Friday was cold and half the students had switched to the drab winter uniform. Isa was one of them. And she’d forgotten to bring the key. Unable to maintain a rational and objective view of the world, I accused her of doing it intentionally to annoy me.
‘It makes me sad if you really think that,’ she said. ‘I might’ve remembered if you’d bothered to tell me why you wanted it after waking me up in the middle of the night. I’ll bring it on Monday.’
‘Can I come to your place after school instead?’
‘If you insist.’
After my longest day in living memory, we caught a train to Erskineville. Isa said I’d been acting remote, bristly and dismissive.
‘I’ve got stuff going on that you couldn’t imagine,’ I said.
‘Newsflash! You’re not the only one. Everybody has stuff going on all of the time. That’s what life is – stuff going on. You don’t realise that other people are struggling with shit because you’re so focused on your own.’
‘Well, excuse me for thinking that I might actually be going insane.’
‘Calm down. People who are really mad are totally unaware of it.’
‘That is complete and utter bullshit!’
‘Shh . . . We’re in the quiet carriage and you’re disturbing the other passengers.’
‘SORRY, FELLOW PASSENGERS! I am not completely crazy. You all just think I am because I’m talking loudly.’
Isa put her hand over my mouth. ‘The only crazy person on this train is me, because I actually used to like you. I liked you a lot, if you want to know the truth. But I’m struggling to remember why. Because right now I don’t like you very much at all.’
‘Great, because I feel exactly the same way about myself.’
We got off the train at Erskineville Station and walked up the stairs.
‘Lincoln, what’s going on with you?’
‘Yesterday I found out stuff that has me questioning the origin of my existence.’
‘You’ve completely lost me.’
‘I really hope not.’
‘What do you mean?’ Isa stopped walking.
‘Nothing. I just thought you were one of the few people who got me.’
Knowing that I hadn’t come for conversation or refreshment, Isa offered me neither when we got to her place. She made me wait at the bottom of the stairs while she fetched the key. Delilah must’ve picked up on the tense vibe, because when I reached down to pat her she clawed the back of my hand then pissed off into the back garden. Isa returned and dropped a charm bracelet into my hand. ‘There you go,’ she said. ‘Take extremely good care of it.’
Attached to the chain, along with the little brass key, was the mood ring Isa’s dying father had given her mother, and a dove flying through a gold heart studded with diamonds – the brooch Edwin had given to Diddy Budd. Two love tokens.
‘Don’t you want to take those off first?’
‘No. Because against all current evidence telling me not to, I trust you one hundred per cent.’
‘And there’s the little key.’
‘There’s the key. Bert told me you might come looking for it. He said, “Make sure the little bugger gets it. But don’t make it too easy for him.”’
‘You’ve done your job well.’
‘Is it for winding the mechanical hen?’
‘I hope it’s for the hen. Bert left a tag around her neck that said, “Good egg for a good egg – Lincoln from up the hill.” This is going to sound completely mad, but I think there’s something inside the hen that’s for me.’
Isa smiled and touched the lapels of my blazer. ‘You know, you really are a good egg,’ she said. Then she crinkled her nose and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Good luck.’
As the elevator ascended to level twenty-seven, I prayed that the hen would recognise her key. I paced the balcony before going to my room. I took Ethel off the shelf and said to her, ‘I think I’ve got what we need to get you going.’ I removed the key from Isa’s charm bracelet and guided it into the keyhole in Ethel’s base. It fitted perfectly but there was resistance when I turned it – an unhealthy grinding. Instead of forcing it, I found a tiny plastic bottle of hair-clipper oil in Dad’s bathroom and squeezed three drops into the hole. After waiting a minute, I tried the key again and it turned, no resistance, until the hen was fully wound. I removed the key and set Ethel on the table. I waited and waited, but she remained still. I figured she needed the token, but it was already trapped inside.
Then I noticed a tiny hole under the base. I poked in Dad’s smallest screwdriver. A hatch fell open, releasing the gold token and the twenty-cent piece.
I kissed the charms on Isa’s bracelet. I picked up the coin, and I kissed the sailor and I kissed George Pemberton. Then I dropped the golden coin into the slot. Immediately something inside Ethel whirred and vibrated. Her head turned from side to side, surveying her new home. She winked at me and nodded three times. There was more whirring, and the sound of something shifting inside. Her whole body lifted slightly then she lowered herself back onto the nest and shook her tail feathers. I bit my lip to stop myself laughing, concerned it might disturb the ritual. Ethel trembled, both metal wings ruffling as much as metal wings can, and she bobbed up and down. She clucked and cackled, scratchy at first then louder and clearer, igniting an intense feeling of joy deep in my soul. The irrepressible joy burnt through my chest and up my throat, erupting as laughter, squeezing tears from the corners of my eyes. Ethel was going completely berserk. Good to his promise, Bert had got her working again.
She quietened down and became still.
I held my breath and waited.
She clucked intermittently, then again came the whirring and shifting of gears.
Then nothing – nothing at all.
My heart sank. I recalled my dog Gus’s valiant last attempt to stand – how hard my loyal friend had tried to please me.
I said to the little hen, ‘Don’t worry about it, Ethel, you gave it your best shot. You can let go now.’
She clucked one last time and she did let go.
She let go of a golden egg, which came rolling down the little chute. The cool, smooth metal warmed quickly in my hand. The egg had a seam like the wooden ball. I peeled off the sticky tape around the seam and unscrewed the egg. It contained neither of the things Bert mentioned, no lolly or handkerchief. But there was something much more promising – a scroll tied with a tiny blue bow. I slid off the ribbon and, fearing the scroll might disintegrate or tear, uncurled it just enough to see perfectly formed but miniature writing – as if penned with the aid of a magnifying glass. I squinted, but it was still impossible to read.
I searched everywhere for a magnifying glass without luck. I went to the chemist on Darlinghurst Road but they didn’t sell them, so I tried the newsagency. There was one left, the size of a bread plate with a super-thick lens – sure to work. I waited behind a guy who was having his lotto ticket checked. He won fifteen bucks. It was a good omen. I congratulated him and bought the magnifying glass, then ran past Frank at the concierge desk, holding it up to my eye for comic effect. Caught the lift up to level twenty-seven. Uncurled the scroll and held it in place between a metal ruler and my mouse.
I read these words:
Dear friend,
In faith I trust that you are the intended recipient of this missive, and am heartened it has finally reached you. Yet I’m also saddened that your possession of it means you bear an affliction that I am in part responsible for passing on. For, if all instructions have been executed as prescribed, then you are my descendant, and alone will be able to determine exactly how many generations apart we are. Not only do I seek to convey my deepest sympathy and most humble apology, but I also hope to express the type of encouragement only possible from one who has shared your peculiar condition.
Where to begin? Perhaps at the very beginning of life itself. All humans in the embryonic stage possess extra vertebrae that are somehow absorbed before they’re delivered screaming and bawling into this world – yes, each and every one of us. But a very few are born with vestigial evidence of this formation intact. I was born with no obvious abnormality, the discolouration not becoming a protuberance until my adolescent years. Initially it was small and easily ignored, but over a period of months it grew to a little over three inches in length.
Recently I completed an autobiographical account of the early portion of my life, which I hope has also found its way into your hands. Some names were changed to enable me to tell my story as candidly as possible while protecting the privacy of those close to me. My real name is Theodore Stonehouse. Edwin Stroud is the alias I used from my first performance in Sydney to my final one in New York. The story ends with my decision to return to Australia after fifteen months performing in the United States of America. The next chapter of my life, described briefly below, is intended for your edification only.
Reuniting with my family was one of the greatest joys of my life. Especially as I’d returned with enough money to pay off all our debts and buy a modest stone cottage in Balmain for us to inhabit. Many things had changed in my absence, but the impact of Federation seemed insignificant compared to matters of a personal nature. My beloved Daisy Blythe, Deidre (Diddy) Budd in my memoir, had fallen pregnant to Reginald McGuffin, who demonstrated his true colours by abandoning her the day after she told him. It was the most dire of predicaments for Daisy, but for me it was an oddly fortuitous turn of events. I’d ruled out the possibility of ever marrying and having children, for fear of passing on my affliction. Here was the perfect solution for both of us! I’d never stopped loving Daisy, and without hesitation I proposed to her. We married quietly and lived with my family in the cottage. I hired a tutor and finished my secondary education around the time our son Otto was born. He is now a fine young lad, exhibiting the kind and serene nature of his mother and none of the malignant traits of his biological father.
Immersed in my later study of medicine at the University of Sydney, I was content with our small family, but women can be persuasive creatures. Shortly after my graduation, Daisy’s belly began to swell a second time and with it my anxiety that something might go awry. My fears proved unfounded when Alice arrived in the world perfect in every way. However, it was only on reaching sixteen that my problem manifested, and the same may yet happen to her. Even if Alice develops no malformation, she may carry the trait to future descendants, which is my reason for writing.
Three years ago, our dear friend George Pemberton passed away and in his will left Ethel the mechanical hen to me. On completing this letter I shall seal it within her egg. Alice will be given charge of the hen on her sixteenth birthday, along with the key and golden token required to set her in motion. If blessed with children of her own, she will pass Ethel on to them and so on down the family line, with instructions to be activated by the person who manifests the strange affliction. That person, my dear descendant, is you.
I hope that you’re living in a kinder and gentler world than the one I currently inhabit. A world where difference is tolerated, if not celebrated – a world where men and women are treated equally and a person is never denigrated or shown prejudice because of their physical bearing, colour of their skin, religion or creed.
On my return to this land, I learnt that our newly formed Federal Government had not recognised Aboriginal people properly in the constitution. It seemed a perpetuation of the barbarous treatment they’ve been subjected to for the past hundred-odd years. And it shames me deeply that while my short performing career earnt enough money to rescue my family from debt, my early act was rife with a pernicious form of humour that condoned bigotry. I must live with this and many other contradictions and failings. There is no possible means of calculating the extent of the historical harms I have caused. So I continue moving forward, seeking to address and oppose ignorance in its various guises, in the hope of a more enlightened future.
Some poor souls are bound and paralysed by their secrets. In my medical practice I often see patients afflicted by what others might consider insignificant, and yet they remain oppressed by their inability to bring them to the light. Once I considered myself too hideous for a woman to love. It took a long time to realise how wrong I was. It is only through accepting our faults and imperfections that we can accept others and love them as they truly are. So I hope that, knowing my failings, you’re still able to feel some sort of bond with me, even though I am probably no longer of this world, and you are not yet in it as I write. I hope that my story gives you strength to prevail against any adversity you face.
Finally, possessing a tail may be an inconvenience, absurd and at times embarrassing. But it really is a tiny problem in relation to the multitude of challenges some people face every day of their existence. Lacking a sense of the ridiculous is a far worse plight – one of the most terrible incapacities a man can suffer from. So never forget to laugh at yourself. The tail is, after all, quite funny.
Yours most lovingly,
Theodore Stonehouse, a.k.a. Edwin Stroud