Holden's Performance (43 page)

‘Ambassador makes splash in desert' ran the Garamond bold in a poor use of mixed metaphor. A photograph showed him dancing the limbo with a legendary belly-dancer, perspiration patches spreading into Tasmania from both armpits of his bush shirt, as he ogled the huge artificial diamond set in her navel.

Doesn't that rare commodity, the dignity of a nation, suffer when its representative displays a lack of dignity? Doesn't its carefully built-up image of subtlety, a nation's treading of the judicious long-view, become suspect? Shouldn't the official envoy practise a policy of‘formal informality'? Certainly nothing after midnight in the kasbah!

But Shadbolt saw none of this. The sight of Hoadley's cheesy flash of optimism triggered a fit of appreciative grinning and eyebrow lifting, tightening the tanned skin around his skull, the phrenology of leader-worship, too plain and innocent for the fancy nightspots in town.

A second, enlarged shot had Hoadley performing a more traditional task. More than most ambassadors it seems he had this obsession for building bridges—between men and women, city and country, words and action, the imagination and fact—but with hardly a drop of water in Egypt, aside from the Nile, and the concrete contractors holding their palms out for backsheesh, he promoted the ideal in a more symbolic and subtle manner, by introducing and dispensing—at no cost to the Egyptians—a dozen fully grown red kangaroos. At the ceremony under a cloudless sky Ambassador Hoadley without necktie bellowed out something along the lines of Egypt and Austrylia being ‘sister-deserts'. He tried cracking a few jokes. But there was so much space beginning there at the outskirts of Cairo, such an infinity of porous sand, his white-man's pun about ‘you might have the Suez, but at least we've got sewers' barely carried above the whining of beggars and cacophony of car horns (not reported in the normally loyal
Advertiser
. his generous mental note to offer the Egyptian government a free set of Hoadley & Sons loudspeakers). With a pair of French milliner's scissors he cut the ribbon, and after a little prodding the first big reds clutch-started out of their crates onto Egyptian soil and hopped about in front of the pyramids—a startling juxtaposition which sent the camels roaring and slipping their nose pegs.

The kangaroos cleared out to freedom, looking in vain for a blade of grass.

Ambassador Hoadley stood beaming in the foreground, the fuzz on his chest glowing in the sun. One eye—yes, Shadbolt wasn't wrong—was fixed on a cheeky young thing in wide trousers selling postcards from a tray. Hoadley's face had puffed up, his full-blooded lips rolled back loose and moist. His smile came on too early. It showed on the page.

The Ambassador had gone native, his white linen jacket already soiled around the lapels.

Shadbolt then brought the photographs closer. In the background of both he noticed the same figure in black, Shadbolt's photographic memory easily penetrating the veil and powder, first identifying the wart on the nose, then the general ample shape, the proprietorial gaze.

As became his habit lately Irving Polaroid looked over his shoulder.

Shadbolt pointed, ‘That's my old landlady from Manly, Mrs Younghusband.'

Polaroid took the paper and had to squint. Fossicking around he found a magnifying glass. It only made it worse.

‘You've got good eyes.'

‘I used to work for Senator Hoadley,' Shadbolt was saying.

‘He was really something. Phenomenal man.'

‘We know him. But what's she doing there?'

Shadbolt held out his hand, ‘Give it here when you've finished. I don't have a photograph.'

He wanted to look at it again.

Rust and Stan Still had been in the service for as long as anyone could remember. They were figures from the fifties. They didn't believe in what was going on now. Their faces were curiously worn, although they left Shadbolt to do most of the running.

Out of embarrassment and because he felt he had to, Shadbolt laughed at their harshness towards foreigners, the weather and mug-politicians, and then he'd move away.

It was difficult to make out Stan Still at the end of the dormitory; there'd only be his smoker's cough between his steady belly-aching to Rust.

‘His time's up soon,' Rust nodded at Polaroid's empty bed. ‘And we'll get landed with some other tin-tank.'

‘The no-hopers always make a beeline for this place.'

‘What do you mean? You're forgetting Tarzan down there'—Rust raising his voice for Shadbolt's benefit. ‘Old Bill's right-hand man.'

‘I'm talking about the whole fucking country, beginning with the poor bloody convicts. We end up getting those who are at the end of the line. Take the architect who drew up this Godforsaken capital. He'd have to be a Yank who couldn't make it in his own place.'

‘Yeah.'

Anyone could be critical. It didn't much interest Shadbolt.

Jimmy remained in the shadows. Sometimes he coughed, reminding everybody. Shadbolt liked Jimmy. He enjoyed sitting around with him or watching him in the kennels.

‘So what are you up to? How's it going?'

To everything he said Jimmy laughed. It was a natural laugh, widening his cheeks, displaying a yellowing set of nutcrackers. And it made Shadbolt standing there begin grinning and nodding. If nobody else was around Jimmy would open a bottle of beer from under the bed.

Loyal to the Colonel, Jimmy didn't take much notice of the others. Stan Still and Rust complained loudly about his preferential treatment. According to them the Colonel treated Jimmy ‘lightly'.

On days off when Shadbolt reached the clearing on Black Mountain he often found Jimmy there doing odd jobs. Jimmy could make a really good beef stew.

‘What have you tossed in the pot today? Possum? Witchetty grub?' If the Colonel wasn't making affectionate banter he spoke to Jimmy quietly and gently.

The three would sit on the one log gazing at their palms or the ground. Silence seemed to be the right approach in the clearing where the colours, from dry brown to grey, sucked out any possible word.

Shadbolt felt so contented there he wondered whether he shouldn't live like the Colonel, out in the open in the bush. Waving at some flies he almost said or blurted as much, ‘We've got all the time in the world!' Later he made some faint car noises, gear changes, which the others seemed to find soothing.

It was the day the Colonel cleared his throat and drew something with a stick. Shadbolt had stood up to leave.

‘That bit of skirt of yours in Manly, time you stopped frigging about with her.'

‘Ar, old Harriet. She's all right.'

He was about to say she never wore skirts. But when he glanced up the Colonel was actually laughing, ‘No, no, no!' Passing behind a branch the sun had clouded his face the way weather changes across a continent.

What's her name—Harriet—was trouble. ‘We know her from way back. She's a permanent suspect. We've always been suspicious of that one. Now she's been writing letters to the PM. She's as mad as a meat axe.' OK? Females anyway were a blasted nuisance. They introduce confusion, divide loyalties. ‘And I ought to know.'

For the first time Light placed a hand on his shoulder, and a wad of loyalty caught in Shadbolt's throat.

On the next visit to Sydney Shadbolt did the run in from the airport. It was late afternoon: light traffic. Peculiar to hot countries the angled shadows and heat conducted by brick, glass and earth measured time in slow decades rather than the hour, and even office girls going home in their thin cottons looked old. Dwelling on Light's ultimatum Shadbolt ran automatically, preoccupied; pulling up outside the four-star hotel near the Quay, he found Rust, Stan Still and Jimmy and the dingoes had all fallen by the wayside. It must have been the heat. Although you would have thought…Squelching in his sandshoes he alone had to muscle past the lowering and scraping concierge with the mnemonic nose, clearing a path for the head-of-state from Burma or some other humid country in an admiral's uniform, leading a troika of pomeranians, as if he owned the place.

Shadbolt was left standing, a wreck. In the foyer other guests stepped back from his body-heat. From behind a newspaper Polaroid in his drip-dry suit gave a nod of approval. He also would have been impressed by Shadbolt's obliviousness to the surroundings.

Outside in the hot air the clammy weight of the .38 in leather shoulder holster tilted Shadbolt to one side. For a second he wondered if he was getting too old for this line of work. He didn't notice, or didn't bother, when pedestrians tugged their children away…another country man in baggy suit who'd put away one too many. He fumbled in his side pockets for salt tablets. An hour later in Manly the familiar gables and pines failed to restore his spirits. He didn't want to see Harriet. Reaching the weather-board on the hill he became uncomfortable.

Harriet stopped working.

‘Are you all right?'

‘It's hot.'

‘I can see it's hot,' she said sharply. He was avoiding her face.

‘It was hot where I was,' he said, loud for him.

‘I know, you must be exhausted.'

They felt something for each other. Now simply respecting his presence, which broadened the rooms, not going back to her work as she did normally, she watched him.

‘Do you have a cold drink or something?'

‘You know where the fridge is…'

With her it was he who felt like the invalid. Thick, unable to speak; something wrong with his tongue. As always she faced him full on, sharp in outline. She didn't need his help: it seemed to him. She was clear about things. Fumbling in the slippery fridge he decided there and then not to tell her. And it didn't mean going against the Colonel. He'd just not see her again, that's all. He'd steer clear of Manly. He wouldn't come to Sydney for a while. And the thought of her chatting away not knowing made him pity her. She did need him.

‘I hope you haven't left my fridge in a mess…'

‘I'm knackered,' he said for something to say.

Loosening his tie he could look the other way.

‘Sit here.'

‘Too hot.'

Harriet sighed. This figure of a man who tagged along and doted on her always appeared out of focus.

The cushions against Shadbolt's ears pleasantly acted as a pair of stockinged thighs which muffled Harriet's voice.

‘When you're not here, do you know what I do? I stop working and I think: I could stick a breadknife into his stomach. The one with the green handle. I could do that. And I suddenly feel like scratching your eyes. Does that frighten you? Does it make you nervous? I feel like punching your big head. You're thick! Sometimes I could—. I wonder why you bother coming here? You're not interested in me. Nothing affects you. You might as well be in China. With you it's like being with—I don't know. Are you happy? Has anything in your life made you angry?'

She was about to cry, which happened lately, for no apparent reason. Still he didn't move. He didn't know what to say. Something in him prevented him getting—feeling—close to her. It had always been like that. It was partly because he didn't talk or think much through his tongue. He had lost his use of it.

Whenever he called he found no one else there. This Harriet was always alone, curved over the angled board, a conflict of lines, illuminated by the lamp. She had small shoes. Other people found her difficult.

And because now he had decided it would be his last visit Shadbolt transferred this knowledge, prematurely to her; and so he was surprised, alarmed even, at what appeared to be her recklessness.

He opened his eyes to find her face an inch from his nose, something she did when they were fooling around. She always had warm breath as if she'd been eating honey, which he usually found attractive. This time she asked softly, ‘Think. Why don't you make up your own mind for once in your life? Why are you doing this to me?'

‘What do you mean?' Shadbolt gave a start.

‘Never mind.'

Harriet's legs twisted away in a flapping tail, and lines pulled her face down to one side, widening her eyes.

He was patient and quiet, always. She knew he watched her.

‘I'm sorry,' she suddenly lost control. ‘I don't know why. I don't know what I mean.' She blew her nose. ‘Stay here tonight?'

Shadbolt looked faraway. His feet had been thudding along the uneven streets from the airport. It was a strange mechanical way to make a living. He didn't know what else to do. He nodded, ‘You know me.'

The Americans who made the flying visits were as lean and as clean-cut as Polaroid. They wore the short-sleeved shirt fitted with special clips for ballpoints and sunglasses, and had perfected a technique of conversing without moving their lips. There was a lot of exchange going on, co-operation between allies; a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. They flew in for a day or two whenever they liked, even when there was no state visit. Among his own kind Irving became almost excited, showing them around, and did his best to answer their questions without moving his lips.

Rust and Stan Still looked on with sarcastic interest. They didn't make a special effort.

And for different reasons Shadbolt didn't feel the need to impress them. The Americans weren't so crash-hot. Shaking the hand of one—Hank, Harv or Scott—he felt the hand begin squeezing hard, evidently one of their tests, and maintaining eye-contact, Shadbolt returned the pressure, and as the man suddenly hunched his shoulders and gasped he matched the dark-suited bodyguard crawling over the boot of the President's accelerating Lincoln. ‘Dallas,' Shadbolt let go. ‘You were there.'

Flicking his bruised hand as if he'd received a burn the man turned to Polaroid, ‘Who told him?'

‘What did I tell you?' Irving smiled.

Similar miracles were being performed by Shadbolt's mother with tea leaves.

Narrowing his eyes the American returned to Shadbolt, ‘You tell me.'

Shadbolt shrugged. For more than a year
Life's
, sequence of the assassination had been pinned up over the washbasin in the dormitory, and almost every day he'd looked up and seen the figure.