The Thirty-Nine Steps, by John Buchan - extract

The Thirty-Nine Steps, by John Buchan - extract

     Richard Hannay has just returned to England after years in South Africa and is thoroughly bored with his life in London. But then a murder is committed in his flat, just days after a chance encounter with an American who had told him about an assassination plot which could have dire international consequences. An obvious suspect for the police and an easy target for the killers, Hannay goes on the run in his native Scotland where he will need all his courage and ingenuity to stay one step ahead of his pursuers.

Extract

Chapter 1

THE MAN WHO DIED

     I returned from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months in the Old Country, and was fed up with it. If any one had told me a year ago that I would have been feeling like that I should have laughed at him; but there was the fact. The weather made me liverish, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick, I couldn't get enough exercise, and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda-water that has been standing in the sun. 'Richard Hannay,' I kept telling myself, 'you have got into the wrong ditch, my friend, and you had better climb out.'

     It made me bite my lips to think of the plans I had been building up those last years in Buluwayo. I had got my pile – not one of the big ones, but good enough for me; and I had figured out all kinds of ways of enjoying myself. My father had brought me out from Scotland at the age of six, and I had never been home since; so England was a sort of Arabian Nights to me, and I counted on stopping there for the rest of my days.

     But from the first I was disappointed with it. In about a week I was tired of seeing sights, and in less than a month I had had enough of restaurants and theatres and race-meetings. I had no real pal to go about with, which probably explains things. Plenty of people invited me to their houses, but they didn't seem much interested in me. They would fling me a question or two about South Africa, and then get on to their own affairs. A lot of Imperialist ladies asked me to tea to meet schoolmasters from New Zealand and editors from Vancouver, and that was the dis­malest business of all. Here was I, thirty-seven years old, sound in wind and limb, with enough money to have a good time, yawning my head off all day. I had just about settled to clear out and get back to the veld, for I was the best bored man in the United Kingdom.

     That afternoon I had been worrying my brokers about investments to give my mind something to work on, and on my way home I turned into my club – rather a pot-house, which took in Colonial members. I had a long drink, and read the evening papers. They were full of the row in the Near East, and there was an article about Karolides, the Greek Premier. I rather fancied the chap. From all accounts he seemed the one big man in the show; and he played a straight game too, which was more than could be said for most of them. I gathered that they hated him pretty blackly in Berlin and Vienna, but that we were going to stick by him, and one paper said that he was the only barrier between Europe and Armageddon. I remember wondering if I could get a job in those parts. It struck me that Albania was the sort of place that might keep a man from yawning.

     About six o'clock I went home, dressed, dined at the Cafe´ Royal, and turned into a music-hall. It was a silly show, all capering women and monkey-faced men, and I did not stay long. The night was fine and clear as I walked back to the flat I had hired near Portland Place. The crowd surged past me on the pavements, busy and chattering, and I envied the people for having something to do. These shop-girls and clerks and dandies and policemen had some inter­est in life that kept them going. I gave half-a-crown to a beggar because I saw him yawn; he was a fellow-sufferer. At Oxford Circus I looked up into the spring sky and I made a vow. I would give the Old Country another day to fit me into something; if nothing happened, I would take the next boat for the Cape.

     My flat was the first floor in a new block behind Langham Place. There was a common staircase, with a porter and a liftman at the entrance, but there was no restaurant or anything of that sort, and each flat was quite shut off from the others. I hate servants on the premises, so I had a fellow to look after me who came in by the day. He arrived before eight o'clock every morning and used to depart at seven, for I never dined at home.

     I was just fitting my key into the door when I noticed a man at my elbow. I had not seen him approach, and the sudden appearance made me start. He was a slim man, with a short brown beard and small, gimlety blue eyes. I recognised him as the occupant of a flat on the top floor, with whom I had passed the time of day on the stairs.

     'Can I speak to you?' he said. 'May I come in for a minute?' He was steadying his voice with an effort, and his hand was pawing my arm.

     I got my door open and motioned him in. No sooner was he over the threshold than he made a dash for my back-room, where I used to smoke and write my letters. Then he bolted back.

     'Is the door locked?' he asked feverishly, and he fastened the chain with his own hand.

     'I'm very sorry,' he said humbly. 'It's a mighty liberty, but you looked the kind of man who would understand. I've had you in my mind all this week when things got troublesome. Say, will you do me a good turn?'

     'I'll listen to you,' I said. 'That's all I'll promise.' I was getting worried by the antics of this nervous little chap.

     There was a tray of drinks on a table beside him, from which he filled himself a stiff whisky-and-soda. He drank it off in three gulps, and cracked the glass as he set it down.

     'Pardon,' he said, 'I'm a bit rattled to-night. You see, I happen at this moment to be dead.'

     I sat down in an arm-chair and lit my pipe.

     'What does it feel like?' I asked. I was pretty certain that I had to deal with a madman.

     A smile flickered over his drawn face. 'I'm not mad – yet. Say, sir, I've been watching you, and I reckon you're a cool customer. I reckon, too, you're an honest man, and not afraid of playing a bold hand. I'm going to confide in you. I need help worse than any man ever needed it, and I want to know if I can count you in.'

     'Get on with your yarn,' I said, 'and I'll tell you.'

     He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then started on the queerest rigmarole. I didn't get hold of it at first, and I had to stop and ask him questions. But here is the gist of it:–

     He was an American, from Kentucky, and after college, being pretty well off, he had started out to see the world. He wrote a bit, and acted as war correspondent for a Chicago paper, and spent a year or two in South-Eastern Europe. I gathered that he was a fine linguist, and had got to know pretty well the society in those parts. He spoke familiarly of many names that I remembered to have seen in the newspapers.

He had played about with politics, he told me, at first for the interest of them, and then because he couldn't help himself. I read him as a sharp, restless fellow, who always wanted to get down to the roots of things. He got a little further down than he wanted.

     I am giving you what he told me as well as I could make it out. Away behind all the Governments and the armies there was a big subterranean movement going on, engineered by very dangerous people. He had come on it by accident; it fascinated him; he went further, and then he got caught. I gathered that most of the people in it were the sort of educated anarchists that make revolutions, but that beside them there were financiers who were playing for money. A clever man can make big profits on a falling market, and it suited the book of both classes to set Europe by the ears.

     He told me some queer things that explained a lot that had puzzled me – things that happened in the Balkan War, how one state suddenly came out on top, why alliances were made and broken, why certain men disappeared, and where the sinews of war came from. The aim of the whole conspiracy was to get Russia and Germany at loggerheads.

     When I asked Why, he said that the anarchist lot thought it would give them their chance. Everything would be in the melting-pot, and they looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage. Capital, he said, had no conscience and no fatherland. Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse than hell.

     'Do you wonder?' he cried. 'For three hundred years they have been persecuted, and this is the return match for the pogroms. The Jew is everywhere, but you have to go far down the backstairs to find him. Take any big Teutonic business concern. If you have dealings with it the first man you meet is Prince von und zu Something, an elegant young man who talks Eton-and-Harrow English. But he cuts no ice. If your business is big, you get behind him and find a progna­thous Westphalian with a retreating brow and the manners of a hog. He is the German business man that gives your English papers the shakes. But if you're on the biggest kind of job and are bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattlesnake. Yes, sir, he is the man who is ruling the world just now, and he has his knife in the Empire of the Tzar, because his aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some one-horse location on the Volga.'

     I could not help saying that his Jew-anarchists seemed to have got left behind a little.

     'Yes and no,' he said. 'They won up to a point, but they struck a bigger thing than money, a thing that couldn't be bought, the old elemental fighting instincts of man. If you're going to be killed you invent some kind of flag and country to fight for, and if you survive you get to love the thing. Those foolish devils of soldiers have found something they care for, and that has upset the pretty plan laid in Berlin and Vienna. But my friends haven't played their last card by a long sight. They've gotten the ace up their sleeves, and unless I can keep alive for a month they are going to play it and win.'

     'But I thought you were dead,' I put in.

     'Mors janua vitae,' he smiled. (I recognised the quota­tion: it was about all the Latin I knew.) 'I'm coming to that, but I've got to put you wise about a lot of things first. If you read your newspaper, I guess you know the name of Constantine Karolides?'

     I sat up at that, for I had been reading about him that very afternoon.

     'He is the man that has wrecked all their games. He is the one big brain in the whole show, and he happens also to be an honest man. Therefore he has been marked down these twelve months past. I found that out – not that it was difficult, for any fool could guess as much. But I found out the way they were going to get him, and that knowledge was deadly. That's why I have had to decease.'

     He had another drink, and I mixed it for him myself, for I was getting interested in the beggar.

     'They can't get him in his own land, for he has a bodyguard of Epirotes that would skin their grand­mothers. But on the 15th day of June he is coming to this city. The British Foreign Office has taken to having International tea-parties, and the biggest of them is due on that date. Now Karolides is reckoned the principal guest, and if my friends have their way he will never return to his admiring countrymen.'

     'That's simple enough, anyhow,' I said. 'You can warn him and keep him at home.'

     'And play their game?' he asked sharply. 'If he does not come they win, for he's the only man that can straighten out the tangle. And if his Government are warned he won't come, for he does not know how big the stakes will be on June the 15th.'

     'What about the British Government?' I said. 'They're not going to let their guests be murdered. Tip them the wink, and they'll take extra precautions.'

     'No good. They might stuff your city with plain­clothes detectives and double the police and Constan­tine would still be a doomed man. My friends are not playing this game for candy. They want a big occasion for the taking off, with the eyes of all Europe on it. He'll be murdered by an Austrian, and there'll be plenty of evidence to show the connivance of the big folk in Vienna and Berlin. It will all be an infernal lie, of course, but the case will look black enough to the world. I'm not talking hot air, my friend. I happen to know every detail of the hellish contrivance, and I can tell you it will be the most finished piece of blackguardism since the Borgias. But it's not going to come off if there's a certain man who knows the wheels of the business alive right here in London on the 15th day of June. And that man is going to be your servant, Franklin P. Scudder.'

     I was getting to like the little chap. His jaw had shut like a rat-trap, and there was the fire of battle in his gimlety eyes. If he was spinning me a yarn he could act up to it.

     'Where did you find out this story?' I asked.

     'I got the first hint in an inn on the Achensee in Tyrol. That set me inquiring, and I collected my other clues in a fur-shop in the Galician quarter of Buda, in a Strangers' Club in Vienna, and in a little bookshop off the Racknitzstrasse in Leipsic. I completed my evidence ten days ago in Paris. I can't tell you the details now, for it's something of a history. When I was quite sure in my own mind I judged it my business to disappear, and I reached this city by a mighty queer circuit. I left Paris a dandified young French-American, and I sailed from Hamburg a Jew diamond merchant. In Norway I was an English student of Ibsen collecting materials for lectures, but when I left Bergen I was a cinema-man with special ski films. And I came here from Leith with a lot of pulp-wood propositions in my pocket to put before the London newspapers. Till yesterday I thought I had muddied my trail some, and was feeling pretty happy. Then...'

     The recollection seemed to upset him, and he gulped down some more whisky.

     'Then I saw a man standing in the street outside this block. I used to stay close in my room all day, and only slip out after dark for an hour or two. I watched him for a bit from my window, and I thought I recognised him . . . He came in and spoke to the porter . . . When I came back from my walk last night I found a card in my letter-box. It bore the name of the man I want least to meet on God's earth.'

     I think that the look in my companion's eyes, the sheer naked scare on his face, completed my convic­tion of his honesty. My own voice sharpened a bit as I asked him what he did next.

     'I realised that I was bottled as sure as a pickled herring, and that there was only one way out. I had to die. If my pursuers knew I was dead they would go to sleep again.'

     'How did you manage it?'

     'I told the man that valets me that I was feeling pretty bad, and I got myself up to look like death. That wasn't difficult, for I'm no slouch at disguises. Then I got a corpse – you can always get a body in London if you know where to go for it. I fetched it back in a trunk on the top of a four-wheeler, and I had to be assisted upstairs to my room. You see I had to pile up some evidence for the inquest. I went to bed and got my man to mix me a sleeping-draught, and then told him to clear out. He wanted to fetch a doctor, but I swore some and said I couldn't abide leeches. When I was left alone I started in to fake up that corpse. He was my size, and I judged had perished from too much alcohol, so I put some spirits handy about the place. The jaw was the weak point in the likeness, so I blew it away with a revolver. I daresay there will be somebody to-morrow to swear to having heard a shot, but there are no neighbours on my floor, and I guessed I could risk it. So I left the body in bed dressed up in my pyjamas with a revolver lying on the bed-clothes and a considerable mess around. Then I got into a suit of clothes I had kept waiting for emergencies. I didn't dare to shave for fear of leaving tracks, and besides, it wasn't any kind of use my trying to get into the streets. I had had you in my mind all day, and there seemed nothing to do but to make an appeal to you. I watched from my window till I saw you come home, and then slipped down the stair to meet you . . . There, sir, I guess you know about as much as me of this business.'

     He sat blinking like an owl, fluttering with nerves and yet desperately determined. By this time I was pretty well convinced that he was going straight with me. It was the wildest sort of narrative, but I had heard in my time many steep tales which had turned out to be true, and I had made a practice of judging the man rather than the story. If he had wanted to get a location in my flat, and then cut my throat, he would have pitched a milder yarn.

     'Hand me your key,' I said, 'and I'll take a look at the corpse. Excuse my caution, but I'm bound to verify a bit if I can.'

     He shook his head mournfully. 'I reckoned you'd ask for that, but I haven't got it. It's on my chain on the dressing-table. I had to leave it behind, for I couldn't leave any clues to breed suspicions. The gentry who are after me are pretty bright-eyed citi­zens. You'll have to take me on trust for the night, and to-morrow you'll get proof of the corpse business right enough.'

     I thought for an instant or two. 'Right. I'll trust you for the night. I'll lock you into this room and keep the key. Just one word, Mr Scudder. I believe you're straight, but if so be you are not I should warn you that I'm a handy man with a gun.'

     'Sure,' he said, jumping up with some briskness. 'I haven't the privilege of your name, sir, but let me tell you that you're a white man. I'll thank you to lend me a razor.'

     I took him into my bedroom and turned him loose. In half an hour's time a figure came out that I scarcely recognised. Only his gimlety hungry eyes were the same. He was shaved clean, his hair was parted in the middle, and he had cut his eyebrows. Further, he carried himself as if he had been drilled, and was the very model, even to the brown complexion, of some British officer who had had a long spell in India. He had a monocle, too, which he stuck in his eye, and every trace of the American had gone out of his speech.

     'My hat! Mr Scudder –' I stammered.

     'Not Mr Scudder,' he corrected; 'Captain Theophilus Digby, of the 40th Gurkhas, presently home on leave. I'll thank you to remember that, sir.'

     I made him up a bed in my smoking room and sought my own couch, more cheerful than I had been for the past month. Things did happen occasionally, even in this God-forgotten metropolis.

     I woke next morning to hear my man, Paddock, making the deuce of a row at the smoking-room door. Paddock was a fellow I had done a good turn to out on the Selakwi, and I had inspanned him as my servant as soon as I got to England. He had about as much gift of the gab as a hippopotamus, and was not a great hand at valeting, but I knew I could count on his loyalty.

     'Stop that row, Paddock,' I said. 'There's a friend of mine, Captain – Captain' (I couldn't remember the name) 'dossing down in there. Get breakfast for two and then come and speak to me.'

     I told Paddock a fine story about how my friend was a great swell, with his nerves pretty bad from overwork, who wanted absolute rest and stillness. Nobody had got to know he was here, or he would be besieged by communications from the India Office and the Prime Minister and his cure would be ruined. I am bound to say Scudder played up splendidly when he came to breakfast. He fixed Paddock with his eyeglass, just like a British officer, asked him about the Boer War, and slung out at me a lot of stuff about imaginary pals. Paddock couldn't learn to call me 'sir,' but he 'sirred' Scudder as if his life depended on it.

     I left him with the newspaper and a box of cigars, and went down to the City till luncheon. When I got back the liftman had an important face.

     'Nawsty business 'ere this morning, sir. Gent in No. 15 been and shot 'isself. They've just took 'im to the mortiary. The police are up there now.'

     I ascended to No. 15, and found a couple of bobbies and an inspector busy making an examination. I asked a few idiotic questions, and they soon kicked me out. Then I found the man that had valeted Scudder, and pumped him, but I could see he suspected nothing. He was a whining fellow with a churchyard face, and half-a-crown went far to console him.

     I attended the inquest next day. A partner of some publishing firm gave evidence that the deceased had brought him wood-pulp propositions, and had been, he believed, an agent of an American business. The jury found it a case of suicide while of unsound mind, and the few effects were handed over to the American Consul to deal with. I gave Scudder a full account of the affair, and it interested him greatly. He said he wished he could have attended the inquest, for he reckoned it would be about as spicy as to read one's own obituary notice.

     The first two days he stayed with me in that back room he was very peaceful. He read and smoked a bit, and made a heap of jottings in a note-book, and every night we had a game of chess, at which he beat me hollow. I think he was nursing his nerves back to health, for he had had a pretty trying time. But on the third day I could see he was beginning to get restless. He fixed up a list of the days till June 15th, and ticked each off with a red pencil, making remarks in short­hand against them. I would find him sunk in a brown study, with his sharp eyes abstracted, and after those spells of meditation he was apt to be very despondent.

     Then I could see that he began to get edgy again. He listened for little noises, and was always asking me if Paddock could be trusted. Once or twice he got very peevish, and apologised for it. I didn't blame him. I made every allowance, for he had taken on a fairly stiff job.

     It was not the safety of his own skin that troubled him, but the success of the scheme he had planned. That little man was clean grit all through, without a soft spot in him. One night he was very solemn.

     'Say, Hannay,' he said, 'I judge I should let you a bit deeper into this business. I should hate to go out without leaving somebody else to put up a fight.' And he began to tell me in detail what I had only heard from him vaguely.

     I did not give him very close attention. The fact is, I was more interested in his own adventures than in his high politics. I reckoned that Karolides and his affairs were not my business, leaving all that to him. So a lot that he said slipped clean out of my memory. I remember that he was very clear that the danger to Karolides would not begin till he had got to London, and would come from the very highest quarters, where there would be no thought of suspicion. He mentioned the name of a woman – Julia Czechenyi – as having something to do with the danger. She would be the decoy, I gathered, to get Karolides out of the care of his guards. He talked, too, about a Black Stone and a man that lisped in his speech, and he described very particularly somebody that he never referred to without a shudder – an old man with a young voice who could hood his eyes like a hawk.

     He spoke a good deal about death, too. He was mortally anxious about winning through with his job, but he didn't care a rush for his life.

     'I reckon it's like going to sleep when you are pretty well tired out, and waking to find a summer day with the scent of hay coming in at the window. I used to thank God for such mornings way back in the Blue-Grass country, and I guess I'll thank Him when I wake up on the other side of Jordan.'

     Next day he was much more cheerful, and read the life of Stonewall Jackson much of the time. I went out to dinner with a mining engineer I had got to see on business, and came back about half past ten in time for our game of chess before turning in.

     I had a cigar in my mouth, I remember, as I pushed open the smoking-room door. The lights were not lit, which struck me as odd. I wondered if Scudder had turned in already.

     I snapped the switch, but there was nobody there. Then I saw something in the far corner which made me drop my cigar and fall into a cold sweat.

     My guest was lying sprawled on his back. There was a long knife through his heart which skewered him to the floor.

http://www.popularpenguins.com.au/default.cfm

Therese Raquin, by Emile Zola - extract

Therese Raquin, by Emile Zola - extract

     In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Therese Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. The numbing tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on a turbulent affair with her husband's earthy friend Laurent, but their animal passion for each other soon compels the lovers to commit a crime that will haunt them forever. Therese Raquin caused a scandal when it appeared in 1867. It is not only an uninhibited portrayal of adultery, madness and revenge, but also a devastating exploration of the darkest aspects of human existence.

Extract

1

     At the end of the Rue Guenegaud, if you follow it away from the river, you find the Passage du Pont-Neuf, a sort of dark, narrow corridor linking the Rue Mazarine to the Rue de Seine.1 This passageway is, at most, thirty paces long and two wide, paved with yellowish, worn stones which have come loose and constantly give off an acrid dampness. The glass roof, sloping at a right angle, is black with grime.

     On fair summer days when the sun bums down heavily on the streets, a whitish light penetrates the dirty panes of glass and lurks miserably about the arcade. On foul winter days, on a foggy morning, the glass roof casts only shadows over the slimy paving: mean, soiled shadows.

     Built into the left wall are dark, low, flattened shops which exhale the dank air of cellars. There are secondhand booksellers, toyshops and paper merchants whose displays sleep dimly in the shades, grey with dust. The little square panes of the shop windows cast strange, greenish reflections on the goods inside. Behind them, the shops are full of darkness, gloomy holes in which weird figures move around.

     On the right, along the whole length of the passageway, there is a wall, against which the shopkeepers opposite have set up narrow cupboards; nameless objects, goods forgotten for twenty years, lie there on narrow shelves painted a repellent shade of brown. A woman selling costume jewellery does business from one of the cupboards, offering rings at fifteen sous,' delicately placed on a bed of blue velvet at the bottom of a mahogany box.

     Above the glass roof, the wall extends, black, crudely rendered, as though stricken with leprosy and crisscrossed with scars.

     This Passage du Pont-Neuf is not a place for strolling. People use it to avoid making a detour, to gain a few minutes. Down it walk busy folk whose only thought is to march briskly straight ahead. You see apprentices in their aprons, seamstresses delivering their finished work, and men and women with parcels under their arms. You also see old men lurking in the dreary light of the glass roof, and gangs of little children who come running here after school to kick up a row, banging their clogs on the pavement. The crisp, hurried sound of footsteps on stone rings out all day long with irritating irregularity. No one speaks, no one stops; all these people are speeding past on their business, walking quickly along with downcast eyes, without sparing a single glance for the displays of goods. The shopkeepers look suspiciously at any passer-by who by a miracle happens to pause in front of their windows.

     In the evening, the arcade is lit by three gaslights enclosed in heavy, square lanterns. These hang down from the glass roof, on which they cast patches of yellowish light, spreading pale circles of luminescence around them that shimmer and appear to vanish from time to time. The passageway looks as though it might really be a hiding-place for cutthroats; great shadows spread across the paving and damp draughts blow in from the street; it has the appearance of an underground gallery dimly lit by three funerary lanterns. The shopkeepers make do with nothing more than the meagre illumination that the gas lamps cast on their windows. Inside the shops, they merely set up a lamp with a shade on a corner of the counter, which allows passers-by to detect what is lurking at the back of these holes where darkness inhabits even in daytime. Along the dingy line of windows, that of a paper merchant shines out: the yellow flames of two shale-oil lamps burn into the blackness. And, on the opposite side, a candle stuck into the glass mantle of an oil lamp puts glimmering stars in the box of costume jewellery. The woman who owns the shop is dozing at the back of her cupboard, with her hands wrapped in a shawl.

     A few years ago, facing this jewellers', there was a shop with bottle-green woodwork oozing humidity from every crack. The sign was a long narrow plank with the word Haberdashery in black; and, on one of the glass panes in the door, was a woman's name in red letters: Therese Raquin. Window displays on either side reached far back into the shop, lined with blue paper. In daylight, all that the eye could see was these windows, in a soft chiaroscuro. On one side, there were a few articles of clothing: fluted tulle bonnets at two or three francs apiece; muslin sleeves and collars; and woollens, stockings, socks and braces. Each item, yellow with age, hung pitifully from a wire hook, so that the window, from top to bottom, was full of whitish rags that took on a mournful appearance in the transparent gloom. The brand-new bonnets shone whiter, making bald patches against the blue paper lining the window, while the coloured stockings, hanging from a rail, struck dark notes against the pale, dim emptiness of the muslin.

     On the other side, behind a narrower window, were piled large skeins of green wool, black buttons sewn on to white cards, boxes of every size and colour, hairnets with steel drops stretched across circles of bluish paper, fans of knitting needles, tapestry patterns and reels of ribbon -a pile of dull, washed-out objects that had doubtless been reposing in this same spot for five or six years. All the colours had faded to a dirty grey in this cupboard rotten with dust and damp.

     Around midday, in summer, when the sun's rays burned down redly on the squares and streets around, you could make out the serious, pale face of a young woman behind the bonnets in the other window. Her profile stood out dimly against the blackness of the shop. A long, narrow, sharp nose reached down from the short, low forehead; her lips were two slender lines of pale pink; and her short but strong chin was attached to the neck by a supple, plump curve. You could not see her body, which was shrouded in gloom; only the profile of the face was visible, dull white, with a wide-open, black eye pierced in it, seeming to be crushed under the weight of a thick, dark mass of hair. There it stayed for hours on end, calm and motionless, between two bonnets on which the damp rails had left two lines of rust.

     In the evening, when the lamp was lit, you could see the inside of the shop. It was longer across than it was deep. At one end, there was a little counter, while at the other a spiral staircase led up to the rooms on the first floor. Against the walls stood display cases, cupboards and lines of green boxes; four chairs and a table completed the furniture. The room seemed naked and cold; the merchandise was packed up and squeezed into comers, instead of lying around here and there with its cheerful mixture of colours.

     Normally, there were two women sitting behind the counter: the young woman with the serious face and an old one who would smile as she dozed. The latter was about sixty, with a placid, chubby face that turned pale under the light of the lamp. A large tabby cat would crouch at one end of the counter, watching her as she slept.

     Further on, sitting on a chair, a man of some thirty years would be reading or chatting to the young woman in a low voice. He was small, puny and listless in manner, with a thin beard and his face covered in freckles: he looked like a sickly, spoiled child.

     Shortly before ten o'clock, the old woman would wake up. They shut the shop and the whole family went upstairs to bed. The tabby purred as it followed its masters, rubbing its head against each banister as it went.

     Upstairs, the house consisted of three rooms. The staircase opened into a dining room that also served as a sitting room. On the left was a porcelain stove in an alcove, with a sideboard opposite. Then there were chairs along the walls and a round table, fully open, occupying the middle. At the back, behind a glazed partition, was a dark kitchen. There were two bedrooms, one on either side of this living room.

     The old woman, after kissing her son and daughter-in-law, would retire to her room. The cat slept on a chair in the kitchen. The couple went into their own room; this had a second door, leading to a staircase, which opened into the arcade through a dark, narrow alleyway.

     The husband, constantly shivering with fever, would go to bed, while the young woman opened the window to close the shutters. She used to stay there for a few minutes, facing the great black wall with its crude rendering, which rose up and extended beyond the glass roof of the gallery. She would cast a vague glance at this wall and silently go to bed in her turn, with an air of contemptuous indifference.

http://www.popularpenguins.com.au/default.cfm

Surrender, by Sonya Hartnett - extract

Surrender, by Sonya Hartnett - extract

    

As life slips away, Gabriel looks back over his brief twenty years that have been clouded by frustration and humiliation. A small town and distant parents ensure that he is never allowed to forget the horrific mistake he made as a child. He has only two friends – his dog Surrender, and the unruly wild boy Finnigan, with whom he made a boyhood pact. 

     When a series of arson attacks grips the town, Gabriel realises how unpredictable and dangerous Finnegan is. Events begin to spiral out of control, and it becomes clear that only the most extreme of measures will rid Gabriel of Finnegan for good.

Extract

     I am dying: it's a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of a cello: dying. But the sound of it is the only beautiful thing about it.

     Several times a week I must be cleaned. Water comes to me on a sponge. I must lift my arms, shift my heels, lower my flaming eyes. I must smell pink, antiseptic. I'm removed from my place while the bedsheets are changed and set to sag in a wheelchair. I am proffered a pan, and the sight of it shames me; at other times I can't call for it fast enough. My food comes mashed, raised on a spoon; spillage will dapple my lap. I am addressed as if an idiot, cooed over as though a child. I'm woken when I wish to sleep, told to sleep when I'd prefer to be awake. I am poked, prodded, pinched and flensed, I'm needled and wheedled and cajoled. My existence is nothing but a series of humiliations, what little life is left to me can hardly be called my own. All of this, this horror, just to say, 'He's dying.'

     I hear the words blow like dust through town. From where I lie, in this lean white room, I hear them spoken under awnings, murmured over counters, delivered as knowing statements across gates. It won't be long now. They say he's dying.

     They say he's fragile, his skin sugar-white; they say he must be handled like a delicate crown of thorns. They're saying he's as weightless as the skeleton of a crow.

     Breathing is an undertaking: it takes minutes to sigh. My ribcage is the hull of a wrecked and submerged ship. My arms, thin as adders, are leaden as dropped boughs. The mattress, my closest friend, has been carved by the knots of my unfleshed bones into a landscape of dents. The soul might rise, but the body pulls down, accepting the inevitable, returning to where it began.

     This is where I began: I am dying in my childhood home. Beyond the window straggles the only world I know and wish to know; I was born and grew up in this few-thousand town. There is nothing about its weft and fold that isn't familiar to me. I know the cracks in the footpaths – I have stepped on them a thousand times. I know the product on the shelves and the reflection in the glass – I have seen myself there, left imprints of my hands. I've felt summer's sahara heat and seen autumn's bedraggled blooms; I've kicked black crickets from my toes and fed wood to a hissing fire. I know which gate tilts in the wind, I know what's cropped in which field. I have known the exact moment when every calf and child was born. From here, on the bed, where I see only panelled walls and a haze of curtain which ushers in the breeze, I can distinguish and put a name to every rooster's cry. The breeze brings to me the scent of sawdust, diesel, feathers, chicken soup. They say that smell is the last thing to fade, so I sniff about while I can.

     It is as easy for me to die here, in the bedroom of my childhood home, as it would be to die anywhere. The procession of needlers and pinchers know where to find me. The word on the street agrees, says, 'It's better he's home, it's comforting there.' My aunt takes care of me from day to day; she sleeps in the neighbouring room. I'll not pretend her task is enviable. The chronically ill make for difficult work; neither is it easy to be chronically ill. It is an effort for me to do anything – to think, talk, imagine, prepare – to do anything except concede to the demands of my squalling usurper. It rules me like a dictator; in turn I rule my aunt. When the end comes, Sarah will have earned her peace. In the meantime, she's not the sort to put a pillow to one's face: when the illness is looking elsewhere I apologise for the grief I cause and, 'Gabriel,' she replies, 'I'll miss you.'

     Inside me roils a thunderstorm. When I breathe, the breath is winter. Lightning jags through my chest, splashes shocks of blood down my chin. Rain falls inside my lungs, sloshes when I move. The thunder rolls like a great cat, settles with a feline weight. The marrow in my bones is ice. My eyes are hailstones.

     And I feel old, as old as the mountains that the walls and window won't allow me to see, as old as if every moment has somehow stretched into a year. And anyone who didn't know me might mistake me for an ancient man – I have an old tranquillity. But I am young – I'm the martyr's age. At my age, hearts are pierced with arrows, and taped over with bombs. Mine is the saintly age, the sacrificial one: I am only twenty.

     But there's no one here who doesn't know me.

     In this small town, conversation is whispered. Treetops, when they buffet, do so mutedly. Cats don't purr, goats don't bleat, birds keep their tunes to themselves. The cow separated from her calf swallows back her moan. Children in their yards don't play, trucks take the long road round. Anything daring to slam with the wind is forcibly nailed down. The wind itself does its best to skulk unheard. Everything here is silenced, for me. Everything keeps a respectful hush. I lie alone in this small room, my childhood's unreliable sanctuary now my prison, soon my morgue, and silence, which is what awaits me, is what I've already received.

     Fortunately my ears are sharp.

     I hear that they are whispering, 'What was missing is found.'

http://www.popularpenguins.com.au/default.cfm

The Shiralee by D’Arcy Niland - extract

      Everyone has their cross to bear – their swag, their shiralee – and for Macauley, walking across New South Wales in search of work, it is his young daughter who has to suffer his resentment at having her in tow. But then, he discovers that the ties that bind can be as much a comfort as a burden, and what he thought of as his Shiralee could be the one thing that will save him from himself.

This classic Australian novel perfectly captures the spirit of the bush and the tough, resilient people of the outback.

Extract

     There was a man who had a cross and his name was Macauley. He put Australia at his feet, he said, in the only way he knew how. His boots spun the dust from its roads and his body waded its streams. The black lines on the map, and the red, they knew him well. He built his fires in a thousand places and slept on the banks of rivers. The grass grew over his tracks, but he knew where they were when he came again.

He had two swags, one of them with legs and a cabbage-tree hat, and that one was the main difference between him and others who take to the road, following the sun for their bread and butter. Some have dogs. Some have horses. Some have women. And they have them as mates and companions, or for this reason and that, all of some use. But with Macauley it was this way: he had a child and the only reason he had it was because he was stuck with it.

     They'll tell you he took that child from the city when it was only three and a half and went into the backblocks and carried it on his shoulder, under his arm, and in a sugar-bag that swung as a balance to his bluey. And that's the truth. He still did it, for the kid was only six months older; though not so much – for it had been broken into walking and Macauley in desperate resignation had shaped his travelling time and means to suit it. They saw him coming into town with the child asleep in his arms, or thrown up with its head on his shoulder, bobbing with the rhythm of the walk, dead to the world. They saw it trudging beside him, the two of them such a contrast in size it made you laugh.

     Wherever Macauley went the child went with him. It was his real swag. The one he carried on his back was a mere nothing. That swag when he hoisted it and strapped it about his thick shoulders stayed put and gave him no trouble. He didn't have to cook a feed for it. He didn't have to make an extra shake-down. If he put it on the ground it didn't walk away. He didn't have to wash it and comb its hair. It never had to have its buttons done up. It was never the burden to slow him down.

http://www.popularpenguins.com.au/default.cfm

The Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles - extract

The Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles - extract

  

   The Moresby's are Americans abroad, but some journeys are best left unmade… Struggling to save their marriage, they resolve to trade civilization for the wilderness of the Sahara. At first, the pair are seduced by the deserts beauty. But beneath the exquisite landscape lurk the dark undercurrents of an alien culture, and the relentless dangers of a hostile natural world. And as they travel deeper, they might not only lose their way. They could lose their lives . . .

Extract

1

     He awoke, opened his eyes. The room meant very little to him; he was too deeply immersed in the non-being from which he had just come. If he had not the energy to ascertain his position in time and space, he also lacked the desire. He was somewhere, he had come back through vast regions from nowhere; there was the certi­tude of an infinite sadness at the core of his conscious­ness, but the sadness was reassuring, because it alone was familiar. He needed no further consolation. In utter comfort, utter relaxation he lay absolutely still for a while, and then sank into one of the light momentary sleeps that occur after a long, profound one. Suddenly he opened his eyes again and looked at the watch on his wrist. It was purely a reflex action, for when he saw the time he was only confused. He sat up, gazed around the tawdry room, put his hand to his forehead, and sighing deeply, fell back onto the bed. But now he was awake; in another few seconds he knew where he was, he knew that the time was late afternoon, and that he had been sleeping since lunch. In the next room he could hear his wife stepping about in her mules on the smooth tile floor, and this sound now comforted him, since he had reached another level of consciousness where the mere certitude of being alive was not sufficient. But how difficult it was to accept the high, narrow room with its beamed ceiling, the huge apathetic designs stencilled in indifferent colours around the walls, the closed window of red and orange glass. He yawned: there was no air in the room. Later he would climb down from the high bed and fling the window open, and at that moment he would remember his dream. For although he could not recall a detail of it, he knew he had dreamed. On the other side of the window there would be air, the roofs, the town, the sea. The evening wind would cool his face as he stood looking, and at that moment the dream would be there. Now he only could lie as he was, breathing slowly, almost ready to fall asleep again, paralysed in the airless room, not waiting for twilight but staying as he was until it should come.

http://www.popularpenguins.com.au/default.cfm

Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner, extract

Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner, extract

      

     Judy's father, Captain Woolcot, found his vivacious, cheeky daughter impossible – but seven children were really too much for him and most of the time they ran wild at their rambling riverside home, Misrule.

     Step inside and meet them all – dreamy Meg, and Pip, daring Judy, naughty Bunty, Nell, Baby and the youngest, 'the General'. Come and share in their lives, their laughter and their tears.

Extract

Chapter One

Chiefly Descriptive

     Before you fairly start this story I should like to give you just a word of warning.

If you imagine you are going to read of model children, with perhaps a naughtily inclined one to point a moral, you had better lay down the book immediately and betake yourself to Sandford and Merton, or similar standard juvenile works. Not one of the seven is really good, for the very excellent reason that Australian children never are.

In England, and America, and Africa, and Asia, the little folks may be paragons of virtue, I know little about them. But in Australia a model child is -I say it not without thankfulness -an unknown quantity.

It may be that the miasmas of naughtiness develop best in the sunny brilliancy of our atmosphere. It may be that the land and the people are young-hearted together, and the children's spirits not crushed and saddened by the shadow of long years' sorrowful history.

There is a lurking sparkle of joyousness and rebellion and mischief in nature here, and therefore in children.

Often the light grows dull and the bright colouring fades to neutral tints in the dust and heat of the day. But when it survives play-days and school-days, circumstances alone determine whether the electric sparkle shall go to play will­o'-the-wisp with the larrikin type, or warm the breasts of the spirited, single-hearted, loyal ones who alone can 'advance Australia'.

Enough of such talk. Let me tell you about my seven select spirits. They are having nursery tea at the present moment with a minimum of comfort and a maximum of noise, so if you can bear a deafening babel of voices and an unmusical clitter-clatter of crockery I will take you inside the room and introduce them to you.

Nursery tea is more an English institution than an Australian one; there is a kind of bon camaraderie feeling between parents and young folks here, and an utter absence of veneration on the part of the latter. So even in the most wealthy families it seldom happens that the parents dine in solemn state alone, while the children are having a simple tea in another room: they all assemble around the same board, and the young ones partake of the same dishes, and sustain their pans in the conversation right nobly.

But, given a very particular and rather irritable father, and seven children with excellent lungs and tireless tongues, what could you do but give them separate rooms to take their meals in?

Captain Woolcot, the father, in addition to this division, had had thick felt put over the swing door upstairs, but the noise used to float down to the dining room in a cheerful, unconcerned manner despite it.

It was a nursery without a nurse, too, so that partly accounted for it. Meg, the eldest, was only sixteen, and could not be expected to be much of a disciplinarian, and the slatternly but good-natured girl, who was supposed to combine the duties of nursery-maid and housemaid, had so much to do in her second capacity that the first suffered considerably. She used to lay the nursery meals when none of the little girls could be found to help her, and bundle on the clothes of the two youngest in the morning, but beyond that the seven had to manage for themselves.

The mother? you ask.

Oh, she was only twenty -just a lovely, laughing-faced girl, whom they all adored, and who was very little steadier and very little more of a housekeeper than Meg. Only the youngest of the brood was hers, but she seemed just as fond of the other six as of it, and treated it more as if it were a very entertaining kitten than a real live baby, and her very own.

Indeed at Misrule -that is the name their house always went by, though I believe there was a different one painted above the balcony -that baby seemed a gigantic joke to everyone. The Captain generally laughed when he saw it, tossed it in the air, and then asked someone to take it quickly.

The children dragged it all over the country with them, dropped it countless times, forgot its pelisse on wet days, muffled it up when it was hot, gave it the most astounding things to eat, and yet it was the healthiest, prettiest, and most sunshiny baby that ever sucked a wee fat thumb.

It was never called 'Baby' either, that was the special name of the next youngest. Captain Woolcot had said, 'Hello, is this the General?' when the little, red, staring-eyed morsel had been put into his arms, and the name had come into daily use, though I believe at the christening service the curate did say something about Francis Rupen Bumand Wooleot.

Baby was four, and was a little soft fat thing with pretty cuddlesome ways, great smiling eyes, and lips very kissable when they were free from jam.

She had a weakness, however, for making the General cry, or she would have been really almost a model child. Innumerable times she had been found pressing its poor little chest to make it 'squeak', and even pinching its tiny arms, or pulling its innocent nose, just for the strange pleasure of hearing the yells of despair it instantly set up. Captain Woolcot ascribed the peculiar tendency to the fact that the child had once had a dropsical-looking woolly lamb, from which the utmost pressure would only elicit the faintest possible squeak: he said it was only natural that now she had something so amenable to squeezing she should want to utilize it.

Bunty was six, and was fat and very lazy. He hated scouting at cricket, he loathed the very name of a paper­chase, and as for running an errand, why, before anyone could finish saying something was wanted he would have utterly disappeared. He was rather small for his age, and I don't think had ever been seen with a clean face. Even at church, though the immediate front turned to the minister might be passable, the people in the next pew had always an uninterrupted view of the black rim where washing operations had left off.

The next on the list -I am going from youngest to oldest, you see -was the 'show' Woolcot, as Pip, the eldest boy, used to say. You have seen those exquisite child-angel faces on Raphael Tuck's Christmas canis? I think the artist must have dreamed of Nell, and then reproduced the vision imperfectly. She was ten, and had a lime fairy-like figure, gold hair clustering in wonderful waves and curls around her face, soft hazel eyes, and a lime rosebud of a mouth. She was not conceited either, her family took care of that -Pip would have nipped such a weakness very sternly in its earliest bud -but in some way if there was a pretty ribbon to spare, or a breadth of bright material just enough for one little frock, it fell as a matter of course to her.

Judy was only three years older, but was the greatest contrast imaginable. Nellie used to move rather slowly about, and would have made a picture in any attitude. Judy, I think, was never seen to walk, and seldom looked picturesque. If she did not dash madly to the place she wished to get to, she would progress by a series of jumps, bounds, and odd little skips. She was very thin, as people generally are who have quicksilver instead of blood in their veins. She had a small, eager, freckled face, with very bright dark eyes, a small, determined mouth, and a mane of untidy, curly dark hair that was the trial of her life.

Without doubt she was the worst of the seven, probably because she was the cleverest. Her brilliant inventive powers plunged them all into ceaseless scrapes, and though she often bore the brunt of the blame with equanimity, they used to tum round, not infrequently, and upbraid her for suggesting the mischief. She had been christened 'Helen', which in no way accounts for Judy', but then nicknames are rather unaccountable things sometimes, are they not? Bunty said it was because she was always popping and jerking herself about like the celebrated wife of Punch, and there really is something in that. Her other name, 'Fizz', is easier to understand; Pip used to say he never yet had seen the ginger ale that effervesced and bubbled and made the noise that Judy did.

I haven't introduced you to Pip yet, have I? He was a little like Judy, only handsomer and taller, and he was fourteen, and had as good an opinion of himself and as poor a one of girls as boys of that age generally have.

Meg was the eldest of the family, and had a long, fair plait that Bunty used to delight in pulling, a sweet, rather dreamy face, and a powdering of pretty freckles that occasioned her much Tribulation of spirit.

It was generally believed in the family that she wrote poetry and stories, and even kept a diary, but no one had ever seen a vestige of her papers, she kept them so carefully locked up in her old tin hat-box. Their father, had you asked them, they would all have replied with considerable pride, was 'a military man', and much from home. He did not understand children at all, and was always grumbling at the noise they made, and the money they cost. Still, I think he was rather proud of Pip, and sometimes, if Nellie were prettily dressed, he would take her out with him in his dogcart.

He had offered to send the six of them to boarding school when he brought home his young girl-wife, but she would not hear of it.

At first they had Tired living in the barracks, but after a time everyone in the officers' quarters rose in revolt at the pranks of those graceless children, so Captain Woolcot took a house some distance up the Parramatta River, and in considerable bitterness of spirit removed his family there.

They liked the change immensely, for there was a big wilderness of a garden, two or three paddocks, numberless sheds for hide-and-seek, and, best of all, the water. Their father kept three beautiful horses, one at the barracks and a hunter and a good hack at Misrule; so, to make up, the children -not that they cared in the slightest -went about in shabby, out-at-elbow clothes, and much-worn boots. They were taught -all but Pip, who went to the grammar school -by a very third-class daily governess, who lived in mortal fear of her ignorance being found out by her pupils. As a matter of fact, they had found her out long ago, as children will, but it suited them very well not to be pushed on and made to work, so they kept the fact religiously to themselves.

 

http://www.popularpenguins.com.au/default.cfm