13

EARLY the next morning there is a stillness that hints at the heat to come. It is just before dawn. Roosters in the backyards of timber cottages strung out in rows facing the railway line have not yet stirred. But already there is activity. In bakers’ kitchens there are lights and the smell of new loaves. Horse-drawn wagons bearing boxes of earthy potatoes and carrots make their way to the produce market. Another dray, laden with fish netted a few hours earlier, lurches east along Collins Street. The carter will do the rounds of city restaurants and hotels, the Metropole among them, filling orders for seafood and leaving on kitchen steps cases of fish covered with damp newspaper and a few stones in areas where stray cats lurk. On the west side of the city, rattling past the motor garages and the station, is an open-topped Darracq automobile. The driver is John Jordan. Harry is next to him, hands thrust deep into the pockets of a leather flying-jacket.

‘Don’t reckon you’ll need that,’ says Jordan, nodding at the jacket. ‘Going to be a hot one. Look – red tinges in the sky. Hardly any breeze, neither.’

‘That’s what we’ll want when my flying machine is ready,’ Harry replies. ‘One fine day. Wind is the enemy of the aviator. A pilot’s controls can’t compete with the breeze. It can flip you over in a second. My mechanic is a stickler on this. He lights a match and holds it above his head – if the match is blown out he deems it too windy to go up.’

‘Good thing he’s no taxi-driver. If he were that fussy about getting out he’d never make any money.’

‘You can’t compare them. A flying machine defies gravity. The motor car is still a rudimentary form of transport.’

Jordan turns to glare at his passenger.

‘Well, you can catch the bloody train next time, mate. There’s a station in Diggers Rest. Not much else, mind: a store; post office; weighbridge; chaff-mill and that’s about it. Be a long walk to your paddock, too.’

‘I meant no offence,’ Harry says. ‘I’m sure your Darracq will do the job just fine. What speed can you get in it?’

‘Past twenty miles an hour on the flat. Faster downhill. Depends on the road. Any rain will mean a bog both sides, so it’s best to keep to the ridge in the middle. Trouble is, others can have the same idea.’ Jordan swings the steering-wheel hard to the left as another vehicle appears over a rise, smoke billowing from its exhaust. Once it has passed, Jordan falls silent as Harry looks around. He can make out shapes in the grey light.

‘Doesn’t take long to feel like you’re out of the city,’ he says. ‘Not that there is much of a city. Compared to New York, I mean. There are open fields here, and … what’s that rank smell?’

‘Flemington stockyards. Cattle brought down from the bush are held there before they’re sold or carted off to the abattoirs. There’s a bone mill, too, and a fellmongery.’ Harry wrinkles his nose in distaste.

‘My wife is inclined to be a vegetarian,’ he says. ‘Perhaps I should join her. Are you married, Jordan?’

‘Not me. I’m a single man and intend to stay that way.’

‘You’re missing out, I assure you. I have loved only two women in my entire life: my mother, and my wife of sixteen years.’

‘I run my own race,’ is Jordan’s only response. Then, as they pass a bluestone church: ‘St Brigid’s, Moonee Ponds. We’ll be into the country proper soon. Any children?’

Harry pauses before replying.

‘We haven’t been blessed. In the conventional sense, that is. My wife and I share a son of a different sort, Jordan. We always bring him along when we travel. Discuss how he’s getting on. If you could hear our conversations, you’d understand how real he is to us.’

Harry is leaning forward in his seat. His manner has become so animated that a flummoxed Jordan wonders if his passenger is about to produce a likeness of this phantom infant. But he says nothing, and the early-morning gloom hides his expression. Harry sits back. Then, after another long silence, starts to unzip his jacket.

‘You were right,’ he says. ‘It is getting warm. Where should I put this?’

‘Toss it in the back.’

Harry twists himself around but hesitates, still holding his jacket.

‘You have quite a load here already, it seems. All these boxes.’

‘Phonographs. Special offer in the newspaper. Importers of the Champion line are giving them away free, on condition that you test a machine and tell your friends. Reckon I can sell this lot, so long as the road doesn’t get too rough and bugger up their workings.’ He swerves to avoid a pothole.

‘Can’t see there’s a future in phonographs myself,’ says Harry. ‘Why would anyone want talking machines?’

‘Music’s the thing. They’re making cylinders now. Flat disc recordings, too, of orchestras. Singers as well. Our Melba is on discs for these Champions.’

‘You’re a musical man, Jordan?’

‘A businessman. If I can sell for more than I buy, I’m in.’

‘Music doesn’t move me. The finest art is what you can see, not hear. My own success, for example, rests on an audience not being able to believe their own eyes. But my wife is fond of music. Perhaps I could get one of your Champions for her. I fear she resents the time I will spend out here.’

‘I’ll keep a phonograph aside. Sort out payment later.’

Pleased by the prospect of a sale, he starts to whistle. Harry endures it for a moment before asking him to stop.

‘I can’t abide whistling. Will only do for dogs.’

Jordan stares ahead.

‘It’s not only whistling I dislike,’ Harry continues. ‘I have no time for comedy. The lowest form of entertainment. An artist should try to inspire and amaze, not just provoke mirth. Yet Rickards puts clowns like Happy Tom Parker on the bill, as if I weren’t attraction enough.’

‘Don’t mind a few jokes myself,’ Jordan says. ‘My father took me to one of Rickards’ shows six or seven years past. Saw an American like yourself. W.C Fields. He could juggle tennis balls, cigar boxes, anything. His legs squeaked when he moved across stage. I never laughed so hard.’

‘But what’s become of this fellow Fields? There’s not much mileage in juggling cigar boxes.’ Harry contemplates parched brown paddocks and scrawny trees before asking Jordan how much further they must go.

‘Close to Keilor now, I’d say. Another forty minutes or so should do it.’

The sun is up now and climbing fast, casting shadows over the dusty road. Harry feels sweat starting to soak his shirt-collar. Jordan is chewing another of his matchsticks. The way he flips it with his tongue reminds Harry of a tumbler in a gymnastics display.

‘You mentioned your father – how is he now?’

‘Dunno. Shot through not long after he took me to see Fields. I never hear from him. No idea if he’s dead or gone to Zanzibar.’

‘To live in ignorance must be awful,’ Harry says. ‘Not knowing if someone has disappeared. I lost my own father, but I know what happened. He died on October 5, 1892, in New York. Thank God I have my beloved mother still. And you?’

‘Gone four years back. Trampled under a runaway carriage.’

‘How awful! Leaving you an orphan.’

‘Too old to be an orphan, mate. Was near twenty when it happened. Made my own way ever since.’

Harry sits back and closes his eyes, as if to contemplate the dreadful horror of losing a mother. And then – it must be the sun or the rhythm of the wheels on the rutted track, or the sound of the engine, or simply the fact that he’s been sleeping so badly, with only a few hours snatched between his last show and the early start – his head becomes heavy, his breathing slows, and he naps. He dreams not of his mother but his late father.

Rabbi Weiss, with his stern features and mouse-coloured beard, is at Temple. He is folding his prayer shawl after officiating at a funeral and explaining to his son, Ehrich, that Jewish principles dictate that a burial must be held as soon as possible after death. Anything less, he intones, is a humiliation of the deceased. The Rabbi places his shawl on an odd-shaped bundle beside him, and now Ehrich understands the funeral is not finished at all. For the bundle is the abandoned body of an unknown woman. His father gazes at him with grey eyes; damp with disappointment. He instructs Ehrich to sit alone in the darkness with this forsaken woman and watch over her; observe shemira. If it isn’t done, he warns, she will never rest. And a similar fate will befall those who denied her appropriate respect.

Never rest. Never rest. Never rest …

Rabbi Weiss is leaning over him. But his features are blurred, as if Harry is trying to see him from under the surface of one of his frigid baths. Now it is his wife leaning over him, not his father. Bess is adding the last pieces of ice. But if it is his wife, why are there holes where her eyes would be, and why are her arms twisted before her like tree branches as she reaches for him under the bath water that tastes of mud? Harry tries to call out but can make no sound. He tries to evade her bony grasp, twisting and writhing, but he’s not in the bath anymore. It’s a motor car, and the Darracq is bouncing around as if its wheels are of different sizes and Jordan is cursing as one of the phonograph boxes almost slides out of the car and Harry sees in front of him a vast expanse of stones and scrub with a few trees scattered near the perimeter and two tent-like structures far apart.

From the closer one, a short figure in black emerges and appears to be looking their way. Harry feels a warm breeze on his face.

‘Right,’ says Jordan. ‘I reckon this is it. Plumpton’s Paddock.’