by Kaz Cooke
None of us gets to choose our family, Horrie, but we can choose our pals. You belong to your mother and father. But to me, too, now because you’ve been kind and I’m very fond of you, and you know my secrets. So will you do me a last favour, even though we’re not related?
Jim and Lizzie are going in tomorrow to see Mr Houdini jump off the Queens Street bridge into the Yarra River. Will you call on me in the morning, and keep me company?
Lilacs? you are a kind soul. They let you know they’ve arrived, don’t they, lilacs? We rarely bought flowers, all those years of moving about. White ones. How beautiful. Even I got a whiff of them and I can’t get much of a breath in today. Waft me around again, Willie. Yes, I am quite queer today. I seem to smell everything. There’s scythed grass somewhere nearby.
I’m not much for sitting up today, dearie-oh, so you’ll have to address me horizontal. Just pretend I’m in a levitation act. I never thought I’d see the day but I couldn’t face a Coconut Puff, Horace. I appreciate the thought. You get stuck in.
Here’s a riddle, then. What’s the difference between King Edward and a policeman? Nineteen shillings and elevenpence. One’s a sovereign and the other’s a copper. You’d throw a cabbage at me, wouldn’t you, given half a chance?
That’s better: I like to see you smile, Horace, even a watery one. Mr Houdini is going to jump into the Yarra from the Queen Street Bridge, today. No cabbages for him – that’s quite a show-stopper.
Have I been asleep?
Lizzie gave me some tincture from one of those little blue bottles on the windowsill this morning, before she took Jim off to the tram. They wanted to stay but I said I’d be wild if they missed Houdini going off the bridge.
Jim called me his dainty terpischorean marvel. He kissed my forehead and went out without looking back. And Lizzie smiled at me, said, ‘See you later, Ada pertater,’ a perfect Cissie-ism she knew I’d like. She’s wearing her best, the melon-green dress, with her hair up nice. She pinned on that leggy old sprig of fabric forget-me-nots I wanted her to have, looked a right picture, and they was off. They’ll be there now, enjoying Mr Houdini’s bellowing.
I’m not the best company in the world; as alluring as an ear trumpet, as Harry would say. The coughing’s badly today. But we have our weapons: pass me the other bottle from the sill, would you, dearie-oh?
Hello, there. Do you know what today is? I’ve been dreaming secrets.
Did you hear the Malvern town hall clock go twelve? They’ll be gathering now in the city. Jim says his assistants have been testing the current at Queen Street Bridge by throwing in pigs. Definitely dead ones, I should think. Too difficult, otherwise.
They’re expecting hundreds of people there by one, all crowded into boats, along the river paths, and across the bridge, it will be jostlers only. I don’t know what on earth the people in the back expect to see over the crowd and around the ladies’ picture hats and parasols, but I suppose it’s the occasion, isn’t it?
Would you mind handing me that little bottle on the dresser? No need for the teaspoon, we’re pals now, so we can’t stand on ceremony.
One thing I’ll say for consumption, it gives you time to lie down and philosophise yourself silly. I have come up with some life lessons, as it happens.
It’s hard to go backwards, that’s what I think. If you begin with slivers of carbolic and rickets and scavenged lumps of coal that’s hardly powder then you’re delighted to get up to the violet-scented soap and real Jaeger underwear and roaring fires with toasted crumpets and dresses made of lawn and crêpe de Chine instead of scratchy fustian. And soft, smooth sheets on a cotton mattress like a cloud, and tea you’ve only brewed the once. After you’ve known the fancier life it’s much harder to be re-carbolicked and lie yourself out on a seaweed-stuffed mattress.
Move with the times, if you can, Horace. See where the new jobs will be, when the old ones vanish in a puff of smoke, Baldwin-style. I spent a lot of time rewriting my past but I advise you to write your own future. It’s going to be a new world of devices and machines that you’ll be living in: no more people in the hay with scythes, or with handlooms, it will be all motor vehicles and the flying machine Mr Houdini is trying to get off the ground every morning out at Digger’s Rest.
So I like to think I won’t be going to Hell. I don’t know what Hell’s like – probably the road into Walhalla in cicada season, or the Blackburn ironworks, or Adelaide. Don’t tell them I said that. It seems to me if God is sending people to Hell, he must be a cantankerous sort. A lot of people are trying to do their best, and if they fall on some terrible luck or do the wrong thing, it seems rather churlish to boil them in oil for all eternity. God could do with a bit more Christian charity if you ask me.
I like to think of my pals going on all right without me. Bob Hall hasn’t got fluppence and is thinking of becoming a clerk in his father’s stock and station agency. Zeno’s gone to India, I think, with a ballet chorus and Moto Girl. Bob will be back at Cremorne Gardens in Perth soon, chasing merchant mariners off the lawn chairs and into the bushes.
Harry and Kate are rooolling in it, and they helped us to the end. They have a Christmas dinner every year for the poor in Sydney at the Town Hall, trimmings and all. I don’t know where Marzella is and I don’t care. Tent shows at California fairgrounds last I heard, which would serve her right.
Jim has some arthritis in his knees, dark-brown stains on his fingers and a touch of asthma. ‘Acrobat bones,’ he says, when he cracks getting up out of a chair or off the bed. Mind you he still managed to captain the Tivoli Opera House cricket team in summer, not bad for an old man of sixty-one. There’s a clipping somewhere. Did I show you already? Morphed, I tell you. Jim needed a bit more luck than he got. You can work as hard as you could for as many hours as God sends but you still have to have the luck.
Our Lizzie will be respected in the highest musical circles and a credit to her family. Her serious face and learned-looking glasses, and her musical talent will mark her out as an especially prized teacher at the School of the Arts. She thought about training as a telegraph operator but knew a violin student who took a day job and was stricken with telephonist’s paralysis in her wrist. We can’t have that for Lizzie. It would be nice to think she could find some companions or a husband as I suppose even Jim shan’t be around forever.
Is anyone ever ready to go? I’m not. I don’t want to go. I don’t mean to count regrets, I’d rather do blessings instead. I’ve felt the breath of other people’s children on my neck as they slept. I’ve seen automobiles arrive. I wore diamonds, near as. I danced just like the headline art act at the Folies Bergère, I owned land in Perth and Vancouver and Preston, and had a trunk ram-jammed full of feathered hats and gowns with matching shoes. I knew human statues, human pincushions, human cannonballs and talking ponies. I was pals with tramp comedians, nut acts, ghost heads, acrobats, monkey trainers and hat jugglers. I starred in pantomimes and had my name in a thousand newspaper stories.
I read scores of books and passed them round to other theatricals in carriages and train stations. I sang millions of songs. I’ve been stuck on a train in the Canadian snow surrounded by trees with spiderwebs full of frozen droplets so that it was like being marooned in fairyland. I’ve seen a rainbow from one end of Coogee beach to the other in the brilliant sunshine. People paid to buy a postcard picture of me even though now I resemble a greyhound in a wig.
I saw Bob Bell run one of Madam Marzella’s corsets up the flagpole of the Fremantle Town Hall and watched Irving Sayles land nine backward somersaults in a row. I was proposed to by army officers in Quetta and cow cockies in Queensland. I’ve winked at the King of Siam and been up on his elephant. I was encored seven times by a full House in Birmingham and I haven’t worn clogs and a shawl over my head without being onstage and paid for it since 1881.
Mrs Pankhurst got me a vote, bless her, I don’t know how she managed it all the way out here. I’ve voted twice, both times against that feather-noggined spiri
tualist Alfred Deakin. I’ve stood on top of a piano with a rose in my teeth. I’ve been on an underground train that went under the Thames. You can’t say that about any girls who stayed in Blackburn.
I know what I was and who I am, though in two minutes I may know nothing but what the morphia tells me. Sometimes I’ve been chatting to you and I don’t think you was ever here at all.
What were we faffing on about, Horrie? Houdini, and escaping.
Can’t you just see him in your mind’s eye now, down at the Queen Street Bridge, he’ll be climbing up now. A funny, stocky little fellow with coir-mat hair sticking out both sides from the part. He’ll have buckets of confidence, muscles everywhere, a smooth trunk and hard lumps here and there like a ghost gum. Jim says he’s got a royal-blue, skin-tight costume. It shows all of his legs below the knee and his bare arms. I lift up one of my arms these days and I don’t recognise it. It’s an old lady’s arm.
I’ll have that other bottle from the sill, if you’d be so kind, duck. It’s perfectly all right, it’s me that knows what’s needed. This is quite a regular small dose, it’s all watered down these days. Could you adjust the curtains for me? This one appears to be empty, dearie-oh, I’ll be obliged if you fetch another one from the scullery. Thank you.
Dying is a bit like being poor, you don’t get much in the way of choices. You don’t happen to things, things happen to you. It’s like being bound with straps, or upside down in a milk-can like Houdini except there isn’t a key in your hair. Don’t tell anyone I said that. He does it every night, escaping. No escape for me, dearie-oh. Except from the grime smears of Lancashire, I’ll take a bow for that.
If I’d stayed in Lancashire I’d have cotton-dust lung, and more difficulties besides. I’d be deaf as a pillar and I would never have worn jewels and silk unders and had fifteen hundred people cheering me and demanding encores. If I’d stayed in the mills I’d have a ha’penny envelope full of boring memories, and no scrapbook at all, and you wouldn’t be here with me, Horrie. I’ve lost a great deal: two sets of parents and brothers and a sister-in-law and two nieces gone to glory. And I lost my career, a glittering life of fame and being a household name. And gave away a baby.
We all have regrets. Something we didn’t do. Something we did. But I’m not sorry I left the mills and took a chance. Not for one tick of a watch. You can let yourself out if I drift off again, dearie-oh. You don’t need a locksmith. Or a blacksmith. I was a jokesmith, a wordsmith, a lovesmith and a liesmith. Doesn’t everyone have secrets? Isn’t a girl allowed to keep some things to herself? If we’re allowed to curl our hair and argue our case, we need the advantage of not being held to the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me.
Am I inside my thoughts, talking? Or outside my thoughts and not talking? I feel like a length of voile – can you see through me if you hold me up to the light?
Are you there at all, Horrie? The light is very odd. Lean closer so you can hear me. We need a magic lantern in here so we can make shadows on the wall like in Matt Northcote’s act. His rabbit was good, but the giraffe looked a bit like a flustered flamingo.
I can’t quite recall how it was not to feel pain. When it’s there you can’t imagine it not being there. I can’t remember waking up with a clear mind, not hurting. It feels like it’s in my bones, in my flesh, in my skin, in the whites of my eyes, in my fingernails. I am so very, very tired.
It’s funny when you doze, you can watch the lace curtain move about for hours, not sure which is awake and which is dream. My breathing goes slower. I used to be able to govern my breathing when I was dancing, and singing. Now it does what it likes, and sometimes it refuses to work properly. Did you notice the two spotted doves who live in the garden? Since autumn they’ve been there – I can hear them trilling low, kind coos to each other. It’s very restful, I think you’ll find.
I’m pretty sure the morphia has me under at the moment, possibly, so I can’t probably be talking aloud, and if I am it’s six-to-one odds you’re probably not here at all, Horrie, so that’s probably all right. Although it’s nice to have the company on a day like today. It’s not every day Houdini goes off a bridge in your town. It’s a warm day for it with this lovely breeze. There’ll be sparkles on the water. The assistant will put the fat chains all around him, and secure Houdini’s arms with gleaming handcuffs, with padlocks around his hands, and his neck. They’ll need two bystanders to rattle the fetters and tug the padlocks and declare them sound. A moment’s wait for silence, and then Houdini’s announcement. ‘I am going to jump, securely bound, into the river, and try to escape my bonds! If I don’t surface in six minutes, come and get me!’ There’ll be a wag on the bridge looking down at the opaque, brown murk of the river water. ‘How will we find you?’
Can’t you just see Lizzie and Jim there, jostled by the crowd, smiling at each other. Houdini, up on the parapet, will be able to see all the way down the river towards the sea, the docks sprouting ships with more funnels than sails these days, gulls whirling and coasting on the winds. Beautiful blue sky.
I wonder if Monty the Kiwi Bounder is dead yet – I shan’t be seeing him in Heaven, after what he did to our Lizzie. He wouldn’t stand by her, and she couldn’t keep that baby. As long as Lizzie knows not to go back to South Australia to try to find her. The baby’s better off out of the theatricals and staying put. Ten years now, so soon enough to be a little woman herself and better off out of all this. She’s alive, and Lizzie’s alive, and there isn’t another soul who knows Lizzie had that babby but Jim and Bob Bell, and they’d die before telling. So all in all, I think I’ve wrapped it up as best as it can be wrapped. If suffering brings us closer to God I am nose to nose with the fellow. I hope he’s plumped the pillows on the crimson settee.
As Professor Baldwin used to say, don’t call it a trick, call it a mysterious illusion. A bit of misdirection, and people don’t see what you want them to miss. And see what you want them to see. It was me with looser clothes, me asking questions about illegal operations, me disappearing for months.
They can poke about as much as they like, every break in performing they see on the record will be mine – I was the top of the bill, and it was me ‘ill’ and ‘having an operation’ and ‘convalescing’ all those months. I taunted Marzella every chance I got and stuffed a pillow up my gown once or twice so it was me she put her beady crow’s eye on, it was me the subject of gossip, with my swirling costume and hidden shape underneath.
It was me who could choose, so I did. I don’t know if that will get me into Heaven.
They say Heaven’s a beautiful meadow. It certainly won’t be a raggedy gum tree. With a bit of luck it’ll be like Parer’s after all, or a smoky boarding parlour packed edge to edge with pals laughing, full of stories and the nice sort of teasing with plum cake and tea on the table (there’s your constant), and I’ll be wearing a new, stain-proof tin-silk with pristine underarms. Cissie will be there of course, she’ll take one look at my frock and call me a tinny, skinny Minnie, and Alice will smile at me and take my hand because that’s what Heaven’s for and if God hasn’t explained it to her and made it all right, and if there are no crimson settees, I shall want my money back at the Box Office.
I’ve just thought of what else will be in Heaven, if I’m lucky, Mr Orpheus McAdoo’s Jubilee singers. It was thrilling to hear them do the gospel songs, there was something sublime in it. ‘Barbaric’ said the Bulletin so it must have been good. And while we’re in Heaven, Lizzie will go on living with her head held high, and teach at the poshest music school in the city. That’s the beautiful bright side, Horrie, that is.
Can you see the lights on the sheets? There’s a rainbow coming through the window glass. The curtain’s billowing like the Serpentine costume. Can you see my hands lifting, my fingers making shadows on the wall? I can’t seem to keep them still. Like Matt Northcote doing the shadow work with his lanterns. I don’t know what that is I’m doing. Not a rabbit. Perhaps it’s a spider. Incy wincy spid
er.
Are you here? Good of you to come.
There’s the curtains flapping again. Did you feel the House lights dim, dearie-oh? The light from the magic lantern begins as a pinpoint and grows wider, can you see? Look at all the faces on my costume. The lantern slides are clicking through, now: a South African general or the captain of the cricket team, I think. ‘Where have you been, Darling?’ I’d say for a big laugh: the captain’s name was Joe Darling, you see . . . oh never mind, you dear thing. It doesn’t matter. Give us a wink.
The bioscope films run backwards for laughs: Zeno throwing an egg into the air and balancing it on the tip of his umbrella and a little bundle balanced on my knee in a carriage. Bob Bell, Jim and Alice. Harry and Katie, Cissie and little Amy, my mam and da and their dolls, the Under-the-Table Boys. Lillie May pouring from the teapot with both hands. Lizzie playing the piano at the School of Arts in front of all the swells, Lizzie the good girl, always the apple of her mother’s eye. I did it for Lizzie, but as time went on I saw that I did it for Alice, too.
Could you hold my croney old hand for a moment, Horace? You grew up with kind people who are proud of you, as proud as a mother can be, and learned the harmonica and you weren’t dragged around and left without protection here and there, or thrown off cliffs in coaches or taunted about the morals of your mother, were you, Horrie? You grew up a beautiful boy, and got a good engagement in an office. Make your own future, Horrie. As Lillie May said, ‘May life turn you to its sunny side and Fortune treat you kindly’.
There go the lights again. Such applause, can you hear that, dearie-oh? I rather think it’s for me.