Then he said, quite keen, in that good accent he had learnt somewhere, and would put on at times:
“I would like you to lend me this book, Hannah. Where did it come from?”
“That! Oh, that belonged to Charlie. My old rag-picker that I told you of. My one and only stroke of luck. Yes, you can have a loan of it. I like a good read of some book. But not that!”
The house, squeezed in as it was between two others, had already grown too dark. Dubbo took the book, and went at once to his own room, where light, reduced to its essence, green-white and astonishing, would trickle a little longer, from over the slate roofs, down from the slate-coloured sky, of which they were an extension.
He opened the book beside the window. At that hour even the veiled panes seemed to grow translucent as crystal. So, while the true light remained to him, he continued to read, in such desperate and disorderly haste that he introduced here and there words and phrases, whole images of his own. His secret self was singing at last in great bursts:
“Praise ye Him, sun and moon: praise Him all ye stars of light.
Praise Him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens;
And wires of aerials, and grey, slippery slates, praise, praise the Lord.
Mountains and all hills: fruitful trees, and all cedars: and the grey ghosts of other trees: and soles of the feet on wet leaves: and the dry rivers, praise the name of the Lord. The orange bamboos praise Him with their creaking.
Beasts and all cattle: creeping things and flying fowl, praise, praise.
Hands praise the God. …”
His own hands were trembling by now, for the light and his eyesight were nearly gone. So he threw himself, face down, on the bed. His upturned heels were quite wooden and lifeless, but in his innermost mind his hands continued to praise, with the colours of which he was capable. They issued like charmed snakes from the tips of his fingers: the crimsons, and the clear yellows, those corrosive greens, and the intolerable purple with which he might dare eventually to clothe the formless form of God.
So he lay and shivered for the audacity of his ambition. Until his body forced him up. Then he switched on the electric light, and did just notice the little dirty trumpet which his mouth must have printed on the pillow. Because it was ugly, he turned it over, so that he should not see the stain.
During the nights which followed Dubbo spent hours reading from the rag-collector’s Bible. The voices of the Prophets intoxicated him as he had never been in life, and soon he was laying on the grave splendour of their words with the colours of his mind. At this period, too, he constructed the skeletons of several works which he did not have the strength or knowledge to paint. The Chariot, for instance. Ezekiel’s vision superimposed upon that of the French painter in the art book, was not yet his own. All the details were assembled in the paper sky, but the light still had to pour in. And suddenly he furled the cartoon, and hid it. To forget about it, at least with the waking part of his mind.
The picture he did paint now was The Fiery Furnace, almost the whole of it one Friday – he had gone sick on purpose – then the agony of Saturday, in which he sat, touching the surface of paint once or twice, but not seeing how to solve, or not yet daring. And did at last, in several soft strokes, of such simplicity he was exhausted by them. And sweating. His thighs were as sticky as though he had spilled out over himself.
After that he cleaned his brushes very carefully and solemnly. He was happy.
He went out, past the kitchen. Norm had arrived, and he and Hannah were cutting dainty sandwiches, spreading them with anchovette, or squashed dates. They smiled at him, but guiltily, for the obvious secret they were sharing: there was going to be a party.
“Hi, Alf,” Norm murmured.
That was all.
Dubbo went as far as Oxford Street, where he knew a barmaid whose friendship did not have principles attached. He could beckon from the street through the bottle door, and sometimes Beat would condescend to see.
Tonight Beat played, and he took his booze down the hill to a dead-end he sometimes frequented, where nobody ever came at night, unless to park a car, or nail a tart against the wall. There he sat on the kerb. He began to drink his neat grog. He went about it at first as though it had been a job he had learnt to do, very conscientious, and holding back some of the finer points of technique for difficult passages ahead. Then spasmodic. Glugging heavily into the bottle. He broke wind once or twice. His digestive tract had caught fire.
He sang a few lines of a song he had made up in similar circumstances:
“Hi digger, hi digger,
My dad is bigger
Than hiss-sself.
My uncle is the brother
Of my mother.
But the other
Is a bugger
No-ho-bodee,
And not my mother,
Knows.”
By now the moon had entered even the back alleys, and was rinsing them of rubbish, so the black man stood up, and began to walk precariously along the solid stream. He loved the square-eyed houses, although they were blind to him. He was well-disposed towards the unpredictable traffic eyes. He touched a mudguard or two, and in one instance a flying bonnet. In the big street the dim fruit-shops were all bananas. An open box of dates reminded him that the flies must be collecting at home.
So he began to make for Hannah’s place.
During the latter years of the war there was often something doing at Hannah’s; the streets were that full, some of it could not help pouring in wherever a door opened. There was the Army, there was the Navy, but better the Navy because of the Yanks, and better than the Yanks, the dollar bills and nylons. Hannah herself was not so far gone she could not occasionally strike a lode deep in the heart of Idaho or Texas: some stoker who would pay real well for an opportunity to tell about his mom. Then Hannah would start swilling the booze around in her glass, and staring deep into it, until the time came to collect.
But there were the other nights at Abercrombie Crescent when Norm’s mob came in. When she was in the right mood, Hannah not only did not mind, but encouraged, and took an intelligent interest in the private life of any perv. The whore would nearly pee herself watching a drag act in some of her own clothes. After the monotony and bruises of the flesh show, it could have been that she liked to sink down on the springs, and enjoy the antics of puppets – tricky, ingenious, virulent, lifelike, but strictly papier mâché.
Now as Alf Dubbo wove through the streets back to Hannah’s, he guessed it would be queans’ night, if only from the special and secret manner she and Norm had worn while spreading the anchovette and dates. The outlook moved him neither way. It was an aspect of life which did not surprise the abo since he had discovered early that almost all human behaviour is surprising; you must begin to worry only for the little that is not. So he went home, as equably as his condition allowed, and prepared for anything.
At Abercrombie Crescent all the inner doors stood open, except that of the room at the back. There were dark whispers in the hall. Somebody was powdering in clouds in front of Hannah’s dressing-table, somebody was pulling on stockings. It sounded as though the lavatory cistern would never stop.
Dubbo found Hannah right at the heart of the festivities, seated on the lounge with her friend and colleague Reen, whose hair was waved that tight it would have disappeared altogether if its brilliancy had allowed; Reen was one of the golden girls, but thin. In addition to the two whores, there was quite a bunch of queans, who knew, but did not know, Hannah’s piebald. There was somebody, besides, whom Dubbo was still too confused to see, but sensed.
Hannah shouted, in what was intended as a social whisper, that Alf had arrived in time for Normie’s act. When Norman Fussell did, indeed, make his entrance. He was wearing a bunch of feathers on his head, and a bunch of feathers on his arse, and a kind of diamond G-string wherever else. Otherwise Norm was fairly naked, except that he had painted on a pair of formal nipples, and was prinked and
powdered in the right places. The bird began to perform what was intended as a ritual-dance, on Hannah’s Wilton with the brown roses. Assisted by gin, and the soul of the original chorus girl, by which he was obviously possessed, Norm extemporized with hands, ruffed up the gorgeous feathers, scratched stiffly at an imaginary earth. Although his bird breathed like a rasp, it did not seem to matter; so do hens when chased around the yard in summer. Just as the chorus girl was smuggled into Norm at birth, her elderly but professional soul had now invaded the body of this pink bird, making it real by the conventions which those present recognized. Indeed, if it ever got around that a bird of paradise had been in conjunction with a brush turkey, Norm Fussell could have provided evidence.
All the queans were shrieking their approval, if it was not their scorn.
Dubbo was laughing loudest and widest. He had squatted down on Hannah’s carpet. If there had been space, he, too, would have danced the figures he remembered from some forgotten time. Instead, he clapped his hands. He was so glad, watching Norm strut, and flap his wings of flesh to music, while the stench of bodies caused the small room to shrink still further round the form of the primordial bird.
“You are a proper pufter rorter, Hannah!” Reen had to remark, because she was a cow. “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t watch this, not if I was offered a good night’s hay. It sends me goosey.”
Hannah, who had let herself be drawn to the mystical core of Norm’s act, would have preferred not to interrupt her devotions, but did reply from behind an objective smile:
“What odds! Capon is just another kind of chook.”
At the same time, she realized the person who had come with Norm was present, and rewarded him with a deferential glance.
So that Dubbo also remembered the fellow wearing a good dark suit was seated in a corner, in what was Hannah’s best chair. The youngish man could not leave off looking at the abo, not offensively, however, for half his face was shaded by a hand. And in that position he remained, voluntarily obliterated. The extraordinarily long hand, which held and protected the long white face, appeared to sever it from the body, and the richly decorous, dark suit.
After appropriate applause for Norman, and drinks for those to whom respect was due, the party proceeded. Dubbo had cadged a drink or two, and was feeling fine, electrically lit. Soon he would sing his song, and dance his dance. He stood swaying in drink and anticipation.
When Hannah’s colleague Reen called:
“What can you do, Dubbo? Tear your clothes off, and show your bottom like everybody else?”
She kicked her heels into the carpet and roared. She was shickered, of course, by now, and sour as always.
But Hannah nudged her friend, and looked anxiously at the young fellow who had come with Norm.
Dubbo himself was overtaken by a sudden sadness.
An Eyetalian boy called Fiddle Paganini was finishing singing a number, in the blond wig and black net stockings he had brought for that purpose in a port.
Hannah said in a loud voice:
“Alf can do better than sing and dance. Take it from me. Can’t you, Alf?”
She did not look exactly at him, and stuck her tongue into her cheek, because she was just a little bit nervous at what she was about to suggest.
She turned to the young fellow in the corner.
“You don’t know what we got here, Humphrey.”
She was addressing the stranger in a voice louder still, in an accent that nobody had ever heard before.
“Alf does oil paintings. Don’t you, Alf? How about showing the pictures? That would be a real treat, and one that Mr Mortimer would appreciate and remember.”
Dubbo was struck by lightning right there in the brown lounge.
Everyone was looking. Some of the queers were groaning and yawning.
“Arr, yes, go on, Alf!” Norman Fussell added.
Norm had returned conventionally clothed, and seated himself on his friend’s lap, from which he had been dropped almost at once, because he was heavy. This piece of by-play, if of no other significance, forced Humphrey Mortimer’s hand to reveal the second half of his face. Which Dubbo saw fully at last.
Now the young man leaned forward, and said:
“Yes, Alf, there is nothing I should like better than to see those paintings. If you would consider showing them.”
He spoke in tones so polite and flat they precluded arrogance, enthusiasm, irony, or any definite emotion. That was the way he had been taught, perhaps. To win confidence, without offending against taste by rousing hopes.
Dubbo stood. Usually he could sense an ambush.
Or was this the one evening when defences might be dropped?
It was vanity that began to persuade him, stroking with the most insidious feathers. All that he was capable of expressing was soon suffocating in his chest, writhing in his belly, tingling in the tips of his fingers. He was looking down almost sardonically into the rather pale, lifeless eyes of Humphrey Mortimer, who was obviously unaware that he might have created an explosive situation.
Until Dubbo was no longer able to endure that such ignorance should be allowed to exist.
“Orright,” he answered, furrily.
He began to walk, or run, along the dark passage to his room, his hands stretched out brittle in front of him, to guard against something. He could not select quickly enough a couple of the paintings, dropped, and recovered them. Started back. At one point his right shoulder struck the wall, which threw him off. But he did arrive in the reeling lounge, where he propped the boards, on the floor, against a chair, in front of the guest of honour.
The whole business was most unorthodox, it was implied by the majority of those present. And the paintings themselves. Some members of the company made it clear they would take no further part in anything so peculiar.
But Humphrey Mortimer sat forward, disclosing through his eyes what he would not have allowed his mouth to attempt; he might have committed himself. Perhaps only Dubbo sensed that an undernourished soul was feeding as though it had never eaten before.
The abo was very straight and aloof.
“Yeeees,” said the connoisseur, because it was time he made a remark, provided it was equivocal.
Dubbo touched the corner of one board with his toe.
“No,” he contradicted. “These paintings are no good. I was still trying. Half of them is empty. That corner, see how dead it is? I did not know what to fill it with. I’ll paint these out later on.”
He was still breathless. But from his vantage point he could afford to be contemptuous, not to say honest.
“Even so,” murmured Humphrey Mortimer.
Possessed by the paintings, whether they were indifferent or not, he had grown completely passive.
Nothing would control Dubbo’s passion now. He ran back along the passage. The things in his pockets were flogging him.
He brought paintings and paintings. They lit a bonfire in the mediocre room, the walls of which retreated from the blaze of colour. Although the gramophone continued to piddle manfully, it failed to extinguish even the edges of the fire.
Some of the queers were taking their leave. Some of them had curled up.
“Wonderful, ain’t it, what a touch of paint will do?” Hannah said, and yawned.
But in the roomful of dormant or murmurous people, it was the painter and his audience of one that mattered. They were in communication.
Dubbo had just brought an offering of two pictures. Increasing sobriety suggested to him that he ought to withdraw. But he propped the paintings lovingly enough.
The other sat forward. Since he had grasped the idiom, he was more deeply receptive. But, from habit or policy, would continue only lazily to smile his pleasure and acknowledgment.
“Ah,” he began intimately, for the painter alone, “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego?”
“Yes!” The abo laughed gently.
It was very like a courtship.
“And the Angel of the Lord,”
Dubbo added, in the same caressing voice.
He squatted down, and almost touched with a finger, the stiff, but effulgent figure. It had emerged completely from the chaos of spirit in which it had been born.
In that it was so very recent, the paint still wet, the creator could not see his work as it must appear and remain. He could at least admire the feathery texture of the angel’s wings as a problem overcome, while forgetting that a little boy on a molten morning had held a live cockatoo in his hands, and opened its feathers to look at their roots, and become involved in a mystery of down. Later perhaps, falling asleep, or waking, it might occur to the man how he had understood to render the essence of divinity.
If he could have seen it, the work was already sufficient in itself. All the figures in the furnace were stiff but true. The fire was final. Neither time nor opinion could divert a single tongue of flame into a different shape.
And the two actual men, watching the figures in the fiery furnace, were themselves touched with a heavenly dew which protected them momentarily from other voices and mortal dangers. It seemed that honesty must prevail.
It was the visitor who broke out first. He shivered violently, and shook off the spell. His eyes could have been regretting a surrender.
“You have got something here, Dubbo,” he said, languidly, even cynically.
It was as far as he had ever gone towards committing himself, and it made him nervous.
The abo, too, was nervous, if not angry, as he gathered up what had become an extravagant effusion in paint.
“What is this?” Humphrey Mortimer asked. “This big cartoon that you brought along last with The Fiery Furnace, and didn’t explain?”
“That,” said the painter, “is nothing. It is a drawing I might work from later. I dunno, though.”
Now that he was stone cold, he bitterly regretted having brought out the drawing for The Chariot. Bad enough The Fiery Furnace. All was exposed and defenceless.
Riders In the Chariot Page 45