The Complete Stories of Alan Marshall

by Alan Marshall

‘Your change,’ said the salesman. I took the silver wrapped in the crushed docket and put it in my pocket.

  I raised my head and our eyes met.

  ‘Clarkey worked here for forty vears,’ he said. ‘He only got the sack a few weeks ago.’

  Beware of the Man in the Blue Suit

  When I got to the Middle Park station a procession was in progress. There were decorated cars and lorries. Men dressed as women paraded on the lorries flaunting padded breasts. Their faces were painted. They made gestures at the crowd. They ogled them with their eyes. Everybody laughed.

  A band led the procession. It played ‘Under the Double Eagle’. The white horses of the troopers pranced and bumped people with their rumps. Children, blowing whistles and shouting, darted between legs.

  I followed the procession on to the reserve and set off in search of the Official tent. There were tents everywhere. Showmen on platforms exhorted the crowd. I met two ambulance men carrying leather bags and stretchers. They didn’t know where the Official tent was. They made a stand before an empty tent and said, ‘This will do us.’

  ‘I think that tent is reserved for me,’ I said.

  ‘Who are you?’ one asked.

  ‘I am the fortune teller.’

  ‘Go on!’ he exclaimed. ‘What do you know about that!’

  He looked at me with interest. ‘What might your name be?’

  ‘Professor Scaradsky,’ I said.

  ‘Russian?’ he asked, with respect in his eye.

  I looked back over my shoulder, then bent to his ear and said, softly, with a sinister note in my voice, ‘Yes.’

  He gave me a cigarette. He also lit it for me. Before I left he offered me another.

  I met an old man dressed as a woman. His bust had dropped to his waist. I helped him raise it to its standard position, and asked him where the Official tent was. He didn’t know.

  A man passed wrapped in a donkey skin. The head was hanging over his shoulder. He was dressed as the donkey’s front legs. Two girls hailed him. One said, ‘Are you the donkey, George?’

  ‘You’re tellin’ me,’ he said.

  ‘A-a-a-a-a,’ cackled the other. ‘He’s lost his backside. A-a-a-a-a.’ She slapped her companion on the back. They clung together. ‘A-a-a-a-a.’

  I noticed a group of nurses wearing blue caps and carrying collection boxes. As I approached them I heard one say, ‘Take the dressings off and then apply the ointment.’ Another one said something about chicken pox.

  They surrounded me when I asked them the whereabouts of the Official tent. The one that had been talking about chicken pox gave me a professional survey. I looked back at her and said, ‘I’ve been inoculated against chicken pox.’

  ‘Smallpox,’ she corrected.

  ‘Well, all right then. Smallpox,’ I said. ‘Anyway, where’s the Official tent?’

  They didn’t know.

  A loud speaker blared, ‘Would Mr Steve Kennedy please report at the Official tent.’

  ‘I’m Steve Kennedy.’ I made for the sound.

  The Official tent was full of men in fancy dress. There were clowns and pirates, and the back half of the donkey was there. There were dames and men dressed like flappers. One of them told me they were going to play in a fancy dress football match.

  ‘That should be funny,’ I said.

  ‘Funny! I’ll say. We’re going to pull off dresses and everything.’

  They were handing out official badges. The men with badges used to say, ‘You do this,’ and ‘You do that,’ and the chap that they spoke to had to do it.

  I said to the chap at the table, ‘How about an official badge?’

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Professor Scaradsky, the fortune teller.’

  ‘We are waiting for Shabaka, the Great Egyptian Soothsayer,’ he said.

  ‘That’ll do,’ I said. ‘I’m it.’

  ‘Come with me,’ he said.

  ‘What about a badge?’ I said. I was thinking of lunch.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ He smiled kindly to humour me. ‘They are for the organisers and are for admittance to various booths. You will be in your tent all day.’

  I gave up the idea of lunch. Anyway I wasn’t an organiser.

  ‘You represent an Egyptian,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve got the ideal costume for you, then,’ he said. ‘A black kimono with a red dragon worked on the back and herons flying round the front over a mountain capped with snow. It’s the wife’s. Most expensive. Look after it, won’t you?’

  ‘I’d sooner one with pyramids in front and a camel walking round the back,’ I said. ‘But I suppose yours will do. Yes, I’ll look after it.’

  He took me to a tent with a sick woman in it. She was lying on her back on a stretcher. The ambulance men were installed. One of them stood beside the woman, rolling a cigarette. A pushing crowd peered through the door. The tent’s walls rested on the heads of every urchin within hailing distance.

  Every few minutes the woman said, ‘Oh dear me!’

  ‘What is wrong with her?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ he said. ‘She says she’s sick.’

  He lit his cigarette.

  ‘They are shifting you from this tent,’ I remarked.

  ‘So the boss says.’

  The kimono man had departed to look for a spruiker. He returned with an extraordinary creature in a long white evening dress. It had red rope hair and streaks of red on its face. It was a man.

  While the ambulance officials were removing their patient and equipment he drew me to one side.

  ‘Are you in the show business, brother?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘I’m just back from doing Queensland with a Kiss-me-for-a-quid show,’ he said.

  With the tent cleared I proceeded to blacken my face. My companion controlled the crowd.

  ‘We will soon be commencing this extraordinary demonstration,’ he yelled. ‘We defy any man to kiss—I mean, we defy any woman to break his grip—I mean, he reads the future, this cove in ‘ere.’

  Wrapped in herons and a dragon I announced I was ready to draw aside the veil. There were no chairs in the tent. I squatted on the ground.

  This state of affairs disturbed the spruiker.

  ‘We musn’t go off half-cocked,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and get some chairs.’

  He left me to the mercy of the multitude. They swarmed in like an Egyptian plague. I was confronted with a score of outstretched hands crying for interpretation.

  ‘I will not proceed until the tent is cleared,’ I cried, with something of the dragon’s defiance in my voice.

  There followed arguments over priority and prestige. The children and old men got the worst of it.

  At last, with every opening in the tent clasping a head, I found myself confronted by a young girl dressed in tennis shorts and carrying a racquet. The hand she proffered me had never known suds. Her lacquered-nail fingers were stained with nicotine and smelt of oranges. I got going.

  ‘A most extraordinary hand,’ I said. ‘Yes, most extraordinary. You will go far.’

  ‘Where to?’ she asked.

  ‘That, I cannot say,’ I replied. ‘However, I can see other things of equal interest. Your palm plainly records the fact that you should eat a lot of fruit, especially oranges. You also excel at some form of sport. Let me see now. I think it is—Yes—it is tennis.’

  ‘Isn’t that marvellous,’ said the girl. ‘I play a lot of tennis.’

  ‘Fancy that,’ I said. ‘How strange are the markings of the hand. . . . Go out, children. Madam, would you please wait outside at the door of the tent. No. I won’t be very long, sir. Let us continue. Ah! Here is something very interesting. You must beware of a man in a blue suit.’

  I began to find it increasingly difficult to keep the tent clear. I had an audience for every diagnosis. Too many were travelling over water. Too many girls were going to marry tall, dark, handsome men.
I began to labour.

  A woman thrust a baby in my face. I got a fright, but it wasn’t the woman I thought it was. I waved the child aside. ‘It’s impossible to read a baby’s hand,’ I said. ‘They always keep them closed. Besides, that baby’s character is constantly changing. Next, please.’

  A woman with a grim and sour face sat before me. I gave her a win in Tatts, a flourishing little business and an old age free of all sickness. But no good. She still looked tombstones. I promised her pleasant surprises, letters of importance and unexpected visits from former lovers. But she remained steeped in gloom. I took a chance.

  ‘You have lost your husband,’ I said.

  ‘I haven’t got a husband.’

  ‘No. Of course not. It’s your brother.’

  ‘I haven’t got a brother.’

  ‘I’ll call,’ I said. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘I’m a palmist,’ she said. ‘You know nothing about palmistry. I’ve been reading hands for fifteen years.’

  I could see that I was up against it. My reputation was at stake.

  ‘I meet amateurs every day,’ I said. ‘Their methods are rather amusing to us professionals. I didn’t study under Professor Gullible of Vienna for nothing.’

  ‘I’ve read all the books on it,’ she said. ‘I know about him. He teaches wrong.’

  ‘Then why does King George consult him every month on matters of state?’ I said.

  The woman stood up. I had trumped her ace.

  ‘This man knows nothing,’ she denounced me to the onlookers.

  ‘Will all impostors leave the tent,’ I cried. ‘I won’t have my profession insulted by their presence.’

  The woman with the baby walked out. The disgruntled female palmist followed her. I was left with the faithful. They expressed confidence in me by a show of hands all clamouring to be read. I insisted that the tent be cleared. They crowded outside, pressing against the guy ropes and the walls.

  I looked at the hand of the girl that remained and said, ‘I see money, lots of money. I see . . .’

  Flop. I couldn’t see anything. The damn tent fell over.

  The girl yelled. I cursed in fluent Egyptian. The heavy canvas weighed us down.

  The girl heaved and kicked. It looked like a case of assault. Someone hit me on my canvas-covered head with a rubber ball bounced on the end of elastic.

  The girl rose like Atlas, but with her rear end uppermost, her hands still pressing the ground. In this position she could have borne the weight of the world. The tent weighed only three hundredweight.

  Outside, the onlookers became suddenly important. Their voices took on an urgent and authoritative note like rescuers in a major catastrophe. With great courage a man crawled in and rescued the girl. He came back to rescue me, but I crawled out the other side.

  I stalked to the Official tent with pied-piper-like resolve, followed by every kid on the ground. The spruiker was there, still waiting for chairs. He joined his complaints with my own. They promised us better treatment after lunch and gave us tickets entitling us to a meal.

  We made for the luncheon booth. At the door we were directed to a table surrounded by clowns, pirates, dames, men with cardboard noses, and painted showmen. They were eating sandwiches. At another table well-dressed men were eating a three course meal.

  I sat beside the rear end of the donkey.

  ‘Here, have a tongue sandwich,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Straight from the horse’s mouth,’ said a dame.

  ‘How come we browse on sandwiches,’ I said, ‘and the organisers on horse nerves?’

  ‘It’s the way of all flesh-pots,’ said the rear end of the donkey, sourly. ‘My cobber what’s in the front of this donkey skin is eating over there with the heads. He doesn’t do any work. It’s me that’s got to do the buckin’ and kickin’.’

  ‘Yes. You got all the dirty work,’ said the spruiker.

  ‘You’re tellin’ me,’ said the donkey’s rear.

  Two coppers came in and sat with us.

  A waitress bent over my shoulder and said, ‘So here you are.’

  I looked at her. She was the girl whose fortune I had told that morning. She had changed from her tennis shorts and was dressed in blue.

  ‘Beware of a man in a blue suit,’ she mocked. ‘You’re a trick.’

  I laughed.

  ‘What’s the joke?’ asked one of the coppers affably.

  ‘I told this girl’s fortune this morning,’ I said. ‘I told her to beware of a man in a blue suit.’

  ‘Are you telling fortunes?’ asked the copper.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Would you mind giving me your name and address, please?’ he said. ‘Fortune telling is against the law.’

  ‘Beware of a man in a blue suit’s right,’ said the donkey’s rear.

  Stepmother

  She was short with broad hips. Her buttocks moved from side to side as she walked. She wore glasses. Her name was Mary Frobisher.

  She started work half an hour earlier than the rest of the staff. I was generally early myself. She swept my office and tidied my table. She talked to me as she worked.

  ‘George took me to Luna Park last night.’

  ‘Go on! Did he? Have a good time?’

  ‘Oo—great. But doesn’t it cost money? George spent over ten shillings. George doesn’t mind, though. Laugh! . . . We kept putting pennies in those machines—you know. . . . You know, where they tell you your fortunes. Some of them are good. Mine said that I was generous and that. George reckons it’s good. It is good. I’m going to keep it.’

  She bustled about the office dusting and moving chairs. I commenced checking a bundle of clicking dockets.

  ‘I was in George’s last night for a while.’

  ‘Oh, yes! George has a new stepmother hasn’t he? How does he like her? What do you think of her?’

  ‘Oh, I like her. She likes me, too. She’s real young. George likes her. She’s funny, though. She kisses George good-bye and everything.’

  ‘She must be fond of George,’ I remarked.

  ‘She likes him; but she bosses him. That’s silly. George just takes it. He says he doesn’t want to start rows. After his father leaves for work she gets George his breakfast. George doesn’t start work till nine. She chips him about being out late with me and that, and says, “Now, now,” and things like that. I said to George, we don’t stop out very late. Others stop out till after twelve. George says not to take any notice of her.’

  I looked at my pencil, twisting it round in my fingers.

  Some weeks later Mary walked in carrying a book called White Sin, by S. Andrew Wood. She placed it on my table while she took off her hat. I glanced at it.

  She said, ‘It’s George’s. His mother gave it to him.’

  She gazed at herself in a hand mirror while she dabbed at her face with a powder puff.

  I turned the leaves of the book. ‘What did she give it to him for?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh! just a present. She says George “helps” her a lot. She says she “relies” on him. Sometimes she puts her arm round his neck and says, “You help me such a lot, George.” She’s funny, isn’t she? George just puts up with it.’

  ‘You met George last night, did you?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. There’s a friend of his over from Tasmania.’

  She commenced dusting.

  ‘He invited him out to his place for the evening but instead of bringing him to his place he brought him to our place. There’ll be another row, I suppose. His mother says he comes to our place too often. She says he’ll wear out his welcome and that.’

  She swung a chair into the centre of the room and commenced sweeping under the table.

  ‘But if he is in love with you . . .’ I said.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I say. Last night I heard a bike-bell ring. Mum was ironing clothes, piles and piles of them—you know. . . . When I went out George had this chap with him and he introduced me. I thought, this is funny—yo
u know. . . . He brought him in then and they stopped till eleven. George took him to the station afterwards. When he came back he said, “I wasn’t going to bring him home to our place. . . . Not on your life! . . . With her there. She’d get narked again. She doesn’t like other chaps about with me. Not at home. She says it spoils our friendship, other men about.’

  Mary stood erect. She stayed her sweeping, ‘Isn’t she silly?’

  ‘She does seem a bit that way,’ I replied.

  Mary continued her sweeping. After a while she said, ‘George was engaged once.’

  My back was to her, yet she spoke as if she were hiding her face.

  ‘Was he, really?’ I said, interested.

  ‘Yes. It was up in the country. George had a lot of papers and things in his room. I helped him to clear some of them out. There was a lot of letters from her. She was always saying she was lonely and that sort of thing—you know. . . . He was sorry for her. So he got engaged to her. It was really out of pity—to take her away from the place and that sort of thing. He didn’t love her. He said she was thrilled to bits but he wasn’t.’

  She was silent for a while, sweeping slowly.

  I stroked by chin and looked at a calendar picture of the Duke of Gloucester.

  Mary drew a breath. ‘George said she had sex appeal,’ then with an embarrassed little laugh, ‘What is that?—I mean, how do you make it?’

  ‘Ah! that’s the question,’ I replied, leaning back in my chair and looking at the roof. ‘We all want to know that. Its worst enemies are corsets and woollen singlets.’

  ‘Coo!’ exclaimed Mary. She looked ahead of her in silence, softly biting a finger nail.

  ‘I suppose you would have to be passionate,’ she said, wistfully, after an interval.

  ‘I daresay that would help,’ I replied, thinking of a girl I had to meet that night.

  ‘George says I’m not passionate enough. I can’t kiss back. I always think, “I wonder is he laughing at me.” You act sort of silly when you kiss back—you know. . . . My girl friend says you should just put your lips near theirs then draw away, sort of. Keep doing it. She says it brings them on.’

  ‘What!’ I exclaimed, sitting erect and wondering whether I heard aright.