NOW
IDA HAUNTS THE CAR PARK
In
certain lights you can see the impression of a vanished building hanging in the
air. The towers and turrets and chimneys of what appears to be a fairy castle
may come into view in the mad blue flash of lightning or at the turning point
of dusk or dawn. You look up, uncertain of what you have seen, and it is gone,
a fanciful silver image fading on the square reality of day, the strange
obscurity of night. You imagine you might have glimpsed movement behind the
tower window - a hand, the turn of a head, the gentle swaying of a velvet
curtain. In the very dead of night it is sometimes possible to catch on the ear
the sound of vanished laughter or the faintest tinkle of a bell.
A
paving stone under your foot tells you in bold gold type that on this site
there stood a college for young ladies, founded, it says on the stone, in 1875,
demolished in 1966. In place of the absent castle is a vast white assembly hall
where gatherings of men meet to perform occult rituals. Nearby, the Day
Procedure Centre of a hospital in which human babies can be brought into being
by astonishing modern technology and thought.
Deep
in the earth underneath these visible buildings is a place for parking cars, a
kind of layer cake joined through the middle by an elevator. The elevator has a
voice all of its own, a disconcerting hollow voice, announcing in its strange
blank way the names of all the elevator’s destinations, such as ‘basement
three’ or ‘ground level’. Underneath the very bottom of the car park is a
little stream of running water which connects this world with the next.
Young
ladies who vanished long ago, taking their easels and their violins and their
tennis racquets, sometimes come back to this place of happy memory, of former
life. Girls such as Ida or Nellie or Henry - an odd name for a girl, but she is
a writer, and the times being what they are or were, she felt the need for a
man’s name in a man’s world. In one of Henry’s books she told the story of her
schooldays - the title of the book was The Getting of Wisdom. These days Henry
haunts the State Library where she is doing the research for a trilogy to be
published at the turn of the present century. It will be a great Australian
saga (inspired by events that have taken place since 1950) produced on CD rom.
The title of this one is, you will have guessed, The Forgetting of Wisdom.
Nellie
is an opera singer who was celebrated throughout the world. On odd occasions
she has spent an evening in the car park elevator, singing the ‘basement
one-two-three’ and ‘ground level’ lyrics to the astonishment of the public.
Many of the people who heard her were returning from the bars nearby, and so
they were inclined to treat her as an hallucination, a large woman in a beaded
gown singing in the elevator. In nineteen hundred and seven, Nellie was the
President of the Old Collegians Association, and when she materialised on the
other side she was re-elected to this position for eternity. The Association is
one of the most active organisations on the other side of the water. It is in
fact as a member of the Old Collegians that Ida haunts the car park. It is her
job to see that the presence of the
old school is maintained on the spot.
Ida
is a painter. She does delicate pictures of fairies with the fabulous wings of
butterflies and other insects. She has illustrated books for children, and once
was asked to paint her joyful pictures on the walls of schools and hospitals.
Dressed as a fairy in a dark blue tea-gown, she haunts the hospital and the car
park. There is a bright hint of mischief in her eyes which sparkle. She carries
a large handbag that is shaped like a butterfly’s wing, embroidered with silks
the colour of the sunset and studded with sapphires from the heavens and pearls
from the depths of the sea. In her handbag she keeps a wand made from a long
stalk of evening primrose, and a telephone of morning glory. The technology of
these things is primitive in the extreme - the telephone must be connected to
the bright blue fire extinguishers in the car park before it will work. The
evening primrose has the power, when waved, to stop the elevator between
floors. Before doing a tour of the hospital, Ida always gives Nellie a call to
let her know she has arrived safely.
Ida’s
outline behaves like that of the old school building - now you see her, now you
don’t. However, one day she discovered that people who are suffering from the
pain of a lost love are gifted with the sight to see her in all her radiance
and beauty.
She
was standing in the elevator, wincing at the hollow sound of ‘basement three’
when a distinguished-looking fellow with silver hair and sad pale eyes got in.
The white silk scarf around his neck slipped and slithered to the floor. He
seemed distracted, didn’t appear to notice that the scarf had fallen. Without
thinking, Ida stooped down and picked it up. She then realised he could see
her, and she knew therefore he must be suffering. She handed him the scarf, he
smiled sadly, the corners of his lovely eyes crinkling as he did so. Ida’s heart
missed a beat and she felt she had to act at once. She whisked out her evening
primrose and there, between the ground and basement one, the elevator settled
gently to a halt.
‘I do
believe we’re stuck,’ he said. And he began to press the buttons on the wall.
Nothing happened. They introduced themselves - his name was Lawrence, Lawrence
Honey - and he explained he was on his way to Lodge. Which Lodge is that, she
asked in innocence, and he told her he belonged to a society called the
Invisible Lodge. She said she liked the name of that, and then she explained
she was a volunteer, a visitor to the hospital. He said he hoped she didn’t
suffer from claustrophobia, stuck there in the elevator, hanging by a thread
between the floors. She said she wasn’t frightened. My ex-wife, he said, and
tears came to his eyes, my ex-wife Georgina was terrified of things like this.
She was very young - always insisted that we use the stairs. As you can see, I
miss her. You must excuse me, he added, and took out his handkerchief and wiped
away his tears, and then he opened up his attache case and took out a silver
flask from which he drank. A nip? he said, and handed it to Ida. She took a
swig of brandy and felt it go straight to her head. They both began to laugh,
and then he offered her a bite of his peanut butter sandwich. My secretary, he
said, always insists that I bring a sandwich with me on Lodge night. She’s a
most practical woman - makes the sandwich for me. I think you’ll find it
satisfactory. And it was.
We’re
moving - are we moving? he said this several times and Ida felt it prudent to
give the evening primrose an imperceptible wave. The elevator slid gently into
motion and they arrived at the ground floor. The security guard at the front
desk woke up from a little dream he had been having, unaware that on his
elevator monitor he had just missed something that resembled a scene from a
silent movie - a man and a woman both in evening dress having a sort of picnic
between floors.
Ida
found that her imagination was gripped by Lawrence. Ida had fallen in love in
that brief time between the ground floor and basement one. She was moved also
by the thought of the obvious cruelty of his ex-wife Georgina. Ida would
comfort Lawrence; he would not have to weep again. She dashed down to a fire
extinguisher and plugged in her morning glory. Nellie, Nellie, she said, all
excitement. I’m bringing someone home to dinner. A simply lovely man. I met him
in the elevator on his way to Lodge. Do we have cognac - I think he would like
that.
It is
a coincidence, Ida said to Lawrence in the elevator when he was going home
after Lodge, that we should meet again. They both laughed and hoped the thing
wouldn’t stick between the floors. You have your car? he said, and Ida said
that actually she didn’t have a car - had something else to show him. Perhaps
he didn’t realise, but the very latest thing to do was to travel round the city
by underground waterway. He said he thought he had read about it somewhere.
Perhaps is was in the colour supplement of the Saturday paper.
Lawrence
Honey, as if in a trance, stepped into the rowing boat. He felt a drowsy
humming feeling running through his blood. The beautiful woman, so reminiscent
of a fairy from a ballet or a picture book, took the oars, and smiled. He
smiled. The small black attache case of the Invisible Lodge slipped silently
from his hand into the water.
They
found the attache case caught in weeds some miles downstream. They never found
a body. Vanished into thin air. The white silk scarf embroidered with
Lawrence’s own secret symbol turned up at the State Library some years later. A
baby boy who was manufactured in the hospital was named Lawrence Honey Hamilton
in a gesture of reparation for the man who disappeared. And in certain lights
you can imagine that you see a gorgeous fairy and a man in evening dress as
they step into a little rowing boat on the water underneath the car park that
is underneath the Day Procedure Centre.
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