by Gary Crew
‘Stan,’ she continued, taking no notice of her client, ‘if I approve your design for this mobile stage, I’ll give you five quid for materials and another five to make it. Take it or leave it.’
‘That’s all right!’ the roustabout exclaimed. ‘You want to see the drawings? I got them in my wagon.’
‘Oh yes please!’ Augustus cried. ‘Get them now.’
Rosa stood, pensive, as Stan hurried away.
‘There is one thing,’ Augustus said while they waited. ‘That is a very big tent, that big top. I really should have some musical accompaniment.’
‘Musical what?’
‘Someone playing a piano or some other instrument to give me a chord, to help me keep true to my notes. To provide my musical line. Like my mother playing for the people who sang for her.’
‘What?’
‘Well, so far I have only sung for you unaccompanied. In a really big space, like that tent, I might also need some other instrument accompanying me to help my voice carry and fill the whole space. Like a piano. Or something …’
‘The circus doesn’t have a piano, stupid.’
‘What about something in brass?’
‘Like?’
‘Or maybe a sax?’
‘Augustus,’ she said, her lips lemony, ‘this is a circus, not an opera house.’
‘Well,’ he said, with just a hint of disdain, ‘you are my manager. And I would have thought that finding someone to play for me was part of your job.’
The idea of backhanding the brat crossed her mind, but she resisted. This was, after all, Day One of his contract and if she upset him, or worse, bruised him, things might turn sour on her. Besides, she had money to lose. ‘Hmmm,’ she said, ‘let me think about this. I’ll ask around. Okay?’
‘Absolutely,’ he agreed. ‘I mean, no date has been set, has it?’
‘I’ll have to check,’ she said, frowning as if she couldn’t remember. Cigar had set a date, just two weeks off, but Rosa had no intention of divulging that information. ‘Anyway, we’ve got time to make plans. And here’s Stan now …’
The roustabout appeared with a few sheets of lined paper torn from a school exercise book. ‘They’re only rough,’ he beamed, bending to spread them on the ground. ‘And they’re not to scale. It was the idea I was after really. I wanted you to see the idea.’
Augustus saw at once but Rosa, being taller, bent over with a grunt. ‘What’s this?’ she exclaimed. ‘A billy cart?’
Stan’s face fell. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s a chariot. It’s what Augie wanted.’
This was too much. ‘Augie?’ she gasped, hand to mouth. ‘Augie? My client’s name is Augustus. He will be known by no other name. The boy has class, you understand.’
‘Sorry,’ Stan uttered, head down. ‘I’m sorry, Rosa.’
‘And what is this chariot thing? I asked for a mobile stage. Not a chariot!’
Sensitive to Stan’s silence (the roustabout was not prepared to be abused again), Augustus stepped forward. ‘I appreciate that, Rosa,’ he said. ‘But I also have a plan for this first performance. A grand plan.’
‘Oh do you now?’ she sneered. ‘Do you? And what is my role in all of this? You stood there not five minutes ago lecturing me – ME! – on the role of the manager and now you’re taking over yourself. Are you? ARE YOU?’ Crush him, she thought. Crush him now. Show him who’s boss.
Augustus couldn’t have cared less. He had lived through many such performances chucked by his gin-fuelled mother, complete with sufficient ragings and arm flailings and posturings and scarlet-lipped wailings to make the Lammermoor look like a choir girl.
‘No, Rosa,’ he declared. ‘I don’t want your job. I’m an artist. A performer. A singer, not a manager. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have ideas of my own. Discussion, as I told you before, that’s what I expect. Discussion, not drama. I left all that behind in my mother’s salon. Pathetic, it was. So let’s sit and talk, shall we? Stan?’
Stan did as he was told, meekly squatting by the outspread plans.
‘Right,’ Augustus said, planting his feet and folding his arms. ‘Rosa, here is the situation. When Stan and I last spoke about this – my first real public appearance – I had an idea for a performance to suit not only the tent – the big top as a vast architectural space – but also the politics of the time; that is, a war has just ended, and I believe,’ in vain he glanced at Stan for confirmation, ‘our side was victorious. Given that’s true, I have deliberately chosen a patriotic song. Making a choice prior to a performance is unusual, I know, since my songs generally come to me spontaneously, but in this case, where spectacle is vital, I need certain show-business accoutrements. And since staging is so important, I need the chariot that I have requested Stan to design, and the musical accompaniment, of course, as I have already outlined to you, Rosa. So that is the situation.’
Faced yet again with the power of the boy’s words, the logic of his planning, the maturity of his thinking (how old was this kid?), Rosa stood dumb.
Stan merely gaped, lost in love.
‘So?’ Rosa managed.
‘So I want my friend here to make me a chariot. Stan, would you say that the vehicle is small enough to be drawn by a pony? I can see myself standing in the thing, being pulled into centre ring as the beast prances before me.’
‘Excuse me!’ Rosa spat. ‘Am I invisible?’
‘I should say that you are both visible and audible,’ Augustus purred. ‘So I ask yet again, could we discuss this please? I do so hate scenes. My mother made scenes, which is the reason I spent the better part of my life beneath a piano. Rosa?’
‘Right,’ Rosa huffed. ‘Okay. Right. So, would you mind telling me, as your manager, what song you chose?’
Awed, Stan looked from one to the other.
‘A victory song,’ Augustus said. ‘To capture the crowd’s need for the celebration of peace.’
‘Which one?’
‘I’m not prepared to say. After all, you still haven’t told me whether or not I will be accompanied. Or on what instrument.’
The girl knew then that she had lost. ‘This is a circus,’ she roared, sufficient to ruffle the waters in Buddha’s distant tank. ‘A circus, I tell you. Not some Salvos Brass Band.’
‘There is that calliope,’ Stan muttered.
‘What?’
Stan knew enough to be wary. ‘A calliope,’ he said. ‘A pipe organ that works using steam.’
‘What?’
‘This circus has one. On wheels. Pulled by a horse. And Una, who can play it, is still here too. Working in the mess tent like I said. Okay?’
‘I’ve never heard of this instrument,’ Augustus piped up. ‘Is it at all melodic?’
Stan shrugged. ‘Dunno what you mean by “melodic”, but Hogie sure liked it. Jumped up and down every time he heard it, he did. But he was just a baby then.’
‘Perhaps I should meet this Una?’ Augustus said, averting his eyes from Stan’s welling tears.
‘Pardon me? Excuse me?’ Rosa demanded. ‘Tell me that I’m not standing here, right? Answer me! Am I?’
‘I’ve already acknowledged that I can both see and hear you.’ Augustus spoke with infinite patience. ‘I only said that I should meet my accompanist.’
‘Ooo-er!’ Rosa mocked. ‘Well, ooo-er-er! I am so sorry to question your plans, Lord Muck, but will you be serving champagne and caviar? And will that poncy Bertie Sullivan be in attendance, dressed up to his poofy nines? Oh I do hope so, seeing that I am your manager!’
Augustus looked down at the drawings, adroitly leaving Rose to rage. ‘And could a pony pull this?’ he asked.
‘You bet,’ Stan agreed. ‘That’s the way I designed it.’
‘Or …’ Augustus wondered aloud, ‘a zebra?’
‘A zebra?’ Stan laughed. ‘Why not? They’re pretty easy to get along with. And you would stand back here,’ he said, pointing, ‘holding on to the reins with one hand and the bridge part up front
with the other. Get it?’
‘But I wanted to hold a sword …’
‘A sword?’
‘Just a little wooden one. Only pretend …’
‘I’ll make you one special,’ Stan assured him.
‘Great,’ Augustus declared. ‘You’re a good man, Stan Platten. That Hogarth was one lucky monkey. And since Rosa has said she will fund its construction, I suggest you begin immediately. Now Rosa, shall we pay this Una a visit?’
Defeated, Rosa gaped.
Later, when describing his meeting with Una to Stan, Augustus resorted to images of food. The boy’s reasoning – incomprehensible to the roustabout – was that, as a baby, his mother had parked (or abandoned?) his perambulator outside the window of a German smallgoods store. Here the infant had been exposed to the delights of all things Deutsch for hour after glutinous hour, until Mrs Trump (in search of her hip flask) returned to find him sucking on a gobstopper of truly Wagnerian proportions. And so, years later, as he explained to the bemused Stan, when the boy approached the tripe-and-onion-slicing Una from behind, he was struck by the similarity between her bum and a pair of cheesy rounds of delectable Marschkäse. And when the woman turned at his touch, timorous as it was, he was overawed by the languorous Bockwurst lolling from her arms. Her fingers were finer, being mere Frankfurters.
But that mouth!
Without a tooth in her head, Una’s lips were sliced liver, meaty slabs drooping, barely able to form a word.
Looking down on Augustus, she shook her head. First she touched her mouth, then her ears, indicating to him cheerily enough, he thought, that she could neither speak nor hear.
Standing beside the boy, Rosa spat, ‘Thanks for telling us, Stan, ya dill.’ Not that Stan heard. He was off fetching materials.
‘Can’t she speak either?’ Augustus gasped.
‘How would I know?’ the ever helpful Rosa added, ignoring Una’s wild-eyed gesticulations. ‘I never saw the tart before. Hides out in the galley, I guess. Besides, you’re the one who wants an accompanist. You work it out.’ She’s an ogress, the girl thought. Maybe I should put her on my payroll too. I could team her up with Buddha.
But Augustus was more tactful. Pulling out an imaginary piano stool, he pretended to sit while proceeding to open the lid of an equally imaginary piano. And having played momentarily on the imaginary keys, he indicated to Una that she should be the pianist and he, singing an imaginary song, her soloist. He then pulled an imaginary cord to blow an imaginary steam whistle, releasing an imaginary whoo-hoo! and for all her mute wisdom, Una understood. Or imagined that she did.
‘Kaliiooppeee!’ she blurted. ‘Kaliiooppeee!’
‘Yes!’ Augustus crowed. ‘Calliope. See Rosa, she can speak and she knows what it is.’
‘Yeah,’ the girl grunted, running her eyes over Una’s massive gut. ‘I bet she knows what strudel is too.’
‘Now Una,’ Augustus continued, ‘I was wondering if that calliope was still in working order?’
The big woman nodded.
‘And you could play it for me?’
Una nodded again, her chins atremble.
‘Wonderful! Then I will have Stan haul it out. I suppose it will need a good clean-up. Especially if the elephants have been having their way with it.’
Una shrieked, the spit splattering.
‘Oh,’ Augustus muttered, stepping back to avoid drowning. ‘So you like that idea then?’
‘Yairs,’ Una replied, bending low, her lips all but brushing his own. ‘Yairs.’
‘All right,’ the boy assured her, turning away. ‘You get on with your tripe and onions and we’ll sort Stan out. We’ll get back to you when the calliope is all shipshape and ready for rehearsal. Just think of the Empire!’
Una emitted a sound that may have been a gut-rumbling belch or a gut-bubbling ‘Bye’ and stood, waving, as the manager and her client retreated between the tents in search of Stan.
All was bustle and confusion over the next few days. Stan was distracted: to build the chariot or to repair the steam organ? Not that he minded either challenge – he would have done anything for Augie – but which was the priority? The calliope, he decided. His reasons were practical, as was his way. The singer needed to practise with his accompanist, not that Stan understood the term, and the calliope’s brassy pipes, licked paper thin by over-fond elephants, needed work. The tin-pot boiler needed cleaning and firing. And, of course, an elephant was needed to pull the thing. Stan was rather fond of Aunty Dora, the seventy-five-year-old Indian; hardly a white elephant as she was touted (although maybe a tad grey and grizzly) and a bit short in the trunk, true, but who needed a trunk to haul a steam organ?
‘So there’s my reasons for doing up the calliope first,’ Stan announced to the sour-faced Rosa. ‘Anyway, I’ll still need a few days to work on the chariot but I don’t reckon Augustus will be wanting any advice about how to stand up in that. Will he?’
‘Why ask me?’ Rosa sniffed. ‘My client seems to have taken this performance out of my hands. Have fun with Una. You’re welcome to her.’ And off she went, her nose in the air.
When Augustus came around to Stan’s van of a morning, hoping to get an invite to see the roustabout’s progress, he was met by a firm rebuke.
‘No,’ Stan said, holding up a stern finger. ‘Not until I’m finished. I want it to be a surprise. Besides, if that old boiler blows up while I’m priming it, you’ll get your head blown off. And then where will I be? I already lost Hogie and I don’t want to lose you. You’re my mate, okay?’
While he was very pleased to be considered Stan’s mate and delighted to be aligned with the legendary Hogarth, Augustus was far from happy. He so wanted to see this marvellous steam instrument that his chin dropped and his lip trembled and the tears began to well.
‘Crying won’t help,’ Stan warned. ’Cause if you do, I’ll start bawling too and that will hold up the work even longer. And you wouldn’t want that, eh?’
‘No,’ Augustus admitted. ‘But it will be ready, won’t it? You wouldn’t let me down, would you?’
‘Let you down?’ Stan gulped. ‘Never!’
But when the child had gone, the roustabout crept back into his van. ‘Let you down?’ he blubbered. ‘Never. Not after Hogie. Never …’
Stan was true to his word. When the night of the performance came, all was in readiness. Crowds flocked; hundreds, thousands queued, shoving, grunting. Everybody – every mum and every dad, every basin-cropped kid, every smarmy-bloused girl, every blue-singleted bloke who wanted a smarmy-bloused girl – everyone had heard of the dwarf, the midget that sang ‘Better’n Our Nellie’. Or so Rosa’s advertising posters spruiked. Financed by Cristo, these had been stuck on every park bench, in every shop window, behind the bar of every hotel from Brissie to Toowoomba. And who could doubt? None other than Hairy Moira and Pretty Betty had been given the task of pasting them up and when had that pair failed to pull a crowd?
Since it was to be such a Big Night, such a Peerless Presentation, such an Awesome Event, who other than Bertie Sullivan should be ringmaster and lead the grand parade? Who but Bertie Sullivan could mince (all giggling and aglow, all make-up and mascara) about the ring, twirling his twinkling baton, cocking his cheeky chin, flashing his pearly whites, batting his baby blues, fluttering the Union Jack in one hand and the Southern Cross in the other? Eureka!
The Grand Parade followed: the ponies first, their plumes fluttering, plucked live from the bums of an ostrich; the tigers, their cages rank; the acrobats, the Tumbling Colleanos, their hair oiled slick and flat, their tights tight; the fat lady, galumphing; the Skeleton-Man clanking; Little Donny, scowling atop a mobile mushroom, all spotty in red and white; and so on and so on, until finally, the crowd, possibly a bit sick of Bertie Sullivan (‘His father’s the Boss, hey …’) and eager to get what they had paid for, caught the suggestion of steam, a whiff of a wheeze, and to the delight of the mob, that matronly pachyderm Aunty Dora came lumbering, her elderly brow
adorned in scarlet, her leathery throat festooned in yellow (who had found such violent marigolds?), her monstrous feet weighed down with silver, towing a red and gold coach (was it?), a castle that wailed (eh? what?): ‘A calliope …?’ some wiseacre in the front stalls muttered.
‘A kaliiooppeee!’ the mob roared, stamping their eager boots. ‘Oooh! Aaah! Kaliiooppeee! Kaliiooppeee! Oooh! Aaah!’
Cocooned inside sat Una, her body swathed in a sari of searing vermillion, her massive flab belting away at the hardwood keys. But (Oooh! Aaah!) the wheezing of steam, the whine of wind, the thumping and pumping of pipes, the roaring of ear drums! Awful the noise was: a sick tuba, a dying cow, an off-key castrato, a geriatric coloratura. But through it all (Oooh! Aaah!) how the audience thrilled to that circus of sound.
Deaf though she was, Una knew her stuff. When the calliope had once circled the ring, she straightened and, having kneaded her bulbous fingers – how the fearful keys quivered – she drew from those pipes a chord of such manifest maestoso the crowd gasped, their fidgeting stilled, their eyes turning, expectant, to the entry: the lifted canvas, the raised flap, the Arch de Triomph!
So Augustus appeared.
First his zebra (regal in purple), then his chariot (ashimmer in silver – though none could have known, save Stan who had made it – this was the tinsel lining of a thousand Ardath packets), and then, a triumph in a white linen toga and a garland of gold, came the dwarf, the midget, and stepping forward in his vehiculum argentum to brandish his tiny sword, Augustus parted his rosy lips for King and Country to sing:
Rule Britannia,
Britannia rules the waves.
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.
Some well-intentioned matron had paid for half-a-dozen kids from the local charity school to see the show. Like the rest of the mob, most of these were only interested in the promise of glitz and glamour but one, Ollie Dogson by name, being blind, was there because he had what someone said was ‘a way with words’ and it was felt that he might ‘get something out of hearing the midget sing’. So Ollie sat in the stalls, gawping this way and that, and up and down, and round and round, his lips set in that silly smile he hoped would communicate ‘I’m having a good time’, which he was, though he could see nothing. Still, he was more than happy to wait for something to happen, as he knew it would, because someone had told him.