The Theatre
Driving down Plane Tree Drive, on my way to work in the city, I shut the vents in my car. The pollen from the plane trees, like yellow puffs of fairy floss, has bothered me since I was a child.
Faraj used to live on Plane Tree Drive and I briefly consider an unscheduled visit to try to find out where he is now. Why he couldn’t live with his carer, why he wouldn’t talk to me, why he vanished, slipping through the cracks of a system gaping with holes. There are a thousand whys I can’t answer about him. All my instincts are screaming at me, telling me he needs me. But I know the answers aren’t here anymore. And because the Department doesn’t know where he is, my instincts can scream all they like, it’s no use.
Nearing the corner of South Road, where the theatre is, old memories settle over me. The curl of the purple and green ornamental façade, crumbling at the corners, the doors pushed closed with rain-warped, drafty gaps. The empty billboard. Tunes whisper to me as I come closer, songs long gone and impossible to forget. Days of rehearsal and nights of fevered performance prickle my skin. People tucked close in the crowded backstage, hours of preparation in the green room, giggling leotard-clad girls and mothers fussing over hair and makeup.
The traffic is bad this morning, even on the Drive, and I wonder if I’ll be late for work. I mentally check my diary for early appointments as orange cones direct traffic away from the theatre and squash us into one lane.
Sitting in the right lane, creeping forward towards the theatre, I watch a man in a hard hat yell instructions into a walkie-talkie, gesticulating aggressively to someone in a bobcat. Machinery, scaffolding and fences engulf the theatre.
Are they doing it up, or pulling it down?
I feel sick all day. As I talk to clients, I barely register any of it. I go through the motions; grant temporary extensions, book inspections, call Family Services three times, sit on hold forever. I try to retain a veneer of compassion, even though there is so little left in me.
Then Faraj comes in again. I still don’t have any housing to offer him. I ask why he can’t go back to Ahmad and his dark eyes flick to the floor and stay there. He doesn’t answer. I ask him a hundred questions, just to keep him close for a while. I tell myself that while he’s with me, at least, he’s not being hurt. But who am I kidding? He carries his hurt like a torch. There is no escaping it. And none of the questions I ask change the fact that I can’t give him what he needs. I’m stalling. Hoping to get to the bottom of him. I give him a list of shelters and he takes it, but I know full well he will choose to sleep rough rather than go to one of those places and I don’t blame him.
I knock off at five and race through the city, driving recklessly. Pulling up on South Road, I watch from my car. The crane is still. The men in hard hats and bright jackets are gone – all but one. He wears a suit underneath his safety gear. He is looking up at the sky. Imagining what? Ten sterile storeys?
I jump out of the car and dodge the peak hour traffic to cross the road.
‘Hey!’ I call out.
His gaze drops from the monstrosity in his mind and turns to me.
‘Hi.’
‘What’s going on?’ I ask.
‘We’re tearing it down.’
The words register brutally, as if they are wedging into my brain with a block splitter. I reach out and curl my fingers through the wire fence. The worn and patchy velvet on the chairs, the embellished wallpaper, the ancient splintery floorboards. All gone. The chandelier. Oh, the chandelier.
‘Are you okay?’ the man asks, obviously sensing an old duck like me might pass out any second of the day, forcing him to write up an incident report.
I ignore him and walk back to my car.
Sleep doesn’t come easily. I spend half the night fending off my husband’s knees and elbows. Eventually I fall into a dreamless torpor that is broken by the canaries. They don’t care that it’s the weekend.
I shower, dress, eat and drive to the theatre.
It’s quiet and Plane Tree Drive is deserted. The houses are silent, sitting placidly in the shade of the plane trees. It’s still early; the frost is still on the grass. I walk to the stage door and try the gate: bolted and chained. I return to my car and haul out the heavy bolt cutters. After working in public housing for a lifetime you learn a trick or two. As I try the chain I wonder what will give first – my bones, or the hardened steel – then the lock snaps and I ease the gate open. Signs scream at me to WEAR SAFETY GEAR AT ALL TIMES and REPORT TO THE OFFICE BEFORE ENTRY TO SITE.
The alley behind the theatre is disgusting these days. Sheets of newsprint like urban tumbleweed. Corners used as a urinal and worse. Bits and pieces of shabby lives scattered into a windblown wound. In my sensible shoes, I pick my way through it to get to the stage door.
Not much has been done yet. It looks like they are still setting up the machinations of their destruction. The stage door is unlocked, presumably the locked gates are considered enough protection for the old building, so I walk into the dark corridor that leads to the green room. As a child, I ran these corridors barefoot, leaping and laughing as we practised the routines in any space we could find. Later I brought my own daughter here for her dance concerts.
The green room is a sad place; empty, hollow, cold. It was never decorated gloriously like the rest of the theatre, but had always been filled with the warmth of a hundred bodies and needed nothing more.
I keep walking and find my way onto stage. I am ten again, dressed in flowing pink tulle and sequins, arms and legs smeared in orange Leg Tan, eyelids electric blue, hair scraped into a painful bun. I spin and stretch; each step is like putting on an old coat. Mum and Dad smile when we take our bow. Their pride glows like lanterns. We scamper off stage, in our excitement forgetting the strict instruction to exit stage left in a tidy line with toes pointed and chins high. That doesn’t matter. All that matters are the waiting hugs.
Now, I sit on the boards and wind my arms around my waist, allow myself to be flooded with melancholy. Until a sound disturbs me. A bird, no doubt nesting in the old ruins. The birds will lose their home too. There will be no place for them in this new structure. I briefly consider trying to catch them but my husband won’t tolerate any more strays being brought home. And my neighbours already complain about my squawking canaries.
Monday, Monday. It always comes around too fast. I take the quick route to work, unable to bear the thought of being stuck in traffic in front of the theatre as a wall crashes down. But by the end of the day my curiosity, and many years of habit, get the better of me.
The man is there again, looking up at the sky. Again. Either he has very little imagination or he is trying to predict the weather. I walk up to the fence and clutch the cold wire.
‘Hi,’ he says.
‘Hi.’
‘It’s going to be beautiful. They’re calling it Theatre Apartments and there’ll be a monument.’
I scoff. ‘Huh!’
‘Do you know this place?’
‘Better than you do if you think anything else could be more beautiful.’
‘But it’s crumbling. It’s dangerous. No one uses it anymore,’ he says.
‘You don’t throw things away because they are crumbling. You nurture things that aren’t strong,’ I say.
He pauses for a while, trying to understand. I can see he wants to. But he can’t. He lives in a world where things that aren’t perfect are replaced. He’s so young.
‘I’m Leyton,’ he says.
‘Coralie,’ I say as I walk away.
‘See you!’ he calls out.
I make it a habit. I drive the long way to work to make it easier to get through my day, and on the way home I go and see what layer they’ve torn down. Elements are thrown into bins to be reused or dumped. At least some of it will be recycled. The floorboards will be sanded and oiled and used to fancy-up some run-down eastern suburbs mansion. The glass doors might be used by someone wanting to add character to their severe modern home. The ragged red velvet curtain will be dumped.
The man isn’t looking at the sky today. He is smiling at me.
‘I have something for you,’ he says.
He strides towards a pile of rubble at the back of the site.
‘Come to the side gate,’ he says. ‘I’ll let you in. You don’t need your bolt cutters this time,’ he winks.
He unlocks the new padlock, opens the gate, slips a fluoro jacket over my suit and puts a hard hat on my head.
‘Sorry, I’ll be fired if you don’t wear it.’
He is still smiling his goofy smile.
‘This way,’ he says.
We walk through the front doors, now just empty frames.
‘Watch your step,’ he says.
‘Okay,’ I say, thinking that I couldn’t fall in this place in a million years; I know it too well. But he’s right. The floor isn’t there anymore – just struts and dull, tired dirt remain. I pick my way over it and follow him to the foyer.
‘I found this.’
He is shy now. His offering in his large, rough hands, held out to me.
‘I don’t know what it is, but it looked beautiful. I wanted... to save it.’
He holds a small brass fixture, newly polished. I don’t know exactly what it is either, or where it came from. I take it and its chill shivers through me.
‘Thank you,’ I say. It is an unknown piece of me, given back to me by this unknown man, and I am overwhelmed.
‘I didn’t want it to end up in a salvage shop. Don’t ask me why,’ he laughs nervously.
I smile at him and notice something different about his face that I can’t quite register.
Leyton and I talk every day; he tells me what they’ve done. It seems peculiar to me that so much care is taken to destroy something. They could have just put a bomb under it. But as it turned out, the theatre is still a valuable commodity. In pieces anyway. Famous light fittings and rows of seats are to be sold at auction. Apparently there are people, past performers and patrons, who want to hold onto it more in its demise than its life.
One day Leyton comes to the fence with a look of sadness I’ve never seen before. Normally he is so invigorated by his work.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘Coralie, tomorrow they blast whatever’s left. I’ve grown quite attached to the place,’ he laughs his nervous laugh. ‘Do you want to come in? One last time?’
I do, I do. But. It will make it harder to walk away.
‘No.’ I say.
He looks like I’ve slapped him.
‘Please come in. I want to show you something.’
I sigh and follow him in. As we pick our way through the rubble I say, ‘We’re all growing old, after all. I guess this will be your fate eventually, too.’
I’m talking to his back, but I see his steps slow. He doesn’t speak ‘til we reach the stalls.
‘I’m supposed to have disconnected this by now... Wait here.’
He runs off to the back of the room and flicks a switch.
The darkness is obliterated and the theatre is washed in the crystal glow of the chandelier. Shadows are cast in patches but it is impossible not to see the place has been gutted and tortured.
Still, with the graceful light of the chandelier it seems almost unspoilt.
‘They can’t get it down. We’ve had experts come in from all over. They want to save it of course, it’s worth a mint. Tomorrow we’ll take it down with the crane and hope for the best. Weighs a tonne.’
The songs return to me like an echo. ‘The Good Ship Lollypop’ when I was just five. ‘Thriller’ when my daughter was twelve – her last performance before puberty got the better of her. Dozens in between. They course through me, wave upon wave. Applause. The acrid smell of Leg Tan and hairspray. Cheeks sore from smiling. Mum’s perfume when she hugged me, forgetting or not caring that I was covered in orange goo. Dad mimicking the steps in a hilarious melange, laughing as he tripped and stumbled. My senses drown me.
‘I know it sounds crazy but I like it in here at night. I hear things I can’t explain. Like it’s alive. That’s why I’m always here when you come by,’ he says.
‘It was never alive, it was the people that made it come to life.’
He walks back and stands next to me.
I reach out and take his rough, young hand.