The Doubleman

by Christopher Koch

  I recall them on stage at the Loft surrounded by a soft cloud of darkness, picked out in the lemon spotlight, the audience mostly hidden. My hands were sweating from nervousness; Rod sat expressionless beside me. Darcy Burr and Rita Carey stood at the edge of the stage, and I wondered briefly what Rita was thinking; she seemed to wear a doubtful expression. Yet no suggestion, as far as I knew, had yet been made that Katrin should join the group.

  She waited now while Brian tuned his guitar, her hair falling straight to her shoulders in the approved manner, her blue and white dress vaguely Bavarian in style, full-skirted, with a cross-laced bodice — folkish, yet somehow making her look doubly foreign among the turtle-neck skivvies, cheesecloth dresses, coloured singlets and jeans. There was unnerving quiet as Brady tuned, and I heard Katrin make her small, throat-clearing sound, touching her lips with her fingers: a sign of nervousness. But she stood straight and still and stared the audience down, her eyebrows raised in friendly query. Tall beside her, ready to begin, Brady smiled in encouragement as though they were alone; on the mike, I distinctly heard him say, sotto voce: ‘OK, Prima Donna.’

  A ripple of clapping went through the room as they began ‘John Riley’. The Joan Baez recording had made this old British ballad popular with the Loft, and studying the faces about me in the dark, I saw that they were instantly impressed with Katrin. Although hers was a trained voice — taboo at the Loft — its natural simplicity helped it not to seem so; and she had adopted the Anglo-American folksinging technique with ease. What Darcy called her choirboy quality helped — it suited the nineteenth-century ballads, and recalled Joan Baez — but blended with this, making the colouring her own, was the faint, tantalising slur of her accent. The mix was just right; and under it all was the classical soprano’s reserve of power. Filled with the exultant note of loss I’d first heard in ‘The Little Bell’, her voice winged upwards, Brady’s deep under it; and on his face and hers, tipped back into the light, looking somewhere beyond the heads of the audience, there was a shared expression; rapt, infectious and disturbing.

  It made me see how they were matched, for the first time. Superficially incongruous together, formal European and Irish-Australian ‘roughneck’, they’d become the song’s nineteenth-century seaman and the patient girl who waited for him; children of the people, physically vigorous, their strong, broad cheekbones making it plain that their longings were the vital longings of health, untainted by any sickly dreams. I felt no twinge of misgiving, that night; I was proud of them both, and clapped as hard as the rest when it was over.

  Rod Ferguson, still clapping, leaned close to me to call in my ear.

  ‘They’re marvellous, Richard. I’m sold, matey; we’ll make a pilot. But your wife’s got to join the group! You can’t keep that girl to yourself any more.’

  8

  ‘I’m sorry to come bothering you like this.’

  The husky voice was humble, yet it started a singing of alarm. She’d come into the office without warning or explanation; after I’d told Penny to send her along, I’d moved out from behind the desk to greet her, and now we stood facing each other in the middle of the room.

  Rita Carey was even smaller than she looked on stage, and I suspected she was the sort of person who found it difficult to keep her life tidy. Reality was difficult; her low-heeled shoes told you this, out of tune with the good grey suit and white blouse I guessed to be her best. The narrow-waisted jacket was well-cut, but somehow didn’t fit properly. And yet she had dignity.

  ‘I won’t stay more than a moment.’ She darted a respectful glance at the pile of scripts on the desk, twisting the strap of her vinyl shoulder-bag between her fingers. Then she looked up at me with the willed, defiant stare of the timid. ‘I’m hoping you might help me,’ she said.

  I asked her to sit down, and she perched on the edge of a chair, drawing her bottom lip carefully under her front teeth. I sat on the corner of my desk, to be informal; but it didn’t seem to dispel her nervousness. For a moment she said nothing, her green stare going out the window to the low brick office buildings of William Street. It was a country stare, more like a trance than thought, discouraging all empty briskness. She came from Uralla, a little town on the New England tableland; the biggest city she’d needed until now had been Tamworth, the country music capital. It had probably taken most of her reserves of courage to come here alone — even though she’d smiled for audiences in tent shows and town halls for years. Where she came from, offices were places that brewed trouble: fines, health department notices, hire-purchase demands, unnecessary permits. For her, ABS probably belonged to that whole official world the bush held suspect.

  To break the pause, I told her how well I thought the group had gone last night.

  ‘Yes. I’m sure everyone’s happy. Your wife’s a wonderful singer. She’s had training, hasn’t she? I never had any training.’

  She picked at a shred of pink varnish coming away from her thumbnail. Then her head jerked up.

  ‘Maybe you can stop what’s happening. I know you’re going to get us this TV show. You could stop Darcy from pushing me out.’

  I drew a deep breath. ‘That’s nonsense. No one’s pushing you out.’

  Her smile was despairing; I couldn’t look at it. ‘I know this isn’t your idea,’ she said. ‘It’s Darcy’s. But if there’s a series, your wife’ll be in it, not me. I know that.’

  ‘Then you know more than I do.’

  She had grown very pale, and twisted the strap of the bag as though to break it. ‘Did you know Brian and me were on the road together for two years, before he met Darcy again? It’s never been the same since. Darcy’s got all these ideas that don’t suit Brian — but he makes him think they do. Brian and me were happy doing country music, as well as the old bush songs. That’s what Brian’s good at. That’s what he really likes. This new ghost music of Darcy’s doesn’t suit him — but he’ll do whatever Darcy says.’

  Taking in her beseeching stare, and her face’s outmoded prettiness, framed in its copper mane, I thought of someone drowning, trying to pull herself over the edge of a lifeboat. And I saw (as sometimes happens in dealing with a stranger, encountered only once) that this was a true crisis in her life, and no manufactured one, and that I was involved. It was very unwelcome; I didn’t want to know about it, and I inwardly cursed both Brian and Darcy. Her head was bent, now; tears had come, but they were quiet, and she was resisting them, blowing her nose. She wasn’t really the sort of person who made scenes, and I wondered how often she’d been defeated before, resigning herself.

  ‘If there’s a series, you’ll be in it,’ I told her; and I meant it.

  She looked up with faint hope. ‘That’s good of you, to say that. But you don’t know what Darcy’s like. He can’t be stopped by talk.’ Then she checked herself. ‘I’m sorry, I know you and he are old friends. And I’m glad you’ll try to help me.’

  Then her voice took on a tonelessness which had recognised the death of love. ‘Brian’s twenty-seven, but he still doesn’t want to get married. He wants to be free, but to have things all mapped out for him. Darcy trades on that, he arranges everything. It’s silly, isn’t it?’

  I saw her to the door, making bland reassurances in an ABS voice, and watched her retreat towards the lift. She was weighed down by the shoulder-bag like a child carrying adult luggage.

  When I arrived home that night, Katrin was stirring chicken soup in our kitchen on the verandah. She looked up through the steam with a flushed, happy face, and I saw that something important had happened for her.

  ‘Darcy Burr wants me to join the group. He phoned today,’ she said. ‘He’s got wonderful ideas for the material we’ll do.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t like Darcy.’

  She looked faintly disconcerted. ‘He’s a bit menacing when you first meet him — but he can be quite charming. And you’re right — his musical ideas are brilliant. I think the group’s going to be extraordinary. I’ll work every day to lea
rn those songs.’

  She hugged me, youthfully excited. She’d been watching my face for the answering enthusiasm she expected; not seeing it, she leaned back and tried to read my expression. ‘What is it? Aren’t you pleased?’

  I told her about Rita, watching the joy fade from her face.

  ‘But Darcy didn’t say anything about pushing her out.’ Her voice had become thoughtful and questioning. ‘It’s possible to have two women in this sort of group, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s possible, but that’s not what Darcy wants.’

  She frowned. ‘And what about Brian? What does he say?’

  ‘He doesn’t even know at the moment.’

  ‘But surely Brian’s loyal to Rita? He must be.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Brian’s always gone from one girl to another. He doesn’t like to be pinned down.’

  We sat side by side on the couch in the unlit living-room, and she stared at the floor in silence. Her responses had been more or less the right ones, but there had been a flatness in her voice that worried me. Now she asked softly: ‘But can’t you persuade them to take me on without dropping Rita? After all, you’ll be in charge of the show.’

  ‘I can try. But it’s not how Darcy sees the group.’

  ‘Darcy thought I’d be just right for the elf sound.’ She stared wide-eyed, with a look of farewell, at the light-filled frame of the double doors where she and Brian had practised.

  ‘Yes. You’d be just right.’ I put my arm about her shoulders. Her body was stiff and sad, and didn’t yield.

  ‘But I have to give it up,’ she stated quietly. She was still looking at the doors.

  ‘No. But we can’t just forget Rita, can we?’

  ‘They don’t want Rita!’ Her vehement tone made me start; she’d swung around on the couch to face me, in the half-light coming from the kitchen. ‘If they did, I wouldn’t say any more. But from what you say, there can’t really be two of us, and they want the one who has a feeling for this music, isn’t that true? And yet you expect me to stand aside.’

  ‘I don’t expect that. But Rita’s stuck with Brian for years. She’s owed something.’

  She stared in silence. She was honourable in her instincts, and I saw that she was struggling with herself, breathing deeply. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter, but full of vehemence.

  ‘I’m nearly thirty. I put Jaan first for a long time, and I spent years being something second-rate; a funny migrant, singing songs that your people don’t want to hear — songs for those people who have only the past to care about, and no future.’ I took her hand, but it was clenched into a fist. ‘Don’t you see? This was my great chance to break out; and I don’t think I’ll ever have another.’

  She glanced at the doors again; she twisted the wedding-ring on her finger. I had never known her like this; I saw an alien capacity for wild despair that alarmed me, and I also knew that what she said was true: it was confirmed by the first, fine lines at the corners of her eyes. She still looked no more than twenty-four; but for how much longer?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You must do what you think right, Richard. But I think you want to please everyone, and that never works. In the end, you may be hated by everyone.’

  ‘Not by you, I hope.’

  ‘Not by me.’ She laid her head on my shoulder as though exhausted, and once again we fell silent.

  It was a silence I continued to find worrying.

  Katrin had taken the enterprise of marriage very seriously. We’d been married in a Lutheran church; I’d agreed to this to please her, since I’d lapsed in my Catholicism, and she’d treated the ceremony with great reverence. For the first few months she’d concentrated on decorating the flat as though it were her whole aim in life. She enjoyed making a home; she enjoyed cooking, and had been filled with pleasure that her grandfather and Jaan lived more comfortably than they’d done at Beaumont House. She’d given up her daytime job as a receptionist, and I’d unconsciously begun to think of her singing at night as a paid hobby; had almost begun to see her as the conventional wife. When I left home in the mornings, she would wave me goodbye from a window of our upstairs verandah, and I would carry away with me up Challis Avenue the image of her broad blonde head and water-grey eyes, watching me go. I would look back twice or more, and when the window gaped empty, I would feel a faint pang. It was the stage of marriage when there could never be enough reassurance; never enough love.

  Now, sitting on the couch, I saw that I’d been living in make-believe for these past few months. Singing was no hobby, it was her central passion, and she didn’t see herself solely as a wife; she’d perhaps been waiting all the time for just this moment. Maybe she’d almost given up hope that it would arrive; but that only made the threat of its withdrawal all the less bearable.

  But our problem was solved very simply. Two weeks later, Rita Carey disappeared.

  It was Brian who told me the news. He and I had met in a pub on the Cross for a drink after I finished work. I hadn’t seen him for these past two weeks; Darcy had wanted time for them to work on his arrangements for the songs before we met again.

  ‘Where did she go?’ I asked.

  ‘I dunno.’ Brian drank his middy of beer off in three long gulps and pushed both our glasses across the laminex counter, signalling to the barmaid for fresh ones. He didn’t want to talk about it, and as always with Brian in this mood, it was almost impossible to extract information from him.

  ‘So you’ve broken up permanently?’

  His quick sidelong glance was like a warning. ‘She’s shot through, hasn’t she?’ He picked up his fresh glass. ‘We weren’t jibing any more as musicians, anyway. She didn’t like this new stuff we’re working on — she was getting to be a real pain about it. Darcy’s right — with an opportunity like you’re giving us coming up, we can’t be half-hearted, can we? Right?’ He looked almost pugnacious, as though challenging denial. ‘She’ll be better off in Tamworth,’ he said.

  ‘Is that where she’s gone?’

  ‘No. I told you — she’s just disappeared. I’ve got no bloody idea where she is at present. I can’t find her, if you want to know the truth.’

  He had tried. He had phoned her parents in Uralla, as well as Country and Western friends in Tamworth; but they knew nothing. He’d even searched through the Cross and the city. But she’d vanished, and the short note she’d left had given him no clue as to her intentions.

  ‘Is this anything to do with Darcy?’

  I got the sidelong glance again. ‘Why should it be? Forget it, Dick. Women come and go. Y’ can’t go on being serious about them, or you end up in harness, mate. That’s all right for steady blokes like you.’

  I suspected pain somewhere; but he remained expressionless, drinking, and I decided to say nothing about her appeal to me. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘the Rymers’ll be OK. We’ve got Katrin now, haven’t we?’

  9

  Now Burr and I began our planning sessions for the pilot programme.

  Brady and Katrin rehearsed the songs with Darcy at other times, while I was at work. They weren’t much involved in the actual mounting of the programme, recognising the fact that Faery was a territory in which Darcy and I specialised. So he and I were left to ourselves there.

  Burr was endlessly receptive and deferential to my production ideas. I was now bent on making the main presentation and style of the group revolve around the English and Scots ballads of the supernatural; my desk at work was piled high with books on fairy and supernatural lore, and with reproductions of fairy paintings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and particularly from the Victorian era: heyday of Faery.

  ‘You’ll have to get out of the jeans and rollnecks,’ I said. ‘You’ll need medieval-style costumes, like people out of a Richard Dadd painting. Do you think Brian’ll agree? He doesn’t like anything fancy.’

  ‘He’ll bloody well have to agree, mate. You’ve got the image we want, spot on; it’s your show. It�
�s going to be like nothing anyone’s seen. No one but you could produce this, Dick. I was right.’

  He was full of glee and admiration. It was partly flattery, of course, I knew this; but I could also tell that he’d made a shrewd decision that my ideas were going to work for him, that they matched his own, and in some ways went beyond anything he could have conceived.

  I was working in my toy theatre again.

  Darcy’s great strength lay in the melodies and arrangements he devised for the ballads themselves; and in this area I deferred to him, scarcely questioning his choices, and returning his admiration. We would pore over Child and other sources together, searching out those ballads of the supernatural that appealed to us; we would decide on the mood and style, and I would leave the rest to him. Sometimes he used traditional melodies; more usually he fitted the words to variants on these melodies of his own devising, with instrumental passages in between the verses that were startlingly modern in their style and in the use of the electric guitars. But it all worked; it had a strange harmony. He was influenced by the British group Pentangle; such things were in the air. But a good deal of what he was doing was entirely new, and his own; when he said it was like nothing else, he told the truth: so far as we knew, some of the Child ballads we were searching out hadn’t been performed in recent times, and certainly not recorded.

  We thought almost as one, as the weeks went by; we excited each other with constant fresh ideas, and I was infected with Darcy’s comical yet dark glee. We laughed like conspirators, as though there were an underlying point to the presentation, never put into words by either of us, which went beyond mere entertainment, and would catch people unawares, subtly undermining their simple enjoyment of a folk group, and drawing them into that Otherworld they thought had no power any more, its messages carried by the weird electric whine of the guitars. Our sessions grew longer and longer; we would phone each other at all hours of the day and night, so that even Katrin began to wonder about the degree of our obsession.