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And I know this could be my last time with flying machines. After this place, I think to make retirement on the Boulevard Chantilly. Grow geraniums in a box on the window. Or have a tranquil cottage outside Paris and keep the fowls for eggs to make a fine omelette. Perhaps my sister Cecile would care to live with me.

I like to think of this. And it could be possible with bonus in American dollars Mr H. has promised for the record.

So he must listen and I will help.

Here there is sun. And plenty wet. Before Mr H. comes again, I must look near tree roots for mushrooms.

30

RICKARDS is chewing the end of his pen, as if this might help him comprehend what he’s just been told.

‘Let’s see if I’ve got this straight,’ he says. ‘You propose to add a new element to the show. An enticing element. Yet you don’t care if nobody knows about it.’

‘They’ll know about it soon enough,’ Harry replies. ‘I envisage this as an unexpected treat for next Wednesday’s matinee. Once word spreads, you’ll sell even more tickets for the evening show and the ones after that.’

‘But there’s enough time to get an advert into the newspapers. Something like this …’ Rickards stabs his pen into a small bottle of ink, then scratches at a clean sheet of paper on his desk while Harry and Bess, seated opposite, watch in silence. ‘This would do it:

‘“Harry Rickards is Proud to Announce, For The First Time In Australia” – I’d get that in bigger type – “The One, The Only, The Original Houdini Accompanied by his Companion In Life, Beatrice Houdini!”’

‘That’s very grand, Mr Rickards,’ Bess says. ‘But I’m not sure—’

‘Ah! Not extravagant enough? How about this: “The Great Mysteriarch and … Mrs Mysteriarch!”’

‘We don’t doubt your promotional skills,’ Harry interjects. ‘But you must understand, my wife has not performed on stage for several years. There will be pressure enough on her without, ah, inflating expectations.’

Rickards screws up the sheet of paper, then sweeps it into a bin already full of torn invoices, portraits of aspiring performers, wrappers for headache powders and chewed cigar butts.

‘So be it,’ he says. ‘But if you weren’t the headline act you wouldn’t even get a say in it. This is my theatre, and I advertise as I see fit. My tragedy’ – addressing Bess directly – ‘is that I’m both a showman and a gentleman.’

‘I appreciate your consideration,’ Bess replies. ‘But while I’m eager to perform again, it may be only for a show or two. It would be misleading to advertise me as a permanent addition to the bill.’

‘Mis-lead-ing,’ Rickards says, savouring each syllable. ‘We couldn’t have anything that were misleading! Ah well, we’ve already got the seamen’s challenge for tonight. Also Sceptic’s letter. That’ll keep business bubbling.’

He pauses, studying Bess as if she has just arrived for an audition. Seated, she appears even smaller than usual, wearing a full-length dress with a colourful pattern and a broad-brimmed hat. To Rickards, she looks more like a program-seller than a performer.

‘So what will you do on stage?’ he asks.

Metamorphosis,’ Harry replies for her, leaning forward. ‘Our very first routine – the substitution trunk trick. Simple but spectacular. Speed is the crucial factor, and I never had a swifter assistant than my wife. Nor a prettier one.’

Bess looks at her button-up boots, muddied in puddles outside the theatre.

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Rickards says. ‘But we all lose our edge with time. Forty years ago, God help me, I cracked ’em up in music halls all over England with “Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines”. Now I probably couldn’t recall even the first verse of that song.’

‘I hope you’re not doubting my wife’s professionalism,’ Harry says.

‘Not at all. I’m sure that she – that both of you – will be wonderful. I’ll make a point of seeing for myself. Wednesday matinee, you say?’

‘Quite right,’ says Harry, apparently mollified. ‘We have a few days for rehearsals. My flying endeavours are postponed until my wife makes her return to the stage. I will not take the Diggers Rest road again until Thursday at the earliest.’ He pauses, so his sacrifice can be acknowledged.

‘Don’t reckon you’d get far before then anyway after all that rain,’ Rickards says. ‘I had leaks in the foyer area here. If things stay wet the whole place will soon smell as bad as Fred Bluett’s sheep’s head.’

Bess gets up. She wants to seek out Franz Kukol to advise him of her plans for Metamorphosis. Harry suggests she will find the Austrian backstage; he will catch up with them both after he has skimmed the latest newspapers. She is at the door when Rickards tosses a question at her with the precision of a knife-thrower.

‘Why did you stop performing?’

‘You know how it is, Mr Rickards,’ Bess replies, half-turning. ‘The same thing night after night can become monotonous. And I was never in any doubt that people came to see my husband rather than myself.’

‘She is too modest,’ says Harry. ‘I have never worked with a more skilful assistant. But there was a private consideration. It has been my wife’s great misfortune never to be a mother. I wondered if the toll taken by demanding performances was a factor in this. At my suggestion, the stage lost a star so we might gain a child. Sadly, however, this wasn’t to be.’

Bess has both hands on her handbag, holding tight.

‘I see,’ Rickards says, embarrassed. ‘But why return now?’

‘Let’s just say the planets are aligned,’ she says. Then leaves.

RICKARDS has learned what Harry likes. Most of all, he likes to read about himself. Seeing his name in print gives him a pleasing sense of permanence. But Harry doesn’t buy local newspapers and magazines, much preferring to let someone else like Rickards spend their own money and then draw pertinent articles to his attention. Articles about himself. Also reports of sudden death or ghastly accidents.

Rickards has noticed that Harry will often devour these before he scans his own clippings, leaning across the desk with his brow furrowed, making clicking sounds with his tongue as he reads “Struck By Lightning” or “Death From Lockjaw: The Accident at Yarraville Rope Works”. Whenever especially intrigued by a particular item, Harry will read it aloud.

‘This is almost too horrible,’ he begins, soon after Bess has left:

‘“A burning accident occurred at Hay when Edith Rose Ray, a girl aged sixteen years, employed by Mr W. Parkhill, sheriff’s officer, went to lift the kettle off the kitchen fire and her dress became ignited. She ran screaming through the courthouse grounds enveloped in flames …”’

Harry contemplates the ghastliness of this story.

Then his attention is taken by another:

Are sens

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