Bite The Wax Tadpole (22 page)

“Coming up like a rash on a baby’s bum. You two here for the karaoke?”

“Yoo bet. We haf been pwactising like mad thince the latht one.”

Cris’ glabrous dome shook from side to side. Malcolm had now moved to stand behind Charlea and Josh.

“I thought I told you you were grounded”, he said harshly causing Charlea to spin round, eyes wide.

“Uncle Max!”

“Thought I was at the Ethics Committee meeting tonight, did you? Well, I’m afraid it was cancelled.”

“Please, Uncle Max. Brodie and I have been practising really, really hard. And I need that hundred bucks to pay back old Doris.”

“I’m sorry, my girl but I gave you fair warning and I don’t make idle threats. Now get yourself home.”

“I know I let you down but can’t you cut me a little slack, just for tonight. I promise...”

Malcolm gave his best considering whether or not any slack was to be cut and, if so, how much look and was somewhat disturbed to hear the director call out “Oh, Christ, not again.” What on earth did he mean? Malcolm turned, as did the rest of the cast and crew, in Cris’ direction just in time to see him stagger to his feet, clutching his chest, then fall to his knees, gasping for breath.

“And cut”, yelled the AD, cutting through the shocked silence. Robert was the first to react. Thanks to his NIDA training he was, for all intents and purposes, at that moment, a doctor and he was at Cris’ side in an instant, kneeling down beside him in a professional and authoritative manner.

“Somebody call an ambulance”, he called out quite unnecessarily as mobiles were already pressed to ears all over the studio.

“Classic angina pectoris, old chap”, said Norman, peering down at the director who was now lying on his back. “From the Greek, meaning strangling of the chest.”

Rob knelt beside Malcolm and Cris. His only medical training was a first aid badge at cubs and a few scripts on “All Saints” but the manager at Merthyr Jobcentre had suffered with angina and had similarly collapsed a few times, once when in flagrante with a clerical assistant in the photocopying room.

“Angina, yes, you’re probably right”, said Malcolm.

Rob hadn’t realised he’d said anything.

“Nitroglycerin under the tongue, that’s the way to go”, continued Norman as Malcolm loosened Cris’ collar.

Nitroglycerin, remembered Rob. That’s what old Aneurin took.

“And where am I going to get nitroglycerin from?”, asked Malcolm.

Rob was certain that this time he hadn’t said a word. Anyway, if Cris did suffer from angina he probably had a bottle of tablets somewhere.

“I daresay he’s got a bottle of tablets somewhere”, said Norman.

“Yes, he probably has”, agreed Malcolm.

“What?”, asked Rob.

“Got a bottle of tablets somewhere. Cris, have you got any tablets for this?”

Perhaps, thought Rob, he and Malcolm could go on the stage together as a mind reading act.

“Patches... on the bedside table...”, gasped Cris. “Nitroglycerin patches. Forgot...” Rob had a vision of someone stubbing out their last cigarette of the day on a box of nitroglycerin patches and blowing themselves to smithereens. Could be a story for the show in there somewhere.

If this had been a story on a TV show there would now have been a cut to the ambulance arriving and the calm and efficient paramedics taking over the situation. As it was everyone had to endure what seemed an age of anxious inaction and muted conversation while Cris lay in the recovery position looking as ashen as an ash tree that’s been burned to ashes. Rob did think that he ought to say something comforting but what? The bloke across the road from me’s had a triple by-pass and he’s never looked better? Perhaps not. But at last the ambulance did arrive and the calm and efficient paramedics did take over the situation. Rob walked alongside the trolley as they pushed Cris towards the loading dock and, as they slid him into the back of the ambulance, did find something to say: “Don’t you worry about the show, we’ll take care of everything.” Cris pulled aside the oxygen mask and made a pithy reply of just three words, the last two being: the show. The mask twanged back into place.

Leo chose, or fate chose for him, to return at that moment from a casting session in the City. He’d been looking for someone to guest as a psychologist who was, by night, a cross-dressing shoplifter and who becomes the witnesses to a murder. None of the hopefuls quite matched his vision and he was wondering about contacting the bloke who used to play the car mechanic in the show. What was his name? Gerry something or other. He’d be good. What was he was doing now, he wondered as he wandered past the “Hopalong Jim” set. And then he was wondering what the hell was going on as he saw his Director being loaded into the back of an ambulance, breathing into an oxygen mask. Scott pitter-pattered up to him as he stood open-mouthed and haltingly filled him in on the details. As he listened, Leo came as close as to apoplexy as it’s possible to get without joining Al Capone and Catherine the Great on its list of victims.

The ambulance drove off, lights whirling, siren screaming. Hard to imagine Ulysses being bewitched by a song such as that, mused Rob as he joined Leo and Scott in a sombre walk back towards the Rickety Street set. Rob had often thought that one of the benefits of a sedentary lifestyle, a high cholesterol diet and stress was that you were more likely to join the choir invisible via a heart attack. Though painful it had the advantage of being quick and therefore preferable to most of the other awful diseases lying in ambush, waiting to carry you off. But he didn’t fancy this not quite fatal variety of coronary heart disease that Cris seemed to have. Ending up in a wheelchair connected to an oxygen tank didn’t seem to be much of a way to spend your declining years. Maybe he really should get himself fit, eat healthy, reduce his stress levels and hope to get run down by a truck when he was eighty five and training for the City to Surf.

“So...”, said Rob to Leo. A short word, a mere syllable but containing in its DNA the message: “well, that’s a bit of a blow, especially for poor Cris. However, you are the producer so it’s up to you to come up with some plan for ensuring the show – the incredibly important live show – goes on without the merest hint of a hitch.”

You don’t get to be line producer of a TV series without people coming up to you on a fairly regular basis and saying “So...” so Leo shook off his impending apoplectic fit and turned to the young, ashen-faced fellow next to him.

“You, what’s your name... Todd?”

“Scott.”

“How long have you been doing this directing apprenticeship?”

“Umm...”

“That’s long enough, you’re in the box.” In days of yore, prisoners at the bar who’d just heard the judge tell them they were off on a one way trip to the gallows must have reacted in much the same way as Scott.

“Cris has got it all blocked out, hasn’t he?” Scott managed a vague nod accompanied by a vague look. Rob held up the clip board he’d prized from Cris’ grip as he lay on the floor. He’d read about cadaveric spasms and death grips and he didn’t want to see the show’s blueprint going off to the mortuary if Cris succumbed. Again, he wasn’t sure why. If the actors bumped into the furniture or exited stage left instead of right it wasn’t his problem.

“I’ll make sure you get a credit”, Leo told Scott. “Well, a half credit anyway. Look, you know Jan, the Vision Mixer, don’t you? She’s been here since Pontius was a pilot. All you’ve got to do is start at 7.30 and finish round about 8. Anything else’ll be a bonus”

Scott nodded again.

“Well, go on then, go off and direct.”

Scott directed himself in the direction of the cast who all seemed to be staring at him, looking for direction.

“Umm, could someone tell me which colour script we’re on?

Chrome gleaming in the afternoon sunlight, the old, familiar Holden pulled up at the Security Hut. Craig, the Security Guard, looked up from the copy of Rugby League News he surreptitiously kept under the desk as Terry rolled down the car’s window.

“G’day, mate. What you doing back? Thought you’d be sunning yourself in the Bahamas by now.”

“Next week”, grinned Terry. “Just came in to pick up a few things.”

“No worries”, said Craig, pressing the button to raise the barrier. “Half your luck, eh?”

“Be seeing you”, said Terry as he pulled away even though he knew the sentiment was extremely unlikely to eventuate. Craig went back to his magazine and the article on why urinating in public is wrong.

Terry parked in a shady spot near the old tennis courts and took a holdall out of the boot. He patted the bonnet of the FJ affectionately and held back a sentimental tear as he made his way up the steps towards the studio. He wore a golfing cap with a long, curved peak which he pulled down low. Coupled with not being in his usual overalls it meant he could make the safety of his former domain without being stopped and chatted to. The time for chat, indeed, talk of any sort, was over.

In a quiet area of the props department, Bob the Firearms Wrangler, placed a steel case on a table and opened the combination lock. Inside were two identical handguns which those with cordite in their brain chemistry would have immediately recognised as Glock 17, 9mm short-recoil operated locked breech semi-automatic pistols with a modified Browning cam-lock system.

“These”, said Bob to Bruce, the actor playing Mad Tony, “are Glock 17, 9mm short recoil operated locked breech semi-automatic pistols with a modified Browning cam-lock system.”

“Cool.”

“Difference is, these have got solid barrels. But the slide, hammer and trigger all work so when you fire it the gas vents through the slots and the cartridge case gets ejected just like the real thing.”

Tony picked up one of the guns and went into a crouching, two-handed stance aiming the gun at the cardboard cut out of Mel Gibson.

“Try not to point it at anyone. We both know it’s harmless but we don’t want to give anyone else a coronary, yeah? Okay, let’s go and try out the squib.”

Terry was back in his domain, his lair, his bolt-hole. A thin layer of grime had already descended on everything. Just as he’d expected. He took a packet of J-cloths and a tin of Mr Sheen out of his bag and began dusting and polishing. He paid particular attention to the pipes and dials of the G-Tech 2000.

Satisfied that everything met at least the minimum acceptable standard, he returned Mr Sheen to the holdall and took out a framed wedding photo of himself and Marge. He set it on the table and gazed at its fading colours, her white dress yellowing, his brown three piece suit turning to sepia. He didn’t have much time left in which to forget but in that time he’d never forget his wedding day which happily coincided with the first ever One Day International between Australia and England at the MCG. He and his groomsmen had watched on a tiny black and white TV set in the back room of the pub where the reception was held while Marge and her bridesmaids danced and drank gin in the so-called reception centre. They’d really understood each other right from the word go.

Smiling to himself, he took a bottle of champagne, zipped up in a cool bag, and two crystal-cut glasses out of the holdall. He was going to go out with a bang but it was a bang that would be preceded by a pop and some fizz.

With healthy eating once more on the backburner next to the exercise saucepan, Rob grabbed an egg and bacon roll from the canteen and found a quiet, shaded bench in the studio grounds. He really, really, most sincerely, did not want to be part of this madness any more. Unfortunately, the choices outside the asylum seemed to be limited. Six thousand dollar advances wouldn’t even keep body and soul within spitting distance of each other. He needed a plan to get him out of the situation he found himself in but the reason he was in the situation he was in was that he never planned anything. Things just happened. Sure, he dreamed and hoped but that fell far short of being a strategy for progressing in life. What he really needed was to go back to a time in his life when a six thousand dollar advance would have seemed like the answer to all his prayers. He could write a half hour script in two days and get six thousand dollars. What was wrong with the world? Its values were all wrong, distorted.

A large bird, black and shiny as an oil slick, was staring up at him with defiantly white eyes. What was the Poe poem? The Raven, of course. Nevermore, quoth the Raven was all he could remember of it. That and that it was about some bloke going mad. Well, no-one stayed sane in a work of Poe’s for very long, did they? It was coming back to him, yes, the young bloke was lamenting his lost love, Lenore. Her name was a stroke of luck for the poet, of course, as it rhymed with “nevermore” which was the only word the Raven could say. If she’d have been called Barbara, the poem wouldn’t have got past the first stanza. And Poe himself was off his head, wasn’t he? Turning up naked on parade at West Point... drinking... marrying his thirteen year old cousin... dying delirious and mysterious in someone else’s suit. That was proper madness, the sort that writers should suffer from. Rob’s madness was of the wrong sort, an ordinary, everyday madness.

Anyway, was this cocky thing strutting in front of him even a raven? Ornithology was not Rob’s strong suit. If it was a raven, maybe it would absorb his soul and fly away with it. He bit into his roll. Fat chance.

Rob’s mobile rang and the Raven flapped its wings in alarm before strutting away in search of some other soul to pester or egg and bacon roll to plunder.

Rob checked the caller ID. Well, at least she was still alive. Or maybe it was the Coroner’s Office going through her calls to see who had last spoken to her before she leapt off the Gap.

“Hello?”

“Sorry about last night. I was a bit dramatic, wasn’t I?”

“A bit. And a bit bloody lucky. If that bus...”

His attention was momentarily taken by Bruce, the Firearms Wrangler, and Tony striding across the grass. Tony, Rob noticed, was wearing some sort of padded waistcoat. Yes, well, given the effect this place had on most people it was surprising that the rooms weren’t padded, really.

“So...”, said Niobe with a fairly obviously forced jollity. “How are things? Live episode today, isn’t it?”