Good Murder (2 page)

That’s where I met Annie, on the bad-breath girl photo shoot. I was setting up the Power Players in Melbourne at the time, and I offered her a place, promising her all the leading lady parts. When she said that she would buy a truck, the deal was sealed. Later, though, her pointed reminders as to who owned the vehicle made me think that I had paid a high price indeed for transport. She claimed that the only reason people came to see us at all was to see her. She was the bad-breath girl and the Tampax girl (‘All dressed up and then
couldn’t
go! …’) and people knew a star when they saw one. I kept quiet when she was doing one of her star turns. As actor/manager I had a responsibility to the whole troupe, and part of that responsibility involved not losing the truck. We were regularly reminded, half-jokingly, that it was
her
truck and that she might just drive away in it.

The truck sat three in the front, or two if the passenger was Tibald, who weighed twenty stone at the time. The rest of the troupe rode in the back with the costumes, the props, and bits of all-purpose scenery. We wove stage magic with a minimum of scenery. It was all about the voice; my voice, mainly. Annie was at her best when looking distressed in grainy newspaper ads about her bad breath or untimely menstrual flow. There was no music in her voice. None at all. The truth is that the success or otherwise of her stage career was entirely dependent upon the reliability of her truck and the availability of petrol.

It was a cool August morning when we lurched down Ferry Street in Maryborough for the first time. My initial impression of this almost-coastal town was that it was unnervingly flat. The eye ran up and down its wide streets unimpeded by dip or hillock. There had been no attempt made to soften the brutal simplicity of these thoroughfares with trees of any kind. For a person used to the huddled houses of inner Melbourne (albeit the house I grew up in was rather grand), Maryborough’s homes seemed unnecessarily generous in size, although this was partly an illusion created by the stilts on which many of them sat. The imagination of the inhabitants did not extend to their gardens. The enormous Queenslanders perched above either a riot of grasses and vines, with the odd ragged and shapeless paw paw or mango, or a blasted heath of sour and ugly earth.

We’d chosen Maryborough because we’d heard that the war had had a remarkable effect upon it. The influx of airmen and soldiers, and the shifting of industry to a war footing, had shaken it out of the drowsy torpor that anaesthetised the inland towns we had visited and failed to arouse. The awful truth — something best avoided in the normal course of events, or at any rate left undisturbed by poking at it—was that the Power Players were ideally suited to performing in small, remote places, where our limitations might pass unnoticed, camouflaged by the greater limitations of our audiences. I had ambitions or, in this context, dreams, that my own talent might provide somebody in one of those godforsaken towns with the transformative experience of art.

I was optimistic about Maryborough, prospering as it was in response to the need to build ships to keep Hirohito at bay. And build ships they did. Walkers Engineering was the pumping heart that kept Maryborough going. If ever proof was needed that war could quicken the economic pulse of a community, Walkers was it. Twelve hundred men beavered away in there, turning out Corvettes for the navy. They travelled to and from work in a great shoal of bicycles that flowed up Kent Street each morning at seven o’clock and ebbed back down Kent Street each afternoon at four. To be unemployed in Maryborough, a man would have to be dead and buried. Surely, here
Titus Andronicus
would release its power to mesmerise and appal.

My troupe drew curious gazes on that first morning. There were few cars about, and the only truck we saw was a military vehicle. We turned into Kent Street and began looking for a suitable hotel. The Royal Hotel would have been ideal, but it was far too grand for our budget. It had obviously been built at a time when the town was flush with money from timber and gold. There were well-dressed women drinking in the lounge, looking prosperous and metropolitan, and doubtless the wives of officers put up there for the duration.

We found a place we could afford close to the river but close, too, to the centre of town. The George Hotel, on the corner of March and Wharf Streets, had three storeys that seemed to have a tentative grasp on the site. They leaned nervously away from the Mary River as if not wishing to attract its attention. The Mary River runs at speed through the town, its waters muddied by the churning drag of energetic tides. It floods with a viciousness that is almost personal. People were still talking about the flood of ‘37 and declaring that the town was about due for another drowning. They got their drowning all right, but it wasn’t quite what they were expecting.

The proprietor of the George was a sinewy, pale-skinned man with hair the colour of copper wire and eyes of a most peculiar, insipid, yellow-flecked green. He welcomed us with open, hairy arms. Customers who stayed and paid were obviously unusual in his hotel. I wondered if the insistent wash of the Mary River, audible through the open door of the bar, had anything to do with it. There were a few men in the bar, and they looked us up and down before returning indifferently to their beer. The proprietor, who declared that his name was Augie Kelly, ran the place more or less on his own.

‘The food’s not great,’ he said. ‘I do the best I can, but there’s not a big demand and there’s not much in the way of decent stuff available.’ As he said this he looked at Tibald, wondering, I suppose, if he was expected to provide enough food to maintain his weight. ‘I’m not a good cook either,’ he added. ‘I had a good cook, but he joined the AIF.’ Turning those unsettling eyes in my direction he explained further, moving his large hands about apologetically. ‘You may not know, but the government is going to bring in austerity measures that will affect public eating houses. Three courses only, and no hors’d’oeuvres.’

I did not imagine that three courses of anything had been served in this hotel for a very long time.

‘It’s twenty shillings a week, each,’ he said.

‘That,’ I said icily, ‘seems rather high, especially in the absence of hors d’oeuvres.’

‘If you can do better anywhere else, be my guest,’ he said, folding those hairy arms aggressively.

Tibald interrupted him.

‘My good man,’ he declaimed in his deepest Falstaffian voice, ‘show me your kitchen.’

Augie was taken aback. ‘Why?’ His eyelids twitched suspiciously as if he thought Augie was already on the hunt for any available food.

‘If the space is agreeable and if the equipment is even a few steps up from primitive, I will cook for your establishment in consideration of a reduction in our tariff.’

‘Now why would I do that? How do I know that you can even cook?’

Tibald raised an eyebrow. ‘Do I look hungry?’ he asked.

‘Mr Tibald Canty is not only a fine actor,’ I interposed, ‘he is also a chef whose skills would intimidate Escoffier himself.’ I took the liberty of putting my arm around Augie Kelly’s bony shoulder and giving it a little squeeze. ‘I can guarantee that in no time at all the word will spread that you are serving great food at the George. This will become the only place to eat in town, and that will mean a substantial increase in your profits. There must be people, even in a town like this, who like food. Imagine your dining room filled with people licking their lips and buying your booze.’

‘I don’t have much stuff in there,’ he said uncertainly, but there was no hostility in the look he gave me. I knew we had him. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from staying in hotels, it’s that every hotel proprietor dreams of greatness. Most of them settle for squalor because after a while even that becomes a standard requiring effort.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what you can do, but I’m not guaranteeing anything.’

The speed with which he acquiesced was unsurprising. He could not afford to turn my troupe away. Even if we stayed for only a week, it would mean more money than he had earned in a long while.

He allocated rooms on the third floor for the men, but gave Annie Hudson a room on the second floor. It was, he said, the best room in the hotel. Not for the first time, I admired the effortless, almost unconscious, ease with which Annie subdued men.

‘If business improves, you can stay for eighteen shillings a week.’

‘Fifteen’, I said quickly, ‘and it goes down further if business really improves.’

‘Show me the kitchen,’ Tibald said, before Augie Kelly could object.

I followed them both down a narrow corridor. The others in the company peeled off to explore their rooms and to lie low. No one ever wanted to join me on my first excursion into a new town in search of a place to perform, which is what I would be doing after the tariff had been settled.

The kitchen was dark, filthy, and malodorous. Flies buzzed, drawn by the seductive promise of rancid fat. I thought Tibald would change his mind on the spot and express his disgust in tariff-raising eloquence. I didn’t want him to do this because I had already assimilated the financial relief his cooking would provide. We would all pitch in, at least until
Titus
was up and running. I was looking forward to telling Annie that she would have to drag out her French maid’s costume yet again and wait on tables. At least we would eat well. To my astonishment he didn’t recoil in horror from the grim spectacle of a room that seemed to be held together by forces no stronger than congealed lard and darkness. Instead he uttered a little whoop of joy.

‘It’s an Aga,’ he said, in a tone normally reserved for the highest expression of stage joy. ‘I can’t believe it. Here, in the middle of this cholera zone you call a kitchen, you have an Aga.’

‘You mean the stove?’ Augie said, puzzled.

Tibald looked at him with such exaggerated pity and contempt that his expression could have been seen from even the cheapest seats in the house.

‘Be in the dining room at 8.00 pm,’ he said imperiously, ‘and if you have any friends, bring them. Now, I need the name of your purveyors. I will purchase the food for this evening’s meal and I will charge it to this establishment.’

Tibald drew a red handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his mouth. It created the unfortunate impression of slobbering at the mere thought of food.

Augie said nothing.

‘I presume you have preferred providores.’

‘I don’t even know what that is,’ Augie said, ‘but frankly it sounds expensive, and this new law means that we can’t charge more than five shillings for any meal — not that there’s a single person in this town who’d pay that much for a meal anyway. Where do you think you are? Paris?’

‘Oh no,’ said Tibald. ‘I don’t think I am in Paris, at least no part of it that’s above ground. If you give me the name of a butcher and a dry goods merchant, that will be a start.’

‘You can go to Geraghty’s for flour and stuff, and Lusk’s for meat, but you can’t charge anything. I don’t have an account, and even if I did I don’t think I’d be sending you off to spend my money on spec.’

‘All right, Mr Kelly,’ I said. ‘I quite see your point. We will pay for this evening’s meal as a demonstration of our good faith. If it is unsatisfactory we will pay you for one night’s accommodation and be on our way. You have nothing to lose and a reputation to gain. May I suggest that you shave before dinner.’

I bustled Tibald out of the kitchen and towards the truck.

‘I hope,’ I said with studied calm, ‘that you can live up to your notices, because if this meal is a failure, we’re ruined.’

‘Who’s going to replace me in
Titus
if I’m cooking every night?’

‘Nobody,’ I said. ‘I’ll just cut the part out. Nobody here will notice.’

I suspect Tibald was secretly glad to be out of
Titus
. My interpretation was a little too athletic for him to feel comfortable in his role. The somersaults I had wanted him to do were proving arduous and he was definitely disgruntled about wearing a leather posing pouch and nothing else.

I dropped Tibald in Adelaide Street with ten pounds to spend. This was more than most people earned in a week. It was a fortune for us, but I knew that it would pay off. I then began to reconnoitre for a suitable hall. Maryborough is sensibly, if dully, laid out, its streets running logically in a treeless grid. A town without the aesthetic imagination to plant trees along its wide, sun-blasted streets might not be ready to embrace the poetic jungle of the Bard, I thought. As I drove I began to have grave doubts about our chances of a successful run in Maryborough. Each citizen who stared at the truck as it passed seemed to me to be a wretched dullard. The general witlessness threatened our very existence. Where were the public servants posted here to support the military, and hungry for the theatre they no doubt took for granted in Brisbane, or Sydney, or Melbourne? I had had such high hopes for Maryborough. I had imagined it as a sort of Antipodean Stratford. Instead, as I explored its streets, it was revealing itself to be little more than a flat town, an inconvenient distance from the ocean, watered by a river that moved through it with the slippery ease of a tapeworm. There was at least pleasure to be had from the sublime thrill of martyrdom in the service of art. But this was a private joy I could share with no one.

Maryborough didn’t seem to me to be a town whose residents were expecting the Japanese at any moment. There was not an air of poised readiness. A few people had built decent shelters in their backyards, although from what I could discern most had desultorily dug a deep trench, propped some corrugated iron on top and, I supposed, watched it fill with water. If a bomb ever fell in Maryborough its citizens were in greater danger of drowning in their back yards than of being blown up.