by Gary Crew
‘And the song?’ Augustus prompted.
‘A love song. Very touching. Very sad.’
‘Can you remember?’
‘I might …’
‘Tell!’ Augustus gushed.
‘La Vie isn’t the only one. I’m a woman too. But her with her ways …’
Augustus sank back on his heels. There’s bitterness here, he thought. There’s envy. And he said, ‘Perhaps I might know the song. Perhaps I could sing it for her. For you too, if you want.’
A silence fell as Blue Butterfly considered, possibly remembering, possibly trying to forget. She slapped her blue-green knees and laughed that laugh. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘you men are all the same, always wanting a bit, eh? And for nothing. Well, you got me. You stirred me up. You sucked me in. Worse, you made me remember. My Bossy. My man. He was mine too, you understand. Once.’ So saying, she folded her wings on her chest. ‘Here it is,’ she said, ‘and it’s all you’ll get from me …’ And she sang one line to the unseen jacarandas.
‘There’s the branch I would sing from,’ Augustus said, pointing into the mango. ‘And there’s her window, but the trunk, you see, is too thick, too smooth for me to climb.’
Stan scratched his chin. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘What you need is a ladder.’
Augustus turned to make sure he wasn’t joking; not being a card, as Stan could be, sometimes.
But he was not. ‘Sometimes there’s ladders under these high-set houses. Even a whorehouse needs keepin’ up,’ and he headed off to look.
‘Wait,’ Augustus called. ‘I can’t climb a ladder. Not an ordinary ladder. The rungs are too far apart.’
‘Stupid,’ Stan growled. ‘Sorry, Augie. Stupid.’
They stood, gaping up.
‘You got the song?’ Stan asked, more to mark time than doubting.
‘I’ve got the song all right,’ Augustus assured him. ‘That Blue Butterfly sang me a line and I knew it straight away. A music-hall song, but a pretty one. My mother had some showgirls over every so often. Voice lessons, you know. I got on all right with those girls. Pretty, but rough.’
‘They was nice to you?’
‘Sometimes they’d give me lollies.’
‘I always liked them gobstoppers,’ Stan confessed.
‘Too big for my mouth,’ Augustus admitted. ‘Besides, they’re bad for your teeth.’
‘Hmmm,’ Stan mused, having lost his own. ‘You still got your baby teeth, right?’
Augustus nodded, baring them. ‘I’m immature in many ways. Mary Smokes told me that.’
‘Maybe,’ Stan muttered. ‘Maybe not …’ Virgin he may be, but he had a pretty good idea of what went on under houses, in the dirt.
‘So?’ the boy wondered. ‘What can I do?’
Stan thought. ‘I could make a ladder. I could nail the rungs onto the tree at spaces to suit. There’s usually timber and nails and stuff under these houses. She had a man for a while, this Miss la Vie, didn’t she?’
‘Bossy Watts. This was his house. That’s what Blue Butterfly told me.’
‘Then there’ll be somethin’. I’ll have a look.’ He set off up the yard.
‘Stan,’ Augustus called. ‘Stan?’
‘Over ’ere.’ The man had vanished under the house, into the gloom.
Augustus hadn’t been beneath this high section before. The space had a different mood from that low part beneath the verandah where he crawled with Mary Smokes. Back here was a forest of stumps, rising direct from the ground like those unbuttressed American Redwoods in that book his mother kept on the cane table in the conservatory at home. The floorboards above were dead flat and dull, but these stumps were lively, their knots and nobbles bursting like carbuncles from the slick black of the creosote. Between them hung cobwebbed branches, their tacky foliage swaying mournful in the draft.
Uniting the stumps along the side of the house, binding weatherboard and earth, were rows of battens, vertical strips of black-oiled timber. On impulse he reached out, pressing the flat of his tiny hand against that surface (as he had done beneath the big top, against that mighty pole), and in that moment, in that instant of knowing, it was no tent pole that stirred him, nor some book about distant redwoods on some distant table. Rather he heard his mother playing and the dark beneath her piano returned to him: those sleek, lacquered legs, the very pillars of his childhood, his poetic psyche. ‘Ohh,’ he sighed as the hurt flowed. ‘Ohh …’
‘Have a look,’ Stan called, bending, ignorant, way up where the floor was low, the dirt close, the dark musty and dank. ‘There’s spare boards up here,’ and going up (since he moved with ease despite the close space), Augustus saw a cache of timber stored between the bearers and the floor.
‘I reckon there’s enough to make a ladder, eh? If I can find a hammer and saw and the odd nail …’
‘Where?’ Augustus bleated, since the concept of construction (other than through song) was alien to him.
‘I bet that Bossy bloke had a bench under here. There, see, by that corner stump? Down the bottom. On the left. Behind them battens. See?’
Augustus did see. The bench was made from timber slabs, inches thick, standing on legs as thick as a man’s arm, though the boy was hardly tall enough to make sense of what was on top.
‘Okay,’ Stan said. ‘What’s he got here? Vice? Good,’ – and he fiddled with the handle – ‘Saw? Okay. Rusty but …’ Ignorant though he was, even Augustus could see that. ‘Nails? You see any nails, mate? Aaah …’
Augustus watched him reach up to unscrew a jam jar, its lid nailed to a floor joist above his head, and empty into his hand a pile of nails, letting them fall in a clatter onto the dusty bench. ‘I reckon we got us a ladder in a mango tree!’ Stan crowed. ‘Let’s get stuck into it.’
Fascinated, Augustus watched as Stan set each piece of timber in the vice, locked it there then sawed it through. Yellow sawdust piled in little hills, a sight new to him, and hearing a sound, likewise new, he looked up to see Stan fixed in concentration, humming. Not a song, not a melody, that more primal sound: the contentment of a man, making.
When the boards were cut into bits, Stan gathered them in his arms. He picked up the nails and reached for a black-headed hammer hanging off a nail on a board at the back, against the battens. When the hammer was removed, Augustus saw another, a painted version, indicating where it should hang; where Bossy Watts had left it, unknowing, before that fatal day.
They went out to the mango.
‘Now, Mr Trump, sir,’ Stan said, all tradesman like, ‘I want you to show me how high off the ground you want the first rung, and we’ll go from there.’
So Augustus did, Stan nailing the rung to the tree, and the ladder was built.
Augustus did not climb into the mango immediately. ‘I would like to be by myself for a while,’ he told Stan. ‘I would like to have a little wander and collect my thoughts.’
‘I’ll make a cuppa,’ Stan said. ‘Let me know how you go, eh?’
‘I will,’ Augustus promised, and they parted: Stan to the shed and his brown teapot, Augustus to wander among the gums, talking to himself, bolstering his courage.
About three that afternoon Augustus began his climb, rung after shaky rung, creeping out along the branches until he found a solid fork where he could stand, straddling the gap, one foot on each branch, one hand raised to grasp a branch above, the other across his chest, calming his heart.
So he opened his mouth to sing:
Goodbye, little yellow bird,
I’d rather brave the cold
On a leafless tree, than a prisoner be
In a cage of gold.
There was no response.
Perhaps she isn’t there, he thought. Or asleep.
So he sang again, pouring out his heart like the nightingale in the story. This time he saw movement. Though those amethyst panes remained closed, he saw a shadow move behind them and pressed his hand against his breast to sing again, his heart’s blood draining.
/>
The edge of a casement trembled, opening ever so slightly. A pink-gloved hand appeared in the gap, its many rings glinting, and a voice called, ‘Bossy?’
‘It’s me, Augustus,’ the boy replied, fully expecting the worst.
The gloved hand eased the casement ajar, coming to rest on the sill.
‘Augustus?’ the voice said.
‘Yes,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘I have come to sing for you.’
‘I thought that he was come back,’ she answered. ‘My Bossy.’
‘No, no, it’s me, Augustus. Shall I sing again?’
The hand was still, the voice silent. He held his breath, his own tiny hand trembling.
Then she answered; cold, distant, abrupt: ‘Sunday is quiet. The Crimson Parlour, at noon,’ and the casement closed.
Three times a day Augustus climbed the tree, ten times in all before Sunday noon. But sing as he might, no hand appeared, no voice responded.
On the fourth climb, or possibly the fifth, he saw movement beyond the casements: a blur of pink, a blur of blue, and voices. That is Miss la Vie and the Butterfly, he thought and he sat in the fork, silent, to listen.
‘Where would you go?’ the Madam asked, her voice acid. ‘What else could a blind moll do, except lie on her back?’
Try as he might, he could not hear the Butterfly’s reply.
The Madam spoke again: ‘I kept you here out of pity. Yes, there’s some will pay for you: the one who wants no one to see, because of his own ugliness or his own shame. So yes, for a liability, you serve a purpose …’
Again, taunting: ‘How could you know? How could you? Love, you say? He gave me all, he gave me life. How could you understand, you poor blind fool …’
And again, cruel: ‘You don’t know. You don’t even know what you look like. I have given you a roof over your head. I have named you …’
Then against the window, her body obvious, Blue Butterfly replied, ‘I can know. I do know. I never saw him, true, but he knew me. And what he told me, you could never understand. He was hardly cold when you turned to this whoring. He was hardly in his grave when you tarted up … When you chose … When you named …’
Augustus could hear no more; the distance, the closed window, the broken lines, and he sank back into the leaves, afraid.
On the fifth climb, or possibly the seventh, he contemplated the house, fearful. How hard was this Miss la Vie? How cruel? Yet he was determined. He had sung only once. Perhaps a second time he would win her, perhaps a third time she would see him for what he was, what he would become: that man, he determined, that proper man.
Since news of the discovery of King Tut’s tomb was relayed to him by Stan, who brought it from the pit – rumours of mummies and gold and curses and ancient wisdom beyond knowing – Augustus developed an interest in things Egyptian. And since he so often sat waiting in the mango tree looking down on the house, eager to sing, he observed that the galvanised iron roof rising uniformly from all four walls to climax at the apex was, in fact, a pyramid. Could it be true, he wondered, that those who live beneath such a structure are somehow empowered?
But when he asked, Absalom laughed and Rosa sneered. ‘Lust isn’t empowerment, ya dill, it’s enslavement,’ and fed up with his childishness, Rosa pushed him away.
What is there about the body that enslaves? he wondered. Which led him to think of bodies he had known. There was Stan and Una and Little Donny and Needly Phyllis and Hairy Moira and now the Blue Butterfly, hardly deities, any of them. Glancing down at his own puny form, he laughed. But when that rosy blush crossed the casements, he sat up and thought again. Miss la Vie is not beautiful, so to lust can’t be about beauty. It’s got to be something else … But being eleven years old and immature, as Mary Smokes had observed, what exactly that ‘something else’ might be, he could not imagine.
Then Sunday came, and he perked up.
Augustus wore the bridegroom’s suit to his presentation at noon. He told Stan what he was doing and guessed that Rosa knew, though she made no mention of it. Still, as he entered the Crimson Parlour from the hallway, he was struck by the turnout. Every chair, every couch, every love seat occupied, every tongue wagging, every hand holding a glass, every glass bubbling.
‘Good afternoon, Augustus,’ Absalom declared. ‘I will let Miss la Vie know that you have arrived.’
The room fell silent, eyes goggling.
Undaunted, Augustus moved to the centre of the room. He looked around. Well, he thought, there is hardly an attractive body here. What have I got to worry about?
He saw that Mary Smokes was missing. This was no surprise. He saw Rosa seated on a divan and noted that she averted her eyes and he, likewise, vowed not to own her, as she would want. Still, she looked nice; the youngest by far, and the prettiest, wearing ruffled white voile, very feminine, such that even he was impressed. He saw the Blue Butterfly in a corner, her dark glasses huge, cocooned in a blue shawl, secret it would seem. This being the limit of the girls he knew, he chose to stand before a mountainous woman in red; her lips red, her skin red, her fingernails red, her shoes red, and over the silence he said to her, ‘Good afternoon. My name is Augustus Trump. I was wondering, do you like the colour red?’
The moment he spoke, the room resumed its hubbub, the tongues their wagging, the glasses their clinking, the bubbles their popping, and the red woman said, ‘It’s what I do, darling. I’m a whore.’
‘I’m a dwarf,’ Augustus replied, indicating his body, ‘but I’m not dressed for a freak show.’
‘What else would you call this place?’ she shrieked. ‘A nunnery?’ And she shrieked again, slopping her champagne.
‘This is a house,’ Augustus declared. ‘As a building it can ask nothing more of you than what you make it to be.’
‘Sure,’ the woman said, beginning to take him seriously. ‘Sure … I’m called Red Hannah. Miss la Vie, the Madam, named us all. I’m pleased to meet you. It’s not every day a gentleman with a brain engages me in conversation. But I got news for you, Master Augustus, house or no house, some of us don’t have no choice. Look at yourself, with that body – I mean no offence, being built like a cow myself, this is only a question – did you make a choice?’
‘I chose not to work as a sideshow freak, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Oooh, did you now? I like a man who knows his own mind. So you’re earning a quid as a salesman, are you? Or maybe a copper? Or a soldier? Or are you on the game yourself? Come on, confess. Since you admit that you’re a dwarf, and I can see that you are, how do you make a quid?’
Red Hannah had him, of course, and in desperation he shot a glance at Rosa, who made a lemony mouth and held it, waiting to hear his response.
‘I sing,’ he said. ‘That’s what I do.’
‘Oooh,’ said Red Hannah. ‘And singing pays well?’
Augustus took care. ‘For some,’ he said.
‘Oooh,’ said Red Hannah. ‘And you’re one of them lucky ones?’
Augustus would have admitted, and steeled himself to do so, but as he drew breath, Rosa leaned forward, her glass on her knee, and said, ‘I was wondering, Hannah, if we might begin again. As I recall, Augustus asked if you liked the colour red. Do you?’
Conscious of being warned (possibly threatened), and by Rosebud, Flower of the House, Red Hannah sank back in her chair. ‘To tell the truth,’ she said, ‘no, I don’t like the colour red. Especially when it lights the front of a house. For me, it’s more of a uniform, like cops wear blue and soldiers khaki.’
‘Nice,’ Rosa said, choosing that moment to primp her white voile.
‘Interesting,’ Augustus offered, ignoring the feminine politics. ‘But what came first? The choice of colour or the name?’
‘Oooh,’ Red Hannah declared, clapping her massive hands. ‘You are sharp, aren’t you? I could take to you, no trouble.’
Augustus blushed. This may have been a reflection of the red or, possibly, as other men had noted, the radiation of her b
ody heat. Red Hannah was one mass of woman.
‘Like I told you, I was named. We were all named, by her, the Madam. She hauled us in off the street, hey? She put a roof over our head.’ She glanced up at the frollicking putti on the ceiling. ‘And it’s her house, ain’t it?’
Augustus was beginning to understand. The pyramid, the empowerment – worse: the enslavement.
‘But it’s good to try something different sometimes, isn’t it?’ he suggested. ‘Otherwise people might take you for granted. Might even boss you around?’
‘She does,’ Red Hannah sneered. ‘She does … but shush, here she is. In her pink, as usual …’ And she shot a look at Rosa, to let her know.
The Madam struck a pose at the piano. Seeing her there, Augustus drew back, overcome. Removed from the dazzling light of her boudoir, that amethyst enchantment, she was changed. Though she wore that same silk gown, extending that same gloved hand, he saw the skin of her neck stretched taut as a mummy’s, her face the mask of a rouged cadaver. Now I see, he thought. Now I understand. I was deluded. Yes, that is the basis of lust. Delusion … And he knew her to be dead, embalmed as she was in the rosy shroud of pretence, her life forfeit to the past.
‘Girls,’ she cooed, ‘I know it is the Sabbath, and how you feel about that, but …’ No laughter followed. She was despised, he realised. ‘This little fellow …’ she pointed, vulgar, ‘came to call the other afternoon. Whatever he wanted, foolish boy, I would not provide …’ a faded glove pressed her coy lips. ‘But since he is so eager, as all boys are …’ she paused to snicker, ‘I thought that I would give him the chance to show us what he’s got,’ and being a whore, she winked broadly.
Affectation was one thing, patronisation another; but her cruelty astonished him. She had called him here to ridicule. Fool that he was, he had hoped that she might appear as a woman who appreciated that he could sing, who believed he could make a difference to her loveless life. Delusion, he understood. All delusion …
