Oh Matilda: Who Bloody Killed Her? Chapter 20

What could go wrong when an ultra-ambitious actress meets the movie mogul and sexual predator?

 

This is ‘summer reading’ like nothing you’ve read before: a diverse field of writers collaborating on a novel that will captivate you through summer.

Each author had just three days to write their chapter, with complete freedom over story and style; it’s fast, fun and very funny.

Start from the very beginning with Chapter 1 or go to ohmatilda.com.au

Today the Australian’s editorial director Claire Harvey takes up the story with Chapter 20.

By Claire Harvey

Even at the back of the cave, the boom was deafening.

Frank Churchill leapt over his sleeping bag and the jumble of opened crates, wires and canisters and peered up to the sky, where all that remained of the seaplane was a puffball of smoke; a pretty little cartoon cloud.

He nodded to himself. Problem solved.

Suddenly thirsty, Frank bent to scoop a handful of water from the creek that trickled down the mountainside just in front of his cave.

He straightened, grimacing at the water’s back-palate tang of possum urine, and ran his tongue over his teeth.

Those teeth. For the ten-thousandth time in his life, he silently cursed his crumbling, cantilevered fangs and allowed himself just a moment for his favourite daydream. How different life could have been if Frank’s teeth had been more evocative of 15 feet of pure white snow and less of Cracker Barrel Special Reserve.

Every other molecule of this man’s body was, and always had been, flawless.

Even pushing 75 he was exceptionally handsome. Cheekbones. Hair that naturally curled and flopped over one eye, coquettish if it hadn’t been so unstudied. Even his nostrils were arousing.

Until not so long ago, he’d had a body to match; a physique to make a librarian punch a hole through her needlepoint.

But, alas, his smile needed a trigger-warning. With every flash of his tusks, he morphed from Cary Grant to Madame Defarge. These were teeth not even a forensic odontologist could love, and Frank Churchill gradually learned not to laugh – or, indeed, to speak in anything other than a slow Outback drawl, for fear of causing women to faint and casting agents to slowly re-cap their Sharpies and fold their clipboards.

He’d tried. The odontologist. To fix the teeth.

But, as is so often the way with cosmetic enhancement, something unfortunate (but covered by the waiver) happened and en route to John Travolta’s smile he ended up disembarking unexpectedly at Mike Tyson’s; worse than where he’d started out. Further surgery was not possible under the Basic Plus Healthy Start singles insurance he could afford at the time.

And if Frank wasn’t going to be a romantic lead, he didn’t want to be on screen at all.

So he gave up acting, did a bit of runway modelling here and there, confident that nobody at Fashion Week would ask him to smile, and focused on succeeding in showbusiness through the only other honourable route: common-law marriage.

If he couldn’t be the leading man, he’d be the man behind the woman playing the woman behind the astronaut, or the president, or whatever.

And in 1971 there was only Australian theatre goddess worth the name.

Maya. Maya Churchill, as she would soon become. She took Frank’s surname because it fitted more neatly on a movie poster than Maya Schlegelberger, and because Frank was so decent about her continuing to be a sexual being outside the home as her fame – and their wealth – grew.

They’d never actually married because Frank thought having him as a long-term fiance, rather than a potentially jealous husband, would help Maya navigate studio-executive patronage with fewer awkward questions.

He was right. Maya was 50 before Frank – now a director in his own right – managed to get her into a hotel suite for a business meeting with Harvey Weinstein.

For Harvey the thrill was dulled somewhat by the fact she only pretended to recoil in disgust before submitting. Nonetheless he followed through on his promise to “make sure you get the recognition you deserve.”

Part of their arrangement was that, in return for Maya’s introducing Harvey to Australia’s most promising NIDA graduates, Miramax would fund Maya to produce and star in her passion project, a colonial-era biopic entitled Spearwoman, for which Maya prepared with six weeks of intensive sunbedding and dreadlocking to play Barangaroo, the Cammeraygal woman who stunned British naval officers in 1788 Sydney with her traditional fishing skills.

Harvey greenlit the project on one proviso: Maya must be topless for at least 66 per cent of scenes.

Even so, Spearwoman went straight to DVD.

Maya was still resentful about this and so, frankly, was Frank, who felt especially affronted by the lack of gratitude shown by the Indigenous actors whom Maya had cast for all non-speaking roles.

Matilda Meadows was a case in point. Playing Barangaroo’s baby, Matilda had spent most of the movie gently sedated and strapped to Maya’s back in a papoose the props team had kept from a previous gig on Dances With Wolves.

Matilda had thanked Maya on precisely zero occasions and had in fact gone around rather piously black-armbanding at every opportunity since her graduation from child star to fully-fledged actfluencer.

Matilda had never spoken publicly of Spearwoman, and its performance was so poor it didn’t even have a listing on Rotten Tomatoes, but Frank had in recent years felt a growing sense of dread that Matilda’s Instagram stories were working up to something big and that before too long she’d be leveraging an appearance on the cover of Vogue to reveal the story of Australian cinema’s most shameless early-Noughties act of cultural appropriation.

Maya would be cancelled. Shamed. She’d become the new reason for retired public servants to refuse Australia Day honours.

Frank couldn’t let that happen. Nobody was putting Maya in a corner. Not on Frank’s watch.

And so, when he’d discovered Matilda Meadows was to star as the prostitute with the heart of gold in this ridiculous island frolic, he appointed himself overwatch.

Frank had contacted an old business acquaintance – island manager Garfield Engelbrecht, who’d helped him out of a couple of fixes before – swore him to secrecy and settled into the cave. He was ready to spring at any moment; to leap to Maya’s defence on land or sea or Snapchat. He’d briefly tried astroturfing a Twitter rumour about Matilda having an affair with an older white married man – himself – but it hadn’t taken off.

He didn’t tell Maya what he was doing, or why.

In fact he hadn’t seen Maya in weeks, since she went into full Edwardian dress and speech patterns to get into character as bluestocking-detective Phryne Fisher. Frank had secretly flown on ahead to get everything ready on the island.

The only other person who knew what Frank was doing was Bradley Champion, who had dutifully attended the cave every day to bring fresh tropical fruits, toilet paper and anything else Frank needed.

Frank glanced at his wrist, out of habit, and tutted in annoyance at the blank electronic square. Flat, as it had been for several days; an uncharacteristic oversight for Frank, and a source of some frustration yesterday evening, when he’d had to jury-rig an alternative detonator for the plastic explosives in Becky Cummerbund’s selfie stick.

Must be nearly time for Champion’s daily visit, Frank thought. He could murder a lychee.

Frank heard the familiar crunch of footsteps on the rocky path above the cave entrance.

“Champo,” he called, “please tell me you remembered the watch charger this time.”

No response. Frank turned to look up at the ridge line, squinting at the silhouetted figure above. It wasn’t Brad. It was a woman.

“Is that … Maya?” he stammered. “How – how did you …?”

And then – nothing.

She turned and crunched away, back to the resort.

Read on: Chapter 21

Australia’s favourite writers, from Tom Keneally to Trent Dalton, are collaborating on our summer novel. Coming up at Nikki Gemmell, Siobhan McKenna, Thomas Keneally and more. To join the fun, read from the very beginning with Caroline Overington’s Chapter 1 or go to ohmatilda.com.au

Claire Harvey is editorial director at The Australian and has worked in newspapers for 25 years as a journalist, foreign correspondent and columnist.