The Mystery of the Venus Island Fetish by Tim Flannery, Dido Butterworth Read Free Book Online Page B

Good onions.’
    ‘Good on you too, Joe.’
    Joe had a genius for mishearing the King’s English. But he was also the most successful
fruiterer in East Sydney. His barrow was perpetually surrounded by a gaggle of women.
He had once told Archie the secret of his success.
    ‘Don’t serve anybody until there’s plenty customer around. Tell the good story, and
make de lady’s eye. That way they stick about, and even more come!’
    Walking had cleared the cobwebs and given Archie a keen appetite for the cheap and
cheerful kind of counter lunch the Maori’s Head offered. He decided that he would
not ask anyone directly about Beatrice. That would be too embarrassing. But he would
keep his ears open.
    The bar was sparsely furnished, dark and cool. White tiles covered the floor and
extended halfway up the walls.
    ‘Archie Meek? Been a while hasn’t it, love? Where’d ya get the tan?’
    Nellie had always had a soft spot for him, but before it was because he was a sweet
kid. Now, Archie sensed, she might develop a different kind of appreciation. He was
about to reply when a stentorian voice hailed him from the gloomy interior. It was
Courtenay Dithers.
    ‘Archibald Meek! Long time no see, old chap! How were the Venus Isles? I hope you
cadged me a bat or two, and some of those giant rats the place is famous for?’
    When Archie first arrived at the museum he idolised Dithers. A decade and a half
older than Archie, the curator of mammals carried his Cambridge polish lightly. His
handsome face, with its aquiline nose, looked almost patrician to Archie, while a
tinge of sadness around his dark eyes revealed a deep empathy with the world. After
lunch, Archie would seek Dithers out for a private conversation about Beatrice. He
saw his old friend as an oracle on all things—but especially women. Much later, Archie
would think how strange that was, since Dithers had lived alone as long as he’d known
him.
    Archie’s eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. Dithers was taking lunch with some colleagues.
Around the table sat the artificer Roger Holdfast and his idiot son Gerald. They
were responsible for constructing exhibits, and mounting specimens within them. Holdfast’s
crew cut made his head look like a bristly brush. Below it his eyes were haunted
and his lips set hard and thin to the point of vanishing. Gerald followed his father
around like a puppy. Just now he was staring at Nellie, open-mouthed, as if she were
dancing the cancan.
    Next to Gerald sat Eric Sopwith, the retired curator of molluscs. His watery eyes
and ruddy nose testimony to a long-standing romance with the bottle. And Giles Mordant
was there too, wreathed in the brittle arrogance of a man whose ambitions outreach
his abilities. Mordant had disliked Archie from the moment they met, and the feeling
soon became mutual. You’d never guess from the look of him, Archie thought, that
he made a living stuffing rats and lizards. Such a flash dresser. Everyone said he
had tickets on himself. He even wore those newfangled vulcanised India rubber gloves
as he gutted and skinned.
    All those present, except Giles, greeted him warmly.
    ‘My shout,’ said Eric. ‘What’ll it be, Archie? Your old favourite, Castlemaine? Bet
it’s been a while since you’ve wet your whistle.’
    It had indeed been so long since Archie had drunk anything but yangona that he was
quickly tipsy. Between them, Dithers and Sopwith had seen more Pacific islands than
Archie had had hot breakfasts, and they were soon roaring with laughter at Archie’s
accounts of the predicaments he had got himself into. But when it came to the effects
of yangona, Eric became serious. The drink was made from the roots of a shrub, which
were chewed by village virgins and spat into a large wooden bowl. There, the saliva
and juice fermented into a frothy grey liquor. It was a curiously intoxicating drink.
    ‘I hope ye didn’t have too much of that stuff, laddie,’ said Eric. ‘It has a strange
effect on the mind.