by Gary Crew
‘Stan, I’m sorry. Absalom’s voice was so sensitive. I mean, I would never have gone in there, not into the house, especially since Rosa told me not to, if it hadn’t been for her voice. I so miss singing. Any singing. I’m sorry Stan …’
Stan moved behind him, hugging his frail shoulders. ‘It’s all right, mate,’ he said, all sniffly and sad. ‘I’m the one who should be sorry. We both need some lovin’, eh? Now go on, I’m listening. Absalom, you say? Her name was Absalom?’
As Stan quite rightly surmised, both Hairy Moira and French Betty had long been acquainted with Absalom and his or her disputed gender. Travelling rural Queensland as they did, the girls first learned of the existence of the said morphodite while rolling kegs in any number of seedy pubs on the Darling Downs but she or he – born Ruby Pratt to Pastor Doug and his wife Dulcie out Dirranbandi way – had not come to their attention in the flesh until an ugly scene occurred at the Toowoomba Railway Station, Toowoomba being the ‘Gateway to the Downs’.
Fanny Schmak, wife of Adolf Schmak, Station Master, first observed a person of dubious intent (the aforesaid Ruby Pratt) apparently loitering on Platform One and later, upon closer scrutiny from beneath a cubicle door, applying lipstick and fluffing her blonde tresses at a soot-streaked mirror in the ladies’ lavs. Alerted by the masculine width of shoulder, girth of bicep and general hairiness of both hand and foot, since libertine Ruby wore neither gloves nor stockings, Fanny ordered the deviant out, obliging the flustered Ruby to make an awkward exit, lurching fortuitously into the arms of Hairy Moira and French Betty, who at that time were loitering on the very same platform, though canny enough to disguise their equally hirsute selves as ample-hipped dowagers, black-veiled and bombazined in full mourning.
(Tricksters, were they?)
So, amid many tears, and with much snot and snorting, Ruby introduced herself. And later, over tea and scones in the Pot Luck Café (assuredly not Toowoomba’s finest), the solitary weeper explained the terrible circumstance of her adolescence: that at the age of thirteen, when still pretty as a picture and the light of Pastor Doug and Dulcie’s lives, the undeniable evidence of her manhood had so suddenly appeared.
Momentarily lifting their veils, Moira and Betty exchanged glances.
‘Well,’ Moira suggested, ‘apart from changing your moniker, I reckon you oughta get back to Master Schmak in the ticket office and buy yourself a one-way to Sydney. They take to people such as yourself much better down south.’ Extracting a ten-pound note from her handbag, Moira pointed the unfortunate morphodite in the general direction of the station.
Being a sensible girl, Ruby took Moira’s advice.
Huddled in a gritty corner of Third Class, she resolved to call herself Absalom, her father having made her aware of that Biblical character’s flowing locks, but since she urgently needed a little of that cash to buy men’s weeds, Moira’s kind donation could only take her as far as Ipswich, so dewy-eyed Ruby never did make it to the flesh pots of Sydney, which led her (or him, was it?) to seek solace in Miss la Vie’s Crimson Parlour. There, some years later, while expressing her woes in song, the diminutive Augustus Trump applied a tap to her shoulder.
‘Ma’am?’ he said, tentatively, and when the siren turned, spinning the piano stool, ‘Sir?’
The moustachioed singer looked down. ‘What,’ it said, ‘are you?’
‘I am not a What,’ Augustus declared, having grown tired of that question over eleven years. ‘I am a He. Although I might ask you the same question.’
‘Ah,’ the singer sighed. ‘And therein lies the agony …’
Augustus was taken aback. ‘The agony?’ he repeated. ‘Do you hurt?’
‘Yes, I hurt. To be me, you understand. Not here,’ – it touched its crotch – ‘but here …’ It touched its breast.
‘Your heart?’ Augustus asked, wide-eyed. ‘You have a weak heart?’
‘Indeed,’ the singer nodded. ‘A very weak heart … But I am rude. Too personal, too soon, as usual. Always the way with me. Always. And there you are, cute as a button in your little overalls. A gentleman, I can tell. I’m sorry, my name is Absalom. I’m what is known as a “Lady of the Night” – though since most boys around here do twelve-hour shifts down pit, I might also be called a “Lady of the Day”. I’m versatile, you see.’
Augustus did not see, not entirely, but he was cunning enough to turn the subject to a topic he could appreciate. ‘I am Augustus Trump,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘And I really like your voice. You have an awfully sensitive tone.’
‘Awful or full of awe?’ Absalom chuckled. He had long since quit his girly giggle – such a giveaway. ‘Clarify, please!’
‘It’s interesting …’ Augustus said, considering the musical veracity of the term. ‘Yes, interesting …’ and he decided to remember the word, in just such a context, should the occasion arise.
‘Well, well,’ Absalom replied, dropping his tone an octave, ‘what a nice young man you are. And what is it that brings you to the notorious Miss la Vie? You don’t look like a sex-starved miner to me …’ Glancing away, then suddenly back, he intoned, even more deeply, ‘Are you?’
Augustus giggled. ‘I have been travelling with Rosa,’ he explained. ‘Rosebud, they call her here. She is what you might call my guardian, though she prefers the title “Manager”.’
‘Not red-headed Rosebud? Not that little firebrand who can charge what she likes? Not that Rosebud? She’s your pimp?’ His hand was at his chest, his cleavage heaving.
‘No, no!’ Augustus laughed. ‘Rosa is my manager. I sing too, you know.’
Now Absalom’s hand was on his moustache, nervously twirling one waxy blond tip. ‘My father conducted a male choir – he was a minister of the church – and I wanted to sing with the boys. I swear that’s why I turned into one – so be careful what you wish for, like they say …’
‘I wish that I would grow into a man,’ Augustus offered. ‘A proper man, like.’
Fingerless gloves slapped ruby-rouged cheeks. ‘A proper man? Ha! Tell you what; you show me a proper man and I’ll show you a miracle.’
‘Perhaps that is what it might take,’ Augustus said, reaching up to stroke the keys. ‘Pretentious as it might sound, I sometimes think that if I could find the right song, and the right place to sing it, and do that right – sing it perfectly, you understand, every note pure poetry – then something good might happen to me: some change, some transformation. There could be such a moment, you know – that one pure note, approaching the sublime.’
‘I never heard it,’ Absalom scoffed. ‘Nor sang it neither. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t be in this lousy place. Sorry, mate, after what I been through, after what I seen, I don’t believe in miracles …’
Sensing Augustus’s disillusionment, he suddenly declared, ‘So you’re a singer, eh? Fair dinkum? What do you sing? Come on. Tell me and I’ll play.’ So saying, he spun the piano stool to face the keys.
‘Older people’s songs mostly,’ Augustus admitted, ever ready for an opportunity. ‘Although I’m usually pretty good at finding something to suit an occasion. Considering what I heard you singing when I walked in, I reckon I know a song you’d like. I don’t need you to play, by the way, I’ve been singing without accompaniment for years. Ready?’
As Absalom sat agape, Augustus planted his pretty feet to sing:
I leaned my back unto an oak,
I thought it was a trusty tree
But first it bowed, and syne it brak,
Sae my true love did lightly me.
But love be bonny,
A little time,
But when ’tis auld, it waxeth cauld
And fades away like morning dew …
When he had finished, the boy waited, but Absalom turned away, weeping.
‘I’m sorry,’ Augustus cried, reaching out. ‘I am so sorry. Is the pain that bad?’
At this, Absalom drew him close between his stockinged knees. ‘Your song reminded me of the angelic voices
I heard when I was a girl, praying in my father’s chapel. But that was another time, another place, another person, before this curse descended. Now I am nothing: I am the hole in the dyke; the crack in the floor; the fault in the earth’s crust. Nothing! Men leer, women snicker. There is not one who doesn’t think that I chose to be this, that I like being this, that I want to be this. Believe me, I do not. If there was some tincture, some cure, some miracle that might change me, that might make me other than what I am, I would drink from that phial, I would risk that fate, I would die to endure it. I would have any body but this! Yes, my little friend, in this whorehouse, this hellhole, I might laugh and play the girly fool, but if I could, I too would be a proper man.’
Augustus stood quite still. At first he thought this tirade was nothing more than melodrama, a mode of theatre he had seen in his mother’s salon – overwrought and signifying nothing. Yet when he considered what was being said, despite the smears and smudges and sobs and slurps, the boy understood this Absalom to be a kindred soul who would, if he could, transform himself. And choosing to reflect privately upon this possibility, he prised his sobbing captor’s fingers from his wrist and crept away.
A stand of eucalyptus survived at the bottom of Miss la Vie’s yard, behind the shed. Hardly anybody went down that way other than Mary Smokes, occasionally, to wail over her lost land, or maybe her lost self – nobody cared either way – but somebody, probably the pretty Rosebud, Demure Flower of the House, had strung a length of rope between two struggling gums to hang washing. ‘Away from the eyes of perverts,’ as she informed Augustus, which he acknowledged with a nod.
Having gotten Stan off to work, the boy had left the shed to see Rosa at the line, reaching up to peg a blouse. She wore a pink and white spotted frock with a belt of the same material, and white canvas tennis shoes. Despite her protests and avowed hatred of the place (and all that went on there) she was, after all, Rosebud, Flower of the House.
‘Rosa?’ he called.
‘What?’ she grunted, a wooden peg in her mouth.
‘Can I talk to you?’
‘You can talk,’ she said, ‘but I won’t promise to listen.’
‘I saw Absalom yesterday,’ he said, perching on an upturned bucket. ‘We talked. I even sang a bit …’
She glared, clenching her teeth on the peg. ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘You what?’
‘You heard me,’ he said, inured to theatrics. ‘I want to ask you about it.’
‘You went into that house?’ And without waiting for a reply, ‘Didn’t I tell you not to?’
Augustus shrugged. ‘I didn’t see anything except some unmade beds and a big red room.’
‘You went right through to the Crimson Parlour?’
‘There was nobody there, except Absalom at the piano.’
‘Ha!’ she laughed. ‘Now you expect me to tell you what Absalom is, eh? Like, man or woman? Right?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I already asked and he told me himself.’
‘So,’ she said, reaching down into a wicker basket, searching for pegs, ‘since you know everything, what do you need to ask me?’
‘Rosa,’ he said, ‘I need to sing.’
‘No-one’s stopping you.’
‘Rosa,’ he said, getting her attention, ‘I mean to really sing. Somewhere with a piano, and an audience. Like a proper singer. Like we said we’d do when you were my manager.’
‘Times change,’ she said, stretching up so as not to catch his eye.
‘Rosa,’ he said, tugging at her dress, ‘I have to sing. I’m shrinking. I’m dying here.’
Stepping back from the clothesline, she gave him the once-over. ‘Augustus,’ she said, ‘you’re not dying and you sure ain’t shrinking. For crying out loud, you’re a dwarf.’
‘And I want to be more than that. That’s why I have to sing.’
She shook her head. ‘What’s all this about, eh? You want to run away, do you? Is that it? Well, I got news for you! You think that I want to be here? You think I like this place? You think I like what I do here?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t. And I appreciate that you do what you do to put bread on the table. And Stan too, but Rosa, I’ve got to live. I’ve got to grow. I’ve got to have a chance to make something of myself. You understand?’
‘Augustus,’ she said, her voice smouldering. ‘This is a brothel. You want me to ask Miss la Vie if my friend the dwarf can sing in her Red Parlour?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do.’
‘Get lost,’ she spat. ‘Go on, get. You’re crazy.’
‘You know what?’ he said, pushing his luck. ‘I never even saw that Miss la Vie. Where does she live? And Absalom? And the other ladies?’
‘So you want to pay her a visit?’
‘I was just wondering …’
‘All right. If I tell you, will you shut up?’
‘Maybe …’
‘There’s two flats at the back of the house. Behind the Crimson Parlour. Private. Miss la Vie lives in one and Absalom lives in the other. He cleans her flat, she hides him from the world. The other girls live in the town. Satisfied?’ She said this with her face buried in the billow of a freshly hung sheet, Miss la Vie insisting upon hygiene.
‘And are they happy?’ Augustus asked. The clip on the ear that followed was unexpected. He sprang back, hurt. ‘Ow!’ he declared, rubbing the offended part. ‘You could have burst my eardrum. Then where would I be?’
‘Couldn’t be much worse off than where you are right now,’ she sniggered. ‘And what do you mean, “Are they happy”? What do you think? They’re whores. I’m a whore. Do I look happy?’
He thought of saying, You never did, but chose not to risk further injury. ‘I was just wondering,’ he began again, ‘about singing up there. I wouldn’t be doing it for money. Just to make a change, you know …’
‘Ooo-er!’ she mocked. ‘Ooo-flamin’-er! Is this the weed I found at the circus, up to his armpits in sawdust? So you wouldn’t be doing it for money, eh? Not like me! Not like that cheap tart Rosa. Not like the only person in the world who stood up for you when your mother sold you off. For how much? Remind me? Ten quid, was it? Well let me tell you something, Lucky Legs: first, you only work for money, ever; second, you already proved that what you got, no-one wants – remember that disaster in the Big Top – and third, you got me to thank for the little you have got. And believe me, from where I stand, you got very little. Okay?’
He felt the tears and blinked them back. She didn’t mean it, he knew. She was just unhappy with her lot. And to avoid further hurt for both parties, he said, ‘I’m sorry, Rosa. I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just that now we’ve stopped travelling, and with both you and Stan at work, I’ve got nothing to look forward to.’
‘So what do you expect me to do about it?’ she said, wrestling with a drooping sheet. ‘Find you a job? Huh? Like singing in a pub. How about that? You’d love that, I don’t think.’
Augustus reached up, offering her fresh pegs. He knew now that he would have to work on this alone. Or with Stan, maybe, but never Rosa. So he said, ‘I think I’ll go and have a talk with Mary Smokes. She likes me. She’ll listen.’
‘Good idea,’ she grunted. ‘Real good.’
During this period of misery, when he longed to enter the house, to sing, and boldly so, yet lived in fear of the consequences, Augustus sometimes lingered on the verandah, savouring the melancholy of what he interpreted as a liminal space, being neither in nor out. Do lovers feel like this? he wondered, meditating on the many miseries of the unrequited in the songs so familiar to his mother’s parlour. If they do, who would fall in love? And casting his eyes down to the weathered timbers beneath him, he contemplated the splinters there, long and lethal, dangerously sharp. I need to take care, he mused. For the ordinary man, one of those would prick deep, but for me, at my size, to be so pierced would be as a dagger to my heart. So he quit the verandah to wander beneath the jacarandas, between the whorehouse and the road
, though the dangers of this space – likewise liminal – were masked by the velvet of fallen blooms.
Augustus first knocked on Miss la Vie’s door just two days after his conversation with Rosa Colleano at the clothesline down the yard. Having long since grown out of Hogie’s outfit, he wore a smart little dress suit that Stan had found in the window of a bridal store, on a tiny mannequin there. A model bridegroom, no doubt. Very nice it was too, complete with black bow tie and wing-collared shirt and grey satin cummerbund and patent leather pumps – not that he had much call to wear it, the last time being to sing for some drunks in a bandstand at Redbank, where no-one cared anyway. But on this occasion he wanted to look his best.
Creeping into the house late afternoon when the girls had gone home to rest in readiness for the night ahead, he padded down the hall, crossed the Crimson Parlour and noted, as Rosa had advised, the doors to the flats at the rear: one being Absalom’s, the body of its snoring occupant partially visible upon a divan, the other (he hoped) belonging to the Madam.
Augustus knocked, arranging himself as if he was about to sing: feet planted, tie straight, chin up.
‘Entrez,’ a woman’s voice called.
Alto, Augustus surmised, and opening the door, he stepped in. He was struck at once by a wall of light and, blinded, he drew back, covering his eyes. Finding the support of the door, he removed his hand and looked again. This was the rear of the house, the flat Rosa had spoken of, but it was not timber like the rest. Before him stretched a row of glazed casements, dazzling in the afternoon sun, the corners of each fixed with a lozenge of amethyst glass. He remembered a ring, secret in his mother’s jewel box. There was a scent too. Roses? He remembered weighty blooms, black and heady, arranged in a crystal bowl on the card table beside his mother’s piano. Yes, roses. When he looked about, adjusting, he saw perfume bottles dotted along the sill: tall and twisted and tortuously spun; likewise scattered creams and unguents, fat-potted and squat.