Before Harry can reply – he wants to protest that Melba knows nothing about their kind of work – Kukol coughs to signal his arrival. He is carrying Bess’s stage costume.
‘Should I put this back in storage, Mrs?’
‘No, thank you, Franz,’ she replies, taking it from him. ‘I would like to keep it with me. And I think I will return to the hotel soon.’
‘I’ll accompany you,’ says Harry. ‘We’ll have some dinner together. I’m famished! But first I must get out of this outfit – it’s ruined.’
Bess nods; tells him to send Franz to get her when he has changed. He will find her on the stage. She wants to stand where she has performed for the final time and ponder the real reason for her announcement – for what she told her husband about Melba’s interview is only part of the explanation. Melba’s recording with Caruso has much more to do with it. Since she first heard the aria, in Puccini’s room, she has been transfixed by the power of this music. Nothing her husband does in his act, as skilful and adroit as he is, can cause such intense emotion and touch her so deeply. To be an accessory to this artifice now seems hollow and false.
She lays her costume down and stands on the edge of the stage. She spreads the fingers of each hand, tilts her head back, and tries to imagine how it must feel to summon that heart-stopping note Melba reaches at the end of the aria. She closes her eyes. If only she could sing …
She cannot see the tall figure who has lingered and stands near the back, in darkness. This is perfect, he thinks. This is how it should be. The heroine alone at the end.
‘Mrs?’ Kukol asks from the wings. ‘You alright, Mrs? Are you ready?’
‘Yes, Franz,’ she replies, picking up the costume and turning her back on the rows and rows of empty seats. ‘I can leave now.’
38
HALLEY’s Comet has disappeared behind the sun. People await its reappearance. If Harry bothered to read anything in the newspapers other than his own notices or lurid accounts of ghastly accidents, he might know that Dr Maunder of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich has described it as, ‘The only periodic comet which is so brilliant as to arrest the attention of the whole world.’ Another astronomer assures concerned members of the public that they shall scarcely perceive the passage of the earth through the comet’s tail because its gases are spread over such a vast distance.
But when Harry lies awake it is not the comet that haunts him. He broods upon the sightless body in the river, now with rats for cold company in the morgue; his wife, who insisted on performing again and then walked away from the stage; the young swimmer who humiliated him at the City Baths; his flying machine that hasn’t flown. The Australian aviation record is within reach, an accomplishment different to anything he has achieved before, yet Harry remains hostage to factors he cannot control.
If he read newspapers he could also appreciate that this Australian record means little on the international stage. Even as Harry waits for everything to be in place, the aviator Henri Farman carries two passengers a distance of fourteen miles in sixteen and a half minutes over France in a flying machine of his own design. He also manages to stay aloft for sixty-two minutes. Both these feats represent world firsts, while Harry is yet to rise above Plumpton’s Paddock. But he still believes he has no serious rival in Australia. When the injured Ralph Banks tells him something he has heard about a Bleriot, its significance eludes him. Harry assumes that Banks is referring to Brassac’s former employer. Like the comet, the monoplane imported to Adelaide by F.H Jones stays out of his sight.
IT has left the Magic Cave.
Martin’s department store (‘Where Your Money Goes Farthest’) now advertises millinery rather than a flying machine. On Saturday 12 March, the day after Mrs Houdini’s final performance at Rickards’ Opera House, the Bleriot is dismantled, packed in a case, and carried to Bolivar, South Australia, on a trolley. The driver takes it slowly, worried that his horses could shy and dislodge their load if passed by a noisy motor car.
At Mr Winzor’s property, which is mostly flat, the Bleriot is put together by Carl Wittber and Fred Custance. They are aviation enthusiasts, working for nothing more than the chance to handle the monoplane owned by F.H Jones and have a crack at flying it themselves.
Wittber is an engineer, Custance a mechanic. In the triangular Bolivar field they toil in an improvised hangar, where they store tyres for the Bleriot’s undercarriage as well as petrol in four-gallon cans. Custance is only twenty years old: eleven years younger than Wittber. Harry knows nothing about him, although part of his perpetual unease can perhaps be attributed to an intimation of something happening far beyond his sight.
Another fit young man, indifferent to reputations, is out to beat him.
AVIATORS do not observe the Sabbath. On Sunday 13 March, Harry is back in Plumpton’s Paddock, where Brassac flushes out all fuel lines in the Voisin in another attempt to get the engine running smoothly.
In Melbourne, meanwhile, Horace Audran is relaxing with his jacket off in his own room, listening to the Boesendorfer play a new music-roll – a Beethoven piano sonata recently acquired from Allans music store in Elizabeth Street. The manager has allowed himself a few idle hours. It is warm, the music is soothing. He even allows his eyes to close, though he is unaware of this until he notices the absence of music. The Beethoven roll has stopped: all he can hear is the tell-tale hissing and clicking sound.
In Bolivar, Jones is keen for Wittber and Custance to begin proper testing of his flying machine. Early on Sunday morning, when Wittber and Custance complete the assembly of the Bleriot, conditions seem perfect. Not even a zephyr over the field. But by early afternoon the wind comes up. Fred Jones reminds his assistants that Europeans will not attempt flight if the wind is troublesome. The risks are too great, he says.
Custance is at the controls when the engine is tested. So great is the force of the propeller that Custance checks his eyebrows.
‘I thought they’d blown away,’ he jokes.
With the engine at half-speed, Wittber then takes the Bleriot for a test run, assessing its ability to handle the uneven ground.
It happens unexpectedly. A puff of wind under the wings. The machine rises a few feet and traverses a distance of two cricket pitches.
For a matter of seconds the Bleriot is airborne.
In the annals of Australian aviation history this becomes known as ‘Wittber’s hop’.
39
IN New York, it might still feel like winter. In New York, where Harry has instructed his mother to keep the furnace on at night until he returns, it might still be snowing. But in Diggers Rest the sun is merciless. There are times in the paddock when Harry feels that the blood in his head will surely thicken and bubble like oil in an over-heated engine. He has never known such conditions: one hundred degrees in the shade and a dry, enervating wind that makes flight impossible. The nights are much more pleasant, mild and still. They remind him of August evenings in Central Park. He can picture himself strolling near the lake arm-in-arm with his two ladies, Cecilia and Bess, and his son Mayer Samuel. How proud they will be if, in addition to all his other accomplishments, he is the holder of an Australian flying record. His feat will be acknowledged by other aviators: they will greet him as a fellow pilot, not just a showman.
As soon as conditions are suitable, the record can be his. All he needs is one good day. Harry is sure of this, just as he has no doubts about his ability to manage the machine – even though he has not been aloft in the Voisin since Hamburg. There is nothing especially tricky to it: a wheel for the elevator at the front to govern lift; the same control to move the rudder. Hold it steady, make the turns slow. But he must be ready when the time is right. So he no longer leaves the Metropole just before dawn.
Jordan now meets him near the stage-door immediately after each evening performance. They drive in darkness to the paddock, where Harry snatches a few hours’ sleep under canvas near the Voisin and the snoring, muttering Brassac while Jordan stretches out as best he can in his Darracq. Then another day of tinkering and tuning begins. Fatigue is as relentless as the heat, like a heavy cloak Harry cannot shed. Yet still he performs.
Kukol and Vickery marvel at the way he can arrive at the theatre imperfectly shaved, irritable and red-eyed, then throw himself into his act as if it were the first show of a new season rather than one of the last. But it is only while he is on stage that Harry is not focused on his flying machine. Everything else occurs on the periphery of his field of vision. He remains ignorant of his wife’s activities while he is absent, though he continues to be assiduous with notes affirming his love. His latest begins, ‘My Darling One and Only.’ And even if he were aware of the Bleriot being tested in Bolivar there is little he could do about it. All he knows is the necessity of completing this job, pulling off his most spectacular stunt.
Jordan is unimpressed by the new arrangement. Nothing about night drives was mentioned in their initial deal. He is awaiting an opportune moment – perhaps when the American gets his crate off the ground and is even more pleased with himself than usual – to push for an increase in his fee. He signed on for early starts, not hair-raising excursions on ink-black roads.
Jordan has noticed that for the first half-hour or so of every trip, Harry is talkative and animated, still buzzing from his show and full of news. He tells Jordan about Rickards embracing the flight attempt as a scene-setter for his Aviation Week in Sydney. Rickards has sent a telegram to George Taylor of the Aerial League, advising him of the imminent assault on the record. A newsreel cameraman and one of Rickards’ mates at The Argus have also been tipped off. Jordan can’t get enthused about any of these developments. Hasn’t even heard of Taylor. He still thinks of flying as a mug’s game and is more concerned about keeping his Darracq on the road.
It’s easy for the American. He can burble about all that’s going on, then nod off. He tells Jordan how poorly he’s been sleeping, how his mind fills with strange and unsettling thoughts, yet still manages to slumber in the swaying, bouncing motor car. Jordan knows he has gone when the stream of conversation halts. He glances across and can just discern Harry’s head slumped forward on his chest or lolling back, mouth open. It’s alright for him, Jordan thinks. He doesn’t have to worry about whatever’s ahead or monitor the engine noise for odd sounds or wonder how long it will be before another tyre is shredded and needs replacing. Jordan doesn’t fancy attempting repairs by the light of a kerosene lamp and doubts the American would help. He has him pegged as a bloke who always has others to sort things out for him – his stage assistants and the Frenchman in the paddock.
Before he falls silent late on this Tuesday night, Jordan suspects that the American is buttering him up. Telling him about the crucial role he can play as a witness to his feat.
‘The Aerial League has precisely set out its requirements for the record,’ he tells Jordan. ‘The duration and distance of any powered and controlled flight must be certified. This could mean putting your own name to a historic document. What do you say to that?’
‘Don’t know I’d be any use,’ the driver replies. ‘Never seen anything fly other than birds. And Banks, of course, before he came a cropper. How could I swear your flight was controlled?’
