Raymond Connection

Also by This Author 3 Special Stories The Angel Wings 2nd edition Boy, the Girl, and the Man (The) Boy in The Valley (The) Concentration Camp (The) Raymond Days and Dreams of Arcady (The) I Saw, in the Night, Visions Laughing Gunner (The) Lion on the Road (The) Connection Love is the Spur Love unto Glory and other stories Mr Hicken's Pears Mr Piffy Comes Home No Life without Dryads Primarily for Parsons Raymond Connection (The) and Other Stories GEOFFREY BINGHAM Return of the Lorikeets (The) Stranger in the Cemetery (The) Story of the Rice Cakes (The) Tall Grow the Tallow-woods This Building Fair To Command the Cats and Other Stories Twice Conquering Love Vandal (The) Where Conies Dwell God and the Ghostown www.newcreation.org.au Published by NEW CREATION PUBLICATIONS INC. PO Box 403, Blackwood, South Australia, 5051 1986 First published by New Creation Publications Inc., Australia, 1986 © Geoffrey Bingham 1986 PUBLISHER’S NOTE The stories contained in this volume have been written National Library of Australia card number and over the past year or two. The one exception is ‘Over the ISBN 0 86408 040 9 Hill,’ published in a Sydney evening newspaper—among others of my early writing—in late 1945. The two stories ‘The Raymond Connection’ and ‘The Power Within’ were included in a slim volume specially published to fit an Australian Broadcasting Corporation ‘Encounter’ session, broadcast in April and November 1985. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. THE COVER: A composition of scenes from the Adelaide River War Cemetery, Northern Territory. Design by Glenys Murdoch. Wholly set and printed at New Creation Publications Inc. Coromandel East, South Australia Contents THE VARIETY OF MAN: A Preface to Another Collection of Stories xi THE CRICKET MATCH 1 BROTHER BILL 9 A DAY IN THE LIFE OF GRANDPA 21 DADDA’S DOUBLOONS 36 MAN ABED! 55 THE RAYMOND CONNECTION 72 THE MURDER 86 THE FRISBEE FAMILY 94 ‘OLD PSYCH’ 105 THE HOLY FEAST 124 OVER THE HILL 135 RED DRESS, WHITE COCKATOO 139 THE LITTLE LIGHT 147 THE BOY WITH A BIRTHDAY 161 THE STRANGE CASE OF CARABY QUINN 171 THE PLACE ON THE LEFT 194 The Variety of Man xi THE BRILLIANT BIRD 215 THE POWER WITHIN 224 THE BRIDING OF BILL 242 The Variety of Man GRANDPA’S SPECIAL BIRTHDAY 252 A Preface to Another Collection of Stories HORT story writing—or even writing itself—is not my Svocation. Stories irresistibly get themselves written from time to time, and accumulate themselves, like all other letters and papers, on my spare desk. That is why I wait for my critics to tell me how I write, as also for them to give evaluation judgements. Yet even these generally puzzle me, for my own yarns seem to come from some alien planet of my own mind-system. So I just grin wryly whilst a book is in the processes of publication, launching and review. Having said this, I know I am deeply involved in the tales I write. Of course they form themselves, insistently, and one becomes a servant to their action and thought. Yet somewhere within us a wisdom has grown over the years. In childhood it was a dream and fantasy wisdom which met the turmoil of adolescent years, and became realistic when it met the evil and goodness of its humanity in others and itself. Stories, then, do not wholly form themselves. They issue from the heart of a writer who is not looking for recognition or praise to boost his insecure psyche. For some years now, xii THE RAYMOND COLLECTION The Variety of Man xiii Milton’s lines keep recurring in my mind: responsible a function today as in the ancient times, when men and Fame is the spur that the pure doth raise women—along with their children—gathered around a desert or a (That last infirmity of noble minds) village fire, and were caught in the rich mystery of man through the To spurn delights and live laborious days. wise telling of stories and sagas. Wisdom came into them, as though by some osmosis, and they went about life with the power of it within I sometimes wonder whether any human being does not have his them. (or her) eye cocked to his present public or coming posterity. The same could, and should, happen today. The mindless use of Keeping integrity is a demanding exercise. Because I not only write man’s degradation without seeing his glory, the fantasising about but am a theologian, I find nothing in me of the cynical or the critical, perversion as though it were the human norm, and the making anymore than the romantic unrealism that haunted me as a boy who obscene of the beautiful gifts man has received, add nothing to our fantasised when he ought to have been concentrating on algebra. I wisdom. This kind of yarning cheats, steals, destroys and kills. assure myself that I know pretty well what humanity is, and this not If all of this sounds like apologia for the simplicity of the true only in the abstract. That is why I treat the stories that come as gifts life—that of a boy in a cricket match, parent-birds sitting silently up from somewhere, to be shared out with a certain amount Of in a tree, or a tired prisoner-of-war going to his happy rest, then so be discernment and objectivity. it. This may sound like a mild recall to reality, or even a not-so-subtle This volume is a departure, even if a mild one, from the previous bit of preaching, but neither is intended. I feel the mere representation three volumes of short stories. Few—if any—of those yarns had of life as stark, ugly, obscene and despairing, is not enough. This is deliberate attempts to teach, to take up issues and struggle with them. not true realism. It is not realistic humanism. It is prostituting the In this present collection, the stories ‘The Raymond Connection,’ emotional reserves of bewildered, embittered, cynical humans, in the ‘The Power Within, ‘Man Abed,’ ‘The Little Light,’ ‘The Holy name of art. Shakespeare and Carlyle may have been didactic, but to Feast,’ ‘The Murder,’ and ‘The Strange Case of Caraby Quinn,’ are some purpose. Chesterton may have been tractarian in his writing, attempts to give one’s mind on certain issues. but he reads none the worse for it. Take the wisdom of these three I find modern humanism quite naive—and even mindless—in the writers away, and their characters become bland, and their writing face of the tragedy of man and his world. Idealism, messianism and tasteless. utopianism are dangerous ingredients and elements working in our Stories should help to tell us who we are, where we came from, society. Man is not bland because he is mainly urban and suburban. and—if possible—where we are going. They should help us to His huge and angry attempts at justice-at-any-price keep wreaking understand our history, not only in its delights, but in the depths, too, terrible havoc. An old prophet stated bluntly, ‘The way of a man is of its titanic tragedies. not in himself. It is not in man to direct his own footsteps.’ I admit this sounds strange in the ears of militant humanism which—in my GEOFFREY BINGHAM mind—does not really understand humanity. Stories, tales and yarns, then, have as powerful and xii The Cricket Match 1 The Cricket Match ou’ve seen some cricket matches in your day, I bet. Probably Y some of you can remember back as far as Clarrie Grimmett, but perhaps not Hobbs. I can remember Don Bradman very well. He was a young man when I was a boy. I can remember writing to him and asking for an autographed photograph. To my immense surprise and delight, he sent me one. I was the envy of my schoolmates and my local cricketing friends- We had cricketing obsession. No sooner were we home from school than we were out on the local pitch. No sooner were Saturday morning chores finished—mowing the lawns and cutting the edges— than we were out on the pitch again. Most of us were sure we would be Test players, although that never eventuated. Of course, not every boy gets his break in life. If I had had my ‘break’ then I don’t doubt my brilliance as a Test player would have shown forth! What some of us wanted to do, when we were grown, married and had families, was to get our sons to do what we had not been able to achieve, due to force of circumstances, not getting the desired break, and possibly to not being Test quality material, although the latter is difficult to believe, let alone accept. 2 THE RAYMOND CONNECTION The Cricket Match 3 For some of us, one of the deepest sorrows of being fathers was to told all about cricket—how to stand at the crease, handle the bat, find that our sons had decided to skip a generation in cricket face the bowler, be careful of the field. It also told how to bowl, how obsession. They scarcely noticed the game was being played. They to stop a ball, and all the other things he had seen on TV had other interests.

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