by David Rain
Skip didn’t understand, but she didn’t want to say. All she wanted was for Roger to keep talking. What was it like to have a father? She hoped it would be like this.
‘Life is a circle,’ Roger added, after a moment. ‘We want to come back to the place where we began.’
‘But didn’t they hate you? You were the enemy of the people.’
‘It was a part I played. There can be others.’
‘That part, Brooker’s part, was your last role with the Players, wasn’t it?’
‘Actually I never did it on the night,’ said Roger. He smiled sadly. ‘Events, shall we say, took an unfortunate turn, and before I knew it I was in a Baby Austin, bound for Melbourne and a big ship that took six weeks to get to England. Sad. I’d so wanted to play Dr Stockmann.’
‘You’d be better than Brooker,’ said Skip. ‘You’d have to be.’
‘Hey! You two coming in for dinner?’ Jack had appeared at the pond’s edge below. Skip grinned and threw a stone to splash him. She loved him. She loved everyone. In Jack’s arms was Mowser, or Purcell.
Shyly, Skip slipped her hand into Roger’s as they walked back to the house.
‘And what do you want to be?’ he asked her.
Surprising herself, she answered, ‘Your daughter.’
‘Oh, Skip!’ His voice was soft. ‘I think you already are.’
‘The Burgomaster’s cap!’ cried Mrs Novak.
‘And here’s the staff of office, too!’ said Mr Brooker. ‘But how in the devil’s name did they –’
Mr Singh tried to intervene; Brooker swept him aside. ‘Ah! I understand. He’s been here to talk you around. Ha ha! He brought his pigs to the wrong market! And when he caught sight of me in the printing room – ha ha! ha ha! ha ha ha! – he took to his heels, eh, Mr Aslaksen?’
A young dentist agreed that this was the case.
The dress rehearsal was far advanced. The stage and the flats behind it had been covered with silver foil; players wore suits of the same material, with silver masks over their eyes, and garden gloves and wellingtons sprayed with silver paint. White chests of drawers and a white wardrobe adorned with light bulbs and bicycle reflectors served as banks of computers, suggesting the printing office in which the scene was set, while the Burgomaster’s cap was a space helmet (actually an upturned fishbowl), and the staff of office a toy ray gun made of red and yellow plastic. In his programme notes, Howard Brooker, BA, DipT, spoke of the play’s universality. An Enemy of the People, he said, was a story that could take place in any time, any place, and citizens of a democracy must be constantly on guard that the tale did not unfold again today, or tomorrow, or the day after.
‘This is all wrong. He’s ruined it.’ Skip, in the dress circle, shut with disgust a shabby greenish volume with the words Prose Dramas picked out on the front in faded gold. Following the dialogue was difficult in any case when Brooker had made many cuts and changes and still, with the first-night curtain only twenty-two hours away, remained liable to halt proceedings and rail at the cast for failing what he insisted on calling his ‘vision’ of the play.
‘What’s with the book, anyway?’ Honza slouched beside her, picking leathery flakes from an arm of his chair. He shifted, squirmed; this was a boy who would never willingly read a book and couldn’t understand when others did. ‘Let’s go down. I want to see what’s backstage.’
‘Yair. Let’s.’ Skip sprang up and stuffed the book into her bag. They made for the stairs while Mr Singh and Mrs Novak gaped with horror and Brooker, donning the fishbowl and flourishing the ray gun, strutted back and forth like a jackbooted Nazi. His ridicule of the Burgomaster was in full flight when a door burst open, stage left, and the president of the Lions Club of Crater Lakes boomed like thunder, ‘What’s the meaning of this folly?’
Brooker, shedding the fishbowl, proclaimed that revolution was about to engulf the town.
‘What a whacker,’ said Honza, loudly, as he led Skip between the stalls. A small audience, scattered in awkward attitudes across the front rows, scrutinised the rehearsal. Among their number were Mr Novak, who stroked his chin; Pavel, looking bewildered; and an earnest Marlo, who was not required in the present scene. A flight of steps led up to the stage; Honza and Skip, to glares and hisses, ascended it and flitted, stage right, into the wings.
‘Looks different from the side, eh?’ Skip gazed across the stage, beyond the spacesuits and flaring foil, to dark hollows lined with raw brick. Switches, black and heavy, like levers that might launch rockets or bombs, angled out beside furled-back curtains; winches for the flies looked nautical, and lights flared from a hanging rig above. A red bucket filled with sand declared on the side in black block letters: FIRE. In spite of Brooker, excitement filled Skip. The stage, she realised, was a world of strange magic.
Honza tugged her hand. ‘Isn’t there a cellar?’
They descended a staircase. Dingy corridors diverged below; pipes ran down the walls like brassy innards. Doors stood ajar to darkened rooms: PROPERTY STORE. GENTS DRESSING. LADIES DRESSING. The screwed-on signs were of lacquered wood, the words painted in chipped bright cursive. Thuds and creakings sounded above their heads and Brooker’s rantings echoed weirdly.
‘Roger should be playing that part,’ said Skip.
They turned a corner. STAGE DOOR, said a sign that pointed towards Crater Gardens, while just before a second staircase, leading up to stage left, was a door on which was taped a quarto page bearing the block-lettered name HOWARD BROOKER. The star’s dressing room: that room from which, long ago, a girl called Deirdre Gull had fled in tears into her father’s arms.
‘Your sister is nuts, ain’t she?’ said Honza.
Skip rounded on him. ‘Don’t. I’ve told you: don’t.’
‘So why’s she on with Brooker again, then?’
‘She’s not. She’s using him. Don’t you know anything? It’s one of a woman’s arts.’ Angrily, Skip pushed open the dressing-room door. She fumbled for a switch. Light glared from a single hanging bulb. The room was mean, low-ceilinged, with a stained pinkish rug filling the space between the clutter. Running along one wall was a chipped, scratched dressing table.
Skip slumped, suddenly weary, into the squeaking swivel chair; her face in the mirror was a potato going green. Against the opposite wall was a rack, empty but for a single spangly spacesuit, with mask, boots and gloves; the wardrobe ladies had made a spare. In the corner by the door stood a large black trunk with a curving, brass-banded top (the treasure chest, perhaps, from a play about pirates); in the other, by the small frosted window that looked into the gardens, a folding screen pasted liberally with flyers for past attractions: Chu Chin Chow, Gang Show, Col Joye and the Joy Boys.
Honza sat cross-legged on the treasure chest. ‘I hate Brooker.’ His bitterness surprised Skip. He never spoke about his mother’s affair; he treated their move to the old Dansie house as if it were a lark. But his nonchalance, she saw, was a front. There were things he minded, things that hurt him bitterly.
On the dressing table lay a leather bag with hanging fringes. Skip riffled through it. Brooker’s wallet? Better not risk it. Brooker’s appointment book? His Silk Cuts? She waved the pack towards Honza. The lighter she found in the bag had been engraved with the words: To Howard – Love, Deirdre.
Their smoke wreathed in the air. Skip, eyeing the mirror again, wondered if she was pretty. She didn’t look like a potato, did she? Half closing her eyes, she thought, as if the fact lent her a certain mystery, a certain glamour: Col Joye, one of Australia’s biggest singing stars, has sat where I sit now.
They could still hear Howard Brooker, one of Australia’s biggest whackers, ranting from the stage above.
‘What if we could get back at him?’ said Honza.
‘How?’ Skip understood at once the impulse behind Honza’s words. She shared it. But it was impossible. ‘Everybody loves him. They think he’s a genius. Genius, huh! He doesn’t care about the play, he just cares about Howard Brooker. It
should be Roger taking the stage tomorrow night. He knows every word of that play. Imagine it! He’d blast Brooker out of the water.’
Quiet for once, Honza blew out smoke rings. Distantly, beyond the window, water cascaded in the sunken cave; a sad sound, hollow, like life slipping by. ‘What if we switched them?’ he said suddenly.
‘What are you talking about?’ said Skip.
‘Stage door’s just along there, eh?’ He waved a hand. ‘And it goes out into the gardens, not the street. Think about it. Wouldn’t be that hard to get old Rog in here, would it?’
‘So nobody sees? I suppose so. But Brooker –’
‘We’d lock him up.’ Excited, Honza scrambled off the treasure chest. A big rusty padlock hung from the front of it, a key sticking out from its underside. He turned it, unhooked the lock, raised the trunk’s warped lid, and flung across the costume rack the mothballed capes and gowns he found inside. ‘Yair, this is perfect. Gag him. Tie him up. Lock him in here.’
Skip mashed out her cigarette. She hated cigarettes. ‘This isn’t Lummo lying around drunk,’ she said. ‘We’re kids. Brooker’s a six foot man. Tomorrow night, there’ll be people everywhere –’
‘So we knock him out. Better yet, Rog does.’
‘Then hide him in that chest?’ Skip’s chair, as she swivelled, made a protesting howl; the chest, with its oily black exterior and mildewed lining of scarlet felt, looked like some prehistoric creature’s vast open mouth. Scarlet vibrated under the buzzing electric bulb.
Her next words were solemn. Honza might never read a book, but his brain could still dazzle her. ‘It’s brilliant. You’re brilliant. Roger wants to show himself to the town again. He’ll be in costume. He’ll be in a mask. When he goes on stage, people will think he’s Brooker – then, slowly, they’ll realise. Everyone will see again what a great actor he is.’
Honza rose, grinning, from the treasure chest and flourished, like a prize, the extra spacesuit. ‘Might be a bit small, but it’ll do. We come here early. Get him in costume, all ready to go on –’
‘Hide him, I guess?’
‘In this room. In this chest.’
‘No, the screen – behind the screen!’
They gripped each other’s hands and leaped around in a circle, laughing.
There was only one problem. Skip stopped and slumped. ‘But Roger – he’d never agree.’ Of course he wouldn’t.
But it was then that the voice came: ‘That’s where you’re wrong.’
Skip and Honza jumped. The Ghost of Crater Lakes had a capacity for appearing suddenly, as if he had only that instant flashed into being. For years he had wandered the town at night, flitting through the shadows, avoiding streetlamps; now here he was, emerging from behind the screen, incongruous in a place that seemed defined by Col Joye. In the small room, Roger appeared taller than ever. He was a giant. A thrill went through Skip.
Then doubt gripped her with equal force. The treasure chest yawned redly. Gazing into it, Roger mumbled something. What was he saying? He was born in a trunk, he half whispered, half laughed, in the Princess Theatre in Something-Something, Idaho. To Skip, less familiar with the works of Judy Garland, his words made no sense. She felt alarmed, and touched his hand gently. ‘You weren’t, Roger. You were born in Crater Lakes.’
He blinked at her, and she asked him why he was there.
‘Oh, I wanted to watch the rehearsals,’ he said, but without conviction. ‘I could sit in the back, couldn’t I? In the dark. I can always sit in the dark. I don’t have to hide where Deirdre hid – I don’t, do I? Not after all these years.’ Turning, he fingered the screen, picking distractedly at the old flyers. Col Joye, in black and white, smiled regardless.
‘They’re up there.’ Trembling, Skip pointed to the ceiling.
‘The rehearsals? Yes. Yes.’ By now, it seemed, Roger wanted only to escape. In his tumbledown house far out of town, he could seem so sane, so strong. And yet even there, Skip had from time to time come upon him in moods like this: distracted, not quite present. It frightened her – it was terrifying to be reminded that this man she loved like a father could no more be relied upon than her crazy mother. Tears sprang to her eyes and she forced them shut. She counted, digging her fingernails into her palms, until a hand – Honza’s – touched her wrist.
She looked around, then ran to the door. Like a phantom, Roger had slipped from the dressing room; he had swung open the stage door and vanished into the night. Was he a dream after all? She turned back to Honza, bit her lip and gripped the boy’s shoulders, as if making sure he was solid, rock solid.
Chapter Seventeen
‘How much longer?’
This time it was Skip who asked. Honza shifted his feet again. They stood outside the stage door. Between feathery trees a path led into back reaches of Crater Gardens; down a grassy slope lay the picket fence banding the sunken cave. In the gathering darkness, the grass appeared purple, even black; the fence glimmered with a strange phosphorescence. November evenings in Crater Lakes are long.
‘Jack wouldn’t let us down,’ said Honza.
While they were waiting, they had gone down to the cave, ack-ack with machine-gun sneakers slapping around the spiral; solemnly they had leaned above the scene-of-the-crime wishing well, in which water lapped above a gleaming new grille; they had curved around to Volcano Street and checked the comings and goings at what Mr Novak, who had duties to perform, called the front of house. The town hall clock, the little Big Ben of Crater Lakes, rose against a greyish pallid sky, ticking like a time bomb towards the first act.
Jack should have been here long ago, propelling the Harley illegally along the garden paths, with Roger in the sidecar, concealed beneath blankets. Smuggling him through the stage door would be harder now the Players had all arrived. Some had asked what ‘yous kids’ were doing, hanging round the back.
‘Something’s happened,’ Skip said to Honza. ‘That bloody Harley! I’ll bet it’s conked out again.’
‘Maybe old Rog couldn’t go through with it.’
‘Don’t say that! We’ve still got time.’ They didn’t need much. They had stolen the extra spacesuit the night before; Roger would be in costume already. But so much could go wrong. Was Brooker still in his dressing room? Roger should have been hidden in there from the first.
‘Heard the news?’ The stage manager, a bachelor greengrocer who had his own segment on Woman’s World each Wednesday (‘Tony’s World of Veg’) and didn’t mind a spot of culture now and then, swung out of the stage door, lighting a Benson & Hedges. ‘Some reviewer’s down from the smoke. Old mate of Howard’s – Professor Somebody, from Flinders Uni. Writes for the Advertiser. Hah! Howard Brooker’s big chance.’
‘Chance of what?’ said Honza.
Heavily, the greengrocer paced the path. ‘He’s a terror, Howard. Silver foil and spacesuits! Me, I’m not sorry he’s buggering off. Yair, half the town’s out tonight. Curiosity, ain’t it? That’ll work once – twice, maybe. But Ibsen, I asks you! Next time, we need a nice musical. Guys and Dolls. My Fair Lady.’ His wrist flicked as he gestured with the B&H. ‘I’d make a good Higgins, I reckon. Can’t be doing with this Russian crap.’
‘Ton-ee!’ A figure appeared in the doorway. ‘Where’s the dinner for the dining room?’
‘They take pills, remember?’
‘Pills? What the hell you on about?’
‘Howard decided last night. Futuristic, ain’t it? All their nutrients in a single daily pill – oh, fuck me dead, where are the bottles?’ The greengrocer flung away his cigarette and rushed back inside.
‘We’re stuffed.’ Skip sank down on the steps. ‘This should be Roger’s big chance – and with the bloke from the Advertiser there, too! And now it’s not going to happen. Nothing will.’
Honza sat beside her. He might, Skip sensed, have slipped an arm around her, but didn’t quite dare; instead, he just laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s not so bad,’ he said. ‘Stupid play, anyway.’
‘Shows how much you know!’
Headlights passed brightly beyond the gardens; from the pub across the road came a chorus of voices; from closer, a birdcall. No: a whistle. The signal! Could it be? Skip, rushing forward, almost collided with Jack as he emerged around a leafy corner. ‘He’s here?’
‘I cut the motor. Rolled her in.’
‘Bloody took your time,’ said Honza.
‘Kids in cars. They held me up on the road into town. Tried to start a ruckus.’
‘You’re all right?’ Skip’s throat clenched with fear.
‘Them kids ain’t. Thought they was just taking me on, didn’t they? But Mr Dansie jumps out the sidecar – flings off his blankets, roars, and they was off! Reckon they thought he was a monster from outer space. But we was left in a ditch.’ His black-olive eyes darted this way and that. ‘Coast’s clear?’
He vanished again; when he reappeared, he was leading a huddled form. The sky shuddered, darkening, as if the earth had jolted on its axis.
‘Check the corridor,’ Skip said to Honza.
Roger unbent his tall frame. Blankets slipped from his shoulders. In the silver suit, with a foil helmet moulded over his hair, he appeared formidable. A superhero mask concealed his eyes: Dr Stockmann, when he denounced his townsfolk, would fling the mask aside, showing that he, he alone, was the one honest citizen. Gazing at Roger, Skip knew she was lost in something more than love: it was awe. So what if Brooker had made a hash of the play; Roger wouldn’t. Tonight, she knew, was the start of something big.
‘Trouble.’ Honza pushed back through the stage door.
‘Don’t tell me – Brooker’s left the dressing room?’ This was Skip’s worst fear: they had to get him alone.
‘Dunno. But he’s locked the door.’
‘Damn it.’ Brooker might be ‘preparing’; often, during rehearsals, he had said musingly, fingers knitting beneath his chin, ‘An actor prepares – now what do we mean by an actor prepares?’, as if the players were pupils in his class. Skip thought quickly. Backstage was crowded. But the corridor that angled around to his dressing room afforded privacy. They might still clock him when he opened the door. And if they knew when he was about to leave …