Two weeks passed and Sydney finally threw off its cloak of humidity for a snappy new autumn outfit. The days were bright and sparkling, sunny but cool. The sea was the only part of the city graciously holding on to its warmth. I’d started training at Bondi in the day and some nights in T H E E Y R I E’s pool if there were no more than two other people in there. It was usually only Patricia from level twenty-nine – the lady with the daisy cap, who mostly swam breaststroke and kept her head above water. Anybody else and I’d have kept my board shorts on. The tail had become easy to spot in Speedos, but with the end of the swimming season approaching, the threat of exposure would soon be removed.
Our group of collaborators on the art project widened. Nana Locke and her friend Glenda both knitted five-metre coils, and I went to Isa’s place three more times for knitting circles. Isa, Phoenix, Dee, Terri and I knitted while Stef looked after drinks, snacks and neck massages. Sometimes it was awkward being the ‘only rooster in the hen house’ – Dee’s words, not mine – and I hardly spoke unless Stef said, ‘Now let’s hear from the voice of man’, which made the pressure to represent without sounding sexist or anything-phobic a bit tricky. But the friendly needling, mostly figurative and sometimes literal, was a small price to pay. My friendship with Isa was advancing in leaps and bounds, and she invited me to her birthday at Luna Park.
Friday night, Dad arrived home and went straight to his room without saying hello. When he finally emerged, his face was swollen, lips puffy and teeth arctic white. Following my interrogation, he finally admitted to a couple of non-invasive rejuvenating procedures.
‘The swelling should go down by tomorrow and nobody will notice the difference,’ he said.
‘What’s the point of it then?’
‘In a competitive environment like mine, looking fresh is equated with relevance. It’s all about giving yourself an edge over your rivals.’
‘So you can pick up younger women like Sophie?’
‘I was talking about work, mate. I’m competing with cowboys ten, fifteen years younger than me. Steve and I share some interests, but his preference for younger women definitely isn’t one of them. There’s nothing happening with Sophie.’
I was tempted to confront him about Maëlle but I literally bit my tongue to stop myself. Seeing my father yield to whatever pressure he felt to look younger made my heart sink. Mum was often surrounded by tight-faced celebrities and pouty models but she’d never gone as far as cosmetic procedures. Despite her line of work, she maintained that beauty is within. I didn’t fully believe that, though – from what I could tell, it was mostly physical and largely determined by genetics, and you could be beautiful even if you were a complete and utter turd. There were heaps of beautiful shits in the world.
On Saturday evening Isa, Dee, Phoenix, Pericles, Tibor and I met under the menacingly happy face of Luna Park. Darkness hadn’t fallen but its crown was already flashing – its teeth glowing almost whiter than Dad’s. In the interest of remaining unencumbered, Isa had insisted on no cards or presents so I complied, wishing her a happy birthday with just a peck on the cheek. Flouting the rule, Pericles gave her a Tiffany heart bracelet. The extravagance made Tibor and I look tighter than a pair of sardine’s arseholes. Tibor filled the awkward void with trivia. ‘The first Luna Park opened in Coney Island, New York, in nineteen hundred and three. Ours opened thirty-two years later, with a funhouse called Coney Island located inside the park.’
‘Fascinating,’ Phoenix said. ‘Shall we go in now?’
Stumbling along the motorised shuffle boards of Coney Island’s Wonky Walk, Tibor looked like Bambi on ice. Isa told me to stop laughing, but wasn’t laughing the point? Once inside, we charged through the Barrels of Fun and rode hessian mats down the Giant Slides, which had shrunk since I was a kid. The Joy Wheel was still Coney’s best feature. The girls claimed prime position on the slightly conical disk, linking arms back to back at the centre. As it started revolving, we all pressed in. Phoenix peeled Tibor’s fingers off. He lost traction, tucked into a ball and rolled off, hitting the boundary’s padding with a >BOOF!< that thrilled the spectators. Pericles wedged himself between Dee and Isa’s legs, but Dee prised him away with her heel. Halfway down he grabbed my foot, and as he was whirling at five times my speed, the force was irresistible. We slipped and spun off like skydivers breaking formation, me on my stomach to avoid tail friction.
Pericles cuffed me. ‘Why’d you let go, pussy? We could’ve taken them down.’
The operator cranked it to top speed but still couldn’t budge the girls. They remained a unified force until the disk stopped spinning, then stood up and walked off with their fists in the air. ‘Who runs the world?’ Phoenix shouted.
From that moment, Pericles turned everything into a competition. At the dodgems I scored a clapped-out jalopy. Lap after lap Pericles rammed into my car then forced me into a corner, wedging me between two other stalled drivers. Before I could extricate myself from the jam, the bell rang – session over. Next was the Tango. Waiting in line, Pericles claimed shotgun and manoeuvred himself next to Isa. Phoenix chose Dee, leaving me with Tibor. As the ride turned, Tibor made a valiant attempt to stay on his side of the carriage but as we reached full throttle his strength failed and he slammed into me. Hurtling around the undulating track with AC/DC’s ‘T.N.T.’ destroying the speakers and Tibor destroying my ribs was hilarious.
‘So much fun,’ Dee said afterwards. ‘But I might’ve done a little wee. Perhaps we should have a break on something more gentle, like the Ferris wheel?’ Together in one gondola we were lifted into the clear night sky, high above the park’s flashing lights, and I felt happier than I’d been for a year. Tibor and Pericles discussed the ramifications of dropping a fifty-cent piece from the Harbour Bridge. Would it crack the skull of a tourist on a ferry gliding beneath or just give them a nasty fright and a permanent dent? Meanwhile, Isa and Dee admired Phoenix’s manicure, indigo with glow-in-the-dark skulls.
‘You like my nails?’ she said, waggling them in front of Pericles. ‘Remember when we painted yours?’
‘No.’ Pericles hid his hands.
‘How could you forget? The colour was Flaming Flamingo.’
Dee rescued Pericles by cutting in. ‘Next ride will have to be our last. Let’s have a vote.’
The decision was unanimous: the ROTOR.
On a cream-coloured façade was a sign that read:
LUNA PARK
PRESENTS
PROFESSOR E. HOFFMEISTER’S
WORLD FAMOUS SCIENTIFIC THEATRE
and beneath, in glowing red letters:
R O T O R
Decorating the façade were comical paintings of women trying in vain to stop their skirts riding up and an upside-down sailor. ‘Let’s give it a go,’ Pez whispered to me, as we climbed the narrow stairs. Isa and Dee continued up to the spectator gallery. Phoenix, Tibor, Pericles and I entered the rubber-lined barrel of what was ostensibly a giant washing machine. The operator issued instructions we ignored and the barrel began revolving.
‘Look up!’ Isa called from the gallery and took a photo. As we approached top speed, the floor dropped away from our feet, eliciting a squeal from the ROTOR virgins, despite us all being safely pinned against the wall. The spinning was nauseating until my brain readjusted, making me feel as if I was stationary and the spectator gallery above was revolving instead.
‘Now!’ Pez said, and began manoeuvring himself around. I followed his lead, wincing from the pain of my tail grinding against the black rubber as I turned.
‘Don’t back down now,’ Homunculus said. ‘Stay with him!’
Soon Pericles was completely upside down and I was ten degrees off vertical.
>RETURN TO THE UPRIGHT POSITION IMMEDJIATELY, OR THE RIDE WILL BE STOPPED AND YOU WILL BE ESCORTED FROM THE PARK!<
The vocalised ‘J’ of the operator’s empty threat made us laugh, because if she stopped the ride ‘immedjiately’ we’d come crashing down on our heads. But we followed her order and edged ourselves back to the correct position. As the ride slowed, everybody began to slip, an aspect of the experience I’d forgotten to anticipate. The drag of the tail against the rubber produced a searing pain as if it were being torn from its roots, so I spread my arms and tried to dig my fingers into the wall to resist the pull of gravity. Isa and Dee called something from the gallery but my hearing and vision were fading.
And I blacked out.
Instead of the ROTOR, I was now riding a red-and-gold bike in a circle, chasing my father who was chasing Maëlle
chasing Mum
chasing Starkey
chasing Nads
chasing Tibor
chasing Mullows
chasing Phoenix
chasing Pericles
chasing Isa
chasing me. Our bikes were fixed on a huge revolving ring. The race was futile but still we pedalled faster and faster, until the pain from the narrow bike seat became unbearable and I shouted, ‘LET ME OFF NOW!’
I opened my eyes and found myself back on the floor of the ROTOR with my friends around me, the circular platform having ascended to its starting position.
‘It’s okay, mate,’ Pericles says. ‘We’re all getting off now.’
‘How long was I out for?’
‘I didn’t realise you were.’
Nothing I’d read lately in My One Redeeming Affliction had grabbed my attention like the scene with the labrador in the storm. The chapter after that had mostly been about Edwin Stroud’s supposedly perfect childhood days growing up at Ambleside in Mosman, and the arrival of his brother Thomas and sister Loula. But the passage I read tonight when I got home from Luna Park got my head spinning.
In my father’s thirteenth year of operating his restaurant at Pemberton’s Magnificent Emporium, the banking crisis struck and rates of visitation to the glittering palace of consumerism plummeted. Living by the adage that one has to spend money in order to make money, Pemberton spent a small fortune purchasing new attractions for the Market Carnival, hoping his confidence would inspire the masses to follow suit. Regardless of economic climate, people are irresistibly drawn to novelty, if only as a distraction from their woes, and George Pemberton was the undisputed king of innovation. His prized attraction, the Velocipede, was imported from France, and forty-two lucky people were invited to partake in the inaugural revolution, my family topping the list.
The mechanism looked similar to a merry-go-round, with red-and-gold cycles replacing the horses for men and two-seater carriages for the ladies – at least that was the order of things when operating in Paris. But on the ride’s first run in Sydney, my mother put my sister Loula and brother Thomas in a carriage and claimed the cycle behind them. My father took the cycle in front and allowed me to lead the charge, though as I was only eleven my feet barely reached the pedals. Pemberton delivered a welcome speech then nodded to a red-coated attendant, who tooted his whistle to set us pedalling.
The giant ring revolved slowly at first, but once momentum built we were whizzing around the banked metal track at a decent clip. The men and my mother – the only woman cycling – spurred each other on with high-spirited taunts. Faster and faster we pedalled, sending the carriage-riders into fits of laughter and squeals of terrified delight. Then, just as we hit top speed, Loula’s hat was blown off, provoking a shriek high enough to shatter the crystal ornaments in the homewares department. We ceased pedalling and, when the ride eventually stopped, my mother lifted Loula bawling from the carriage.
‘Here’s a treat to cheer you up!’ the avuncular Pemberton said, pulling a strap of liquorice from his sleeve. ‘I think Her Majesty will take great pleasure in our new marionette theatre. And what jolly good fortune: the first performance is about to commence!’
We made our way to the theatre and settled in for the show. Sailor boy Jack Tar was lured to an island by a mermaid’s singing, his boat destroyed on the reef. The mermaid promised to kiss him if he closed his eyes. When the hapless sailor puckered up, the mermaid switched places with a sea monster, who kissed the sailor passionately. Jack Tar recoiled from the sea monster’s fishy breath and offered him a tin of Hooper’s Cachou for breath correction. Mortally offended, the sea monster swallowed the sailor whole then writhed about with indigestion. Finally he released an enormous belch, expelling Jack Tar’s tiny white bones – peppermint candies that Thomas, Loula and I scrambled to gather.
As the other guests were leaving, Pemberton invited my family to his quarters for a special private viewing. Before allowing us to enter, he gave an impromptu speech on the way forward for mankind. ‘We must learn to embrace not only our neighbour but also the foreigner – the stranger on the other side of the globe who is our cousin, distant only geographically. Whether black or white, brown, yellow or red, we are one family.’
There was a hoot and screech followed by a bang from behind the door, which he ignored.
‘Peace amongst the nations will surely only prevail when we all acknowledge our common ancestor.’ Another, louder bang.
‘What’s that noise?’ Thomas said.
‘Mr Darwin postulated that all living things originated from a single source and, over millions of years, evolved in diverse ways. I have behind this wall one of our closest cousins who grew up in deepest Congo, blithely unaware of man’s existence. I’ve been teaching him how to behave like a gentleman, but he will not be displayed until he’s quite fit for the challenge. His name is Mr Whitby Pemberton. As long as you promise to keep his existence secret, you may now enter and make his acquaintance.’
My father, my siblings and I were all delighted by the caged chimpanzee. But I’ll never forget the desolation on my mother’s face when Whitby Pemberton soiled the trousers of his ill-fitting suit.
I was baffled by the fact that Edwin Stroud’s description of the Velocipede matched the vision I’d experienced just hours earlier on the ROTOR. Even the colours of the cycles were the same – red and gold. The synchronicity was starting to spook me. At least the puppet show in the book wasn’t much like the version that Bert had narrated. But still, the coincidences were uncanny. Had Bert read My One Redeeming Affliction at some point in his life and merely forgotten the details of the show? Or had he been trying to tell me a story of his own?