by Kim Kelly
I’m not melancholy exactly, not mad like before; but I am in a very strange place. I try to paint it, not even sure what I am painting. They don’t look like pictures. There’s one that makes me laugh, though: a headless woman in a wedding dress holding a wooden leg like a baby. I don’t know why it makes me laugh; something about the way she seems to be smiling, in her hands. She’s grateful to have that leg, over the moon, and I suppose she’s slinging off at the disgust that made me think her into being, having a joke with herself, without me. France thinks it’s the most obscene thing I’ve ever done. It is. I’ll definitely send this one to Doctor Fanny; see what he thinks of this pretty. He’s going off to Europe at the end of the year; wrote to ask if he could take the monsters along, to show some mate of his, said Mr Duncan was keen that he should; I wrote back telling him I don’t care if he takes them on a tour of Mars. And I don’t.
It’s a letter at the end of July that shakes me out of it. It says:
Dear Sir, not sure what else to call you, mate,
I just wanted to let you know that I’m still alive, despite myself. I’ll be passing through Lithgow on Sunday the tenth of August and would like to drop in to see you, not for the conversation, just to say g’day. Let me know at the above address if that’s all right with you.
Clem Foley
The thrill this little note gives me just about knocks me over. I’m sitting on the front steps and I see France, running around with Danny and Charlie and Harry. They’re chucking slushy snow at each other. Davie’s holding onto my trouser leg as he laughs at them, staggering like a drunk, wanting to run out there too.
France sees me smiling at her and chucks a handful at me. ‘Good news?’
Yep.
FRANCINE
Mr Clement Foley is precisely the sort of man who makes you wonder what the AIF were thinking when they were recruiting. He’s around thirty-five, with huge brown, thoughtful eyes and wispy fair hair, and so tall and reedy slim you feel you should ask him if he’d like to sit down to save him the trouble of standing. The absolute sweetest gentleman, too, polite to a fault. And he is, funnily, a bookkeeper by trade. No specs, though. Very hard to imagine him going through all that; hard to imagine him digging a hole. But it’s true. And even more surprisingly, he’s ridden his horse all the way from Sydney; camped out last night in the mountains.
He and Daniel are sitting on the back verandah now, and I’m finding it very difficult not to eavesdrop. I’m hovering in the kitchen, near the back door as much as possible, overfeeding the children, while I check Sunday lunch every five minutes. Stop it, Francy, or the beef’ll never cook. I pick up that Clem got back in March, that things weren’t too good for a spell, and that he’s got a job and a house in Mudgee. Stab of sadness at the thought that he appears to be on his own, but maybe he wants to be, or has to be. They talk about Dunc and Stratho and some others I’ve never heard of, but not about each other I don’t think. Daniel’s not one for talking about himself much anyway.
Then Daniel clumps inside and says: ‘Clem’s staying for lunch. That’s all right, isn’t it.’
Goodness, my darlingest can raise a giggle out of me; I don’t think he knows how to ask a question. He tries, I’m sure, but just about everything that issues from his mouth sounds like statement or command, just can’t manage the upward inflection. You have to look at his eyes, and the position of his eyebrows to see the enquiry.
‘Course it is,’ I say. What difference would it make when there will be twelve Ackerman overeaters at the table already? Sarah, Miriam, Kathryn, Roslyn, Harry, Charles, Bronwyn, Jennifer, Isobella, Large Daniel, Small Daniel and David. Plus me.
Besides, ever since Daniel got his friend’s note, he’s slept like a bear in winter. I’ll feed Clem Foley for the term of his natural life for that gift. Meantime, hope he survives the experience of Sunday lunch at our place.
He does. His large sad-sleepy eyes float around us and spark with delight at the noisy chatter of the children, twinkle at a squabble over the last of the bacony bits of the creamed spinach. He doesn’t say much but he spends the afternoon smiling, and despite his rangy frame he puts away his food like it’s his last meal.
Charlie, who wouldn’t sit at a table for the length of lunch if you tied him down, wanders over to our visitor and asks: ‘Are you really a soldier too?’
And Daniel cuts him off: ‘Was. And don’t be rude.’
Clem chuckles and tells Charlie: ‘I wasn’t much chop at it, young man.’ He taps his nose. ‘Don’t tell anyone, though.’
What a lovely man he is. Miriam clearly thinks so too; she’s barely taken her eyes off him, and has been unusually quiet today. I sniff the air for hyacinths. Say a prayer for all the lonely lovely ones. Get up with some dishes; splash some water on my face.
We’re celebrating Daniel’s birthday this Sunday, for September the twenty-fifth, and he’s twenty-five. We’ve just given him a good teasing about the fact that, as we’ve recently discovered, he shares his not-pretend birthday with none other than Billy the Troll; I sent the prime minister a lump of coal through the post a few days ago to show how much we care; attached a note saying: Don’t eat it all at once. Lots of love, Lenin. Here and now, we’ve just completed feeding time of industrial proportions, all seventeen of us, since Peter and Violet and their too little and too adorable to be naughty daughters Rose and Daphne are with us. It’s raining buckets, and women and children have retired to the parlour, listening to Sarah play the piano, or trying to above the din of raindrops and chatter. She’s playing Liszt’s Consolation, D bloody flat, and I’m trying not to look too much at Violet, who’s quite pregnant. I’m trying very, very hard not to be jealous. Failing miserably. I should be pregnant now; it’s been five months since I stopped feeding Davie. I just can’t accept it. I can dream my sweet fantasies of Joe; even yearning for him now, when I do, is more a tender affirmation of my acceptance of it; I usually stick my head in the linen cupboard to do it and the smell calms me. But barrenness? Resentment curls up through grief again. Just not fair. It’s not that I want to make up for Joe, either; it’s that I want … I don’t know. I think I want ten babies against all the loss. New national pastime I can’t take part in — can’t go anywhere without seeing babies — everywhere. The too lovely, too pretty music is eating into my brain. I know that I’m a bit menstrually deranged today, but I’m suddenly not coping at all. I wish Father would materialise from his photograph and start playing something vulgar.
Try to let my mind drift and linger upon pleasant, funny things … Received the most beautiful letter from Louise Beckett last week. She’s in Brisbane now: sub-matron in a headcase hospital; one of the doctors there keeps bothering her, and she said she might go to the pictures with him if he’d recommend her for some physical therapy course. She’s got radical ideas of her own on the benefits of touch and gentle exercise aiding the mentally distant. And the poor doctor said yes, so now she has to come good and go out with him. She said that if he’s not too much of a pain, then she’ll look into what other courses he might like to recommend her for. She also thanked me, profusely, for our lunatics-together interlude, said she wouldn’t be so at peace or anywhere near where she is today without it. Good for her. And now I’m not coping again.
Kathryn, wise and peachy little woman that she is, wafts over and snuggles against me on the sofa. That does me in. I squeeze her tight and kiss her on the head; fib to her I’ve a sniffle and need to find a handkerchief.
I go out to the kitchen, because it’s as far away from the parlour as I can get, and look out at the apple trees, streaky in the rain, streaky like me. Should be happy about all this rain; we’ve had the most dreadful drought all year and the tanks were down to nearly nothing. I can hear Daniel and Peter talking on the back verandah; they usually go for a walk after lunch when Peter comes over, but it’s too wet today. Their voices are so similar, I can’t tell who’s saying what, when one of them bellows: ‘He asked you if he could what?’
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The other one laughs: ‘Write to her. Isn’t that special?’
Special; that’s a Danielism.
‘Have you told Mim?’ Peter asks him.
‘No. Not going to. She’ll be more hysterical if it comes as a surprise.’
What? And why haven’t you shared whatever this is with me? Brothers’ business evidently.
Peter says: ‘He is a good bloke, this Foley character?’
Very audible gasp from shameless eavesdropper.
‘The type that asks a woman’s brother if he can write to her.’ Daniel laughs some more.
‘He does know that she’s got seven kids, doesn’t he?’
‘Yep. Met them last month when he stopped here. All the hard work’s been done for him.’
‘Is he insane?’
‘Yep.’ I can hear Daniel slap his thigh with laughter now.
Peter says, serious: ‘Don’t you let her get upset.’
Silence, then: ‘I won’t.’ Daniel switches to fierce so fast I flinch at the sink. I can appreciate his attitude, though: he adores his sister and Mim’s sons have virtually become his own, so he’s hardly likely to be flip about this, regardless of the joking.
Now Peter laughs: ‘All right. Settle down.’
‘Don’t tell me to settle down,’ says Daniel, but he’s back to joking too.
‘I’ll tell you to settle down and I’ll make you.’
‘Go on.’
‘All right.’
And I can hear chairs and feet scraping and a few thumps. The sounds of boys. Very large ones. ‘You bastard.’ Someone falls off the verandah. ‘Watch your language.’
Clump, clump, clump, here they come. I make myself busy at the sink filling a glass with water. Slightly less glum now. Daniel gives me a sly slap on the bottom as he walks past, heading for the parlour. I stay where I am, and hear him say, ‘Give it a rest, Mum,’ before bashing out some ragtimey dance tune. Quite a bit less glum now. Done my dash with magic; what more could I possibly want? It’s Mim’s turn to have a little. Hope so.
DANIEL
Hysterical doesn’t say it, not by any stretch. Mim is actually in some kind of shock when she tells me Clem Foley has written to her with a view to forming an acquaintanceship. I would be too, I suppose, just at the breathtaking formality and gentleness of that turn of phrase.
But that’s what he’s like, where women are concerned at least. If he was any nicer he’d make you sick. I only ever saw Clem become anything but once, and that was when we’d stopped in a little cafe–bar type place on the road south of Albert, to try to scrounge a feed with real food in it, or at least something missing woodchip bickies and tinned dog. There were a couple of blokes there more interested in the red wine when we walked in, and they were harassing the girl behind the counter. She was alone: in a room full of Australians, Kiwis and French Canadians, all of them apparently ignoring the fact that she was distressed and didn’t want to serve the two idiots in front of her. She clearly didn’t speak much English, and the idiots could barely speak anything approaching any language, they were that out of line. It was when one of them reached over and grabbed her by the arm that Foley went off. I took a second to watch his hand meet the back of the bloke’s collar before I followed him outside but he didn’t need help; and the other idiot wasn’t going to take me on, especially since a couple of Maoris had started crossing the road for a gander. Clem went back inside and apologised to the girl, in French. She shrugged in reply; you have to love the French.
As for the rest of the duration, I don’t know how he coped; he says he didn’t, but obviously he did. Enough to get home anyway, with his quiet sense of humour and loud sense of chivalry intact.
I say to Mim: ‘Well, are you going to write back?’
She says: ‘You don’t leave a letter like that unanswered, do you.’
No.
She turns away to take the kettle off the stove, pours the water into the pot, sits down at the table to plait Isobella’s hair: last kid left at home. I’ve come round to Mum’s with Charlie and Harry, who’ve just taken the rest of their million sisters off on the walk to school. I only stopped in to finally pick up those boxes of Dad’s old records, to shift them to the Wattle where they belong, but I’ve forgotten all about that as I watch Mim, wondering what’s going through her mind. She could plait hair in her sleep; she looks up at me and says: ‘How’s he stayed a bachelor so long?’
I say, and I think it’s probably as true as anything is: ‘He might have been a bit shy once. Maybe he’s not so much now.’
‘Well,’ she says, and my sister’s never been known for shy but here she is: speechless and full of amazement. Good. She deserves every breath of that. I get a glimpse of what Clem must see in her; you don’t really see your sister that way until it’s suddenly important: she is very beautiful. Some women would be wrecked after going through all that; she’s not.
The hysteria doesn’t come until November, when Clem writes to tell her he’s coming up for a visit, and bringing an extra horse because he’d like to teach her to ride, with a view to us teaching the children eventually.
Mim and France flap about as if he’s going to walk in in the next five minutes. What’s she going to wear to go riding, what will they make for lunch. They both look and sound about fifteen. Mum’s sitting there, arms crossed on the table, laughing at them. Better than a show in town, this is. I’ve never seen this kind of female carry-on before: it’s fascinating.
About to leave, I finally remember the boxes and tell Mum. I follow her into her bedroom to get them. Haven’t been inside this room since the day I got married and came in here to look myself over in Mum’s mirror. Today, the first thing I see is Dad’s comb and razor still on the dressing table, toothbrush in the cup behind. Like he’s about to wake up and need them. We might be that odd mob who lives round the end of Dell, but we do a good line in devotion, all of us, in one way or another.
Mum says, bending down, pulling out one of the boxes: ‘What are you going to do with them?’
‘Just keep them where they should be, and keep it going, you know.’ Make a note of how and why each time someone’s injured, sick, sacked, retired and hopefully never killed on the job. No other mines that I know of keep official records of these things, it’s always up to the union to bother, but the Wattle will.
‘You’re going to write up records yourself?’ She looks round at me.
‘Yes.’ And tell me why not.
‘No one will be able to read them.’
Thanks Mum. I tell her: ‘Since you can read my writing, you can make a neater copy of my scribble if you like.’
‘All right, I will.’
‘Good.’
She laughs: at me. I love her too.
FRANCINE
Armistice Day, the eleventh of November. Daniel signs a hefty cheque for the Returned League, for the widows’ fund, and will post it tomorrow. No note. Reminds me of Father, the way he’d send off yearly cheques to the Society of St Vincent de Paul, not out of penance, I don’t think, but because he agreed on principle with the good works, if not the holy doctrine attached.
Daniel’s too busy to post it this morning, or pause to observe the two minutes’ silence. He’s got me standing by the far windows in the room off the verandah, in the sun, trying to match the colour of my hair, says it’s darkened slightly and he just can’t get it right. Tells me for the umpteenth time that I am a very bad wife for cutting it. Still, every painting of me is true: short hair. Except for one: I’m eighteen, leaning around the pole of the lean-to at the back of Sarah’s, with the gully behind me, a wayward strand floating over my shoulder in the breeze. I don’t know what he’s going to do with this ever-growing monument to his uxoriousness. He says he can’t send any of these ones to Doctor Adinov, and they’re too big and too me to hang in the house, so they sit stacked in this room; seventeen of them now: don’t stop. Sometimes, I think this run on Francine is funny for everything it says about his ind
ulgence, but mostly I think what a treasure it is that I can see how he sees me, how much of me he sees. I’m not particularly pretty, in a conventional sense, too many angles and freckles; but he makes me beautiful, in the shapes, the colours of me. I think he’s a genius, of course: I would.
We’re at it again on the last Sunday of the year, except that I’m standing here completely naked. The children are still at Sarah’s; we’ll pick them up later. Daniel told her: ‘I want to see her skin in that light. See you round five.’ You have to wonder how many sons say that to their mothers after lunch.
I want him to paint my expression of desire right now, but he’s busy doing whatever it is he’s doing with the white, a splotch of which is dribbling down one knee. He is a picture in himself, in his summer painting attire, which consists of an old bespattered shirt, cut-off trousers and those always everyday boots, no socks today, though. It gets very hot in this room with the afternoon sun.
Busy, busy, busy. So busy, we’ve been lately, that we didn’t even manage to vote in the federal election two weeks ago. Hughes has been returned, of course, and there was simply no one else to vote for who could win or who wasn’t clangouring for The White Australia Policy. An idea it appears the labour movement dreamed up to protect the Aussie worker from treacherously cheap Chinese blow-ins a generation or so ago, but which now is our new Galvanising National Fear: Fight the Yellow Peril! It would seem absurd if it hadn’t been so effective at the polls. Not that the National Party needed it when they hold the trump card: the delicate economic situation requiring the steady management of the government that saw us through the war and put the country in the red by some three hundred million pounds, a figure we’re to be chuffed about: a war bill greater than that of New Zealand, Canada and South Africa put together. Now, if you want to live here, you have to be prepared to work for a subsistence wage or less, so the Chinese would be mad to come here anyway, wouldn’t they.
