The Starlings

by Vivienne Kelly

  ‘Might be quite a good match,’ said my father.

  ‘My throat’s a bit sore,’ I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact rather than placatory. I’d had a slight cold during the week, and I had other plans for the afternoon.

  He knew he couldn’t beat me down on this, because my mother had vetoed outside activities for me over the weekend. I made a retreat, as he said something I didn’t catch about the forward line.

  My plans included Hamlet. I’d had my eye on the Prince of Denmark for a while, partly because the Unscared Game made me think a lot about ghosts. The idea of Hamlet meeting his father as a ghost terrified me. I wondered what it would be like to encounter my father as a ghost. Would I like him more? But I did not want my father to die.

  In the tale, the place where the ghost appeared was called the platform before the palace. This made no sense to me: I had a vision of a little stage, erected as the wooden stage was erected every year at school for the Christmas play, sitting in front of a big castle. I put this to my mother.

  ‘Platform,’ she said. ‘I see what you mean. I would have said ramparts. Or maybe parapet.’

  She wandered off, and returned with her Shakespeare.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Here it is, right at the beginning. The castle at Elsinore. A narrow platform upon the battlements. Ramparts, battlements. Same thing. It’s just a roof. Just a big, flat roof of the castle, with parapetty things around it.’

  If my father were a ghost, might he roam the roof of our house, and command me to meet him there? I did not like heights.

  If my father died, would my mother marry his brother, Uncle Ron, who lived in Sydney and barracked for the Swans? Would I be called upon to take some action to defend my father’s honour? Would I saunter around the house, wearing black and speaking in riddles?

  Would my mother marry someone else, even if my father didn’t die?

  I had no answers to these questions. But casting was relatively easy. Zarlok walked straight into the main role, as usual: the black velvet cloak from Othello proved useful for the Danish Prince too. After some thought I wound some black wool snugly around Zarlok’s legs and his bottom, and this looked encouragingly like tights. Somebody had once given me a small plastic skeleton, which was supposed to teach me about anatomy. It hadn’t enlightened me about much, but the skull was detachable and made a very good Yorick. Rose was Ophelia (Juliet’s handkerchief nightie worked well for this part, too); Crystal was Hamlet’s mother, Queen Gertrude; Fleshbane was his Uncle Claudius. Brutum, Stinger and Hateshi made up the minor roles.

  Once this production got underway I found there was less dramatic action than I liked: Zarlok had to do a lot of soliloquising (another word that I loved), and even when he was not alone there were several scenes in which conversation dragged. There were other problems. I couldn’t see why Hamlet thought it was necessary to pretend he was mad. The story had it that he thought he would be less an object of suspicion when his uncle should believe him incapable of any serious project. To me it was obvious that his efforts to fly under the radar only drew more attention to him. I actively sought not to be noticed (which was different from seeking neglect), but I was sure that had I pretended to be mad I would have attracted all kinds of unwelcome scrutiny. I wondered if Hamlet realised this. Further, I disliked the way he treated Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who didn’t necessarily understand the dastardly plot they were involved in and didn’t deserve their fate. I was beginning to understand that few characters in stories deserved their fate.

  Before my father came home I made sure, despite my struggles with Hamlet, that I turned on the radio. I was pleased to hear that Hawthorn had won by twenty-nine points, which seemed pretty good against Geelong. Once I’d got the score I turned the radio off: I wasn’t interested in the discussion.

  My father trudged in the door like a man for whom the meaning of life had ebbed away.

  ‘We won, didn’t we?’ I said uncertainly.

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ he grunted, unwinding his grubby old scarf from his neck.

  This was mysterious, but I soon found out what had happened. At the end of the game a brawl (the correct term was melee, I discovered) had taken place. The person principally responsible for this was Mark Jackson, also known as Jacko, a Geelong player famous for his temper and his physical aggression. Jacko had lost his temper and had ploughed into the Hawks. He had been reported eight times, for eight separate incidents—which must have been a record, even for him.

  This information, though, did not seem to account for my father’s despondency. Brawls (melees) happened from time to time and I had even seen my father quite excited by them: they were manly incidents and there was no shame attached to a few young blokes getting a bit hot-headed. On television that night all was made clear. There was footage of the melee and the newsreader made a few disapproving comments.

  ‘Horrible,’ said my mother. ‘Why would grown men behave like that?’

  The melee had concluded, the newsreader said, with Neville Bruns, acting captain of Geelong, and Leigh Matthews, Hawthorn captain, both leaving the field with bloody faces.

  ‘My God,’ said Pippa. ‘The perfect Mr Matthews was involved in all of this, was he?’

  ‘Leigh Matthews is a gentleman,’ said my father.

  ‘That’s why he’s called Lethal, is it?’ asked Pippa.

  ‘Matthews came off the field streaming blood from a broken nose,’ said the newsreader.

  ‘He was taken unawares,’ said my father. ‘He didn’t know what was going on.’

  ‘Bruns has been hospitalised with a broken jaw,’ continued the newsreader.

  ‘Matthews was framed,’ said my father. ‘Matthews would never willingly take part in anything like that.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Pippa, sarcastic. ‘Not at all. Not our Leigh.’

  ‘Anyway, Bruns hit Tuck. In the second quarter. So it was Bruns who began it.’

  ‘You sound like a kid in a sandpit,’ said Pippa. ‘He started it. No, he started it.’

  ‘Goddammit,’ shouted my father. ‘This isn’t some kind of a joke. This is a man’s reputation we’re talking about here. This is a man who’s been a role model all his life and he’s not only a great footballer but a great gentleman. I will not have you mocking him.’

  Eruptions like this from my father were not unknown, but they were rare; and we all knew to keep our heads down. It seemed that Pippa had forgotten this.

  ‘You mock things that are important to me,’ she said, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed. ‘If silly old Leigh Matthews goes and behaves like a big bully and starts to beat people up, why aren’t we allowed to even notice?’

  ‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that, young lady,’ said my father. ‘You wouldn’t understand anything about it.’

  ‘I understand perfectly,’ hissed Pippa. ‘You just can’t bear to admit you’re wrong. You’re just a great big bully too.’

  I was petrified, but I was also enthralled by my sister’s courage, and I was locked into the drama of the confrontation. I glanced at my mother. Her face was set and her eyes were closed.

  My father rose and walked across to where Pippa was sitting, so he could look down at her. He half-raised his arm.

  ‘Hit me,’ screamed Pippa. ‘Go on, hit me!’

  My father dropped his arm and glared at her. His face was nearly purple.

  ‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Get out of my sight.’

  For a moment it looked as if she would defy him again; then she rose and stalked from the room. My mother’s eyes were still shut. My father resumed his seat. He grabbed the remote and turned the volume up so that the football commentators were shouting at each other. After some minutes of this my mother rose and left the room.

  The discussion of the incident between Matthews and Bruns continued on the television. Neither player had been reported, because the field umpires hadn’t seen the incident. There was some question about the league instituting some kind of an
inquiry. I asked my father whether he thought this would be a good idea, and he said it would not.

  My mother returned to the room, wearing a jacket and holding her keys. ‘I’m going around to see how Dad is,’ she said.

  My father grunted.

  ‘Can I come?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said my mother, disappearing through the door. A moment later I heard the sounds of the car as it reversed along the gravel drive and faded down the street.

  My father went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of whisky. He came back in and sat down and cradled the glass in his hands. This was unusual. In summer he would often have a beer before dinner; in winter, a whisky. And sometimes wine with the meal. But he rarely drank afterwards. I eyed him apprehensively, but he took no notice of me and soon I slipped out and retreated to the fastness of my bedroom, where Hamlet and Ophelia awaited me.

  Later in the evening, feeling peckish, I slipped down the stairs to head kitchenwards, but froze midway as I heard my father’s voice, which sounded unexpectedly hearty. At first I thought my mother must be back, but then I realised he was on the telephone and speaking to Grandpa.

  ‘Anyway, Dan, I was just wondering if Jenny’s still with you.’

  A pause.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘No, no. I must have got it wrong. She’s been out and I thought she was going to drop in on you on her way home. No, just a girls’ night out. Yes. No, no, it’s quite late now, isn’t it? I shouldn’t think she’ll come now. Must have been a change in plan. No, no worries. See you later.’

  On his way back to the living room he glanced up and saw me. ‘What are you doing, Nicky?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘You should be in bed.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’ll be up in ten minutes,’ he called.

  I changed into pyjamas and brushed my teeth, just in case, but he forgot. Pippa’s room was quiet and dark—no Madonna, for once—and I assumed she had gone to bed.

  Some little while later, I heard the car return, and my mother’s footsteps over the gravel to the side door of the house. I crept out onto the landing. As the back door opened, Pippa’s door also opened and she sidled out. Our eyes met briefly. Our parents’ voices floated up to us.

  ‘Do you know what the time is?’ said my father.

  ‘There’s a curfew, is there?’ asked my mother.

  ‘Where have you been? I’ve been speaking to Dan, so I know you didn’t go there.’ His voice was thick, but more with bafflement than anger.

  ‘I did go there, as it happens. But Rose’s car was there, and I didn’t feel like having to be nice to Rose.’

  ‘So where were you?’

  My mother’s voice was brittle with scorn. ‘Really, Frank, what on earth are you on about? I drove over to Maddy’s and had a coffee with her.’

  ‘How is she?’ asked my father, aggression fading from his voice.

  ‘Not too bad. She’ll be back soon. Are the kids in bed?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Asleep?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘I’ll go up and say goodnight.’

  Pippa melted back behind her door and I followed suit. I was tucked up in bed with a book and looking suitably drowsy by the time my mother arrived.

  ‘Sleepybyes,’ she said, coming in and gently taking the book from me.

  I stretched my arms up to her for a hug. ‘Your face is so cold,’ I said.

  ‘It’s cold outside. Sleepybyes, darling.’

  ‘Once I saw a fish alive?’ I asked.

  ‘Not tonight,’ she said, going out and closing the door.

  As the week wore on, journalists reported endlessly on the melee and its consequences. My father followed all these reports, grumbling about the injustice in the world. There was much editorialising about whether the league should investigate incidents unnoticed by the field umpires, and whether on-field assaults should be punished like any other assault. The tribunal outed Jacko for eight weeks, which my father thought a mild penalty and by which Jacko himself was evidently not too dismayed. Neville Bruns, whose jaw Matthews had broken, was still in hospital when the tribunal met. Malingering, said my father.

  I was still wrestling with ghosts, playing the Unscared Game. It reduced me time and again to a state of mind which was the exact opposite of my intention. Instead of developing a careless attitude to all these horrors, I became dominated by them. From being insubstantial wraiths they acquired muscle and sinew and heft: they writhed and stamped and bullied. Yet I continued the game, believing that further exposure must surely work its toughening magic. Not every night, but many nights, once lights were out, I deliberately summoned the Wombat Ghost, or the Drowned Man, only to find that once one or two appeared the rest clustered behind them. The Tree Man was the fiercest and the most terrifying, the hardest to expel. Bit by bit they infiltrated my house, my bedroom, my mind. Constantly I dared myself to withstand their terrors; constantly I failed to do so. I became unhealthily fascinated by my own terror. Usually my mother would stop by my room on the way to bed; she would bend her head around my door. ‘Goodnight, Nicky darling,’ she would whisper. ‘Don’t let the bedbugs bite.’ Then she would close the door. This did nothing to reassure me. It was as if my mother’s voice floated thinly to me from another dimension; it was as if she cried out to me from a distant shore, while I lay chill and mute, locked into my fear, as unable to respond as if I had been gagged and bound.

  The weekend arrived during which my father was attending a conference in Sydney, and therefore missing the Hawthorn–Melbourne match. He was in a cheery mood on Friday morning, his case packed and his eyes bright with the pleasures in store, which were to include sessions about root canal work and new kinds of amalgam. In previous years, when he had attended these conferences, my mother and Pippa had engaged in a kind of gentle banter which marvelled at the esoteric nature of dental entertainment. But this time my mother gave him an abstracted peck on the cheek when the taxi arrived, and his waved farewell to Pippa and me was cursory.

  That night we were in something of a holiday mood. It was Friday, of course, which helped; but we all recognised tacitly that things were more fun now my father was absent. We had fish and chips for dinner (my father frowned on takeaway) and settled down in front of the television (my father preferred us to eat at the table). We laughed at a silly Carry On film on television, and during the breaks we switched over to Drew Morphett’s Footy Show on Channel Two (my father didn’t approve of channel-hopping) and saw Leigh Matthews, still sporting a sensational black eye, refusing to comment on the famous incident. Pippa uproariously mimicked various people, including Matthews, some of her teachers and, finally, my father. She pulled her round face to make it look long and dark like my father’s, she deepened and slowed her voice, and she delivered a short monologue on the deficiencies of Hawthorn’s coach, Allan Jeans.

  On Saturday afternoon Pippa caught the tram to Gina’s place, saying they were going to have a study session. My mother felt scepticism over this, but wisely did not bother to follow it up too closely. I went up to my room and attacked Hamlet, whose ghosts were less terrifying than mine. I was up to the scene where Hamlet jumped into Ophelia’s grave. I’d managed to secure a flash box for the coffin: it had once held a perfume bottle of my mother’s and, to my delight, was lined with white satin. Rose was a tight fit, but I managed it. And, because of my father’s absence, I didn’t have to worry about the footy. I was enjoying myself.

  Zarlok had just jumped on top of Rose and said, Pile mountains of earth upon me that I might be buried with her when my mother put her head around my door.

  ‘Nicky,’ she said. ‘How are you going?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, suspiciously.

  ‘I’m just wondering,’ she said.

  I waited. ‘I’m just wondering if you’d like to go over to Grandpa’s?’

  ‘He’ll be at the football.’

  ‘Oh. Are you sure?’

&nbs
p; ‘Melbourne’s playing Hawthorn. He said he’d be going. Remember?’ I thought it odd that my mother didn’t recall the conversations that had flourished around this match. ‘Grandpa said he’d take us to the members’ for this match, but Daddy had his dentist thing to go to, but Grandpa said he’d still go today, and he asked me too, but I didn’t want to.’

  ‘Oh—yes,’ said my mother, but not with conviction. ‘The thing is, Nicky, I need to go out for a little while.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘But Pippa’s not here.’

  ‘Oh.’ It was an absolute rule (for reasons that to me remained mysterious) that I was never to be at home on my own. ‘Would you like me to come with you?’ I asked.

  ‘N-no,’ said my mother. ‘But I’m just thinking, Nicky, Pippa will be home soon. Would you mind very much if I slipped out, just for half an hour or so?’

  My astonishment must have shown on my face.

  ‘I’ll be back very, very soon,’ she added, hastily. ‘You won’t mind, will you?’

  It wasn’t at all that I minded. To have my mother popping out and saying Nicky, dear, I’ll be back in a couple of hours was wonderful. It represented horizons of adulthood that I had thought I could only imagine. But my need to be accompanied at all times in the family home was such an unbreakable rule, I couldn’t understand how it could be brushed aside.

  ‘No,’ I said, a little dazed. ‘I won’t mind at all.’

  ‘Pippa said she’d be back by five, so you won’t be on your own for long.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘And nothing can possibly happen.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I know.’

  ‘And if you’re worried at all you can always ring Grandpa.’

  ‘Grandpa’s not there,’ I said patiently.

  She nodded, although I didn’t think she had heard what I had said. She stood, fingering her car keys.

  ‘I’ll be off, then,’ she said.

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  ‘Bye-bye, darling.’