The Best Australian Stories 2010

by Cate Kennedy

  A searchlight over slaters and dottle beneath Doug Livermore’s lathe, Roland probing with an offcut, brushing back the cobwebs while Mary Jane swept up the diary. No need for a key with a wrist like hers.

  He searched for hours to find her, uncovering just the diary, flung into the millet bin, the clasp broken with a page torn out. Roland could laugh about it now, the misadventure, the betrayal. He should never have boasted about being a writer, of being taken by the muse, though most of what was contained in his round, legible hand had been gossip from the neighbourhood, snide notes about his illiterate brothers and about the Liver-mores themselves, how they served up grits and leftovers and home-made ice-cream that tasted like rancid buttermilk.

  Mary Jane would have found a reason to justify, always defending her family, making claims. Like the one about her father being a Spitfire ace over Europe. Roland had recorded everything, the shuffling in his seat, the crossing of arms, the baulking at his brazen question: ‘Did you really shoot down six Messerschmitts in the war, Mr Livermore?’

  In the end it was his daughter who strafed the air and dived low for the kill. Roland’s confessional a schoolyard auto-da-fé. Grilled for a song to the lock forward in the football team, to the long-limbed school captain with the beautiful eyes of palest blue. Roland saw all of him in the change rooms at the swimming carnival, the curlicues of pubic hair, the Donatello bottom. Scripted everything in black and white with a pencil sketch of him mounting the blocks of the pool. A boy roiling in the blue deeps as his classmates sent the page around. Grabbing and tearing and soiling until the teacher intervened, but enough for Roland to be bullied until his last day of primary school.

  Mary Jane ended up at a different high school with a quicksilver gang and a glam rock induction. Roland had crept up a gutter pipe in the night, spied through a blazing side window and found Gary Glitter posted up and staring out from every wall of Mary Jane’s bedroom. And then at the railway station he saw her, six-inch platforms and electric-blue flares, staked in a huddle of satin-sheen girlfriends, parroting the chorus to ‘Hello, Hello, I’m Back Again.’

  *

  Goodness gracious, hello Mary Jane

  Message sent

  She had pages of friends on Facebook and Roland was just a novice who was sceptical of this new social interface.

  Roland Finkel hello. Goodness gracious Gary Glitter? I should know the song. I’ve added you to my list. It must be 30 years!

  He was Mary Jane’s friend again now. His very first friend on Facebook. Mary Jane’s wall posts were criss-crossed with numerous links to other websites. He would amuse her by posting the YouTube original of ‘Hello, Hello, I’m Back Again.’ Gary poking out his fat tongue, baring his chest alongside his prancing Glitter Band in silver suits and a star-shaped guitar. But then that link to a Christian rock website had him reconsider. Stryper. Petra. Sonic Martyr. Blessthefall.

  He scrolled through those other icons and profile photos. Mary Jane’s friends and family. Even her father was there, a tight smile in an air-force uniform. Roland clicked the publisher’s hypertext. All about a poor boy from Tarcutta, who kept his bare feet warm in winter, the squelch of fresh cow pats in a misty paddock. A memoir about a Spitfire ace. For Doug had worked through his demons. A daredevil blurb about fear at 10,000 feet above France, of low fuel and a spluttering engine and of several mates not returning.

  Roland surveyed a handful of photos but the medals and stripes were thin on the ground. Simply young Doug with a buzz cut and pipe. Such a modest line in honour and glory and Roland felt the hairs tingling. There was regret certainly, to not have believed, but he had only been a kid in that adult zone of repressed urges and sublimation. Instinct and observation, that was the child’s metier, though Roland could see his own failing on that score. Never before had he noticed the colour of Doug Livermore’s eyes, almost identical to those of the school captain, to Gary Glitter himself – an arresting, pale blue.

  Mary Jane had four children. Roland clicked top to bottom. The daughter must be the real rock chick. A photo of her scrambling out of some moshpit for Jesus in a black T-shirt and a dangling crucifix. ‘The praise pit was awesome,’ said the caption and there was a link to rapture.com. There was no Armageddon prophecy from the twin brothers even if they did share a Mormon glaze, their lips thin and unforgiving. The posts from the twins were in scattergun Gen-Y argot, though Roland got the drift about their epic hangovers, towelheads on Cronulla beach (‘Osama don’t surf’) and digs at their kid brother Anthony, twirling around the lounge room to Dancing with the Stars.

  Roland scrolled straight to Anthony. Turning thirteen next month. Roland saw a long-limbed lock forward coming to life, though ballroom dancing was this boy’s favourite thing. He even had a Yahoo link to an AFL player, the celebrity winner from season five of the television dance show. Anthony Koutoufides. Young Anthony’s blog was there too. His own hot-pink heading as infectious as a high five. Mad about Paso Doble. Salsa. Jive. A radiant smile and those blue eyes, not pale but closer to cobalt, like daedal pools of beauty and grace.

  Grace. Despite the knocks, Roland liked to think it was still his to carry. A concern that young Anthony might be tripped up, defeated in a family like that one. Unless he was the one to confound them all. Roland was not asking to be godfather. Not guardian or life coach either, though something more daring than acquaintance or guide. To lure Anthony away from the beaten track. Help find his feet among the stars.

  You must be friends with Anthony Bassenthwaite to see his full profile

  Roland considered the options:

  Add as Friend; Send a Message; View Friends

  He did not say much on the message. An old friend of his mother’s. That was kind of a lie considering he revelled as her enemy for many years after. The claim that his niece was a huge fan of Dancing with the Stars was a falsehood too, though Roland expressed a genuine delight about the many coloured fonts the boy splashed across his blog page. Outasight. That was the lad’s tagline and Roland wished he had a smart one of his own. Unreal, Anthony. Was that still the patois for a young adolescent?

  After three days there was no response. Not from Mary Jane nor Anthony. And then a revelation:

  hi roland funny thats our cats name … well its always been the cats name and this one is roland the third

  i didnt tell my mum about your message though ive heard about you before from mum who reckons you are a writer can you dance too?

  Roland was laughing in his chair. He felt exultant. What a brilliant young fellow. The sense of humour, the curiosity about a man more than thirty years his senior. Only a small obstacle in not being a writer, not since those days in the chook yard at least. Roland had to admit that being an architectural draughtsman sounded a bit pedestrian. Maybe he could keep on pretending. After all, Mary Jane seemed to cherish the idea of his being a writer. Roland even suspected some conflation of guilt about that day in the schoolyard, the day when she unveiled that page from his own diary. So he would send a message to Mary Jane. Ask her to join him and Maxy, the retired song-and-dance man, for lunch in the studio. Don’t forget to bring Anthony.

  Roland was beginning to feel that as the thread played out, everything gathered to heal, that the human world was benevolent at heart and that even Facebook was part of the mystery.

  ‘Hello, hello, tell all of your friends,’ sang Gary Glitter. ‘I’m back, I’m back as a matter of fact, I’m back.’

  The verse was running through Roland’s mind when he logged on again that evening. A matter of fact on his Facebook page.

  The profile photos were gone. The promise was gone.

  Roland has no friends

  The Notorious Mrs K.

  Dorothy Simmons

  Benalla Ensign, 21 October 1871

  Benalla Police Court, Tuesday, 17 October, before Mr Butler, PM

  Ellen Kelly v. William Frost

  Mr McDonnell for complainant, Mr Pow for defendant

  Smile away, smile
away: smarmy bugger that you are. What I ever saw …

  That’s it, keep those weevilly eyes slipping and sliding, every which way but mine. Now why would that be? Come on, Bill, look at me. Fine upstanding citizen like yourself, all done up in your best Sunday-go-to-meeting suit: surely you can look a poor widow woman in the eye …

  Can’t, can you? Not so long, though, Billy boy, not so long since you couldn’t keep your eyes off me, never mind your hands. Look at you: hair all neatly combed over your bald spot, pink snags of fingers squeezing your hat half to death: scared, aren’t you? Scared your lady customers won’t be coming to you for their best topside roast any more, isn’t that it? Real butcher’s hands that they are too, sawing the mouths off your poor horses, reefing them in to plunge and leap and make you look flash. Jesus, if you’d been on your own two feet that first time I saw you, we’d not be here this day. But you were up on that lovely grey mare, spitting image of my Red’s Misty …

  Those were the days. Red on Misty and me on my own Nellie, cantering down the Melbourne road to St Francis’s church at first light, and the priest stood smiling at the altar; riding back with a ring on my finger and the whole world shining. Those were the days … Every man and his dog out celebrating the independence of Port Phillip, the independence of us: singing ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,’ racing the last mile home …

  My own Tipperary man, Red Kelly: and a thousand times the man you’ll ever be, Bill Frost. Poor soul, the grog buried him long before I ever did … but even blind drunk, even when he couldn’t have bitten his own thumb, he’d never have come creepy-crawling around like you, Billy boy. What, ten quid and a horse if I’d drop the case? That’s all you thought I was worth? Or never mind me, your own baby daughter: ten lousy quid?

  Forgotten, have you? Well, I haven’t: galloping into our yard, your horse in a lather and yourself the same, couldn’t wait to get your hands on me. Soft touch that I was; not like that Bridget Cotter. Hard as nails, that one. Only one kind of screwing for her, screwing a ring onto her fat finger …

  There she is, set down next to you: Mrs Lady Butcher ma’am, with her paisley shawl and her shiny black beads. Did you ever see the like? Mutton, mutton dressed as lamb. Stick a sprig of mint in her gob and you’d never know the difference. Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean … and so between them both, you see, they scraped the platter clean … between them both, hear that, Billy boy? It takes two; tell that to your side of lamb dressed up in her best bib and tucker. As for that poker-faced bitch set next to her, that’s the same constipated cow as took one look at me coming down Bridge Street and sent all her good lady friends scuttling across the road, hands over their mouths like I was some sort of contagious disease …

  No surprises, of course. Annie, with your moaning and groaning about what I was in for, did you think I didn’t know? That I needed my own daughter to tell me? Look at them: just look at them with their corsets and their net gloves and their lace collars, they’re flesh and blood for all that. Same as me. ‘Fallen’ woman? Tripped is more like it, and I’ll bloody trip him …

  Yesterday we had an adjournment. Big word for putting off. Had they nothing better to do? But Mr Pow had witnesses to call. Conjure, more like. Mine have come of their own accord, I’ve had no need of adjournment. Get on with it, that’s what I say.

  The entire congregation’s here: gents all shaved and spat and polished, ladies with their frills and fringes, sighing and sucking and shaking their heads. The McBeans, that McCormick woman, Whelans, Halls: that Constable Flood. Now there’s another smarmy bugger …

  It’s a wonder the ladies would be seen in the same room. The Notorious Mrs Kelly: I could be catching. Like the pregnancy, I hear that’s contagious. Jesus, the looks of some of them, it’d want to be an immaculate bloody contagion. As if the Victorian police aren’t righteous enough without their womenfolk setting themselves up in holy orders, holier than thou or me or any bloody one.

  Steady, Nell, steady. Calm yourself. What’s the only difference between you and them? You took a man at his word. More fool you.

  How would they cope, with their picket fences and their geraniums and their doilies, how would they cope with snakes and poddy calves and clearing land? Never mind raising a family. Oh, Ned does his damndest when he’s there; but most of the time he’s not.

  It’s only natural. A woman needs a man, a man needs a woman. Somebody to have and to hold. To lose him … cuts the heart out of you.

  You carry on, of course. No choice. But a hand with the fencing or the splitting gives you one less thing to worry about; a squeeze of your hand or a smiley word brightens you up; and at the end of the day it’s easy to close your eyes just for a minute, let him stroke your hair back from your forehead …

  At least I know how to love. Which is more that this congregation of buttoned lips and boned bodices ever will. A gold band and a cold hand: what they get and what they give. Oh, and reputation. Pass the reputation please. Pillars of the church, every last one of them. No wonder our constables are the miserable mongrels they are, squashed up next to a bloody pillar all night.

  I could have been Mrs Frost. Mrs Frost, she’d have had to be a pillar too, swapping recipes and pruning roses, tittupping along the road on some sway-backed lady’s hack. Jesus, I wouldn’t last a day! No, I’m well out of it. But that doesn’t let you off the hook, Billy boy; bad enough that an innocent bairn gets branded bastard instead of you. Still can’t look me in the eye, can you? Well, I’ll look you, I’ll damn well make sure at least baby Ellen gets a fair go ...

  A fair go: all we’ve ever wanted. Same as anybody else.

  Adjournment: when was the last time they adjourned sooling the law onto the Kellys? And what sort of a law is it when you give a man a bite to eat and a taste of whisky and next thing the lickspittle rat’s reported you for selling grog? Ah but the Law, the big bloody ‘L’ Law, the Law’s for everybody. Not just for squatters with their long acres. The Law is set down in black and white; it’s printed out in the Matrimonial Statute. God help the child, she’s yours as well as mine, Bill. The least you can do is provide for her.

  Will the first witness for the plaintiff please step up …

  Head up, Annie, love, that’s it! Hand on the Bible, tell them the truth. That’s it.

  Poor soul, struggling along without her Alex, and their first baby dead in her cot. Like my own Mary Jane, all those years ago. You never forget, never. I can still see the wee face, still feel how cold … but you carry on. You have to.

  No point just moping till the boys get home. No point in just giving up the ghost. You’ll get no thanks for that. Ask Ned. If the Kellys know nothing else, they know to stand up for themselves because sure as hell nobody else is going to. It’s like the song: Oh, what can a man do when the world is his foe … but bend the brow bravely and go away far, to follow good fortune, and get home in the war …

  It’s a war all right.

  Thank you, Mrs Gunn, you may stand down.

  Ma knew it’d be like this. I warned her, I did. You sure you want to go through with it, the naming, the shaming? I’ve no call to be shamed, says she. I’m a Quinn and a Kelly and proud of it. Dear Ma: the straight back of her, chin up, spark in the eye: no stopping her once she gets that spark. Thought you were on to a good thing, didn’t you, Bill Frost? God’s gift to women, she’d be so pleased, so grateful … no. Not my mother. Not Ellen Kelly.

  A congregation, Ma called it: and so it is. That Bridget’s face would curdle milk. If you didn’t know better, you’d think Ma was the defendant, not the complainant. The complainant, Mrs Kelly. Kelly. That’s it. The name. When’re they ever going to listen to a Kelly? She’d have been better off taking the ten quid.

  Maggie says it’s our new sister we’ve to think of, little Ellen, that the child’s not to blame for her father. Maggie’s Ma all over again. Heart of a lion. I get too agitated …

  Why does everything always have to go wrong? Alex, you f
ool, why’d you have to get caught? Three years: how am I going to manage for three years? Women can’t shift loads and fell trees. What am I going to do?

  All Ma wanted was a man about the place again: bit of comfort for her, bit of help with the boys, bit of security. Did everything for him, cooked, stitched, gave him a warm bed; bugger didn’t know when he was well off. Damn him to hell for the liar and cheat that he is …

  The nerve of her: I could never speak out like that. But that’s her. Any time her boys were in trouble, she was there too, tearing strips off whoever was there to tear strips off. Got them off more than once as well. But I’ve never seen her so set on winning as she is this time …

  God, I wish Ned was here. He’d make them take notice. To think of him, him and my Alex, eating their hearts out inside those cold grey walls: it’s enough to make you weep. Weep: women must weep. Sometimes I think that’s all they bloody do …

  Where’s your fighting spirit, Annie? That’s Ma. Or Maggie: we can’t take this lying down, Annie. Too bloody right, goes Ma, that’s what got me into this mess in the first place. You have to laugh …

  Dear Ma. Look at her now, chin up, taking in every word Mr McDonnell’s saying. Matrimonial Statute: the legal responsibility of the defendant …