stage we had no light show, no props, no choreographed moves, no staging of any kind. We didn’t vomit blood, or leer like trolls while rolling our tongues lasciviously at the audience. Our strengths were our personalities and our music. And at the Station, the room was intimate enough for both to count. On a good day, we believed, our characters and our music formed an irresistible winning combination.
The central element of this winning combination, our lead singer Broderick Smith, sat next to me as Stockley dropped his second gift-ball. Brod’s hand shook as he lifted his glass to his lips. He had a very complex and puzzling personality. As fantastic as he was onstage, offstage, and particularly behind the wheel of his vintage Land Rover, he was stodgy and anxious. Maybe, I thought, he was trying to keep his zany side at bay, as if it were a strange beast — a mercurial, abnormal thing, which could only be released safely at showtime when outrageousness is customary. He must keep it in check lest his veneer of sanity cracked. If I had his gift, I thought, I would revel in it twenty-four hours a day.
Stockley dropped his third cinch shot.
Brod had a complexion that was prone to ashenness. He had grey-blue eyes and a large, expressive jaw that jutted out heroically. He had a dimple in his chin. Brod resembled the Germanic ideal, but he had an endearing scruffy quality — like an Aryan the cat dragged in.
The contents of his flat affirmed his zany side. His formal need to cling to sanity was apparently abandoned amid the eccentric clutter of his collection of bric-a-brac. A Remington statuette of a cowboy on a rearing horse stood in as a heroic paperweight. It was on a large glass museum display case, which, supported by antique filing cabinets, was used as a desk. Inside the glass case, hundreds of lead military miniatures were lined up in chronological order from Roman Centurions to Patton’s Eighth Army. The desk was an island in a sea of dolls, exotic hub caps, rolled-up maps, old cameras, wood and metal puzzles, and antique scientific instruments. He was a voracious reader: comics, individually wrapped in clear plastic, were stacked in hallowed corners; a huge bookshelf sagged under the weight of science fiction paperbacks, which were crammed into it at the rate of one every two Earth days. And, with his collection of books on the history, customs and conquest of the North and South American native peoples, he sought the fantastic in the real world too.
Brod’s wife was a seamstress. Pieces of material, quilts and cloth-filled cane hampers added plushness, a buffer to Brod’s clutter that was appreciated by the third denizen, Ronald, a lithe Persian cat. Ronald, if he wasn’t asleep in some dark, cushioned nook, could be seen bouncing from object to object in search of one or another of the infinite possibilities of its Broderickian universe.
But, as used to the wacky world of Broderick as Ronald was, I think he would have gone stark raving mad if he just once saw his master in action at the Station. At the end of Sydney Ladies, a song Brod wrote about American GIs on R&R from Vietnam, he would blow a ten-minute harp solo into his refurbished taxi-driver’s microphone. As he walked out onto the audience’s tables, people cleared their glasses to make way for his tattered tennis shoes. Girls mockingly clutched at his crumpled jeans. His hair stuck to the sweat on his cheeks and forehead as his frenzy increased. At the climax of his solo, the audience cheered as if someone had scored a go-ahead goal in the final second. Brod would affect smug appreciation for the applause and saluted the crowd like Hitler at the Nuremburg rally. Then he would introduce the next song:
‘Die fumph zong nicht einer kraftwerk von Chris Stockley, Achtung! Mein Kamerades die tempo: ein, zwei, drei …’
Stockley would play a lightning-fast introduction while Brod slid across the stage on his knees, prostrating himself before the guitar hero.
After this song, as I was tuning my bass, Brod would whisper into the microphone in the voice of a golf announcer, ‘John is moving onto his D string … no. Wait just a minute … I’m sorry. He’s changed his mind. He’s on the A string. He’s pulling it up … up … up … until it’s just right. Ooh, that was nicely done.’
On it went from a seemingly bottomless well of comic patter. And Brod never repeated himself — that was anathema to him.
What theory of personality could accommodate the contradictions in this man, this man who sat next to me with his elbows on his knees, wringing his hands in anxiety over life in general, and the phone call in particular?
He wasn’t sweating over the pool game, though. He stood up, ‘I’m going for a walk along the beach. I’ll see you back here about six.’
‘Okay, mate.’
‘See ya, Brod,’ said the others.
And he disappeared, worrying out the door.
Stockley looked at his fifth giveaway shot. It required him to put the cue behind his back with just one foot touching the floor. He grunted. ‘A little … tricky, this one, mate.’
He pocketed the ball with a motion that said: Take that! But he left himself in poor position for the next shot. He made a gallant shot off the cushion but just missed.
Then, to reach the white ball, I had to use the extension stick to rest my cue on.
‘Need the poofter stick, John?’ He stood leaning against the wall with his cue, his beer and his scars.
‘Would you mind buttoning up your shirt,’ I said. ‘It’s like trying to play next to the bloody Aurora Borealis.’
‘No way, mate.’
My ball went down but I had a long shot for the next one and I missed by a mile.
‘Too bad, mate.’
I left him in good position for his last two balls. He had not beaten me in quite a while so he took his time deciding which ball should go into which hole. He made his first shot and was nicely in line for the next, but, in trying to hit it too hard so the white ball would carry back up the table to the eight ball, his last ball bounced from side to side of the pocket and dribbled out impotently. ‘I was fucking robbed.’
‘Bit too much english, mate.’
By this time J.L. and Kerryn were watching. ‘Another round of beers?’ asked Kerryn.
‘Thanks, mate,’ we all said.
Stockley went to the bathroom and I punched in three balls while he was away. When he came back he looked at the table and said, ‘Was anybody watching this bastard?’
Next, instead of trying to make a difficult shot, I put the white ball behind my ball snookering Stockley. He was genuinely miffed.
Kerryn laughed. ‘I’m next,’ he said as he slapped some coins on the table.
Stockley couldn’t recover and I sank my last ball and then sent down the eight ball with a feather-touch side shot. It was a fluke.
‘See, mate? Finesse. You gotta have class in this game.’
‘You’re a ratbag, John,’ he said. And he guzzled down his beer. ‘I’m going upstairs. I’ll see you in the lobby at six.’
‘They’re dropping like flies, Kerryn.’
He collected the balls and looked for the rack. ‘Where’s the thing?’ he said.
I passed him the rack. ‘A thing by any other name is still a thing.’
Kerryn’s
