12

The music of words draws Emmett towards poetry, which he knows in his heart with a searing clarity is the highest art form. He believes that the great poets Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson can make anyone weep and this, he believes, is the greatest skill. These blokes weave actual beauty with the skill of angels.

On the league table of Art and Beauty his second art form has to be music. Few, he reckons, come close to the big two, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. He plays the 1812 Overture on an LP on the old red velvet-fronted radiogram in the front room and it leaves him speechless and shaken. ‘Listen to this kids!’ he roars over the soaring music. ‘This is what life is about!’

Caprice Italien is called for when his mood is elevated and then the music bounds out of the room and waves itself like big flags from the windows of the little house.

And when he’s really up, Tchaikovsky is Chockers and Beethoven is the Big B. ‘Kids ... cop a load of this! You bloody beauty Chockers!’ he cheers and their hearts sink because there’s much to fear when Caprice Italien goes on. No mood that wheels so high can remain in flight.

The thin wooden walls squeeze in and out and the music surges forth, dissolving in circles of distance. Across the road, the Quails, a family of one mother, five boys and a collie named Wedge, flinch at the onslaught of Emmett’s music.

One night sitting on the swaying train coming home from work, Emmett reads a story about Rudolf Nureyev and a new production of The Nutcracker Suite and with a gathering resolve, decides this is something for him. He’s long had a bit of a soft spot for Russians (he deeply approves of the Russian Revolution) and since the music was written by one Russian and performed by another, he determines that this Nureyev bastard will have to be seen.

He decides to take the two big kids because they need something decent to remember when they’re old. They’re getting older by the day and there isn’t that much that defines their childhood, he thinks. (He excludes himself from the definition even though Emmett will be the only thing they will ever remember with any clarity.) To his mind, the things you can talk about when you’re older are seen at the footy and cricket. For instance, he’s always barracked for North Melbourne, the mighty Shinboners, and he remembers with a shining reverence Saturdays at Arden Street with thousands of others. Could never play himself, just born bloody clumsy, much to his own bitter disappointment, because he always felt he should have been brilliant. Would have been good at being brilliant.

The really sad part though is that the kids missed out on Bradman and this is a tragedy, pure and simple. All they have is Bill Lawry and true, he is a Victorian, but sadly, and he believes Bill would be the first to agree, he’s no Bradman.

Emmett had never seen Bradman himself because he spent most of his young life working or stuck in orphanages and then there was the question of finances – tickets to the cricket cost money and he had zero. But at his Nana’s, when he could, he listened to the radio all through the long winter nights when the Australians played the Poms in England. Listened to every last ball.

But he is prepared to concede that there’s more to life than cricket and footy. He’ll take these kids of his to see this Russian cove and Margot Fonteyn, who he’s heard is also pretty damn spectacular even if she is an ageing Pommy prima ballerina.

It’s winter and in the unremembered night, the weather hurls itself upon the house. The following morning, a Saturday, Emmett calls them into the kitchen to tell them they will go to Her Majesty’s Theatre in the city to a matinee this very afternoon. Football will be given up for one week.

Rob squirts a little sideways look at Louisa but says nothing. It’s final. ‘And you will enjoy this!’ Emmett booms at them.

After much scrounging through the clean-washing pile, Anne finds a cardigan to go with Louisa’s best dress. Rob wears shorts and the duck-egg blue jumper that is imprinted in Louisa’s memory as the only one the boys own. Anne, Daniel and Peter wave goodbye and off they set, both wearing school shoes and striding after Emmett, who sets a cracking pace, to the train station.

It is an intermittently bright, cold day and the roads are all slick after the night rain and Emmett is wearing the khaki coat he brought into the marriage. The sky is massed with heavy towering clouds, charcoal and indigo and the deep green of storms at sea. Sometimes it rains, but they walk through it as if they were waterproof, as if they were pilgrims unconcerned with the everyday.

Emmett sits opposite Rob and Louisa on the train and looks both menacing and handsome. There is to be no mucking around. In his low grainy voice as though he were imparting a secret, he says, ‘This is your big chance to witness something important here. Now I want best behaviour, that certainly goes without saying.’ He leans in and fixes them with his dark eyes, ‘But you can have a bit of fun too, it’s the theatre and that’s what people do when they go out, they enjoy themselves.

‘You,’ and he glares at Rob who seems to shrink under the hot beam, ‘will have to concentrate bloody hard. Are you with me?’ He leans further forward and taps the boy on his bare mottled knee, ‘because I don’t want to have to say anything to you.’

He sits back quickly with his hands deep in his pockets and flaps his coat up around his legs. Rob says evenly, ‘Yes Dad,’ and Louisa pushes her gaze out the window towards the stacks of containers so she can’t catch his eye. The sky continues to be iron grey and dense with rain but occasionally the sun shoots through the clouds like a cannonball.

While she’s excited, Louisa isn’t feeling optimistic about the ballet. Rob will mess this up, she thinks solidly, the habit of gloom already long ingrained.

Emmett continues the lecture. ‘Now this Rudolf Nureyev bloke we are going to see, and old Mrs Fonteyn too, they are very special. Rob, pay particular attention to the leaps, they’re as good as anything you’ll see down at the football ground. Don’t be put off by the tights son, that is not important.

‘This is about the blending of music and the human body. This is an art. Right, we’re off at the next stop,’ he says, and bounds to his feet and pushes the door open before the train has fully stopped. The wind whips his hair about and his coat-flaps stream and he’s riding into the station like a valkyrie.

In the city Emmett strides along the wet street with the children nearly running to keep up. Rob does try to trip Louisa at one point (he deliberately stands on her loose shoelace and she knows it was deliberate because he laughs) and she staggers forward and grabs Emmett’s coat but he isn’t mad, he flicks a small smile at her.

Louisa considers kicking Rob but common sense gets the better of her. Rob smirks. By the time they get to the theatre, excitement is pulsing through the puffing, sweaty children.

Emmett strides over to the ticket box to buy the tickets. The kids perch on a round red buttoned seat in the foyer, eyes swallowing the magic of the place. People cluster and chat, laugh and gossip and the kids are entranced.

It soon becomes clear, however, that something is wrong. Here comes that underwater moment when you begin to drown and your legs work like engines but can’t save you. No matter how hard they try to pretend that everything is all right, it isn’t. Something right here in this shining theatre is going all wrong. Emmett is taking too long and the kids know with sickly sinking hearts that there’s a major stuff-up underway and when he strides back to them his face is a thunder cloud.

‘I’m short by two quid,’ he says curtly, quietly, and it dawns on the kids that he doesn’t have enough money to buy the tickets. Isn’t it always the case? Money holds the keys to the game.

‘Could you sell your wallet Dad, since it’s empty?’ Rob ventures helpfully.

Emmett looks at him as if he might snap him in half, and then he withdraws his eyes from the boy and says wearily, ‘Shut up Robert,’ and slumps on the round seat. He leans his head back and closes his eyes. His grey face sags.

The kids look at each other warily. They have not often encountered a defeated Emmett. Usually he shields himself from the reality of defeat with anger. This is very bad, they think simultaneously. Will there be an explosion? In public? Right here? They look around like mice in a room full of cats.

In a while, when most of the well-heeled have drifted into the theatre, Emmett gets up and the kids follow a few steps behind, heads down, shuffling like Japanese ladies. Emmett decides he’ll at least buy them some Fantales, and standing in front of the lolly counter, he feels around for his wallet.

Then for some reason he pushes his hand into the inner breast pocket of his coat and amazingly, he pulls out a ten-pound note. He holds up the money as if it were a miracle from God, which it possibly is, and he laughs and whoops and roars, ‘By God, the Browns are going to the bloody ballet!’

He buys the tickets and the Fantales and they go inside, only a little bit late, to watch Nureyev and Fonteyn fly across the stage like angels.

On the train home Emmett can see old Rudolf as a very plausible full forward for North and he and Rob rave about this for a while. Emmett doesn’t tell them the music made him weep because he thinks this is beyond the pale. But Louisa saw him wiping his eyes and was astonished. She files it away to discuss with Rob later.

Louisa and Rob remember the train ride home. Sealed in there with him in the red rattler, shaking across the flat industrial acres and looking out from the dark windows, they can still see that leaping Russian and hear the music that spoke of otherness.

Near to Middle Footscray Station Emmett leans across to Louisa and whispers, ‘You understand beauty, young Louie, and beauty will always console you.’ Louisa smiles and doesn’t know what to say to her father so she says, ‘I’d like to be a dancer like Nureyev or even be like old Mrs Fonteyn, that wouldn’t be too bad.’ The sheer delight of having all this good attention from him is making her dizzy. Emmett nods sagely and sitting back on the vandalised train seat says, ‘Anything is possible.’

He looks reflective as he watches the light bounce off the blocks of containers outside. ‘Nureyev is very good but if you want a real artist, look no further than Frank Sinatra, a Yank, true, but what an artist. And of course, there’s always Banjo.’ He sits back and grins and Louisa thinks she sees happiness in him. The rarest thing in the world.

Soon, they’re at their station and he’s bustling them off the train with ‘Get a move on, Robert, you dilatory boy!’ And then the train is gone and they’re walking in his footsteps, following him home through the thin, darkly shining streets.