Volcano Street (34 page)

‘I therefore beg to move’ – the Burgomaster’s ray gun swept the front rows – ‘that this meeting declines to hear the proposed lecture or speech …’

Roger missed his cue. ‘So I’m not to be heard?’ he returned, too late.

The Burgomaster blustered on about the baths and their importance to the economy. Was the town to be ruined for a theory? The dentist said Stockmann must be a revolutionary, trying to bring down the administration. Ibsen’s script called for a drunk at the meeting, slurring out jibes; that night, many a drunk in the audience offered more. Everybody had turned on Dr Stockmann.

Skip was barely listening. She had never stood on stage before. Bright lights seared her eyes and the blackness beyond was a fearful void, like space seen from a space station window. Burly men in silver flung the drunkard into the wings.

‘Can I speak?’ Roger said at last.

Reluctantly, the dentist pressed
PLAY
on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, bulky as a suitcase, commanding silence with futuristic bleeps and whirs. ‘Dr Stockmann will address the meeting.’

Stars flared from Roger’s spacesuit as he gravely mounted the platform. There, palms outspread as if to show he had no weapons, he might have been about to say, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit …’ or ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen …’ or ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do …’ He started softly, paying no heed to guffaws and sighs. Proceeding, his voice grew stronger; silence fell. Players clustered closer. Some exchanged glances. What had happened to Howard? This was not the man they had known until now. Deirdre Novak fixed entranced eyes on the silver form.

Roger, as the doctor, said he had done a lot of thinking. What he
had to say tonight was not what he’d planned to say. He had made a discovery more important than the pestilence in the baths. The town’s sources of spiritual life were poisoned. (Murmurs and angry voices punctuated the speech.) His whole society was false. The authorities were corrupt. The leading men were fools; they were goats in a young plantation, doing harm everywhere, blocking the path of the free man whichever way he turned. Leading men, he said, should be exterminated like other noxious pests. But they were not the chief danger society faced. There were other, more perfidious enemies of truth and freedom.

‘Who, then?’ called the players. ‘Who is it? Name, name!’

Roger’s voice surged, filling the theatre with the force of his conviction. ‘Yes, you may be sure I’ll name them! For
this
is the great discovery I made yesterday! The most dangerous foe to truth and freedom in our midst is the compact majority. Yes, it’s the confounded, compact, liberal majority!’ He whipped the mask from his eyes. ‘There, I’ve told you!’

Here it was, back in force after all these years: the talent that had dazzled Sir Laurence Olivier. Shouting, stamping, whistling filled the stage. It came from the players. It came from the audience. It came from every corner of the theatre. Skip’s heart swelled. Roger Dansie, cast out in shame a generation ago, had returned in triumph. His talent, in that moment, was a volcanic force, sweeping away all in its path. No one laughed. No one jeered.

Yet all was not well. Deirdre Novak clutched her hands to her chest. She might have woken suddenly, painfully to find herself in a different play, a story of ghosts and hauntings. What went through her mind in that moment? Horror, no doubt, at the irony of fate. Deirdre had done with Howard what she had failed to do with Roger, but the reenactment had gone all wrong. She had tried to return to the past and make it different. Her efforts had been in vain. The past had risen up to destroy her, as it had threatened to do all along.

Roger cried, ‘The majority is never right – never, I say! That’s one of the social lies a free, thinking man is bound to rebel against. Who makes up the majority in any given country? Is it the wise men or the fools? I think we must agree that the fools are in a terrible, overwhelming majority, all the wide world over. But how can it ever be right for the fools to rule over the wise men?’

Players tried to shout him down, but ringingly he declared that truth was always on the side of the minority.

There was more, but Roger didn’t have the chance to say it. Deirdre Novak cried out. She rushed downstage, covered her face, collapsed to her knees. Confusion filled the theatre. Was this part of the play?

All doubts were gone when she turned, pointed and shrieked, ‘Roger Dansie – it’s Roger Dansie!’

Silence fell. Skip staggered as if somebody had pushed her. A hot rush, like vomit, spread in her chest. Her knees, she thought, would give out beneath her, but she forced herself forward – one step, two steps – pushing through the crowd towards the front of the stage. Something terrible had happened. There was a grenade in the theatre. Somebody had pulled the pin and tossed it, and it hurtled, as if for ever, through the crowded auditorium.

Roger tried to continue, but his voice failed. He stood blinking, face blank. On stage, players had scattered. A yell came from the stalls: ‘Dirty bastard!’ Then another: ‘Bloody poofter!’ ‘Murderer!’ Soon, boos and catcalls filled the darkness; a beer bottle shattered on the stage. Drunkards surged from their seats.

The world became a blur. As the lights plunged to black, Roger leaped down from the platform. Skip grabbed his hand, struggling with him through a jostling forest. They battered out of the stage door. They blundered across the gardens towards the low wall. Where now? Behind them, a crowd had spilled out of the theatre, eager for mayhem.

A voice rasped, ‘Over here.’ Jack, with the Harley!

They bundled Roger into the sidecar. Strangled gurgling burst from his throat and he shuddered as if in the grip of fever. In Skip’s brain the words thudded: My fault. All my fault.

Jack gunned the motor. ‘Get behind me and hang on.’

Chapter Eighteen

‘Roger? We’re home.’

Skip touched him and he flinched. Curled like a question mark, he cowered in the sidecar, legs drawn up awkwardly, hands clawing his face as if to tear it from his skull. Gently, Jack shouldered Skip aside, speaking soft words she could not make out. Roger’s head lolled. He could not respond, and shuffled like an old man as Jack helped him up the veranda steps. Heat, pregnant with summer, hung like fruit in the tangled trees. Insects chorused frenetically in the dark.

‘He’ll be all right, won’t he?’ Skip’s voice cracked. In the drawing room, she watched helplessly as Jack lowered Roger to a sofa. There could be no hope of getting him up to his room; his legs seemed unable to hold his weight. Jack told Skip to get blankets and she raced upstairs. Moonlight flickered goldenly at the window as she ripped the blankets from her own bed.

Outside, car doors slammed shut. When Skip returned to the drawing room, Mr Novak was bent over the sofa. He silently took the blankets. Roger was convulsing – in the grip, it seemed, of a seizure. Jack poured brandy. Marlo, still in costume, peeped through the tasselled curtains; Pavel, head hanging, stood beside her. Honza
was the only one who looked at Skip. He seemed frightened. Mr Novak took the glass from Jack and held it to Roger’s lips.

Roger tried to speak. Where was the voice that had dazzled Olivier, that had thundered to the furthest seats in the King Edward VII Theatre? All that remained was a reedy gasping, as if the force that had infused him was gone, never to return, spirited away like lost time.

‘Has he been like this before?’ said Marlo.

‘Not quite this bad.’ Mr Novak smoothed Roger’s forehead. Long moments passed before he grew quiet. Tears pressed intolerably in Skip’s eyes. When Mr Novak turned towards her she felt the accusation swing back like a pendulum, poised to toll the hour.

He said simply, ‘It was too much.’

Patterns in the carpet leaped out under the lights. The clock on the mantelpiece thudded metallically, Baskerville howled somewhere in the dark, and a voice that seemed to swell from the air said, ‘My fault. All my fault.’

Skip thought the words had come from her own throat, and was startled to realise they were Honza’s. He burst out in sobs; she went to him, and her own tears followed swiftly as she wrapped her arms around him. His shoulders were thin and shook violently. Honza was not the oblivious boy he seemed. Strings of snot swung from his nose and she didn’t care.

‘My poor children!’ Mr Novak encircled them both in his warm, soft embrace. ‘The fault is mine. I should never have let Roger stay in this town. I was selfish. I wanted him here. We’ve got to get him away.’

Skip brushed her eyes. ‘Away? But where?’

‘He has a cousin in Sydney. Malcolm McKirtle’s an ABC scriptwriter. More than once he’s urged Roger to go and live with him. It’s a big city.’ Mr Novak looked sadly at his friend. Roger appeared to be sleeping now, though from time to time he shivered and his teeth chattered. ‘He’ll be all right by the morning, I hope. Then I’ll take
him. It’s a long way. Dangerous, what with his health. But I’ve no choice. He’ll never be safe in Crater Lakes.’

‘I’ll take him.’ It was Pavel who spoke.

‘You?’ said his father.

‘I’ve been thinking, you see. Oh, I suppose you think I’m not much good at that. Marlo’s helped me see things more clearly. Roger’s helped in his way. Everything that’s happened here in Crater Lakes has helped. But mostly I had to understand for myself. I’ve got things straight now. It’s time for me to go.’

‘No.’ Mr Novak understood at once. His face was ashen as he stared at his son. ‘You’ve been called up. It’s your duty.’

‘Are you going to tell me about the fight against communism?’ When Pavel stepped forward, Skip saw, to her surprise, that he was taller than his father. ‘You ran away when you were my age,’ Pavel said. ‘Now it’s my turn. I’m not going to end up like Baz. And for what? I’ve been thinking about this war. I didn’t understand it before. And now I reckon I do. I’m running away, and not because I’m a coward. I’m running away because I’m brave.’

Mr Novak nodded. Perhaps at another time he would have argued, but now he knew it was no good. Crumpled bags hung beneath his eyes and his jowls were grey and pendulous. He said quietly, ‘Where will you go? What will you do?’

‘Sydney, like you said. You can hide out in the big city. Give yourself a different name.’

‘And I’m going with you,’ said Marlo.

‘But your exams …?’ said Pavel, astonished.

She went to stand beside him. ‘Maybe I’ve put too much trust in exams. It’s time to trust in life.’

Skip remembered her plan to escape with Marlo to the shabby glamour of Kings Cross. That had been a fantasy, she realised, but now perhaps the fantasy would come true. Already there were three bound for Sydney: Pavel, Marlo, Roger. And what if there were a
fourth? There had to be. Hope surged in Skip’s chest, then plummeted again, as she saw in Marlo’s eyes the answer to a question that had not yet been asked. And, Skip knew, she would never ask it. Of course not: Skip Wells was a child, just a child. Marlo Wells was a child no longer. Time is a terrible thing. Blankly, Skip surveyed the drawing room: the green stripy wallpaper; the shelves of leathery books; the mirror over the mantelpiece, framed like an old master; the glimmering varnish of the grand piano.

‘Let’s get ready,’ Marlo said to Pavel. ‘We’ll need to pack for Roger too.’

But the chance was lost. As they went to the door, an explosion rocked the room. Skip gasped, crouched. A brick had crashed through the window. Glass lay scattered on the carpet, the curtains whipped back and forth, and a cheer sounded from outside.

Honza was the first to move, rushing out to the veranda, though his father called him back. The boy put a foot through a rotted floorboard, stumbled into a wicker chair; he kicked, cursing, but was just in time to see two silhouettes scrambling away towards the open gates.

‘Bastards! Come back!’ Limping, Honza made it into the long grass just as one, two, three, four motorbikes burst as if from nowhere and revved across the lawn. They swirled around him; the riders, monstrous insects in their flashing helmets, bellowed in triumph. One slapped the side of Honza’s head. Gasping, Honza sank to his knees as the bikes accelerated away.

Skip at once was beside him. ‘Are you hurt?’

Stunned, Honza could say nothing, but rose unsteadily to his feet. For a moment the boy and girl clung together, trembling; then, looking up, they saw a line of cars racing towards them down the road. And not just cars: among them was Sandy Campbell’s Greyhound. The whole population of Crater Lakes, it seemed, had descended on the old Dansie house. Vehicles screeched to a halt. Drunken men lurched into the night. The coach doors squealed open.

‘Quick,’ said Skip. ‘We’ve got to warn the others.’

But there was no time. They had barely regained the veranda before the attack began. Boots slammed through the grass. There were ululations, shrieks and chants as torches seared the darkness. They plunged inside the house with barely a moment to spare. Rocks rained down on the roof. Pavel and Marlo secured the locks but footsteps thundered all around. Fists hammered on the doors. Somebody swung up to the second-storey veranda. Baskerville, in the garden, howled and gnashed. Skip hoped he would rip out somebody’s throat. She crouched with Honza under the piano as a desperate Jack, shotgun in hand, drove off the first wave of attack. Blasts boomed above the melee.

‘Maniac!’ voices cried. ‘Fucking abo maniac!’

Quiet descended slowly after that. Skip and Honza, after some moments, crawled out from beneath the piano. The drawing room was a shambles of dust and glass. A missile had gashed the piano’s lacquered top, and the mirror over the mantelpiece had cracked and fallen in shards to the floor.

‘It’s the OK Corral!’ Pavel released Marlo from his arms. ‘Where’s Wyatt Earp when you need him?’

Jack was bleeding from a cut to the face.

‘My God.’ Marlo went to him. ‘Let me help you.’

‘No. Leave me.’ He dashed blunt hands against the blood. ‘Them buggers will be back soon enough.’

The lights flickered twice, then guttered out. ‘Damn, they’ve got the generator. Find candles,’ Mr Novak told Skip.

‘What about Roger? We have to move him.’