‘Yes, Your Honour. Used the Almighty as a metaphor only. Sorry. The document is dated the 29th of May this year and signed by Maureen Cotswold of Wyndamere Nursing Home, and states …’ The little bearded barrister rattles the page at arm’s length and smiles confidently at his jurors. He is holding something mighty hot. He begins to read, ‘“I, Maureen Cotswold, long known as the author and composer of ‘Ulladulla Lullaby’, wish to make a confession of plagiarism before the Supreme Court of Victoria.”’ He pauses for the astonishment to die down while Her Honour calls for order. ‘“To whit I did steal the famous, and now disputed, chorus of the aforementioned song note-for-note from the natural world, more particularly the ornithological part of the natural world, more particularly still – from the lyrebird itself.’” He smiles at his jury again. Are you catching on, you peers of the accused?
‘“During the Second World War, I was living in the Blue Mountains town of Leura, which is a natural habitat of the lyrebird and the place I first heard their mating call. I annotated that call musically, pretending it was my own composition, and turned it into ‘Ulladulla Lullaby’. I have lived with this secret for many years and am glad, at last, to get it off my chest. The famous chorus of ‘Ulladulla Lullaby’ was a tune already existing in nature. Abroad and trilled in the gullies of the high country for many thousands of years. A snatch of ornithological language that has evolved, along with the bird itself. A morsel of song wrought by many generations. I have been, at times, ashamed at taking credit for what the bird did. It has, if you will, been an albatross around my neck. But in my defence, I was young, and I only borrowed the tune from the ancient, natural world to delight Queen Elizabeth on her tour of her southern dominions. I could never have imagined it would become so ubiquitous and loved. Nevertheless, it is the song of the lyrebird, and had echoed a hundred million times through the Australian woodlands before humanity ever heard it and laid claim to it.”’
The court looks up at Maureen Cotswold. Her Honour looks down at Maureen Cotswold. Maureen takes a pellet of high protein layer feed from the pocket of her cerise blouse and gives it to the bird in her lap. She taps the tin whistle on the arm of her chair. The bird gobbles the food and leaps onto the back of her wheelchair, frowns around at the assemblage, Melba performing before muck, and begins to sing.
TOORALAI OORALAI HOOMPTY PUMPOO
TOORALAI OORALAI HOOMPTY PUMPOO
OH HOOMPTY HOOMPTY WOOSA WAZZANG
LARBIDDY LARBIDDY OHSO YAI ANG. ANG. ANG.
It is a loud and raucous rendition that drowns out all other noise in the court apart from Lionel Pavelich inviting his barrister to fuck him sideways.
The case is dismissed. Nobody can own copyright on birdsong. Citing the binding precedent of Holmes versus Arthurson of 1875 in which Holmes sought to gain copyright over the call of the English blackbird and instead lost his house and ended up living in a hedge with English blackbirds, Judge Kristen Fleet finds against Lurid Music and awards costs to Serial Atlas.
Outside the court on William Street news crews are filming Serial and his legal people and his family and his Exotic Jujubes as they hug and whoop and shake hands. Maureen is parked alongside them. Her bird is bristling at the undignified ruckus. But she is happy watching the joy of the musicians. There will not be many victories in a life in music.
Not far away stand Lionel Pavelich and his lawyers waiting for a cab, all with their teeth clamped and their jaw muscles bulging, looking straight ahead, ignoring the joyous scene. The Town Hall clock strikes midday. It is similar enough to the chiming of Big Ben that precedes the BBC’s playing of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on that station’s New Year’s Eve broadcast to trigger a memory in the lyrebird’s head. The bird bursts into its zesty rendition of ‘Auld Lang Syne’, incorporating the soprano choir and church organ of Westminster Abbey and even the radio static that accompanies the broadcast.
Lionel Pavelich turns slowly toward the bird and its tutor.
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
Maureen is waving her tin whistle before the bird like a baton.
‘Fraud bitch bastard.’ Lionel’s barrister grabs at his arm, but is brushed aside. He makes his run at Maureen.
The Jujubes (and there are four: a lead guitar, a bass guitar, a drummer, and a hulk who waggles a tambourine against his thigh and sources drugs) have naturally taken cocaine and amphetamines before entering the legal precinct and are wired with twitches and snatches of violent energy. So when this small business-dude in his tan suit attacks their new friend, the legend of music old Maureen What’s-Her-Face, they are set to go, ready to rock, as it were.
They pluck him from atop Maureen, his ear shiny with her spittle. And lucky for Lionel that they do, for he is being pecked in the eyeballs by the bird while it simultaneously tries to convince him auld acquaintance should not be forgot. The Exotic Jujubes are momentarily confounded by being in possession of an evil runt squirming like George Costanza at a Go Go Discotheque and covering his eyes and squealing, ‘Mauled! Blinded! Disfigured!’
They throw him to the footpath and pile on and begin to slap and bite and scratch him and pull his hair in the time-honoured fighting style of musicians. Having quickly exhausted their combat techniques and with their enemy hunched into a whimpering ball, the drummer (always the drummer) begins to hump Lionel, shouting, ‘Who’s doin’ who now, Record Company Man? Who’s doin’ who now? I plagiarised this move from old Elton John. You like it? Just wait till I show you what I ripped off from Freddie Mercury.’ The other Jujubes begin to hump Lionel as well, from all angles.
In the legal precinct there are many police. Several arrive at this disturbance and stand watching as the Jujubes, laughing and grunting, hump Lionel. ‘Here’s a technique I plagiarised from George Michael. I call it the toilet-block pony.’
There is no precedent for this. A brace of gypsies dry-humping a moderately well-dressed businessman on William Street in the lunch hour rush. Might it be consensual? Might it be their civil right to do so? ‘Blinded,’ someone cries from inside the cluster. ‘Freddied,’ cries a second voice. ‘Plagiarised,’ cries a third.
The cops look at each other, blinking. We live in a tolerant age, their blinks seem to say, in a broad-minded town. They shrug their shoulders. Hump away, you Jujubes.
Serial comes up the winding drive of Wyndamere Private Nursing Home surreptitiously in the dusk and his lipstick-red Aston Martin. He has been on a roll ever since his courtroom win. He’d come away from that looking like a rebel. He had broken The Man on his own turf. Vision of The Jujubes humping Lionel was YouTubed by a vast international audience. What could be cooler? Four musical pirates humping a suited nasty in broad daylight while wigged legals and bemused cops stand around watching. It made them stars. What a country. Australia became a destination for a million backpackers who, watching the pirates hump the suited nasty while authority smiled, thought it Utopia. What right-thinking young person didn’t want to see this sort of justice served up under blue skies?
He finds her parked in the Camellia Garden. They can both feel the eyes of many staff on them through the foliage. He can hear the snicker of cameras as he places two roses in her lap.
‘Maureen, if I can call you Maureen, thank you. For what you did. Must have been hard ownin’ up to rippin’ that song off, it bein’ all you ever done. It took guts, man, fessin’ up to bein’ a fake.’
‘Horeheen heeya.’ (Fucking idiot.)
‘I don’t even say you stole it. You and me both know how writing songs goes as a activity. You got to pick up whatever jewels and wonders the muse lays in your path.’
‘Ar heent heal ear. Ooh hee, heenbar.’ (I didn’t steal it. You did, dingbat.)
‘I hear you, baby. I hear you. The muse is the muse and wherever she lays down the paycheck is where we got to cash it. Be it birds, field-hands, forgotten jazz-hounds, the sound of traffic or the rhythm of waves … whatever and wherever, eh, babe. Take what’
s on offer or starve like an undiscovered dude.’
‘Or ooh coo igh or owe ong, li I dee, am.’ (Or you could write your own song, like I did, champ.)
‘I guess I heard the birds, too, Maureen. I went to Healesville Sanctuary on a school excursion when I was at school. My best guess is the lyrebirds were fired up and honkin’ their piece that day, too.’
‘Oufoo.’ (Doubtful.)
‘And I heard ’em. Subliminal like. And the tune stuck with me. Subliminal like. And then, these years later, here it is. Whoomf. Like a kid you didn’t know you had come knockin’ on your door. “Hello, Daddy.” Amazin’ bit of gear, the mind.’
‘O orth.’ (Not yours.)
‘Yeah, right. Anyway, Maureen, point of my visit, I just wanted to let you know you don’t have to worry about your bills here any more. I’m pickin’ up the tab from now on, babe. Least I can do. After what you did for me. I paid three years up front. And that’s all we ever got to pay. ’Cause these bastards here, they’ve taken a punt you won’t go that long. You kick the bucket tomorrow, they got three years fees for mindin’ your ghost. You go another ten it’s seven outta their pocket.’ Serial smiles at her. ‘Guess they don’t think you’re Methuselah, Maureen.’ He smiles at her.
Maureen smiles back at him. A lop-sided expression, leaking spittle and joy. Be her death in one month or ten years, she doesn’t care. Now her life at Wyndamere is secure time isn’t even time anymore. ‘Harnhoo,’ she says, blinking wetly.
‘Hey, don’t cry, man. Shit. We write songs about love and people and the heart, don’t we? No good just talkin’ the talk.’
Serial feels good having done this for Maureen. And it’s no skin off his nose. He feels rich, having mistaken himself for a force rather than a fashion in music. As he eases out the drive he drops the window of the Aston Martin and breathes in the Australian bush. Ahh. Bathroom fresh. And the sounds. He can hear bellbirds tolling, a kookaburra laughing and … and … oh yeah, you old scallywag, Maureen. You old borrower of ideas. You old pickpocket.
TOORALAI OORALAI HOOMPTY PUMPOO
TOORALAI OORALAI HOOMPTY PUMPOO
OH HOOMPTY HOOMPTY WOOSA WAZZANG
LARBIDDY LARBIDDY OHSO YAI ANG. ANG. ANG.
Lyrebirds love a new tune. Whether it be a chain-saw felling a mountain ash or a Harley gunning up the Olinda–Dandenong road or a piece of Gilbert and Sullivan leaked from a Subaru window, pretty soon every one’s singing it.
And Barry has, these past weeks, perched atop the stone wall of the Wyndamere Private Nursing Home and warbled his new song until even the more limited cover-artists in his family have it down pat. It has become the hit of the summer, spreading bird-to-bird through the Dandenongs and up to the Alps, heading for New South Wales, whence Muriel said it came. Serial, with his head out the window of the car, can hear it sung near and far. For nature is the most adept plagiarist never to be accused of the crime, and knows a pretty tune when she hears one.
About the author
Anson Cameron has written five critically acclaimed novels, Silences Long Gone, Tin Toys, Confessing the Blues, Lies I Told About a Girl, and Stealing Picasso, as well as a collection of short stories, Nice Shootin’ Cowboy. He was born in Shepparton, Victoria in 1961 and lives in Melbourne.
Pepsi Bears and Other Stories Page 17
