The Children's Writer (3 page)

S
unday morning, just a week after we heard Chanteleer at the Redmond Barry theatre, it was time to get ready for the garden party at his house in Kew.

(I really don’t want to write about this. I really don’t want to invite him back into my memory, my life, where once again he might hurt me, as he did, but if I’m going to tell this, and be rid of him I know that I must.)

So that morning I got up, made coffee and toast, and took it in to Lootie.

She sat up in bed (yes, Rory, we
were
sleeping together) and said, ‘Did you check on your coat? For the garden party?’

I sat beside her, one hand on her leg, my coffee in the other. ‘It’s there,’ I said.

‘I’m sure that it’s there,’ she said, ‘but is it pressed? Is it nice?’

‘You’re nice,’ I said, rubbing her leg.

‘Charlie,’ she said, pulling away. ‘I asked you to check that it was okay. Did you?’

‘Why shouldn’t it be okay?’ I asked. ‘It just hangs in the cupboard. I never wear it.’

‘Get it out,’ she said. ‘Show me.’

This was the second Sunday morning that Chanteleer had occupied our minds. So I said, ‘Why? Do you think Chanteleer might be keen on me?’

(Being ignorant, it was nothing to make jokes in those days. Lard arse though I was, my assurance in my love for Lootie made me invulnerable. I believed that the might of my love for her, the all-encompassing certainty of it, guaranteed her love for me. I was, of course, a fool.)

Lootie snorted. ‘You’re revolting sometimes.’

‘He might like revolting. Being so twee himself.’

‘I’m going for a run,’ she said. ‘We have to leave at quarter to eleven.’

‘How are we getting there?’ I said.

‘Cab.’

‘Cab? That costs. Can’t we ride our bikes?’

She was rooting around in a drawer, looking for her running shorts, I guess. ‘I’m wearing a dress,’ she said. ‘My white linen shift. So bikes are out. And I’ll take that blue linen bolero, in case it gets chilly.’

‘This is a garden party, you say?’ I said to her back as she headed for the door.

‘That’s what he said.’

‘So, is that like a bar-b-que?’

‘No,’ she said, all snooty like. ‘It’s a garden party. So we present ourselves at our best.’

‘Meaning?’

‘No shorts and no T-shirts. Smart casual is the go.’ She yelled this from the front door. ‘Hence my linen and your coat. Get it?’

‘So there won’t be snags and tomato sauce?’

Either she didn’t hear me or she couldn’t be bothered answering.

I opened my wardrobe (Lootie was too neat to share) and took out my coat.

We arrived a little after eleven. We had asked the cabbie to pull in at a bottle shop. Lootie chose the champagne. It cost $42.50, which was top shelf. For us, at least, on our income. I said nothing.

I guess the episode with the coat, and the white cricket flannels that she made me wear, had prepared me. And the white tennis shoes, seeing as I didn’t own any white leather shoes. (Not being a real estate salesman, as I pointed out.)

But it was not the cricket flannels, nor the white tennis shoes, nor the $42.50 champagne that set me back that morning. It was the gilt dragon that Lootie stuck in my lapel.

Before we had even left our place, as we were waiting for the cab in the patchy shade of the elm, she said, ‘Here, Charlie, turn around.’

Did I have dandruff on my shoulders?

‘Other way, silly,’ she said when I had my back to her.

I turned to face her, wondering. Had I dribbled on my clean white shirt?

She dug in her change purse and pulled something out. ‘Stand still,’ she said, and put the something in my lapel.

I looked down. As best as I could see, it was a kind of brooch. A little gold brooch, or stick pin, in the shape of a dragon. A dragon with its mouth open breathing gold fire, its pointed tail arched over its back. Maybe two centimetres long. On big fat me.

‘What is it?’ I wanted to know, twisting it around so I could see it better.

Lootie slapped my hand. ‘A gold dragon,’ she said. ‘I bought it especially. For when you meet Sebastian.’

‘What?’ I said, but the cab pulled up.

‘Why?’ I asked when we were in the back seat. She didn’t answer. No matter how many times I asked. She patted my hand and looked out her window, as if to say,
mother knows
(as my mother did) and I had to be satisfied with that.

The cab pulled up before a massive pair of wrought-iron gates set in a cast-iron fence with spikes on top. (They were probably fleur-de-lis, but being Chanteleer’s place, I imagine them as spikes, jousting lances at least.) The garden beyond was thick with glossy-leaved shrubs, camellias mostly, some protruding through the bars as if attempting an escape.

Lootie pushed the gates open and I followed her through. The curved drive was paved in red brick with a circular bed of pansies, all scarlet and purple and gold—a cushion of velvet—squatting in the centre.

I followed until we came to three stone steps leading to a portico. Lootie went on up; I stood back.

The house reminded me of the whited sepulchres that Father Steven taught us about in chapel on Sunday mornings while my mother waited in the vestry. ‘Father Steven means you should watch out for frauds,’ she told me as we trudged home in the summer heat.

‘What?’ I said, not understanding.

‘Frauds. People who look like one thing and they’re another,’ she declared. ‘When they’re something else. They’re what you call “whited sepulchres”.’ For all of her explanations (and since I was so naïve, so ignorant, you might say), none of this meant anything to me.

But standing in Chanteleer’s garden, and looking up at his house, was something of an epiphany. For all its apparent magnificence, the place was built of brick not stone. The notion of strength was borrowed from the iron in the surrounding fence, the illusion of wealth from the jewelled tapestry of the pansies. The bricks were old and ill-fired, the sepulchral white paint peeling off. A Greek pediment (empty of sculpture, streaked with bird shit), evidently provided a home for starlings; and while I stood on tiptoe to look inside, the faded corrugations of the threadbare curtains (once royal purple?) meant that I could see nothing.

Lootie was at the front door, waiting for someone to answer. I stepped up beside her. The knocker was of some bright yellow metal in the shape of a dragon’s head. When I looked more closely, I could see a bar-coded price sticker still attached. I figured that Chanteleer must have
added this bit of whimsy to suit his taste. If Eve (aka Red Lips) was to be believed, he had not been in this country all that long.

Obviously no one was home.

‘Let’s go,’ I whispered, ever hopeful.

(Would that I had grabbed her arm and run!)

‘They must be somewhere,’ Lootie hissed.

She pulled me down from the portico and took a cinder path leading to the right, through more camellias, very dense, towards the back of the house.

I followed.

Ahead I heard music and laughter, then Lootie broke through the shrubbery and was gone. Left alone, I plunged on, but stopped, seeing on the lawn before me a crowd in pink and blue, their faces turned towards me, gaping.

I side-stepped into a clump of camellias, the foliage thick enough to screen me, and hid, watching. The heavy smell of rotting blooms was all about me, their fallen, fleshy petals crushed beneath my nervous feet.

I eased my collar, suffocating.

‘So you’re a fr- fr- freak too?’ someone stuttered in my ear.

Behind me stood a bloke in his thirties, his hair red and wavy. I recognised him as the gormless money taker at the Redmond Barry theatre. The dill with the cake tin full of coins. ‘What?’ I said, intimidated.

‘You’re hiding t- t- too,’ he said.

This was true, but I wasn’t about to admit it. Not to any old Tom, Dick or Harry, especially one dressed in a
blue-and-white striped seersucker blazer. (My mother was very particular about the naming of fabrics: in haberdashery, she would say, ‘That is a nice poplin,’ and hold the bolt up at one end to smooth the cloth through her fingers. So I came to know.) The red-headed man held a straw-yellow boater in his right hand. By the look in his eyes, which were weak, the colour of water, he might have something wrong with him, mental like.

‘At least you look as if you belong here,’ I said, making a vertical sweep of his get-up. ‘You’ve got the coat and hat.’

‘You’re w- w- welcome to ‘em,’ he said. ‘They go with the h- h- house.’

‘Sorry?’ I said.

‘I h- hate the house too.’ He hawked up the word
hate
, rather than said it, wanting to get it out without the stutter, I suppose. The result was horrible, all the same. ‘I hate the whole place, h- hey!’ and he tore at a camellia leaf for good measure.

‘So how come you’re here?’ I asked.

‘I didn’t c- c- come,’ he said, shredding the stiff leaf.

‘Well you’re here, aren’t you?’ I said, the rotten blooms claustrophobic, the proximity of the stutterer making them more so.

He shrugged off my question, chucking the remains of the leaf away. ‘I live here,’ he said.

‘You live here?’ I backed deeper into my camellia.

‘I’m Adrian,’ he said.

‘Adrian?’

‘The gardener, h- hey. The jack of all trades. The Man F- Friday. The Master’s s- s- shadow…’

‘Ah!’ I said. ‘That explains it. I saw you at the Redmond Barry theatre, taking the money.’

He looked at me vacantly, as if not comprehending and I would have escaped, if I could, I would have cut and run, if the stiff green leaves had not engulfed me, if the giggling pink and blue of the crowd had not confronted.

‘And hoo- hoo- who are you?’ he asked, as well he might. ‘And how c- c- come you’re hiding t- too?’

Finding the balls to step out, I declared, as my mother had taught me, ‘I’m Charles Franklin Bloome. Charlie, if you like. And I’m not sure why I’m here…’

‘Not s- sure?’ he said, looking at me queer.

‘I came with my partner, Alice,’ I said, remembering. ‘She’s a fan. Of Chanteleer’s.’

‘And you’re n- n- not?’

I shrugged. The crushed petals choked, the stiff leaves scratched. I made the goofy face.

‘It’s j- j- just that you’re wearing one of his dragon pins,’ he said. ‘A fan pin.’ He touched a gilt pin in his own lapel, then reached out to touch the one that Lootie had given me.

‘Ah, that,’ I said, enlightened. ‘Alice put that there. Not me.’

‘Who is…?’ he began.

I looked into the crowd, saying nothing, not wanting this interrogation to continue.

‘Your g- girlfriend?’ he said. ‘H- hey?’

‘Something like that,’ I said, brushing myself.

‘You’re l- lucky,’ he said.

‘Sorry?’ I said.

‘S- S- Sebastian gets all the g- g- girls. Always has.’

I had no idea what he was getting at, and didn’t want to, so I said, ‘It’s a nice garden. The camellias…’

He pushed past me. ‘I have to g- go,’ he said. ‘The mother said that I have to c- carry the sandwiches. There’s c- cucumber, you know.’

‘The mother?’ I asked, but he didn’t reply. Rather, he stepped into the sunlight, stopped a moment, his hat in one hand, his free hand to his chin, then he turned and, checking his watch (white-rabbit-like), hurried away, muttering.

When he had gone, I also abandoned the hide-out. Whether this was motivated by a desire to behave like an adult, or simply to find Lootie, I really don’t know. All the same, I straightened my coat, and joined the crowd.

There were about fifty people, maybe more. Considering how close they stood, even allowing for that well-established party-buffer, the glass of wine held at chest height, and the intimate manner of their speech (they spoke directly into each other’s face) to me they constituted a crowd.

And Lootie was somewhere among them.

‘Pardon,’ I said, blundering. ‘Oops.’

I spotted her, surrounded, since she was the loveliest there. ‘Lootie,’ I called. ‘Lootie.’

Seeing me (my sorry face), she put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, Charlie!’ she said, as if she had forgotten. As if she had mislaid her hankie.

‘Yes,’ I said. Could there be any doubt?

‘Get a sandwich,’ she called. ‘And…’ Her words were lost as the crowd surged. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Up there,
listen…’ and she drew my attention to a person standing on a balcony above us.

We were looking at Sebastian Chanteleer.

‘It is my privilege,’ the writer said, gazing down, ‘to offer a vote of thanks to my mother, Constance Chanteleer, our gracious hostess.’ He raised his glass and, turning this way and that, politely patted one hand against the back of the other, as encouragement for us to join him. Which I did—awkwardly, since I had no glass—seeing as it was the right thing to do.

Then Constance Chanteleer stepped forward to join her son, there, at the balustrade above us.

But I will not tell you about her yet.

Just as I put Sebastian Chanteleer on hold when he was about to take the stage at the Redmond Barry theatre, so I will set his mother to one side while I tell you about my mother. While I have the chance.

Florence Mary Bloome (Florrie to the grocer and the butcher), my mother, was an ignorant woman, full of her own importance. I can say this now that she is dead.

Mum was born to a dairy-farming family in Dunolly, ‘up the bush’, as she would say, her education ending with primary school. Her future was to work on the farm, milking cows and carting slops to pigs. Understanding this, she left for the city. I figure she was also pregnant, not that my father was ever mentioned (though I must have had one).

Mum found work in the big smoke trimming ladies’ hats, clawing her way up to become a milliner, then left to
start her own business working from home—and to raise me, which is to her credit.

She rented a three-bedroom weatherboard house. One bedroom was hers, one mine, the other a workroom where her customers turned up in answer to a weekly ad run in the paper. These were society women, looking for an original model to wear to the Flemington races. Mum was rough as bags, but good at what she did. ‘You have a good eye, Mrs Bloome,’ the women would say, and noticing me playing on the floor with her hat blocks and fabrics and artificial flowers, they’d add, ‘And this is your boy?’ Then mum would sniff, and shove me into the yard.