Holden's Performance

by Murray Bail

  ‘This shithouse system. Those cheapskate bastards.’

  In his drive to cut expenses he'd hired the public address system from a huckster operating from a garage, not far from the theatre, and so transgressed the first law of exchange: you only get what you pay for. Now he was paying for it, standing there flapping like a scarecrow.

  Moving onto the stage Shadbolt whispered, ‘Hang on a sec’ And as Screech stood humbly to one side he did what the audience had expected all along.

  ‘Testing, testing. One, two, three…’

  The four strokes of the internal combustion engine. Those numbers were repeated electronically in public places all over the country throughout the fifties. And then with his spare hand Shadbolt activated in a single downward stroke the waiting amateur orchestra. It was intended to open with ‘God Save the Queen’ anyway.

  Standing in the wings was a man with sandy combed hair, wearing a tuxedo.

  ‘Well done,’ he winked as Shadbolt came off. ‘That's the spirit. Alex can piss off now. I'll get behind the wheel. I can do without all that electronic garbage.’ He shook Shadbolt's hand and patted him on the back, all in the one motion. ‘Hoadley. Senator Sid Hoadley.’

  He strode onto stage. Acknowledging the applause he placed his arm around the proprietor's defeated shoulders.

  ‘Thankyou for the introduction, my good friend Alex—what'd you say your last name was, Alex? “Screech”, that's it. Well, what a coincidence?’ He laughed with the crowd. ‘Thanks anyway for all the hard yakka that's gone into this, a great national occasion, where we can all sit back and feast our eyes on some of our young lovelies. I must say this is a night I've been looking forward to.’

  Already Hoadley had one hand resting in his side pocket, his thumb forming a fin in the dark waters of his jacket. No need for the microphone and all the wiring: Sid Hoadley, the human loudspeaker, could penetrate the farthest reaches of the most cavernous hall. His was a foghorn of confidence, matching the legs-apart stance, helped along by the voltage of his smile.

  Shadbolt hardly noticed his friend stumble past.

  ‘Don't talk to me,’ Alex muttered.

  Shadbolt should have been patrolling the aisles looking for trouble. Instead he leaned forward watching the Senator; and the perspiring aspirants queued up behind him, first in bathing costumes, designed to throw their vital statistics into bold relief, before changing for the final round into rustling ballgowns. At the sound of their names they brushed past Shadbolt, switching on the Colgate smile, and entered the limelight.

  By loudly cracking regional jokes and then turning and suddenly speaking softly, almost privately, Hoadley had the happy knack of putting each contestant at ease. Then he'd turn to the audience, speaking loudly again.

  ‘Now what's your name again? Speak up, darling, I'm hard of hearing at my age. Now what are your interests in life? Don't tell me, don't tell me. Mathematics, mountain climbing, car engines. What? Music, parties, swimming? Do these old ears of mine hear correctly? How about a swim tonight in the moonlight? Beg your pardon, cancel that! What are you laughing about? Ladies and gentlemen, we have here in contestant number four a girl who doesn't stop laughing. That's all I can say. Why, I remember the first beauty contest I entered…That was before the war. All right, I'll change the subject. Do you have a boyfriend? Don't answer that! Are your mum and dad here tonight? What? All the way down from northern Queensland? Where are they? Let's have a look at you. Stand up Mr and Mrs—. Give them a big hand, You have a very beautiful young lady for a daughter, you must be very proud of her. I think Queensland is in with a very big chance.’ Drums and fanfare. ‘And now’—sunny Miss Queensland tripped off scoring an impressive nine out of ten in the smile department—’and now, before we come to our next young lady, I'd like to ask something. What exactly is a beautiful woman? Now if you ask me—’

  Grinning encouragement Shadbolt half-turned, and brushed against silk.

  His mouth opened. He hardly recognised Karen standing tall at his elbow.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I'm terribly nervous, I'm shaking like a fish.’

  Her brother looked at her.

  ‘Whose idea was this? When did you arrive?’

  ‘—and now from Ad-elaide, South Austrylia, the city of churchyards, wine vineyards, the city of light—’

  Shadbolt patted her slippery hip. ‘I'd better wish you luck.’

  ‘Do I look all right?’

  Brothers are supposed to be blind to the attractions of their sisters. ‘The rest weren't up to much,’ he shuffled. ‘You'll be right.’ Rising to the occasion Karen stepped out and began hesitantly smiling.

  She was different from the others. Hoadley saw it immediately. The eradication of innocence produced a stronger, complex beauty. An adult firmness had entered her throat and eyes.

  Turning his back on the audience Hoadley winked over his shoulder. ‘This is just between me and Miss South Austrylia. You're not nervous, are you?’ he murmured. ‘No need to be nervous.’

  At that moment the flow of the parade was broken by a voice somewhere in the audience. People in the stalls turned around. Even Sid Hoadley who had answered back hundreds of hecklers in his loud career was taken by surprise, for he felt himself judged by the beauty alongside him, and his famous foghorn voice of confidence was no match for this high-pitched, persistent irritant. Karen waited patiently, smiling with interest.

  A hand roughly shook Shadbolt's elbow. Alex Screech had his clip-on tie askew, and breathed whisky fumes.

  ‘This is no time to stand around perving. Your job's down in the aisles. That's what I'm paying you for. Now get fucking moving. There's trouble and I want it rooted out before the whole bloody show becomes a shambles.’

  Blinking and nodding Shadbolt brushed past blushing Miss Tasmania and Miss Northern Territory. The boss had never been harsh to him before.

  He had no trouble spotting the agitator in the middle row, and as he muttered excuse-mes, making his way past raised knees, he recognised the voice.

  ‘You lot all coming here gawping at women's bodies—look at you. Women's bodies being paraded half naked like this, to feed your eyes on. What's wrong with you all? Nothing better to do? You should be ashamed. Everybody here. You men, how would you like your wives to. And look we have an elected government Minister here. Take a look at him. He's joining in too.’ Glancing up at Shadbolt she cried, ‘Don't you lay a finger on me!’ and turned back to the stage: ‘So is this government policy? Answer that. Does the government condone the view of women whereby—’

  Lifting the shouting body Shadbolt felt something become stuck between the seats. Bending down he found a pair of embarrassing crutches.

  ‘You only had a walking stick the other day,’ he gritted.

  Struggling past the knees again he carried Harriet half over his shoulder, the clumsy crutches protruding at pathetic angles, her two fingers forming McBee's V for victory behind her back, a hectic flash-illuminated image which would appear the following day in the tabloid papers.

  ‘Give her a big hand, ladies and gentlemen,’ Hoadley bellowed. ‘That looks like Miss Austrylia, 1928.’

  In the foyer Harriet said in a quiet voice,

  ‘You can put me down now.’

  ‘What did you have to go doing that for?’ Shadbolt asked. ‘Why do you get involved?’

  Alex Screech came towards them, shouting at a distance.

  ‘I spose you're happy now. You and your crazy ideas on what's right and what's wrong. Everybody's having a good time, and you come and fuck the show up good and proper. And what about these?’ He pointed to the crutches, ‘I've never seen them before. Just to spoil the show and embarrass me. I know. If you weren't a woman,’ he said through his teeth, ‘I'd kick you in the balls.’

  ‘I'm driving her home,’ said Shadbolt quickly. He could feel her body leaning against him.

  ‘I don't know what the Senator's going to say about all this. There are some very im
portant people inside. They're so important they don't like photography. And this is going to land on page one, you'll see.’

  Applause as the band struck up. Another contestant—it was Miss Northern Territory—traipsed off stage in slightly scuffed high heels.

  ‘Alex sure was hopping mad,’ Shadbolt shook his head as he turned into Kangaroo Street. He switched the engine off. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I think I'll have a drink.’

  Carrying the crutches Shadbolt cracked his head on the doorway. Harriet moved about, switching on lamps.

  He watched her legs plait around the stout walking stick, revealing her buttocks.

  ‘I tell you what. That stick of yours, it goes with you. I can't see you without it.’ In his innocence Shadbolt was tactless. He was looking around the room, not at her. ‘It makes you stronger than anyone else. You wouldn't think so, but it does. You know how when you picture someone…Last week I was going to drop in. We wondered where you'd got to. But Alex had me doing all sorts of things.’

  Harriet remained standing.

  ‘I'll get you the drink,’ Shadbolt said. ‘Go on, you sit down.’

  A lamp on her left illuminated one side of her face. A small, dark-haired figure half lost among the slate-coloured cushions. Shadows softened and distorted her crippled curves. Curled up warm she could fit in his hand. She was a snake.

  ‘You're a nice boy.’

  ‘Boy?’

  She held out her glass. ‘More.’

  A soft glow blurred her face; Harriet began smiling more. Laughing, the white throat bulged. He'd stood up and looked out the large window across the roofs and pines of Manly. So many twinkling lights of privacy. To the right above the broken teeth of rooftops the glow of the Epic Theatre lightened the sky.

  ‘Alex sure is going to have an electricity bill. I can see it from here.’

  ‘I don't want to hear about him or his stupid theatre, ever again.’

  Shadbolt nodded.

  ‘You can come here.’ She held out her hand.

  Lifted onto his knee she slid all over him. Parts of her dismantled. She came to pieces. Whole areas fell away and merged again. She was many places at once. Unstrapped, the metal on her leg suddenly fell away. Her irrational curves redoubled, her head tilted back, snapped forward. Curled up and crouching she guided him like a dog, shuddering cries which resembled distraught laughter; it happened, amazing him.

  The symmetrical statistics of Miss South Australia produced the unanimous verdict. Accepting the tiara of cut glass she held her back perfectly straight and used her long-gloved palm to wipe away the uncontrollable tears of surprise. ‘She's streets ahead,’ one of the judges, a manufacturer of undergarments, unwittingly murmured.

  But Karen herself never fully realised the unusual depth of her beauty.

  The runners-up graciously stepped forward and kissed her left and right. There was humid Miss Queensland, and Miss Tasmania with the apple cheeks whose tapering torso duplicated the pubic shape of the island. The others stood in a line behind, smiling.

  The new Miss Australia's only weakness, and a touching one at that, had been in the word department, which is understandable considering her history of heat and wide open, flat space. When asked, ‘What are your interests?’ she shot back into the mike like a good Shadbolt, ‘I don't have any that I know of. I'm happy the way I am.’

  The contestants had all been coached in responses by their sponsors and chaperones; with Karen, Frank McBee had assumed the responsibilities of both. In her excitement on stage she had clean forgotten his instructions. When asked what had she learnt working for spastic children during the fund-raising she should have reeled off in a sing-song voice, ‘Everyone's greatest disability is other people's attitudes towards them,’ etc. Instead, Karen seemed to take a bite out of the microphone, ‘Gee, I don't know. They look so awful. First of all I wanted to run away, but they're really very nice little people underneath.’

  Miss Australia was photographed leaning against the yellow relief map in the foyer, clasping a bunch of Everlastings. It had been Alex Screech's idea. A plug for his theatre. Standing next to her the Right Hon. Sidney Hoadley appeared to be whispering sweet-nothings in the beauty queen's ear. Coming between them her war-hero chaperone, McBee, waved his mulga walking stick, and from one pinstriped arm hanging onto her bare shoulders, gave his characteristic victory sign.

  ‘She's a long-limbed filly,’ the Minister of Commerce said out of the corner of his mouth. He winked at McBee, ‘And you know what you do with horses.’

  ‘That'll do. That's my little girl-daughter you're talking about.’

  Sid Hoadley gave a friendly laugh. His top lip rolled back revealing a row of polished hearts.

  Slipping away from them Karen tugged at Screech's sleeve.

  ‘Where's Holden gone? I want to see my brodier.’

  ‘That's funny,’ Screech scratched his neck. He felt uncomfortable with women. ‘I haven't seen him myself. And I need him to clean up.’

  ‘I wanted him to congratulate me.’

  ‘It's like World War Three,’ said Screech referring to the theatre. Lit up by magnesium flashes his face looked a little careworn: the expected spinoffs and the rubbing of shoulders with useful connections hadn't eventuated. He suddenly glanced at Karen, ‘Did you say your brother? Is he your brother?’

  Among the bystanders straining for a glimpse of what represented archetypal beauty was Mrs Younghusband, flashing lapis and gold earrings. Her fleshy immensity almost revealed its secrets as she became squashed in the crowd. Shadbolt had wangled her a free ticket; and obeying her weakness for beauty queens the landlady had stepped out onto the footpaths of Manly for the first time in seven years. Miss Australia's symmetrical features she recognised from the newspaper cuttings on Shad-bolt's sleepout wall, and looking around now for her favourite boarder to escort her home she became conscious of the eyes of the solid healthy specimen with sandy hair, staring at her while talking to several men. Perhaps a few years younger than her this man had been the master of ceremonies, a confident man, and now only a few steps away retained the same aura of power and optimism, so much that she kept glancing unavoidably in his direction, which he must have noticed. There was no sign of Shadbolt; but she couldn't move anyway. The crowd straining to be associated with an archetype had pushed up into view the fluidity of her breasts.

  ‘Two radio stations here want to talk to you,’ Karen's chaperone-manager called out. The manufacturer of ladies' undergarments was also trying to get a word in edgeways: something about a contract for modelling. ‘And then you and I,’ whispered Frank McBee, ‘are going back to the hotel. You got that?’

  Nodding and half-listening to a bigwig petitioning for a local tram licence Senator Hoadley brushed the Egyptian elbow, let out an exaggerated ‘Woopsie daisy,’ and introduced himself with his well-known vote-catching smile which bulged the manly muscles in his neck.

  Outside his office Screech shrugged off the heckler incident. ‘He's in my employ. I need a fulltime strongman to control the crowds I pull in; someone who's reliable. This is not a tinpot outfit I'm running here. And tonight with all that bare flesh and high heel shoes we had to watch out for the perverts.’ A reporter from a metropolitan daily wrote hurriedly in a notebook. ‘Say, what did you think of the gala occasion?’

  When Shadbolt returned to the boarding house in the morning he noticed the ministerial limousine parked outside, the driver slumped over the wheel clocking up triple overtime.

  Mrs Younghusband was still in bed. ‘This hasn't happened before.’ The typesetters rattled utensils and plates. ‘I don't like the sound of it.’ They had to set their own breakfast.

  After the night of nights Alex Screech went back to wearing shorts, and looking out over a scattered audience, half of them hard of hearing, the other half nodding off.

  Out of stubbornness and in the hope of attracting future bookings—conventions, annual general meetings, anything—dog shows, tap-dancin
g contests, hypnotist displays—he'd kept the loudspeaker system which needed perpetual fine-tuning, and its electronic reverberations made the theatre seem even more desolate. Many in the audience took their seats for the soothing sensation of seeing and hearing evidence of the rest of the world's energy—in the form of Mr Screech, a no-nonsense younger man, pale and gaunt there with the effort of proposing arguments and opinions. But without his normal horizontal voice the soothing element went, and with it most of the core audience. This in turn affected his delivery. To stir up the remaining listeners he raised his voice and introduced impatient arm movements. As Harriet put it, ‘Alex is beginning to screech.’ The very tiling he preached against began happening to him. Like everybody else in the world he felt the difficulties of superimposing his presence on events. The surrounding epic forces were gaining the upper hand. He could feel it. Everything became confusing. The world was a swirl. At his time in life it was dead easy slipping off the rails—he had said that until he was blue in the face—and now he too was beginning to lose direction. He wanted to recapture his old clarity: now you see it, now you don't. Even the small everyday problems worried him. It became hard to make decisions. There were so many alternatives.

  He began relying more on Shadbolt. During the hourly lectures Shadbolt stood in the wings, a solid gum tree, holding a screwdriver for emergencies, to prompt the boss when he faltered and lost the thread; for his speeches were all recycled from material Shadbolt had heard many times before.

  Only a few weeks after the Quest night Screech began pointing out in public how dead-easy it was ‘to miss Austrylia, as a place, as an idea.’ A promising start. Continuing he then tried relating the Miss Australia quest to the island-continent lying speckled and dun-coloured on the foyer floor, which was ‘hard to miss’, and he lost track of the argument; not even Shadbolt could grasp the connections. While striving to find his way Screech noticed Sid Hoadley, the Senator, sitting in the back stalls; he saw the large aggressive head, and parts of his face looking bored. It threw Screech completely. He lost all thread of the argument, all hope of wrapping it up. Assuming that the Senator had come for business—perhaps to hire the theatre for a very important public event—his voice trailed off into absent-mindedness.