Pleased by the prospect of a sale, he starts to whistle. Harry endures it for a moment before asking him to stop.
‘I can’t abide whistling. Will only do for dogs.’
Jordan stares ahead.
‘It’s not only whistling I dislike,’ Harry continues. ‘I have no time for comedy. The lowest form of entertainment. An artist should try to inspire and amaze, not just provoke mirth. Yet Rickards puts clowns like Happy Tom Parker on the bill, as if I weren’t attraction enough.’
‘Don’t mind a few jokes myself,’ Jordan says. ‘My father took me to one of Rickards’ shows six or seven years past. Saw an American like yourself. W.C Fields. He could juggle tennis balls, cigar boxes, anything. His legs squeaked when he moved across stage. I never laughed so hard.’
‘But what’s become of this fellow Fields? There’s not much mileage in juggling cigar boxes.’ Harry contemplates parched brown paddocks and scrawny trees before asking Jordan how much further they must go.
‘Close to Keilor now, I’d say. Another forty minutes or so should do it.’
The sun is up now and climbing fast, casting shadows over the dusty road. Harry feels sweat starting to soak his shirt-collar. Jordan is chewing another of his matchsticks. The way he flips it with his tongue reminds Harry of a tumbler in a gymnastics display.
‘You mentioned your father – how is he now?’
‘Dunno. Shot through not long after he took me to see Fields. I never hear from him. No idea if he’s dead or gone to Zanzibar.’
‘To live in ignorance must be awful,’ Harry says. ‘Not knowing if someone has disappeared. I lost my own father, but I know what happened. He died on October 5, 1892, in New York. Thank God I have my beloved mother still. And you?’
‘Gone four years back. Trampled under a runaway carriage.’
‘How awful! Leaving you an orphan.’
‘Too old to be an orphan, mate. Was near twenty when it happened. Made my own way ever since.’
Harry sits back and closes his eyes, as if to contemplate the dreadful horror of losing a mother. And then – it must be the sun or the rhythm of the wheels on the rutted track, or the sound of the engine, or simply the fact that he’s been sleeping so badly, with only a few hours snatched between his last show and the early start – his head becomes heavy, his breathing slows, and he naps. He dreams not of his mother but his late father.
Rabbi Weiss, with his stern features and mouse-coloured beard, is at Temple. He is folding his prayer shawl after officiating at a funeral and explaining to his son, Ehrich, that Jewish principles dictate that a burial must be held as soon as possible after death. Anything less, he intones, is a humiliation of the deceased. The Rabbi places his shawl on an odd-shaped bundle beside him, and now Ehrich understands the funeral is not finished at all. For the bundle is the abandoned body of an unknown woman. His father gazes at him with grey eyes; damp with disappointment. He instructs Ehrich to sit alone in the darkness with this forsaken woman and watch over her; observe shemira. If it isn’t done, he warns, she will never rest. And a similar fate will befall those who denied her appropriate respect.
Never rest. Never rest. Never rest …
Rabbi Weiss is leaning over him. But his features are blurred, as if Harry is trying to see him from under the surface of one of his frigid baths. Now it is his wife leaning over him, not his father. Bess is adding the last pieces of ice. But if it is his wife, why are there holes where her eyes would be, and why are her arms twisted before her like tree branches as she reaches for him under the bath water that tastes of mud? Harry tries to call out but can make no sound. He tries to evade her bony grasp, twisting and writhing, but he’s not in the bath anymore. It’s a motor car, and the Darracq is bouncing around as if its wheels are of different sizes and Jordan is cursing as one of the phonograph boxes almost slides out of the car and Harry sees in front of him a vast expanse of stones and scrub with a few trees scattered near the perimeter and two tent-like structures far apart.
From the closer one, a short figure in black emerges and appears to be looking their way. Harry feels a warm breeze on his face.
‘Right,’ says Jordan. ‘I reckon this is it. Plumpton’s Paddock.’
14
THIS is it.
A barren place. An almost-flat place. A farmer’s paddock from which most of the rocks have been cleared, or otherwise dragged into piles with tufts of dry grass clinging to cracks. It is a paddock without any animals, apart from creatures that cannot be seen: lizards slipping between rocks; coiled snakes sleeping under the exposed roots of trees around the perimeter fencing; birds nesting in these trees; and flies that land on the exposed salty skin of Harry and his driver as soon as Jordan slows the Darracq just inside the entrance to the paddock.
The tents, one much larger than the other, are their destination. A path of flattened yellow grass leads towards them. Jordan has to concentrate as his vehicle dips and lurches on the uneven ground but, even so, is struck by the change in Harry’s demeanour. A few minutes earlier he was dozing, twitching and making sounds that Jordan couldn’t understand, but now his eyes are bright with anticipation, like a child visiting the beach catching sight of the sea for the first time. As they get close enough for Jordan to make out several ‘HOUDINI’ signs around the bigger tent, Harry rises in his place and then springs up so that he is standing on his seat: a mahout showing off on the back of an elephant.
‘Don’t be such a bloody idiot,’ Jordan hisses as the Darracq’s wheels strike something and the American is almost dislodged.
But Harry ignores him. Cupping his hands around his mouth he calls out: ‘Bonjour Brassac! Ća va?’
The man in black, a plump man with a moustache, raises his bowler hat – a type of headgear that strikes Jordan as being more appropriate to Collins Street than this empty place with its flies and parched vegetation. But the driver has only a second to register the mechanic’s appearance before Harry jumps over the side and lands neatly on his feet while the car is still moving. Jordan’s curse reflects both his opinion of the American’s foolhardiness and his suspicion that one of the Darracq’s tyres has been shredded. He is correct.
When he stops the vehicle and gets out, his back aching from the rough ride, he sees that the right rear tyre now resembles a sausage skin stripped of meat. Flat and useless. Jordan also sees small pennants fluttering from the twin peaks of the larger tent that houses Harry’s flying machine. He sees Brassac the mechanic gesturing towards the machine, which resembles a piece of agricultural equipment, as he talks to his employer. Then Harry turns to consider another figure approaching from the second tent, which has no signs around it, is of much more modest design, and is located one hundred yards away.
Harry doesn’t wait for the other, bigger, man to reach him, but rather steps out to meet him. This must be Banks, the fellow with the Wright flier also intent on claiming the Australian record. He is a competitor but also, in Harry’s mind, a fellow member of the brotherhood of aviators.
Before Jordan turns his attention to replacing the ruined tyre, a hot and tedious task, he watches the two men meet. They shake hands, converse with hands on hips, appear to be surveying the whole paddock. Then Banks produces paper from a pocket so the famous visitor can sign his name.
Bugger me! the driver tells himself. Another star-struck fan. Jordan gets to work on the damaged wheel, wondering whether this bloke or Brassac could be interested in a Champion phonograph.
This is it.
A paddock with two tents, two flying machines, one mechanic and two aspiring pilots, one of whom must make regular trips to and from Melbourne to fulfil his contract with Rickards the theatrical promoter.
AND there it is.
Far from Diggers Rest, the Bleriot that has been ‘Exhibited and Flown Before Crowned Heads’ remains on display in Martin’s Magic Cave, its cables as taut as the string of a flexed longbow. Frederick Jones, the Bleriot’s proud owner, asks around, hoping to find an empty place on the outskirts of Adelaide that might serve as an airfield.
15
EVERYTHING has changed now. The day hums with possibilities. Bess hasn’t got time for breakfast: Audran has promised to call for her at 10am. Her head is whirling with what he had told her the previous night. Her husband has gone to see his flying machine. She is glad he is not there to ask any questions about her air of eager anticipation, so different to the torpor she has known. As self-centred as he is, he would have noticed how she cannot stay still.
Bess was aware of Harry leaving, shortly before dawn. She woke to the smell of a struck match and saw her husband writing at the desk by candlelight with his back to her. Feigning sleep, she watched between almost-closed eyelashes as he placed his latest note close to her pillow. He stood quite still with his hands behind his head, looking away, the pose of a man who is very tired or deep in thought, then departed. She heard the latch of the door slip shut; muffled voices outside; the noise of an engine harsh in the morning stillness.
