The Starlings

by Vivienne Kelly

  ‘Were you listening in?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said.

  ‘You mean you were. I’ve told you not to do that, Nicky. I’m disappointed in you.’

  ‘I couldn’t help it. I was asleep, and I was waking up, and I couldn’t help hearing what they were saying.’

  My mother shook her head irritably. ‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘I’ve told you not to do that.’ She stood. ‘What did they say, exactly?’

  I thought. ‘Grandpa said he was sometimes worried about it, and Rose said he needn’t be and it was the best thing for Didie.’

  ‘He was sometimes worried about what?’

  ‘About the present. The big present they gave Didie.’

  My mother sat down again. Her face had a different expression.

  ‘Nicky,’ she said. ‘Nicky, try to remember and tell me exactly what they said.’

  ‘Grandpa said he sometimes felt guilty, and Rose said he needn’t be, and she said they had given Didie a big present and she—um—she understood that.’

  My mother was leaning over me as if she might devour me. ‘And what did Grandpa say?’

  I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. ‘I can’t remember, exactly.’

  ‘Try. Think, Nicky.’

  ‘Rose said that between them they did the very best for Didie that could possibly be done.’

  ‘And what did Grandpa say? Tell me what Grandpa said.’

  ‘He said she was lovely, I mean that Rose was lovely, and he didn’t deserve her. And that sort of thing.’

  ‘But what did he say about the present?’

  ‘He said he was sure she was right.’

  ‘Did he say anything else?’

  ‘Not really. Nothing about the present, anyway. Actually, Rose called it a gift, not a present.’

  ‘She did, did she?’ said my mother.

  I couldn’t work this conversation out at all. My mother’s reactions had not been what I’d anticipated. She looked a little mad: her eyes were dark and dilated and her colour heightened; and her mouth was twisted in an odd way that made her look triumphant but also angry.

  ‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ I asked. ‘I mean, if they gave her a big present.’ I remembered something else. ‘Grandpa said he loved Didie very much, and Rose said she loved her too.’

  ‘She did, did she?’ said my mother, for the second time.

  ‘Rose is really, really nice, Mummy,’ I said.

  She looked as if she was about to respond to this. ‘Go to sleep, Nicky,’ she said instead. ‘School tomorrow.’

  *

  During the night, after this conversation with my mother, I woke up needing a pee. I hated it when this happened, because it meant braving the various hostile creatures gathered around the end of the bed, but the need was urgent and I managed to find a way through. On the way back from the bathroom I heard my mother’s voice, slightly raised, coming from my parents’ bedroom down the corridor. Although I was cold, I paused. ‘That’s not fair,’ she was saying. ‘It’s not a bloody molehill. It’s important.’

  ‘Sounds like a molehill to me,’ said my father.

  ‘You’re not listening to me.’

  ‘Well, I am. I’m not the one who isn’t listening.’

  ‘Frank, Nicky said—’

  ‘You told me what Nicky said. As I understand it, Nicky overheard something that Dan and what’s-her-name were saying to each other and as usual he got it completely arse-about. He then repeated this nonsense to you and you not only jumped but if I may say so positively flew to various conclusions which are as foolish as they are unlikely. Not to mention dangerous.’

  ‘But Nicky didn’t even realise what he was saying.’

  ‘That is neither here nor there. He relayed something to you which he obviously got wrong. Jenny, for God’s sake, think of the implications of what you’re saying. Think of your father. You know as well as I do that Dan would never, ever be involved in something like that.’

  My mother’s voice dropped and she said something about that bitch.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said my father.

  ‘I never liked her.’

  ‘As it happens, that isn’t true. You actually said when she first came that you thought she was charming.’

  ‘Charming!’ exclaimed my mother. She muttered something I couldn’t catch, and then there was silence.

  What was it I had got wrong? What were the implications of what I had told my mother? Why did I get things completely arse-about? I waited a little while, but I was freezing cold and the discussion was evidently over. I padded back to bed.

  The Hawks looked to be finishing the season in a flurry of sensational victories. They had defeated Sydney by seventy-three points and Richmond by sixty-seven points: when it came to the next match, against Fitzroy, my father was dangerously confident. He put pressure on me to go, but this match was to be played in the arctic conditions of Waverley, and after my recent turn my mother roused herself from her current distractions to say that she thought it would be foolish to take me.

  ‘You know how he is, Frank. Once he’s had one of these things he’s a bit fragile for a while. You don’t want him to be sick and dizzy while you’re watching the match.’

  My father had to admit that he didn’t.

  In the meantime I was absorbed in The Merchant of Venice, a tale that had long fascinated and mystified me but which I had not yet made into a play. I did not know what to think about Shylock. There were moments when he seemed to be simply evil—for example, in the courtroom, when he was sharpening his knife to cut the pound of flesh from Antonio’s body. At such times I felt Karkin for the part would be especially suitable, as he already had in his giant claw an inbuilt personalised knife. He would need to sharpen his crab-claw from time to time, and this activity would be just as sinister as if a knife was involved. But then there were times when I really felt Shylock was to be pitied. An instance was his response when Antonio requested a loan:

  ‘Signior Antonio, on the Rialto many a time and often you have railed at me about my monies and my usuries, and I have borne it with a patient shrug, for sufferance is the badge of all our tribe; and then you have called me unbeliever, cut-throat dog, and spit upon my Jewish garments, and spurned me with your foot, as if I were a cur. Well, then, now it appears you need my help; and you come to me and say, Shylock, lend me monies. Has a dog money? Is it possible a cur should lend three thousand ducats? Shall I bend low and say, Fair sir, you spit upon me on Wednesday last, another time you called me dog, and for these courtesies I am to lend you monies?’

  I expected Antonio to deny these actions, and explain to Shylock that he had been mistaken somehow, that he had misinterpreted Antonio’s misguided pleasantries (pleasantry was a word I was fond of). After all, Antonio was the kindest man that lived, the best conditioned, and had the most unwearied spirit in doing courtesies; he was greatly beloved by all his fellow-citizens. I did not see how such a man could say to Shylock: I am as like to call you so again, to spit on you again, and spurn you too. If you will lend me this money, lend it not to me as a friend…

  Recently a boy in my class had been sent home for spitting at another boy, and it had been made clear to the whole class that spitting was unacceptable. Why then did Antonio, who was what my father would call a good bloke, feel it was okay to spit on Shylock? Has a dog money? I found myself muttering. Is it possible a cur should lend three thousand ducats? I recognised in these ironic queries something of my mother’s recent dryness, the sardonic note her voice could slide into nowadays when she spoke to my father. I was sure my mother wouldn’t approve of spitting. I myself did not approve of spitting. This made it hard to cast Zarlok as Antonio.

  Rose of course was Portia. I messed around half-heartedly with the rest of my cast, unsure about what kind of a story it was that I was dealing with.

  That evening, as the family was eating dinner, I asked, ‘What’s a Jew?’

  My mother stared at me, white and wild-eye
d. Pippa had dipped her head almost into her plate and was making the unpleasant snorting noise by which she signified amusement.

  Only my father continued unperturbed with his dinner. ‘Why do you want to know, Nicky?’ he asked.

  ‘Because of Shylock,’ I said.

  ‘Oh!’ my mother said, in an odd tone. ‘Shylock!’

  ‘What about him?’ asked my father.

  ‘Well, Antonio spits at him and kicks him, or he says he does, and he obviously thinks all of that is okay. So is it okay to spit at Jews and kick them?’

  ‘This is your department,’ said my father, looking at my mother.

  ‘Oh?’ she said dryly. She had recovered her composure. ‘Because it’s complex and difficult?’

  ‘No,’ said my father. ‘Because you’re an English teacher and I’m not.’

  She sighed. ‘Nicky, times change. When Shakespeare was writing, people didn’t like Jews. That was the culture of the time, and Shakespeare slotted into that culture.’

  ‘So things are different now?’

  ‘Yes, of course they are,’ said my mother.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said my father.

  ‘You just opted out of this conversation,’ she said.

  ‘I simply deferred,’ he said, ‘to greater knowledge. But I don’t have to sit here pretending I agree with everything you say.’

  ‘Be my guest,’ said my mother. ‘Who am I, after all? What would I know?’

  ‘You can’t possibly maintain there is now no prejudice against Jews,’ said my father, still chewing.

  ‘I said no such thing. Of course anti-Semitism still exists. I only said, things are a little different.’

  ‘What’s anti-Semitism?’ I asked. They didn’t hear me.

  ‘You didn’t say things were a little different; you said things were different, full stop. You implied that everything was fine so far as Jews are concerned.’

  ‘I did no such thing.’

  They glared at each other.

  ‘Why didn’t people like Jews?’ I asked.

  ‘Ask your father,’ snapped my mother. ‘He knows all about it.’ She stood and began collecting plates.

  ‘I haven’t finished,’ said Pippa, grabbing hers back.

  My mother made a gesture of frustration and stalked off.

  I was perplexed and alarmed by the outcome of what I had thought was an inoffensive query. Normally situations like this developed around the displeasure of my father, who could be placated by a footy-related question. But this time it was my mother who required placating, and a footy-related question wasn’t going to achieve anything. I finished my dinner and pondered the unpredictability of adults.

  Later that evening, puzzling again over Shylock, I came across this paragraph:

  One day Bassanio came to Antonio, and told him that he wished to repair his fortune by a wealthy marriage with a lady whom he dearly loved, whose father, that was lately dead, had left her sole heiress to a large estate; and that in her father’s lifetime he used to visit at her house, when he thought he had observed this lady had sometimes from her eyes sent speechless messages, that seemed to say he would be no unwelcome suitor; but not having money to furnish himself with an appearance befitting the lover of so rich an heiress, he besought Antonio to add to the many favours he had shown him, by lending him three thousand ducats.

  This passage raised a number of questions, some of them quite uncomfortable. Even I could catch the ambiguities in someone wishing to repair his fortune by a wealthy marriage with a lady whom he dearly loved. It was fortunate for Bassanio, who needed money, to have fallen in love with a wealthy lady. And why couldn’t this lady simply tell Bassanio she liked him, instead of sending speechless messages, which by definition were prone to misinterpretation. And then there was something about the final thud of three thousand ducats, something suggesting that Bassanio was being calculating in his friendship with Antonio too. I assumed three thousand ducats was in the region of three thousand dollars, which seemed to me wealth beyond imagination. Stinger had been temporarily assigned to the role of Bassanio; perhaps Brutum or Ironstrike (both more sinister than Stinger) should play him instead?

  I was considering these and other issues on the following Saturday afternoon while my father was shivering out at Waverley, watching the Hawks smash Fitzroy. I had turned the radio on so that I could later make comments to my father about the game, despite my absence from it. The football burbled away in the background, but even the manic screams from the commentators (And he’s kicked a GOAL, a GOAL—oh, no, no, the goal umpire says no, not a goal, only a behind, gosh, Lou, I thought that went through, didn’t you?) didn’t attract my attention because they were simply woven into the burble. Every now and again I would force myself to listen. So it wasn’t an efficient process, but it was consistent with my hopeless belief that I had to maintain the pretence for my father’s sake. Why I persisted with these efforts for so long is something I cannot now understand: it was simply a given, a pressing fact of my life that seemed as if it would never change.

  But I did manage in a spasmodic way to gather information: Brereton executed a magical boomerang kick for a goal at the end of the third quarter; Dunstall bagged five; Dipper put in a solid effort to be (in the commentators’ opinion) the best on the ground. Hawthorn won easily by a margin of seventy-two points and my father was bound to be happy about that.

  And so he was, when he came home. Matthews at this time was still in the deregistered state the league had imposed on him, so he wasn’t playing, and my father was quick to point out that the whole team had responded to the challenge caused by his absence. You couldn’t afford to rely on just one player, he told me. It had to be everybody: there had to be a team spirit. One for all and all for one, he added, quoting the Hawthorn song.

  The Hawks’ next game was against St Kilda. During the week before it took place, the league made an announcement that the Sydney Swans were being bought by a doctor named Geoffrey Edelsten. The only things I knew about Dr Edelsten were that he was a millionaire and he had a pink helicopter. My father had much to say about the league and the Great God Mammon.

  I couldn’t understand how Dr Edelsten—or anyone else for that matter—was in a position to buy a football team. So far as I knew, football teams simply existed; they weren’t possessed by anybody.

  ‘Who owns the Hawks?’ I asked my father.

  He grunted. ‘Not a bloody millionaire, anyway.’

  I pressed further.

  ‘The Hawthorn Football Club owns the Hawks,’ he said.

  ‘Then who owns the club?’

  ‘The club owns the club, Nicky. The club doesn’t need some mincing medico, some poodle in a pink helicopter, to poke his nose into their business. The club manages just fine on its own, thank you very bloody much.’

  His face was beginning to acquire the deep flush that indicated annoyance, so I left it at that.

  Pippa at this time seemed very distant. When we travelled home together we hardly spoke. Not that lively discussions between us had ever been par for the course: I was accustomed to being squashed by Pippa if I tried to initiate such discussions. Still, we had enjoyed a kind of monosyllabic semi-civil discourse, and I did rather miss this.

  When we left the tram one afternoon I noticed that she was walking more quickly than usual. I slowed my steps and dawdled behind her.

  ‘Come on, Nicky!’

  ‘Why? We’re not in a hurry.’

  ‘I’m in a hurry. I need to get home fast today.’

  I sighed and accelerated very slightly. ‘Why?’

  But she was well ahead of me and either had not heard or would not hear. I shrugged my backpack up my shoulders to make it more comfortable, and set off after her. I soon saw why she had wanted to rush. Rose’s blue Datsun was outside our house, and Rose was in the driver’s seat. At this sight I did speed up, and arrived at the car only just after Pippa.

  ‘Hello, Rose,’ I called joyfully.

&
nbsp; ‘I’ll open up and shove my bag inside,’ Pippa was saying, racing into the house.

  Rose leaned out of the car window. ‘Hello, Nicky. How are things?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I have to drive Pippa somewhere.’

  ‘I’ll come too,’ I said decisively, and opened the back door. I started to get in.

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t,’ said Rose.

  ‘Get out of it, Nicky,’ shouted Pippa, who was now running back from the front door.

  ‘Haven’t you told him?’ Rose asked her.

  ‘Meant to. Didn’t get round to it.’

  Rose leaned further out of the car window and caught my hand. ‘Nicky, love, I can’t take you this time. Just can’t.’

  ‘It isn’t fair,’ I said. I started to cry. ‘Why can’t I come too?’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Pippa. ‘This is all I need.’

  ‘You’re leaving me on my own,’ I said. ‘You’re not allowed to do that.’

  ‘Mum left you on your own. Seems to me you’ll be okay.’

  ‘Stop it, Pip,’ said Rose, but gently. ‘Nicky, love, Pip and I won’t be gone very long. An hour or so. Please, go inside, settle down, get yourself something nice for afternoon tea, and show me how grown-up you can be when I really need it from you.’

  ‘When will you be back?’

  ‘About an hour.’

  ‘An hour,’ I muttered indignantly, but such was my infatuation that already I was preparing to display to Rose a new version of myself.

  Dejected, I trailed into the house as they drove off, my sense of justice more than usually offended. It was not just that I was being left alone, not just that Pippa had secrets from me. Rose had always been my friend rather than Pippa’s, and now I felt that she was being stolen by Pippa.

  Still, I followed instructions. I had a drink of milk, raided the Tim Tams, and crossly settled down before the television.

  It seemed a very long time before they returned, certainly longer than an hour. I was divided between wanting them back, and wanting them not to arrive until after my mother reached home, so that Pippa would get into trouble for deserting me. The difficulty with this scenario was that Rose would be in trouble too, and I didn’t want that.