The more Archie thought about the concert, the more daunting the whole thing became. What does one do with a young lady on a first date? Was it even a date? And what to wear? He confessed his worries to his best friend, the mammalogist Courtenay Dithers.
‘Just kiss her,’ Dithers replied airily. ‘Politely, on the cheek. Or the lips if you must. That’s all that’s required on a first date, Archie. But you must pass muster, clothes-wise, old man. Do you have a suit?’
‘Maybe I could borrow my brother’s,’ Archie replied doubtfully.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’d be swimming in the thing. Better ask for Nev at the Maori’s Head. He’ll sort you out.’
That lunchtime Archie detoured via the Maori’s Head Hotel. It was the museum’s local. Nellie, the barmaid, pointed out Nev, a slight, furtive-looking man who was smoking in a darkened corner of the public bar. He was, Archie felt, the kind of bloke who’d vanish at the first sign of trouble. And, judging by the look on his face, trouble was never far off.
‘Suit, is it?’ Nev said, as he mentally measured Archie up. ‘Formal? S’right? See me out the back at four, and bring a tenner. Nine bob as surety you’ll return it on time.’
At the appointed hour Archie presented himself in the dank laneway at the rear of the Maori’s Head. Nev materialised out of nowhere. The fug of smoke around him thickened, courtesy of the durry hanging at a corner of his mouth. He was carrying a large parcel wrapped in newspaper.
‘It’ll fit yer like a glove,’ Nev said. A smile revealed gappy, nicotine-stained fangs. ‘Just get it back on time. Tomorrer, 7 a.m. Don’t be bloody late or yer’ll do yer dough!’
Archie untied the package to reveal a pair of black and grey striped stovepipe trousers and a splendid tails coat that hung halfway down his calves.
He cornered Dithers. ‘Nev gave me a mourning suit! I’m going to a bloody Salvo’s concert,’ Archie wailed, ‘not a state funeral.’
‘It will all be all right, Archie. Never hurts to dress up. Just don’t be too public in it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, Nev runs a little sideline. He works for a dry cleaner up the Cross, and rents out clothes overnight. Then he cleans them before the shop opens in the morning. As long as nobody knows, no harm is done. Wouldn’t do for the suit’s owner to see you, though.’
‘This is a bloody nightmare,’ Archie mumbled to himself as he waited for Beatrice on the steps of the town hall. She was surprised to see him so smartly decked out. Perhaps the concert was a formal one? If only she’d known, she said to herself. She wore a knee-length tan skirt and bolero jacket, which broadened her shoulders, and an elegant green velvet hat with a fine net over her forehead and eyes. Despite the hat, she now felt distinctly underdressed.
Archie must have looked like he needed saving, because the ticket seller had given him front-row seats. As they entered the grand hall they saw that the stage was decorated with red flags. In the centre of each was a yellow star on which the words ‘blood and fire’ were emblazoned. Archie and Beatrice had only been in their seats a few moments when a crisply dressed man in a military uniform strode onto the stage. He introduced himself as Brother Amos, leader of the Salvation Army in Sydney, and announced that this was a charity night in aid of homeless families. ‘The three S’s! Soup, Soap and Salvation. That’s what we are here for tonight!’ he shouted as the brass band and choir mounted the stage.
The announcement added to Archie’s worries: he was down to his last few shillings, and the thought that Beatrice might consider him a skinflint convinced him that he must part with all he had. The band and choir gave a peculiar salute, their forefingers pointing skywards, and shouted, ‘Hallelujah!’ When they launched into ‘I Will Follow Jesus’, Archie risked a peep at Beatrice. She looked glorious. And, he noted with relief, she seemed to be enjoying the hymns. He began to relax.
‘Brother, come pray with us,’ a voice boomed. It was Brother Amos. He was pointing directly at Archie. ‘It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Hallelujah, brother. We are delighted to have a gentleman such as yourself here tonight! You are a beacon to your class. Please do honour us by joining our choir for “Onwards Christian Soldiers”!’
There was no choice. Wishing that he might vanish, Archie dragged himself onto the stage. He did his best with the hymn, but his wavering voice couldn’t be controlled, and he found himself slipping up an octave.
‘Sounds like a billy goat pissing in a tin!’ a rough-looking chap in the centre of the third row shouted derisively.
He was, thought Beatrice, probably a member of the ‘skeleton army’, knockabouts recruited by publicans and paid in beer to disrupt teetotal gatherings.
‘Tune don’t suit, that’s all,’ said a more sympathetic voice, but all Archie heard was ‘suit’. Was the owner of his splendid outfit about to mount the stage and strip him of it there and then? His throat tightened, and he lost his voice entirely.
It was a terrible moment. Archie felt as if the eyes of the whole town hall were on him. Then, to his astonishment, he saw that Beatrice was beside him, singing the hymn in a beautiful soprano. She had amazed herself. In all her life she had never done anything quite so public, or so brazen.
At last the band stopped and Beatrice and Archie stepped down from the stage. Archie emptied his pocket into the collecting tin. Then Brother Amos asked if they would help out in the soup kitchen.
‘Of course,’ Beatrice replied. ‘That’s why we came tonight. Wasn’t it, Archie? To help those less fortunate than ourselves.’ She looked up at him and caught his eye, for the first time without blushing.
Beatrice took to the soup ladle with gusto, while Archie handed out the bowls. They had settled into a splendid rhythm, until a gent whose filthy pants were held up by a rope round the waist held out his bowl to Beatrice. ‘Best tits I’ve seen since I worked in the dairy!’ he smirked, setting the entire line of men laughing.
Somehow, this upset Beatrice’s soup-serving rhythm. Before she knew it, instead of filling a bowl, she was emptying a ladle full of hot soup straight into Archie’s lap. It all seemed to happen in slow motion: the steaming soup cascading towards Archie’s trouser-front, his yelp of pain, his sharp leap backwards upsetting the piles of waiting soup bowls, and his agonised clutching at his sodden trousers.
‘Heavens to Betsy!’ Beatrice squeaked as she dashed forward. She averted her eyes from the actual site of the stain, and dabbed ineffectively with a petite lace handkerchief at Archie’s chest. The homeless men were in gales of laughter. ‘Best prayer meeting ever, Pastor, having that Charlie Chaplin bloke and his girl entertain us. Well worth a hallelujah next Sund’y—just for the laugh.’
Beatrice and Archie walked towards the ferry in the gathering dusk. The scalding had left Archie feeling distinctly uncomfortable. Beatrice, he knew, must be feeling uncomfortable too, though in a different way. ‘Don’t worry, Beatrice, please,’ he said. ‘It was a simple accident.’ He recalled Dithers’ admonition that a kiss was required. By the time they reached the ferry he’d still been unable to summon the courage to deliver it. So he boarded with her, though he had not intended to do so. Beatrice led him to the bow, where the waters of the harbour lapped in the moonligh
t. Archie, feeling that time was running out, made a rather unexpected lunge. Beatrice had never been kissed. Instinctively she turned away, causing Archie merely to brush her lips before landing his kiss on her ear. Or rather in her ear. The explosive sound made her squeal. She was always squealing, she told herself sternly. She must stop it.
‘Tickets, please.’ They were now halfway to Mosman. Archie had not a penny.
‘Ah, sir. I’m here by accident,’ Archie mumbled.
‘I don’t care if you’re here on behalf of Billy Hughes hisself, mate, you need a ticket,’ barked the inspector. ‘Now where is it?’
‘I haven’t got a ticket. I got on by accident.’
‘Don’t be a smart-arse with me, son!’
‘But I’ve got no money!’ Archie almost wailed.
‘You look well enough dressed to me, mate,’ the inspector said. ‘Flash as a pox doctor’s clerk, I reckon. Now pay up or I’ll slap a fine on yer!’
‘Please, inspector. Give me two singles to Mosman.’ Beatrice handed the inspector a shilling. When they alighted she swiftly turned, kissed Archie on the cheek, and vanished into the darkness.
It had not occurred to either of them that Archie had no way of getting home. He walked to the ferry at Blue’s Point and cadged a lift, promising to pay the pilot on the morrow. As the ferry crossed the calm waters, Archie looked up and imagined what the great bridge might be like when it was completed. The pylons on the north and south shores were already taking shape. He imagined the arches reaching towards each other from either shore. One day they would be joined, and the bridge would be complete. Would he and Beatrice ever make their own arch?
Chapter 4
Now, over five years later, and despite Archie’s proposal of marriage by letter, that question was still unanswered. As he walked towards the anthropology offices, intent on finding Beatrice, Archie felt nervous and unsure. He reminded himself that he had been initiated into manhood in the Venus Isles. He was now a fully competent adult in the world, cured of all silly shyness and prudery.
He turned the corner into the anthropology department and saw her, bent in silent concentration over the great leather-bound register. She was wearing a white blouse and knee-length grey skirt which revealed her perfect legs and accentuated her slender waist and full breasts. Her curling blonde hair cascaded almost to her waist, and her posture, even while seated, was perfectly upright. He stole up behind her, not wishing to break her concentration. She was holding an elegant fountain pen, from which flowed line after line of exquisite script. The register entry—as much as the artefact she was registering—was a work of art.
‘Beatrice. Darling.’
Despite his best efforts at self-control, Archie’s voice was breathy, less manly than he’d intended.
She turned to face him. For a moment her exquisite blue eyes were kind, if inquiring.
‘Archie Meek, is it—you? How dare you,’ she half screamed. ‘How dare you send me that…that…that THING. You—you—BEAST!’ She squeaked as she flung down her pen and fled out of the room.
Archie was stunned. He looked at the register. An ugly inkblot was spreading across the otherwise immaculate page. The top line, yet to be engulfed, was still legible: ‘Love token, Venus Islands. Don. A. Meek. December 15, 1932.’
Archie felt puzzled. ‘Love token’. Could that be his foreskin? If so, her entry stated that he had donated it to the museum. Had there been a terrible misunderstanding? Or was this a rejection? As the implications of the entry sank in, blind rage surged. How could his fiancée tag and number his foreskin—his own flesh—which he’d sent as a pledge of his commitment to her, and so make it the property of the government of New South Wales!
No, she was not his fiancée. In treating his sacred love token so foully she had ground his love and trust into the dirt. Yet he could hardly believe that a girl as tender and intelligent as Beatrice could act like that. And why had she fled as if he were the devil incarnate? After all her loving letters, her promises, had his Beatrice really turned into an unfeeling monster?
Archie needed to sit down. He looked about and saw his name on a door. He pushed it open and groped in the gloom for a light switch. When the naked bulb flicked on, Archie discovered that his new office was barely larger than a broom cupboard, and windowless. In fact, he decided, it was a renovated closet of some sort. A desk and chair all but filled the space, and his small library of anthropology texts was stacked on the floor.
Beatrice Goodenough was already stomping across Hyde Park. ‘How dare he call me darling!’ she muttered. ‘How dare he send me that—thing!’
Archibald Meek had caused her the most severe embarrassment she had ever experienced. No, he had ruined her life. Beatrice flopped on a bench and began to sob.
It was some time before she looked up and saw the half-completed war memorial. It reminded her of how many women had waited in vain for the man of their dreams to come home. She cried some more at the thought. She had not recognised him at first. He looked ridiculous in that ill-fitting suit. Yet at the same time he seemed so brown and grown-up. That had scared her and dismayed her all at once. Mixed with her fierce anger at him was another, deeper emotion. She feared that Archie had experienced a great deal during his time away. He was now a man and she felt a mere girl. Had he left her behind?
Despite herself, she remembered the letter she’d written to her sister Betty shortly after attending the Salvation Army concert. She’d omitted the unfortunate incidents.
‘But, oh Betty, he is a most interesting young man,’ she wrote. ‘He’s not so tall and rather thin, but he has expressive hazel eyes and he seems so pale and wan that I’m certain there’s something quite spiritual about him. He doesn’t say much, which makes me feel sure he is wise and kind. Last night we attended a concert. He dressed splendidly, and gave all the money he had to feed the poor. He’ll soon be going to the islands to complete his studies, so we can communicate by letter, which will be easier and more satisfying, I feel, than if he were here. I don’t know whether he has the sort of vim that Father would like to see in a young man, but I am rather fond of him, Betty, though please don’t tell anyone.’
Beatrice was thrilled that Archie wrote to her so often from the Venus Isles. When she opened his last letter, her heart swelled to bursting. She loved him, loved him, loved him, she told herself over and over as she read its opening words:
Beatrice. Would you be mine? My wife. Forever and ever?
Her brave Archie, who had gone all alone to the islands! How happy they would be with their house on the North Shore and a growing band of children. Of course, she would have to leave her job at the museum, as all female public servants must do upon marrying. But Archie would support her, and the children. And she would help him with his work.
She was desperate to tell someone her good news. The only person in the whole museum who seemed to care about her since Archie left was Giles Mordant, the Cockney taxidermy assistant. A flash dresser, young Mordant possessed a forced sophistication that sat well with his sallow complexion. He had a way of joking that made Beatrice feel like a younger sister, though it often seemed to her that she was the only one who didn’t get the joke. Mordant had the kind of face, she decided, that could be either handsome or viciously ugly, depending on his mo
od. She was struck, too, by the terrifying vacancy that could play over his eyes when he felt he was unobserved.
Beatrice ran across Mordant in the great hall, where he was tinkering with an exhibit. ‘Giles, I’m engaged to be married!’ she blurted.
He didn’t seemed particularly pleased. She showed him Archie’s letter.
‘Blimey, Beatrice, what’s this?’ he asked, picking up the small object folded within it.
‘Oh, that,’ she said, trying to sound knowledgeable. ‘It’s a foreskin. Archie says it’s an infallible love charm.’
Mordant was almost choking. ‘Beatrice, you do know what a foreskin is, don’t you?’
‘It’s the skin of a fore,’ she lied, desperately trying to hide her ignorance, ‘which is a kind of frog found in the islands.’
Giles burst into high-pitched laughter, attracting the attention of a group of schoolgirls. ‘Beatrice, that bloody thing is the end of Archibald Meek’s cock, his penis, in other words, which some savage has chopped off with a stone knife!’
The schoolgirls began giggling. One of them mimicked Giles: ‘The end of Archibald Meek’s cock!’ This unexpected announcement caused a vicar, who had been examining an exhibit of seashells, and an elderly couple standing by the stuffed lion to evacuate the gallery. Beatrice was convinced that both gave her dirty looks as they fled. She felt herself turned to stone, unable to shift from the spot.
The schoolgirls stared gleefully at Beatrice, and everyone seemed to be hooting in derision. All of a sudden it was too much. Beatrice ran to the women’s toilet, in tears. She sat in the cubicle a long time, holding the offending object between the pages of the letter, as she considered flushing the horrid thing down the pan, along with Archie’s letter. A hard streak of spite arose in her. No, she thought. She would not flush it. Instead, she would register it in the collection, where future generations could read of horrid Archibald Meek’s perfidy!
The Mystery of the Venus Island Fetish Page 4