Kevin brings his glass to his lips. He is drinking diet lemonade. He can taste the chemicals in the fizziness exploding on his tongue. He watches as the burnt end of the coil falls lightly, soundlessly, to the plate, revealing the glowing red tip.
By 10 pm, the air is at maximum humidity, almost dripping. Kevin and Marjorie lift themselves up out of their chairs and prepare to go to bed.
Marj says: ‘I’m just going to mow the lawn – I mean clean me teeth.’ Especially when she is tired, Marj is liable to mix up phrases with rhythmic similarity. Or she’ll come to the middle of a sentence and find nothing there, no more words.
She says, ‘I’m just going to put the –’
She says ‘what’s-it’ a lot, or ‘what’s-its-name’: ‘Put it on the what’s-its-name, Kev.’
He knows what she means. He puts the plate with the spent mosquito coils on the kitchen sink, ready to be cleaned up properly tomorrow.
They take turns making the short trip along the cracking cement path to the toilet.
One at a time, they swish through the bead curtain hanging between the kitchen and the hall. The beads, of amber-coloured hard plastic, clink softly together as they have through the decades.
A pair of tea chests serves as bedside tables. Inside the chests, originally brought to Port Badminton on a ship that docked off the One Mile Jetty a lifetime ago, there are rarely used blankets and never-used wedding presents and a shoebox of mysterious photographs and postcards bequeathed by an unmarried uncle and some of the children’s first drawings and toys. Every ten years or so, a returning child will ransack one of the boxes, strewing long-lost items all over the bed, sucking greedily at memories. Marjorie has topped each tea chest with finely crocheted cotton doilies.
They lie under a thin white sheet. Even this threadbare sheet feels hot on the skin. A small fan whirrs on the dressing table, slowly looking from right to left and back again, through the hours. Kevin and Marjorie Kelly lie side by side, habitually fighting the tendency, caused by their sagging mattress, to roll in towards each other. They move in and out of sleep in the wet air, sometimes waking at the same time, sometimes listening to the fan or the other person breathing or gently snoring.
Marj’s voice suddenly pipes up, fully awake.
‘Do you want the radio on, Kev?’
‘No, it’s all right, love.’
‘I don’t mind, Kev. If you want to hear about the cyclone.’
‘No, it’s all right. Let’s get some sleep.’
Marjorie sleeps, but now Kevin is wide awake. He looks at the ceiling, thinking about Kimberly’s red hair and fresh summer frocks, the sun touching her bare shoulders. He is writing her a letter. He adds a sentence here, a sentence there, when Marj is not looking. At first, the idea of a letter startled him. Then he found himself composing it in his head. And then, he was actually writing it.
With Marjorie snoring gently, Kevin Kelly gets out of bed, goes to the Long Cupboard and retrieves the small lined writing pad he has been using. His blue biro is still on the table with yesterday’s West Australian.
The writing pad has been in the house for at least thirty years. On the front of the writing pad is a photograph of a young woman in a bikini sitting on a sweep of white sandy beach, smiling at the camera. Other swimsuited people are dotted along the beach in the distance. Palm trees stretch out over the sand, yearning for the blue ocean like pot plants stretching towards window light. When Marj brought the pad home thirty years before, she had left it on the table after she had put all the other groceries away. As the afternoon wore on, everyone had given the cover a bit of a glance, Kevin and all five children. They had noted the girl’s excellent figure, especially Kevin, who had experienced a tiny peak of sexual interest. But now he does not give the young woman the slightest glance, does not wonder how old she’d be now if she were still alive. Instead, he lifts the cover and looks at his own handwriting.
Dear Kimberly.
He wants a cigarette. The other eight letters of his life were all written with the help of cigarettes. He makes himself a decaffeinated instant coffee with skim milk and no sugar.
The wind is strong outside. Their sinewy ginger tomcat is curled up on Marjorie’s chair, his abdomen rising and falling slightly. With his pen in his hand, Kevin looks at the cat but thinks about Kimberly. Her colouring, come to think of it, is similar to that of the cat. She has freckles across her upper arms and darker more concentrated ones on her forearms. She isn’t young, but she has kept a marvellously flat stomach. She has straight white teeth and sometimes laughs loudly.
She used to own a fish-and-chip shop in northern Queensland. She emptied plastic bags of frozen chips and battered fish into wire baskets, lowering these into boiling vats of oil. She chatted to her customers, wiping the benches with a hot soapy dishcloth, raising the wire baskets to reveal the golden food. Salt, vinegar, newspaper. Her customers liked her.
When she was a little girl, she went on a talent show on TV. She sang ‘Feed the Birds’ from Mary Poppins. Now that she’s a member of parliament, she’s on TV all the time. Keep Asians Out, she says. A reporter asks her whether she is xenophobic. She has never heard this word before. She says: Please explain. Kevin pays attention, liking her boldness, her refusal to apologise for herself.
As he touches pen to paper the colour in his face rises, redder and redder. He feels like a schoolboy writing to a girl he likes, not a citizen of Australia writing to a politician.
Dear Kimberly,
Don’t take any notice of what they say about you people are so afraid to say what they really think but your not. Good on you! I am sick of politicians lieing cheating stealing just to get there lifetime superannuation. But you are standing up for the ordinary person, the AUSSIE BATTLER.
YOUR not scared to ask the curly questions!
Look at the Abo’s getting handouts left, right and centre. Look at them, driving around town in their new cars. They don’t even look after them. They run them into the ground and then they get another one. Where does all the money come from? The TAXPAYER! You and me. Something’s wrong with this picture.
Kevin is pleased with this sentence. He repeats it to himself, his lips moving ever so slightly. Something is wrong with this picture! Kevin’s mind forms a vague picture of the ideal Port Badminton, with offending elements erased from it. There is the generous wide street, and there are all the people he has known up and down it, women in frocks, men in hats, children clean and orderly, all greeting each other in a friendly way, standing on the footpath talking, like people used to do. One or two Aborigines are there, dressed as stockmen, possibly even riding their horses, the red dust clinging to their clothes. There are no Aborigines filling up big cars at the service station. There are no big cars, only honest to goodness dust-coated Land Rovers complete with dangling canvas waterbags.
Kevin Kelly has made speeches at his daughters’ weddings, warm and funny once he got going, and better the fifth time than the first time, but never any other sort of speech. Now, he imagines himself up before a crowd of people at the Civic Centre, glancing down at his notes – this very page – every now and then, warming to his theme, and getting applause. Standing back, licking his lips, taking a sip from his glass of water. Kevin toys with the idea of offering himself as a candidate. He might even suggest it in this very letter. He sits back in his chair, deep in thought. Why not give it a go? Then he imagines a television crew advancing towards him, the fluffy end of a boom microphone stretched out towards his mouth, and the wind goes out of his sails.
Outside, the wind is beginning to howl and moan.
Kevin gently puts the pen on the table. He gazes at his cold, half-drunk cup of decaffeinated coffee. He looks at the sun cancers and liver spots on the back of his hand. Weak; weak and old. Kevin Kelly may be angry about Aborigines in big cars but he is just as angry with Time. It has tricked him, failed to give ad
equate warning that one day it would be like this. Please explain: what has this hand to do with me?
Hey, True Blue, Kevin whisper-sings to himself. Don’t say you’ve gone. Say you’ve gone out for a smoko, and you won’t be very long. He is crying for himself, for his life, his own soul, the one separate from Marjorie and the kids.
Kimberly. Kevin writes, slowly, using just her first name, then a full stop. There is something intimate about this tiny full stop.
Kimberly. Your a very attractive woman.
Kevin’s pen comes to a halt, frozen on the page, stuck to that last full stop. Where did that come from? Now the letter is ruined. He can’t possibly send it.
Kevin looks up in the direction of the door, expecting Marjorie to appear there, scolding or shaking her head in disappointment and dismay. But no-one is there.
Kimberly, do you know who you look like? You look just like Deborah Kerr in An Affair to Remember. The same red hair, the same graceful style. Did you ever see that film? An ‘Oldie but a Goodie’.
Kevin is back in the swing now.
They weren’t spring chickens, Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. And nor are we. But –
Treacherously, Kevin allows himself to contrast Marjorie, his wife, with Kimberly Lamb, the breath of fresh air in Australian politics. He thinks of shapeless Marjorie in her shirts and slacks, and shapely Kimberly in her sleeveless summer frocks. She’s always in a new outfit, just like Deborah Kerr on the ocean liner in An Affair to Remember. She must have had a really big suitcase for all those clothes. You never saw the suitcase.
Kevin is now writing a secret love letter. He has decided to finish it and send it anonymously. He’ll sign it: An Admirer – Political AND Personal. He’ll have to find an envelope, buy a stamp. How much is a stamp these days? He has lost track.
His heart is pounding. This isn’t good for his heart. He picks up his pen.
I like your sundresses.
Marjorie used to wear sundresses. They were dresses with straps over the shoulders, with her bra straps held in place by little loops fastened down with press studs. Marjorie hasn’t worn such a dress for a long, long time. Sometimes, in the bedroom, she will lift an arm and shake the hanging flesh and say: ‘Look at me flabby arms, Kev.’
Kevin puts his pen down and thinks about Kimberly Lamb in a sundress, a sprinkle of freckles across her décolletage. Kevin knows this word, décolletage. Living with Marjorie for over forty years, with the paraphernalia and jargon of the dressmaker, has given him special insight into this female realm. He and Marjorie are interested in each other’s work. Marjorie will expand on the lovely décolletage of a client and the bit of lace showing above the cleavage, and Kevin will listen, and then he will talk about holes in prawning nets, and she will listen. He has watched Marjorie haul things around, her skinny brown legs, her barrel-like body strong, quite masculine. She could have held her own on a prawning boat if she’d had to. So he knows about this word, décolletage. And below the décolletage. Under the sundress, nothing except a slip of a bra and panties. Her shapely figure. Her waistline. Kevin is breathing harder, looking at the words he has already written, no longer reading the meaning of them. He picks up his pen.
We could go out to a restaurant and dance the night away.
Kevin imagines himself out on a date with Kimberly. They are not spring chickens but they’re still in the prime of life. These events are taking place in a city, possibly New York. He is standing on the top floor of the Empire State Building and she’s running through the city to meet him, but this time she’ll look where she’s going, not get hit by a car, and she’ll meet him, slightly breathless, on the top floor with views all around. They’ll have dinner in the revolving restaurant – is there a revolving restaurant on the top of the Empire State Building? – looking down like carefree gods over the glittering city. With glasses of wine. What wine should he choose? He would rather have a beer, but romance dictates wine. Then he has an idea. He could say to the waiter, ‘What would you recommend?’ That’s it. And then he imagines looking over at Kimberly. She smiles slowly and says, ‘Wouldn’t you rather have a beer? I know I would.’ That’s the kind of woman she is, marvels Kevin. A down-to-earth woman, but with grace and style. When the waiter comes, he’ll look him straight in the eye and order two beers.
Your my kind of woman, writes Kevin.
EIGHT
Cyclone Steve
The Dish, in lock position, is now communicating directly with the residents of heaven. It finds a signal from Evan Johnson and they talk shop, just like old times: blocks and runnels of figures and coordinates pour back and forth in perfectly straight lines through whipping clouds and driving rain.
The wind is screaming now, and it is time for our threnody. With all the breath we can muster, Lizzie and I join each other in our death wail. Lizzie’s keening blends with the wind; mine is not quite so harmonious. In fact, mine is rather staccato – my windpipe was not made for the long, drawn-out vowels that Lizzie can manage: Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . oooooooo . . . aaaaaahhhhh
We shriek: Get FUCKED. Get FUCKED. Fucken, fucken FUCK!
We do this under cover of the noise of the cyclone. Nobody can hear us. Or if they can, they must know that during cyclones, normal social bonds are loosed. If an old woman and a galah wish to shriek their way through it, then that is all right.
To work herself up to the threnody, Lizzie tells the story of the teacup and the chains and the islands. She needn’t say all of it; shorthand will do.
Camel train – jetty – island – sharks. It’s the story that lives inside my teacup; if you drink from it, you can see glimpses of it, in full colour.
Her mother was taken by camel team from her home in the interior, all the way to Port Badminton on the coast. She was a criminal: her crime was to be the possible carrier of venereal disease. The punishment was isolation on the islands off the coast of Port Badminton. One island was set aside for men, the other for women.
For the journey through the scrub, there was a wagon for male prisoners, a wagon for female prisoners and one for two government officials in long socks, sturdy boots and pith helmets. And there were drivers, guards and dogs. Little writing desks were loaded and unloaded in the evenings so that the Longsocks might write reports. The polished legs of their desks sat in the red dust. Before retiring at night, they’d chain up their prisoners and dogs and say their prayers. They were engaged in a bit of practical detail relating to the preservation of health and hygiene in the state of Western Australia. They’d unlock all the chains in the mornings, but prisoners were forbidden to leave the moving wagons. Some died on the way, causing delays.
To keep their spirits up, the prisoners shouted to one another from wagon to wagon. The male camels came on heat, foaming thickly at the lips. Bits of thick foam, the consistency of stiffly whipped egg white, would fly off and hit you, if you weren’t careful. This was something to watch for and laugh about. And there was a rhythm to the moving wagon, good for napping and dreaming.
And then the land came to an end, lapped at by a body of glittering water stretching to the horizon. The prisoners were marched out along the One Mile Jetty, glimpsing the sucking water in the gaps between the planks. A stinking pearl lugger was waiting for them – the stink was from the meat still clinging to the shells. It took the prisoners to the twin islands separated by a deep, fast channel.
Lizzie’s mother carried with her, all the way, a dainty teacup with a broken handle. It was a present from her days as a kitchen maid in a pastoralist’s kitchen. Every time she thought she’d lost it, she found it again.
When Lizzie’s mother was assigned her stretcher in the long hospital tent, she lay down, eagerly waiting to die. She listened to the flapping of the tents, the roar of the ocean. She thought about her home, her boyfriend on the other island and her old job in the kitchen, where she could eat bits of cake and jam.
Eventually, she began to feel hungry, and this drove her from her sickbed.
Once off her stretcher, and feeling surprisingly well, there was nothing else for it but to join the strange life of the women’s lock hospital. Even on a small island consisting of nothing but canvas tents, there was a lot of work to do. Laundering sheets, cooking dinners, patching and mending. In their free time, they were allowed to go out and catch small animals, and cook them over a fire. Lizzie’s mother was not happy, but she got used to it. A nurse taught her to read and write using whatever scraps of reading matter might be found. They laboured over the sentences, each word requiring new explanations, new story-ways.
Probably one of the greatest evils of tight-lacing lies in the fact that healthful breathing is thereby rendered an impossibility.
Cyclones would hit without warning, turning everything topsy-turvy, sending things scudding into the sea. Then everything must be set up again, lashed down with sturdier rope.
After ten years, the government sent out a letter – On Her Majesty’s Service – announcing that the twin lock hospitals were to be closed. The prisoners were dropped off on the mainland, left to fend for themselves. Lizzie’s mother had nothing but the clothes she wore, and a dainty teacup with a broken handle. She stood on the jetty with her fellow prisoners, uncertain about how to proceed.
The teacup, as it turned out, was her passport to new employment. Hearing of an influx of trained servants, a doctor’s wife had arrived early to choose the best. The one with the teacup caught her eye.
Lizzie’s mother thus returned to domestic service. But she was haunted by the lock hospital and how she got there, and the people who had died on the way, and the government dogs that had snarled at her and all the men who had casually made use of her.
The Lucky Galah Page 11