The Starlings

by Vivienne Kelly

  I went out to the upstairs extension, on the landing above the stairs. ‘Hello,’ I said, experimentally.

  ‘Hello,’ said a male voice, deep and rich. ‘Is that Nicky?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Hi, Nicky,’ said the voice. ‘Can I speak to your mum, please?’

  ‘Who shall I say is calling?’ I responded, as I had been taught.

  ‘It’s Ben,’ he said. ‘I’m a colleague of your mum’s. Is she around?’

  ‘I’ll get her,’ I said. I put the handset down and looked around me.

  ‘Mummy?’ I shouted. No answer.

  I picked up the handset again and said, ‘I’ll have to go and find her.’ I thought it would be nice if Ben, whoever he was, said not to bother, but he didn’t. I trudged down the stairs.

  My mother was sorting clothes in the laundry, which was down the back of the house and not near the telephone.

  ‘There’s a guy called Ben on the phone,’ I said.

  She gave me a wild look, as if I’d told her King Arthur was at the front door. ‘Ben?’ she said.

  When I was back upstairs and heading towards my bedroom it occurred to me that I should put the handset down, as my mother was taking the call downstairs. I picked it up—with every intention of hanging up—but as I did so I heard a voice that both was and wasn’t my mother’s.

  ‘I’ve told you,’ she was saying tremulously, ‘you mustn’t ever, ever, ring me here. Not ever.’

  The voice at the other end—the deep, rich voice of Ben—said, ‘My gorgeous girl, I couldn’t help it.’

  I stood on the landing, holding the receiver, staring at it. I was electrified. I couldn’t hang up now, because they would know I’d heard them. But I couldn’t not hang up either. I suppose this panicky indecision amounted only to a few seconds, but I have never forgotten the moment and my memory has it lasting interminably. Then, in despair, I put the receiver down, very gently, on the little telephone table, raced into my bedroom, and closed the door.

  Some few minutes later I heard my mother’s footsteps ascending the stairs and the quiet click of the receiver being replaced on the telephone. She paused outside my door, but then I heard her moving away and going downstairs again.

  After a while I eased my door open and again went down the stairs, barefoot and quietly. I could hear a strange noise. I tiptoed towards the laundry, where my mother had returned. She was sitting on the laundry basket, her head in her hands, sobbing.

  I didn’t know what to do. My mother was crying, and I felt I ought to have run straight to her and tried to comfort her: had I been a nicer or more outgoing child, I suppose I would have done so. I watched her for a few seconds. I stepped away and sped back to my bedroom.

  I think of this episode now with some wonderment and shame. I think I was not a cold or unaffectionate child; I loved my mother and, as is probably clear by now, depended on her extravagantly. But I was embarrassed by her behaviour: sitting sobbing on laundry baskets was not something mothers did, and my own mother had no business doing it. My embarrassment—combined with sudden, unexpected rancour—prevented me from trying to console her.

  *

  On the Queen’s Birthday long weekend the Hawks were playing on Monday against North Melbourne. It was a big match for all kinds of reasons, and was to be played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. My father and Grandpa and I were all going: Grandpa was a member and was taking us as his guests into the members’ enclosure. Every year Grandpa invited my father there, usually for a Melbourne–Hawthorn match, but the MCG Melbourne–Hawthorn match this year was scheduled for a weekend later in June during which my father would be away at a conference in Sydney, so they had settled on this match instead. This was the first time I had been included in this ritual outing, and I was deeply ambivalent. On the one hand it was a sign of my expanding maturity, a kind of footy bar mitzvah. On the other, it was yet another match to be endured. I knew it was meant to be a major treat for both of us, and I knew, because it had been drummed into me, that it was outstandingly good of Grandpa to take us both. But I was as uninterested in the members’ enclosure at the MCG as I was in football in general. Even Grandpa, who knew what a trial my father’s football obsession was for me, did not understand that an invitation to the members’ was not a cause for rejoicing.

  The thing about North Melbourne was that their coach was John Kennedy, and the thing about John Kennedy was that he was Hawthorn royalty. Well, ex-Hawthorn royalty. His defection to North Melbourne near the end of the previous season had caught Hawks supporters by surprise and had shaken my father.

  ‘Thirty-four years,’ he said. ‘Thirty-four years a Hawk, and he’s thrown it all away.’

  It was inexplicable to him. Kennedy was one of those figures before whose name The Great was reverently uttered, as in The Great Michael Tuck, The Great Leigh Matthews, The Great Peter Hudson. He had famously won the club’s best and fairest four times in his first five years as a player; he had captained the team for five years; he had coached Hawthorn to three premierships, including their first, in 1961. Why would such a man turn his back on old glories, old loyalties?

  The defection left him unsure where he stood. Kennedy was a hero and deserved unflinching support; but Kennedy was a turncoat and must be cast out. Fundamental questions were involved—about love, fidelity, and honour, about what it took. My father was used to knowing what he felt about such matters, and he did not like the emotional and ethical ambiguity with which the situation confronted him. It was as if the North Pole had attacked his moral compass.

  This was the first match in which John Kennedy was to coach his new team against the Hawks; and, to add insult to injury (or so my father said), his son, whose name was confusingly also John Kennedy, would be playing in the Hawthorn team. It was as bad as Balyn and Balan. Second place on the ladder was up for grabs. The surge of emotional drama propelling this match could not have been more intense.

  My own feelings were more personal in nature but not less powerful, I think, than my father’s. This would be the first match I’d attend wearing my glasses. I knew I would be expected to respond more knowledgably, and I was nervous about my capacity to do this. The glasses made a big difference, but I wasn’t convinced that they’d transform me into a person who understood what was happening on a footy field. I thought it would be a great relief if I were to come down with a virulent disease on Monday morning, but I guessed the odds were against this. I considered faking, but I knew that Grandpa would be disappointed; and anyway it was no good trying to fake when my father was around.

  Late on Saturday night, Pippa slipped into my bedroom.

  ‘I’m going to do it again,’ she said, softly. ‘Go out, I mean. You don’t have to do anything, Nicky. I’m just telling you.’

  I had been talking to Fleshbane when she knocked, and my first thought as she opened my door had been to hide him under the bedclothes. I couldn’t see that there was anything wrong with talking to Fleshbane, but I didn’t necessarily want my sister to know that was what I did. But I saw from her face that for once she wasn’t in a teasing mood.

  I hadn’t told Pippa about the telephone call from the man called Ben, or about my mother crying in the laundry. I’d thought about it, but something stopped me. To hear my mother speaking in that tone, to hear the intimacy of the responding voice, and to hear her weeping, had jarred me terribly. I intuited rather than comprehended that something was badly wrong, and, since I didn’t know how to set it right, I preferred not to talk about it—which might make it seem more real—or even to think about it. Instead, I locked it away in my mind.

  Pippa slipped out through my window and returned so quietly that night, that I wasn’t aware of her movements at all.

  Grandpa drove us to the MCG in his beautiful old Rover and he and my father talked football all the way in. I’d wondered if Grandpa might mention Rose: in fact I’d even wondered if Rose might come with us. But it was all footy. Grandpa, who liked to stir my fat
her, said he thought North might win; my father scoffed. Grandpa discussed the miraculous talents of North Melbourne’s star Krakouer brothers; my father said that good old Knights and Judge and Matthews were pretty well unbeatable on their day, not to mention Wallace, of course, and how about Buckenara and Byrne and Eade. I sat in the back and gave an occasional friendly pat to Brutum in my parka pocket.

  Being in the members’ enclosure meant that we had proper seats and were under cover; and the chips were good quality, too. My father asked me several times during the first five minutes of the game whether wearing glasses was making a difference, and each time I said yes, it was. This was true, so far as it went: I could read the scoreboard, and the players’ numbers. It didn’t mean, however, that I had the faintest notion of what was happening. I found I still needed to employ the old strategy of imitating what everybody else was doing. If my father roared and leapt to his feet, so did I. Or perhaps I punched the air, or said Yes with joyful emphasis. It would not do to be too exact. Rather, I tried to offer interpretations. If my father slumped and shook his head, I gestured in despair. If he gave a roar of indignation, I growled softly, or said Oh, no. It was wearing, especially since it was possible, amid all the noise and chaos, to misconstrue emotions. It wasn’t good, when an opposing player kicked a goal, to be punching the air.

  My father stopped asking me about my glasses and concentrated on the game, which was a relief. By the end of the first quarter Hawthorn—we—were about four goals ahead. He was contemptuous of the Kangaroos, and appealed to Grandpa: ‘Playing like schoolboys, aren’t they?’

  Grandpa held that North would settle and improve in the second quarter. This they did, but at half-time the Hawks were still comfortably ahead. Then things tightened. At the beginning of the last quarter we were only one goal ahead and my father was looking grim. Then the lead changed seven times; three times the scores were level. My father was rocking and making small moaning noises. Very late in the quarter, the scores were dead level, sixteen goals eleven points apiece. And then my father (along with half the rest of the crowd) sprang to his feet, shouting with all his might, Kenny—yes—Kenny—carn Kenny! Ken Judge—number 1—The Great Ken Judge—had snapped a goal. A roar surged around me. Hawthorn led!

  I desperately wished to feel some inkling of the emotions that weekly wracked my father and turned his life into a shimmering feast of joy or a murderously arid desert. Now, especially, I wanted my heart to stir; when I leapt to my feet, I wanted to be leaping because I felt I wanted to leap, and not because my father had done so. All was madness and joy and yet I could view it only from outside. The more I longed to be whipped into passion, the more such passion evaded my grasp. The beast that was the crowd roared, snatched my father, plunged its claws into him, lifted him and tossed him through the glittering air. Me it ignored. My father was, I could tell, scoured by hope and fear and tension, out of which might flower the most profound delight. I looked at his face and all I could think was that I would never rise to such ecstasy.

  And then, before we knew what was happening, Phil Krakouer, one half of the miraculous Krakouer brothers, kicked a brilliant reply.

  Scores were level again.

  And then—the siren.

  The match was drawn.

  An eerie silence drifted over the ground; then the crowd murmured and keened in a strange prolonged grieving wail. People were bewildered. My father’s face was ashen. Grandpa (was he a covert Hawk after all?) put his head in his hands. We hadn’t won, but we hadn’t lost. No celebration; no despair. A giant emptiness seemed to possess the entire ground. I gripped Brutum and wondered what was the right thing to say.

  Grandpa stayed for dinner. In the past he had gone home to Didie after the annual visit to the members’ enclosure. I wondered if Rose was waiting for him at his house. Their house, I supposed it would be now. Since the disastrous afternoon tea the previous weekend, nothing more had been said in our house about Grandpa and Rose. My mother had cooked roast lamb and there was much conversation about the match, both Grandpa and my father (having partly recovered from his initial dumb misery) making good headway with a bottle of claret and giving vigorous accounts of the highlights. Everything was going perfectly well.

  ‘Now, Jenny,’ Grandpa said. ‘Rose and I would like you all to come over for a meal one day next weekend. Saturday dinner, Sunday lunch—whatever suits. How about that?’

  He smiled at my mother, whose face had become rigid. I thought regretfully that he obviously hadn’t understood the business about the best china.

  ‘That’s very nice of you, Dad,’ said my mother, floundering.

  ‘Then you’ll come?’ he said. ‘It would mean a lot to Rose and to me.’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, with an effort. ‘Dad, could we perhaps go a bit slower? This is hard for me, and I’m just not ready, really. I mean, it’s not that I’m permanently opposed to, well, to anything, but can we go a bit slower?’

  He looked disappointed, and started to speak, but she interrupted. ‘Anyway, can we perhaps talk about it a bit later?’

  ‘I don’t mind talking about it now,’ said Pippa.

  ‘I don’t see why we can’t discuss this in front of the children, Jen,’ said Grandpa, with determination. ‘Pippa and Nicky are quite old enough to know what’s happening.’

  My mother looked agonised. ‘I’m not trying to keep anything from Pippa and Nicky,’ she declared. ‘Dad, that’s not the point. I’m just asking for a little more time. Please.’

  He started to speak, but she cut in again.

  ‘Dad, my mother died. Okay? I loved my mother and she died. I want to grieve for her before I start to think about anything else.’

  ‘I trust you’re not implying that I didn’t love your mother.’

  ‘No, of course not. I’m just asking for time. Please, please, don’t rush me over this.’

  Grandpa fell silent for a little while and then turned to Pippa with some question about school. But the dinner did not regain its genial atmosphere.

  The senior school put out a monthly magazine, and this found its way to our home through both Pippa and my mother. It was a stapled photocopied affair, and its attempts at journalism were rudimentary, but I enjoyed looking at it, because I liked to think that I was beginning to understand the workings of the senior school, which I would experience myself one exultant day, instead of being a tadpole in the junior school. I picked it up one night in the kitchen and flipped through it.

  I stopped on page three, which had a photo of Mr Ben Bloomberg, the recently appointed head of Art. I squinted at the photo, which was fuzzy. Mr Ben Bloomberg wore black-rimmed glasses and was fuzzily dark-haired and lanky, and that was about all you could tell of him. He was posing with a Year Twelve student who had won some art competition. I remembered Pippa asking me if I’d heard of Mr Bloomberg; I remembered the deep voice on the phone. Here he was. Mr Ben Bloomberg, who called my mother his gorgeous girl and made her cry. A plume of bewildered resentment mounted in me and I turned the page.

  Here I discovered pictures of a charity ball the Year Twelve students had organised. Again, it was hard to see anything beyond dark suits and blurred pale party frocks, but the caption under one photograph said it was of Adam Pascoe and Fran Hunter. I’d met Fran Hunter, though only briefly, because she was the older sister of Pippa’s friend Gina. I thought about this for a while, but I couldn’t make much sense of it. I was certain Pippa’s night escapades were connected with Adam Pascoe, though it continued to puzzle me that a connection could exist between my insignificant sister and the blazing star that was Adam Pascoe. Gina and Pippa had been inseparable since Year Seven. If Fran Hunter and Adam were going out together (if they were an item, as Pippa termed it), presumably Pippa had come across Adam at Gina’s place. My life at this point presented me with so many puzzles that I felt relieved at having sorted out this comparatively minor one.

  My mother also noticed this photograph, and asked my sister during din
ner whether Fran and Adam were an item.

  ‘I guess so,’ said Pippa.

  ‘I thought so,’ said my mother neutrally.

  Pippa had a good ear for deliberate neutrality. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing at all. Why should I mean anything?’

  ‘It sounded like it.’

  ‘All I meant, Pip, was that I’ve seen them together sometimes.’

  ‘You’ve got Adam in one of your classes, haven’t you?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘What do you think of him?’ asked Pippa. ‘Do you like him?’

  ‘You know I never discuss my students with you.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to have a discussion,’ said Pippa, in a voice that suddenly sounded shaky. ‘I mean, I’m just asking if you like him. I’m not asking for any state secrets or anything.’

  My mother peered at her. ‘Why on earth do you care whether I like Adam Pascoe?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ exclaimed Pippa, standing up with a bang as she shoved her chair back. ‘Does everything have to turn into an inquisition? I mean, I’m just making conversation, for heaven’s sake.’ She stomped off.

  ‘Pippa,’ warned my mother. ‘You haven’t asked if you can leave the table.’

  ‘Come back here, young lady,’ shouted my father.

  The door slammed and angry footsteps receded.

  My mother looked at my father and made a face. ‘Hormones,’ she said.

  ‘What are hormones?’ I asked.

  Hawthorn’s match that week was with Geelong, which meant Ablett would be pitted against his old team: my father kept saying that he wasn’t worried by this, or by the fact that Knights and Wallace would both be out with injury.

  ‘We’ve got too much depth to let that be a problem,’ he said to me on Saturday morning. ‘And people talk a lot about Ablett, but it isn’t as if Geelong’s a strong team.’

  Geelong were in fact lying only two places behind Hawthorn on the ladder, but I did not say so. Instead I murmured in an assenting kind of way.