by Murray Bail
In several strides Shadbolt reached the confectionery counter. Twisting the deep glass lid off its hinges he carried it, and—crucifying himself—carefully lowered it over Australia.
It fitted, just. With his foot he rubbed the Cocos Island and Lord Howe into the carpet.
‘Good man,’ Screech whispered, ‘that'll do for now.’
The glass case began fogging up, cloud cover over the continent, and Shadbolt used his handkerchief to wipe the fingerprints as Screech obsequiously ushered the Goodloves past.
He returned, rubbing his hands. A disaster had been turned into a valuable asset.
In his office he dug out a warm bottle of beer to celebrate.
‘I was going to get you to run out and knock his fuckun block off his shoulders, throwing up over my good carpet, but I think he might have done us a favour…Here's mud in your eye. Listen, we'll have to rig up a proper showcase, with a ventilated lid. We don't want it fogging up. We'll have to drill holes in the glass. And spotlight it. You'll need a hundred watts. That'll make it hot. I'll leave it to you. And we'd better padlock it. This is my lucky day.’
Shadbolt nodded as he tasted the slops.
Earlier, he'd seen the boss flipping through the morning papers, scratching his head for suitable topics for his off-the-cuff lectures. Now he had a permanent visual aid right on his doorstep. And to think that other, more gimmicky theatres further up the coast went in for live Grey Nurse sharks in tanks on stage, or papier mâché mermaids reclining in the foyers…
‘As you walked in, ladies and gentlemen, you may have noticed—no, I'll say that again—as you walked in you would have almost tripped over, on the carpet, Austrylia! I'm speaking about this colourful, warm country of ours. Once upon a time known as the Great South Land, Terra Austrylis. Its shape is unmistakable. It's enough to bring a lump to our throats. Am I right? You bet I'm right! And let me say something, right here and now, we don't know how lucky we are.’
Inhabitants of island-nations have a visual advantage. Conscious of the shape of their place, in toto, they develop a concentrated, distinct form of patriotism. The very idea of their place appeared to be portable. There was no holding back. Island-nations have a history of exporting their nationalism, otherwise known as expansion, aggression, imperial power, and why countries of partial outline, Spain, Italy and the US were examples, tried to expand ‘to complete their shape’. The recent case of Germany's ambitious attempt merely proved the point: Germany trying, over-anxiously, to overcome its indistinct shape in the mind.
Standing in the shadows Shadbolt had his mouth open, waiting for the boss to introduce his notion of the epic.
Screech's voice trailed off for a second. He appeared to have a brainwave. Speaking quietly, picking up the thread, he dismantled once again ‘epic’.
‘Even Patriotism,’ he spelt it out, ‘Is Colourful.’
He let it sink in, continuing: ‘Patriotism consists of strong feelings. It rises of its own accord. A display of patriotism is nothing to be ashamed of. As in a great epic, it contains all the seeds of history and tradition, of luck and bad luck, battles fought, climate, words and numbers, all mixed up with the nation's cuisine. These are the epic qualities of patriotism. We are shaped by them, as we are by the physical shape of our country, which is why all evidence of spontaneous patriotism should be preserved. Am I right?’
At that point the pale figure became engulfed in classic three-pointed star footage, and began backing off into the wings, almost apologetically.
For a few seconds the audience remained staring at the empty stage, before suddenly applauding, and instead of queueing up for soft drinks and chocolates in the foyer, crowded around the speckled-yellow mass of Australia, baking under the blazing sun of the hastily positioned spotlight.
The recalcitrant nature of the continent, its terrible disappointments, Australia's blankness, stared back at them. Some pointed to where they were born, and where their ungrateful grandchildren had settled, or where they had once taken holidays. Landmarks such as Ayers Rock and the Adelaide-Alice Springs railway line were identified. It reminded Shadbolt of his mother who read tea leaves. A certain solemnity infected the group. ‘I saw a carpet snake,’ someone pointed, ‘at a place there west of Cloncurry.’ Mr Goodlove, who had money pouring out of his ears, commented, ‘We always suffer droughts. Everything dries up here.’ A place of extremes, for there was flooding up in Queensland. The rivers ran into the sea, a waste. As Screech had predicted, the sight of their country brought a lump to their throats.
‘I love it so much,’ said a large woman, ‘it makes me sad to look at it.’ Everybody seemed to know what she meant.
‘Homesickness,’ someone nodded.
Shadbolt left the theatre in an exultant mood.
It was not only pride at the narrow squeak of turning the physiological disaster into a showpiece success, which itself, as Alex admitted ruefully, happened to be a compression of the nation's history—’though Christ knows, I couldn't stand up and spout that’—it was also the stirring effect of Screech's words, the way they animated the audience. In the dark he walked and then half-ran along the beach—huge solitary figure wading the sand—revelling in the idea of being at the effervescent edge of the continent, something he had never really considered before.
In his latest letter Vern came out with a philosophy of sorts.
‘I believe in disappointment. It has a shape. It's something to reflect on, it's constant. I've realised I'm happy enough with it. Take today. I was thinking: I don't know what's happened to me. I'm fifty-two next month. All my life has been spent closely reading words in small type. I've done nothing else. And when I look at the great men in the past—you know the ones I mean—I even feel disappointed. I've realised their lives don't exactly prove anything. This didn't used to be the case.
‘Fine weather. Les and Gordon haven't been around lately. I see your friend Mister McBee has become even more of a big wheel (proof enclosed). Without such men our country would not be so colourful, so new…’
Shadbolt stared at the stamps.
This unexpected angle on disappointment didn't square with his own experience, not at all. Every minute of the day was interesting. He was busy with his hands. The tremendous sunlit mass of Australia on the blue carpet had provided a focus, a point of reference to the theatre. Alex had even considered changing its name. He compromised, of course. On the front of the twenties building he enclosed ‘EPIC’ with the outline of Australia in yellow and orange neon. And Harriet, the house-artist, was instructed to include the orange relief map in all her poster creations. Our trademark, as Screech put it.
The new focus had sent Alex Screech all over town, drumming up business and so on, so much stopping and starting that the Citroen with its distinctive corporal's chevrons, which still made bit-part appearances (sometimes just the front mudguard) in European newsreels, burnt out its clutch on the Harbour Bridge.
‘In case you didn't know it, I'm something of a fixer. I bring people together. Even if I do say so myself.’
The flapping black satchel scarcely left his hand now, and he bought off the peg a brown double-breasted suit and waistcoat (‘The PM wants to help the wool industry’) which only made him appear more dishevelled. Groups of similarly dressed numbers men filed into his office. They sat behind closed doors while the invisible projectionist slaved away in his cramped quarters.
It was the Epic Theatre's ‘finest hour’—Screech's description, sounding uncannily like Frank McBee, MP. Attendance improved from half-empty to half-full, with a parallel rise in soft drink receipts—for one look at the cracked and empty interior on the carpet gave people a terrible thirst. And Shadbolt had his hands full, bouncing the extra nuisance-element from the different class of patron now attracted to the new-look theatre; at the same time he kept his eyes open for the French-curvature of the freelance poster artist, tripping over himself to be of any assistance, for she too was part of the epic resurgence.
Screech's efforts culminated in a phone call in the middle of the Friday matinee.
All day he had paced the foyer, winking at Shadbolt whenever he passed, ‘If that phone rings get hold of me. It doesn't matter if I'm on stage or having a bog.’
Emerging from the office now, jingling coins in the trousers of his off-the-cuff suit, Alex tried to contain the twitches rippling across his face.
‘September 22 looks like being a busy night. I've kept it under wraps, but I can tell you now. It's official. I've just heard on the blower. Is that Harriet still there? She'll have to be in on this. This is going to require something out of the box. It's the biggest thing we've ever handled.’
Every year the venue for the Miss Australia beauty quest was closely contested. For a few hours after dark it placed the selected auditorium in the national limelight; gave it a glamorous edge which would take years to wear off. Handled properly it could be long-term lucrative for the owners. Aside from the percentage of the gate, it attracted future bookings, such as nostalgic reunions of old soldiers, something Screech was keen to develop, and political rallies and—as it turned out—a convention of hypnotists where the entire audience fell asleep. The impresario of the chosen theatre also had the pleasure of mixing with tuxedoed VIPs, of rubbing bare shoulders with the archetypal young beauties in satin bathing costumes. There were spin-offs for the local community too. The aspiring girls and their Methodist-minded chaperones would have to check in at a local hotel, and photographers and columnists representing newspapers and radio stations from as far away as Darwin and Perth invariably wrote something about the local scene. Hosting the Miss Australia quest could put Manly back on the map.
‘Hotly contested’, Screech's term; and yet the Epic Theatre had a visual edge over its rivals. Conducting the committee on a tour he pointed to the spotlit mass of creekbeds and deserts lying on the foyer carpet, and in electric outline on the front of the building. These symbols fitted in nicely with the national beauty quest. And in a casual aside Screech promised to erect outside a lifesize silhouette of a blonde with perfect vital statistics, comprising a hundred or two hundred—‘whatever it takes’—electric light bulbs. The committee was satisfied with security. Seems that Shadbolt's reputation extended across the Bridge, even to cities interstate, Australia being such a small place. And in the proprietor, Alex Screech, although burdened with a grease-monkey's features and manner, they had a readymade master-of-ceremonies.
‘I think I'll ask Sid Hoadley to make the presentations,’ he mused. ‘I owe him a favour. Do you know who he is?’
Shadbolt looked blank.
‘Don't you read the papers? I'm talking about the Senator, the Minister of Commerce, Home Affairs and the Interior. That'll give you some idea of the man's phenomenal energy.’ Alex began grinning, ‘If I know our Sid, he's going to have himself a ball.’
Photomechanical images from the Advertiser and the newsreels shuffled in Shadbolt's mind: a manly-looking man, large, a speckled face, stiff collars protruding at state banquets like the sails of the future Sydney Opera House (which a young architect just then was idly doodling on an envelope in Copenhagen, while on the telephone). Others had the Minister doing a de Groot on a new bridge with a pair of ceremonial scissors. He possessed the magnetism of confidence; Shadbolt could see that.
Meanwhile—that is, between holding press conferences, pulling strings over the telephone, instructing electricians and carpenters—Screech delivered his daily lectures on the hour, ‘In Praise of Black and White’ and ‘What Makes me Sick about This Country’, at the same time edging towards the idea of youth, beauty, and the spirit of competition.
In Adelaide people had woken up one morning to find there were no more trams. Gone too was the network of dark wires over the city which had placed a ceiling on emotions, and the steel lines which had channelled the thinking of generations. Lost was a sense of direction. The gains lay in the field of light which exaggerated the flatness of the city, and gave broad hint of the immensity of the continent and of the world beyond. People in houses without fences instinctively began erecting them.
In the vacuum, silver buses appeared: of British make, fitted with tinted windscreens for the blazing remote colonies; tremendous diesels, with their pneumatic doors opening and closing with an exasperated hiss.
From his vantage point in the Hills, Vern felt the changes but had trouble seeing them. His old friend Les Flies lost his job on the trams. Turning down an offer to manhandle one of the buses he employed another transport term, ‘I wouldn't touch one of them with a barge pole.’
Les saw his remaining function in life as helping his friend Vern with the crossword puzzle, accompanying his other friend Gordon Wheelright on his field trips, and drinking cocoa with both of them. The violent backdraughts and swirling diesel fumes of the speeding buses had completely thrown out Wheelright's researches, a lime-known casualty of the removal of the trams.
To remind the city of the electric relics it had finally discarded, the state's biggest GM dealer commissioned a sculpture of a tram, a full-size replica in bronze by an artist with a promising Polish-sounding surname, to be placed on a plinth in one of the city's four main squares.
‘Not all big wheels come as generous as Mr McBee,’ declared a grateful editorial in the Advertiser.
The announcement was made from the VIP lounge at Adelaide's sandy airport. McBee was at his most expansive; he had the local journalists doubled up over their notebooks, laughing through their noses. A stiff brandy sloshed around in McBee's hand. The other rested proprietorily on the knee of Karen, seated on his left and smiling nervously, setting off with McBee as chaperone to represent the state in the Miss Australia finals.
A possible hitch here was Alex Screech persisting in imagining his life in the terms of an epic. God knows, he had become bogged down in more and more words, many loose particles, loose ends, a compression of words, which corresponded with the mounting pressure of events; and as the gala night approached he began to look on his efforts the way a mechanic surveys an engine suffering carburettor problems. With time running out, and certain organisational obstacles appearing insurmountable, Screech saw himself as the solitary figure shifted about by the larger forces, and all the time conscious of the eyes of the world watching him. If only he had Shadbolt's reliability.
He rushed about breathing through his mouth. Frowning and distracted he had no time even for a bloody haircut. In periods of stress the words he released were fragmented and unmentionable; Harriet had always called him ‘sewer-mouthed’.
Shadbolt thought the boss might have been getting on Harriet's nerves. Since the announcement of the beauty quest she'd hardly been in the theatre. Balanced at the apex of ladders, wiring the place for loudspeakers and spotlights, and hammering up the purple drapes embroidered with the sunrise of the future (Alex's idea), he kept watching out for Harriet. He considered calling at Kangaroo Street, but had been discouraged by her last visit when she'd simply flung down a pile of layouts outside Screech's office and left.
The trouble was Alex had firm ideas on how the show should run. As he said in a distracted voice, ‘For Christ sake, I'm in the show-business game, I oughta know what's needed. If I'm not a world's expert in atmospherics, who is?’ He had new business cards featuring the phrase ‘Special Events Specialists!’ and ‘EPIC reversed out of the map of Australia.
It had been Screech's plan to have a drum roll and trumpets announce each high-heeled contestant. For that an orchestra would have to be hired out and put through rehearsals. It would also play the national anthem. Some kind of a catwalk had to be hammered out of packing cases, and fringed with tassels of purple velvet, ‘so that it doesn't look fucking second-rate’. Florists would have to be lined up, and former Miss Australia winners as usherettes would do the rest. A special red carpet would roll out the front door, a salacious tongue welcoming the voyeuristic VTPs. All this required extended meetings with the bank manager, where Screech made speeches ab
out youth, beauty and patriotism, dropping the hint of free tickets for the manager and the missus. Even Shadbolt could see the danger of Screech becoming, in every sense, over-extended.
On the night which would shape the remainder of Shadbolt's life there was still wet paint in the foyer. At the last minute Screech had decided to paint it ‘nipple pink’, as he put it, to increase the atmospherics. It made Shadbolt squint and wonder if the boss had ever seen those things of a woman. Through his window the Adelaide usherette's had been dizzying circles of terracotta, and close up were bumps of honey, dusted with freckles; and only the other day he couldn't take his eyes away from Mrs Younghusband's crinkled great-divides, swinging ponderously free of their supports, as she bent over scrubbing the enamel bath, while he described the behind-the scenes activity in the theatre, his voice going dry. Her circles were ancient grey, almost black. Still he willingly helped Screech with the painting, and ended up doing most of it himself.
The show opened at eight, as advertised.
Drum rolls, trumpet fanfare, lights!
Alex Screech came skipping out on stage, the elongated triangles of his hired tails snapping at his ankles. Raising both arms he exposed a silver watch Shadbolt had never seen before. From the wings Shadbolt could smell the turps Alex hastily used to dissolve the paint from his fingers and hands.
‘La-dies and gentlemen, distinguished guests—’
Shadbolt winced at the earsphtting screech and whistle of loudspeakers. In the stalls, ladies wearing cultured pearls put fingers to their ears, the sunspotted men frowning and clearing their throats. But then the voice came over loud and clear.