Charley Has A Spell

By Bill Gill

'TITHE infernal racket in this town,”

J. said Charley peevishly, “is get ting me down.” He had to shout to make himself heard above the din of passing trams, trucks, buses and other traffic; and I, who had enjoyed his hospitality in the Islands on so many occasions, could sympathise with him.

I well remember the brooding stillness of his verandah, broken only by the rustle of the wind in the palm fronds, the murmur of the surf on the reef, and the subdued thunder of his gastric indigestion.

“I’m heading for the bush for a spell of quiet,” he continued. “Leav ing to-morrow to stay with an old mate of mine who’s got a place out West. Angus McPhee is his name —used to be Spanish Consul until they found him out. His wife has left him on account of him being obsolete, so he’ll enjoy my com pany.”

I assured Charley he couldn’t do better; and, after arranging to see him off, we parted. * * * On the following morning, I held his suitcase whilst he approached the booking office.

“I want a ticket,” he said. “Re turn.”

“Where to?” asked the clerk.

“Why, to here, of course! I’ve got to come back here, though I hate the sight of the place.”

The clerk eyed him in silence for a while. Then: “You want to re turn here, you say. Now, tell me this, where do you want to return here from.”

It took Charley a few moments to digest this rather involved question, but the meaning gradually dawned on him. “Why, back from McPhee’s place, of course,” he cried. “You don’t think I’m going to camp with him permanently, do you?’

“Listen, mate,” began the clerk with a dangerous edge to his voice.

Then, to his ever-lasting credit, he swallowed his wrath and continued in a quieter tone: “This McPhee, where does he live?”

“Why, in Bellbird Gully, of course,” Charley answered. “Where else, I’d like to know!”

“A return to Bellbird Gully,” said the clerk “will set you back two pounds fifteen.”

“WHAT!” shouted the outraged Charley. “Come again?”

“You heard me,” said the clerk.

“Two fifteen—cash.”

“I won’t pay it,” howled Charley.

“I don’t want to buy a train, I only want to travel a little way in one.

Why, I’d sooner pad the hoof than pay a price like that.”

“Suit yourself, Pop!’ said the clerk,

indifferently.

“Now listen here, young fellah— -111 go as far as thirty bob for a ticket, not a penny more.”

“Okay. There’s a lot of places

you can travel to for thirty bob, but Bellbird Gully isn’t one of them.” , so?” said Charley, bitterly, “in that case I’ll walk”— and he turned away from the book ing-office with a brave air of

finality.

The clerk grinned derisively, and Charley knew he was licked. .“Very well, then,” he said, slap ping down a couple of notes. “I’ll take a ticket to Bellbird Gully— single. And I’ll never use your perishing railway again as long as I live.”

He boarded the train breathing fire and brimstone, and vowing to shake the dust of Sydney from his feet forever. * * * A couple of days later who should I bump into but Charley!

“I thought you said wild horses wouldn’t drag you back to Sydney again,” said I. ‘'Well, they didn’t,” Charley re plied.

“But something did,” I rejoined.

“Tell me.”

“When I arrived at Bellbird Gully,” said Charley, setting down his glass, “there’s McPhee all set to board the train I’d got off. ‘l’m going to Tasmania,’ says he. ‘Just heard my wife’s won the lottery there so I’ve decided to forgive her.

You go on up to my place,’ he goes on. ‘You’ll easily find it —just help yourself!’—and he hopped on the train and off!

“It wasn’t so easy to find his place, at that, but I got there in the end

“Where to?”

with the help of providence and an asthmatic jalopy. The house looked all right, too, set in a garden abloom with wolf-bane and stinking roger, and quiet as they come, except for the wild howling of a million mos quitoes. But it was nearly midnight before I’d rustled up a feed for my self and collected a mattress and a few blankets from different parts of the house.

“I’d hardly got my head down, it seemed, when an eldrich screech nearly lifted my scalp off. It was only a rooster, big as a Cassowary, perched on the window sill. After I’d bounced both my boots off his chest and cracked him over the skull a few times with the curtain rod, I managed to dislodge him, close the window, and get back to bed.

“I was just dropping off again when an Imperial bang rocked the house off its foundations, almost. I leaped up and poked my head through the shattered window: ‘What the ?’ I began; but a young fellow interrupted me: ‘Pull your head in, Pop,’ says he. ‘We’re only blasting out a few tree stumps to clear this site for a railway marshalling yard.’

“Well the blasting went on all morning. Then along came bull dozers, graders, pneumatic drills and heaven knows what, and I started yearning for the quiet racket of the city again—so here I am.

“And there’s always a sea breeze in Sydney,” Charley concluded, “I get a kick out of that.”

It was only a rooster.