ONE season flows into another with the inevitability of the tide. Before Melbourne there was Hamburg. After Melbourne there will be Sydney, where the Mick Simmons chain of sporting goods stores uses the headline ‘HALLEY’S COMET ECLIPSED’ to advertise its annual sale. Specials include generous discounts on gun-cleaning tools and fishing hooks. After Sydney there will be a European tour, though not until Harry has endured one more stomach-heaving sea voyage via New York, where he will be with his adored mother for her sixty-ninth birthday. He had expected to return as a conquering hero. Now he is not so sure. He has taken the Voisin up, as he planned, but it may not be enough.
He blames Brassac and his caution. He could have been aloft weeks ago except for his mechanic’s timidity. Yet Rickards has dismissed Custance as an irritation. Harry must have faith in the theatre owner, whose interests are also at stake, and trust he is right about Taylor of the Aerial League.
Now he has a final show to perform. On stage in London or Paris or San Francisco he usually has a sense that he will return one day. But he is certain he will never come back to Australia. It is too distant, too dislocating. The harsh light and accents are foreign. He cannot sleep. Yet he is a showman and appreciates that there will be people in the Opera House in Melbourne this Friday night who will see him on stage for the first and only time. So he must give them something remarkable. Something to remember.
‘Okay, boss?’ Kukol asks him when they encounter each other backstage. Bess asks much the same question before returning to the hotel to rest before his performance. Harry gives the same answer to each: ‘I’ll be fine.’
His assistants have prepared the required apparatus for a baffling escape – a rope to restrain him constructed in two sections, fastened together with a screw and socket. The join is so neat it cannot be detected with a casual inspection. But a half-turn brings it apart. Then, when his hands are freed out of the audience’s sight, it can be reconnected, allowing Harry to wriggle free of the chair in which he is trussed with all knots still intact in the rope. Remarkable.
Amongst the cheering audience members it is only Bess and Rickards who wonder why he performs the trick wearing a cream-coloured suit. He even stays in it for the milk-can routine that follows, and because it is his last show he allows Kukol to feign panic and take a harmless swing with his axe at a lock on the metal cocoon before he materialises.
Water streams from his sleeves and cuffs when he closes his season.
He raises his arms, calls for quiet, urges spectators to be seated once again. Standing in the wings, Vasco the Insane Musician, the Harmonious Huxhams, and the Australian Dartos gather to hear what he says.
‘I’ll bet he won’t thank us,’ Teddy McLean of the Dartos mutters to brother Roy.
He is right.
Harry does not acknowledge his fellow performers, his assistants or even his wife. Instead, after reminding people that although many of his challenges have been pirated by imitators, he was the originator of the routines they saw. Then he makes a brief farewell speech.
‘This is my first visit to Australia,’ he says, ‘and is very likely to be my last …’
‘No!’ Rickards calls out, keeping his head well down.
‘Yes! My last, for within two years I intend to retire and devote myself exclusively to aviation. And when The Handcuff King has long been forgotten, I trust that my name will firmly be cemented in Australian history as the first man to fly here!’
‘A nice touch, Double,’ Rickards says to himself as the applause begins, hesitantly at first then more enthusiastically as Harry takes a final bow, a damp circle around his bare feet on the stage.
‘What’s he mean with that flying business?’ Roy McLean asks his brother.
‘Beats me,’ Teddy replies. ‘Probably another one of his tricks.’
47
ECHOES of the applause for his final show stay with him until early the following morning. But Harry’s mood changes as soon as he gets to the paddock. Clouds scud across the grey-blue sky.
‘Rather blowy don’t you think, Old Boy?’ says Ralph Banks. His breath reeks of alcohol and he looks unsteady. Harry already has his flying-cap on and pretends he cannot hear him. He also tries to ignores Brassac when the mechanic stands in front of the Voisin with his red flag, demonstrating how the fabric flutters in the breeze. But the Frenchman’s certitude ignites the irritation that has been mounting within him for days.
‘Damn it,’ Harry calls out. ‘You care about the machine more than anything I might achieve. Let me tell you something: you can forget all about your bonus if I don’t nail this record beyond any doubt. I sometimes wonder if you’re still working for your precious Bleriot.’
Brassac lets the flag fall to his side and walks away without a word.
Jordan purses his lips as if whistling silently. The American is on edge. The driver wants Brassac rewarded so he can get paid for the phonograph. Not to mention the money still owing to him. He just wants it all done.
Harry immediately regrets his outburst. He needs Brassac’s help more than ever. It has struck him that neither the mechanic nor Banks have asked why he has returned to the flying field so soon. Perhaps they heard something about Custance – from McCorcoran, probably. Standing near his stationary Voisin, watching Brassac retreat to his tent, Harry curses this unseen man near Adelaide who has complicated his plans. Custance has appeared from nowhere, upstaging his own performance. Rickards insists that Harry can still trump his unheralded rival, but on this overcast Saturday morning, with the breeze flapping the legs of his trousers and Banks loitering nearby, Harry again has a sense of his luck turning sour; of being jinxed. The voice he hears is confusing him with contradictory messages.
He knows what steps he must take to try to make things right. Audran could get onto it; maybe Kukol. But not now. Today he has come to fly. So he will do that, regardless of Brassac and the wind and Custance the usurper.
‘Quite sure, Old Boy?’ Banks asks when Harry secures his goggles and settles behind the controls. Harry offers only the slightest of nods in response. Banks shrugs, reaches up, then swings the Voisin’s propeller. As he staggers away from the noise and dust and smoke, too much smoke, Banks spies Brassac looking on from a distance with his hands plunged into his apron pockets.
The engine doesn’t sound right. Harry hears this at once. It is like an instrument out of tune. His machine feels sluggish as he prepares to work the elevators and try to get it off the ground. Perhaps when he is aloft, the Voisin will right itself. There. The floating sensation tells him he is up. But the controls twist in his hands, all the angles keep changing, and he is over Hamburg once again, trying to stop the thing from breaking up, coaxing it back on to the uneven ground.
‘Twenty-nine seconds,’ Banks mutters, checking his watch after satisfying himself that the Voisin is not about to tip over. As he starts to approach it – no hurry, as it’s not going anywhere – Banks can see Harry thumping on the control wheel like a drum. Brassac has turned away.
Harry says just one word to him when he leaves. ‘Demain.’
Tomorrow he will try again.
WHEN Harry returns to the Metropole, tired and dusty and famished, it is early in the afternoon. He can achieve nothing further in the paddock and has no more performances at the Opera House. Suddenly he is a man with nothing he must do. Even more unusual is his desire not to be noticed. He is in the habit of glancing around near the hotel or theatre doors to see if there are people waiting for a greeting or an autograph or a handshake. He is invariably happy to oblige; generally carries with him a few signed pictures to hand out. Now, however, he just wants to retreat to his room, where his wife will be waiting for him. But he is barely into the hotel foyer before Horace Audran is on to him, as neat and calm as Harry is grimy. The manager’s freshly manicured fingers waft a greeting.
‘Mr Houdini, good afternoon to you. My heartiest congratulations, sir.’
Harry spins around. Is Audran making fun of him?
‘Congratulations? For what?’
‘Your aviation achievements.’
Now Harry feels certain he is being mocked.
‘Actually, the flying was a big disappointment today. Barely got off the ground. Too windy. A long trip for little result. Now, if you don’t mind …’
‘I meant your achievements of yesterday, sir. As reported in the morning papers. Have you not seen them?’
