grasshopper Bank in London paid the taxes for oh donkey’s years. Then came forth from over the seas Major John Deak, formerly Judge Deak: nephew, isn’t he?”
“Cousin,” said Stickney Forster. Briefly.
Briefly. And everyone had time to think thoughts. Puff. puff. puff… — How long did or had the gallows tree remained there? “Too long by far. Timber’s always been cheap here. too cheap, you know. and it was even cheaper back then. No reason to dismantle the damned engine,” he used the word in an archaic meaning without hesitation but not without emphasis; “and bring the baulks and beams back, bring them anywhere for that matter — there was after all another gallows in King Town — so here it stayed, tainting the very sky, as you might say, till down they fell. Did anyone topple them? I doubt it. Probably tumbled down in some strong wind, a wind of long fetch. not one of hurricane strength, else the pieces would’ve been flung afar. ”
The few pieces of exotic furniture, a painting showing a jungle scene, similar to but not the same as the local “bush,” brassware and other foreign finery, scarcely filled or disguised the bareness of the room; and through the open doors on each side the breeze blew fitfully but without interruption for very long. Sounds of gaiety accompanied at times by the tunes from Alex Brant’s gramophone, snatches of loud amused conversation, came to them in fits and snatches; from time to time the drone of Deak’s monologue into the ears of, by the murmur of an occasional comment, good-natured Neville. Felix asked, “But what do you mean, ‘another gallows in King Town’? If there was one there, why did they have another one here?”
Ah, said the Honourable (with a wave of the by now puffed-out pipe), ah, that was another story. “My uncle George became interested in the matter and he copied an account of it out of some annal or archive and I made a copy of his copy and I placed it in that book, the yellow one there on the shelf between the Bible and the Dictionary, which I lent to Major Deak with the intention that he should read it as a sort of preparation of the, well, ha ha, no, not for the Gospel; you know Eusebius, do you “Somerset!" “Mmm, yes, my dear; preparation for knowing the background of the — but I suppose he hasn’t read it, eh?”
“He hasn’t read it.” — Stickney Forster. Still brief.
“Mm. Well, I thought the book might anyway interest him, like most men I assume that if a book interests me, it must interest others, and — “
Jack knew exactly what the man meant, and, knowing that the man spent very long hours trying to prepare such arid items as A BILL to ascertain that the SEWERS and DRAINS of the Municipality of KING TOWN, as set forth in Sanitary Act 3317, Schedule B, Article 6C of the 18th April, 1959, be hereby AMENDED, as follows', so that the National Assembly might prevent being up to its nostrils in SLUDGE: whereas the Members of the Assembly would much, much rather have been adopting resolutions condemning the Repressive Regime of Zambazunga — or, better yet, voting to adjourn early to see the Middle Schools cricket game; Jack, knowing this, felt a burst of sympathy for the Honourable Minister for Government’s rambling away on other subjects. “What book is that, Sir?” he asked.
“It is a copy of the Planter’s Annual for 1810.”
It was absolutely astonishing how all at once Jack’s eyes and Felix’s eyes were locked into each other’s gaze; and in hers he read with alas all too absolute certainty the charge that by knowing that May was fascinated by that series of historical volumes he was somehow convicted of being privy to some passion between May and himself — a passion of which he knew himself utterly innocent. He had never given May any more than a cousinly kiss; May was sweet in her own dry, acerbic way; her face was a plate of pudding with just enough nose to hold her eye-glasses up, and her blouse concealed no more curves than would hospit a pair of doorknobs; all this was beside the point, the point being that (a) he had perhaps gat Felix with child when she would probably rather not be gat, and (b) at a time when he had a felonious intuition of May’s preferred taste in historical reading matter. Surely Queen Elizabeth, the High and Mighty Prince, Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII, “that vile monster,” as Who? had called him, would have sent any man to The Tower on just such a charge. And Felicia Ann Fox, the sole true love of John Lutwidge Limekiller’s life and perhaps the bearer of his baby beneath her beating heart was now staring at him with a blazing gaze which seemed to accuse him of every crime and conceivable offense from masturbation to simony: and defying him to have any expression upon his face or even to drop his eyes.
“If it weren’t for the breeze I couldn’t tolerate being out here,” said the Honourable Mrs.; “and I don’t much like the breeze.”
***
Now was heard from a different quarter a puffing and a huffing which was neither the offending breeze nor the Honourable’s pipe. Major Deak was slowly lifting his large tortoise’s body up the shallow steps from the sand-filled yard to the house, with nice Neville at one elbow. and horrid dreams,” the Major was saying, between gasps. “Thought I was choking or strangling. but doctor finds no sign of asthma or emphysema. can’t live here,” he sank into the chair which Jack vacated, “and can’t live elsewhere.” He paid no attention as Felix, who had taken the yellow book from its shelf, proceeded to drop it, fumbled picking it off the floor, quite twisting herself around, got it at last, replaced it. “For Christ’s sake pour me a drink, Stickney. ”