by Gary Crew
So the top rung was free. Still fiery, but free. Until Sebastian Chanteleer appeared, perching proud and predatory in her place, up there, at the very top.
22
And so I began to accept (slowly, I confess) that it was over between Lootie and me. What further evidence could I need: notes hidden in drawers, unspoken meetings for coffee, tears and accusations? But for all of that (the clear signage of separation), she hadn’t asked me to leave, and I lacked the courage to go of my own accord. So when I saw Rory at uni, the week of Lootie’s gig at the Curzon Street church, I asked him to meet me for a beer at the local pub.
The hotel was your average Australian watering hole: single storeyed with a white iron lace veranda (blotched red with rust), a public bar accessed directly off the street (high-gloss Brunswick-green tiles, some cracked, some missing), draped with a rumpled runner of beer-soaked towelling; half a dozen fat-gutted drinkers (middle-aged, male, in pairs or alone), leaning; a boot, a rubber thong, planted on the flash brass of the foot rail; the races on a TV screen, blaring loud and invasive above the mirror-backed spirit rack behind. The place stank of booze, of cigarettes and vomit. And here and there, as we crossed the space (myself in the lead, hurrying) of piss. I regretted the arrangement to meet there and looked for a quiet spot. Somewhere peaceful, somewhere a man could talk, and be heard. Somewhere confidences might be exchanged. If that man had the balls to begin.
I shouted for Rory to come outside with me, into the beer garden. I saw two women there, in their fifties, peroxide blondes in heavy conversation, both smoking and shaking their heads at the scandal shared. ‘Noooo…’, they ooohed, round-mouthed, wide-eyed, ‘Never…Bitch!’
‘Here,’ I said to Rory, finding a table in a corner. ‘Sit.’
‘You got troubles, Monkey Boy?’ he said.
‘Don’t call me that, Rory,’ I said. ‘Those days are over. My name is Charlie.’
(I heard myself say this, and was glad.)
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘old habits die hard.’
‘They do,’ I admitted.
‘Charlie,’ he said, ‘it was a joke.’
‘Not any more,’ I said. ‘Which brings me to what I want to talk to you about.’
‘My shout,’ he said, and up and left.
I raised my glass when he returned. ‘My relationship with Lootie,’ I said, getting stuck in, ‘I need to ask you, like, is it just a habit that I can’t give up, or do I love her? Am I a fool, you know, a Monkey Boy, as you say, only tolerated because I’m compliant? What? Tell me.’
‘Hell, Charlie,’ he said, ‘that’s a mouthful.’
‘Rory,’ I said, ‘I don’t have family, I don’t have friends. The truth is, you’re the only friend I’ve got. We go back a long way. A long, long way…’ and over the beer I told him everything: about the notes in the drawer, Lootie’s ambitions, the way I was treated, and the fact that, despite all of this psychodrama, I could no more walk away from her than fly to the moon.
‘And you’re telling me this, why?’ he asked.
‘I gave you my reasons.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘you did. And they’re good reasons too. And as you say, we’ve known each other a long time.’
‘We have. So…?’
‘So,’ he said, ‘because we’ve known each other so long, and can see each other’s faults, each other’s monkey ways, so to speak, how come you never worked out that I know nothing about this stuff. About women? Nothing. I mean it. The longest relationship I’ve had is a one-night stand. Tops a weekend. And that collapsed by Saturday night. So…’
I looked at him, stunned. Rory, who always laughed at me, could admit to this? ‘Rory,’ I said, ‘I’m serious. I need help here. Quit mucking about.’
He checked the blondes. They were still involved. Leaning forward, well into it, much like us, I guess. ‘I’m not joking,’ he said. ‘I know bugger all about women. I had it off twice in my life. And that’s a fact.’
‘Sorry Rory,’ I said. ‘What am I supposed to do? I mean, you have to have an opinion. Telling me anything is better than nothing. At least it gives me something to think about, doesn’t it?’
He drank a bit more, his head down, then looking up he said, ‘There’s another thing about me that you don’t know, Charlie, but maybe it might help…’
‘Which is?’
‘I’m lonely, mate. Dead lonely. I’ve got nobody either. I go to the movies. Three times a week sometimes, when it comes over me bad. Sometimes, on weekends, I do back-to-back sessions. You didn’t know that, did you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘How would I?’
‘Yeah, well. I try to cover my tracks. But if the movies have got something to teach us, it’s the worth of love. The value of having someone who’s your own. They don’t have to love you back, they just have to be there. Like old slippers. Comfortable, reliable. So you’ve got someone to go home to. So your life makes sense.’
I looked at him hard, waiting for the grin to crack, the old ‘Gotcha Monkey Boy’ gag-line, but there was none. He was telling the truth. He was sincere, for sure. ‘So you think my love for Lootie might be enough for both of us, is that what you’re saying? That I should be grateful to have her?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe. Then again, I’m not proud.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘That’s not so silly. And it means a lot to me. Really.’
When it was time to go, and we stood outside, on the kerb by the gutter, Rory said, ‘Charlie, don’t take any notice of me. I’m a loser. I know that. But don’t throw away what you’ve got. Life works itself out sometimes. In weird ways, ways we never even thought of. Look at us talking about love. Who would’ve thought it, hey?’ and he put his arms around me, and hugged me, right there on the street.
Bearing in mind what Rory had told me, when the day of Lootie’s gig arrived, I decided to make the effort to go. It was a Friday, and being an XPress day, I told her that I would come home, shower and change, and meet her at the church.
‘I’m glad you’re coming,’ she said, giving me a peck on the cheek. ‘I thought that maybe you’d had enough of Sebastian.’
‘I have,’ I admitted, ‘but I’ll never have enough of you.’
‘Charlie,’ she said, and I tingled all over.
I came home that night and did what I had to do. The hot shower was great and the bed looked so tempting, but I had to go. I had to keep trying.
There was moonlight by the time I left, and the church hall was just around the corner, so I decided to walk. The gardens along the way were old, the great Bull Bay magnolias in bloom, their lemony scent drifting in the air.
As I walked I saw the little blonde girl from Ho’s coming towards me, click-clacking along the fence with a stick.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘Evening,’ I said. ‘All alone?’
‘My brother’s at home,’ she said. ‘In trouble.’
‘Oh?’ I said, and since she paused, expecting, I asked, ‘Tell me, what’s your name?’
‘Alice,’ she said, ‘like in Wonderland.’
‘Ah,’ I said, refusing to let on. ‘And where are you off to?’
‘Down to Ho’s,’ she said. ‘My dad’s come back. I’ve got twenty dollars, see?’ and she held out a note.
‘You know,’ I said, bending to share a confidence, ‘Since you live in Wonderland, you don’t need money. Not really. You could make another one of those golden chains. Using soy sauce and newspaper…Remember?’
She smiled when I said that, and looked down at the note in her hand. Then looking up, she said, ‘Yeah, I could do that, but not everyone believes, you know. Especially not in Wonderland.’ And she tapped her temple with one finger—knowing, I guess, where the imagination dwelt. ‘Most people reckon it’s bullshit, eh, what we can conjure up. But we know better, don’t we? We know it’s real.’ And off she went, her shadowy figure click-clacking, into the silvery night.
I climbed the stairs to the hall, pa
using at the door to peer inside. I was pleased to see about twenty people there, all adults, true, but that much I had come to expect. And there was Lootie, as lovely as ever, wearing white herself, as if to shame the magnolias. I caught her eye as she crossed the stage and she waved, evidently nervous, obviously preoccupied. And there was Adrian, seated at a little table, a cake tin full of change in front of him, just as he had done at the Redmond Barry theatre, all that time ago.
‘Hi Adrian,’ I said. ‘I’m Charlie, remember?’
‘I r- r- remember,’ he said. ‘It’s five dollars, th- th- thanks.’
‘No such thing as a free lunch,’ I said, and he shoved a program in my hand, eager for me to keep moving.
‘You must get sick of this stuff,’ I said, thinking that I ought to say something.
He gave me a strange look, his eyes pale, watery, struggling to focus. ‘You d- d- don’t know the half of it,’ he spat, and looked away, shamed.
You poor fool, I thought. You ape. You Monkey Boy. Doomed to crawl forever. To stoop. To serve.
I chose a pew in the back row, to the left. I wanted to see everything, but not be too close. I’d had enough of Chanteleer at close quarters.
Right on seven, Lootie appeared on stage. I felt my heart swell. She looked so beautiful in white, her hair swept back, her face alive. She’s doing what she wants, I thought. She’s happy. And so she introduced herself, and welcomed us, and the evening began.
A boys’ choir, dressed in sky-blue robes, filed onto the stage from the right and left. I braced myself, expecting some rousing Methodist hymn. But the boys hardly opened their mouths. Lips pressed firmly together, eyes fixed on the ceiling, they presented Puccini’s ‘Humming Chorus’ from Madame Butterfly, or so the program informed me.
I have never been one for music, especially opera, but the goosebumps came out all over. Lootie had set the scene. All Chanteleer had to do was follow. He might have farted and the evening would have been a success, but not our Sebastian. He just had to go one better. He just had to do his thing.
Entering from the left, he crossed the stage in the monastic manner that I had seen at the Redmond Barry: head down, hands clasped high, walking ever so slowly as if deep in thought. Or prayer perhaps. Reaching the pulpit, which protruded from the stage proper, he entered and gripped the sides, turning his face heavenward. He stood like this for a minute (gathering energy from above?) and then, looking down at us (his congregation?), he said, deeply, meaningfully, ‘My dears,’ and I saw the tears in his eyes. ‘My dears, surely we have heard the voice of angels. Were we ever so blessed?’
If somebody had cried ‘Hallelujah!’, I would not have been surprised—but they would’ve had to be fast. Sebastian Chanteleer was away.
‘How might I extol the beauty of the child?’ he boomed. ‘How might I be equal to the task—no, privileged indeed—to write for them! What author could aspire to greater? What author might be more humbled by his audience? Why, the children’s writer, my dears, the children’s writer…’
And so he continued, filled with the spirit as it were, delivering an exhortation worthy of the most zealous evangelist, stopping short of nothing other than a call for a healing, for the audience to fall down and be cured before him—though of what, I could not imagine, other than their evident gullibility. Never in my life had I been subject to such hokum, such inflated verbiage, and I cringed, almost unable to maintain my seat.
But the audience was rapt. Entirely taken in, all save one: Adrian, the brother, sat in a row just ahead of me and I saw him suffer, his eyes cast down, his fingers agitated, knotting and re-knotting. Tormented.
When it was over, Lootie took the stage (during rounds of applause) and having thanked the speaker, and prepared his believers for a signing, she re-introduced the choir.
Out the boys filed, beautiful it’s true, and once again, their eyes to the ceiling they sang. This time ‘Vespers’, from A. A. Milne’s When We Were Young. ‘Little boy kneels at the foot of the bed…’
As they silently filed away, I swear I heard weeping.
After the refreshments, I stood near the door, next to the signing table, hoping to see Lootie. I wanted to tell her that she had done well, that the boys’ singing was beautiful, her organisation perfect. I wanted to say, sincerely, hopefully, this might lead to work. That Chanteleer might see how good she was, and employ her. Which, strange as it may seem (after all my angst and protestations), I had come to accept. On the proviso that he could afford to pay her, of course.
But Lootie’s proposed employment was not to be the end of the story.
As I have mentioned previously, citing Dickens, in the business of writing (particularly fiction, assuredly Chanteleer’s forte, in print, or otherwise), there can never be an over-reliance on coincidence. Its use, or abuse, is more a ‘question of degree’.
And so it was in the case of Chanteleer’s death; that the children’s writer (acclaimed as he was) sat at the signing table when he did, unsheathing his Montblanc (black, lethal), and placed it on the table before him; that his idiot brother dropped the change tin when he did, clattering, banging, ruining the ambience so artfully created; that Sebastian turned when he did, exposing his jugular, thick and taut, hissing, ‘Pick it up, you fool!’—(read child, read Monkey Boy)—and his brother, enraged, seized the opportunity—or re-imagined it, out of somewhere, who would know?—(the coincidence that I speak of)—reached out and, grasping the fatal pen, shoved it in to the writer’s throat.
So! And so! And so!
Lootie left me. Some weeks later, true, but having lost her purpose in life (or so she said), she left me all the same. And now I sit beneath my elm, looking down to Ho’s, imagining. And writing, of course—children’s stories, since that is what I do.
About the Author
Gary Crew has written over fifty books for children and young adults and won many awards, both internationally and in Australia (including the Australian Children’s Book Council Book of the Year four times) and both the NSW and Victorian Premier’s Awards for Children’s Literature. He lives with his wife, Christine, on their property in Maleny in Queensland. Gary is Associate Professor (Creative Writing) at the University of the Sunshine Coast.
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Also by Gary Crew
Strange Objects
No Such Country
Angel’s Gate
The Diviner’s Son
The Lace Maker’s Daughter
First Light
The Watertower
Beneath the Surface
The Mystery of Eilean Mor
Copyright
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Australia in 2009
This edition published 2010
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
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Copyright © Gary Crew 2009
The right of Gary Crew to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Crew, Gary, 1947–
The children’s writer/Gar
y Crew.
ISBN 978 0 7322 7836 8 (pbk.)
ISBN 978 0 7304 4344 5 (epub)
A823.3
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