In a Tree
We’re shooting scenes for the new series of The Librarians at a red-brick house in Hughesdale, a suburb that can’t decide whether it’s Oakleigh, Ormond or Murrumbeena. Wayne Hope is currently at the wheel, so I’m standing out the front, trying to assemble a cup of tea on the freezing, fog-blown nature strip.
‘Hey, aren’t you that guy off Thank God You’re Here?’
The voice belongs to a fourteenish-looking boy and, along with his eyeballs, suggests that he is off his nut on something.
‘Fraid so.’
‘Is that what youse are filming in there?’
‘No, this is The Librarians. On the ABC.’
He bares his teeth, revealing a glinting mouthful of braces, and throws me a look that suggests he has heard of neither the program nor the network.
‘Hey, do they give you the thing you’re gonna be doing before the show?’
Second only to questions about when Enough Rope is coming back – merely half of which are meant as a joke – are those about whether Thank God You’re Here is ‘rigged’. People are obsessed with the possibility that my half-arsed stammerings may have been prepared in advance. As I roll into my standard answer about how you’re dragged into a tiny booth and stapled into a uniform less than a minute before Bourney pushes you through the blue door with a laugh often far too generous for the lame joke you’ve just made about your costume, my fully pinned and lightly swaying interrogator carefully slides a single cigarette from his top pocket.
‘Sorry, mate, I’ve only got one of these,’ he says, unsteadily lighting it with a green Bic and puffing away like someone who’s copying something from a movie. My answer tails off as I realise he is no longer listening and is instead peering down the driveway in the hope that someone more famous will appear.
‘I’m getting into the music business meself,’ he offers, but declines to elaborate. I try to remember what I was doing at his age. I certainly wouldn’t have dared flagrantly to smoke a cigarette in my street, where word could easily have gotten back to Mum, but then, I wouldn’t have been staggering around on anything stronger than the news that a fresh series of The Goodies was starting the next week.
He clocks me staring at his cigarette. ‘My orthodontist worked out I’d been smokin’.’
‘Yeah?’
He coughs out a stop-starting laugh. ‘But I hadn’t been. Not these kind, anyway!’
I realise that this is my cue to be impressed and so I return his glassy smile, although I’m wondering whether I should be offering some sort of adult-type guidance. But what would I say? I’m no more a role model to the young than that moronic footballer whose wife is on Dancing with the Stars.
‘Anyway,’ he continues. ‘Both me mum and dad reckon I’m gonna be dead by thirty-five.’
This does call for a response. ‘What? Are you not well?’
‘Nah. Just from all the smokin’ and drinkin’.’
Drinking too now.
‘Well, you could maybe take the foot off the pedal in that department.’
He just looks at me and laughs, like I’m a ‘square’ in a fifties movie, warning the young ’uns about the ‘reefer menace’.
‘Them cunts’ve done that house up, haven’t they?’ he asks.
‘Yeah, looks like it,’ I say, turning back to our location for the last week.
‘Used to be all run-down an’ shit. Me an’ me mates used to sneak round the back to smoke and drink after school.’
Good lord. It sounds like smoking and drinking are the primary activities for kids round here. What’s happened to the traditions of my day, like shoplifting and vandalism?
‘So, how’d you get into TV?’ he asks.
What can I say? By slacking off at school, only being interested in comedy and getting expelled? True, it worked for me, but it’s hardly solid, inspirational advice for the kids. I try to word things as helpfully as possible.
‘Look, anyone can do this. You’ve just got to really be into what you’re doing and don’t let anyone tell you you can’t do it.’ Christ, I sound like Evel Knievel addressing some orphans the night before a big jump.
‘Yeah, right.’ He takes a final drag on his cigarette, stubs it out on the underside of his shoe and carefully returns the butt to his shirt pocket. ‘I’m getting into the music business meself,’ he repeats.
‘Well, good luck with that,’ I say, meaning it sincerely, but I can tell he thinks I’m being sarcastic.
‘Yeah, right,’ he says again, and stumbles off up the road.
A minute later, he’s back.
‘What’s this show again? Liberians?’
‘Librarians.’
He snorts, as if to say, ‘Who’d watch that?’ Then I notice he’s smoking a second cigarette. He notices me noticing and, for a moment, looks genuinely guilty.
‘It’s all right,’ I say. ‘I didn’t want one anyway.’
‘It’s me last one.’
‘I bet it isn’t.’
‘Nah, it’s not!’ he blurts, giggling. ‘I got a whole packet. In a tree.’
‘In a tree?’
‘Don’t tell anyone,’ he says, making a ‘shhh’ gesture, followed by another shaky exit.
And I won’t. His secret is safe with me.
Tony Martin is the Melbourne-based author of ‘A Nest of Occasionals’ and ‘Lolly Scramble’. Podcasts of his radio show ‘Get This’ are still available for free download at iTunes (type in: ‘Get This: Richard Marsland Lives’). Most recently, he directed new episodes of ‘The Librarians’, which returns to ABC1 on October 13.
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