Solomon's Song (43 page)

The old man, wobbling violently at the knees, places the gramophone carefully down to the side of the stage and, staggering back a step or two, is caught in a violent paroxysm of coughing, puffing and wheezing so that he is forced to sit almost doubled up on the edge of the little platform. Finally he seems to recover whereupon he clears his throat and hoicks into a brass spittoon on the floor four feet from him.

‘How’s yer ashtray goin’, Hornbill?’ Numbers Cooligan calls as he suddenly realises what the brass bowls placed on the mats are intended for. ‘Don’t stub yer butts in the bottom of ‘em, lads, they may not be empty.’

The old bloke has now recovered sufficiently to wind up the gramophone, then lifting off the lid he sets the turntable going and places the needle arm down onto the thick bakelite record. His hands are shaking like a first-night actor and there is the familiar high-pitched scratching sound as the needle misses its intended groove before gaining traction.

A high-pitched wail, redolent of the music they’d been hearing all day in the bazaar, issues forth, though it seems to be coming from a great distance in fits and starts, as if it has been tortured by being pulled out of the guts of the machine and threaded piecemeal through the enormous brass speaker. The wailing is of such an indeterminate sound as to make it impossible to decide the gender of the singer.

The old man climbs onto the stage and stands beside the woman, who, while being no taller than him, is three times as broad and occupies most of the available space. To maintain his balance, he is forced to rest one leg on top of the basket and his hand on the edge of the gramophone.

The belly dancer hasn’t moved since her arrival. She stands with hands clasped in front of her, staring resolutely into the dark. If she can see them she gives no indication. Her face from the eyes down is covered with one of those masks they’ve seen all day on women in the bazaar.

‘Jeez, they all look like nuns planning a hold-up,’ Crow Rigby exclaimed on first seeing a group of women in the bazaar. The belly dancer’s mask isn’t black, though, but is made of a shiny pink material which reminds Hornbill of his mum’s knickers.

When they asked Woggy at the bazaar what these masks were called he shrugged. ‘It’s a face apron,’ he claimed, which seemed a fair enough description.

Above the belly dancer’s shiny pink face apron appear two hard-as-anthracite eyes buried into kohl smudges, which cover her eyelids and extend into the eye sockets and upwards to end a quarter of an inch below her painted-on eyebrows. She too is a dead ringer for Hornbill’s uncle’s postcards. Only her jet-black hair is different, either naturally so or deliberately teased. It consists of an enormous frizzy mop which flops in an eight-inch halo about her face and reaches down to touch her shoulders.

‘Ladies and Gentlemans, Dames en Heeren, Madame, Monsieurs, Boyses and Girlses, I give you very, very wonderful belly dunce!’ the old man announces, as though addressing an audience of several hundred, throwing his head backwards and forwards with the effort, an emphatic spray of spittle exploding into the pink light.

On cue the fat lady comes alive and, with a theatrical flick of the wrist, she unhooks the curtain ring securing the cape and flings it aside in the direction of the old bloke who has stepped from the platform just in time to cop the lot. The heavy cloak hits him on the side of the head and knocks him arse over tit.

This brings a big laugh from the audience but is completely ignored by the belly dancer who is now revealed clothed only in two faded gold tassels which hang from nipple cups glued to her enormous breasts and a pair of Ali Baba pantaloons that balloon to her ankles from her waist. The pantaloons are of the same material as the face apron and Hornbill’s ma’s bloomers and shimmer in the light.

The belly dancer appears to have a three-tyre thickness of blubber over her stomach and now each of these rotates to the music as she begins to grind her enormous hips. Then, with all her wobbles moving more or less in the same direction, she bends forward slightly and, grabbing her left breast firmly in both hands, gives it a violent twist which sets the tassel rotating. Whereupon she repeats the same exercise with the right tit and now she has everything going, tassels whirring, stomach wobbling and hips grinding as the six lads look on in startled amazement.

It is a bizarre enough sight and they almost feel they’ve had their money’s worth in sheer grotesqueness when the old bloke, having untangled himself from the velvet curtain, lifts the basket lid.

‘Bring on the snake! Let’s see the snake!’ Numbers Cooligan calls out.

‘Yeah! The snake! The snake!’ the others chorus.

But instead of the snake the old bloke pulls out a bottle about eighteen inches high into which is fitted a long cork. He places the bottle on the stage in front of the gyrating, swirling, tassel-rotating, belly-blubbering, hip-swinging dancer, who miraculously, given her weight, stands on one leg and whips off one side of the pink pantaloons and then the other, not missing a beat.

There is a gasp from the darkness, none of them, except perhaps for Numbers Cooligan, has ever seen ‘it’. And, in this case, ‘it’ is almost a match for her hairdo. ‘It’ is a thigh beard of monstrous proportions and, like some dark, tangled creeper, it straddles the top of her legs as solid as tree trunks.

Tassels still swinging and everything else going as well, she lowers herself down onto the bottle and using ‘it’ she neatly extracts the cork from the bottle and with a tremendous flick of her hips the cork flies into the air and is neatly caught in the old bloke’s top hat. ‘Very, very wonderful belly dunce!’ he shouts gleefully.

There is cheering and clapping all around at this amazing display of dexterity and Numbers Cooligan for a start is rapidly becoming convinced they’re getting their money’s worth and then some. But there is more to come.

‘Shit!’ Crow Rigby suddenly whispers in a voice loud enough for them all to hear. ‘There’s a bloody snake in the bottle!’

They all crowd forward to see that the bottle indeed contains a snake curled at the bottom which is now beginning to rise. With everything still moving to the wailing cacophony, which seems a little less scratchy towards the centre of the gramophone record, the belly dancer lowers herself onto the bottle neck and neatly grasps it. She lifts the bottle and arches backwards until she is almost parallel to the surface of the stage. To everyone’s horror the snake, about eighteen inches long, moves forward out of the neck of the bottle into the external furry darkness.

‘Holy Mary mother of Jesus!’ Woggy exclaims, while the others are too gob-smacked to say anything. The dancer, still gyrating and wobbling, though the tassels have now come to a stop, lowers the bottle to the carpet and continues to dance, turning and whirling several times until it seems impossible that her sheer weight and momentum will not throw her from the tiny stage. Then she begins to slow down until she faces them again, her hips undulating slowly, stomach barely wobbling to the music, and opening her mouth she slowly pulls the snake out. In a trice it is wriggling in her hands, its head darting forward, its tongue testing the air, as she holds it triumphantly above her head.

In the weeks to come the eighteen-inch snake will take on python-like proportions and the tit tassels will whirr like Crow’s old man’s windmill in a stiff breeze. The belly dancer’s hips will expand to the size of a buckboard on a sulky and her breasts will become bigger than Easter Show watermelons. They have had their money’s worth ten times over. Tired but happy they return to the Aden Club to rendezvous with Wordy Smith.

An hour later they are still waiting for the lieutenant to arrive. Numbers Cooligan finally persuades the reluctant white-uniformed guard in a red fez at the gate to allow him to enter the club to see if the lieutenant isn’t waiting for them on the veranda. Most of the Australian officers have already departed for the ship, while those preparing to leave pause only long enough for a final soothing ale. They claim not to have seen the platoon commander all day. At half-past six the lads return to the ship and are put on a charge by the provost sergeant at the gate for staying out beyond the limit on their day passes.

Crow Rigby finds Ben and reports the missing Wordy Smith.

‘He may have returned on his own,’ Ben says, shaking his head. ‘Dozy bugger.’

But Wordy isn’t in his cabin or the officers’ mess and Ben returns to the lads. ‘Did he say anything when you left him?’ he asks.

‘Yeah, Library translated, he said something about “splendid specimens on the cliff”,’ Numbers Cooligan says.

Library corrects him. ‘No, no, cliffproms splendspes, whato! Cliffs promise splendid specimens, what ho! He had his things with him, in his day kitbag.’

‘Any of you men have any experience cliff climbing? Or rock climbing?’ Ben asks.

‘Yeah, Sergeant,’ Hornbill volunteers, ‘I come from mountain country, I done a fair bit.’

It is almost seven o’clock before Ben gets permission from his CO. to leave the ship. They’ve obtained a length of rope from the chief petty officer, two torches and batteries from the quartermaster and a first-aid kit from the ship’s hospital. Sister Atkins, obliging with the latter, seems pleased to see Ben again.

There is only one set of cliffs, to the right of the port as you enter the harbour, though hills stretch further back from them. Ben isn’t sure whether he hopes Second Lieutenant Peregrine Ormington-Smith has stuck to the cliffs and probably killed himself or gone into the mountains and become lost. The cliffs seem to be the logical place to start the search, are not too extensive and rise above the sea no more than a couple of hundred feet.

By the time they arrive it’s almost dark and Ben sends Hornbill to one end of the top of the cliff face while he takes the other, instructing that they’ll meet in the middle, all the while looking downwards and shouting out in the hope of making contact with Ormington-Smith.

Almost ten minutes later Ben hears Hornbill screaming, ‘Sergeant, over here!’

When he arrives Hornbill is on his stomach, shining his torch directly downwards. From where he is standing Ben can’t see anything and so he joins Hornbill and shines his torch to double the beam. About thirty feet down, Wordy Smith is seen sitting on a ledge looking upwards, squinting into the beam of light. One of his boots and socks has been removed to show a large white foot.

‘Doangle!’ he shouts at them.

‘He’s done his ankle,’ Ben says quietly. ‘Shouldn’t be too hard to get him up.’

‘Let me go, Sergeant?’ Hornbill offers.

‘Nah, I want the bastard to owe me,’ Ben says. ‘You reckon you can pull him up if I go down and rope him?’

‘Sure, Sergeant, if I can’t you can tie him and come back up and we’ll sort him out together.’

Ben searches for a while until he finds what seems like the best way down to the ledge. He’ll need both hands so he can’t take the torch and will have to rely on Hornbill lighting the way for him from the top. It takes him no more than five minutes to reach the lieutenant, whereupon Hornbill lowers the rope and Ben, balanced precariously on the narrow ledge, ropes Second Lieutenant Peregrine Ormington-Smith up and ties his kitbag to the rope as well. The lieutenant seems quite overcome and finds it impossible to get any words past his lips. ‘Don’t talk, just hang on tight while we get you up,’ Ben instructs him.

Making sure Ormington-Smith is secure he calls to Hornbill to have a go at pulling him up. But thirty feet is a fair drop and even though Wordy Smith in appearance seems as light as a bag of chook feathers, without a tree or rock to anchor the rope his weight is too much even for a man as strong as Hornbill to pull up alone.

‘Wait on, sir,’ Ben instructs and makes his way back up the cliff. It is hard going in the dark and he loses his footing and several times a clatter of small rocks crashes down the cliff face into the sea below. Finally, he crawls back over the lip of the cliff and lies for a moment to recover.

Between them they haul their platoon commander back up and after regaining his breath Ben examines the lieutenant’s ankle. It is badly swollen but doesn’t appear to be broken, though it is doubtful he will be able to walk. ‘We’ll manage between us, can you hop on one leg, sir?’

Ormington-Smith nods, it is past eight o’clock and dark, the moon not yet up as they move out with Ormington-Smith between them, his arms clasped about their shoulders and utilising his good foot to hop. They have gone no more than a hundred yards when he suddenly stops, resisting their efforts to move forward.

‘What is it, Lieutenant, need a rest?’ Ben asks.

‘Sketbook!’ Wordy Smith says.

‘Sketbook? Oh, your sketchbook?’

‘Leftit.’

‘You what?’ Ben can’t believe his ears. ‘You left your sketchbook? Ferchrissakes, where?’

‘Clif-ace.’

‘The cliff face, on the ledge?’

Ormington-Smith doesn’t reply but gives out a desperate cry, like a child suddenly threatened with a backhander from his father. He removes his arms from their shoulders and, turning, hops back towards the cliff face.

‘Bloody hell, we’ll get it in the morning!’ Ben shouts after him, but Ormington-Smith, as though possessed, keeps hopping frantically towards the cliff face in the dark.

‘Shit, he’ll kill himself,’ Hornbill shouts and together they set off after the lieutenant who has almost disappeared in the dark and is managing a remarkable pace hopping on one leg.

They reach him at last and Ben wrestles him to the ground, but the scrawny subaltern seems possessed and he is hard put to restrain him. Ormington-Smith is whimpering and sniffling like a child as Ben finally subdues him. ‘Sketbook!’ he howls again.

‘Take it easy now, Lieutenant,’ Ben says, trying to calm him down, rising and then lifting him to a seated position. He reaches for the first-aid kit slung across his shoulder, takes out a bottle of water and, unscrewing it, hands it to Ormington-Smith. The lieutenant gulps at the bottle greedily, most of its contents spilling down the front of his torn tunic. ‘You all right?’ Ben now asks as the bottle is handed back to him, he can see that the lieutenant’s hand is shaking violently. Ormington-Smith nods and then suddenly begins to weep quietly.