The Jacaranda House, page 15
Their room was lovely, and it even had a telephone and a television in it! Which Gina immediately turned on, and lay on the bed watching some children’s thing called Mr Squiggle.
‘This is weird,’ she said after a while. ‘And boring.’
‘Shall we go and have some lunch?’ Polly suggested.
So off they went to a restaurant down the street, where Gina tried something called a Moreton Bay bug, which she decided was just a little koura.
Polly sampled a tiny bite, announcing, ‘It’s not quite as strong as crayfish, though, is it? Sort of a cross between koura and scallops.’
‘But it’s not a bug,’ Gina insisted. ‘Bugs can’t live in the sea.’
‘What about backswimmers?’
‘That’s fresh water, Mum, not sea water.’
‘Of course. What was I thinking?’
‘How’s your barranunda?’
‘Barramundi. Not bad.’
Gina tasted a bit. ‘It’s a bit muddy. OK but I think I’d rather have snapper. Or tarakihi. Or hapuka. Is barramundi an Aborigine word?’
‘Sounds like it, doesn’t it?’
‘So where are they all?’ Gina asked.
‘The barramundi?’
‘No, the Aborigines.’
Polly looked at Gina, silenced for a moment. She couldn’t answer that as she didn’t remember seeing any in the Cross, and there certainly weren’t any there in the middle of Brisbane. ‘I don’t know, love. I really don’t.’
‘I haven’t seen any kangaroos yet, either,’ Gina said.
‘No, but it’s not quite the same thing, though, is it?’ Polly said. ‘It’s not nice to put Aboriginal people in the same category as kangaroos.’
‘I wasn’t.’ Gina popped a cherry tomato in her mouth, bit it and pulled a face. ‘Oooh, that was sour. This is Australia. When you think of Australia you think of Aborigines and kangaroos and koalas. It’s their country. And I haven’t seen any of them yet. Just a whole lot of white people, and a puppy and a kitten. I’m just saying.’
‘Yes, well, you’ve only been here a couple of days.’
‘Can we go and see some kangaroos and koalas?’
Polly nodded. ‘There’ll be some at the zoo. Otherwise I expect you’d have to go out of the city.’
‘Will they have wombats?’
‘Probably.’
‘And Aborigines?’
‘Gina!’
‘Well, it’s weird, Mum. There’s no brown faces. I’m used to seeing brown faces.’
So was Polly. It was one of the things she missed most about living in Australia.
*
Polly and Gina spent ages getting ready for the concert. Polly wasn’t too fussed about what she wore – it wasn’t her treat – but she made Gina have a soak in the bath, with so many bubbles she nearly disappeared, then dried and styled her hair with her portable hair dryer. But Gina’s hair was beautiful when she’d finished – smooth, sleek and shining. Then she did Gina’s face – just a little bit of blush, a flick of pencil in her brows to give them some definition, a quick spit onto her mascara block for a few swipes over her daughter’s already long lashes, and some pale pink lipstick. Gina wore her new skirt, a sleeveless top and, of course, her Beatle boots. She was ready to go an hour early.
‘Come and look at this,’ Polly said, standing at the window with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
At her elbow Gina looked down at the street below: both Albert and Elizabeth streets were absolutely packed in both directions, vehicles apparently marooned in a sea of jostling, elbowing teenagers.
Polly pushed up the window and the sound rolled in – angry horns tooting, shouting and the high-pitched drone of thousands of overwrought female voices, punctuated by screams of excitement. Bloody hell, this was ridiculous. Perhaps booking a place so close to the venue hadn’t been so clever after all. Were they going to be able to get out of the hotel?
‘We’d better go, sweetie,’ she said, knocking back her drink. ‘We might have to fight our way down the street. Are you any good with your elbows?’
‘I’m not bad at netball.’
‘That’ll do. Are you ready?’
‘Yep. Got the tickets?’
Shit. They were in her handbag, which she was leaving behind in case she lost it in the melee. That would have been annoying!
She slipped them and a few notes into her bra, her fags and lighter in the pocket of her capri pants, and swiped her mouth with pale lipstick. Hopefully she wouldn’t be the oldest person in the audience, and if she was, she didn’t want to stand out.
Outside the hotel the noise and the crush were horrific.
‘Hold on to my belt and don’t let go!’ Polly shouted to Gina, who dug her fingers into the back of her waistband.
Polly couldn’t tell if all these girls were waiting to go into the Festival Hall, or were simply hoping to glimpse the Beatles when they arrived, and neither did she care, as long as she and Gina got into the hall and to their seats in one piece. By elbowing and barging they gradually made their way down the block to the entrance to Festival Hall – no semblance of an orderly queue anywhere – and by waving their tickets above everyone’s heads she managed to get them inside, where it was marginally more quiet. Then there was quite a long wait to go up the stairs and into the hall itself, and finally they were in. Polly saw the problem at once – the seating appeared to be really quite limited, catering to perhaps four or maybe five thousand people. What idiots. You’d think they’d choose a bigger venue for a band that pulled crowds like the Beatles obviously did.
But Joe Adler had come through for them because their seats were in the balcony, which meant Gina would still be able to see if everyone in the stalls stood up, and they surely would if they got carried away. On the other hand they were some distance from the stage, reducing the performers to little more than miniature figures.
Polly had been in show business long enough herself to know that the Beatles wouldn’t be the only act on the bill, and that they’d play last. She checked her ticket to see who the support bands were. Well, she knew Johnny Devlin was a New Zealander who’d had a big hit back home with ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy’, but whose star wasn’t twinkling quite so brightly now he’d moved to Australia, and she had a vague idea The Phantoms were an instrumental guitar band, but who the hell were Sounds Incorporated?
It turned out that both bands were instrumental only, and Sounds Incorporated were travelling with the Beatles on their world tour. That didn’t stop the audience booing them, especially when they played what was announced as their biggest Australian hit, ‘The William Tell Overture’. The Phantoms weren’t bad, though: Polly didn’t mind The Shadows and The Ventures, whose style The Phantoms were copying outright. She thought they were probably doing quite well – surf music was big in Australia.
She also thought both bands were probably quite pleased to get off the stage after an hour. The girls in the audience had come to see the Beatles, not a couple of instrumental groups they’d probably never heard of, and were making their feelings fairly obvious, stamping their feet and shouting, ‘We want the Beatles! We want the Beatles!’ What a badly behaved herd of little hooligans.
There was a short interval while the bands’ instruments were changed and the sound men rushed about plugging things in and what have you, during which the stamping and screaming grew steadily louder and the tension in the hall became almost palpable, then some bloke came on and bellowed into the microphone, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles!’
A massive, shrieking roar went up and, as Polly had predicted, everyone in the stalls shot to their feet as four tiny, waving figures trotted onto the stage.
Polly barely made out John Lennon saying, ‘Hiya, Brisbane, we’re the Beatles –’ before the screaming began in earnest, and that basically was the last thing she heard from John, Paul, George and Ringo.
The noise from the auditorium was phenomenal. She saw the Beatles start playing, she saw them move now and then, but she was buggered if she could hear them.
She tapped Gina on her shoulder, raised her eyebrows and pointed to her ears.
Gina shook her head, shrugged and turned back towards the stage. Slightly relieved that she hadn’t suddenly been struck with some mysterious form of deafness, Polly followed suit. The Beatles bowed suddenly, stepped back from their microphones, appeared to share a few words, then launched into another song.
Polly looked at Gina, who was leaning forwards in her seat, fists clenched, screaming her head off as energetically as everyone else. Oh well, at least she was embracing the experience.
And so it went on, a continual, solid wall of noise from the audience, the Beatles looking as though they were miming unheard songs, for the next thirty minutes. And then suddenly they were gone, leaving five thousand shrieking, weeping, exhausted and possibly quite annoyed fans behind them. That was it. Twelve songs, if Polly had counted correctly.
All that money spent, all that time and effort planning and sitting in planes and taxis – for twelve songs they hadn’t been able to hear?
The audience stamped and clapped and chanted, ‘We want more! We want more!’ but there wasn’t any more, and eventually the auditorium began to empty.
On the way out, Polly bought signed individual pictures of the Beatles for Gina, and a couple for Rhoda and Star, and a lapel button for Gina declaring, I Love the Beatles.
‘Did you enjoy that?’ she asked her as they were ejected from the Festival Hall, carried out onto the footpath by the crowd like a cork popping out of a bottle. Alarmingly she realised she couldn’t hear properly, her voice sounding as though she were speaking under water.
‘It was fab!’ Gina declared. ‘’Cept I couldn’t hear them.’ She frowned. ‘That was a bit stink. And I’ve gone deaf.’
‘So have I.’
Gina opened and closed her mouth as though yawning several times, then shook her head. ‘Nope. Got a sore throat, too.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t have screamed so hard.’
‘It was the Beatles, Mum.’
‘I know what’ll fix that.’
They fought their way beyond the crowd and wandered down Elizabeth Street until they found a cafe that served gelato. Gina had mango and passionfruit, and Polly had raspberry, and a coffee.
‘So, was it worth it?’ she asked, lighting a cigarette.
‘Yeees! Thanks for taking me, Mum.’
‘It was lovely to be able to, sweetie.’
Gina licked her spoon and smiled happily. ‘I think I like Australia.’
‘I do,’ Polly said. ‘And I like that you’re here. With me.’
‘Me too, Mum.’
*
Gina slept most of the way home on the plane the following day: Polly thought she might be exhausted from the excitement of the past few days, and had to keep reminding herself she was only a child. Apparently children needed routine: she would have to do her best to give her that.
Rhoda and Star were home when they arrived at the flat in the afternoon, and Polly knew immediately that something was wrong.
‘Out with it,’ she demanded.
‘How was the concert?’ Star asked, cuddling Baz.
‘Good. Don’t change the subject. What’s wrong?’
Star and Rhoda exchanged a glance. Rhoda sighed, picked up Tatiana and settled her on her chest. ‘We had an incident.’
Polly sat down at the table, waiting for it to come out.
Star looked pointedly at Gina.
‘Why don’t you go and unpack your bag, sweetie?’ Polly suggested.
Gina obediently went off to her room.
Star said, ‘We fucked up.’
‘We are so dumb,’ Rhoda said.
‘We let Terry stay here last night. He told us –’
‘He told us he had nowhere to stay,’ Rhoda interrupted, ‘and he was too frightened to sleep on the street, so we let him stay here.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Then Polly had a horrible thought. ‘Not in my bloody bed, I hope! Or Gina’s.’
‘No, he slept on the couch.’
‘What did he pinch?’ Polly demanded.
Rhoda stared at her. ‘How did you know?’
‘Because he’s a con artist. I told you!’
‘No, you just said you didn’t like him,’ Rhoda said. ‘You didn’t say he was a thief.’
‘I didn’t think I’d have to spell it out, for Christ’s sake. What did he take?’
‘My beautiful clocks,’ Star said, pointing at the mantelpiece, now devoid of her antique carriage clocks. ‘Money from our purses.’
‘The money I had in my room,’ Rhoda said. ‘I don’t know how he got that.’
Polly refrained from saying it serves you right. Rhoda didn’t have a bank account – she used the Bank of Under the Mattress – and Polly had warned her that one day she’d be sorry for not managing her money properly.
‘And a couple of our stage costumes,’ Rhoda went on. ‘Star’s costumes, actually. Some jewellery. Only costume, but still.’
Star said, ‘We haven’t checked your room. We didn’t know what valuables you have in there.’
Polly immediately went to her room and checked her drug drawer. Her heart plummeted as she realised it was all gone – her entire stash. That poisonous little fucker. Her jewellery box had been moved, too, and she saw that several pairs of gold earrings and a ring – gifts from past clients – had gone. She didn’t really care about those, but she was incensed about her drugs. They were her lifeline: they gave her a place to go when she couldn’t cope. They were her salvation. And prescription drugs bought off the street weren’t cheap. Now she’d have to go out, find her connection and stock up again, because she couldn’t bear to be without them.
She stuck her head into Gina’s room. ‘Is anything missing from your room?’
Gina looked around. ‘I don’t think so. Why?’
‘Bloody Terry stayed last night and helped himself.’
‘Oh. That wasn’t very nice.’
‘No, it wasn’t. I’ll just finish talking to the girls, then you can come out, OK?’
‘OK.’
Polly marched out to the lounge. ‘He’s taken my stash,’ she said, sitting back down at the table. ‘The whole fucking lot. I’ll kill him when I see him.’
‘Not if I see him first,’ Star said.
‘After everything we did for him,’ Rhoda said, sounding more disappointed than outraged.
‘How much did you actually have?’ Star said.
Not wanting to admit to the extent of her pharmaceutical stockpile, and aware that they wouldn’t know because they weren’t that nosy and wouldn’t have gone ferreting around in her room, Polly said, ‘This and that. A bit, I suppose.’
‘Enough to be worth nicking, obviously,’ Star said.
‘I suppose we’ll never get any of it back,’ Rhoda said with a sigh. ‘Those costumes weren’t insured, and anyway we let him in. The jewellery wasn’t worth much.’
‘My clocks weren’t insured either,’ Star said.
Gina came out and sat down next to Polly. ‘You could tell the police,’ she suggested.
‘I don’t think so, sweetheart,’ Rhoda said.
‘Why not? When someone stole our washing off the clothesline I said Nannie should tell the police.’ Gina made a face. ‘She didn’t though. Dunno why not. But you should.’
Polly, Rhoda and Star all looked at her. God, what do I tell her? Polly thought. That we can’t go to the cops because Rho and Star are camp as well as trannies, and that being camp is illegal and the cops will think they’ve been gypped by some trick they picked up, and even if they’re lucky not to be arrested for that, the cops just won’t care?
Eventually she said, ‘They’re probably too busy to waste time looking for someone like Terry. It’s not worth bothering, love.’
‘Should we go out and look for him?’ Star suggested. ‘The Cross isn’t that big. He can’t be far away.’
‘What for? He’ll’ve flogged everything by now,’ Rhoda said.
‘I know that. We won’t get any of it back. I just want to punch his lights out.’ Star crossed her arms. ‘Well, I would have in the old days.’
‘How would that fix anything?’
‘It wouldn’t, but I’d feel better. I loved those carriage clocks.’
‘What you mean is you don’t like being shat on,’ Polly said.
‘That too.’
‘I say forget about him and good riddance,’ Rhoda declared. ‘And let it be a lesson learnt.’
‘Well, I don’t want to learn a bloody lesson,’ Star said. ‘I don’t like being used.’
Polly had a really awful thought. ‘He didn’t take anyone’s keys, did he?’
Rhoda and Star rushed off to check, then came back, looking relieved, keys in hand.
‘So he’s not as clever as he thinks he is,’ Polly said. ‘At least we won’t have to change the locks.’
Evidently disgruntled at having been ejected from Star’s lap, Baz trotted across the lounge floor, stretched expansively, then lifted his leg and peed on the edge of the hearth in front of the fireplace.
‘Hoi!’ Polly shouted, and threw her fag packet at him.
Baz gazed back at her with his big brown puppy eyes, scratched the floor furiously vaguely near where he’d widdled, and scampered off.
Polly couldn’t even be bothered having a go at Star.
‘Whoops, sorry,’ Star said, and headed for the kitchen for paper towels.
‘Anyway, bugger Terry, tell us about the Beatles,’ Rhoda said.
*
Polly had a problem. She had to go to work that night and had nothing left in her handbag except two morphine tablets. She never worked without drugs, and if she took the morphine she’d very likely knock herself out. It was getting a bit late but she thought she might just have time to go up the road and meet her dealer – if he was out and about, and if he had anything she was interested in buying.
She left Gina with Rhoda and Star, who had the night off, and walked up Darlinghurst Road. She could have jumped in a taxi, but the traffic was heavy, so walking was faster. Where Darlinghurst turned into Macleay Street she crossed over to the El Alamein fountain and sat on a bench, looking about. If he was anywhere outdoors he’d be there.
