Bite The Wax Tadpole Read online

  They paused outside a small, open-fronted eatery where checked tablecloths, chardonnay and the in-crowd spilled out onto the pavement. The picture of which Rob had spoken seemed to be forming in Niobe’s mind. And when it had finished forming it was a graphic one.

  She screamed. It was like the scream of a parlour maid in a 1950s film when she discovers Lord Ne’erdowell slumped over his desk with an Afghan knife in his back. Chardonnay was spilled, prawns choked upon and hairs raised on the backs of necks. Rob could physically feel the blood drain into his boots. What did these people think he’d just done to her? He grinned stupidly, as if that would help dispel any thoughts onlookers had about him being a bag snatcher or a sex pest.

  “I mean, I’d love to go off to a Greek island with you”, he said quickly and, he hoped, soothingly. “But I’ve got responsibilities, more responsibilities. Did I tell you it was twins?”

  She put a hand to her mouth as if to halt a rush of words then took a deep breath before speaking calmly.

  “ You’re a man of integrity, a man of honour, I know that.”

  He felt like an absolute shit but felt it best to agree with her. “Right, well, I’m glad you see it that way. I’m really sorry. Really, really sorry. If I could...”

  She put her index and forefinger to his lips to hush him. “Please, if it’s over let’s not talk any more. Just one last kiss before we say goodbye forever.”

  Was that it? Was it going to be that easy? One scream followed by a farewell kiss? Relief flooded through him like Rocky Mountain melt-water through a ravine. Smiling sadly, she leaned forward and kissed him gently on the lips. And then she stepped in front of a bus.

  The bus, fortunately, was not travelling at speed but the driver’s eyeballs still nearly flew out of their sockets as he slammed on the brakes. Rob gasped and cringed, waiting for the awful impact. But she passed out of his line of sight as the bus dipped its nose violently into the road. A dark cloud of shredded rubber rose from the tyres. He couldn’t see her but he heard more brakes screeching, horns honking. A crash, a yell and a motor bike spun, sans motorcyclist, past the bus. A moment later the rider followed it, sliding smoothly on his leather clad bottom. The bus lurched forward. Niobe was on the other side of the road disappearing through the crowd.

  Travelling home from the radio station by taxi that afternoon, Charlea had gazed thoughtfully at the ubiquitous Maccas and KFCs and Red Roosters as they slipped by the window. How many of the staff, flipping burgers and shovelling chips, were out of work actors? And what about the supermarket shelf fillers and the petrol station attendants and the blokes digging up the streets? Could the girl holding up the stop/go sign at the road works be mentally running through her next audition piece? What about the taxi driver? He could have been the former Yugoslavia’s foremost interpreter of the works of Ibsen. And how many of them hated and resented people like her who got into acting by a fluke? Up until she’d entered the magazine competition she’d wanted to be a veterinary assistant.

  Instead of going straight home, she’d asked the taxi driver to drop her off outside the local library where she browsed along the shelves marked “Drama and Theatre.” Stanislavsky – she’d heard of him. She slid out a copy of “An Actor’s Work”, flipped through the pages and then slipped it under her arm. By the time she’d got to the check out she’d added “A Shakespearean Actor Prepares”, “The Way of the Actor”, “Strasberg and the Actor’s Studio”, “Voice and Speech in the Theatre” and “Caring for Small Pets.”

  And now she sat up in bed, ear plugs in to drown out the sounds of music from the lounge room, learning how to deliver iambic pentameter. She’d show them, all those Harriets out there, that she could act.

  “Now is | the win-| ter of | our dis-| con- tent...”

  Terry crushed the beer can and lobbed it towards the bin. It hit the edge of the coffee table and bounced behind Marge’s favourite chair. Pick it up in the morning, he decided. He contemplated getting up and fetching another one from the fridge but he couldn’t be arsed. On the TV, in fading and beer-fuddled black and white, James Cagney was shot by Edmund O’Brien and staggered around before firing his gun into the gas tanks he was standing on top of. “Made it, Ma. Top of the world”, yelled Cagney just before the tanks exploded in balls of flame and the credits rolled.

  That’s the way to go, that’s the way to go, Terry mumbled to himself as he lapsed into a dreamless sleep.

  Phyllida had spent the evening alternating between learning her lines for the Monologues and the live episode and now it was time to relax with a nice cold glass of Semillon. She was opening the fridge door when the phone, the landline, rang.

  “Hello?” Silence. “Who is this?” Silence. “Is there anybody there?” No response but there was definitely someone on the end of the line. Still with the phone to her ear, Phyllida went back into the lounge, switched the light off and twitched the blinds. On the far side of the street, in a pool of light, was a figure in a long overcoat talking into, or at least holding, a mobile phone. The figure snapped the phone shut. At the same time Phyllida’s call disconnected. The figure stepped into the shadows.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Manager of “The Black Gum” pub stood beside his barman and nodded at the old bloke sitting at the table in the corner talking to himself.

  “Keep an eye on him, Darren. Had one just like him at the last place I managed. Thought Jesus Christ was sending messages to him through the juke box.”

  Malcolm, the old bloke under observation, sipped at his melancholy beer and tried to avoid looking in the direction of Norman who was lying on his elbow along a bank of seats, head resting on his hand.

  “You know, I expected rather more of the after-life than hanging round TV studios and dingy pubs. It’s what I spent most of my actual life doing.”

  “Yes, well, as soon as they cut this tumour out you can be gone. Quite where I do not know and, to be brutally frank, I do not care.”

  Malcolm was still grappling with what to do with that portion of his life that yet remained now that the comforting rug of a long run in “Ricketty Street” had been yanked from under his feet.

  He’d spoken to his agent, a man who still had plate jugglers and novelty poodle acts on his books, and he’d been less than sanguine about finding work in the immediate future.

  “Mate, it’s all reality shows and serial killers out there in TV land these days. The stage you should be on. King Lear is what you should be doing, I know, but the stage? Who goes to the theatre any more? Only thing I’ve got is a TV ad for Freedom Funerals. Mind you, it’s money for old rope. All you have to do is lie there with your arms folded across your chest looking serene. You can do serene, can’t you?”

  Be good practice, thought Malcolm, as he put down the phone.

  Plumbing is what his father had wanted him to do. “If the Russkies drop the bomb on Sydney”, he’d told him back in those warm, comforting days of the Cold War, “you could name your price if you was a plumber.” It had seemed odd to him back then to posit your career on some loony in Moscow pressing the red button marked “ World War Three” but if he had become a plumber he’d be retired by now to a beachfront property up the coast. Instead...

  “I must be here for a purpose, don’t you think?”, said Norman.

  “Apart from making my every waking moment a misery, you mean?”

  Norman sat up and adopted a pose denoting deep thought – chin resting on hand, index finger running alongside his nose.

  “Do you recall “It’s a Wonderful Life”? Clarence, the angel, showed James Stewart that life really was worth living.”

  “Whatever you are, you’re no angel.”

  “Or “A Christmas Carol”. Did I ever tell you I played Marley’s Ghost in “Scrooge on Ice” at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre?”

  Malcolm shook his head and took a long pull on his beer. The combination didn’t seem to be a good one. His head began to spin. Or was it the room? Was his head spin
ning one way and the room the other? Whatever, whichever, it wasn’t a great feeling. Now there were lights, hundreds of them, thousands. All spinning. But they weren’t lights. No, it was a glitter ball, a huge glitter ball. And there was music, too. Music from a lifetime ago. Disco music. Donna Summer if he wasn’t mistaken. But he must be mistaken because it wasn’t 1970 something or other and he wasn’t in a disco, he was...

  God’s socks! He was in a disco! And it looked very much like ... damn it, it was... Strawberry Jim’s in Chelsea, a sliced goal kick from Stamford Bridge. When he’d tried his luck on the English theatre scene this is where he ended up most Saturday nights. Bloody hell, this brought back memories. Practising his dance moves in front of the wardrobe mirror in his digs... taking the creases out of his three piece white suit with a flat iron and a wet handkerchief... smoothing down his lovingly layered hair... driving up West in the lime green Cortina 1600GT with the Wolfrace wheels. Now that was a great car although he’d never figured out why it stopped working when it rained. Ah, well, happy days. He started chuckling at the time the Virgo sisters, Sharon and Karen, had turned up completely blotto and...

  Wait a minute! Wait a bloody minute! Was he going absolutely insane? He should be, he was, in a pub in Newtown, Sydney in 2013 not in a pommy disco forty years ago. But this was definitely Strawberry Jim’s. The Black Gum had completely disappeared. He recognised the awful decor, recognised as awful even in the Seventies, and the long forgotten faces. There was Eric the hippy, Trevor the used-car salesman, Barm Pot the mad Yorkshireman with his seriously sexy wife, Lady Deborah de Vere Shawcross Partington. They were all dancing, doing the Hustle, arms flopping, hearts pulsing to the four-on-the- floor beat, sweating under the surging, urgent lights.

  I’m hallucinating, he told himself, closing his eyes so firmly he expected them to clang like the flap slamming on a cell door. This bloody tumour’s poking into that bit of the brain where embarrassing fashion memories are stored. All he needed to do was concentrate and he’d be back in Newtown.

  “You were quite a little mover in those days, weren’t you? I’m surprised Travolta even got a sniff of that role with you around.”

  Malcolm opened his eyes to find Norman beside him, dancing in much the same way a corpse danced on the end of the hangman’s rope.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Norman pointed a bony finger. “Where did all that hair go?”

  And there he was, dancing across the floor towards himself. Impossible, of course, but a brain tumour pushed back the boundaries somewhat. He caught sight of himself and his younger self together in the mirror behind the bar. How on earth had the one metamorphosed into the other? As Norman had alluded to, the jet black locks, including the ones that sprung manfully from the top of his unbuttoned shirt, had thinned into silvery grey wisps and he seemed to have lost a foot in height. His nose had grown, though. How was that? The young himself threw himself around the dance floor in a series of moves that had the old himself wincing at the thought of the irreparable damage it would do to his joints these days.

  “I say”, said Norman. “Who is that gorgeous creature?”

  Along with gravity waves, scientists are still searching for waves of nostalgia but a series of the latter now swept their melancholy way through Malcolm as he watched the dark haired girl with the dimple and the high cheekbones join the young himself on the dance floor. Peggy, his first wife. God, where was she now?

  Actually, he half knew where she was now. Playing an old age pensioner with a murky past in “EastEnders.” But what was she doing with the other part of her life, the part away from the cameras? Was she happy? Was she still with Julian, the only choreographer in world ballet married to a woman? Children? Grandchildren? Great grandchildren? Questions, questions...

  Oh, Jesus, they’re kissing. No, no, this isn’t right. It was too much. Memories should just not be this vivid. It made them unbearable.

  Norman nudged his elbow. “Enjoying yourself?”

  “No, I bloody well am not. I’m having a serious attack of nostalgia. Assuming you got me in here, get me out. Now!”

  “Fair enough.”

  Everything went black then faded-up into what looked like the start of a kitchen sink drama. Well, there was the kitchen sink for a start. Unlike Malcolm’s own kitchen sink it wasn’t loaded to the gunwales with food encrusted plates and dirty cups and the floor didn’t look like the bottom of a bird’s cage. Nevertheless it did have a familiar feel to it, an old man’s kitchen.

  “Ah”, sighed Norman, again at his side, “home sweet home.”

  The door opened and in shuffled another Norman, one not noticeably younger than the one that stood beside Malcolm although this one wore a faded towelling dressing gown rather than doublet and hose and his grey, waxy face showed several days’ sporadic white whiskers.

  “Oh, dear, I don’t look well, do I?” remarked Norman as his Other Self shuffled to the pantry cupboard and took out a tin. He struggled to deal with the ring-pull but at last bent the lid back to reveal the chunks of Pedigree Chum inside

  “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it”, advised Norman. “Bit of paprika and onion, delicious.”

  His Other Self began to chew until a curious, bewildered look came over his face, a look which turned into a grimace, then a rictus of pain. He let go of the can and fork, clutched his chest, let rip with a mighty fart and pitched forward onto the work top before sliding to the floor.

  “Good God, is that how you...?”

  “Indeed it was, old boy”, said Norman, looking curiously at his dead body. “Cry woe, destruction, ruin and decay – The worst is death and death shall have his day. We’ll fast forward three months, shall we?”

  A paranormal zip cut and they were in another apartment where a family were seated round the small dining table in the kitchen area. Mum, Dad and the two kids, a perfect TV ad family.

  “Meet my erstwhile neighbours, the Robinsons”, said Norman. “From the floor below. Nice people, if a trifle on the religious side.”

  The Robinsons bowed their heads over bowls of tomato soup.

  “For what we are about to receive”, intoned Mr Robinson, “may the Lord make us truly Thankful.”

  The family amened and reached for the soup spoons. Mrs Robinson’s spoon had just about reached her lips when a large drop of something dark and viscous landed with a disconcertingly loud plop in her soup dish. They all looked up at the ceiling, at the black, spreading, weeping stain.

  “Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase dropping in for dinner, don’t you think?”

  Malcolm put his hand to his mouth, revolted and nauseated, as the room began to fade and things began to swirl again.

  “To the future, I think”, said Norman. “Your future, that is.”

  When the spinning stopped they were clearly in an old folks’ home. The evidence lay in the rows of old folks in leatherette chairs gathered in front of a young woman playing “Mull of Kintyre” on a portable keyboard. They were singing along with rheumy-eyed enthusiasm, dentures clicking in time to the music.

  “This, sadly, is where you’ll end up” said Norman. “Should your brain surgery prove successful, that is. Quite nice, don’t you think?”

  “It’s vile. And I loathe and detest sing-songs.”

  “Just as well you’re not singing then. That’s you over there.”

  Malcolm followed Norman’s nod to a corner where a palsied, drooling, head lolling wretch slumped in a wheelchair. The nurse next to him left off her singing and sniffed.

  “Oh, dear, Malcolm”, she said, “time for a nappy change. Stinky poos!”

  If the sight of Norman dripping through the floorboards had been unsettling this glimpse of his future decrepitude was terrifying. As the nurse, nose high in the air, wheeled the gaga Malcolm off to the geriatric nappy changing room – such a place didn’t bear thinking of – the whirligig of time or whatever it was spun the still sentient Malcolm and the reconstituted Norman
back to the bar at the Black Gum.

  “Hmm”, said a thoughtful Norman, “that didn’t quite go the way I expected.”

  Malcolm downed a mouthful of beer. “Maybe you were right before. When you said it was best to go out with a bang not a whimper.”

  He looked up to see the Bar Manager, towel over one arm, carrying a fistful of empty glasses. “Is someone coming to take you back or what?”

  Rob woke at three am precisely from a dream of escaping to New York as a trainee navigator in a Catalina flying boat and sat bolt upright. Anna Karenina he thought. Niobe had been trying to do an Anna Karenina. All that literature had unhinged her. And she was last seen heading towards Central Station. He lay back down again, wide awake and sweating. She wouldn’t, would she, not really? But it had been only luck that she hadn’t been flattened by the bus. He could see it all now. Hauled in front of the Coroner’s Court to testify as to the deceased’s state of mind prior to her throwing herself in front of the last train to Blacktown. He stared into the darkness of the ceiling, listening to the croaks and buzzes and trills of the tropical garden knowing he wouldn’t get back to sleep until five minutes before the alarm went off. What to do, what to do? He didn’t want to think. The Periodic Table, yes, he’d try and recall the Periodic Table as taught by “Stinky” Stevens in O Level chemistry. Now then, the elements are listed in order of atomic number which is the number of protons in the nucleus. Isn’t it? Number one is, of course, hydrogen. Atomic number: one. Number of protons in the nucleus: one... And he was asleep. Never failed in “Stinky” Steven’s chemistry class, didn’t fail now.

  The sun was a golden ball in a sky that was cerulean. Rob wasn’t too good on shades but cerulean, if not accurate, did at least sound right. He was on a Greek Island sitting on the veranda of a white-washed cottage tapping away at an old fashioned typewriter, glass of deep red wine on the table beside him. He was even smoking a cigarette. Filthy habit, of course, but still part of his romantic image of the writer. A flock of sheep passed by on the dusty road herded, or should that be flocked, by a wizened old peasant with a grey, sandpaper beard and blackened teeth. Rob gave him a cheery wave to which the old man responded by spitting on the ground. Rob returned to his typewriter. “This morning the old shepherd only spat once on the ground” he typed. “Last night in the tavern, Nikos did not laugh and point at my private parts. I think I am becoming accepted by the islanders.”