Holden's Performance

by Murray Bail

  ‘He had one leg, and then he lost his life,’ Shadbolt reported soberly.

  ‘Is that so?’ Hoadley nodded. ‘I may have read about him. So what happened after that?’

  He wanted to hear it from all angles, and he wanted to hear it again. He merely nodded when Shadbolt, still perplexed, recalled how his mother had come down on McBee's side.

  ‘From that night,’ Shadbolt pulled on the handbrake, ‘Frank went about with a slight limp. He's only got nine toes. Although it seems to have worsened lately,’ he conceded.

  Hoadley sat for a second before patting him on the cap and bounding out.

  ‘You've made my day,’ he said.

  And Shadbolt couldn't help admiring the man's resilience as he strode up the garden path, his optimism restored by the inside knowledge of McBee's Achilles heel.

  The pressures on the Minister were almost too much for one man. Whenever he left the capital, even for twenty-four hours, a backlog of dissatisfaction built up among his neglected constituents, and the minute he returned he was forced to race around in circles, calming them, satisfying their needs. Sometimes he returned to the car inside ten minutes; Shadbolt knew when to keep the engine running. And accelerating away onto the next address the Minister quickly worked on his papers or put on a fresh shirt.

  Waiting outside the houses—the various tastes in front doors, varieties of letterboxes and flowerbeds—Shadbolt had time to wonder how the Minister could possibly keep all his constituents happy all the time. It was difficult enough in country towns where they were reconciled to irregular appearances; but in Canberra, where he was over-extended, there were always a few who actually took his whispered words seriously, or whose happiness became entirely dependent on his presence (wife of the clerk in the—), and were temperamentally unable to handle his arbitrary absences.

  But Hoadley thrived on the hectic itinerary; he appeared to feed off complications. He gained strength from the universal arms of women. The rush from one to another increased his physical and mental power. Shadbolt could see it in the mirror: he grew in size and optimism. ‘If I live to be a hundred, I'll never feel better.’ And he tossed down a few salt tablets.

  On the day after he returned from Adelaide Miss Kilmartin with the hornrims caused a scene. Hoadley came back to the car, biting his bottom lip.

  For a few seconds he rested his elbow on Shadbolt's door. He put on his kid gloves. ‘Listen, old son, I'd like you to drive Mrs Hoadley to the reception tonight. I'll phone her. I'm having a few hysterics here, I don't know what's got into her. It needs a bit of sorting out.’

  Yes, this was the reception at the New Zealand embassy. A party of their craggy mountaineers looking out of place in slip-knotted neckties had been given the OK by Hoadley some time back to venture into his territory, the interior, where it was possible to climb down—down below sea level into absolute emptiness. Their expedition had been written up in the Advertiser (‘Why are you doing this?’ Shadbolt remembered reading. ‘Because it's not there,’ answered the lookalike leader with the woman's name).

  Mrs Hoadley at six hardly said a word. She sat in front. A good tiling: only an hour before Senator Hoadley had the waitress slithering out of view on the back seat, his muffled voice instructing Shadbolt to keep on driving, which he did, in circles named after the greatest Australian explorers.

  The pale outline of Mrs Hoadley was illuminated by the lights of passing cars. Shadbolt wondered what she did all day. He had never seen her before, not even alongside the Minister in photographs.

  Out of the corner of his eye the slit in her skirt exposed a vanishing point of thigh, a country road at night, and spilling over her knee a silver handbag twinkled as the lights of a small town.

  It was she who began to speak.

  ‘Sidney works so hard, I sometimes worry about his health. He comes home so exhausted he falls into bed. Ever since I've known him he's been like that. Now I don't think he's ever worked so hard. And with the affairs of state on his shoulders he's been letting his business interests suffer. Sidney owns picture theatres. But Sidney hasn't shown any concern about the inroads of television. If you ask me the theatres are going to suffer. What do you think?’

  ‘I don't know, I haven't—’

  ‘People like to stay in the comfy of their own homes. You haven't seen our loungeroom, it's like a picture theatre. Sidney doesn't like me going out, even with a friend. Sidney installed my own projector. I've learnt how to operate it. I see all the latest releases. When Sidney has a night home we usually see a film.’ Mrs Hoadley rubbed her nose with a finger. ‘Sometimes he stands in front of the screen and makes a speech like the manager, or he comes around with a tray, and I say,“Thankyou, a chocolate icecream, please.” He'll do anything to make me happy. What was the last film you saw?’

  ‘A newsreel, I think.’

  She pulled a face. ‘Don't like them.’

  In the dark she watched the moving scenery framed by the windscreen. As they turned into the New Zealand embassy her fingers formed stars of surprise: for a cheap publicity stunt the mountaineers were ‘arriving’ for the Movietone cameras, roped together on the floodlit south face of the building.

  They watched as the last man clambered into the first-floor window, and there was the sound of breaking glass.

  ‘Better go now, Mrs Hoadley. The show's probably starting. I'll be waiting in the car park.’

  ‘I don't know why Sidney asked me to go. He knows I hate official functions.’

  Pouting, she looked down at her hands.

  Shadbolt couldn't work her out. He had never met a woman who was happy and yet at the same time unhappy.

  ‘You're his friend. If we went to see The African Queen, afterwards you wouldn't tell Sidney, would you?’

  Now he saw her pale face, although she remained looking away from him, a child.

  ‘It's my favourite. I could see it every day of my life. But I don't have any money. Sidney doesn't leave me any.’

  ‘I'll look after that,’ said Shadbolt loudly. ‘Now go on, you'll be late. I'll be waiting for you here.’

  Watching her walk away, the last scene in a film, he felt sorry for her; and somehow the figure—turning at the door to smile— made him ponder his own future.

  In late 1959 Shadbolt saw Colonel (‘Wild Bill’) Light in the flesh. The man was naked: not an ounce of superfluous flesh. Side-on his face represented his country turned on its end: lean Cape York nose, thin lips, mangled chin. In newspaper photographs he appeared in the centre of crowds, his face screened into a professional alertness, looking out for the slightest suspicious movements.

  If he hadn't been born to it people would have called him Light. The best years of his life had been spent poring over street maps, and he had developed the occupational habit of pointing with his right arm outstretched. That was how Shadbolt saw him in the changing room of the gymnasium, just opened off Anzac Parade: his arm and index finger aimed horizontally at another fitness-freak standing there with his hock on light's towel.

  Shadbolt had been spending so much time parked outside houses he felt his life slipping through his fingers idly tapping the steering wheel. Conscious of his flesh he decided to act. He began a body-building course; a gymnasium might also be a place to meet people. On his afternoons and evenings off he began doing strenuous press-ups and lifted bars over his head. There he regularly saw Colonel Light, although he didn't yet know his name. Even in a pair of boxer shorts he stood out as a man of far-sighted vision. Thudding over the wooden horse he maintained an air of immobile authority, which is the air of dominance, his right arm extended out of habit, and when they happened to be the only ones at work or emerged together from adjoining showers the Colonel gave no sign of recognising him; not so much as a glance in Shadbolt's direction.

  It was several months later, in Manly, that he spoke to Shadbolt, officially.

  Things had been going bad for Hoadley. Too generous with his body and soul, unable to say no, he'd fin
ally spread himself and his optimism too thin. And there was the paperwork of his portfolio. It kept piling up. To escape the hysterical demands of Miss Kilmartin, and the wife of the clerk in the—, he headed for the irregular lines of Manly and Mrs Younghusband, the way wheat farmers used to recuperate after the harvesting.

  It was hot and windy: the very conditions, according to Alex Screech, that had debilitated an entire nation. ‘It's made us too manly,’ he pointed his finger at the audience of pensioners. Somebody should write a new history of the world homing in on heat and humidity. Hoadley meanwhile was telling Shadbolt how the otther day he had bought for a song a cine-projector from a run-down theatre, and its entire inland sea of spring-back seats. In his words he had made a killing Whenever they crossed a bridge Hoadley became expansive.

  Shadbolt had suddenly opened his mouth to ask a question when Hoadley leaned forward.

  ‘My first experience with a woman was underneath the Harbour Bridge. Right about…there. A little peach of a girl. Her father used to pilot one of the flying boats. She cried afterwards and I bought her an ice-cream. She and I had been to the pictures. It was after midnight. Guess what? The other day I bumped into her at Government House. She's married to a High Court judge, I won't say who. Very la de da. You should have seen her face when I sidled up, gave her a nudge, and said,

  Underneath the arches,

  On the cobblestones they lay…

  ‘How about that?’ the Minister nudged.

  Shadbolt nodded to show he smiled. Nothing surprised him anymore.

  Around the corner from the boarding house Shadbolt undipped the flag from the bonnet. Folding it he put it in his pocket while nodding at Hoadley's instructions. Already the Minister was undoing his tie, as if he was diving into the surf.

  ‘A heavy programme tomorrow,’ he called over his shoulder, striding off to the landlady.

  It was too early to front up at Kangaroo Street, so Shadbolt stepped into the Manly gym for men.

  The walls were scuffed and chipped, the manager had a face punched in like a leper's. On the far long wall a physical fitness artist with a Polish name (Kondratieff?) had painted in lieu of fees a bambocciade mural depicting a man in leopard tights wrestling single-handed with a lion.

  As usual Shadbolt was by far the tallest man in the gym. To warm up he pedalled furiously for ten miles on the exercise bike, dwarfing the defective machine which kept losing its chain. The effort induced a kind of vagueness… riding his post-war hybrid into a hot wind down Magill Road. It was about time he went back to see Vern.

  With little practice Shadbolt could lift really enormous weights; and in his simple singlet and chauffeur's trousers, the antipodean head remaining more or less expressionless, his power was all the more impressive. Shadbolt had lifted to his chin the weight of a motorbike and sidecar. As he moved up to the equivalent of a small English sedan the other bodybuilders rested on their oars to watch, including the manager, face like a leper's, who thought he had seen everything. Through the strain Shadbolt attained a pleasant obliviousness. He took no notice of his surroundings and the attention of the other he-men; but as he gritted his teeth and held the weight for a second longer he saw from the corner of his eye Colonel Light fully dressed, arriving or departing, pause to watch.

  In those places there is not much in the way of talk: all creaking of equipment, the grunts of self-absorption. The young bodybuilders returned to their mirrors and became rapt again in their muscles expanding before their very eyes.

  The Colonel was in the changing room snapping his fingers at three fit-looking men Shadbolt hadn't seen before. Hands around their ankles they were hurriedly lacing up their shoes.

  Reaching his towel Shadbolt sneezed.

  Colonel Light's arm moved up in an arc and aimed horizontally.

  ‘A man can be shot for less than that.’

  Looking down Shadbolt grinned foolishly. He had blown his nose on the Australian flag.

  And then Light was gone, his men tripping over themselves to keep up.

  In December 1959 the nation's economy and optimism were entering a trough, although Shadbolt and everybody were only to understand that later. Shadbolt took a leisurely shower, bought some fish n' chips at the place next door, and stood on the beach. The waves came from the deep and out at sea. Wave after wave of huge and unforeseen world-waves, constantly advancing, hurried along by others, one by one rearing into a translucent yawning, turning semicircular before dumping into a thunder of self-destruction. It was regular and yet way out of control. Shadbolt paused with a lump of flake; he had never seen waves as large. The beach was empty except for some seagull figures, halfway along. For a while he watched them: specks on the continent's white edge, by turns huddled there and agitated. He sat on the sea wall and thought he should visit Vern, see how he was going in Adelaide.

  At four he made his way towards Harriet's place. Around the corner from the Epic Theatre he heard the noise before he saw the crowd. Not since the Miss Australia finals had there been so many people…He began grinning. Alex would be around somewhere in khaki, putting on his act of being nonplussed.

  Already a connoisseur of crowds Shadbolt noticed the people were different to the normal picture-goers, their faces and movements displaying quite different expectations, and then he saw— a portent of the leaner times—the famous electrolier lettering had been switched to form PICE, and in flashing lights below it, EMPORIUM. Taken over by a Gujarati family from Fiji—there they were lined up on the footpath, wearing their best saris and pencil moustaches—the theatre had been converted into the first place in Sydney to specialise in cheap Indian fabrics, everything from tea-towels to curtain material, the once-proud doors and display boxes where Harriet placed her ‘Next Attraction’ montages now plastered all over with cut-price posters that glowed in the dark. And when Shadbolt saw the TV cameras and the reporters forming a pyramid on the steps, and over the corrugations of hats and craning craniums Colonel Light staring as in a newspaper photograph at the slightest suspicious movement, he realised it was about to be gala-opened by the PM himself, some kind of statesmanlike gesture to our Commonwealth neighbours to the north.

  His first impulse was to run back and get the Minister. Whenever Hoadley missed out on something for days afterwards he suffered a drop in optimism; he took it all too personally.

  As always Shadbolt's mind was made up for him by events. Everybody suddenly tilted in a mass towards the footpath. The black Cadillac (Fleetwood, V/8, fitted with sunshield) pulled up and double-parked, the teenage son of the pushy Gujarati merchant nudged forward to open the door and was elbowed smartly out of the way by Colonel Light, who appeared everywhere at once and had eyes in the back of his head. In the silence of expectations, a pair of crow-black eyebrows first emerged like two mobile moustaches misplaced on a pale oval of dough, which in turn vibrated and stretched out from the darkness of the upholstery, the effort of which raised one eyebrow autographically higher than the other, and now paused, the entire face revealed including multiple chins, offering a nice contrast against the limousine duco, light out of darkness, justice over evil, which is how he appeared in the nation's newspapers.

  From a few paces away the grandfatherly heaviness of Prime Minister Amen impressed Shadbolt. By emerging slowly he gave an impression of the burdens of high office, but that he was getting on top of things. By contrast, Senator Hoadley simply appeared all energy, straight lines…

  The PM briefly shook hands with the Indians and prepared to speak. An almost humorous clearing of the throat, the hooking of his thumbs in the lapels: and everybody including Shadbolt opened their mouths expectantly, egging him on. For everybody in the country was proud of their leader's command of English, his world-famous wit.

  With a surprising amount of hum-ing and ah-ing, and a kind of gurgling at the back of the throat, the sentences unrolled as long banners of gilt lettering. Enfolded in flapping angles of woven wool the man appeared to be talking to himself; even his sh
rugs and asides, raising the crow-wing of one eyebrow, were for his own amusement.

  ‘Our good friends in Indi-ah, who, I might add, are handy with a bat as well as making impressive runs of printed cottons…’

  He was just warming up, slightly smiling at his own turn of phrase out of Wisden's, when Shadbolt looking over the motionless heads saw Colonel Light nodding to one of his men; a face he recognised from the gym.

  This man came towards him through the crowd with practised, unobtrusive ease. Turning slightly, Shadbolt noticed another converging at an angle. At the same time he felt a slight scuffle behind him.

  ‘It's him I want, I have to see him.’

  One of Light's lieutenants held her arm so casually no one nearby noticed, although it twisted Harriet's cheek and jaw. The man had black patent-leather hair. Shadbolt took his wrist and bulged the man's eyes.

  ‘That'll do. Leave her alone.’

  Everybody knew how the PM liked to encourage hecklers, confident of his barrister's repartee. What was wrong with Harriet?

  The Colonel now at Shadbolt's side spoke without moving his lips.

  ‘Do you know this woman?’

  ‘What's the big idea?’ He turned to Harriet. ‘What's going on?’

  ‘I've got to see you,’ Harriet put on a smile. She looked unhappy.

  ‘I was on my way,’ Shadbolt said ignoring the others. ‘It's just that I thought Alex might be here.’

  ‘Alex…’ Harriet looked away.

  At a signal from the Colonel's eyes the men loosened their grip.

  ‘We get all types,’ he grimaced at her stick and legs. ‘Madam, I beg your pardon.’

  Shadbolt stared at the Colonel: pale cracked eyes, dry flesh. Something funny about those eyes.