Rita Carey came on now, and she and Brian sang a number of the traditional Irish songs the Loft approved of, made popular by the Clancy Brothers. Her intonation still carried traces of her years in Country and Western: certain plangent last notes were country, and so was her frilled white blouse, with which she wore a black velvet skirt; so was her wide smile, which appealed for friendliness. She was small, with a small-chinned Celtic face and a mane of waving copper hair falling to her shoulders; her voice was quite good but somewhat frail: a dependent voice, which seemed uncertain when it wasn’t blended with Brian’s. But the Loft was prepared to like her, and applauded at special length when she sang ‘Aileen Aroon’, which she did as a solo, the two male guitars gently following after. She sounded curiously alone, as though singing on a moorland; and the song somehow fitted her. I guessed that she and Brian were lovers; he stood close and proprietary, his size exaggerating her smallness.
The last song, ‘The Bard of Armagh’, was Brian’s solo. He went back to acoustic guitar, and Burr abandoned the electric bass for a penny whistle — its aged piping mingling perfectly with the Ramirez. The last of my hostility towards Darcy now ebbed away, as he piped with eyes closed, white nose pointing.
How could anyone vicious produce these far, sweet sounds? The feeling I’d had long ago in the Sir Walter Masterman came back: I wanted to interweave my life with theirs; more: I wanted, irrationally, to raise them high. We would all live inside their songs, and their simple yet enviable talent, the raw matter I lacked, would be half mine too: I would contain them all in my own life.
I knew all this was absurd; but as long as the music lasted, common-sense was cancelled. And as Brady performed the song which would become his signature, head thrown back, eyes half closed, he was no longer anyone I knew: I saw him as the line of girls at the front were doing — the groupies in their cheesecloth dresses who had become his first fans. His tangled brown hair and broken nose were not of today at all; he had come from somewhere else: the ageing harper of the ballad, marked out by Sergeant Death. Soon, too soon, he would disappear, no matter how much they yearned for him to stay.
Under the applause, I looked at Katrin, who was clapping hard. She was quite unaware of my glance; her face, still turned towards Brian, could perhaps be called thoughtful, and there were tears in her eyes. This didn’t startle me; she had a Slavonic readiness for tears, especially when music moved her.
I led her over to the wooden barrier next to the stage which hid the singers waiting to come on, and behind which the group had vanished.
Brady and Burr were crouched in a corner, packing away their instruments; Rita Carey wasn’t to be seen. Darcy caught sight of us and waved, his expression slyly elated.
Straightening up, Brady looked surprised, then delighted. He advanced on me, his face adopting an expression of mock menace, waggling in his hand a phantom strap.
‘Assume the position, Mr Miller. A little taste of Doctor Black.’
I held out my hand and he gave me two phantom cuts. We doubled with laughter, while Katrin stood waiting. I was glad to see him as I’d seldom been glad to see anyone.
‘Jesus, you were good,’ I said. ‘How did you get so good?’
‘Introduce us to Mrs Miller,’ he said. He was looking at Katrin over my shoulder, and I saw her as he must do: her courteous smile and firm, friendly gaze a little too formal for the Loft.
He almost certainly perceived her as someone more correct than he was used to dealing with; when I’d introduced her, he put a hand to his mass of curling hair. ‘Take no notice of the hair,’ he said seriously. ‘It’s a wig.’
She burst out laughing, and I was pleased; I wanted them to like each other.
3
Peak hour at the Hasty Tasty, the Cross’s roaring vortex; the permanent, seedy midnight of the old Australia.
The pubs are closed and the drunks are in; The Beatles, Elvis Presley and The Beach Boys wail and thunder from a giant, glowing jukebox in a corner. A sign on the back wall announces ambiguously: WE NEVER CLOSED. Up under the canopy of the vastly high, slaughterhouse-pink ceiling, it’s still the nineteenth century, the ancient mouldings defeating all trivial attempts at modernisation. But down below here it’s 1965, as sailors, derelicts and prostitutes jostle by the door for hamburgers and steak sandwiches, visit each other’s booths in the restaurant-section like Hollywood celebrities, or fall dead drunk off the stools at the counter. In the big window on the street, watched through the glass by a knot of appreciative spectators, a little man in a cook’s hat makes the hamburgers, flipping them in rows on a big black hotplate, distributing watered-down tomato sauce from a basin, toasting the buns. Shrieks and growls rise from the arena behind him; Navy men locked in combat writhe past him like blue eels, but his starved comedian’s face remains sad and tolerant, presiding over the Hasty’s hearth.
Oblivious of the din, Brian Brady and I sit talking in one of the booths, drinking the Hasty’s terrible grey coffee.
It’s a cold night; rain whips along Darlinghurst Road outside. Brady is hunched in a navy-blue pea-jacket, both hands locked around his cup, looking like a figure from one of the ballads he sang two nights ago; for me, he’s still enclosed in their echoes. Close to, I find more lines in his face than I saw at the Loft: he looks thirty. There’s a redness about his nostrils, perhaps from cold.
Passing here half an hour ago, walking home from a late production in the William Street studios, I was startled to see him sitting in the booth alone, and came in to join him. The Hasty seemed an odd place for him to be at this hour, especially when the Victoria Street flat that he and the other two shared was three minutes’ walk away.
‘Rita’s out this evening,’ he told me. ‘And I needed to get away from Darcy for a while.’ He grinned to take the edge off this, in a way that invited no further discussion.
I questioned him about his life over the past eight years. I was glad of the chance to talk to him, and interested in his time as a seaman, when he worked on overseas freighters. I was ready to see this period in a romantic light; but he dismissed it.
‘All you see is the bloody ports. And most of the time on ships I was scraping paint off the sides. No sea shanties now, Dick.’
He spent a year surviving in Britain, he told me, where he sang in pubs and clubs as the folk revival was born; it was there that he built his repertoire of traditional ballads. Then he came back to Australia and eventually found Darcy Burr again. At present, he said, he and Darcy and Rita were only just surviving; they had one regular job, playing flamenco and sentimental Spanish songs in a small restaurant in the city for a miserable fee.
‘The flamenco still comes in handy,’ he says now. ‘It impresses them in the fancy restaurants. I’m glad Brod taught us.’
‘What became of Broderick?’
He looks at me from under his brows, sipping coffee. Then he puts down the cup. He doesn’t answer at first, but glances across to the doorway, where the crowd struggles at the hamburger counter. Mr Smith appears outside, halting in front of the window in his dripping felt hat and eternal, masklike sunglasses. His age is hard to tell; perhaps fifty. He’s said to be an Englishman of good background come down in the world; his mouth is refined and superior, and he surveys the Hasty with an unpleasant smile, hands in his overcoat pockets, detained by this onion-smelling turmoil of the vulgar, and the hamburgers sizzling on the iron. Then he moves on through the rain, in his broken sandshoes.
‘Brod?’ Brian says. ‘That was a bit queer. Brod disappeared.’
‘Disappeared? How?’
‘He vanished about five years ago. Old Sandy told us about it. No one knew where Brod went, or why; he didn’t tell them at the bookshop he was leaving. He got listed as a missing person by the police, eventually. But Darcy’s sure he’s dead. I am too, actually.’
‘How do you know?’
He begins to roll a cigarette; then he looks up at me sharply from under his brows, the half-made cylinder gone still in his
hands, as though he’s wondering how far I can be trusted. ‘We know because Darcy calls up his spirit. He comes pretty regularly.’
Seeing my expression, his hungry blue eyes drain of friendliness; or at least become empty. ‘You don’t believe it; but it’s true,’ he says. ‘Brod gives Darcy advice. Darcy says that when we play he can feel Brod helping us. I’ve felt it myself. You can say what you like about that, mate.’
I can think of nothing to say to this; I’m embarrassed. These are callow games that should have been left behind in Harrigan Street; but they are still plainly real to Brady.
He lets a small breath of laughter escape him now, and says: ‘You didn’t like Darcy contacting spirits, in the end, did you, Dick? Neither did I. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.’ He lights the cigarette abruptly, and something in the tightening of his cheek-muscles makes me realise that he’s tense in some way; his eyes avoid mine. When he speaks next, his glance warns me not to disagree. ‘Darcy’s got a lot of strange ideas, but he’s also got a lot of talent. I need him. Rita and I really want to succeed with this group, and it’s Darcy who’s going to get us there.’ Under his worn, newly adult face, I see the boy’s looking out half-defiantly, as it once did in the St Augustine’s yard in front of the old bicycle shed. The image is projected on the noisy air between us, while the Everly Brothers wail from the jukebox.
‘But you’re the real talent in the group,’ I say. ‘It’s your singing that does most to carry it, Brian.’
He shakes his head. ‘It’s Darcy who pushes us. He learned a lot about scoring music from Brod, and he’s got a real flair as an arranger. He can play any instrument he picks up. And he’s the one who handles agents and managers. I don’t want to know about all that commercial crap. Darcy’s sharp.’
‘Yes, he’s sharp.’
‘He’s been into some strange things. He even worked in Scientology once. And he went away for a year.’
I look blank.
‘He did time a couple of years back, in Melbourne. A restaurant-owner owed Darcy for two weeks’ work playing guitar, and wouldn’t pay him. So Darcy beat the shit out of him, and cleaned out his till. He got a short spell in Pentridge for that.’
He looks towards the door again, and I seem to see a shadow cross his face. ‘Here the bastard is now,’ he says. ‘He must have followed me out.’ His tone seems cheerful enough; but I wonder whether it’s natural.
Burr is moving towards us between the booths; and his appearance is changed. He’s taken to wearing rimless glasses, which give him a stern, almost schoolmasterly air. There’s something pedantically neat about him, no matter how shabby his dress; I feel sure he would have been neat in prison. It’s difficult to see him normally, now, knowing he’s been in that netherworld; but as he slides into the booth and grins at me over the table, I smile back as naturally as I can.
‘Well mate — what do you think?’ He radiates anticipation; he’s referring to their performance at the Loft.
‘You were terrific,’ I say. ‘You’ll be regulars there now.’
But he shakes his head in happy dismissal. ‘No, Dick, no. That’s not what we want. We’re aiming for something a whole lot bigger.’
I sit back, retreating a little from his stare. ‘Lots of luck,’ I say. ‘What is it you want?’
He goes on smiling with an air of triumph. ‘Our own show on ABS TV,’ he says. ‘And you’re going to get us there, Dick.’
I laugh outright, and look at Brian, but his serious face already knows about this; he watches Burr. And in spite of my resentment at Darcy’s cheek, I feel an insidious excitement begin to churn in me. Isn’t this what I wanted, watching them at the Loft?
‘Your own show? That’s impossible,’ I say. And I bring out all the reasons, talking like the smooth ABS executive I’m becoming.
‘To get an appearance on TV, let alone a show of your own, you have to have a big reputation. But you and Brian aren’t even known. Besides, I’m not even a regular television director; I’m a radio man.’
‘But you could do it if they let you, couldn’t you? You could direct a music show, couldn’t you, Dick?’
Yes, I say patiently, I’ve done a few TV productions; but what he wants can’t happen. A group would have to be extraordinary, to be given its own show.
‘We’re extraordinary.’ Burr’s smile has gone, and he leans towards me with his elbows on the table. When he becomes emphatic, he still cranes his neck like a goose; it emerges now from his black rollneck pullover, and his face comes close to mine. He peers, his myopic gaze almost threatening behind the new glasses, which I’m sure he doesn’t intend.
‘I’m telling you, we’re like no other group. We’re going to be terrific.’ His nasal voice gives the last word magical importance; he emphasises key phrases like a salesman, creating a hypnotic effect; I can’t look away. It’s a performance I half admire, despite my resistance.
‘You saw why we’re different,’ he says. ‘The electric backing. No other folk group uses that, right? We’re no dreary ethnic folkies; we’ll get the rock audience as well as the folk audience. The people who listen to the Beatles will listen to us! So what do you think about that?’ His air of triumph has a deeper current beneath: fanaticism, perhaps.
‘I’m not denying you’re good. I might even be able to get you an appearance,’ I said. ‘But not a series, Darcy. Be sensible.’
‘There’ll be a series.’ He’s absurdly confident; he glances at Brian with the air of one who confirms something, and Brian’s look is respectful. It’s as though they both knew I’d come in here tonight.
The din of the Hasty grows louder: it’s time to go. On the jukebox, the Beatles are singing ‘Love Me Do’ for the third time; and in a booth across the aisle, a middle-aged derelict with thick grey hair and a face the colour of dough and raspberries is beating time frantically with two teaspoons, lost in an ecstasy of second-hand creation. For him, the Hasty is a no-land of no hope; when the jukebox stops, he’ll know it once more.
Burr and Brady have as much chance of their own show as he does, I think. But I find myself agreeing to get them an appointment with Rod Ferguson.
4
The Australian Broadcasting Service was a nation within the nation. Inside her capacious empire, Aunty harboured many territories and breeds; and the producers and journalists who were the organisation’s aristocracy were seen in those days not just as broadcasters but as part of the establishment that ran the country. Mechanics of dreams with permanent tenure, we inhabited a world of make-believe on Federal Government pay, with full superannuation on retirement. What could be more desirable? I grew sardonic about this at times, but mostly I appreciated my luck.
To Burr and Brady, I could tell, my situation was entirely enviable, and they probably had a childish belief that I could do anything for them I wanted to, no matter what I might say. But by the Monday afternoon following our meeting in the Hasty, when they were due to call in at my office, I’d begun to cool on the situation.
I’d set up a meeting for them here with Rod Ferguson, and now I half regretted it. Theirs simply wasn’t the sort of group that ABS would mount a show for, I thought, and Rod would probably see me as the type who went in for nepotism; I’d told him Brian was my cousin.
The phone rang; it was the secretary in the main office. ‘There are some people here say they’ve got an appointment to see you, Richard. A Mr Burr and his friends.’ Her voice sank, dubious and inviting family confidences; fortyish Penny was a typical ABS vestal virgin. ‘Have they really got an appointment dear — or are they off the streets?’
We both knew what this meant; it was a standing ABS joke. People were always trying to get in off the streets to the corridors and studios of dreams: actors and writers who would never act or write, as well as the purely deranged, trying to climb out of the Cross into another life, as I’d done. Wenceslas Kupka had once got as far as the Director of Radio Features, brandishing wads of poems and inflammatory pamphl
ets; a uniformed commissionaire had escorted him shouting from the building.
‘They’re OK. Send them along,’ I said. A winter downpour was filling the gulch of William Street, seven floors below; waiting at my desk, I sat and watched the cars sending up bow waves.
When they straggled in, making the small room seem overcrowded, I became even more convinced that the whole thing was a mistake. It was hard to believe that this was the group I’d found so enviable under the lemon spotlights at the Loft. They all looked bedraggled, plebeian and pallid, and they made me acutely conscious of the formal suit and tie that ABS expected its production staff to wear. At the same time, looking around them curiously in their worn jeans and damp dufflecoats, the two men made the office fussy and sterile. They stood against the bookcase with a dubious respectfulness and examined the tall radio monitor in the corner.
‘What’s this, mate?’
I explained.
‘Jeeze. Looks like a coffin.’ They kept their voices low, as though in church, while I phoned Rod’s office to let him know they were here.
Rita Carey sat timidly in front of my desk, legs crossed, having given me her wide stage smile. I would catch her watching me as though trying to guess what I might do; plainly, there’d been much discussion. She was pretty, I thought, and somehow likeable, but she lacked the glow she’d had on stage, and had the hinted melancholy of those who are determinedly cheerful. Her mane of copper hair didn’t look very well-brushed, and her pale blue dress had a dingy look. Her white legs were bare, and the sandals she wore despite the rain were plainly at the end of their life.
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