Read Online Mr Darwin's Shooter by Roger McDonald - Free Book Online Page B

enough.’
    â€˜What did you say?’
    â€˜I said wise ,’ MacCracken nodded and shouted, ‘ enough .’
    â€˜You tied a string to a tortoise and made it pull a rock.’
    â€˜Thank you,’ croaked MacCracken into his chin. ‘So you hold my own writings against me. Thank you kindly. What a good proof of readership. Alone of all the faithful you kept the faith.’
    â€˜Since we met I’ve been wondering about something.’
    â€˜We never met, we collided, old barge.’
    â€˜Is a man only ever to be as he seems? That is my point,’ said Covington.
    â€˜And a good one, ancient Diogenes,’ remarked MacCracken. If he was only ever to be as he seemed, then he would be a flimsy sort of a fellow.
    They smoked their pipes and watched the shallow tide. When it retreated it printed white sand with mottled hearts of Port Jackson fig leaves.
    â€˜Must a servant be always—just a servant?’
    â€˜Jesus was a servant,’ said MacCracken righteously.
    â€˜Who?’
    â€˜ Jesus .’
    â€˜Nay, he was a master,’ said Covington.
    â€˜Come up to the house,’ said MacCracken, clapping a hand on the shoulder of his brooding friend. ‘I have a fine old brandy from the Cape.’ Covington stared at him uncomprehendingly until MacCracken made the ‘snorter’ sign with his elbow, and then he leapt up and trotted at his side to ‘Villa Rosa’.
    â€˜What do you think the brain is?’ Covington said, when they were settled with their snifters. ‘Does it have several organs packed into it, like lumps of clothing in a seabag?’
    â€˜That is a pretty idea,’ nodded MacCracken. He was interested in the brain. He had dissected it into portions but found the process useless, philosophically speaking, leaving him always at the point he wished to start with—the mystery of being.
    Covington sneered into his swirl of spirits. ‘We must all have great heads or these qualities are small, trailing back on roots to be all fitted in like turnips or yams .’
    â€˜Another?’ MacCracken held out the bottle.
    Covington declined, saying the brandy was ‘oily to his taste’. The comment irritated MacCracken extremely. It undercut his hospitality. Some friendships were better conducted through the mails, he swore to himself. In Covington’s letters from ‘Forest Oak’ there was never any innuendo, while face to face he was full of it. As Covington placed his glass on a shelf and readied himself to leave, grunting and cracking his joints, his eyes were caught by an arrangement of shells MacCracken had placed in a window recess. Among them was a saucer of sea urchin spines. Theywere slim, shaded in brown, about half an inch long and dotted with small marks like goose bumps. Covington held them to the light like a diamond connoisseur, making judgemental clicks of the tongue, saying he ‘owned these too,’ having found them on the same island where MacCracken teased the tortoise and smothered the bird. His noise of disapproval was typical. He seemed captivated by the souvenirs, and somewhat lost, and yet there was this disdain also.
    MacCracken cupped a hand to his mouth and shouted to be heard:
    â€˜Chatham in the Galapagos? When were you there? When , old stager?’
    â€˜When the world was young,’ was all Covington would say in response. And perhaps that was everything, thought MacCracken, that he would ever need to say. (MacCracken would come to think so when he was wiser.) MacCracken was struck by the swirls of feeling that Covington shot out at him. They were full of pain.
    Opening his diary that night MacCracken wrote his piece on friendship. ‘No, a man does not have to be just as he seems. He can be more, in the light of understanding.’
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    Covington called another day, and they spoke of other things. Yet always with difficulty, one shouting himself hoarse, one