Bite The Wax Tadpole (4 page)

“You, an actress?”, mother had laughed. “People like us don’t become actresses, you stupid little cow.”

Which made it all the more poignant when, after the fire, she’d discovered, in a suitcase in the barn, a decade’s worth of yellowing, creased copies of “Modern Screen”, “Photoplay” and “Screen Stories” . It was hard to imagine the hollow-eyed, semi-comatose woman slumped in front of the TV slugging back cooking sherry poring dreamily over stories of Doris Day’s love life but presumably she had. Had she once even thought of becoming an actress herself? Had she drifted off to sleep dreaming of Hollywood, of becoming a star, of attending movie premieres on Clark Gable’s arm and drinking champagne on Sunset Boulevard? Maybe her dad, he of the liquorice teeth and farm-stained flanny shirt, had had dreams once too, dreams that didn’t involve getting up in the dark with a hangover to swill out pig pens. She’d never know now. All she did know was that by the time she and her sister were old enough to notice these things her parents were both hopeless, argumentative and often violent drunks. And then they went and died in the fire.

A sudden frisson ran across her shoulders as she flicked through the script, found her place. The language wasn’t exactly Shakepearean. God knows what Sister Scholastica, the nun who had taught her English back at Our Lady of the Bleeding Stigmata, would make of the play. A bonfire probably. With the writer on top if she could find enough copies.

Nev Beale sat under a coffee-house sunshade looking out over the jewelled waters of the Harbour while absently but furiously scratching his reddening forearms. In between scrapes he alternated quick sips of cappuccino with gulps of the Red Bull chaser. He was as twitchy as an ornithologist with St Vitus’ dance. Behind his wraparound sunnies, dilated pupils darted from side to side like synchronised metronomes. Tick, scan the harbour... tock... the Overseas Passenger Terminal ... tick, the harbour again... He looked at his watch. He’d arrived way too early. Blokes like them, they were professionals, they’d arrive on the dot. Only he wasn’t quite sure now which dot it was they were meant to arrive on. Quarter past? Half past? Jeez....

He turned his attention to his thighs and scratched away at them with bitten fingernails. A nervous tic pulsed on his right cheek like a Morse key sending out an SOS. Sweat cascaded down his forehead and seeped from his armpits. Did he even have the right day?

Having won the battle, temporarily at least, against his scrofulous flesh, Nev turned his restless attention to the coaster on the table. He placed it half off the edge, flipped it hard with his index finger and caught it as it spun through the air. Then he did it again. And again. And again...

He couldn’t understand why he was so nervous... Flip... He was usually the one who made other people nervous... Catch. Mind you, this was one hell of a deal he was about to pull off. .. Flip... Biggest deal of his life. .. Catch... No room for errors... Flip... If it all went tits up he’d be... Catch... didn’t bear thinking about where he’d be... Flip... But if it went okay... Catch... he’d be farting through silk... Flip... boxers for the foreseeable... Catch... future. Calm, just stay calm... Flip...

“Good morning, Neville. You are well, I hope?”

The coaster flew over Nev’s shoulder and landed at the feet of a seagull who looked at it with an air of disappointment as it been hanging around the tables hoping for some panettone French toast with mixed berries to drop onto the floor. Nev shot to his feet, banging his knee on the table, upsetting the remains of his coffee and Red Bull. “Aw, geez, sorry fellahs.”

Before him stood two thirty-something gentlemen in well-cut summer weight suits. Their suavity and sophistication were at odds with Nev’s lack of either. “Had a bit of a late night”, continued Nev, shaking a coffee stained trouser leg.

“No worries”, smiled the taller of the two men with a hint of anxiety and a slightly guttural accent. “That’s what you Aussies say, isn’t it?”

“Too true, yeah. Good to see you again, umm...”

He held out a hand.

“Ruud”, the taller man said.

“Johan”, said the smaller. Handshakes over, they all sat down. Coffee and Red Bull dripped over the edge of the table.

“How was your flight?”, inquired Nev, still shaking his leg. “No problems?”

“Why should there be?”, smiled Johan.

“No reason. No, no reason at all”, said Nev. He righted his cup and began soaking up the puddles with a serviette as Ruud fanned himself theatrically with his hand. “It was snowing in Amsterdam when we left. And here it is one hundred degrees in the water bag. That is another Australian expression? I have been reading a phrasebook.”

“Yeah, you might want to get a newer edition.” Nev raised a hand to attract the waitress’s attention. “Guess you blokes want a coffee.”

“But of course”, said Johan. “So, everything is A okay with the deal? All is going as planned?”

“She’ll be apples, mate, no worries.”

The two Dutchmen exchanged puzzled glances.

“Australian expression”, said Nev, scratching his crotch.

CHAPTER THREE

Mandrax House had once stood in solitary splendour on a knob of land jutting into the Parramatta River and had been the home of a family of brewers whose sparkling ales and lagers had helped make Sydney what it was and probably still is, whatever that might be. Henry Lawson had once been a guest and it would be pleasing to report that he wrote an early version of The Drover’s Wife or another one of his rugged bush tales whilst under its roof. Unfortunately, by the time of his stay, the house had been turned into an asylum and the only writing he is known to have done is a note he penned to the Superintendent complaining about the cockroaches crawling up the walls and the pink elephants roaming the grounds. Writers and the demon drink – was it ever thus?

Today, Mandrax House is part of The Barking Institute of Psychiatric Care and Rehabilitation. Entrance is via a grimly arched Gothic Gatehouse that looks as though it could well contain a portcullis and a murder hole through which boiling oil could be poured on escaping inmates. The grounds have, however, been pleasantly landscaped with deciduous trees that make it extremely picturesque in autumn and, if it were not for the occasional old man wandering about with his flies undone muttering “shittenfickingprickingshitten, one could well imagine oneself in a garden belonging to minor European nobility.

The main building, though, is undeniably of the House of Usher School of Architecture. The original head of the brewing family, Jasper Mandrax, being a recluse, wanted something guaranteed to put off casual callers. And, if possible, members of his own family. When he left it in his will to the State it positively cried out to be an Insane Asylum as it already fulfilled the number one criterion of such institutions in those unenlightened times, that of being forbidding. This was presumably on the assumption that if you ever felt like going mad the thought of being locked up in such a place would make you pull yourself together and stop hearing those voices telling you to drive the English out of France and crown the Dauphin.

Behind the main building, however, in the bosky woods leading down to the Bay, stands a more inviting modern structure, built on the principle that open spaces, bright lights and an abundance of beverage dispensing machines are necessary to the treatment and recovery of the mentally ill.

In her room in the Benway Wing, Melissa, blonde and beautiful, packed the last of her clothes into the suitcase, zipped it up and sat down on the stripped back bed. This aseptic room – white walls, the ubiquitous Tom Roberts sheep shearing print and a bowl of flowers on top of the TV - had been her home for the last three months as part of her re-introduction to society. It was one of the nicer institutions she’d been a guest of though it lacked any serious competition. The food was good, the setting pleasant and the doctors, on the whole, gullible. She’d almost miss the place but she had things to do and people to be.

There was an apologetic knock on the door followed by the apologetic appearance of Professor Winkelman. “Hello, Melissa, sorry to trouble you”, she smiled uncertainly. “All set to go?”

“Oh, yes, thank you, Professor”, said Melissa, standing up and returning the smile. The Prof, a middle-aged woman who dressed like a pre-war maiden aunt, was, in Mel’s opinion, far too naïve and trusting to be a psychiatrist. Too naïve and trusting to be a kindie teacher if it came to that.

“Just thought I’d see you before you, you know, popped off, as it were. Got everything you need?”

Melissa patted her suitcase. “I think so.”

“Splendid. Now you will take your medication, won’t you? Absolutely vital that you do. Don’t want a relapse, do we?”

Melissa picked up a prescription from the bedside table. “We certainly don’t. No offence but I really don’t intend coming back here ever again. Even if you ask me back for the Christmas party”.

“Right, good, splendid. Yes...” The Prof hesitated. There was something she really ought to say to Melissa before she left. Something someone should have mentioned to her a long time ago. Well, maybe they had. Maybe it didn’t bother her. Maybe she’d learned to live with it. And you can’t force people to undergo medical procedures they don’t want to undergo. Some people feel that these things, things other folks might look on as disfiguring or unsettling, are a part of themselves, a part of their personality. She vaguely remembered reading a paper by Allcock and Bull on that very topic. No, best to leave it. If Melissa wanted to have something done about her strabismus then she’d sort it out herself.

“Was there something else?”, inquired Mel.

“What? Oh, er, no, yes. So, where is it you’re going to be staying?”

“I’m going to live with my sister.” This was not strictly true but if she’d replaced “with” with “as” that would have let the cat out of the drainpipe.

The Prof didn’t remember Mel mentioning a sister during their sessions together but one of the things you had to take into account when working with the mentally ill was that they were sometimes the most whopping liars. Mind you, her husband and the truth rarely spent quality time together and he was a barrister.

Ten minutes later and Melissa had passed unscathed through the gatehouse and stood beside her suitcase at the bus stop. An enormously fat man in a cheap green tracksuit with a hooded top and football socks pulled up to his knees sat slouched, unheeding, on a bench in the full glare of the sun. A bony woman with straggling ash-tray grey hair paced up and down, talking to herself. Bloody loonies, thought Melissa.

She casually checked the time of the next bus to city before just as casually glancing back towards the hospital. Dark smoke was rising lazily over the trees and there was a flash of red through the shrubbery. An alarm began to wail.

Melissa had to give the doctors their due. Their diligent psychotherapy had cured her of any tendency towards pyromania. She felt no desire at all to sneak back into the grounds and watch, breathing heavily, the flames leaping and dancing out of the windows. She felt no thrill at all at the approaching fire engine siren. She’d done it for old time’s sake, that was all. It was amazing what you could do with a rolled up prescription, a few wood shavings and a cunningly concealed box of matches.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Channel 8 studios stood on the top of Knobs Hill, looking westwards to the blue haze of the mountains and eastwards, like Kipling’s pagoda, to the sea. When they’d been built in the mid-1950s, it was a district of farms and market gardens on the edge of the city but now they were in the midst of middle-class Sydney suburbia. The grounds were still extensive, however, and the marshy bit down by the creek occasionally stood in for tropical Queensland when drama required a cheap location shot. There was also a helicopter landing pad in its own little compound and several huge satellite dishes gathered news from around the world and bird droppings from a more local source.

The first time Rob had seen the studios it had been early morning as he walked nervously up the hill from the railway station ready to tackle his first script conference for the Network. The buildings had risen through the mist, so it seemed to his excited eyes, like many- towered Camelot. He soon found out, of course, that there was no Round Table, chivalry was in short supply and the Holy Grail was nothing more precious than winning the 7pm time slot in every major capital city. On the other hand there was a Siege Perilous. On which his backside now perched uneasily.

Sitting with the indicator flashing, waiting for the sluggish traffic to clear so he could make a right turn, he looked up at the huge billboard in front of the studio gates. Staring back at him was a designer-stubbled bloke wearing checked chef’s pants and a blue, flour puffed singlet. His teeth gleamed like a cannibal’s necklace and his tattooed arms, pumped in the gym and photo-shopped in a computer, were folded across his chest in the manner of Chopper Read. Instead of guns he grasped seeded baguettes in both hands. The poster bore the legend: Luke North – The Master Baker. Underneath, it continued: “Weeknights at 7.30 – Only on 8 – Your Master Baking Station.” Bloody reality TV, Rob thought unkindly as he turned into the studios.

Finding a shaded parking spot near the tennis courts didn’t make up for the lousy start he’d had to the day. As he climbed out of his air-conditioned sanctuary, the Network chopper rose from behind the bushes, did an about turn, and climbed into the empyrean, sunlight bouncing blindingly off its nose and rotor blades. He sniffed the hot, humid air: ah, nothing like the nauseating smell of aviation fuel first thing in the morning.

He trudged up the incline towards the studio, shirt glued to his back. Leaves, dry as old bones, crackled and disintegrated under his feet. Scabs of bark hung from the eucalypts and the air vibrated with the harsh trill of a million cicadas. He’d tried joking with the police officer that he wasn’t actually talking on the mobile, he was listening to a lecture from his wife but he’d been handed the penalty notice without even the hint of a smile, just a perfunctory: “Have a good day, drive carefully, sir.”