Illywhacker

It is not the normal practice for arresting sergeants to pay social calls upon their victims, and even if it were, it would take a keen man to make a journey up from Grafton at night. The last hour to Rankin Downs is along a straight, rutted gravel road cut right through the paperbarks. Having arrived at night I can speak with some authority on the desolate feeling the road produces: the white fire-scarred trunks, the unsettling vision of yabbies moving from one side of the road to the other. In the daytime, they tell me, the squashed yabbies make the bush smell like the Sydney fish markets.

It was the custom at Rankin Downs to receive visitors in the shade under the big tank stands. There was no provision in the "cells" for a visitor. I offered Sergeant Moth my bed. He took it and I squatted on the floor with my back against the cracked asbestos-sheet wall. When my knees got stiff and sore I asked his permission before I sat on the floor.

He talked. I watched his mouth move. I could not understand why he had come and I listened to him talking about Peter Dawson who had sung the "Floral Dance" at the Jacaranda Festival the year before. I had, on the one hand, a thirst for all the details of normal life. I wanted to hear about Dawson, what he had sung, what he had worn, how the trees had looked along the avenues of Grafton. In another way I did not want to hear at all, loathed every word he said, just as I sometimes loathed every word of Goldstein's letters. At the same time I was frightened of being bashed. His manner was not a basher's manner. It was fussy and finicky. This did not calm me, but somehow made the prospect of bashing more certain. I would have liked to stand up and not be so defenceless on the floor, but now I was there I did not like to attract his attention with any sudden movements. I could hear my next-door neighbour, a little apprentice mechanic from Coff's Harbour, crying in his sleep. It was a soft whimpering noise. At first I thought it was a bird. His name was Jacko and he was getting out next week. He wouldn't help me if I was bashed.

Moth brought a bottle from his pocket, an old Vegemite bottle with something – I took it for a little yabby – floating in it.

"I thought", Reg Moth said, giving the bottle a good shake, "that it was a shame to throw it out."

Throw what out?

"So I went", he said, "down to Phelan's, the chemist chap in Grafton, and I said, have you got a little formaldehyde and he gave me a drop of it in a Vegemite jar. It's very expensive, formaldehyde. Have you ever purchased it, Badgery? Shockingly expensive. But he gave it to me, out of the goodness of his heart. Gave it to me and I put Charlie Goon's finger in it, and here it is, see. I've kept it for you, a souvenir."

"Thank you," I said. I tried to smile politely and look grateful but I had a gagging feeling in my throat.

"You like it?" It was hard to get the meaning of those bulging eyes, but he looked surprised. I felt hot and dizzy. I was disgusted with myself for having torn off an old man's finger. It floated before my eyes, suspended in a Vegemite bottle with a little torn skirt of skin.

"You like it?" He picked his lower teeth with a big square thumbnail. "It makes me want to vomit."

For a moment I thought he was a basher after all and that he had to make himself angry before he could get his fists to me. I pulled down my shirt sleeves.

"But I can see", he said, examining his thumbnail, "that it'd be a different matter for you. It could even be valuable to you. Now, to someone like me, it's a very unsettling thing to have around the house, and there's also the question of the expense I put into it."

"But this chemist chap…"

"Phelan."

"Phelan. This Mr Phelan gave you the formaldehyde." I did not mean to argue with him. I was trying to point out that I had not put him to a lot of trouble. This is how your mind starts to work after two months in gaol.

"Gave me the formaldehyde? Who says so?" He peered around the cell. There was not much to peer at – we had the big black cockroaches that year, not the smaller German ones which, now I think of it, were probably not German at all. He studied the gaps between the floorboards, then the single shelf which was, so early, already crammed with Goldstein's letters. "Who says so?"

"There are no witnesses," I admitted.

"That's right, Badgery." He grinned and winked at me. You couldn't help liking him when he was like that. He didn't look like a copper at all, but a farmer about to set off for the pub. "So who's to know if I paid for the formaldehyde or not? Perhaps I have a receipt, here, on me, from Mr Phelan. He's not exactly what you'd call a Mason."

"Is that so?"

"It is." He was, suddenly, very solemn.

In the silence that followed I realized that I was not to be bashed. It was only bribery that was required. The night was full of the high-pitched whine of the swamp.