I busied myself with a box of magazines while Spencer was engaged with a wooden box packed with tools and engine parts. Scattered across the top of the pile in front of me was a mish-mash of old mechanical magazines. These were nothing of interest to me, and I figured they were too battered to be worth anything on the second-hand market. I started to make a pile of worthless things at the base of the boat’s bow. The boat, I’d explained to Spencer, was the only thing in the garage we were not to touch because Mum and I had decided that, with a good clean, it would be worth something and if I managed the sale, I was allowed to keep all of the money. I looked over the dates and condition of the boring magazines and started piling them up. Next came two rows of knitting and craft publications that had obviously belonged to Ma. The models wore outdated knits and caftans and the price on the front page was still in pounds. I thought they might pick up a few dollars at the local used bookshop, but for the effort of trudging them down there, it was barely worth it. Besides, I had my money from the boat coming, so a few extra bucks was neither here nor there.
Over on the other side of the garage, silhouetted by the yellow globe behind him, Spencer was transfixed by his box of knickknacks. He held what looked like an oversized nut and bolt aloft, as though expecting some fantastic creature to emerge from it. We were not speaking to each other as we fossicked over our finds but I was glad to have included him in this chore, after all, to show him that outside of his own minimalist home, there were houses in this suburb brimming with the bounty of hoarders and one never quite knew what would be found.
While I was watching Spencer, bemused, my hand kept shifting aside the magazines I knew I would not want. Eventually, I looked down. I could not believe my eyes and my whole body flushed with the discovery of another secret. These were not the kinds of magazines I was expecting to find among Pa’s collection! A woman was seated on a chair, her legs spread and her enormous milky white breasts dangling down to her belly. She looked about forty, certainly older than my mother, and her face was harshly made-up. Her hair was all bouncy and large, like something from a 1970s prison movie. She was looking straight into the lens of the camera and she was smiling, almost seductively, though giving more an impression of greed. I found this quite a feat, given that as well as smiling and posing for the camera, the woman had the tips of two penises poked into her mouth.
The men standing either side of the woman were completely naked. Both were younger and their poles were thick and cumbersome, their ends purple and swollen. The one on the left was hairy all over, almost no skin to be seen without thick, dark sprouts, while the one on the right was completely bald, even down between his legs. This image utterly entranced me and I wondered where the photographer had found two men so completely different. I could not stop staring at the image, so private and bold, so dangerous in my possession. I knew I shouldn’t, knew this was none of my business, but I lifted the magazine out of the box with a trembling hand and I began to turn the pages. The sights were almost too much for me to grasp. My heart leapt into my throat and again I felt nauseous, but not in the way I did if I ate too much food, just that my entire being was about to be emptied of all of its weight. Images of men shoving thick pink willies into women’s wet holes littered the pages. I thought I heard Spencer speak, but as much as I wanted to hide these things away again, pretend I’d never come across them, I was too mesmerised to move or respond. Before I knew it, Spencer was at my side, an excited puppy, panting over an unexpected new toy.
‘Ha!’ he said with a chuckle, ‘Check out her boobs! Herr herr herr herr.’ He laughed like a machine gun, the first time I had heard this. ‘She’s a real dog!’
I wanted to laugh but could not. I was uncomfortable, uncertain what the natural course of events should now be. Was it right to continue rummaging through Pa’s things like this? I should tell my mother and she, as the adult, could dispose of the magazines. I thought this was perhaps robbing Pa of some of his dignity, revealing him as a dirty old man. But if that was the case, then surely the last person I should share these with was my mother.
‘Man, that’s bloody massive!’ Spencer continued his running commentary of the obvious.
As we neared the end of the first magazine, I thought again of what had happened in the money room. So unexpected, so inexplicable . . . I hadn’t dared mention it to anyone else. Now I wondered if that were a normal thing. I knew men could do this with their things, knew this was how babies were created, but did other boys manage to do it in such bizarre moments? Did it feel the same for everyone, that low, deep burning followed by a complete sense of shame?
‘Can you make yours do that?’ I pointed at the photo on the last page.
‘My dad’s got a magazine like this one.’ Spencer seemed to deliberately ignore me.
‘Can you?’
‘Yeah. Can’t you?’
‘Prove it,’ I blurted without thinking.
‘What?’
The reality of my request soon set in. I knew it was an alarming thing to say, but I was so desperate to see if I was normal. I just wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted confirmation that what had happened in the money room was nothing at all to be concerned about.
‘I’m tired,’ Spencer said, forcing a yawn.
‘Yeah, let’s . . . let’s finish up here for the night.’ I rearranged the magazines just as I’d found them, my heart beating faster than I’d ever felt it before.
Spencer did not want to stay up. He’d asked about a spare mattress in the garage and together we had dragged it down to my room to place it on the floor next to my bed. ‘It’s a bit dirty,’ I had said, but Spencer said he didn’t mind. Then, when we’d made it up and Spencer lay down upon it, I said: ‘Doesn’t it smell a bit musty, that mattress?’
Spencer did not answer. He was pointing under my bed. ‘What are they?’
‘They’re my cards, the ones I told you about.’ I had spent nearly the entire lunch hour on Thursday telling Spencer about my collection.
‘Not those, these.’ He pulled two clear boxes out from under the bed. One of them contained a doll replica of Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind, another of Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz.
‘Tom . . .’ His voice was one of confusion, disbelief. ‘Tom, these are dolls.’
‘No, they’re not . . . I mean, not like that. I don’t play with them or anything. These are part of history, Spencer, they’re from the movies.’
‘Tom . . .’ Again he was hesitant, and though I wished against it with every ounce of strength in my body, I knew what question was coming. ‘Is there . . . are you . . . a queer?’
The word pierced the darkness in the room and that one simple syllable turned my new world upside down. I’d seen enough movies to know what the term meant, and how people usually reacted to it. The boys at school had called me poofter often enough for me to know that’s what most of them thought of me. But none of them knew me, not like Spencer did, so anything they called me I dismissed as stupidity. Now Spencer, my best friend, had come to the same conclusion. In truth, I had never really thought about sex in any real sense of the word. It was true that sex scenes in movies sometimes made my willy go hard, but that had nothing to do with what I was, that’s just what happened to all men. I’d never once participated in the petty love games around the playground, and while I’d overheard snippets of who had pashed who at Fitz’s party on the weekend, none of that appealed to me. I was not the same, but I was not that. I felt I was hanging in limbo, in a strange void of uncertainty.
I still hadn’t answered Spencer. I was so petrified I could not speak.
‘Tom, I want to go home.’
I pretended I did not hear him and made my standard pretend sleep sounds.
‘Tom, are you awake?’ he whispered.
I sighed heavily. I wanted to cry, to talk to Spencer about the thoughts playing havoc with my mind. I lay there with my eyes closed, faking rapid movement. I realised it was inevitable this would happen when I�
��d done something as stupid as allow an outsider into my private world. The possibility of repercussions was already beginning to rear its ugly head.
A few hours later I heard Mum come in from work, sighing her familiar concessions to exhaustion. I got into her bed and pulled her arm tight around me. When I woke the next morning and saw the bedroom door ajar, I knew Spencer was gone.
• • •
Sunday was movie day. Mum was awake before me and made us some Bircher muesli. When I yawned my way into the kitchen, she gave me an accusatory look.
‘What happened last night with you two?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Where’s Spencer? Why did he leave without saying goodbye?’
‘I dunno.’
‘And why did you end up in my bed? Did you have a fight?’
‘No, Mum, honest. He said something about church this morning.’
‘Maybe I should give his mum a call?’ ’
‘Said they’d be at church just about all day.’
We sat and ate our muesli in silence. When we’d finished, Mum talked about Pa, and how much she missed him. There were no tears as she spoke, but her eyes were off somewhere in the distance and I wondered what scene from her childhood she was replaying.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that Pa would want things to go on as they were, don’t you? Are you up for the movies today? We’ll go in Pa’s honour.’
‘I . . . I guess so, Mum.’
I thought that perhaps there should be more to grief than a week off school. Now, not even two weeks after his death, here we were pretending like he was never here in the first place. I thought about using this moment to tell Mum about the magazines we’d found but the very thought of them ignited that fire down in my belly. Mum had spoken of Pa’s honour, so I decided to keep this information to myself.
Mum had to get to work earlier than usual, so we only went to the matinee double feature. Usually the midday movies were G-rated, kid-friendly flicks but today we were pleased to see a slightly more grown-up offering: By the Light of the Silvery Moon and On Moonlight Bay. The projectionist obviously had a penchant for Doris Day, said Mum. Surprisingly, I had seen neither before and I enjoyed the escapism, munching on the cupcakes Mum had baked after breakfast, and stuffing handfuls of salty popcorn into my mouth. It delighted me to hear Mum laugh aloud at the fun parts of the film, and I listened intently as she hummed along to the tunes she found familiar. Though the movies and my mother’s mood worked in unison to keep my spirits buoyed, at irregular intervals throughout the afternoon, a stab of dread coursed through my veins: Spencer was an unknown quantity.
Later that night when my mother came home from work, she made her way to the shower then slinked into bed behind me. She sobbed lightly, gently stroking my hair.
‘Tonight Steve told me he was with Kit,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t ever want you to grow up. The adult world is a shitty place.’ At this she heaved a heavier sob. ‘Bastards, the lot of them.’
Eleven
It was tough saying goodbye to Martha. Most characters pass through like a visiting relative I was frankly glad to see the back of, but it was different for Martha and me. The last performance hung heavily over us all, for end of season also meant parting company. It was the most exhilarating adolescent summer camp coming to a close. Damon and I still hadn’t spoken, Max and I were still avoiding each other, but there were enough people I would genuinely miss to make the last drinks at the pub somewhat melancholy. After my last drunken performance in front of the gang I tried my best to control my intake to keep the beast at bay. Perhaps I was bored with the company after all, for I couldn’t relax until well into my fourth beer. The crew was very complimentary to Victor and me, as though the run had been of our joint creation, and Turner admitted that despite the odd hiccup, my behaviour throughout had been unexpectedly non-diva.
Thursday was a strange evening to end on, but a handful of the technical support had another job to rush off to, a rehearsal to light and sound and dress. Max was celebrating his anniversary, so excused himself earlier than usual and I didn’t even see Damon and Alyce leave; surrounded by well-wishers, I’d realised that I’d barely seen them arrive either. By eleven p.m. it was just Victor and I along with Amelia, who’d played Nick for the majority of the season. She was a lovely and sweet girl but we’d barely said two sentences to each other outside of communicating to get the roles nailed. I liked her all the same, and she bore a striking resemblance to Meryl Streep that made her all the more magnetic.
We found a cheap noodle place still open in Darlinghurst and sat under the fluorescent glow, chatting about the show’s highs and lows and what we were doing next. Amelia had landed a recurring role in a commercial series that was paying her more than she’d ever earned and Victor was racing back to Scotland the very next day to get things ready for his revival of Who’s Afraid over there. Amelia let it slip that Damon was down to the last three in a much-hyped revival of Rocky Horror (playing Rocky, naturally). I was coy about my next step, said I had a mound of things to get through but this was, of course, shorthand for ‘absolutely nothing’ and they both knew it.
The gasoline wine we’d been guzzling over too-spicy and lukewarm glass noodles swiped Amelia from the side like a bus running a red light and within minutes of the meal arriving she was slumped in her chair, barely able to keep her eyes open. How refined it seemed to me to simply pass out from drunkenness than turn into a social pariah. Victor poured her into a taxi and paid the driver to ensure she got to her door, and came back inside the soulless restaurant. We shared her barely touched bowl as we polished off the last of the wine from tiny water tumblers of orange and blue.
‘I actually wanted to be alone with you,’ Victor began.
‘Oh . . .’ I murmured into the dregs of my glass. My stomach dropped to my knees and I looked about the restaurant searching for a happier distraction. In my experience, all serious Victor roads led in one direction. All out, all change!
‘Do you really have another job lined up or was that all bullshit, sweetie?’
A work talk! My mood was once again enthused.
‘You know, this and that . . .’ I said without a hint of irony.
‘Just as I thought. Do you mind?’ he asked as he reached over to eat the raw shallots I’d left on the side of my plate. I motioned for him to go for it. ‘Look, I didn’t want to tell you this in front of anyone else, it’s bitchy enough on the scene without me playing favourites.’
‘Am I your favourite?’ I teased.
‘One of . . . unbelievably so. Yes, you are, Tommy Houghton.’ He only ever called me Tommy when he was praising me.
‘Fool. Cretin! Stupid luvvy.’
‘Yes, that’s what everyone else has been calling me when I’ve told them what I’ve gone ahead and done.’
‘Sounds ominous,’ I said, wishing desperately that there was more wine in the bottom of the bottle, drawing just shy of being desperate enough to turn it upside down into my glass.
‘So. Edinburgh. You, me, Martha.’
It was like the time he’d stuck his tongue in my mouth. Close in, whispering directions, just the two of us on my living room floor. Wet, acrid flesh, twisting around fishily, looking for some form of contact, an acquiescence that never came. Only this time I was eager, I could have leapt across the table and mounted him. But I needed to play it cool. He was my director, my boss, my employer.
‘Are you asking what I think you’re asking?’
‘Don’t be a dumb shit, my sweets. Of course I am! I can’t begin to tell you how much begging and pleading I grovelled my way through on your behalf. Local talent, local schmalent. Australian unknown, Australian unschmown. It’s Tom Houghton or it’s no one!’ He was beaming like he’d just solved a most complex scientific problem, had achieved the impossible. He tried, but could not hide the moisture in his eyes.
‘Victor, I think you are quite possibly the nicest person I have ever had in my life,’ I said to
him in earnest. For the life of me I could not work out why he would be so generous. I knew the part – I was damn good in the part – but to take me all the way to Scotland when scores of local actors would have given their left and right testicles for the role . . . ‘Is there a catch?’ I asked.
‘Don’t ruin it, you pathetic old tart. Just be thankful.’
‘I am. Victor, I really am. The first time, I couldn’t feel it . . .’
‘I like you! I really like you!’ he joined in and we laughed at this place in our hearts.
He asked me out for a nightcap and I could hardly refuse, had I even wanted to. In the Victoria Room we could well have been in Europe as we knocked back our cocktails and made fun of the scene-stealers. Darkened corners had a habit of bringing the wicked stepsisters out in us and, so long as no one ventured close enough to overhear, we were usually safe from retaliation, verbal or otherwise. So much youth and beauty, the only thing I knew to do was to jest by finding fault in any minute mannerism or fashion detail and Victor with his pockmarked face and sadly hideous teeth could imagine he was a king being knelt before.
The lights came up at three and I saw Victor into a taxi and started the stroll down the hill towards my little box near the harbour. A wave of anxiety overcame me. I’d never lived outside Australia before, not even for a few weeks. The most I’d ever stayed in any one place was six nights and that was Vegas, so it barely counted. What was I going to do with all of my stuff? Would I simply lock up my flat and leave it for the months Victor told me I would need to be away? Maybe I could take this opportunity to end the lease and start afresh. But that would mean losing all ties and floating was something I never dealt well with. One step at a time. Did I need a new passport?
Sitting on the stoop of my building was Damon, his duffel bag next to him. He looked like he’d been crying, though the bleariness in my own eyes made it difficult to say for certain.
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