Sebastian Carmichael

by Gary Seeary

  “Well done, Sebastian. Most people can’t look me straight in the eye.”

  We reached Swanston Street. Like most Saturday afternoons it was teeming with people, today more so, probably due to the return of mild weather. William stopped on the corner of Swanston and Collins looking around at all and sundry and then for a long time up Collins Street, oblivious to me for close to two minutes, before appearing satisfied with whatever he was looking at.

  “Sebastian, I think we should go to the cinema … the flicks.”

  William’s voice had changed from posh upper-crust to something like a working man’s, in mid-sentence. He pointed to the Regent Theatre and that’s where he headed.

  “I was plannin’ to go to the flicks tomorra’ with my sister. She might wanna see the same show,” I yelled out, but I don’t think he heard, or wanted to hear me, because he continued to walk fearlessly through a full line of traffic towards the Regent.

  I caught up with this sometimes ‘prefect’ out front of the Regent Theatre, expecting to go up the stairs into the magnificent foyer.

  “You won’t be watchin’ the same show, Seb. Can I call ya Seb, Sebastian?” then, slipping back into his posh self again, “Come along with me.”

  William and I had walked only a short distance up Collins Street before we stopped at a plain door marked ‘Stage Door’.

  “Wait here,” William demanded and then walked back down towards the main entrance, turning left to go inside.

  After twenty minutes or so had ticked by, I was beginning to feel like a shag on a rock, hanging around outside the Stage Door. The few people that came and went through it must have wondered if I was slightly touched waiting for actors that never get to leave the silver screen.

  That was when I thought, this smarty is playing a bloody trick on me.

  I didn’t know him from Adam. This could be some long-winded joke he’d worked out to make me pay for what I said at the Aid for Spain stand. He’s most likely laughing himself silly inside the theatre with Elaine trying to stop him.

  I’d give him a couple more minutes and then I’d be off.

  Why did I ever follow this bloke into town?

  The Stage Door suddenly opened and a rosy-cheeked lad wearing a funny looking bell-boy hat stuck his head out onto the street.

  “Are you Sebastian?” the young lad asked nicely.

  I nodded my head and then he said, “Come along with me.”

  I was led down a dimly lit corridor by the young theatre worker, specks of dust floating onto old boxes and cane chests stacked high against the walls, the corridor disappearing further on, into a murky darkness. This was certainly not what I expected, totally different from the spectacular foyer that must be less than fifty yards away.

  I followed the young lad past doors on our right, labelled in brass lettering: FOYER, STALLS, DRESS CIRCLES, BOXES. Then, no doors for quite a while.

  Finally up ahead, I could see a small shaft of light coming out from a barely open double door, still on our right. I stopped to have a look through the inch wide gap between the two doors into what seemed like a huge abandoned ballroom, amazed to see a rotund red-faced man dancing in front of a similarly round and red-faced boy of perhaps six or seven years of age.

  He was cutting a pretty good rug this big man, spinning his body in full turns and then stretching his arms forward and then back, up and then down while wiggling his fingers. The young fella must have liked the show because he clapped wildly at the large man, when he had finished.

  The theatre lad poked me in the shoulder, urging me to move along. After twenty yards, he stopped and whispered.

  “That’s the boss and his son in there. He doesn’t come in that often, but when he does, he hates people hanging around down here. He would flip his lid if he saw us … and he really hates being watched, too.”

  A little further on, he pointed to a staircase on our right which led, almost straight up, into obscurity.

  “Head to the top. There’s a door on the right. Knock only once, not loudly, and then wait.”

  “Thanks,” I said, although the young lad had already scooted halfway back down the corridor, before I finished the word.

  After I had climbed about thirty steps, I could hear two voices and then giggling, coming from the darkness above.

  Don’t tell me this bloke has a girl up there? He hadn’t mentioned anything about Elaine coming to the pictures, but who knows what this character would do.

  I knocked gently on a small door that I could just make out in the pitch blackness at the top of the stairs and then waited, like I was told. I could hear fits of laughter coming from inside the room. After about thirty seconds the door opened towards me. William was standing there, a finger across his lips, chuckling like a big girl. This took me quite by surprise to see him like this, after what I’d recently seen at the City Baths.

  “Come in, Seb,” William whispered “This is the projection room of the Regent Theatre. Come and meet Sidney.”

  There was a large, shiny machine on the left-hand side of the room making a steady whirring sound, silver disks above and below at the front, a man toiling on the far side. I tried to take in my surroundings as fast as I could. This was a most unusual, stuffy and tight place to be in.

  A large, round-faced bald man popped up from behind the machine.

  “Sidney, meet Seb. He’s a good friend of mine.”

  This William bloke has got more crap in him than a night cart.

  I leant over to shake Sidney’s hand.

  “Pleased to meet you, Seb. William has talked about you. He says you’re a good fighter, is that correct?” the large man asked in an accent I didn’t recognise.

  I gave an annoyed look at William.

  “I think he’s talking about the wrong man, Sidney,” I replied, still embarrassed about my fight at the university. “I try to avoid fights if I can.”

  “Seb, Sidney’s from Poland. He’s only been here for four years. He is one of the hardest working people in the Aid for Spain movement, when he can. Unfortunately, he finds it hard to get away from the projector. There are only a couple of people in Australia that know how to work this monster of a machine.”

  “Nice to meet you, Sidney. I’ve never met anyone from Poland before … actually, I’m not really sure where it is?”

  “It’s stuck between Germany and Russia, Seb. That’s the problem.” The large Polish man laughed out loud, his whole body quivering.

  “Wait until you see this week’s newsreels, Seb,” William said excitedly. “There’s a kangaroo called Peter in boxing gloves fighting some bloke. It’s the funniest thing you’ll ever see. Sidney showed it to me just before you got up here. There are plenty of other newsreels from around the world, I can show you them in Sidney’s small reel viewer, if that’s okay, Sid?”

  “I don’t mind Bill, but I do have to thread the film, ‘reel’ soon; the show as they say, must go on.” Sidney grinned broadly and then disappeared behind the projector again.

  I looked through the rectangular viewing portholes in the wall of the projection room, into the vast theatre. I could see several couples in their finest, searching up and down the aisles trying to locate their seats, only a couple of kids to be seen up here in the dress circle.

  “Sit over here, Seb. Sidney has made up some rough seats for us to see the show. I wouldn’t mind seeing the start of Cain and Mabel, if that’s all right before we watch anything else. What d’ya say, Seb?”

  He’s laying it on a bit thick. I didn’t even know who he was, an hour and a half ago.

  “Yeah, that would be swell.”

  At least at the moment, he wasn’t acting like the angry young man from the Aid for Spain stand in Emerald Hill, or a handler of two enormous bodyguards like he was at the Red Square, and nothing like the uppity senior he was outside the university. He does genuinely seem a different person up here, out of sight. Maybe, he should stop trying to impress everyone with his ‘loose cannon’ act.r />
  But, I wasn’t his friend, and I didn’t like pretending I was. He had to be up to something. What other explanation could there be for someone who knows what’s happening on every street corner, wanting to be friends with a fellmonger.

  I was really enjoying the performance of Marion Davies in Cain and Mabel; such a feisty character. Out of all the Hollywood stars, she’s probably the closest to the down to earth country girls I’m used to. Clark Gable is a good actor too, but not in this flick — not at all convincing as a boxer, doesn’t look like he could knock the skin off a rice pudding — and doubly ridiculous in a star-shaped boxing get-up.

  At intermission, Sidney asked us if we would go down and get him a bottle of creaming soda to have with the cold meat and smelly cheese he laid out on small plates near his machine. William and I snuck back down the dusty corridor again, past the ballroom where the big man had danced for his son, which was dark and empty now. We turned left through the door marked ‘Foyer’, hearing the murmur of the patrons grow louder and louder, until suddenly, we were amongst them, almost blinded by the dazzling lights around the mezzanine.

  “Wait here, Seb. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  William wandered into, and then was lost in, the moving mass of chattering people.

  It seemed I had to be prepared for anything, anytime with this bloke, and there was no way to tell how any of it would turn out. His unpredictability would make anyone nervous, but as far as today was concerned, I was starting to enjoy myself.

  Five minutes later, I saw William push back through the crowd, holding three bottles of creaming soda high in his right hand, and what looked like a couple of really long pieces of liquorice in the other. Two girls followed behind. He really did look like the cat that got the cream, a huge grin on his face, when the two girls squeezed ahead of him.

  “Seb, may I introduce you to Margaret and Danielle, they are Elaine and my best friends at the university. Truthfully, they should be preparing for tutorials but can’t resist Clark Gable at all,” William said, showing off.

  “Pleased to meet you, Seb” Margaret nodded, followed by Danielle, before shaking my hand in turn.

  “I believe your sister is working with Madeline in our kitchen today. Has she cooked before, Seb?” Margaret asked, though fairly sure of the answer.

  “Yes, she loves cooking more than anything,” I replied. “Very nice to meet you both,” I said and then, unsure of what to say next, looked to William to fill the silence.

  “Seb’s sister, whose name, I am sad to say, I have momentarily forgotten, has just arrived down from the Wimmera. I think with her love of cooking, and with Madeline being so nice, the union of the two should work out mutually beneficial.”

  Lucky, you don’t know what Madeline thinks of you.

  “Her name is Leticia, but she prefers Lettie,” I said, looking at the smarmy reaction on William’s face, knowing that he would worm Lettie’s name out of me, somehow. “So, fingers crossed she has a good day.”

  William’s two friends from the university were both pretty; smart and pretty, a good combination. Danielle was the prettiest to me, with pitch black wavy hair and a great smile — and miles out of my league.

  “We’d better get back to Sidney, Seb. He’s doesn’t have much time to eat during intermission. So, I will say adieu girls, and see you back in the Common Room in due course.”

  “Nice meeting you, Danielle, Margaret, and don’t be afraid to say hello to Lettie in the kitchen. If she gets the position, that is.”

  I had shaken both their hands again before we left. Danielle’s hand seemed to hold on longer than Margaret’s, and she also turned around to give me a tiny smile, before heading up the stairs that led back into the theatre stalls.

  William handed me a soda and a liquorice strap and then gave me a small pat on the shoulder, indicating that I should head back towards the corridor.

  “How much do I owe ya, William?” I asked, moving slowly away from the crowd, “I like to pay my own way.”

  “Then, pay me nothing, Seb. That’s what I paid. A lot of people appreciate what we’re doing.”

  “We!” I shot back. “I haven’t done anything. I’m not part of your cause. I have a family that needs me more than people on the other side of the world that I don’t know.”

  “Yes, ‘we’, Sebastian. I think you want to be more than a fellmonger at Cooks. You want a say in your life. I’ve seen it before,” William proclaimed, as we walked through the ‘Staff Only’ door and then turned right into the dimly lit corridor, before speaking to the emptiness in front of him as he strode along.

  “My father would have given up his trade as a mason, if he had to, when he arrived in Adelaide on a ship from Germany, shortly before the Great War. Fortunately, for my father, the demand for masons at the time could never be met.” William’s stride increased, along with his enthusiasm for the subject.

  “Although, financially secure, he soon became dissatisfied working for his mostly ‘Anglophile’ bosses, who took every opportunity to remind him that he was the hated enemy. When he bought a rundown concrete works for a song, the good citizens of Adelaide laughed at him, until he began employing their sons. He gave them a fair day’s pay, for a fair day’s work. Now, they respect him, and so do I.”

  William stopped at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the projection room.

  “I worked in the concrete works at every opportunity, outside of school. I liked the honesty of the men in the crushing mill, and would have happily worked there longer, but my father told me ‘Knowledge, always wins out over brute strength’. So, I was sent to Melbourne University, and told not to come back until I was my own man.”

  We were both silent for a second, unsure if there was anything more we needed to say to each other.

  I’d never had to question myself before. Why would I, my life was simple? I would be working in the job Aunty May teed up for me, for the foreseeable future and probably beyond. But, I had a gnawing feeling that I should make a stand for myself while I still had time, and not just accept the cards as they were dealt.

  “If you want to go, Sebastian, that’s fine by me. You’re not a prisoner,” William asserted. “Now, I must get back to Sidney.”

  William turned his back on me and then started his steep walk up the stairs. I immediately felt that perhaps I’d been unfair to this bloke. He was different, that was for sure, but maybe he did care about people a lot more than I first thought. Why hadn’t I given him the same fair go as I gave everyone else?

  “Are there any more newsreels that have Peter the Kangaroo on them?” I yelled out to William, who stopped midway up the stairs. “I’d like to see ’em if there are.”

  After a few seconds, he turned around and said, “Yeah, Sidney has one that was filmed at Melbourne Zoo, only a couple of months ago, where he rips a hessian bag apart. It’s hilarious. Do ya wanna go up and see if we can find it?”

  I headed up the stairs behind William, feeling a sense of relief that I’d made the right decision to stay.

  *

  The odour of Sidney’s stinky orange cheese had filled the small projection room. I had to politely refuse Sidney’s offer to try some, but, William had no qualms about scoffing down a large slice, saying that to appreciate life one had to try new things, as if I’d been brought up in a cave.

  William searched the side of a stack of film cans that were leaning against the far wall of the projection room. Sidney left us to it, getting back to the second half of Cain and Mabel, which I quietly would have liked to as well, but resigned myself to seeing what gems William came up with.

  William pulled out five film cans and then set them down next to the reel viewer, holding one up, with a big grin on his face.

  “I’ve got it. Peter the Kangaroo in Melbourne!”

  We took it in turns to look down the viewer at the short silent film. It was a real crack-up, Peter ripped a hessian bag filled with wool into a thousand pieces, bits flying in a
ll directions. It shouldn’t have been funny, but it was. Then, we watched a British Pathé newsreel on the Italian Army in Abyssinia, which was rolling artillery, trucks and tanks, up and down rough dusty roads, in pursuit of a native army that appeared to have only spears and ancient rifles. A bit embarrassing I thought for the Italians, taking on an enemy, they couldn’t help but beat.

  On one reel, a lady called Nola Reid danced a daring version of the can-can. On another, the Mitchell’s Christian Singers and Bing Crosby sang ‘I’m An Old Cowhand’. There was too much war footage on the next reel for my liking, so I suggested to William that we get back to watching Cain and Mabel.

  “There’s a new reel on the floor, next to the stack, Bill,” Sidney called to us. “It’s just come in from London, I’m told there’s lots about Spain in it. The boys from the Keno want me to clean it up for the Aid committee’s lantern shows. I haven’t seen it yet, but it’s less than three weeks old. See what you think.”

  I only had to watch thirty seconds of Defenders of Madrid to realise that it would be too much for most people to watch. The poor buggers in Madrid were going off to work while bombs fell all around them. It was courageous and insane at the same time. I stopped watching, but William wouldn’t leave the viewer.

  All of a sudden, he got up and punched the metal back wall of the projection room, setting off a loud vibrating sound that must have been heard from outside our tiny confines.

  Sidney shot up, surprised and annoyed by the sound that William had made, Cain and Mabel still flickering in the background.

  “Sidney, I’m so sorry!” William apologised immediately. “I don’t want to think about Spain any more.”

  William, obviously very upset by what he’d seen, said sorry to me as well and then headed out the door and could be heard racing down the precarious stairs.