The True Story of Spit MacPhee (3 page)

While this was happening, the town made its first contact with the five-year-old boy. He was taken by his grandfather wherever he went, and the boy copied his grandfather in all things. He shouted aggressively because the old man did, and he spat (or tried to) because old Fyfe, who smoked a short cubby pipe, spat noisily and frequently. Inevitably the boy was soon known to the town as Spit MacPhee, and it was a nickname he didn’t mind, which was lucky because when he eventually went to school he didn’t have to get into fights over it. But in the formation of his character, which was already like his grandfather’s, he would spit drily and emptily and forcefully to state his position. By the end of that summer he was a brown, bare-legged, barefoot copy of the old man who never seemed to restrain him, even though he shouted at the boy the way he shouted at everybody else. By the end of that summer Spit was left free to wander where he liked in the town, or along the river, or even across it on Pental Island. He learned to swim in a few days, and thereafter the river became his natural home. He was afraid of nothing and nobody, and was soon so well-equipped to look after himself that it persuaded some of the worried women of St Helen, notably Betty Arbuckle, that in fact he was a little too good at looking after himself. Like eating people it was wrong for a six-year-old to be so recklessly free, and it was about this time that Betty Arbuckle first decided she would have to do something about the future of this boy who needed a proper home with proper care, which meant the Boys Home in Bendigo.

But then, one Monday morning, when Spit had been with old Fyfe for three months, the old man switched the sign on his gate to OUT, and taking Spit by the hand he caught the morning train to Bendigo – a large town one hundred miles away. Fyfe returned next day with Spit and a tall red-headed woman. It wasn’t known at first sight who she was. All three were the last off the train because it was obvious that the lady did not want to be seen. But she was noticed anyway. Though it was the 1930s and the fashion then was short skirts, the lady wore a skirt to her ankles. Even more peculiar, she wore a brown veil that covered her face down to her neck so that only a few strands of her bright red hair were visible. She held Spit’s hand in her own gloved hand, and Fyfe carried her suitcase as they walked straight to Tom Smythe’s gig. It had been waiting for them, obviously pre-arranged by old Fyfe. The gig had a little oval step for mounting to the padded seat, but the veiled lady couldn’t make it without Fyfe’s help. Once up on the seat, still holding Spit’s hand, Tom Smythe drove them to the little house by the river, and it was obvious then that she was Spit’s mother and that Fyfe had built the little cabin expressly for her.

But once she was in it nobody thereafter caught more than a passing glimpse of her sitting in the back garden. She would sometimes sit there on a deck chair, holding a faded green parasol low over her head. Sometimes she was shelling peas or peeling potatoes or sewing, but more often than not she simply sat there as if that was all she could manage, never speaking to anyone, even when some of the ladies shouted a greeting to her. Sometimes Spit was seen spread across her knees, face down, kicking his legs, but nobody ever saw her face.

Eventually, a real explanation seeped through a report, in a Bendigo paper, that Mrs Mary MacPhee had been badly burned when her house in White Hills, near Bendigo, had caught fire. Mrs Joyce Andrews, coming from Bendigo to visit her sister in St Helen, had seen the case reported in the Bendigo
Advertiser
. The real tragedy was that Murdoch MacPhee, old Fyfe’s son and Mary’s husband, had managed to rescue the boy, but in returning for his wife and rescuing her from the back of the house, he had burned his lungs to shreds and was already dead on his way to hospital. Mary MacPhee had been badly burned on the face, legs and back, and she too had suffered some sort of lung injury from the heat and smoke. Only the boy had escaped untouched.

The town of St Helen was a normal town, and the sympathy for the MacPhees was natural and widespread. But unfortunately old Fyfe’s shouted hostility to all questions or offers of help made any expression of sympathy difficult. It was particularly difficult for Betty Arbuckle, because now she had to think of the mother as well as the son. She too needed help and Betty was sure that personal salvation was the only way to rescue her. Never daunted by the devil in the flesh, or by setbacks, she had tried to call on Mary MacPhee only to meet old Fyfe, who happened to be digging in the garden. He threatened her with the spade and chased her off, shouting after her, ‘Ye spying minnie. Y’re after seeing her face, aren’t ye, but if ye come down here again I’ll throw you in the river.’

Spit was too young then to hurry her on her way with a bucket of river water, and Betty Arbuckle had not called on Sergeant Collins in those early days because she knew that Collins, like most people in the town, was on the side of the MacPhees. In fact, after some time, Betty had to admit that with his daughter-in-law there, old Fyfe began to control his temper a little, despite his threats to anyone who offered help. His sudden outbursts of wild shouting at anybody in the street and his mad attacks on the boiler stopped entirely. When it was time to start school, it was Fyfe himself who took Spit to be registered, and though Spit wore a clean, un-ironed smock, and clean pants, he still had no shoes. But at least he was off the streets, and because the river was rising he was not so much in it now but along its bank watching the currents. What did not change were the noisy exchanges, because Spit and his grandfather went on shouting at each other as if that was the only way they could talk to each other, and the people above the railway line would hear them exchanging early morning arguments at the tops of their voices every morning before school.

It remained like that – a rather neutral situation, until one cold, wet, winter’s day in July, Mary MacPhee died. Initially only Dr Stevens and the Reverend Mackenzie of the Presbyterian church knew about it. Then, most people heard about it when they watched her funeral, attended only by Fyfe and Spit. It saddened many people in the town, and Betty Arbuckle wept for the woman whom nobody had actually seen in her terrible disfigurement, although it worried Betty that the boy might have seen his mother’s badly burned face. That in itself was a frightful condemnation of what the boy had to suffer in those horrible conditions.

After the funeral old Fyfe and Spit had locked themselves up for two days and nobody had heard them shouting at each other. But it was only a matter of time before Spit was back at school and roaming freely again. Once more they shouted at each other, and once more Fyfe appeared from time to time on the streets, denouncing nobody in particular but simply walking around in a state of fierce invective. Spit was seven when his mother died. Now he was ten (‘almost eleven’ he would say when he was asked his age), and it was the accumulation of those three years of the boy’s motherless condition that had persuaded Betty Arbuckle to try once more (the sixth time in three years) to do something about the boy, and it had brought her back that day to the little red and green boiler house on the river bank.

Something had to be done. The boy was now so fearless, so bold, so outspoken, and so equal to anyone, adult or child, so dirty (she was sure), so neglected by the old man and so lacking in any moral and spiritual guidance (he had never been seen in the Presbyterian church, or at Sunday school) that somehow he had to be saved from what was clearly and obviously an unChristian future. It wasn’t fair to the boy to leave him like that. The beautiful Betty Arbuckle, with close haircut and buckled shoes, was more determined than ever not to be defeated by the swearing and insults of a mad old man. Soaking wet from Spit’s bucket of water, she went home singing her favourite hymn:

Praise my soul the King of Heaven

To His feet thy tribute bring.

Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,

Who like thee His praise should sing.

Praise Him, praise Him,

Praise Him, praise Him,

Praise the Everlasting King.

Then her two favourite lines: ‘Slow to chide and swift to bless. Praise Him, praise Him …’ And finally her private addition to it: ‘Give me strength, his soul to save.’ Because salvation to Betty was God’s pity, and she was sure that sooner or later she was going to save Spit from that Godless little house.

But though Spit seemed to be a leaf caught in something of a mortal storm, almost every boy in town liked him and admired him; and in return Spit himself was friendly to anybody who would accept him for what he was and could tolerate his habit of shouting rather than talking, and his routine gesture of dry spitting with his tongue. Spit’s personal toleration of all and sundry was more like an equaliser between friends rather than the kind of mateship that Australians loved so much.

Girls were inclined to keep well clear of Spit, avoiding him as a barefoot ruffian. In response, Spit ignored the lot of them (though later there would be one exception to this). When he did get into a fight with boys his own age it was usually over a point of honour rather than a contest for some sort of superiority. If he was beaten by a bigger boy he never admitted defeat and would only accept his punishment on the understanding that there would be a return bout another day, which sometimes he forgot. In this regard he never bore a grudge, although he had his likes and dislikes. Among his very few dislikes were the son and daughter of Betty Arbuckle and her husband, Frank, who read the water meters and checked the town’s water supply. He was also responsible for keeping the water mains in good condition.

Like Betty, Frank Arbuckle had been saved in his youth because (like Betty) his parents had also been saved. But whereas Betty was sustained in her salvation, Frank was overwhelmed and beaten by it, exhausted and helpless in it. Betty got life and vigour from her faith, whereas Frank followed silently behind – easily frightened, worn out, and only able to do the best he could. Like his ten-year-old son Ben, Frank was an easy victim for Spit’s retaliations whenever Betty Arbuckle attempted to get into old Fyfe’s house. Spit’s usual response was to choose a moment in the night, find some remote corner of the town, and lift one of the small water mains’ inspection covers. Then he would jam a piece of wood into the ball-cock that was used as a valve when sometimes the mains had to be tapped. The flood that followed was not easy to stem but needed quick attention, and Frank Arbuckle always knew who had done it. To all Frank’s complaints Sergeant Collins always gave the same reply: ‘You catch him at it, Frank, and I’ll see he gets punished.’

‘The little devil is too cunning for that,’ Frank Arbuckle said. ‘But I’ll get him someday, Joe.’

But Sergeant Collins knew that Frank Arbuckle was as much afraid of Spit as he was of his wife, and of old Fyfe, and of his own twelve-year-old daughter, Joannie. So he would do almost anything to avoid Spit under any circumstances.

Spit, for his part, didn’t spare the Arbuckle children: Ben his own age, and Joannie who was older. He terrorised Ben simply by waiting from time to time until Ben happened to be fifty yards in front of him in the street. Then Spit would shout, ‘Look out, Ben, I’m after you.’ And setting out on his fast bare feet after the fleeing Ben he would roar his threats, never trying to catch him and never intending to harm him, but out simply to remove him from consideration.

But one day, instead of fleeing at full speed, Ben ran a little way in his heavy, black boots and then suddenly stopped and turned around to face Spit, who was amazed. Spit got ready for a fight, but instead of offering resistance, Ben was in tears.

‘Why don’t you leave me alone, Spit,’ he said. ‘It’s not me, it’s my mother. So leave me alone …’

This so startled Spit who, recognising a
cri de coeur
despite himself, didn’t know what to do except to shout in reply, ‘Well I’m after her, Ben, so you’d better tell her to look out.’

‘I know, Spit, but I can’t help it.’

Ben’s tear-stained face was already too much for Spit, and the best he could manage in retreat was, ‘What does she think she’s doing?’

Thereafter he left Ben Arbuckle alone. Joannie, though, was another problem. Spit could not threaten her with violence, and Joannie would stand up to him and accuse him of being dirty, smelly and mad like his grandfather. Spit’s reply was usually a shouted insult about her mother being a crank, which didn’t frighten Joannie so that Spit had to resort to one or two ‘bloodies’ or something worse. Joannie could stand almost anything except bad language, and as a rule she covered her ears and ran away. Joannie was even prettier than her mother, but she didn’t have her mother’s resolute innocence. She always wore a pinny, her hair was tied in two curious little horns above her ears, and like her mother she wore buckle shoes and thick stockings. But like her mother she couldn’t dim her own prettiness, and like her mother she firmly believed that the Lord Jesus needed everyone to turn a shamed and obedient face to the world and acknowledge their sins in order to be saved.

‘You were born wicked, Spit MacPhee,’ she would cry out as she fled.

But apart from the Arbuckles and a few other people who tried to interfere, Spit made a point of never threatening anyone without cause. If the men, women, boys and girls of St Helen left him alone, he would leave them alone, and in those sort of live-and-let-live conditions he was given a fair amount of good-natured respect, even from adults. What helped him was his dour self-confidence, because he was always rather serious for a boy. When he stood at the back door to face Mrs Evans (or Mrs Jackson or Mrs Ellison) to say to her, ‘Do you want to buy a fish, Mrs Evans?’ he was making an offer that had to be accepted or rejected without any nonsense. If Mrs Evans asked him how much he wanted for the Murray cod he would give his price. But if she made a mistake and asked him, ‘Is it fresh, Spit?’ he would shout, ‘What do you think it is, Mrs Evans? I just caught it.’ If he chose to take offence he would take his fish and walk away.

In this particular case Mrs Evans mentioned it to her husband and said, ‘He really is a bit mad, Bert. Just like the old man.’