The Children's Writer
For Christine (who stuck by me)
H
er family name being Lutyens, and her Christian name Alice (as in Wonderland), I called her Lootie, because it suited.
The day the horror began, I remember her slipping from our bed naked. En route to the bathroom, she paused before the mirror to fluff her morning hair. I lounged on my pillows, admiring her from behind. Sunlight filtering through the autumn-leafed elm outside our window dappled her green and red and gold. And being so thin, her yellow hair so short and boyish, by that eerie light she looked quite the changeling. Elfin almost.
Or so I imagined.
I heard the front door as she ran into our tiny garden to collect the papers and presently I caught the reassuring Sunday morning smells of toast and fresh-brewed coffee. She reappeared with a tray, wearing my red boxer shorts, no doubt snatched up from the bathroom floor. I am a big man (fat, some say), so my shorts were held up with a knotted belt she had also, no doubt, discovered on the bathroom floor.
I am not a tidy person.
We read, ate toast and drank coffee. And because it was Sunday, and easy, we made love in the crumbs.
I write the word
we
but I would rather use
they
, the third person going some way towards convincing me that what I am about to tell you relates to some other couple, not us. Not me and Lootie. But it is about us, and always will be, since not even a writer can change the past. With any permanency, that is. Or truth. Though believe me, I have been tempted.
I was twenty-three and studying Literature at uni. Lootie was even younger, just nineteen, and in her first year of Education. I wanted to be a writer, she a teacher. We rented a shabby terrace in Elm Street, North Melbourne. We owned a bed, a table, two chairs, a sofa and hundreds of books…
That particular morning, as she read the paper, Lootie elbowed me and said, ‘Have you got plans for today?’
‘It’s Sunday,’ I said, lazily throwing my arm over her to draw her towards me, hoping.
She pulled away. ‘Fancy going to uni this arvo?’ she said.
‘On Sunday?’
‘It says in the paper that Sebastian Chanteleer’s speaking there.’
‘Who?’
‘Sebastian Chanteleer,’ she said, play-punching my arm. ‘You must remember him. He was my idol when I was a kid.’
Had she told me this before? Had I forgotten? ‘Really?’ I said, playing safe.
‘Really!’ she huffed, wriggling closer. ‘You must remember. I’ve told you about him heaps of times. You know, Chanteleer, the children’s writer.
The Snow Serpent. The Wizard’s Road
…Didn’t you have a childhood?’
Of course I knew who he was. Sebastian Chanteleer had been somebody in the 1980s, something of an Enid Blyton-cum-Roald Dahl. Or so the media claimed. But I felt like stirring her up, so I said, ‘Not if you define childhood as reading the crap he wrote.’
She turned to look at me, obviously hurt. ‘Be careful,’ she said.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
She seemed to accept this, and patted my thigh. ‘So you’ll come?’
‘If you want me to.’
‘Do you want to?’
‘I’ll go. All right?’
She sat up, arching her back against me. ‘I don’t want you to come,’ she said, ‘if you don’t want to.’
I picked up the paper and read the ad. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Since he’s a writer—albeit, a kid’s writer—it can’t be a total waste of time.’
‘There’s no need to be condescending,’ she said, and grabbing the paper from my hand, she tore the ad out. ‘What have you ever published?’
She knew only too well that for me to become a writer (a published writer, a novelist) was my dream of dreams.
I said, ‘I’d love to go,’ and gave her a hug. ‘When?’
She didn’t answer. Instead, with studied deliberation, she began to lift my entwined fingers from her stomach, one at a time. When she had, and pushed my hands away, she reached out, and taking the clipping, folded it, then tucked it away in a pocket of her backpack. Then she zipped the pocket up. Then she patted the pocket flat. Then she got up, crossed to the mirror, and began brushing her hair in jabby, pointless bursts. Petty and cross, she was determined to annoy.
I lay watching, refusing to bite.
‘He’s the best writer,’ she said, still jabbing. ‘The very best. I read everything he wrote. Everything.’
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘What do I know? He most likely is the best writer. For kids, anyway. I won’t knock him again. Right?’
She sniffed and chucked the brush into the clutter on the dresser—rubber bands, keys to no place remembered, a photo of Lootie in a tutu when she was a kid, a blunt pencil, lip balm, a pocket mirror, an unused envelope—then she went to the bathroom. I heard her shower, and in a matter of minutes, she was in the garden, shifting the splintery bench out there so she could read in the dappled shade of the elm.
Sebastian Chanteleer was speaking in the Redmond Barry theatre at 2.00 so we left at midday, riding our pushbikes, stopping for a latte and panini at Georgio’s on Lygon. Georgio prided himself on his restaurant’s alfresco seating arrangements. Patrons, mostly young—or those who liked to be seen with the young—ate at umbrellashaded
tables set on the footpath. Exhaust fumes were thick, although it was not hip to say so.
We ordered inside. Lootie flirted with Georgio, a goodlooking Italian. He returned the favour by circling her and whistling, playfully checking out her tight jeans, her chest-hugging skivvy. ‘She nice,’ he said, winking at me. ‘Very nice.’
In those days I suffered no sense of rivalry, no understanding of jealousy. So while Georgio leered and fawned, I shrugged his antics off, goofy-like. How could another man pose a threat to me? To us? Georgio was a cook. I was a scholar, destined to be a writer.
That afternoon the coffee crowd was a little too loud for our mood, so we chose a table on the periphery to let it be known that we were with them, but not of them. When our order came we took our books out of our backpacks and propped them against the salt and pepper shakers. I might have read a line or two (I was reading Randolph Stow) but Lootie never did (she opened Neil Postman). To her way of thinking, Georgio’s was for people-watching; for eye-rolling and leg-prodding to alert me to anyone worthy of attention, her book no more than a protection against any philistine who might have the temerity to approach. Her childhood admiration of Chanteleer’s novels aside, Lootie was no reader.
Once she had finished her latte, she nudged me and said, ‘Let’s go.’
‘Your panini,’ I said. ‘It’s hardly touched.’
‘Forget it,’ she said, and we left.
A
t the entrance to the theatre, a red-headed guy sat at a card table selling tickets. He had change and some notes in a cake tin. A handwritten sign announced in purple felt pen that tickets cost five dollars.
‘Afternoon,’ I said. ‘Is there a student concession?’
‘W- what?’ he said, looking up.
I saw that he had problems (‘Not the full quid’, as my friend Rory would say), so I leaned forward. ‘What’s the student concession?’ I repeated.
‘F- for what?’ he asked.
‘For the Chanteleer lecture,’ I said, minding my manners.
‘There isn’t w-w-one,’ he said, and returned to shuffling tickets.
‘But…’ I began.
‘Pay,’ Lootie whispered, jabbing me in the back.
I paid.
Lootie entered the theatre first; I followed. We sat in the third row from the front, our backpacks at our feet.
The auditorium lights were dimmed, the stage being spot-lit from above. One spot focussed on a table set centre front. On this stood a small wooden lectern with a microphone; a cut-glass vase of white roses, a silver ewer and a glass tumbler, empty. I might have grasped that ewer. I could feel the icy frost of its silvery bowl bite my palms, see the track of the odd drop trickling down to pool on the table. Or so I imagined.
Two more spots set either end of the stage lit a pair of polished bronze cannon shells, each sprouting spikes of white gladioli.
The mood was sombre.
I looked around.
Only a handful of people were in the theatre. A big-breasted woman in pink floral sat with two brilliantined boys wearing school blazers, serge shorts and long socks. Two older men, both in white shirts, sat together, stiff and attentive, and after a while, the stuttering money man from out front sat in the back row, alone.
The place was quiet, still, solemn.
What was missing?
The reedy wheeze of an organ?
A casket?
A black-suited undertaker?
I glanced at Lootie.
She sat straight as a school girl, her eyes fixed on the stage. I reached out to take her hand, to say, ‘I’m here’ but, as I did, a black-suited woman in stilettos strode onto the stage. She stopped at the table and turned to us. She gripped the lectern, lowered her eyes, paused, then
looking up, said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, today we are privileged to be addressed by none other than Sebastian Chanteleer, the acclaimed children’s writer.’ She looked down, then looking up again, she continued, her voice softer, almost a whisper, conspiratorial, ‘And possibly, if we are
very
lucky…’ At this she conscientiously covered her red lips in order to suppress a girlish giggle, ‘He might even agree to read for us…’
A collective intake of breath.
Lootie’s knuckles clenched on her knees.
Had she told me about this Sebastian Chanteleer before? What he had meant to her, as a kid? Had she?
‘Sebastian has only recently taken up residence in Melbourne,’ Red Lips began to hurry—perhaps the writer was approaching—‘having left his native Sussex “to re-discover,” as he expresses it, “here, in the Antipodes, that topsy-turvy view of the world that is childhood.” ’ She looked down, paused, then looked up, as if in appeal. ‘Sebastian has always been one for a delicious turn of phrase…’
The audience waited.
‘And here,’ Red Lips gushed, ‘here, is the great man himself…’
Because I am writing this, and not Sebastian Chanteleer, I will let him wait in the wings. I will leave him out of the limelight. I will not so much as look at him. For now, at least. Instead, I will tell you something about myself.
My name is Charles Franklin Bloome. Charlie to my friends. I am (as I have said) a big man, dark haired with
brown eyes. Although never a slick dresser, I was thought by some (my mother, at least, or so she said) to be handsome. As for my hopes and dreams—my future—I wanted to be a writer, although I was in no hurry. With Lootie at my side, why should I hurry anything?
That will do about me. But I wanted to get something down, before Chanteleer swamped me.
The author entered stage left and crossed to the table in the centre. He walked with his head down, apparently studying the floor. His hands were cupped and held high against his chest, which gave him a monastic air (sort of). He was of average height (considerably smaller than me) and thin. Not scrawny, though not pink with health.
He did, however, have a head of hair. Auburn, you might say, now shot through with silver, parted down the middle and combed back behind his ears in waves.
He looked about fifty.
For all of this detail, and considering the awful consequences of the occasion, it might seem surprising that I can’t actually recall what he was wearing. I would like to say that he wore something decidedly camp, a white suit with matching white shoes, a lavender shirt and a purple, velvet bow tie, but I want to tell the truth.
Although I am certain about the bow tie.
Chanteleer always wore a bow tie.
But since I can’t remember (not exactly, at least), I’ll take a stab. I will say that he wore his usual: a baggy beige suit, white shirt, houndstooth waistcoat with gold watch chain, and a brown bow tie (to match his tan brogues). I
will also presume that he wore odd socks. Although I did not see them on that day, odd socks were a standard Chanteleer affectation.
As was his opening line.
‘My dears…’ he said when he reached the lectern. ‘My dears…’
I glanced around.
Every eye was on him.
Every ear alert.
Every tongue silent.
I gave Sebastian Chanteleer my full attention.
He spoke of how happy he was to be in this country and to be greeted so warmly and by ‘so many fans’ (maybe half a dozen?), at this, his first speaking engagement. His voice was light, almost tremulous, with just a hint of an English accent, though not marked, which was interesting. He spoke of his many awards, the ‘burden of his success’, how he couldn’t stop himself ‘from writing every day’, and how ‘money meant nothing and writing meant everything’, and his desire ‘to begin again with a new view in a new country’.
Then he reached out and, picking up a novel that had been lying unseen on the table, he opened it on the lectern.
‘I will begin,’ he said, ‘by reading from
The Otterly Dragon.
Then, perhaps, you might like to put some questions…’
I have never been keen on the idea of authors reading from their own work. I might be a bit of a slob, but I do go to literary festivals and the like, and whenever an
author reads, or is pressed to read (as is often the way), I am intimidated. I feel that I am
expected
to like what they read. Because I have no choice. Am I supposed to hiss if I don’t? The inevitable outcome is that I clap politely (like the rest of the captive audience), then buy the book at the signing table that I am forced to confront as I attempt to leave.
Even worse, I know that the presenting author has written the book, and should, therefore, claim some ownership, but he or she has also put it on the open market and allowed it to carry a bar code on the back, so by my reasoning, it has been sold to me to read as I like. For this reason, I don’t care to have the work orally interpreted through the author’s voice, vocal inflection, or nuance of punctuation. Nor do I like watching their facial high-jinks as they read ‘sensitive’ bits. Nor, especially, how they invariably interrupt their reading to explain how the writing of certain ‘personal moments’ was like ‘having the flesh torn’ from their bodies. ‘With hooks.’
Chanteleer read well enough, although I did detect a somewhat effete lisp from time to time, but the reading was too long. Inane as the piece was (so many ‘bronzed dragons’ and ‘blasts of fiery breath’), I began to fidget.
To scratch, even.
Lootie, on the other hand, did not move. She sat, upright (a child in school), staring at him.
I turned, just a little, to check on her. She was beautiful: her upturned nose, her clear skin, her flushed
cheeks, her pink tongue barely concealed behind her lower lip.
I could have sat there all day, watching, loving her.
But long-winded though he was, Chanteleer finished.
‘You will have to read the rest yourself,’ he chortled, ‘if you want to find out what happens next.’ And putting the book down, he looked about, asking, ‘Any questions?’
Aware that we were on notice, I put my face into attentive mode, and prayed no one would speak. But the floral mother had other plans. I saw her flabby arm nudge one of the boys. After some remonstration, the child said, ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’
‘Ah,’ Chanteleer beamed, ‘that would be telling, wouldn’t it?’
Ask a silly question
, I thought.
After a further nudge, his brother (?) piped up, ‘What’s your favourite book?’
Obviously considering the question related to his own work rather than the literary canon (children’s or otherwise), Chanteleer rattled off half a dozen of his titles, all associated with dragons or spells or similar fairy-type stuff, and having done so, and without so much as a by-your-leave, or the opportunity for another paying customer to ask more, he tucked his novel under his arm and, head down, hands cupped at his chest, left the stage. Apparently to continue his Antipodean meditations elsewhere.
But not for long.
Red Lips sprang into the breach to announce that the author would be only too happy to sign books at the rear of the theatre.
I stifled a sigh and reached for my backpack as the applause broke out. (I exaggerate. Those present clapped politely.) I glanced up to see Lootie standing, applauding in the direction of Chanteleer’s back.
‘Ready to go?’ I whispered.
‘I want a book,’ she said, turning to look down at me. ‘Come on.’
I followed.
By some miraculous means (known only to authors), Chanteleer was already in the foyer when we arrived. Indeed, he was already ensconced between piles of brand-new books at the signing table, his hands folded on the white cloth before him, beaming. Red Lips was on guard at his right shoulder. The red-headed money taker lurked in the gloom behind, the coins in his cake tin emitting a Caravaggian glow. An Ecclesiastical tableau, if ever I saw one.
But we were not the first worshippers.
The floral-frocked matron had beaten us. After some sober deliberations, her boys chose a book each, money was exchanged with great solemnity, and the purchases passed to Red Lips. Turning to the title page, she placed each book carefully (flat, open) on the cloth before the Master. Only when a book had been paid for could it progress. Then, and only then, could it be signed. Which Chanteleer did, with theatrical flair.
His wrists were sinewed, golden hairs adding class. I noticed his elegant hands. His fingers long and knotted,
craftsmanlike. Writer’s hands. Mine were pale and pudgy, streaked with dark hair. Ape’s paws.
His signature was assured, enviably authorial. The pen a sleek black Montblanc. Lethal as a stiletto.
And a desire surged raw out of nowhere (my heart? my mind? my future?) to snatch that pen and, gripping it in my fist (no less powerful for its hairy flab), to stab his neck, his back, his head—
So! And so! And so!
How could this aberration be?
This murder?
I am not a violent man, being conditioned otherwise.
(Unless imaginatively provoked, it would seem.)
And so I addressed myself, and snapped back, catching at that precise moment a sly glance (complicit even) from the red-headed money taker who, dopey as he was, had stepped from the gloom to pierce my thoughts.
When the books were duly autographed, the floral matron and her brilliantined boys moved away, murmuring.
We shuffled closer, to stand before him.
I wondered then, should I stick out my tongue, like a true believer, to receive the host? (Note how I change, from man to ape, from sinner to saint.) But seeing that Lootie had selected a novel, I reached for my wallet.
‘I loved your reading,’ she cooed as I stretched across the table to pay. ‘It took me back to my childhood.’
Perhaps it was the fact that I had so far to reach, perhaps my surprise that Lootie had spoken at all, or even, perhaps, a reaction to what she had said, but as I stretched, I dropped the money.
Coins rolled across the table, clattering to the floor.
I cursed and bent to pick them up.
As I stood, my head reappearing over the table top, Chanteleer’s eyes caught mine. They were not pale, as might be expected. They were dark, black, almost. And judgmental.
Dickhead
, he was saying.
Loser…
Too embarrassed to compete, I made a goofy face.
Chanteleer turned his attention to Lootie. Or, more correctly, to Lootie’s breasts. This was not a fast move. Although apparently casual, it was in fact studied (arch, calculating), that particular turn of the head whereby a man can take a mental photograph of a woman in a glance. A kind of pornographic slow-mo intended to be filed away for some later, private time.
The shower, maybe.
Having seen what he wanted to see, and gathered what he wanted to gather, Chanteleer closed the shutter, looked Lootie full in the face, and smiled.
‘Back to your childhood?’ he said. ‘Wasn’t that just yesterday?’
Lootie giggled.
The money having been retrieved and counted (the red-headed stutterer all flustered and dithery), Red Lips opened the book, placed it reverentially (flat, open) on the cloth before Chanteleer, and signed. I saw that pen again.
Beautiful. A weapon, indeed.
‘I’m studying Education,’ Lootie offered, waiting.
‘Ah,’ the Great One beamed. ‘Here? At this university, do you mean?’
‘Yes,’ Lootie breathed.
‘I believe I am speaking to Education students on this campus tomorrow.’ He glanced at Red Lips. ‘Is that so?’
‘You are,’ Red Lips flashed scarlet. ‘Theatre Three. At 12.00.’
‘Eve is
so
reliable,’ Chanteleer said. Or announced. ‘A true gem…’ He looked directly into Lootie’s eyes. Unblinking. Unashamed. ‘So I will see you there…?’
Lootie giggled, again, and picked up her book.