‘Harris Tea Rooms. Midday.’
At ten minutes to the hour Archie made his way onto the street, pretending to be buried in a newspaper, and headed to the Strand Arcade. It was posh, and Archie felt doubly unworthy of being there on account of his bruises.
The tea rooms were abuzz. Fox furs and hats bedecked with birds of paradise were the order of the day. Customers filled every table and crowded the counter, standing as they drank. Archie found Beatrice hunched at a tiny table in a corner.
‘Oh, Archie! It was awful!’ Beatrice sobbed, clutching his arm.
‘I’ve been so worried about you! Tell me what happened, from the very start. Let me get you a cup of tea—Earl Grey?’
When the elegant china cup and saucer on its silver tray, accompanied by a small silver teapot, was sitting before her, Beatrice stopped sobbing.
‘Oh, Archie, I wanted to get your foreskin back. Don’t worry, it’s safe. I read your report and I know now why you gave it to me. Anyway, I waited for Bumstocks to go out. Mordant had shown me where he kept it. I opened the drawer and picked up his wallet. The foreskin was in it. I took it and went into the taxidermy workshop. It’s a strange place, Archie. Frightening. But I was so curious. There was a stoneware jar on a shelf just inside Bumstocks’ office, with a big sign saying “Do Not Touch”. I couldn’t resist. I fished in it with a wire hook, and it grabbed onto something—and out came Eric Sopwith!’
Archie found it hard to keep up. ‘You’re making no sense, Beatrice. How could Eric be in a jar?’
‘It was his skull, Archie! With bits of flesh still on it,’ she wailed, alarming the pair of shoppers at the adjacent table.
‘Beatrice,’ Archie whispered loudly. ‘How do you know it was him?’
‘It had his name on it, Archie. On a metal tag.’
‘Could it have been a joke…or something?’
‘No!’ Beatrice wailed. ‘Those teeth. I’d know those teeth anywhere! And the bad gums. Oh, it’s so awful. You were right all along, Archie. The director has gone mad. He is collecting his curators. And Bumstocks is helping him do it. Thank God we didn’t let him collect your foreskin too!’
‘So, it really is true,’ Archie whispered to himself. His worst fears were no yangona-fuelled hallucination, no paranoia resulting from five years in the tropics. Vere Griffon was collecting his curators. He was probably a murderer as well, and Bumstocks and Mordant were his accomplices. Dithers, his dearest friend, was surely next in the firing line, and the poor man had no idea.
But what, he suddenly thought, if Beatrice was wrong? Could she possibly have been mistaken?
Archie had to see the skull for himself. After his last encounter with Bumstocks, he was not looking forward to returning to the taxidermy workshop. But this time he would be more careful. The opportunity came two days later. Dithers told him that in a few hours the Piltdown man was going to be installed in the new evolution gallery and that most of the staff would be assembled there to get a glimpse of the terrifying reconstruction.
Archie loitered in the public exhibition space until he saw Bumstocks and Mordant, who had a large sticking plaster on his nose, struggling along with the wooden case containing the figure. The taxidermists would be some hours settling the exhibit in.
The door to the workshop was open and Archie went directly to the stoneware jar. The grey liquid it held looked revolting, and the ‘Do Not Touch’ sign was still in place. Archie lifted the wire hook off the nail, and dipped it gingerly into the grey liquid. Almost immediately it snagged something, and Archie’s heart began to race. As he pulled it towards the surface he squinted in terror. An eye socket appeared above the slime. Archie’s hand began to shake. But he had to go on.
‘Sopwith?’ he said softly as the skull emerged into the air. But there was something wrong. The forehead was almost flat, and the canine teeth huge. Even though the precise shape of the cranium was obscured by half-rotten slabs of flesh and sinew, Archie could see that it was not human at all. It belonged to a chimpanzee, and was doubtless destined for the new evolution gallery. He replaced the wire on the nail and strode towards the light of the corridor, feeling an immense sense of relief.
That afternoon he walked Beatrice to the ferry.
‘Are you certain that it was Sopwith’s skull you saw? The thing is, darling,’ he added patronisingly, ‘I went back today and looked myself. All I found in the jar was the skull of a chimpanzee. Do you think that the gruesomeness of the place might have triggered your imagination?’
Beatrice stopped, furious. ‘How dare you, Archibald Meek. How dare you doubt my word. I know what I saw! It was Eric’s skull. I’d recognise those teeth anywhere.’
The look of hurt and betrayal on her face was more than Archie could bear. But one thing was undeniable: the evidence of foul play had vanished, if indeed it had ever existed.
Despite the skull incident, their adventures had drawn Beatrice and Archie closer than ever. Beatrice realised that she had fallen hopelessly in love with Archie. Yet she would not admit this to herself. Instead she remained stand-offish, except in her dreams. She could not have explained, even to her sister Betty, the full cause of her reticence. But she felt that things should be done properly. Archie owed it to her to propose, formally. Why didn’t he seem to understand this?
Archie, meanwhile, had accepted Beatrice at her word. He and Beatrice should be nothing but the best of friends. On other fronts, however, his sense of perplexity was increasing. Griffon had said nothing about the fight. Had Mordant not told him? Perhaps Mordant had his own reasons for not spreading the news. When they passed in the corridor, Mordant now avoided Archie’s gaze, which gave the idea some credence, Archie thought.
Despite these developments, Archie was half-expecting each day to be his last at the museum, anticipating that he’d be met at the entrance by a couple of policemen with handcuffs, to be arrested for assault. It was partly this fear that led to his dithering over the fetish. He really needed to examine it again. But how could he do that without alerting Griffon?
His ruminations were temporarily eclipsed when he picked up the phone in the anthropology department. It was a shipping clerk from Burns Philp.
‘A group of savages has arrived on one of our steamers, sir, and they have a letter saying that you’ll be responsible for them while they’re in Sydney.’
Archie had quite forgotten that he’d written to the islanders, care of a missionary, requesting a dance troupe to perform at the launch of the new gallery. He grabbed his hat and dashed out the door. None of the islanders spoke English, or had ever left their homeland before. He’d been expecting advance notice of their arrival, but something must have gone wrong. They’d be as helpless as newborn babes. As he dashed down Macquarie Street it dawned on him that looking after them would be a full-time job.
Archie found the Venusians huddled on a bench in the shipping clerk’s office. There were six: Uncle Sangoma, Cletus and his brother Polycarp, and their cousins Pius, Arenga and Barup. All except Polycarp, who had managed to cadge a blanket, were wearing nothing but bark loincloths. Sangoma sat impassively, a little distance from the others. A great boar’s tusk pierced his nasal septum, and the head of a rhinoceros beetle ornamented his nose-tip. Horizontal scars running across his musc
ular chest marked him as an tribal leader, and in his left hand he grasped the conch shell trumpet of an island big man.
The younger boys and men, in contrast, looked miserable. Arenga and Barup, who must have been barely fourteen, were shivering, and sat with their arms wrapped around their chests. Archie noticed that Polycarp, wrapped in his blanket, wore a pencil, rather than a boar’s tusk, in his nose piercing.
‘Uncle, brothers! Welcome to my village,’ Archie said in Venusian.
Instantly, the islanders became as happy as condemned men who’ve received a pardon. There was a long round of ecstatic hugs.
‘Polycarp, why are you wearing that pencil through your nose?’ asked Archie.
‘A sailor swapped it, and this blanket, for my boar’s tusk. I thought I might learn to write with it.’
‘That could take some time—like you teaching me to climb a coconut tree.’ The group laughed. ‘Oh well, I suppose that we can get you a new tusk, from the collection. For the dance, I mean. And what happened to Father Clement? I’d arranged for him to accompany you—and send advance notice of your arrival.’
‘Couldn’t come,’ Sangoma said, as he mimed a drunk man swigging from a bottle. Archie had heard the rumours, and mentally ticked himself off for trusting the missionary.
‘Have you eaten?’
‘Not a thing, for days,’ said Sangoma. ‘That stuff they call bully beef stinks. Cletus reckons it’s preserved human flesh!’
‘Well, the first thing to do is to get you a good feed. There’s a cafe nearby that does the best steak and chips in Sydney,’ Archie said, catching himself. ‘Steak and chips’, he realised, meant nothing to his friends.
The islanders clung to Archie’s side like leeches as they walked up George Street. A passing lorry caused Cletus practically to leap into his arms. ‘It’s all right,’ Archie kept repeating, but the sights, sounds and smells of the city were overwhelming for the islanders, as were the stares of the crowds.
They finally reached the cafe, and they calmed a little. They watched Archie carefully as he wielded his knife and fork, then tried valiantly to eat with the implements themselves, but to no avail. In frustration, Uncle Sangoma picked up his steak in his hands, and began chewing on it. Cletus, Polycarp and the others soon followed. The pretty waitress serving them fled into the kitchen, and moments later a burly cook with a thick black moustache emerged. ‘What do you fricking cannibals think you’re doing?’ he thundered.
Archie decided that the best form of defence was attack.
‘Look here! These fellows are members of the Tongan royal family, and they’re in Sydney on an official visit. They’re about to see the governor, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want any trouble from his chargé d’affaires.’
The cook backed off. ‘Well, just eat and get on your bloody way as quick as you can.’
Soon the T-bones were picked so clean they almost glowed, and Archie decided to take the islanders to the relative quiet of the museum. The domain was almost deserted, and he managed to get them there without incident. At the museum he installed the islanders in the guard room, under the watchful eye of Jeevons, and went to see Dryandra Stritchley about an allowance to cover their expenses. Then he walked to the hostel across the road and secured rooms in a boarding house. They were basic, to say the least, but the budget would extend no further.
By the time he’d gone to the second-hand clothing shop and bought half-a-dozen ex-military greatcoats, Archie knew that he couldn’t look after the islanders alone. So he turned to Beatrice. She was excited by the prospect of meeting the exotic visitors, but was alarmed for their safety.
‘What if Griffon wants to add them to his collection?’ she asked in horror.
‘I’d rather die than see harm come to my family,’ Archie replied. ‘I’ll defend them with my life.’
Reassured, Beatrice helped Archie sketch out a rough plan. She felt certain that they would love to see where European goods came from. She promised to speak to a dressmaker she knew and an uncle who worked at the Eveleigh rail yards, to see if visits could be arranged. And she was fairly sure that Sir Halward Edmonds would be willing to show them his refrigerator factory as well as Taronga zoo, where he was director. Archie, on the other hand, felt they might enjoy a visit to David Jones, and the new mouse-trap factory in Mascot.
Later that morning Archie introduced Beatrice to Uncle Sangoma.
‘This is your wife?’ Sangoma asked.
‘No, Uncle.’
‘Ah, I see now she’s not wearing your skin-ring. Still saving up pigs, eh? It took me years to get enough to marry your Auntie Balum. This woman looks pretty strong. Should be good for at least three gardens, and lots of kids.’ He flashed a brilliant smile at Beatrice.
‘What a gentleman!’ Beatrice beamed.
Archie decided that a translation wasn’t required.
They devoted the afternoon to a tour of the museum. As the islanders wandered through the great halls they scrutinised the contents of every cabinet. Those containing artefacts or objects from their region were observed with particular interest: the arrangement and labelling of sacred objects in particular were minutely examined. They also took careful note of the skeletons and stuffed animals—particularly the totemic ones like the whales and sharks. When the closing bell rang, it was only with the greatest difficulty that Archie got them to break off their studies.
As they were filing out, Archie found their way blocked by a knot of visitors. Predictably, they were gathered around Jeevons. The guard’s face was turned heavenwards, the very picture of anguish.
‘When you found Sopwith, Mr Jeevons, was he dead or alive?’ a man asked.
‘Alive,’ croaked Jeevons.
‘Did he say anything?’ a matronly-looking woman asked in trepidation.
‘Yes, yes,’ the museum guard almost whispered, before pausing dramatically. ‘He looked up at me with them terrible eyes, and pointed with his claw, all bent up with the poison, and whispered, “The golden cowrie.”’
Archie hurried his visitors away. ‘Who is that great man?’ Sangoma asked, looking back in awe. ‘Is he the chief of the museum? I can’t understand a word he is saying. But what a powerful orator! And so well dressed.’
It was not without misgivings that Archie left his friends at the boarding house. It wasn’t just the bedbugs and the cold he was worried about—there was nobody there who could understand them. And they understood nothing at all. He showed them the toilet, but was far from sure they properly understood what purpose it served.
‘Just don’t drink from it. The water is here,’ he said, turning a tap in the common washroom. The sight of the water spurting from the wall had twelve eyes growing to the size of dinner plates.
When Archie arrived at work the next morning and found Uncle Sangoma standing in the foyer, handcuffed to a sturdy policeman, he was not entirely surprised.
‘Constable Doolan,’ Archie said, reading the policeman’s badge. ‘What is this about?’
‘This savage is charged with theft. And resisting arrest. He practically dragged me here.’
‘Uncle, what happened?’ Archie asked.
‘Well, I got up with the b
irds and went looking for food. I saw a man with a pile of fruit. He was giving it out to people, holding a feast, just like we do in the islands. So I joined the line, sure to receive my share. But when I took a banana and started to eat it, the man went mad, and called this chief,’ he said, pointing to the policeman.
‘I’ll handle matters from here, officer. And I’ll see that the fruiterer is paid,’ said Archie.
‘If I so much as see either of you again, in any circumstances,’ Slugger Doolan said as he unlocked the handcuffs, ‘you’ll learn how to behave the hard way.’
Archie took Sangoma to his office and told him to stay there until he returned, but not before he issued a stern warning. ‘Uncle, this is a dangerous place. Far more dangerous than the Venus Isles. Please, no matter what, do not leave your rooms without me. It’s a matter of life and death.’
Archie found the fruiterer at his usual location.
‘That bloody blackfella took the banana, and he smile like a bloody thief! Mista Mik, it’s not right.’
‘Joe, Sangoma comes from a place where there’s no money. He doesn’t understand. But if he and his family can have breakfast here every morning, I’ll pay for the fruit. Okay?’
‘If you say so, Mista Mik, I give the fruit. But they betta bloody well eat it over there,’ Joe said, pointing to a park bench at some distance from his fruit barrow.
‘I’ll tell them,’ Archie acquiesced. He could see how Joe’s coterie of female customers might be scattered to the four winds by the presence of the swarthy islanders.
Later that day Archie and Beatrice took the men to the Eveleigh rail yards. They wanted to demonstrate the power of the industrial process—to show the islanders where the wealth of the white man came from. But the machinery, noise and glowing metal seemed not to impress. The islanders walked through the noisy sheds, their hands clasped behind their backs, looking at the faces of the workers and avoiding even peeking at the machines. A visit to the dressmakers and the department store got the same response. Only when they got back to the hostel, and Sangoma once more saw the running tap, did they become lively.
The Mystery of the Venus Island Fetish Page 19