Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly Read online

  Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly

  John Franklin Bardin

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1948 by John Franklin Bardin

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition June 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-353-3

  Also by John Franklin Bardin

  The Deadly Percheron

  The Last of Philip Banter

  To John C. Madden

  with respect and admiration

  NOTE

  Every character in this book is entirely fictitious and no reference whatever is intended to any living person.

  When I was young I used to wait,

  On massa and give him his plate,

  And pass the bottle when he got dry

  And brush away the blue-tail fly.

  Chorus:

  Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care,

  Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care,

  Jimmy crack corn and I don’t care.

  My massa’s gone away.

  And when he’d ride in the afternoon,

  I’d follow after with a hickory broom,

  The pony being rather shy,

  When bitten by a blue-tail fly.

  Chorus

  One day he ride round the farm,

  The flies so numerous they did swarm,

  One chanced to bite him on the thigh -

  The devil take the blue-tail fly!

  Chorus

  The pony run, he jump, he pitch

  He threw my massa in the ditch;

  He died and the jury wondered why -

  The verdict was the blue-tail fly!

  Chorus

  They lay him under a ‘simmon tree

  His epitaph is there to see -

  ‘Beneath this stone I’m forced to lie -

  Victim of the blue-tail fly!’

  Chorus

  An authentic Negro Minstrel song of circa 1840

  1

  Today is the day, was her first waking thought – and she repeated it, charmed by the echoing syllables, the rise and fall of the cadence, saying the words aloud this time, playfully accenting one of them: ‘Today is the day.’ Ellen breathed deeply and stretched her arms upward towards the pale-green ceiling until her joints cracked and her tendons strained. The clear morning light washed the immaculate box of a room, splashed it with sun as a dasher splashes cream in a chum. Ellen laughed at the image, pleased with the ingenuity of her mind. Why, she hadn’t ever really forgotten anything, had she? Only once in her life had she seen a chum, only once – during that month, the first month of their marriage, when Basil and she had stayed at that farm in Vermont – had she seen the thick yellow cream, the queer whitish butter that had tasted so marvellously rich, the frothy paddle. Oh, she was well again, there was no doubt about it, or she would not have thought of that. And it was so apt – the sun on the bland green walls did look like cream turning to butter, and she did feel happy. In fact, she felt as happy now as she had felt that month, that incredibly idyllic month, when Basil and she had first been married. Her mood and the sun and the butter, they were all the same; it was all of a piece. Ellen let her hands fall abruptly and, with a tremendously contented sigh, let her lungs empty out the huge breath she had been holding in, guarding jealously, as if in this way she could clasp the perfection of the moment to her. And, bounding and bouncing despite the stiffness of the springs and mattress, she threw back the covers and jumped out of bed. ‘Today I am going home!’

  Basil was coming for her. She would take his arm, a little gravely, a little self-consciously, and walk down the corridor with him. She would stand beside him while Martha – or would it be Mary? – unlocked the door, only this time she would not clutch his arm any tighter, her fingers would not tense against the rough tweed of his sleeve. For this time she would not have to stop at the door, she would not have to stand there, helpless, while Basil kissed her cheek, her brow, and then, with a caution he had not once known, her mouth. She would not have to smile and say something casual, something meaningless but cheery, to Martha – sometimes it had been Mary – while he walked rapidly past the door, down the hall, clattered on the iron, the fireproof, stairs. She would not have to turn around and walk back up the corridor to her room, just like the others, even with the monks’ cloth hangings, the bound scores of Bach and Handel, Rameau and Couperin, Haydn and Mozart, in the bookcase that she had requested and Basil had brought her from town. Not today! No, never again would she sit by the window, her back turned so she would not see him walk down the flagstone path with Dr Danzer, the limp volume of her favourite Bach spread open to the first page of the text, the black notes swarming before her eyes, her fingers arching in elaborate dumb-show as they practised the first trill, her mind on the beats, the leaning upon the upper note, the precise apperception of the stopping point – not a moment too soon, not a moment too late – and in her ears once more the sound, the slow dignity, of Anna Magdalena’s sarabande, a delicate ornament for her melancholy.

  ‘I am going home today!’ She said it again, laughing under her breath, brushing her brisk blonde hair until it was vibrant and sparkled when touched. She dressed quickly, surely, not hesitating over what she was to wear, but choosing irrevocably the forest-green suit, the brown oxfords with sensible heels, the hat with the feather which she did not particularly like but which Basil had selected himself and brought to her so proudly. There had been no choice, of course, or rather she had done the choosing months ago, when she had first dared to look forward to this day. All except the hat, that is; she had decided on another hat – a mannish affair that suited her and the occasion better. But then Basil had brought this hat and she could not but wear it, since she would not hurt him for all the world. No, from now on Basil’s happiness came first, was her sine qua non, for he deserved it. Where would she be without Basil? Who had looked after her, talked and reasoned with her when she was sickest, stood by without faltering? Basil. Who had come to see her every visiting day, even when he knew there was no use, that they would not let him see her, coming from the city by train to the town, from the town by crowded bus to the hospital? Basil. And then, the last time he had come – after they had told him – he had brought her the hat. A silly hat, a frippery thing with a nonsensical feather, the kind women buy when they’re in love and men buy when they go into a store and are embarrassed and say, finally, stammering, ‘I want a hat.’ And both times the betrayal is accompanied by the same sales-girl words, ‘Madame will find it so chic!’ – the same slurred speech, the same shamed groping for purse or billfold, the same flush when one thinks of the incident later and knows, whether one admits it or not, that one’s been had. But, after all, what did it matter? What if the day did seem to require a more serious head-dress, a more sober hat? Hadn’t Basil bought this silly thing, and wasn’t that one fact worth more than any female prejudice? Oh, there was no question about that hat – she would wear it and love wearing it, for she loved Basil,
and today she was going home with him. That was all that mattered, that was the wonderful fact.

  After she had finished dressing, after she had made the stiff, high hospital bed for the last time, she looked at her watch, and saw that it was yet only a few minutes past six. Breakfast would not be until seven, the doctor would not see her before eight; even if Basil had taken the afternoon train yesterday, as he had promised he would, and stayed overnight at the town’s one hotel, he could hardly be at the hospital before nine. She had three hours or more to pack her clothes, her books and scores, to say good-bye to Mary and Martha, to thank Dr Danzer for all he had done for her – three more hours, at least, of leave-taking. It would be a long time, now it seemed that it would never be over; but, then, would it be long enough? What are three hours in two years, especially when those hours are heavy with the burden of those years, when all the past time endured weighs on the present interval, makes each moment massive with meaning? From six to nine she would be aware of each instant in its passing, as it seemed to her she had known intimately every hour of the night and day of the two years that were ending. But – and she looked at the window, saw through it the green lawn and the curving flagstone walk, the elms that lined the high stone wall, the wrought-iron gate and the brick cube that was the gatekeeper’s lodge – nine o’clock would come; although the intervening time would pass slowly, Basil would come, and she would take his arm, smile up at him, and then, finally and irrefutably, the years and the hours would be over.

  She went to the bookcase and ran her hands over the narrow-backed, gilt-stamped volumes of her scores, her fingers arching and pointing, forming arpeggios, appoggiaturas and glissandos, feeling the firmness of the buckram, the softness of the vellum, aching for the last time for the hard, polished veracity of keys, imagining the bright, satisfying, metallic sound of a plucked string, hearing in her mind’s ear the heart of the note, the vibration of a chord, the tinkling precision of a sweeping run, a trill. A few hilly miles on a lurching bus, Basil beside her holding her hand, the rush of a train drawn as by a magnet to the city, the frustration of a taxi’s stops and starts, Basil close to her, enclosed in the small space with her, his ears annoyed like hers by the metronomic tick of the meter, and she would be going up the stone steps of their house, exchanging bows with Suky, the butler – his a lithe swoop, hers a dipping of her head, a shrugging of her shoulders – then she would be past Suky, running up the stairs to her study, pausing at the door to seek the rose walls, the soft overhead lighting, the long couch where she could stretch out when her back was tired, the bow window, but pausing only an instant before stepping confidently forward to her instrument, sitting on the bench and running her hands softly over the old wood of the lid, then lifting it back on itself to reveal the manuals, the rows of keys, bringing her hand down abruptly; but, as she felt the ivory surfaces give, drawing back, holding back, slightly, hearing the chord and its overtones as her foot pressed the pedal, the sharp cleanness of sound’s heart surrounded by a cloud of overlapping tones, the essence of music that only with a harpsichord can one distil. That would be noon – noon at the latest; but it might be before, when she could play again. Her fingers would not obey her; she was reconciled to this – although she had tried to keep them supple throughout the years of her alienation by exercise and silent practice. She would know the scores – she knew them backwards and forwards, she had scanned them so many times – but she was sure that at first her fingers would stumble, her coordination would be poor, her attitude tense, her rhythm inconsistent. But she would be at the keyboard again, she could strike the plangent notes whenever she desired, pick out a melody, devise an ornamentation, and with the days that lay in the future would come long mornings and afternoons at her instrument, her fingers working at the keys bit by bit reassembling the knacks, learning again to translate the ideal sound she heard in her head into actual music. It would come, it would come – it would all be hers again. And, thinking this, she began to pick the volumes from the shelves, one and two at a time, and carried them to the suitcase that lay open on the bed, fitting them carefully inside, walking back and forth, quickly, quietly, happily.

  When she had packed all her books and scores and had closed the large suitcase, had tugged its heavy bulk off the bed and set it on the floor, she placed the two smaller travelling-cases on the room’s two chairs and went to the closet to gather her few clothes. Two old dressing-gowns, a few dresses, several more pairs of oxfords and one pair of pumps that she had worn but once, on a day soon after she had first come to the hospital; had slipped and fallen in them, had had them taken away from her – they had not been returned for many months – along with her manicure scissors, her watch, her fountain-pen, her nailfile: all the little objects she had become used to, depended on, but which they had taken from her, saying, ‘You won’t need these now, will you?’ and, of course, she had needed them – more than that, she had wanted them; but she had known that to protest would have been useless, that they had their routine, their methods, and that even Basil said that they knew best. Besides these shoes and dresses, the closet held her coat which she had used this winter for the first time to take long walks with Martha and Mary, her other hats, and that was all. She made three or four armfuls of them and dumped them into the two cases, straightening them with hurried pokes and deft pattings, taking much less care with them than she had with the volumes of scores, knowing that she would not wear them again, except, perhaps, around the house – the styles would be so different; she would need so many new things.

  She emptied the drawer of the shiny, white metal cabinet where she had kept her stockings, her underclothing and other oddments, and put them all together in one bag, without looking at them, closed and latched it swiftly and decisively. Standing in the centre of the room, she looked around to see what she had forgotten, what remained that belonged to her and she wanted to keep – not that there had ever been much. The radio she had given to Mary months ago, since the only stations she had been able to get on it had played insufferable programmes, dramatic serials, jazz, commercials, the news; although once it had served her well – during the days when she had first begun to grow better, when she had been allowed to see Basil again and he had bought her the little set with its gaudy dial and varnished cabinet: days when it had been reassuring just to hear a voice in the room, a voice that belonged to a stranger, with a stranger’s false warmth and affability, a voice that was without a doubt human, yet belonged to someone who did not know her, was not concerned with her, could not possibly have any designs on her. The pictures that she had asked Martha to clip from magazines and which she had taped to the wall, a line-drawing by Picasso, a four-colour version of one of Renoir’s auburn-haired girls, a severe Mondrian diagram and one of Leonardo’s drawings for a flying-machine, she had pulled off and tom up and thrown away the night before, knowing that no patient or nurse would want them – that they had had their purpose of reminding her of the order that still existed in the world and which she must emulate, but that now their function was no longer needed, she would soon be back in her own house, surrounded by the paintings Basil and she had bought together, and that these substitutes were better destroyed. There was nothing left but the monks’-cloth drapes at the windows, and she hesitated to pull them down; they would leave the room naked, make obvious its sterility, emphasize its restrictions. Although she knew she should not, that what came after was no concern of hers, she could not help thinking of its next occupant, could not help projecting upon this person the despair, the aloneness, the fear she had herself felt when she had come into this room for the first time, saw its green walls, its high bed, its lattice-guarded windows, knew that it was a locked box, a cell, a grave for the living. She remembered the nights she had lain awake, fighting off the sedative they had given her, watching the moonlight, shattered into glowing fragments by the criss-cross of the lattice, creep along the floor, the walls, the bed, menacing her. And she recalled the sharp shards of spli
ntered sun that stabbed like daggers at her eyes on brilliant days. And she walked to the other chair, bent over the second travelling-case and slammed it shut, clicked its latches and turned the key in the lock, deciding that she would leave the drapes at the windows where they belonged.

  Mary brought her breakfast a few minutes later, a familiar breakfast that she had eaten many times before: orange-juice, cold but tasting of the can from which it had been poured; oatmeal, thick and warm and gelatinous; two slices of whole wheat bread and a pat of bright yellow butter; coffee with a little bottle of cream and one packaged lump of sugar which she never used but which she still found on the saucer every time. Mary’s face was as scrubbed and shining as ever – Ellen had a fancy that after she washed it she must rub it with a cloth until it shone like ten-cent store silverware – her iron-grey hair, neat as coils of wire, bulged at her cap, obtruding here and there, as it always had before. But this morning Ellen felt that the smile on the attendant’s face was less automatic than usual, that the quick gestures of her hands showed a certain nervousness that might be attributed to enthusiasm, that Mary, like herself, was glad that Basil was coming, that she was going home.

  ‘Dr Danzer will be a little late this morning, Mrs Purcell,’ Mary said, and then, without pausing, ‘where shall I put the tray – here, on the table?’

  Ellen came across the room, nodding her head, plucking the glass of orange-juice from the tray before the attendant could set it down, gulping the cold stuff to escape the tang she did not like.