Read Online Bring Larks and Heroes by Thomas Keneally - Free Book Online Page B

presses and polite journals and medals struck by the Royal Society. In the zenith heat, on his way home to the town, Partridge might understand this and, in his lassitude, hurl the two poor blacks overboard.
    â€˜You are a blessed man,’ Ewers continued, havingan option on Halloran’s ear despite the mangroves and slow, silty water.
    â€˜Do you think so?’
    â€˜Yes. You have quick eyes and you respect the Arts. You’re the type of man who should be free of the restrictions of the service.’
    â€˜Aren’t we all?’
    â€˜In two years, you will be back amongst your people. If I could say the same . . .’
    For half a minute and without warning, Ewers wept, still flat on his back, and his split, navy-style sleeve clamped against his eye-brows. The corners of his long mouth had drawn back prodigiously to show tall, grimacing eye-teeth.
    Halloran leant over and nudged his right elbow gently.
    â€˜Man, there are pardons you know. I’d imagine you’d be amongst the first to be pardoned.’
    â€˜A pardon is useless.’ He sat up. ‘If I had the decency, I’d die here of shame. Because I’m known as a forger in Dumfries. Even in Edinburgh.’
    â€˜Hah!’ said Halloran, going gusty and bluff and gesturing over his right shoulder with his thumb. ‘There are worse crimes against man and God. Down the river and not so far, there are far worse.’
    â€˜I forged four bank-notes on the Bank of Scotland. The Bank’s engraver said at my trial in Dumfries that their qualities as forgeries astounded him. I was proud.I can still remember my pride. I was proud, I can remember, and my aunt sat up in the public gallery, and people pointed her out behind her back.’
    He turned his face to the north bank and with his hand over his mouth, whimpered or giggled. In that heat it was anybody’s guess.
    At last, his long face turned back to his brother-boaters. It was stained with grief, not at all its clean-shaven self.
    â€˜Let me tell you about my aunt,’ he implored.
    In common mercy, ‘Yes,’ sighed Halloran.
    This will be as good ,he thought, as one of those fruity sermons on the crucifixion. On two and a bit pounds of meat every week, he had no emotion to spare for Ewers’ aunt in Dumfries.
    At this moment Ewers began to doubt himself. As if from a great distance and painfully, he peered at the two transports. He was gratified to find their eyes rolling, their ears full of their own rhythmic exhaustion.
    â€˜Her name is Miss Kate Norris. I went to her when I was three years old. I became her life, as you’d expect with a spinster.’
    He ’ ll say next that there was never a better woman ,thought Halloran.
    â€˜There never lived a better woman,’ said Ewers. ‘Every woman whose company I ever found myself in, I observed closely, to see if she had the qualities of AuntNorris in however immature a form. None of them ever did reproduce the range of her virtues.’
    â€˜I see,’ said Halloran. He spoke, not out of enthusiasm for Aunt Norris, but because he felt it within him one day to make Ann’s fortune by writing a farce called The Master-Forger Chooses a Wife .
    â€˜The thought that she rebuffed a number of suitors for my sake is one which I eat with ashes every day.’
    There and then, he began to eat it with ashes again and wept for a full minute with most of his face hidden behind his sleeve, his sobbing hidden by the groan of the boat and the slowly plangent river.
    â€˜I want you to assure me you’ll do a thing for me. For her.’
    â€˜That depends,’ said Halloran. He said it severely since there was something too unctuous and full-blown about Ewers’ misery. Within the system, he had little enough space in which to conspire humanely. Ewers’ aunt in Dumfries could ascend into heaven for all he cared; and might, if there wasn’t a girl in Scotland to