Arthur Upfield - The Devil_s Steps

“Yes.” Bagshott was regarding the fungus lying in Bony’s hands. “Don’t know much about ’emmyself,” he went on. “There are some fine specimens of ‘Shelf’ or ‘Saddle’ fungi to be found growing on the underside of fallen trees down in the gullies about here. Got one or two in the house. They keep well. But this basket one beats the band. You wouldn’t think thatall that network could have come from so small a container, would you? I understand that when it springs out from the shell it sheds its spores and then swells through its power to absorb moisture.”

“There must be many wonderful things up on this mountain,” Bony said, and found Bagshott’s hazel eyes regarding him. “It is a charming place. I looked at the fog lying in the valley this morning for almost two hours. Never thought there was such a place in Australia. You know, you’re very lucky to be able to live here. Interested in natural history and that kind of thing?”

“Yes-superficially. There are many strange things even in this garden. Sometimes I dig up ayabbie. You wouldn’t think to find them so far above the nearest gully stream, and they are almost white. You want to take a walk well off the road at night and listen to the earth-worms. They make a sucking noise, like water going down a bath outlet. They’re yards in length, too. Come on in. I’ll show youthat Shelf fungi.”

Bony was taken out of this part of Bagshott’s garden which was devoted to the cultivation of vegetables and raspberries, conducted through an arch in the dividing hedge and into the garden surrounding the house, where ornamental trees and flowering shrubs inhabited a secluded world. His eyes were busy with the surface of the paths, too. Everywhere he saw the imprints of Bagshott’s shoes, and not only of those shoesthe man was then wearing. All these imprints had the same peculiarities, revealing the maker of them to be mentally energetic, slightly neurotic, and longer in the right leg than the left.

Having wandered through city botanical gardens and having seen many gardenslaid out with unnatural orderliness, this garden was a new experience to Bonaparte. Here and there he saw foreshortened vistas in which things appeared to grow just as Nature placed them, and he thought that the sacrifice of the view was worth it. Bagshott was saying in reply to a remark Bony had made:

“Yes, beautiful district. But like everything else, the human animal comes to appreciate beauty less as he becomes more familiar with it. There are days when I pine for an inland gibber plain, and want to have to strain my eyes to see the distant horizon. I’d give all this for the outback. A man can become too respectable.” He chuckled and glanced back at Bony. “Sometimes I find respectability very wearing. One of these days I am going to break out.”

“You lived for many years, didn’t you, outback?”

“About twenty,” replied Bagshott.“Got around a bit too.”

“And are you really determined to have a month at Wanaaring?”

“Too right I am,” replied Bagshott forcibly.“Been out of the bush for ten years now. Haven’t had a holiday since before the war, and I’m becoming dyspeptic, mentally unbalanced and affected by advanced senile decay. So would you be, too, if you lived in a place like this for long. Come on in.”

Bony was taken into a small room furnished with a writing desk, a lounge, stiff-backed chairs and book-cases crowded with volumes. On the walls hung framed original drawings of illustrations of the man’s stories. There hung also the skin of what appeared to be an enormous snake.

“Whatd’youthink of that?” Bagshott asked on observing Bony regarding it.“Nice specimen, eh? Shot it myself. See the shot-mark? Measured twenty-three feet in length.”

It was beautifully marked with green lines branching outward from a central grey ribbon, all on a ground of dull brown, and Bony was wholly taken in.

“That,” said Bagshott, “that is a piece of bark from a mountain-ash gum. Remarkable likeness to a snake’s skin, isn’t it?”

Bony had to finger the bark before he could accept the reality.

“Well, now, sit down and behaveyourself,” Bagshott commanded, and waved his visitor into a chair.

Bony was startled, being unaware that he was misbehaving, and then his eyes gleamed with humour, for his host meant nothing more than to put him at ease. He was shown the specimen of the Shelf fungi, which had been lightly varnished and was as hard as stone and appeared to be indestructible. He was holding it in his hands when his host vanished.

Left alone without explanation, Bony gazed round the room in which mystery stories were concocted. It was very masculine, and comfortable though small, and it looked out upon ornamental trees backed by the tall hedge that banished the highway to the far end of the world. Quite by accident, he espied on the mantel above the great open fireplace an exceptionally large fish-hook.

He was fingering this hook when Bagshott came in. His mind was hundreds of miles away. He was seated in the stern of a launch, with his electrified hands poised above the great reel attached to the rod, through the guides of which hundreds of feet of stout cord were being swept away into the dancing sea by the great fish which had taken his bait. And then when his mind clicked back to the present he looked up to see Bagshott regarding him with a strange expression.

“If you ever want to be really and properly alive,” he said, “go and angle for swordfish.”

“I have been really and properly alive,” averred Bony.

“You have! Where?”

“Off Bermagui. Have you been there?”

“Too blinking right!”Bagshott almostshouted, his eyes alight and in them strange fires. “Come here.”

Bony was practically hauled from his chair and dragged out of the room into another, where mounted on a plaque was the head of a marlin. Bony stood in the centre of the room, looking upward at the gleaming sea-green-and-blue specimen of the greatest fighting fish in all the oceans. Bagshott was talking game fish, but what he said did not register in Bony’s mind, for Bony’s brain had become a torch set on fire by the head and sword of the fish and by the huge hook he still carried in his hands. He could smell the sea. He could feel the tautness of every nerve whilst waiting for the moment to strike. A million pictures passed before the eyes of his inner mind, and he lived again through the greatest moments of his life.

Then he and Bagshott were asking questions of each other and not waiting for the answers. Mrs. Bagshott came in and her husband did not give him time to acknowledge the conventional introduction. She had accompanied her husband on his fishing expeditions, and she knew the background equally with him and this stranger to her house.

For five minutes all talked at the same time, Bony being shown photographs of fish and sea-scenes, and views of the coast which he readily recognised and which brought out of the store of memory incidents of his own experiences. Then he was being rushed by the volcanic Bagshott back into his study, where on the desk Mrs. Bagshott had set a tray of tea and cakes. His hostess was valiantly trying to ascertain if he took sugar or not, milk or not, and he being badgered by questions by his host concerning big game angling, so that he began to lose the sense of knowing whether he were on his head or toes.

Yet he thoroughly enjoyed it, and Mrs. Bagshott did not appear at all fearful of being buried in the garden, although it is wonderful what mountains are removed by faith-and/or arsenic. He left them standing at their garage gate, and began his walk back to the Chalet, his mind a little chaotic with the admixture of Net and Shelf fungi, swordfish, snake-skin cum tree bark, and the impressions left on earth by a pair of large shoes.