Read Online A Thing of Blood by Robert Gott - Free Book Online

has talent,’ I said.
    ‘She’s also rather lovely, isn’t she?’
    ‘Yes, she is.’
    ‘I’m very attached to her. Giving her up isn’t going to be easy.’
    An expression of some sort must have crossed my face because he shook his finger at me.
    ‘Don’t make the mistake of thinking that she’s waiting for someone to rescue her,’ he said. ‘That’s sentimental tosh. She knows exactly what she’s doing, and it suits her to do it.’
    I had to agree that there was nothing reticent about Gretel’s stage persona.
    ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he said. ‘I’m bored sitting here.’
    ‘Fine,’ I said.
    In the hallway he called up the stairs to Gretel.
    ‘Will and I are going out.’
    ‘OK,’ she called back.
    ‘Do you want us to come back, or will we meet you there?’
    She turned on the tap and called over its noise, ‘I’ll meet you there. I’m on at twelve-thirty.’
    In the street outside, the weird and chilling yawn of a lion reached us from nearby Melbourne Zoo. We walked aimlessly for a while, and Clutterbuck sang to himself a few bars of ‘Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition’.
    ‘I wouldn’t have picked you as a propaganda peddler’, I said.
    ‘That’s Nigella’s influence. She works for that crowd. Have you seen that hideous short that’s on before every film?’
    He raised his voice a few octaves and minced in imitation of a woman: ‘I found the WAAF in many important respects just as vital as the RAAF. There’s so much a girl learns in the air force. It’s given me a new interest in life. An entirely different outlook, and has supplied the answer to a question. It’s a haunting question, you know.’ He paused dramatically. ‘Are you in a war job? Are you?’
    He snorted.
    ‘That’s one Nigella had a hand in. Frightful, isn’t it? Needless to say I told her I loved it, and, if it comes up in conversation tomorrow, don’t be surprised if I dragoon you into expressing admiration for it, too.’
    ‘But I haven’t seen it.’
    ‘What you just saw is better than the original, so that should be enough to carry any expressions of awe you are required to make.’
    We slowly wended our way towards Ma Maguire’s, and Clutterbuck began asking questions about my background. I told him as much as I thought he needed to know. As we crossed Princes Park he asked me to recite something from Shakespeare. Confident of my skill, I did not demur, but produced a sound, if subdued, reading of a passage from The Tempest . I threw in a few lines of Caliban’s, just to demonstrate my range. He seemed genuinely impressed, which was pleasing, and he nodded and said, ‘Yes’ and ‘Yes’ again as if to reinforce that his affirmation was well considered.
    We walked on in silence after that, until we reached Ma Maguire’s. The entrance to this establishment was through a lane at the rear, and as soon as the door was pushed open the heat and noise that hit us indicated a crowded house. Gretel would have a large audience for her late performance, and from the raucous sounds coming from deep in the house, most of them were already drunk.
    Clutterbuck left me to my own devices, and I was soon approached by a woman who said she was on her way to the dunny outside. She paused long enough to observe that she thought I looked like ‘somebody.’
    ‘Don’t know who,’ she said, ‘but somebody in the movies.’
    She meant, of course, Tyrone Power, to whom I bore more than a passing resemblance. This made the coincidence of our surnames remarkable.
    ‘People say Tyrone Power,’ I said.
    She was quite drunk, and slurred, ‘No. Not someone good looking. But someone in the movies. Definitely.’ She stumbled away towards her date with a toilet bowl.
    Twelve-thirty came and went, and when Gretel still hadn’t arrived at one-thirty Clutterbuck said that she must have fallen asleep, and that we should go and wake her up. There was still time for her to perform. There would be a crowd at Ma