The Starlings

by Vivienne Kelly

  To dramatise the story of the brothers Balyn and Balan was no simple task. It was rich in pathos and tragedy, and it included two full-scale battles, lots of hand-to-hand fighting and smiting, various damsels, the appearance of the Holy Grail, and the invisible knight Garlon. (At least Garlon would be easy.) There were also one hundred sweetly singing ladies and one hundred richly dressed knights, but they were not essential to the action, which was fortunate, as I had no such extras at my disposal. I was considering how to bring the story within my range when my father knocked at the door. As was his custom, he opened it immediately after knocking. He frowned at me. I knew I was looking guilty. It was a reflex. I couldn’t help it where my father was concerned—probably no more than he could help frowning.

  ‘Want to go down to the park and have a kick?’

  ‘Not really,’ I murmured.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’m a bit busy, Dad.’

  He looked at the figurines scattered over the carpet. ‘Busy?’

  I felt myself colouring.

  ‘What’s all of this?’

  ‘They’re my Heroes.’

  ‘How can they be your heroes?’

  ‘They’re my Heroes of the Cosmos. That’s their name.’

  My father’s face twisted oddly. ‘Nicky, you need to look around you for heroes. Lots of people are proper heroes. Footy players are heroes.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. (This was what I habitually said when I didn’t know, or didn’t agree.) I wondered what on earth he was talking about. Footy players were big, sweaty, galumphing men. Heroes were magical and wondrous; they achieved miraculous things in extraordinary distant worlds.

  ‘So. What about that kick?’

  ‘I’m just working something out.’

  ‘What sort of something?’

  Why could I not explain to my father that I was engaged in a project requiring concentration? Why did he so reliably reduce me to a state of stumbling apology? The words would never come when I needed them. Somewhere in me dwelled a velvet-capped Arthurian lad who could say, with weary grace, Good my lord, I beg of you release me from this imposition, as methinks I lack the time or the wherewithal to accompany you. Instead I said, ‘Nothing, really.’

  ‘Well, if it’s nothing, perhaps you could take some time off from it? Nicky, you spend far too much time indoors. You need some fresh air and exercise. Come on.’

  My father strode down to the park, football under his arm, while I trailed behind. There was an oval there, near the swings and slides and sandpit where as a smaller boy I had enjoyed playing. I knew exactly what would happen next. First we jogged around the oval to loosen up. Then we positioned ourselves twenty metres apart and kicked the ball to each other. We were supposed to catch it, too (mark was the correct term), but I couldn’t because I couldn’t catch anything to save my life, and my father couldn’t catch my pathetic passes, which skidded off to the side and were all I could manage. As this happy pastime unfolded my father became more annoyed and I became tenser, afraid that I would cry—the unforgivable transgression.

  I didn’t know why I cried so often. It was almost always my father who caused this behaviour; and of course it was my father who deplored it. He found my sissiness utterly dispiriting. I had heard my parents discussing this trait in me: my mother called it sensitivity. That was how I liked to think of it, too. My father said I was spoiled. My mother said he was being ridiculous. He said she was encouraging me in babyish behaviour, and that no good would come of it.

  Sometimes, however, my reasons for crying were harder to pin down. Sometimes, even when my father was absent, if something unexpected or threatening happened, panic would roll up my throat, choking me. It felt like a furry tennis ball; it lodged in my gullet and obstructed my breath and forced me into great, gasping sobs. My mother had told me to breathe deeply when this happened, but if I couldn’t breathe at all (as I tried to explain to her) there was no point in telling me to breathe deeply. She also told me to think calm thoughts, which seemed equally impossible. The closest I could manage was to think of the words I liked. Desperately I would repeat them to myself: apostrophise, obsequious, frangible, equivocate, cardinal. The Lambs provided me with many new words to relish, among them insurmountable, conjuration, antipathy, blackamoor, prodigious, ruminating, enraptured. Lancelyn Green was also rich in vocabulary: dolorous, enchanter, treacherous, chivalry, damsel, pavilion. These and others made a music that sang in my head. My fascination had nothing to do with the meaning of the word (which sometimes I didn’t know): it was all a question of how it looked, how it sounded, the feel of it on my tongue.

  If I kept still and closed my eyes, these spells would sometimes pass relatively swiftly. If they did not pass they produced dizziness and nausea, and turned into the episodes known as ‘Nicky’s turns’, dreaded by my family for their intensity and unpredictability. These became full-blown periods of illness, accompanied by fever and migraine, impossible to control (no matter what my father thought). The only way I could get through them was to go to bed and try to sleep. The doctor said urbanely that I was a funny little chap and that I would grow out of it. So far I hadn’t.

  On this occasion I managed to fend off unmanly conduct. Then my father gave me several lessons on how to kick the ball. See, Nicky? You just have to hold it properly, drop it straight, and the rest follows. No, not like that. Look, watch me. He trod back to his previous position and we tried a few more kicks, and they were no better than the last ones. He gave up in disgust. It was always the same charade, and why my father persisted with it I could not imagine.

  The park lay between our house and Grandpa’s; visits to both were often combined. I remembered what my mother had said at breakfast. ‘Could we go to see Grandpa?’

  ‘No,’ said my father irritably, before he remembered my mother’s request. ‘Yes, all right,’ he said, just as irritably. ‘Off we go.’

  ‘Will Rose be there?’ I asked, trotting beside him.

  ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Rose was there to look after Didie. There’s no reason for her to be there now.’

  When we arrived at Grandpa’s house we saw that Rose’s old navy-blue Datsun was parked in the driveway. My spirits bounded. I ran around the back ahead of my father: we never used the front door here. The drive curved around behind the house, where there was a tall, dark-green picket fence, and a gate, which I opened. Rose and Grandpa were sitting in the large back room, whose spread of floor-to-ceiling glass doors and windows looked out over the garden of which Didie had been so proud. The house was old, but some years earlier the back section had been renovated and extended: another room had been thrown out to provide a large new living area adjoining the kitchen. Didie had referred to this new room as the garden room, and it looked out over the lily pond and a long curving bed of standard roses that had been her particular delight. I still have a photograph of Didie standing among her roses: her beaming face shines forth her pride and she looks altogether nicer than I recall her being.

  I ran to the glass sliding doors and opened them.

  ‘Nicky!’ said Rose, opening her arms. I ran into them and hugged her.

  ‘Nicky and I were down at the oval, having a kick of the footy,’ said my father from the doorway, by way of explanation, ‘so we thought we’d drop in.’

  Grandpa seemed pleased to see us and Rose bustled around getting cups of tea for the adults and Milo for me. The new jigsaw Grandpa had mentioned was of a ship being dragged by a tug against a sunset so bright that I thought at first the ship itself was on fire. Some years later I came across it in a Turner exhibition and with an emotional lurch recognised in The Fighting Téméraire the picture whose edges Rose and I began to string together that afternoon. It was a thousand-piece puzzle, bigger and more complex than anything I had attempted before. I was a little intimidated, but Rose said I would manage it with no trouble at all, whether or not she was there to help me. Normally, by edict of Didie, jigsaws had to be worked on in the dark a
nd rarely used dining room, but to my surprise we were now allowed to set the puzzle up on the big polished table in the garden room. I did not comment, but wondered whether other prohibitions would in time be relaxed as a consequence of Didie’s death.

  While Rose and I worked on sorting edges and colours, Grandpa and my father were immersed in friendly antagonism about the game on Easter Monday, when their teams were to play each other. Often, when Hawthorn and Melbourne collided, they went to the game together. My father suggested this, but Grandpa declined.

  On the way home, my father said, without much hope, ‘How about coming with me on Monday, Nicky? I didn’t want to say so to Grandpa, but we’re a shoo-in on this one.’

  ‘Er,’ I said, casting about for a good excuse. ‘Can I think about it?’

  We walked home in silence.

  I might have agreed to go if Grandpa would be there too. His presence diminished the horror of football afternoons for me. He was interested in the game, and happy to explain aspects of it to me. But he didn’t shout at the umpire, or quarrel with non-Hawthorn supporters. He didn’t become so absorbed in the action that he forgot I was there.

  ‘Nicky and I went to see Dan,’ said my father over dinner that evening.

  My mother beamed. ‘That was good of you, Frank. How did he seem?’

  ‘Good,’ said my father. He glanced at my mother, and I suppose he could tell she wanted something more. ‘He thinks Flower will play on Monday,’ he volunteered.

  My mother made a small disappointed noise and went back to her dinner.

  Flower did play on Easter Monday, but my father was dismayed to read in the paper on the morning of the game that Leigh Matthews was injured. Various Hawthorn players commanded my father’s affection and respect, but in his estimation none surpassed Lethal Leigh. Lethal was a magnificent player but also a perfect gentleman; he was special. All the Hawks were special, of course, and all were gentlemen, like John Winneke, who had once played for Hawthorn and had subsequently enjoyed a stellar legal career. My father was fond of citing him as an example of the extraordinary talent typically shown by Hawthorn footballers: Winneke was a Royal Commissioner! he would say proudly; and, later, Winneke was a judge! But Matthews represented the zenith, the culmination of every possible quality, and my father would defend him to the death. He did frequently need to defend him, too, since supporters of other clubs had been known to call Matthews a thug and worse. For Lethal to be unavailable was catastrophic.

  ‘We’re without Buckenara and Judge, too,’ he said, looking up discontentedly from the paper.

  My mother murmured in a vaguely consoling way.

  ‘Who’s this Dunstall fellow, anyway?’ said my father in disgust, stabbing at the offending paragraph with his buttery knife. ‘It’s his first game. He looks pudgy to me. So he kicked ninety-seven goals in Coorparoo last year. Where the hell’s Coorparoo, I ask you?’

  ‘He might turn out to be very good,’ said my mother.

  ‘Pigs might fly,’ said my father.

  In the event, Jason Dunstall kicked three goals, and in spite of Matthews’ absence Hawthorn thrashed Melbourne by sixty-eight points. My father rollicked home in triumph, and Coorparoo was suddenly a very good place.

  ‘You missed a great game, Nicky,’ he told me over dinner.

  I tried to look sorry.

  ‘Brereton slotted five,’ he said, a rapt expression on his face. ‘That man is a genius.’

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Nicky,’ he said. ‘We’re not playing next week, and the Hawks are in Sydney the weekend after, worse luck. But after that we play Richmond at Princes Park. Let’s go to that one, hey? You’ll enjoy that.’

  ‘Um,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure what I’ve got on that weekend.’

  I very seldom had anything on at the weekend, which my father knew perfectly well. He cast me a look of exasperation. ‘The way we played today,’ he said. ‘My God, the way we played today, we—we’ll annihilate them.’

  ‘Nicky,’ called my mother.

  It was Saturday afternoon and my father was at the football. To his annoyance, he wasn’t watching Hawthorn. The Mighty Hawks weren’t playing this weekend: there was an interstate match on Tuesday night in which they would play a team from Adelaide. This would not be part of the regular footy competition and, although my father planned to watch the match on television, for him it lacked the significance of the home-and-away rounds. So he was making do with Richmond and St Kilda at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the vast arena where the grand final was always played.

  Pippa was out with friends. I was in my bedroom, poring over my copy of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table and wondering whether Zarlok’s talents would be better used as Arthur or as Launcelot.

  My mother appeared at the door. ‘Nicky, I’m going to take some things around for Grandpa. Do you want to come?’

  ‘What sort of things?’ I asked.

  ‘Couple of casseroles, a pie. Things he can heat up for dinner. He said he had a new jigsaw. Do you want to come with me and give it a go?’

  ‘I’ve started it,’ I said. ‘It’s a ship and a sunset. It’s a biggie.’

  ‘Well, then. Coming?’

  My grandfather welcomed us. The jigsaw was where Rose and I had left it on the table. We hadn’t finished sorting its edges, and I set to. I could see already that the waves and the sky were going to present problems. My mother and grandfather went into the kitchen and boiled a kettle: I could hear the murmur of their voices. Then they came out with mugs of tea and sat with me.

  ‘Look, Nicky,’ said my mother helpfully. ‘Here’s a corner. Top left.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, sliding it out of her reach. I liked to find the corners myself.

  The conversation was desultory and centred on the jigsaw.

  Then Grandpa said with an effort, ‘Jenny, you know Didie wanted you to have her jewels.’

  My mother’s face softened. ‘For Pippa and me, I know. We talked about it.’

  ‘Why don’t I give them to you now?’

  ‘There’s no need, Dad.’

  ‘But there’s no point in putting it off, either. Let’s do it now.’

  He brought in Didie’s jewellery box, which I had often seen on her dressing table. My mother sighed as she placed it in front of her on the table and opened it. It was covered with velvet, which had once been a brilliant royal blue but had now faded and lost some of its nap. I peeked across and was disappointed. I had hoped her jewels might mean the sort of pirate’s treasure a dragon might guard: chunky gold chains, flashing gobstopper rubies and emeralds. But there were only some rings, a string of pearls, a few brooches. Small, everyday earrings. I had seen Didie wearing most of these, especially the pearls, which to my eye seemed worn and dull.

  My mother picked up one of the rings and turned it around. ‘She loved this,’ she said, her voice breaking.

  ‘Yes,’ said Grandpa. ‘Well. She wanted you and Pippa to have all these.’

  She ran the pearls through her fingers. ‘I won’t give them to Pip straightaway,’ she said. ‘I’ll let her have something small, but I’ll save the real things for when she can properly appreciate them. Fifteen’s too young.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Grandpa.

  My mother picked up another ring, then a fine gold chain. ‘Dad,’ she said. ‘Where’s the little diamond brooch?’

  ‘Which, dear?’

  ‘You know. It belonged to Grandma. It was a sort of diamond spray, very delicate.’

  Grandpa looked into the box. ‘It must be there, Jen. Everything’s there.’

  ‘No,’ said my mother. ‘No, Dad, there’s one thing missing. You must know the one I mean. A little brooch, silver, maybe white gold. With diamonds in a sort of spray thingy. It was a special brooch. She only wore it sometimes, when she got dressed up. It belonged to Granny.’

  ‘Ah,’ said my grandfather, apparently remembering something. ‘I’m sorry, dear,
I’m forgetting. I believe that’s the one she gave to Rose.’

  My mother stared at him. ‘To Rose?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Grandpa.

  ‘Dad, that’s not possible.’

  ‘It’s true,’ said my grandfather, with some hauteur. ‘Rose was very good to your mother; your mother was very fond of her.’

  My mother ran her fingers through her curls. I could see that she was making a great effort not to be cross with Grandpa.

  ‘No, no. Dad, you don’t understand. Not this brooch. Didie would never have given away this brooch. She’d promised it to me. It was mine. It belonged to Granny; it was an heirloom, a family thing. She never would have done that.’

  Grandpa looked obstinate. ‘She may have become confused.’

  My mother made a tut noise midway between indignation and disbelief. ‘Didie wasn’t confused, Dad. She never got confused. She was on top of things right to the end. I can’t understand how this could have happened.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll have to ask Rose for it back, then. So embarrassing. But she’s a nice girl, I’m sure she’ll understand.’

  My grandfather’s voice became louder. ‘I forbid it,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I absolutely forbid you to approach Rose and ask her any such thing. It is a mean-minded and disgraceful suggestion and I will not tolerate it. The care—the loving care—she gave your mother was extraordinary and whatever—whatever Didie gave her, chose to give her, that was something she deserved. Thoroughly deserved. She had to do terrible things for your mother. Terrible.’

  His face had turned a strange purplish colour. The air in the room had changed: I was dismayed but enthralled. I had never heard Grandpa speak like that; I don’t think my mother had, either. I thought for a moment she might burst into tears, but she held on. Her face became blank, quite unreadable.