The Bat Page 23

  ‘Not at all. They’re cirrus clouds, feather clouds, about fifteen thousand feet up.’

  ‘You surprise me, Joseph. Not that I know what a skydiver should look like, but I wouldn’t have imagined that he’s . . .’

  ‘A drunk?’

  ‘For example.’

  ‘Ha ha. That’s two sides of the same coin.’

  ‘Do you mean that?’

  ‘Have you ever been alone in the air, Harry? Have you flown? Have you jumped from a great height and felt the air trying to hold you up, to catch you and caress your body?’

  Joseph was already well on his way down the first bottle, and his voice had assumed a warmer tone. His eyes gleamed as he described the beauty of free fall to Harry.

  ‘It opens all your senses. Your whole body screams that you can fly. “And I haven’t got any wings,” it shouts to you, trying to drown the wind whistling past your ears. Your body is convinced it’s going to die and goes into full-alarm mode – opens all its senses to the max to see if any of them can find a way out. Your brain is the world’s biggest computer, it registers everything: your skin feels the temperature rising as you fall, your ears notice the increase in pressure and you become aware of every furrow and hue in the map below. You can even smell the planet as it comes nearer. And if you can push mortal fear to the back of your mind, Harry, for an instant you’re an angel. You’re living a life in forty seconds.’

  ‘And if you can’t?’

  ‘You don’t push it away, just to the back of your mind. Because it has to be there, like a clear, strident note, like cold water on your skin. It’s not the fall but the mortal fear that opens your senses. It starts as a shock, an adrenalin rush through your veins as you leave the plane. Like an injection. Then it mingles with your blood and makes you feel happy and strong. If you close your eyes you can see it as a wonderful poisonous snake lying there and watching you with its snake eyes.’

  ‘You’re making it sound like dope, Joseph.’

  ‘It is dope!’ Joseph was gesticulating wildly now. ‘That’s just what it is. You want the fall to last for ever, and if you’ve been skydiving for a while, you notice that pulling the ripcord becomes harder and harder. In the end you’re scared that one day you’ll overdose, that you won’t pull it, and so you stop jumping. And that’s when you know you’re hooked. Abstinence eats away at you, life appears meaningless, trivial, and in the end you find yourself squeezed behind the pilot of a small, ancient Cessna, taking an eternity to climb to ten thousand feet and consuming all your savings.’

  Joseph took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

  ‘In a nutshell, Harry, they’re two sides of the same coin. Life becomes a living hell, but the alternative is even worse. Ha ha.’

  Joseph raised himself on his elbows and took a slug of wine.

  ‘I’m a flightless bird. Do you know what an emu is, Harry?’

  ‘An Australian ostrich.’

  ‘Clever boy.’

  When Harry closed his eyes he heard Andrew’s voice. Because, of course, it was Andrew lying next to him on the grass and sermonising about what was important and what was less important.

  ‘Have you heard the story about why the emu can’t fly?’

  Harry shook his head.

  ‘OK, stick with me, Harry. In the Dreamtime the emu had wings and could fly. He and his wife lived by a lake where their daughter had married Jabiru, a stork. One day Jabiru and his wife had been out fishing and brought home a wonderfully big catch; they ate almost everything and in their haste forgot to leave the best bits for her parents, as they usually did. When the daughter took the remains of the fish to her father, Emu, he was furious. “Don’t I always give you the best bits when I’ve been hunting?” he said. He grabbed his club and a spear, and flew to Jabiru to give him a sound beating.

  ‘Jabiru, however, was not of a mind to let himself be beaten without offering any resistance, so he took a huge branch and knocked the club away. Then he hit his father-in-law first on the left and then on the right, breaking both wings. Emu crawled to his feet and slung the spear at his daughter’s husband. It pierced his back and exited through his mouth. Beside himself with pain, the stork flew to the marshes where it transpired the spear was useful for catching fish. Emu went to the dry plains, where you can see it running around with the stumps of broken wings, unable to fly.’

  Joseph put the bottle to his lips, but there were only a few drops left. He eyed the bottle with an aggrieved expression and replaced the cork. Then he opened the second.

  ‘Is that more or less the same as your story, Joseph?’

  ‘Well, er . . .’

  The bottle gurgled, and he was ready.

  ‘I worked as a parachute instructor up in Cessnok for eight years. We were a great bunch, excellent working atmosphere. No one got rich, neither us nor the owners; the club was driven by sheer enthusiasm. Most of the money we earned as instructors was spent on our own jumps. I was a good instructor. Some thought I was the best. Nonetheless they stripped me of my licence because of one unfortunate incident. They maintained I was drunk during one skydive with a course participant. As though I would have spoilt a jump by drinking!’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘What do you mean? Do you want the details?’

  ‘You a bit busy?’

  ‘Ha ha. OK, I’ll tell you.’

  The bottle glistened in the sun.

  ‘OK, this is how it was. It was an improbable convergence of ill-starred circumstances that did it, not a stiffener or two. First of all, there was the weather. As we took off there was a layer of cloud at about eight thousand feet. That’s no problem if the clouds are so high because you mustn’t pull the ripcord before four thousand feet. The important thing is that students see the ground after the parachute has been released, so they don’t go crazy and head for Newcastle. They have to be able to see the ground signals to know where they should steer according to wind and terrain to land safely in the drop zone, right? When we took off it was true there were a few clouds coming in, but they still seemed some way off. The problem was that the club used an ancient Cessna held together with gaffer tape, prayers and goodwill. It took more than twenty minutes to reach ten thousand feet, the height at which we would jump. After take-off the wind picked up, and when we passed the clouds at eight thousand feet, it blew a second layer of cloud in beneath us, which we didn’t see. Understand?’

  ‘Didn’t you have contact with the ground? Couldn’t they tell you about the low clouds?’

  ‘Radio, yes. Ha ha. That was another matter that was hushed up afterwards. You see, the pilot always played the Stones in the cockpit at full blast when we reached ten thousand feet, to get the students going, make them aggressive instead of shit-scared. If they did send us a message from the ground we never received it.’

  ‘Didn’t you even make a final check with them before jumping?’

  ‘Harry, don’t make this story more complicated than it already is. All right?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘The second thing that went wrong was the mess with the altimeter. It has to be set to zero before the plane takes off so that it shows the height relative to the ground. The moment we were due to jump I discovered I had left my altimeter down below, but the pilot always had full parachute equipment with him, so I borrowed his. He was as afraid as the rest of us that the plane would suddenly fall apart one day. We were already at ten thousand feet so we had to move fast. I had to hurry onto the wing and didn’t have time to check my altimeter against the student’s – which of course I had checked was set to zero on the ground. I assumed the pilot’s meter would be more or less accurate, even though he didn’t set it to zero every time we took off. That didn’t bother me too much – when you’ve done more than five thousand jumps, as I had, you can judge the height visually to a reasonable degree of accuracy by looking down.

  ‘We were standing on the wing, and the student had three good jumps behind him, so I wasn’t concerned
. No problem with the exit, we jumped with arms and legs splayed and he was floating fine, quite stable, as we raced through the first cloud cover. I had a shock when I saw the second layer beneath us, but I thought we would just perform the activities we had and see how high we were as we approached. The student did some regulation ninety-degree turns and horizontal moves before returning to the standard X-shape. My altimeter was showing six thousand feet when the student went to pull his ripcord, so I signalled he should wait. He looked at me, but it isn’t so easy to read the facial expressions of a bloke with his cheeks and lips flapping round his ears like wet linen on a clothes line in a gale.’

  Joseph paused and nodded contentedly.

  ‘Wet linen on a clothes line in a gale,’ he repeated. ‘Not bad at all. Cheers.’

  The bottle was tilted up.

  ‘I read five thousand feet on my altimeter as we hit the second layer,’ he continued, after regaining his breath. ‘A thousand to go before we pulled. I grabbed hold of the student and kept an eye on the altimeter in case the cloud was thick and we had to pull the chutes in the cloud, but we were out again in a flash. My heart stopped when I saw the ground racing towards us; trees, grass, tarmac, it was like zooming in with a camera. I pulled for both of us at once. Had either of the main chutes failed there wouldn’t have been time to activate the reserve chute. Turned out the low cloud was at something closer to two thousand feet. People below went pretty pale when they saw us emerging from the cloud without chutes. On top of that, the idiot of a student panicked after his chute opened and managed to steer himself into a tree. That didn’t matter in itself, but he was left hanging four metres above the ground, and instead of waiting for help to arrive, he unhooked himself, fell and broke his leg. He made an official complaint saying I’d smelt of alcohol, and the club committee took a decision. I was given a lifetime suspension.’

  Joseph finished off bottle number two.

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘This.’ He tossed the bottle away. ‘Social security, bad colleagues and bad wine.’ He had begun to slur. ‘They broke my wings, Harry. I’m from the Crow tribe; I’m not made to live like an emu.’

  The shadows in the park had huddled together; now they were beginning to lengthen. Harry woke up with Joseph standing over him.

  ‘I’m off home now, Harry. You might want a couple of things from the pavilion before I hop it.’

  ‘Oh shit, yes. My gun. And my jacket.’

  Harry got up. It was time for a drink. After Joseph had locked up they stood shuffling their feet and sucking their teeth.

  ‘So you reckon you’ll be heading back to Norway soon, do you?’ Joseph said.

  ‘Any day now, yes.’

  ‘Hope you catch the plane this time.’

  ‘Thought I’d ring the airline this afternoon. And my workplace. They’re probably wondering what’s happened to me.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ Joseph said, smacking his forehead. He took out his keys again. ‘I reckon there’s too much tannin in the red wine I drink. It corrodes the brain cells. I can never remember whether I’ve switched off the light or not, and the parkie gets pretty angry if he comes and finds the light’s been left on.’

  He unlocked the door. The light was off.

  ‘Ha ha. You know how it is when you know a place inside out, you switch off the light automatically, you don’t even think about it. And then you can’t bloody remember whether you’ve done it or not . . . isn’t that crazy, Harry?’

  Harry’s back had stiffened and he stared at Joseph.

  41

  A Baroque Sofa

  THE CARETAKER AT St George’s theatre shook his head with incredulity and poured more coffee for Harry.

  ‘I’ve never seen the l-like. It’s full here every single night. When they do the guillotine number people go berserk, scream and carry on. Now it’s even on the poster: “Deadly guillotine – as seen on TV and in the press. It’s killed before . . .” Christ, it’s become the star of the show. Strange business.’

  ‘Strange business indeed. So they’ve found a replacement for Otto Rechtnagel and perform the same show?’

  ‘More or less, yes. They’ve never had anywhere near as much s-success before.’

  ‘What about the number with the cat that gets shot?’

  ‘They dropped that one. Didn’t seem to appeal.’

  Harry squirmed. The sweat was pouring down the inside of his shirt. ‘Mm, never quite understood why they had that number . . .’

  ‘It was Rechtnagel’s idea. I had a go at being a c-clown in my youth, so I like to keep an eye on what’s happening onstage when the circus is in t-town, and I remember that number wasn’t part of the show until the rehearsal the previous day.’

  ‘Yes, I had a feeling Otto was behind it.’

  Harry scratched his shaven chin.

  ‘I’ve got a problem gnawing away at me. I wonder if you can help. I might be barking up the wrong tree, but listen to this theory and tell me what you think. Otto knows I’m in the auditorium, he knows something I don’t know which he has to try and tell me, but he can’t say it openly. For a variety of different reasons. Perhaps because he himself is involved. So this number is cooked up for me. He wants to tell me that the person I’m hunting is a hunter himself, that he’s someone like me, a colleague. I know that sounds a bit weird, but you know how eccentric Otto could be. What do you think? Does that sound like him?’

  The caretaker studied Harry for some time.

  ‘Officer, I think you should help yourself to a bit more c-coffee. That number wasn’t trying to tell you anything. It’s a c-classic Jandy Jandaschewsky number. Anyone in a circus can t-tell you that. Nothing more, nothing less. Sorry if that ruins things for you, but—’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Harry said, relieved. ‘In fact, that’s what I’d hoped to hear. Now I can safely exclude that theory. Was there more coffee, did you say?’

  He asked to see the guillotine, and the caretaker took him to the props room.

  ‘I still get shivers down my spine whenever I walk in here, but now at least I sleep at n-night,’ the caretaker said, unlocking the door. ‘The room’s been scrubbed down since.’

  A cold rush of air came out as the door opened.

  ‘Togs on,’ said the caretaker, pressing the light switch. The guillotine towered over the room with a rug over it, like a reclining diva.

  ‘Togs on?’

  ‘Oh, just an in-joke. We usually say that at St George’s when we enter a d-dark room. Yup.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ Harry raised the rug and felt the blade of the guillotine.

  ‘Oh, it’s an old yarn dating back to the 1970s. The boss here at that time was a Belgian, Albert Mosceau, a hot-blooded man, but those of us who worked under him liked him well enough, he was a genuine theatre person, bless his soul. People say, as you know, that theatre types are terrible philanderers and l-libertines, and that may be true, well, I’m just saying how it is. Anyway, in those days we had a famous, handsome actor in the company, n-no names mentioned, who was an old goat. The women swooned, and the men were jealous. Now and then we used to do a tour of the theatre for people who asked, and one day the guide came with a class of k-kids to the props room. He switched on the light – and there he was on the baroque sofa we used for Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, rooting one of the canteen ladies.

  ‘Now the guide could of course have saved the day, for the famous actor, no names mentioned, was lying on his front. But the guide was a stripling who hoped to become an actor himself one day and was, like most theatre people, a vain galoot. So he wasn’t wearing glasses even though he was very short-sighted. Anyway, to cut to the chase, he didn’t see that things were happening on the sofa and he must have thought the sudden thronging at the door was because he was such a damned good talker, or something like that. As the guide continued waffling on about Tennessee Williams, the old goat swore, making sure not to show his face though, just his hairy arse. But the guide recognised
the voice and exclaimed: “Goodness, is that you there, Bruce Lieslington?”’

  The caretaker chewed his lower lip.

  ‘Oooh dear.’

  Harry laughed and held up his palms. ‘It’s OK. I’ve forgotten the name already.’

  ‘Anyway, next day Mosceau called a meeting. He explained what had happened and said he considered it a very serious matter. “We can’t have this kind of publicity,” he said. “So I’m sorry to say that, with immediate effect, there will be a b-ban on this kind of g-g-guided tour.”’

  The caretaker’s laughter resounded against the walls of the props room. Harry had to smile. Only the reclining diva in steel and wood was as silent and unapproachable.

  ‘Now I understand the “togs on”. What happened to the luckless guide? Did he become an actor in the end?’

  ‘Unfortunately for him and fortunately for the stage, no. But he stayed in the industry and today he’s the lighting engineer here at St George’s. Oh yes, I forgot, you’ve met him . . .’

  Harry breathed in slowly. Down below there was a growling and jerking at the chains. Shit, shit, shit, it was so hot!

  ‘Yes, that’s right. He probably wears contact lenses now, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Nope. He claims he works better if he sees the s-stage in a blur. Says he can concentrate on the totality instead of getting hung up on details. He’s a really strange b-bloke.’

  ‘Strange bloke indeed,’ said Harry.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sorry to ring so late, Lebie. This is Harry Holy.’

  ‘Holy? Christ, what time is it in Norway now?’

  ‘No idea. Listen, I’m not in Norway. There was some trouble with the plane.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘It left early, let me put it like that, and it hasn’t been easy to get another seat. I need some help.’

  ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘You have to meet me in Otto Rechtnagel’s flat. Bring a crowbar if you’re no good with picklocks.’

  ‘OK. Right away?’

  ‘That’d be nice. Appreciate it, mate.’