The Fourth Man
by
Brian Parker
Published by MoshPit Publishing
https://www.moshpitpublishing.com.au
Copyright 2012 Brian Parker
The Fourth Man
by
Brian Parker
The taxi drew up outside Floriana's restaurant in the city and four men alighted. Three of them were dressed in dark business suits, not so the fourth man. He looked as though he was from the country, dressed in a woollen shirt, tie and jacket. His pale corded trousers were somewhat shapeless and his elastic-sided boots did not have quite the shine of his companions' shoes. The shorter and older of the businessmen, whom the others called Stu, led the way into the restaurant and gave his name to the maitre d'. The others followed, admiring the simple yet tasteful decor and fittings. Their table, laid with heavy silver on the crispest linen was in a stone flagged courtyard under a canopy of vines; everything about the place looked cool and light and spacious and of the highest quality.
When the wine waiter appeared, Stu again took charge. ‘Reg, what will you have?’ he asked his companion on his right. The tall man’s protruding eyes under his luxuriant eyebrows moved from side to side for a second or two, then as he leaned forward, the light reflected off his well polished head. ‘Vodka Martini, I think.’ There was preciseness about his speech.
Stu turned to the other businessman who was fingering his heavy gold cufflinks. ‘Same for you, Danny?’ The man gave the merest suggestion of a nod and the tiny smile of a spider.
‘And you my friend?’ Stu asked the fourth man. ‘What would you like to start with?’
He thought for a while. ‘Yes. Martini. Make mine gin though … Tanqueray’s of course.’
‘Of course, Sir,’ replied the waiter, smiling with cold teeth.
‘And while you're at it,’ Stu said, still studying the wine list, ‘you'd better pull the cork on a couple of bottles of this Grange.’ He snapped the wine list shut. ‘Do you agree gentlemen?’ They all agreed.
The conversation was light and amusing, about mutual friends, scandals in government, the media, sport and the weather. No business was discussed.
They all started with the signature dish of the house: beautifully fried, fresh sardines, as light as a sandwich at a vicarage tea party and as crisp as the table linen. With it, they drank a Chardonnay that was bright and clean and expensive.
The conversation turned to the inclement weather that had recently brought thunderstorms and minor flooding.
‘Our place was flooded out,’ Reg said. ‘It was very distressing for my wife. This cascade of water rushed down the drive and seeped into the living room.’ His eyes twitched at the thought of it. ‘It was pretty terrible really ...’
The fourth man did not hear the end of the sentence; he was lost, some 15 years back in time, wondering if any of them had really seen a cascade of water, devastating all before it …
***
He and Veloo were looking for one of the dogs that had not returned the night before. Honey, the old matriarch of the pack, now chose which hunting expeditions she would join and for the first time had failed to return. Everybody knew that she must be lying up somewhere, probably badly injured.
Veloo, a supervisor on the tea plantation, knew more about wild pig than any man alive. He was a blue/black Madrasi: strong, courageous and with a sixth sense about wild boar that could only have come from a previous incarnation as a porcus scrofa.
They hunted most weekends. He would bring along four and a half pair of beagles, his Holland and Holland, his shotgun, and enough shot for the whole party. Veloo would bring along four or five labourers whom he could trust, and a dozen or so youths, to act as beaters. The tracker was very strong on procedure and etiquette on a shoot and had once chastised his boss when he'd had strayed into someone else's firing line. Today there were just the two of them, looking for a favourite dog.
The plantation was on a gently sloping plateau and on the lower side there was a sheer rock face, dropping some 500 feet, then a steep fall of hill to the valley floor, some 2000 feet below. The coarse manna grass and stunted shrubs on the hill had been grazed to near extinction by the cattle from the village that clung to the hillside, halfway down to the valley. Deep, wide ravines scored the face of the hillside, eroded by monsoon rains, some as much as 90 to 100 feet across and at least 30 feet deep. Most were well wooded and a favourite spot for pig.
It was wet and misty and a steady rain had fallen since early morning. Veloo pointed to a spot in a deep, well wooded ravine, some 300 feet below them. He said that the last time he had seen the old dog was when she had led five or six of the pack in there to flush out the old tusker that they had eventually killed some three miles across the hill. The pig had weighed some 250lbs of muscle and meanness and had the biggest tusks the hunters had ever seen.
Telling Veloo to walk down the nearside, he got down into the ravine to traverse it. Lightning and thunder crashed high above on the plantation and the rain became heavier. The stream at the bottom of the ravine was rushing along, a dirty brown with eroded soil; the going was heavy. At one point in the middle of the ravine, a large jungle hardwood had held against the erosion, its roots forming an island in the middle of the ravine.
They spotted old Honey simultaneously, lying at the base of the hardwood. She had been disembowelled by the tusker, obviously no longer nimble enough to avoid its scything tusks. He looked at his favourite dog lying there quite peacefully. It was a good way for a hunter to go.
He heard the roar, like an oncoming express train, and Veloo shouting at the same time. He looked up the hill to where the tracker was pointing and at first did not see anything. Then he noticed a disturbance in the ravine, a couple of hundred yards above him. The shrubs and small trees and saplings were moving violently, as though caught by a whirlwind. It was only then that he saw the wall of water and debris five or six feet high, boiling down towards him.
***
The three businessmen were looking at him.
‘I said, how were the sardines?’ Stu asked.
‘I'm sorry. I was thousands of miles away … literally.’ He looked down at his empty plate, not remembering having eaten them. ‘They were … very good.’
‘Yes, weren't they?! What'll you'll have to follow?’
‘The rare fillets of beef, I think,’ he said tapping the menu.
‘You have been very quiet,’ Danny said.
‘I was thinking about Reg's flood.’ He turned to the bushy browed man. ‘It must have given your wife a fright?’
‘It jolly well did!’ he said, his eyes positively dancing. ‘From what she said, this wall of water came gushing down the drive …’
The fourth man looked at him and shook his head. Reg has no idea, he thought, a wall of water doesn't gush. It thunders, roars, smashes, leaps and gouges. It certainly doesn't gush.
***
It roared all right. It was like standing behind a big jet on takeoff. For a moment or two he was mesmerised as the surging wall smashed its way nearer and nearer.
There was very little time. He knew it was useless to try and get out of the ravine and decided that he would be better off behind the big hardwood. He moved quickly but first he attempted to swing his shooting bag up out of the ravine to where Veloo was standing, but the sling caught in a branch and it dropped back into the ravine. He was determined to be more careful with his gun. Taking it by the barrel he heaved it up to the tracker but it dropped short and came to rest on a ledge about three feet from the top of the ravine.
There was nothing he could do. The water was upon him. He clung to the lower side of the tree but was still very nearly swept away by the first crushing breaker. Small boulders, branches and other d
ebris buffeted him until his arms hurt and he thought that his grip on the tree would give way.
He looked up to see Veloo lying on his stomach trying to reach the shotgun. He shouted to the tracker to get away but his puny noise was drowned out in the maelstrom. He tried to wave to attract the man's attention and in doing so was himself almost washed away.
Then in slow motion, he watched in horror as a large sapling, twisting and turning end over end in the torrent, as though it was a pencil, caught the tracker as he leant over into the ravine and brushed him down into the Demerara coloured turbulence.
He momentarily saw the man's outstretched arm, and then he was gone.
Almost as quickly as it had arrived, the flood subsided and it was the silence that he noticed more than anything.
Everything had gone: Veloo, Honey’s corpse, his gun and shooting bag. He looked down to see that one of his leech boots had been torn off and that there was a deep gash on his leg which was bleeding profusely. It later needed a dozen or more stitches.
***
‘Liqueur? We’re all having Sambucas. What will you have?’
‘Oh, er … yes. I'll have a port, please. And if you're having coffee I would like a short black.’
‘Cheese?’ the waiter asked.
‘Why not? Bring a selection, please.’ Stu said.
The man with the chunky cufflinks and the tiny smile announced that he was taking his wife to the theatre at the weekend. ‘I think that I shall bring her here for dinner, afterwards.’
‘Sounds like fun,’ said Reg. Nodding towards Stu, he said. ‘My ancient friend here, and his beautiful young wife, are spending the weekend on our cruiser.’
‘And what are your plans?’ Stu asked the fourth man. ‘Staying out at your country retreat?’
He was always amused at the idea that they thought that anywhere beyond the metropolitan boundary was in the deepest hinterland. ‘Nothing planned at the moment, but I'm getting the germ of an idea for a short story.’
Nobody commented, perhaps the businessmen thought that that was a bit passé.
Putting his napkin on the table, Stu said, ‘Well, I suppose all good things must come to an end. Waiter! Cheque please.’
The bill duly arrived in a tooled leather folder.
‘What's the damage?’ Danny asked
‘It's my privilege,’ said Stu. ‘It's not often that we can all meet up.’ He placed his credit card on the folder.
‘Are you sure?’ Reg asked, taking out his wallet.
‘Yes! It will give my expense account a bit of a nudge, but … what the hell!’
The fourth man saw Stu round up the bill to $500, much to the pleasure of the waiter. Making a quick calculation he realised that the cost of the meal was somewhere in the region of 36,500 rupees, at the exchange rate then prevailing.
***
The flood had been caused by the failure of a reservoir bund, high up on the plantation. A huge body of water, together with the swollen streams, had washed away everything in its path to the valley below. Veloo's body was never found and it was believed to be under tons and tons of rubble and silt, near the valley floor. They did find the tracker's gun and returned it to his wife.
There was no compensation or insurance for the poor unfortunate woman and her five children. The directors of the company ruled that Veloo's death had not occurred during the furtherance of his work. Despite the company's attitude, as manager, he was able to find the money in the estimates, to pay for the 'funeral expenses’ and an ex gratia sum of 500 rupees for her. Five hundred dollars, though, would have kept the family comfortably, for a very long time.
***
That night, he had a nightmare, reliving those dreadful 15 minutes, as he had done on so many other nights in the intervening years. He was frightened and sobbing.
His wife woke him. ‘The water?’ she asked. ‘What brought it on?’
As they lay there in the dark, he told her about the lunch and then fell back into a fitful sleep. Half an hour later he was sobbing quietly again. This time she did not wake him, as he was not unduly distressed.
She lay awake, wondering if he was crying for Veloo’s family, the inability to turn the clock back or the irony of life itself.
(c) Brian Parker 2012
About the Author
Brian Parker finished school, then immediately went out to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to become a tea planter.
In 1970 he joined the advertising department of the London Evening Standard.
Three years later, with wife Ruth and their three children, he emigrated to Australia, joining News Ltd. After three years working on suburban newspapers, he joined The Australian, before forming his own media services company.
Despite spending the majority of his working life in the tea industry and the media, Brian has also worked as a fur porter (a long time ago when people actually wore fur!), an office cleaner, a barman and a door-to-door encyclopaedia salesman. As he says - all great sources of material!
Brian and Ruth moved to the Blue Mountains, NSW, in 2002 and have lived there ever since. They have three children and four grandchildren.
Engage with Brian at his blog:
https://parkerthestoryteller.com/