In the Frame (17 page)

GABA, I thought. I found it awesome, but it didn’t move me in terms of paint.

After a while I took off the exaggerated hat, laid it on the empty seat beside me, and tried to find a comfortable way to sit, my main frustration being that if I leaned back in the ordinary way my broken shoulder blade didn’t care for it. You wouldn’t think, I thought, that one
could
break a shoulder blade. Mine, it appeared, had suffered from the full thud of my five-eleven frame hitting terra extremely firma.

Oh well… I shut my eyes for a bit and wished I didn’t still feel so shaky.

My exit from hospital had been the gift of one of the doctors, who had said he couldn’t stop me if I chose to go, but another day’s rest would be better.

‘I’d miss the Gup,’ I said, protesting.

‘You’re crazy.’

‘Yeah… Would it be possible for you to arrange that
the hospital said I was ‘satisfactory’, and ‘progressing’ if anyone telephones to ask, and not on any account to say that I’d left?’

‘Whatever for?’

‘I’d just like those muggers who put me here to think I’m still flat out. For several days, if you don’t mind. Until I’m long gone.’

‘But they won’t try again.’

‘You never know.’

He shrugged. ‘You mean you’re nervous?’

‘You could say so.’

‘All right. For a couple of days, anyway. I don’t see any harm in it, if it will set your mind at rest.’

‘It would indeed,’ I said gratefully.

‘Whatever are these?’ He gestured to Jik’s shopping, still lying on the bed.

‘My friend’s idea of suitable travelling gear.’

‘You’re having me on?’

‘He’s an artist,’ I said, as if that explained any excesses.

He returned an hour later with a paper for me to sign before I left, Jik’s credit card having again come up trumps, and at the sight of me, nearly choked. I had struggled slowly into the clothes and was trying on the hat.

‘Are you going to the airport dressed like that?’ he said incredulously.

‘I sure am.’

‘How?’

‘Taxi, I suppose.’

‘You’d better let me drive you,’ he said, sighing. ‘Then if you feel too rotten I can bring you back.’

He drove carefully, his lips twitching. ‘Anyone who has the courage to go around like that shouldn’t worry about a couple of thugs.’ He dropped me solicitously at the airport door, and departed laughing.

Sarah’s voice interrupted the memory.

‘Todd?’

I opened my eyes. She had walked towards the back of the aeroplane and was standing in the aisle beside my seat.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Mm.’

She gave me a worried look and went on into the toilet compartment. By the time she came out, I’d assembled a few more wits, and stopped her with the flap of the hand. ‘Sarah… You were followed to the airport. I think you’ll very likely be followed from Melbourne. Tell Jik… tell Jik to take a taxi, spot the tail, lose him, and take a taxi back to the airport, to collect the hired car. O.K.?’

‘Is this… this tail… on the aeroplane?’ She looked alarmed at the thought.

‘No. He telephoned… from Alice.’

‘All right.’

She went away up front to her seat. The aeroplane landed at Adelaide, people got off, people got on, and we took off again for the hour’s flight to Melbourne. Halfway there, Jik himself came back to make use of the facilities.

He too paused briefly beside me on the way back.

‘Here are the car keys,’ he said. ‘Sit in it, and wait for us. You can’t go into the Hilton like that, and you’re not fit enough to change on your own.’

‘Of course I am.’

‘Don’t argue. I’ll lose any tail, and come back. You wait.’

He went without looking back. I picked up the keys and put them in my jeans pocket, and thought grateful thoughts to pass the time.

I dawdled a long way behind Jik and Sarah at disembarkation. My gear attracted more scandalised attention
in this solemn financial city, but I didn’t care in the least. Nothing like fatigue and anxiety for killing off embarrassment.

Jik and Sarah, with only hand-baggage, walked without ado past the suitcase-unloading areas and straight out towards the waiting queue of taxis. The whole airport was bustling with Cup eve arrivals, but only one person, that I could see, was bustling exclusively after my fast-departing friends.

I smiled briefly. Young and eel-like, he slithered through the throng, pushing a young woman with a baby out of the way to grab the next taxi behind Jik’s. They’d sent him, I supposed, because he knew Jik by sight. He’d flung turps in his eyes at the Arts Centre.

Not too bad, I thought. The boy wasn’t over-intelligent, and Jik should have little trouble in losing him. I wandered around for a bit looking gormless, but as there was no one else who seemed the remotest threat, I eventually eased out to the car park.

The night was chilly after Alice Springs. I unlocked the car, climbed into the back, took off the successful hat, and settled to wait for Jik’s return.

They were gone nearly two hours, during which time I grew stiffer and ever more uncomfortable and started swearing.

‘Sorry,’ Sarah said breathlessly, pulling open the car door and tumbling into the front seat.

‘We had the devil’s own job losing the little bugger,’ Jik said, getting in beside me in the back. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Cold, hungry, and cross.’

‘That’s all right, then,’ he said cheerfully. ‘He stuck like a bloody little leech. That boy from the Arts Centre.’

‘Yes, I saw him.’

‘We hopped into the Victoria Royal, meaning to go
straight out again by the side door and grab another cab, and there he was following us in through the front. So we peeled off for a drink in the bar and he hovered around in the lobby looking at the bookstall.’

‘We thought it would be better not to let him know we’d spotted him, if we could,’ Sarah said. ‘So we did a re-think, went outside, called another taxi, and set off to The Naughty Ninety, which is about the only noisy big dine, dance and cabaret place in Melbourne.’

‘It was absolutely packed.’ Jik said. ‘It cost me ten dollars to get a table. Marvellous for us, though. All dark corners and psychedelic coloured lights. We ordered and paid for some drinks, and read the menu, and then got up and danced.’

‘He was still there, when we saw him last, standing in the queue for tables just inside the entrance door. We got out through an emergency exit down a passage past some cloakrooms. We’d dumped our bags there when we arrived, and simply collected them again on the way out.’

‘I don’t think he’ll know we ducked him on purpose,’ Jik said. ‘It’s a proper scrum there tonight.’

‘Great.’

With Jik’s efficient help I exchanged Tourist, Alice Style, for Racing Man, Melbourne Cup. He drove us all back to the Hilton, parked in its car park, and we walked into the front hall as if we’d never been away.

No one took any notice of us. The place was alive with pre-race excitement. People in evening dress flooding downstairs from the ballroom to stand in loud-talking groups before dispersing home. People returning from eating out, and calling for one more nightcap. Everyone discussing the chances of the next day’s race.

Jik collected our room keys from the long desk.

‘No messages,’ he said. ‘And they don’t seem to have missed us.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘Todd,’ Sarah said. ‘Jik and I are going to have some food sent up. You’ll come as well?’

I nodded. We went up in the lift and along to their room, and ate a subdued supper out of collective tiredness.

“Night,’ I said eventually, getting up to go. ‘And thanks for everything.’

‘Thank us tomorrow,’ Sarah said.

The night passed. Well, it passed.

In the morning I did a spot of one-handed shaving and some highly selective washing, and Jik came up, as he’d insisted, to help with my tie. I opened the door to him in underpants and dressing gown and endured his comments when I took the latter off.

‘Jesus God Almighty, is there any bit of you neither blue nor patched?’

‘I could have landed face first.’

He stared at the thought. ‘
Jesus
.’

‘Help me rearrange these bandages,’ I said.

‘I’m not touching that lot.’

‘Oh come on, Jik. Unwrap the swaddling bands. I’m itching like hell underneath and I’ve forgotten what my left hand looks like.’

With a variety of blasphemous oaths he undid the expert handiwork of the Alice hospital. The outer bandages proved to be large strong pieces of linen, fastened with clips, and placed so as to support my left elbow and hold my whole arm statically in one position, with my hand across my chest and pointing up towards my right shoulder. Under the top layer there was a system of crepe bandages tying my arm in that position. Also a sort of tight cummerbund of adhesive strapping, presumably to deal with the broken ribs. Also, just below my shoulder blade, a large padded wound dressing, which, Jik kindly
told me after a delicate inspection from one corner, covered a mucky looking bit of darning.

‘You damn near tore a whole flap of skin off. There are four lots of stitching. Looks like Clapham Junction.’

‘Fasten it up again.’

‘I have, mate, don’t you worry.’

There were three similar dressings, two on my left thigh and one, a bit smaller, just below my knee: all fastened both with adhesive strips and tapes with clips. We left them all untouched.

‘What the eye doesn’t see doesn’t scare the patient,’ Jik said. ‘What else do you want done?’

‘Untie my arm.’

‘You’ll fall apart.’

‘Risk it.’

He laughed and undid another series of clips and knots. I tentatively straightened my elbow. Nothing much happened except that the hovering ache and soreness stopped hovering and came down to earth.

‘That’s not so good,’ Jik observed.

‘It’s my muscles as much as anything. Protesting about being stuck in one position all that time.’

‘What now, then?’

From the bits and pieces we designed a new and simpler sling which gave my elbow good support but was less of a strait-jacket. I could get my hand out easily, and also my whole arm, if I wanted. When we’d finished, we had a small heap of bandages and clips left over.

‘That’s fine,’ I said.

We all met downstairs in the hall at ten-thirty.

Around us a buzzing atmosphere of anticipation pervaded the chattering throng of would-be winners, who were filling the morning with celebratory drinks. The hotel, I saw, had raised a veritable fountain of champagne
at the entrance to the bar-lounge end of the lobby, and Jik, his eyes lighting up, decided it was too good to be missed.

‘Free booze,’ he said reverently, picking up a glass and holding it under the prodigal bubbly which flowed in delicate gold streams from a pressure-fed height. ‘Not bad, either,’ he added, tasting. He raised his glass. ‘Here’s to Art. God rest his soul.’

‘Life’s short. Art’s long,’ I said.

‘I don’t like that,’ Sarah said, looking at me uneasily.

‘It was Alfred Munnings’s favourite saying. And don’t worry, love, he lived to be eighty plus.’

‘Let’s hope you do.’

I drank to it. She was wearing a cream dress with gold buttons; neat, tailored, a touch severe. An impression of the military for a day in the front line.

‘Don’t forget,’ I said. ‘If you think you see Wexford or Greene, make sure they see you.’

‘Give me another look at their faces,’ she said.

I pulled the small sketch book out of my pocket and handed it to her again, though she’d studied it on and off all the previous evening through supper.

‘As long as they look like this, maybe I’ll know them,’ she said, sighing. ‘Can I take it?’ She put the sketch book in her handbag.

Jik laughed. ‘Give Todd his due, he can catch a likeness. No imagination, of course. He can only paint what he sees.’ His voice as usual was full of disparagement.

Sarah said, ‘Don’t you mind the awful things Jik says of your work, Todd?’

I grinned. ‘I know exactly what he thinks of it.’

‘If it makes you feel any better,’ Jik said to his wife, ‘He was the star pupil of our year. The Art School lacked judgment, of course.’

‘You’re both crazy.’

I glanced at the clock. We all finished the champagne and put down the glasses.

‘Back a winner for me,’ I said to Sarah, kissing her cheek.

‘Your luck might run out.’

I grinned. ‘Back number eleven.’

Her eyes were dark with apprehension. Jik’s beard was at the bad-weather angle for possible storms ahead.

‘Off you go,’ I said cheerfully. ‘See you later.’

I watched them through the door and wished strongly that we were all three going for a simple day out to the Melbourne Cup. The effort ahead was something I would have been pleased to avoid. I wondered if others ever quaked before the task they’d set themselves, and wished they’d never thought of it. The beginning, I supposed, was the worst. Once you were in, you were committed. But before, when there was still time to turn back, to rethink, to cancel, the temptation to retreat was demoralising.

Why climb Everest if at its foot you could lie in the sun.

Sighing, I went to the cashier’s end of the reception desk and changed a good many travellers’ cheques into cash. Maisie’s generosity had been far-sighted. There would be little enough left by the time I got home.

Four hours to wait. I spent them upstairs in my room calming my nerves by drawing the view from the window. Black clouds still hung around the sky like cobwebs, especially in the direction of Flemington racecourse. I hoped it would stay dry for the Cup.

Half an hour before it was due to be run I left the Hilton on foot, walking unhurriedly along towards Swanston Street and the main area of shops. They were all shut, of course. Melbourne Cup day was a national public holiday. Everything stopped for the Cup.

I had taken my left arm out of its sling and threaded it
gingerly through the sleeves of my shirt and jacket. A man with his jacket hunched over one shoulder was too memorable for sense. I found that by hooking my thumb into the waistband of my trousers I got quite good support.

Swanston Street was far from its usual bustling self. People still strode along with the breakneck speed which seemed to characterise all Melbourne pedestrians, but they strode in tens, not thousands. Trams ran up and down the central tracks with more vacant seats than passengers. Cars sped along with the drivers, eyes down, fiddling dangerously with radio dials. Fifteen minutes to the race which annually stopped Australia in its tracks.