The True Story of Spit MacPhee by James Aldridge

severely. ‘It’s just the way it is. Spit needs some discipline, and that’s the sort of place where he’d get it.’
    Sadie didn’t accept it, even though she knew she must accept it.
    ‘You keep away from that old man,’ Mr Tree told her. ‘In case he gets dangerous.’
    ‘Yes, Dad,’ she said, and when they had joined Mrs Tree in the kitchen Sadie said nothing at all about old Fyfe because if anything was to be said about it her father would do the saying.
    That night, when Sadie had gone to bed, Jack Tree told his wife what had happened. ‘The old man was lying there like a grizzly bear in agony,’ he told her. ‘His hat was off, but he had on a sort of felt skull cap which looked as if it was glued to his head.’
    ‘Last week,’ Grace Tree said, ‘Mrs Evans told me he was seen walking around the town in the middle of the night, shouting at all the dogs and opening all the front gates, with Spit walking behind him closing the gates again.’
    ‘You keep the back door locked,’ Mr Tree told her.
    ‘But he’s harmless, Jack,’ Mrs Tree said quietly. ‘He could never hurt anybody.’
    They were sitting in Mrs Tree’s spotless, linoleum kitchen. While Mrs Tree labelled the glass jars of her preserved apricots, Mr Tree was saving electricity by working on his reports at the other end of the kitchen table – not only a soldierly man but a neat man with a neat moustache, organised papers, and a dry pipe in his mouth which he sucked but didn’t smoke.
    ‘You’re not to take a chance,’ he ordered his wife. ‘The old boy could easily turn violent.’
    Mrs Tree didn’t argue, but she inspected her husband carefully for a moment before saying, ‘We really ought to do something about that boy, Jack.’
    ‘What do you mean – do something? Do what?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Mrs Tree said. ‘But he and old Fyfe can’t go on much longer the way they are. Spit is a nice boy, and someone should help him.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘I don’t know how,’ Mrs Tree said unhappily. ‘But there must be some way.’
    ‘Leave him to Betty Arbuckle. She’ll do something. The best thing for him is probably that home in Bendigo.’
    ‘That’s not right Jack.’
    ‘Well, right or wrong, there’s nothing you can do about it, Grace, so leave him alone. He’s a grubby little devil, and he’s like the old man. He can look after himself.’
    ‘He can’t be grubby if he spends so much time in the river.’
    ‘Keep him away, that’s all I’m saying. Don’t let him hang around.’
    ‘He doesn’t hang around.’
    ‘Then what are we arguing about?’
    Grace felt guilty now. She wanted to tell her husband more about Spit, but Jack had made his position too firm and clear to do it now. Nonetheless, when he went off again on one of his inspection tours she allowed Sadie to go on swimming and fishing with Spit. The trouble was that other people had seen the children together, the Evanses, Mrs Andrews up the slope, the station master’s wife, and Mr Moon the butcher. Sooner or later it would all leak out.
    It was Sadie who told her more than anyone else could possibly know about Spit and his grandfather, because Sadie had been watching and listening and thinking about them, and she had reported everything she had seen and done to her mother. Sadie had not only seen inside the boiler, but she could now sit quietly in Mr MacPhee’s workroom with Spit and watch them together. It had been quite simple. She had said to Spit after they had been swimming one day, ‘Can I see inside your boiler house?’
    Spit’s first reluctant reply was, ‘I dunno …’ But Sadie simply waited as if she knew he would change his mind, and he did so. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But no telling anybody.’
    ‘No. I won’t tell anybody.’
    Spit took her through the front door of the house, through the workroom where old Fyfe was working on a clock, and into the extension which finally opened into the boiler itself.
    What she saw amazed