Holden's Performance

by Murray Bail

  This wasn't like Sid Hoadley at all. When McBee had slammed his arm down onto the bonnet something generously elastic must have snapped inside his head. It loosened his jaw and eyes, and his way of talking and seeing.

  His audiences had emptied like his theatres, even in the Senate and the Members' Bar, where he used to hold a crowd, and through some mysterious osmosis, which can never be adequately explained, his weakened position reached the interior, and invitations to open the innumerable new concrete bridges simply dried up. (That was another cause for loss in concentration: somebody else—no prizes for guessing—must be opening them.) And against the national trend Hoadley began to talk louder to make himself heard.

  Meanwhile, Frank McBee, MP, appeared to be everywhere at once, strutting and waving and benedicting heads and so on, the pinstriped symbol of resistance. Sometimes, Shadbolt had trouble recognising him; for he kept seeing through him to the original figure in khaki behind the flyscreen door, or on the old motorbike, or else grinning in the paddock among the parked aeroplanes, up to his elbows in grease. Even the painful scene in the 100-watt kitchen seemed more natural, where he reverberated on one foot, blood spurting from his four remaining toes.

  Bumping into each other, easy in Canberra, McBee was perhaps reminded of those days. He narrowed the eyes and shook Shadbolt's hand, ‘You and I must get together one day,’ both knowing that nothing would come of it. No use telling the boss Frank McBee had muscled in on his bridge-opening act. Difficult to pick up the paper without seeing the hemispherical figure glittering a V with the ceremonial scissors, and every other week his voice came out of radios and the screen in measured rhetorical sentences; already he had imitators, who reproduced his image further, and satirists and cartoonists, inflating him still more.

  One morning driving to CHAI Shadbolt noticed the boss had lifted his chin from his chest and was actually smiling. Relieved, he began raising his eyebrows and smiling too, and was about to say something in encouragement, when Hoadley spoke as if to himself.

  ‘I believe Mister McBee is about to have a bucket of shit poured all over him.’ A bright light showed in his eyes, as in the old days. ‘It's not my style, not my nature, but that's too bad. People are getting sick of fatso and his to-and-from voice. Who does he think he is?’

  Shadbolt scratched his neck to signal caution.

  He waited for a reaction. None.

  It interested him to see how men of power concentrated themselves even when they stooped to ordinary levels. In this they were like everybody else, only more so. That was their business, Shadbolt concluded. It evidently made them what they were.

  ‘No siree, he won't know where to run and hide when I've finished with him. If it's one thing the Austrylian people don't like it's a bullshit artist.’

  In a country of extremes McBee's hot air had inflated his body and soul, until a separate identity had ballooned out from himself, altogether larger and more colourful, recognisable to others, though not always to him. His power had gone to his head. Evidently with his unbroken sequence of victories he began to believe in the image he had created.

  Lately McBee had taken to publicly pointing to his war wound with the mulga walking stick.

  ‘I've got Herr Hitler to thank for this little number. A night I'll never forget. An almighty explosion! The experience of war changes a man, as it gives a nation character. I'll spare you good people the details.’

  The indomitable warrior-figure could then expand to the subject he knew best. Having one toe shot off made him the walking embodiment of modern transport. That's right, whenever he hobbled forward he was reminded at every step: his mangled left foot had the same number of toes as the strokes of the internal combustion car engine. ‘And so it's as if petrol's in my blood, I can't help thinking about it.’ Naturally he had entered the automobile business; it had to be; and the rest was history.

  The motorist could rely on his experience. Frank McBee would look after them. He was in Canberra to fight their battles for them. Raising his fingers signalled victory over adversity; which also happened to be the roman five for the OK number of toes. ‘I represent therefore the best of both worlds. You can rely on both sides of my experience.’

  And lately he'd been wrapping up this hard-sell by lifting his Achilles heel in public, exposing his diamond-pattern sock.

  It was all too much for Hoadley.

  ‘War hero, my foot! The bastard never left Austrylia. A good friend of mine told me how he got his limp. It's time the whole world knew.’

  ‘It went off in my hand,’ Shadbolt recalled. ‘It was an accident.’

  Hoadley wasn't listening.

  Pursing his lips he even forgot the crying needs of his constituents. He drove around in circles, the layers of unread reports, memos and cabinet papers multiplying in fluttering planes every day.

  To explode a powerful myth he needed a novel venue, not just any place. He toyed with the idea of using the original kitchen in Adelaide, but thought that might be overdoing it. Hoadley looked at it from all angles. And the timing would be crucial.

  He decided. He announced a press conference to be held outdoors, in Sydney.

  Shadbolt had never seen him looking so optimistic. With vague concern he watched as he organised it, calling out to some reporters on the streets and getting others on the telephone.

  On that Friday morning which would decide the fate of a dozen men, and even more women, Shadbolt arrived late for the Minister. Seems that Miss Kilmartin with the twangy accent had cornered Shadbolt in the echoing government garage. He was to be her emissary. ‘Make him understand. You tell him. He can't do this to me.’ At the time Shadbolt noticed she wasn't carrying a handbag. He had never seen a woman as distraught. When he mentioned it twice to Hoadley, as they sped across the Bridge, he merely nodded. Lips moving, he was rehearsing his off-the-cuff speech.

  The harbour was as grey as newsprint. The white edges of waves ruffled like flapping pages. A dozen or so reporters waited on the sloping lawn at Milson's Point.

  Hoadley strode forward. Everybody knew him. He didn't muck about.

  Hands on hips, flywire shirt billowing, the human loudspeaker introduced his nasal revelations with a few jokes, dropping his aitches; even when a train passed directly overhead his voice could be heard. He was back to his old fighting form: most journalists began making a note of that very point. And on the fringes, ‘Mudguards’, his loyal driver, stood nodding and gaping with real fascination, as he had before with McBee, Alex Screech…

  ‘This is where, right at this very spot, thirty-four years ago, I first lost my innocence—’ Hoadley began; and got no further.

  From the grey of the Bridge a soft, bright colour separated; and in the accelerating tumble of limbs and cloth Shadbolt saw an open mouth, the way a face sometimes showed in the clouds. The mouth multiplied among the reporters. By the time Hoadley turned—he had his back to the Bridge—all he saw was the splash.

  ‘I got her,’ a TV cameraman began yelling, ‘I got her falling, smack in frame!’

  And he tripped after the others waving cameras and notebooks to the harbour's edge. Left deserted at the spot where he had embarked on his meteoric career thirty-four years back Hoadley stood cursing.

  ‘Those parasites are going to think I organised it. It'll get splashed all over the front page.’

  Shadbolt hadn't moved.

  ‘Did you get a look at her?’ Hoadley called out. ‘Was the girl young?’

  Shadbolt began blinking. It was the saddest sight he had ever seen.

  ‘She must have been out of her mind,’ Hoadley squinted at the water. ‘What a way to go. That's the bloody trouble with bridges.’

  Near the pylon he stood with his hands in his pockets. Already Shadbolt could see the Minister discarded, to one side. He wondered at how figures of power can suddenly fall. Hoadley himself didn't know yet.

  In their stampede back up the slope to reach their offices the reporters passed him, and Hoadley nodded,
winking at some and calling out their Christian-names.

  Shadbolt's rooms in a block of rhubarb brick (Gov. architect, 1940s) had green lino on the floors. Flyscreens in all rooms tessellated the view of gum leaves and sky. Except for a few car magazines and an alarm clock Shadbolt had no possessions. Not even much in the way of clothing. Wearing a uniform all day, and often at night, went with the job.

  To anybody looking in his life may have appeared as barren as his rooms. And yet an over-abundance of artworks, knicknacks and nests of tables and ashtrays may be seen as the true index of loneliness. Shadbolt's rooms spoke of self-reliance. In this he was an urban version of the mythical Digger, mostly from the bush, who held out for months on end at Tobruk and Gallipoli on a lump of beef (‘Bully for you!’) and a mug of black tea. With simple needs Shadbolt enjoyed the routine of obedience; it allowed him to remain open; he felt, among other things, an almost daily accumulation of knowledge, a build up of small details, which massed within him as a kind of silent power.

  Miss Kilmartin's body was never found. The sharks. Sydney Harbour is full of them. They feed off the ships. The incident, the regrettable accident, as Her Majesty's Government preferred it, produced confusion and much diplomatic bowing and scraping, elaborate feats of wordbending. It was hushed up. The Americans understand these things. What was she doing, anyway, a single woman alone in Australia?

  Apparently symptoms of a nervous condition had been there for some time. The only trouble was, after forensic experts had examined the grain of the TV film through various magnifying glasses, no one could be one hundred per cent sure the poor woman was Miss Kilmartin. In each frame her hem obscured her face.

  A few days later, Shadbolt was lacing up his sandshoes, preparing to go to the Gymnasium for Men, when someone knocked, and before he could stand up, stepped into his room. Looking up he saw the red desert of Australia flaking in profile, touch of spinifex there around the ears. The Colonel placed his hand on Shadbolt's shoulder, not so much in commiseration, for these were awkward times, as dominance, instruction.

  To make sure Shadbolt understood he glanced around and made himself at home.

  ‘Nasty business on the Bridge the other day.’

  Shadbolt went back to his laces.

  ‘Sure was.’

  ‘Now why would a nice girl go doing anything like that?’

  Shadbolt tied himself in a knot.

  ‘The poor woman. She wasn't a girl,’ Shadbolt said. A slight lump rose in his throat. He would have been the last person on earth she spoke to.

  ‘Who are we talking about here?’

  ‘She was American. She worked at the Embassy.’

  ‘Ah yes, your Minister saw a lot of her.’

  Shadbolt wondered what he was driving at.

  ‘I wouldn't say that…’ God, she was just one of dozens. Shadbolt almost shook his head at how the boss managed it. The energy and alertness it would take.

  ‘What makes you think it was her on the Bridge?’

  ‘I saw her face.’

  ‘Fair go. She would have been doing a hundred and twenty miles an hour. We're talking about a falling body.’

  Shadbolt buttoned his cardigan. ‘It was Miss Kilmartin all right.’

  The Colonel stared at Shadbolt, then looked away. ‘Her car was found on the Bridge,’ he nodded thoughtfully. ‘You didn't tell the Minister this?’

  ‘Sid? Nah, I almost did. I haven't seen him since Tuesday. He works his guts out, you know. Never stops, he's always on the go. He's taken a bit of annual leave and I've been having this spinebash myself.’

  Shadbolt picked up his bag.

  What's he asking all this for?

  He then noticed the silhouette of one of Light's men through the frosted door.

  ‘That's what I want to talk to you about. Pay attention when I'm talking!’ Light held him with narrowed eyes. ‘Stand up straight. You no longer have a Minister, no longer a job. Understand? Think about that.’ He passed backwards and forwards in front of Shadbolt. ‘I've been keeping an eye on you. I've been looking into your background. I'd say I know you better than you know yourself. I'm a judge of horseflesh, I'm a shrewd bastard. That's what I get paid for. And you're quite an oddball. You know that? You're attracted to cripples and power-maniacs, and you don't think it's necessary to know people. Ever thought of that? That's a bit odd, isn't it? You ought to have your head examined.’

  He stopped in front of Shadbolt.

  ‘You have other qualities…dependability, good reserves of stamina, patience. You won't let a man down. They're what I'd call your saving qualities. They need deploying and developing, that's all. Perhaps you're not fully aware of them?’

  Whenever a person spoke about him, whether it was Frank McBee, his distant friend Vern in his rapid earnestness, Alex, or Harriet even, Shadbolt never knew where or how to look, or what to say. He felt like a log, a lump, and yet he was grateful. As he stood in his room he felt the vague stirrings of a new chapter beginning.

  When he turned the Colonel's face had cracked here and there into dry gullies of welcome; knowing its man the hand had already extended.

  4

  Shadbolt runs into trouble—VIPs and assassins—a connoisseur of crowds—the Colonel extends a hand—Light turns a blind eye—women, difficulties of—Hoadley goes native—the assassination—Shadbolt impresses the Americans—light and darkness—the aesthetics of exhaustion—Holden's specifications for the future.

  Shadbolt had become so associated with Sid Hoadley people couldn't disconnect them in their minds, and when Shadbolt was replaced by a visual and oral opposite from the ranks, a Tasmanian no taller than an apprentice jockey, and with a jockey's foul tongue and prematurely wrinkled face, people didn't actually see him—they looked clean through and past him. All day he stubbornly sat in the underground garage waiting for the Minister's call; and because Mr Hoadley never turned up, had disappeared, the little man whose eyes barely made it over the steering wheel, even with the help of pneumatic cushions, simply ceased to exist. The car remained motionless in its designated spot, slowly leaking cigarette smoke from the doors, the cracked voice automatically calling out to anyone passing, like one of Hoadley & Sons' defective speakers. The other drivers, and the mechanics especially, discovered they had enjoyed the solid presence of Shadbolt, and to his surprise they greeted him loudly and with real affection whenever they passed in the street.

  Too large to be handed down his old uniform hung askew in the wardrobe for several weeks, and he wore the necktie several times out of habit, before he stuffed the struggling arms and legs into the rubbish bin. A different kind of anonymity was required in the new job.

  ‘You were born for this line of work. Everything you've done since has prepared you for it. You'll go far,’ the Colonel prophesied with more truth than Shadbolt imagined.

  In all his years in the game Shadbolt stood out as his finest recruit. The Colonel could hardly believe his luck.

  A glance at his specifications showed how he was made for the local conditions. Light had always been impressed with the strong body, and Shadbolt's unusual ability to idle all day in the one spot in the sun. Stamina, reliability, economy, no mucking about (no frills) were the qualities needed in a young country, a place existing in the consciousness as largely a blank—Shadbolt saw the sand-coloured interior form on the carpet of the Epic Theatre—where liberty is so vast it verged on nothingness.

  The Colonel proceeded to build on the strong points, playing down the weaknesses. He ignored features such as Shadbolt's honesty and his khaki eyes, which he considered irrelevant to the task. ‘It's time you put your accumulated knowledge to work.’ That was his angle. ‘It's bursting to get out. You're ready to explode, I can tell. The grain of sand in the oyster and all that. You've acquired so much. It's a matter of pointing you in the right direction.’

  Colonel Light was something of a philosopher. He tried to see everything in an ‘objective light’. He also read old verse in the Every
man's editions, and as Shadbolt discovered later was a closet water-colourist. They went for rapid walks together. He woke Shadbolt at all hours. He tested his reflexes. He put a stopwatch on his man sprinting around the velodrome, twenty-four laps on an empty stomach. He dropped Shadbolt off blindfolded in one of Canberra's curving side streets and told him to get back to base in sixty minutes. Stuff like that. Another difficult test was to hide behind one of the obelisks near Parliament House and with the Colonel's opera glasses identify each arriving and departing Minister. Trickier still was to run backwards through a crowded shopping centre, keeping pace with the Colonel's slowly passing two-tone Vauxhall. When Shadbolt least expected it—outside the gym at night, or leaving the lavatory—light flashed mugshots of VIPs and terrorists from the newspapers; Shadbolt had to make the distinction. The locations of all the embassies and legations, their front and side entrances and swimming pools were memorised. And in the footsteps of Vern, Mrs Younghusband and the epicurean Hoadley, the Colonel advised on the most healthy diet.

  While carefully supervising Shadbolt, Light managed at the same time to keep him at arm's length; and conscious of this gap, the way a dog is held within a leash, Shadbolt worked even harder to please. He looked up to him. The Colonel was impressive all right. Here was a man as tough as leather who didn't put a foot wrong. And it wasn't long—less than a fortnight—before Light's face and way of choosing words replaced the missing Minister's. At that moment of intersection, Colonel Light, who had the knack of looking at Shadbolt while looking in another direction, judged the time right for him to meet the others.

  In fact, where was Sid Hoadley? The question slightly troubled Shadbolt. Nothing serious: though enough to tackle the Colonel the morning they drove out to the barracks.

  The Colonel tugged at his driving gloves. ‘My information is that he's been moved sideways, pending.’