32
Limelight man
At the end of the week, the whole troupe was exhausted. Mrs Bowman had spent most of her time in the post office, wiring telegrams to Melbourne in the hope of finding Kate. Clancy was worn out from having to make three costume changes every evening and was having trouble remembering which character he was playing at any given moment. Old man Lytton limped around the camp, having injured his hip on the third evening of playing Officer O'Grady. Ted Bowman announced they were folding the tour and heading back to Melbourne. They'd made enough to cover their losses and the Bowmans wanted to go home.
‘We have to find Kate. There's still a chance we may be able to cover it all up. The marriage isn't legal without our consent. We'll have it annulled and get our Kate back.’
Clancy rolled his eyes and leant close to Paddy.
‘They've never fathomed Kate. They don't know how stubborn she is,’ said Clancy. ‘I've known her all my life. If she's mad enough to run away with Whiteley, she's not likely to come back. She'll make a fist of it, will Kate. And everyone will just have to get used to the fact that she's Mrs Eddie Whiteley from now on.’
Paddy winced. Clancy might have known Kate for a long time but he didn't know much about Eddie. Paddy couldn't imagine Eddie sticking with anything, let alone marriage.
On the morning that they were to leave Colac, Paddy walked away from the camp and into the bush. Dappled sunlight cut through the gum trees and the air smelt sweet and dry, with a tang of eucalypt. Paddy took a deep breath. He plucked at a gum leaf and crushed it between his fingers. He shut his eyes and tried to imagine what it would have been like to be a bushranger, to be Ned Kelly or Ben Hall or a character like Lightning Jack, and roam across this huge, open land. And then he thought of the night of the storm, his first night in a starring role, and he felt a sharp happiness.
When he opened his eyes, he found Clancy standing beside him.
‘We have to go,’ said Clancy. ‘Father says we're to take the train back to Melbourne with Mother and Mrs Bowman. They're going to drive us to the station now. What are you doing wandering about like this?’
‘Just saying goodbye,’ said Paddy. ‘I wish we could keep on touring. I wish we could have made it to Portland.’
‘Well, I'm ready to go back to town,’ said Clancy. ‘I've never liked touring. All the spiders and the heat and the mud. I wish we could go on tour on a boat and sail home to England. That would be real touring. This gallivanting from one drought-stricken town to the next, it's simply not good enough.’
‘I don't want to go to England. It's not my home.’
‘Well, I'm looking forward to being a proper British citizen and going to England one day. You're as bad as Father, with all his republican ideas! If I was old enough, I'd sign up and go and fight for the Queen, to show I'm really British.’
All the way back to Melbourne, Clancy and Paddy argued about which was better, England or Australia. Eventually, Clancy had had enough. He pushed his cap forward over his face, folded his arms and slumped lower in his seat, pretending to be asleep. Paddy looked out at the blue sky arching above and the great expanse of dry fields. A stand of golden wattle glowed on a distant hillside. When had it happened? – that moment when he realised he belonged in this landscape?
At Spencer Street Station, Mrs Bowman and Mrs Lytton organised a porter to load their trunks onto a carriage.
‘No hard feelings, old bean,’ said Clancy. ‘Hope to catch you round the traps. I'll watch out for those “Celebrated Star Artist – Melbourne Idol – Billy Dare” posters.’
‘And I'll keep an eye out for those headlines, “Colonel Clarence Lytton, hero of the empire”,’ joked Paddy. They shook hands and punched each other in the shoulder.
‘But seriously, I'll send news if I hear anything at all about Kate and Eddie.’
The city smelt hot and sour after his months in the country. Paddy walked down Bourke Street feeling as if a huge weight was settling on his shoulders. He didn't want to go back to tell Bridie about what had happened. He could just imagine the look on her face; the crushing shame and disappointment when he told her about Eddie Whiteley eloping with Kate Bowman.
He turned into Stephen Street and stopped. The road was almost blocked with bird fanciers who were buying and selling their birds. One man had a big black-and-yellow cockatoo in a cage and its screeches were so loud, they hurt Paddy's ears. Another man had a sulphur-crested white one that he claimed could talk. There were hundreds of different pigeons changing hands. Paddy looked up at the copper-coloured evening sky. On a windowsill on the third floor, a flock of sparrows had gathered. Bridie was definitely at home. Paddy drew a breath and turned into the narrow stairwell.
The lodgings smelt of sour cabbage and rancid meat. Shifting his duffel bag and swag onto his shoulder, he trudged up the stairs of the building.
For a split second, Bridie stared at him, bewildered.
‘Billy Smith!’ she exclaimed. ‘What drove you to turn those golden curls black as coal?’
‘It's a long story,’ said Paddy. ‘And I'm not Billy Smith any more. I've changed my name again. Billy Dare.’
‘Billy Dare?’
‘Remember? Sir Gilbert, he told us about a character he knew once, a boy called Billy Dare who shot a bushranger? I thought it made a good stage name. “I dare do all that may become a man, who dares do more is none.”’
Bridie wiped tears of laughter from her eyes and clapped her hands.
‘Brave words, Billy Dare.’ Then she peered over his shoulder into the darkening hallway. ‘But where's Eddie? Did he come back with you? I've missed you boys. The pennies have kept the wolf from the door but I've missed the pair of you every day.’
Paddy felt the words stick in his throat as he tried to explain what had happened. Bridie leant forward in her chair, frowning a little, as if he were speaking a different language and she had to concentrate hard to understand him. But when he'd finished she simply nodded. She took Paddy's chin in her hand and turned his face towards her.
‘You mustn't judge him too harshly, Billy. You mustn't judge if you don't know his story.’
Paddy couldn't stop himself. ‘I don't need to know his story to know he's a scoundrel.’
Bridie turned away and hobbled over to the window seat where she had left her work. She picked it up and returned to sewing sequins onto the costume. She would never hear a word said against Eddie.
‘Well, I'd best be getting on. I have to find lodgings before dark,’ said Paddy, hitching his swag back onto his shoulder.
‘Don't go, Billy,’ said Bridie, looking up from her work. ‘I know it's not as comfortable as Charity House. All I can offer is a place to roll out your swag and a cup of sweet tea in the morning. I don't have any work for you and no sixpences to spare. But you always have a place here, with me, if you choose it. I promise you that.’
Paddy stood with his hand on the door handle.
‘Even if I'm an actor?’
‘Even if you're an actor. But you must promise me one thing.’
Paddy hoped it wasn't a promise he couldn't keep.
‘What?’
‘I want a front-row seat when you open at the Princess Theatre.’
Paddy laughed. ‘First I have to find a theatre that will take me!’
‘You're too late to find a part in the Christmas pantomimes. I'll have a word to Tom Wannan, down at the Bijou. He's the limelight man there and I've heard he's looking for a boy.’
‘But I want to be on stage, not behind the limelight.’ ‘I know, and you will be, but you can make a start there. You'll meet everyone you will ever need to know. All of Melbourne goes to the Bijou.’
All through the long hot summer of 1898, Paddy worked at the Bijou, running back and forth from the footlights to backstage, scurrying along the underground passages beneath the stage.
‘Mr Hugarde!’ Paddy called. ‘Five minutes, sir!’
Hugarde nodded and led his six soldiers int
o the wing, waiting for their final cue. Even after weeks of watching it, Paddy hadn't discovered how the man defied death day after day. Hugarde strode out onto centre stage and delivered his usual speech, his team of soldiers behind him. Then he moved to the left of the stage and the six soldiers lined up on the opposite side, guns at the ready. At a signal from Hugarde, they opened fire one by one. With a movement so quick, so deft that Paddy could never see it, Hugarde caught the bullets, holding them up between thumb and forefinger for the astonished audience to see.
Joey Windsor the ventriloquist and McGiney, his Irish dummy, were next up. Joey was always late but he usually blamed McGiney. They'd come on stage arguing furiously. McGiney was meant to be a stupid Irish dolt, but somehow, the dummy always managed to get the last word in.
Paddy watched them impatiently, waiting for the last joke that was a signal to him to run and line up the other acts. Jugglers, impersonators, shadowists and escapologists all crowded in the backstage dressing rooms, waiting for Paddy to give them their call. The stage manager panicked whenever anyone was late.
The second-last act was Georgia Magnet. Paddy felt the stage shudder as she lumbered past him. Georgia Magnet's act traded on the sheer strength of her presence. She was so powerful that no one could drag her from the stage. The audience roared as men were invited to step up from the stalls to try and move the giant of a woman. Three men with ropes couldn't drag her away.
Finally, Chung Ling Soo, the magician, took the stage. Chung wasn't really Chinese, but when he was on stage he carried an air of Oriental mystery that convinced the audience that he was from the heart of the East. He was a master of smoke and mirrors, bewildering everyone with illusion. Objects floated across the stage, a goldfish materialised out of thin air and Chung Ling caught it in his hand. Paddy hated it when he had to run under the stage to help Tom with the lighting. He couldn't bear to miss a minute.
After the show, Paddy met Nugget at the pie and tea shop in Little Collins Street. The boys squeezed into a corner booth and ordered a pie floater each.
Nugget packed his pipe while they waited and looked at Paddy appraisingly.
‘Glad to see you got rid of all that nancy-boy hair. You was starting to look like a right freak with that black and gold mop. You look like a man again.’
Paddy ran one hand over his scalp. A thin stubble of blond hair was all that was left. Nugget had given him such a hard time about the black curls with blond roots that he'd had the barber shave it all off.
‘I wish I did look like a man. I can't seem to get the parts I want. I've auditioned for a couple of shows but when I tell the directors that I'm fifteen, they say I'm too young to play a man and too old to play a child.’
‘You should spin ‘em a yarn. Say you're nineteen. No one's gunna snitch on you.’
‘No one's going to believe I'm nineteen, either.’
Nugget mashed his pie into his bowl of pea green soup. ‘Give it time, mate. I reckon you was born lucky. Never seen a man land on his feet like you do. Reckon you must be half cat. No matter how far you fall, you always come up trumps. How you going with the old girl? Still bunking down on her floor?’
‘For the moment,’ said Paddy.
‘She's a great old bird, Mum Whiteley,’ said Nugget, shaking his head. ‘she's helped a lot of us out. Always willing to feed a cobber, if she's got anything to spare. It'll be a black day when she passes in her marbles.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Paddy.
‘You know, drops off the twig, croaks it, kicks the bucket, mate. She must be more than sixty years old. She won't be around forever.’
Paddy shuddered. Was this really where Bridie's life would end, in those two dark rooms in Exhibition Street? Bridie said everything changed, whether you wanted it to or not. But Paddy felt they were both marking time. He was waiting for his big break, the role that would take him out of the wings and put him in front of the audience. Was death the only thing Bridie was waiting for?
33
Welcome strangers
On a hot afternoon, Paddy staggered through the front door of the lodgings with an armful of costumes from the Bijou for Mum to repair. Standing at the foot of the stairs was a dark-eyed, black-haired girl in a pale blue dress.
‘Hello there,’ she said in an American accent. ‘Could you help me? We're looking for Mrs Bridie Whiteley. We were told she lived in this building, but Gramps has already knocked on every door and we can't find her.’
‘I'm going up to her rooms right now,’ said Paddy, trying to smile at the girl over the crumpled fabrics.
‘Gramps,’ she called excitedly, ‘come quick, this young man knows where she lives.’ An old gentleman appeared from down the end of the gloomy hallway. His pale blue eyes crinkled into a smile when he saw Paddy.
‘Good afternoon to you,’ he said, raising his hat. ‘Lead on, young man.’
Paddy took them upstairs. ‘Could you knock for me?’ he asked the girl. ‘It's a bit tricky, with my hands full.’
The girl turned to the old man. ‘Are you ready, Gramps?’
Paddy looked curiously from the girl to her grandfather. The old man's hand trembled as he knocked.
Bridie opened the door and the old man stepped forward as if to introduce himself, but all he did was stare. Bridie looked back warily. Slowly, tenderly, the old man raised one hand and touched Bridie on the cheek. Her eyes grew wide and she trembled.
‘Even after all these years, blood knows blood, eh, Bridie girl?’ said the old man.
Then Bridie and the old man were hugging and crying and Paddy was so embarrassed he didn't know where to look. The dark-haired girl glanced across at Paddy and laughed. ‘I'm Annie O'Connor. And that's my grandfather and my great-auntie. They haven't seen each other for a long time.’
‘You mean that's Brandon?’ asked Paddy, incredulous.
The old man turned around and stretched his hand out to Paddy. ‘doc O'Connor. It's a long time since anyone's called me Brandon. Only my bossy big sister can get away with that.’
Paddy stared at him in wonder and then, thrusting a hand out from beneath the armful of costumes, shook the old man's hand.
That evening, the O'Connors and Bridie went to the Bijou and afterwards they all met Paddy in the Grand Saloon at the Victoria Coffee Palace for supper. Doc O'Connor made sure they had the best table.
‘Now you order anything you fancy, Bridie, Billy. And I've been thinking, I'm not happy about your lodgings. You two should come over to the Grand Hotel and stay there with me and Annie until Bridie's sorted her business.’
‘You're not staying at the Grand Hotel?’ said Paddy. The Grand was the most luxurious hotel in all of Melbourne.
‘Brandon, you can't be paying for us to stay at the Grand,’ said Bridie. ‘A night in the Grand would cost as much as we earn in a month! Besides, I don't want to move out of my lodgings. Billy, can you imagine what Tilly Dunne would say if I asked her to come to the Grand Hotel for a fitting!’
Paddy couldn't help but laugh at the thought of a parade of showgirls trotting in and out of the foyer of the Grand Hotel.
Doc leant across the table and covered Mum's hand with his. ‘I don't want you worrying about stitching for a living any more, Bridie.’
Bridie smiled, but Paddy could tell she was uncomfortable.
‘Billy,’ said Doc, 'me and Annie, we owe you. If you hadn't written those letters, we never would have come for Bridie. I'm right grateful to you. You want to stay at the Grand, don't you?’
Before Paddy could answer, two men stopped at their table.
‘We're real glad to see you here in Melbourne, Doctor O'Connor,’ said the taller of the men. ‘tim Madigan and Jim O'Leary. You're an answer to our prayers, sir, if you don't mind me saying it.’
Doc shook hands with each of the men.
‘We've heard you can turn a no-hoper into a real goer,’ said O'Leary. ‘Our syndicate's got the finest filly you ever saw, but she needs a gentle hand. You could have h
er ready for the Spring racing carnival, you could have her take the Melbourne Cup.’
Doc laughed but Paddy could see his sharp blue eyes taking the measure of the two men. ‘Well, I could take a look at her, if you like. But I'm only here for a short visit, then I'll be taking my family here back home.’ Doc spread his arms expansively to encompass the whole table.
Paddy stared at Doc, bewildered. Was the old man including him and Bridie? Maybe he thought Paddy was really Bridie's grandson.
While the two men tried to persuade Doc that he at least had to see their horse, Paddy tried to catch Bridie's eye but she was intent on the conversation between Doc and the punters. Annie took her spoon out of the bowl of strawberry icecream and licked it clean, staring at Paddy with her unfathomable black eyes. ‘It's going to be real fun getting to know you better, Billy Dare,’ she said.
Early the next morning Annie, Doc and Paddy went out to Flemington. Paddy was meant to be showing them around but Doc didn't seem to need much help. He simply hailed a cab and ordered it to take them straight to the track.
Annie and Paddy wandered from one stall to the next, looking at the racehorses while Doc went off to inspect the new filly. Paddy hadn't realised how much he'd been missing the scent of horseflesh. Annie seemed to be thinking exactly the same thing. When a mare came to the front of the stall she reached up and slipped her arms around its neck. The horse nuzzled her and she stroked it with tenderness.
‘Back home, I ride every day but I haven't been on a horse since we took the damn boat out here,’ said Annie. ‘I told Mr Madigan and he says he's gonna give me a pony. I'll be riding her as the Spirit of Erin in the St Patrick's Day parade at the end of the week.’
‘What, you got given a horse? Just like that?’
‘It's not because of me, silly. I told you. Gramps is famous. He's the finest horse doctor in all of California, probably in the whole US of A. C'mon, let's go see what this pony of mine looks like.’
Becoming Billy Dare Page 18
