Reading these words I always imagined the man who wrote them. M. V. Anderson was a thin stooped fellow with a big nose and a high-pitched voice, a tea drinker, a gossip with dandruff on his shoulders and nicotine on his long fingers. M. V. Anderson enjoyed himself. There was nothing to excite him as much as a lie. I imagine the glint in his eye and the pendulous lower lip as it begins to blow up and expand with blood as he tells his reader that Bourke and Wills were not involved in simple exploration but were spies for the colony of Victoria, sent to steal a piece of Western Queensland that had, by error, been omitted from the proper survey.
It was M. V. Anderson who showed me that a liar might be a patriot and although, at the time, I thought this a lesson learned too late, it was not so. So if I say some unkind things about Father Moran they must be weighed against the positive aspect, i.e., that it was he and no one else who drove two hours along rutted gravel roads to introduce M. V. Anderson into my life. The book, of course, had another name on its flyleaf. Stephen Wall, it said, 6B. When I pointed this out to Moran, and suggested that Master Wall must miss his book, he merely said that M. V. Anderson was unsuitable for boys.
Moran did not always annoy me. Often I was pleased to see him. He could be amusing. He had a rare ability to tell a football match from beginning to end and he would sometimes arrive late on Saturday night with beer on his breath and his cheeks flushed with excitement. In fact, I realize now, he did not really give me trouble until the football season was over. It was then he started going through my bookshelves. The screws occasionally did the same. Every now and then there would be whistles and searches and they would find homemade knives or dirty pictures. Moran did not search like a screw. He did it like a man browsing in a bookshop, but he was at the same thing, pulling out books, looking behind them, flipping through the pages, peeking into Leah's letters. I waited for him to get on with his trade and start talking about God, but he was reluctant to do it. I tried to bring the subject up once or twice, but it made him hostile.
'What would a fellow like you want to talk about God for?'
He was right, of course, but I was surprised by the venom when he said it. It puzzled me even more as to why he came to see me and I might have been kept in suspense a lot longer if I had not blundered into the matter by mistake. I mentioned – in connection with what I now forget – Sergeant Reg Moth.
Moran was standing there with one of Leah's letters hidden inside an Oxford Dictionary, pretending to look up some word or other while all the time he was prying into my private life. But when I mentioned Moth, his mouth opened and his brow furrowed.
'You didn't call him that?'
'Call him what?'
'Moth.'
'I might have called him Sergeant. Sergeant, or Moth, or Sergeant Moth.' I shrugged.
He was such a big man and it was a very small room so his moods always seemed too bulky for the space. They pushed at me, bumped at me, seemed as if they would swamp or suffocate me.
'He cannot stand the name,' he said, shutting the dictionary with the letter still in it. 'It drives him mad. You would have hurt him if you called him Moth.'
'His own name.'
He put the dictionary back in the shelf and – an annoying habit of his – lined up the spine exactly with the edge of the shelf. 'His nickname,' he corrected me. 'Aren't you going to ask me why?'
'Why?'
And suddenly all his big solemn red-faced officiousness was gone and he was grinning at me like a schoolboy. 'The Moth – because if there's a light on, he'll turn up.' He giggled. 'I shouldn't laugh. It's my own brother after all.'
Of course he was the loony's brother. Of course he was. He had that same square head and bulging eyes. 'Well, well…'I said.
'Come on, Badgery,' he smiled. 'Don't pretend you didn't know.' He started to lower himself on to my damaged heater, changed his mind and went to the bunk. His smile pulled at his face as tightly as his buttoned-up suit pulled at his big footballer's body. 'I saw the way you looked when I told you about the little fellow on the mushroom. You knew what I was alluding to. You understand my intention.'
'Father, I swear, I understood nothing.'
'But what could you swear by – that is the thing. Perhaps you might tell me later, but I saw at the time that you understood my point, that my brother would not look at devilry, that he did not think such things were even possible. You appreciated the irony.'
'Now you call it devilry.'
'Of course it is devilry, man. Or would be, if I had not made it up. Do you think God makes tiny men to sit on mushrooms? Of course it is devilry, and you know it too.'
I felt disappointed. I had liked that little man on the mushroom more than I knew. I asked him why he made it up.
'To trap you,' he said, clapping his big hands together, and giving me that white picket-fence grin. 'I know you've got that thing in a bottle somewhere. I thought if I told you that story, you'd bring it out. But, like my brother says, you are cunning as a rat.'
I was an old man, decent and frail. I put the cap on my pen. I smiled. I showed him my lovely violet eyes. 'Come, Father, we're both grown men.'
He withstood the powerful blast of affection I sent his way. 'Are we?' he said. 'Are we? Are we now, men? Reginald came to me up at St Joseph's. I was taking a class. He came to the door. He said to me, 'Michael, I have seen the devil.' You know his voice, loud and rough. 'I've seen the devil,' he said. I thought he was drunk. God forgive me, I was angry because he interrupted my class. I saw the tears in his eyes and I denied him. I never got on with him, Badgery. He was never a happy man. He would not let God into his heart. Always the Moth. It wasn't the bribes he was after when he pestered the illegal drinkers. It was the company. They knew that, of course. That's why they gave him his name.
But now he can look back on those times, when he was sneaking round Flanagan's backyard, arresting people and letting them off for a quid, he can look back on them as happy times. Father Doyle has heard his confession, but he has no peace, other than what he can get out of a whisky bottle. There have been policemen up from Sydney to witness his behaviour.'
I didn't know which brother was the maddest. There is no doubt, however, that the priest was the biggest, by a good two stone. 'Father,' I asked him, 'do you really think I'm the devil?'
'Perhaps you're just a witch.'
I took the bottle out of my pocket where I'd had it all along. I held it out towards him. He would not look at it. He peered away from it, into the corner, as if he was looking for cockroaches. 'Is that it?' His voice was quite excitable.
'It is.'
He took it from me, but still he did not look at it. I remember the enormous heat I felt radiating from his hand. I got out of his way. He went to the desk, I to the bed. He took out a little black book from his suit pocket and read some Latin out of it. I didn't understand the words of course, but he was a fearsome reader. I suppose he was exorcizing the devil or some other trick of his trade. When he finished he put the book away. He stayed where he was. And then he knelt. I thought he was praying, but no. 'Badgery,' he said, 'come here.'
I went. He was looking at the bottle, moving his big square head around, peering from one angle then another. There was a strong odour of camphor, but that came from his suit. He looked up at me and smiled, a lovely smile, not that straight picket fence of a thing he'd shown me up to now.
'What a lovely thing,' he said. 'What a lovely thing.'
Indeed it was.
'Would you deny to me that these are angels?'
I could not.
'Angels, whizzing around in a bottle.'
'Take it,' I said. 'Have it. Keep it. Please, for Chrissakes.'
It was the blasphemy that changed him. He jerked like a fellow who has given himself a shock off his own car battery. He dropped the bottle as if it were a spanner. He was going to shake hands with me -he usually did when he was leaving – but something made him change his mind. He shivered. The silly ninny thought I was the devil. I know I cannot prove it, but I am sure it's what he thought. In any case he did not visit me again and, when the
