Ash Mountain

by Helen FitzGerald

  Fran opened the sliding door of the built-in robe. Before moving to Northcote, she had put her mother’s precious, oak linen box in this cupboard, memories safely padlocked inside.

  She dragged the chest out onto the bedroom floor and unlocked the padlock as her father watched from his hospital-style bed. She threw the contents into a black rubbish bag. First, the hand-painted birthday cards her mother had given her – one, two, three, four, five birthday cards. In the bin.

  ‘Oi, what are you doing?’ Gramps stretched his fingers out.

  She ignored him, and took out her mother’s precious jewellery box, ballerina intact but out of battery. Inside were two rings: the sapphire and diamond number her dad had proposed with under ‘their tree’, and a wedding band. She slammed the lid of the pretty box and put it in the rubbish bag.

  ‘Francesca! They’re for you.’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t hear you because you’re dead,’ she said, grabbing handfuls of memories now, as much as she could – photo albums and letters and embroidered linen from Italy and her first holy communion dress and the worn koala she’d practically eaten as a toddler. She shoved it all in the black plastic bag.

  Wooden chest now empty, Fran put all her father’s medications inside and closed the padlock, adding the key to the pile on her keyring and pushing the box into the hall. ‘Love you Dad,’ she said, turning off the light and half closing the door.

  She moved the chest all the way through the living area to the pawprint room. Sliding open the mirrored door of the built-in robe there, she kicked the vacuum cleaner aside and shoved the chest in, putting the black bag of memories behind it and slamming the wardrobe door so hard that it wound up open.

  At the desk in the kitchen, she sniffed the joints in the Vegemite jar and texted Dante: ‘We need to talk.’ She then resurrected the jogging buggy she’d used when Vonny was a baby, and attached a broom to the back, using tie-down straps and masking tape. Then she taped and strapped Vonny’s most recently discarded device – a large iPad – to the head of the broom. Her dad’s face would be at his actual height (they had argued over this in the past and come to an agreement of five foot eleven). She gave the buggy a wobble. It was a little rickety, but it’d work. Project #2, Gramps on a Stick. Tick! He’d leave this house, all right. He’d go to places on a stick he probably wouldn’t have gone even before the stroke.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Nine Days before the Fire

  ‘Ned Kelly’s dad escaped from there,’ said her dad, who was not present in the flesh, but speaking from the iPad. He’d been bashful at first, had refused to turn on the video at his end, but obviously couldn’t resist. ‘Blasted a hole in the old jail the size of an Irishman,’ he said. ‘They built this tower after that.’

  They were at the top of the monument, a place Fran always visited when she was home. She put a coin in the telescope and did a slow 360: there was the city smog, there was the new new highway, there was the water tank, there was a digger digging. ‘And no-one’s escaped since,’ she said.

  She was ill-balanced when a boarder appeared from behind the bend in the inner staircase of the tower. Her dad’s screen banged the bluestone wall, which made him joke-wince, which made Vonny laugh when she shouldn’t have because this was one of the things that provoked boarders.

  ‘On you go,’ said Boarder #1, flattening himself against the wall and checking out sixteen-year-old Vonny as she slithered past.

  There were only three, thankfully. They weren’t in uniform, but wearing city-slicker casuals the locals wouldn’t be caught dead in. Even these three were dapper, and they were the dregs of the college, boys who no-one wanted in the summer, bar the clergy.

  The boarders remained elevator-silent till they reached the lookout, then one yelled: ‘Mountain Slut!’

  Fran assumed they’d yelled it to her, then realised that she was now a mountain hag. It was her daughter who was a Mountain Slut. Her head heated as the boys laughed.

  ‘Ignore them,’ said Vonny when they were outside. ‘Anyway, it’s kind of nice to be called a slut for a change. Race you down?’ Vonny had inherited her mother’s competitive gene, and was off already.

  Fran extended the buggy, took hold of the handles, and jogged down the track, her on-screen dad reacting to unexpected potholes with an ‘arghhh’ and a ‘weeee!’.

  The centre of the thriving metropolis of Ash Mountain was three blocks away. Fran and Vonny headed into Gallagher’s Bakery, leaving the window of the four-wheel drive open so her dad could talk to passers-by. He was really getting into the stick thing, and began immediately: ‘Boo!’

  Henry Gallagher, dressed in his standard shorts/long socks/hat combo, dropped his shopping bag. ‘Jesus Christ! Is that you Collins, you bastard? What’s your head doing on a pole! Haha!’ His wife Shirley had gone nuts apparently, hadn’t left the house in years. The shopping was his job.

  Since selling the pharmacy five years back, Gramps greeted everyone the same way: ‘How’s that nasty rash?’

  ‘Itchy,’ Henry Gallagher was saying. ‘Haha, have you lost weight, mate? No really, how you going?’

  Vonny ordered three snot blocks from Tricia, the third Thomas Gallagher girl and the meanest.

  ‘What are you doing for the fete?’ Tricia asked.

  Fran’s blank look encouraged her to explain:

  ‘Australia Day, next Monday on the oval. There’ll be games and cakes and rides and stuff. Vonny, you should come.’

  Fran always intervened on behalf of her daughter, and was always in trouble for it afterwards. ‘You mean Invasion Day?’ she said.

  Vonny rolled her eyes and tried to make herself smaller, which meant Fran was a bad mother yet again, and that Tricia could add another point to their imaginary scoreboard. Thirty years, and they were still neck and neck.

  ‘It’s gonna be respectful and inclusive,’ said Tricia.

  Fran was surprised she knew the word inclusive. As for respect, what did she ever know about that?

  ‘We’ve got a competition going among the ethnic minorities in town for the best knitted cat,’ Tricia said. ‘Vonny, maybe you could try one, y’know, seeing as how you’re…’ – Tricia whispered the next word as if it was a made up thing – ‘indigenous … One I made earlier!’ she said, pulling a gnarly woollen cat from under the counter. It was life-sized; striped blue, white and red, and scattered with southern stars. Tricia’s ethnic minority was obviously ‘Australian’.

  ‘Cats are certainly appropriate for Invasion Day,’ Fran said, attempting to stand the feral beast on the bench, but its legs were wonky and it fell into the curried egg.

  ‘I’ll knit a mixed-up bastard!’ Dante had just walked into the bakery and joined the growing line for sandwiches. He kissed his mum, tickled his huffy half-sister, and set about making everyone laugh.

  Dante was the best thing about Ash Mountain, and everyone knew it bar Tricia, whose withering look indicated that she did not approve of foul-mouthed bastards with snobby-slut mothers and allegedly aboriginal daughters.

  Tricia had a couple of mixed-up bastards of her own from her cousin Chook, so she could stop with that superior look right now.

  ‘I’m not sure mixed-up bastard is a minority community here,’ said Fran, giving Tricia twenty dollars and herself a point.

  ‘Biggest in town!’ said Stephen Oh, who was behind her in the queue. ‘Only one that really took hold.’

  ‘Come to think of it, why has there been no chain migration since the Celts?’ This was from Verity O’Leary, president of the Country Women’s Association and next in the line adjacent, which was for hot food. ‘That’s how it worked: word of mouth, O’Donaghue to O’Donaghue, Gallagher to Gallagher. Stephen, did you not tell your family and friends about Ash Mountain?’

  Stephen reddened because the busy shop had gone silent. ‘I told them. But they mostly settled in Leopold. It’s … it’s near, um, the beach.’

  Verity and most of the room recoiled, as the in-lander loc
als did not like to hear mention of the beach. Stephen was fully aware of the error he had made.

  ‘They’ll be filling the town pool soon, God willing,’ said Verity, who was wanting three curry pies with sauce.

  ‘There has been chain migration since the Irish, you know,’ said Fran. They’d just passed the Monument Reserve and were now taking in Shitboxville, home to the never-seen commuters.

  ‘Do you know anyone who lives in there?’ Gramps hated commuters, they got their prescriptions in Melbourne at lunchtime and their groceries trucked in from Green Creek.

  ‘True, they don’t count,’ said Fran. ‘Guess again.’ They drove past the Ash Mountain sign and onto the dirt track. To the left was the dilapidated farmer’s cottage that Dante had rented since his glorious return from overseas. There were numerous rusty vehicles and some old furniture in the front yard. Out back was a rickety corrugated iron water tank, which was open at the top and held up by metal stilts.

  ‘Hey, Dad!’ Fran waved at their brown brick house to the right. Her real-life dad was with Vincent and Nurse Jen in the living room, his wheelchair facing the thin slice of yellow garden in front of the veranda. Every beaten, grassless foot of the rest of the property was allocated to the two elderly ostriches, still running in order to attract, activities that did not naturally fit together for Fran.

  She parked just past the drive to take a look, turning her dad’s monitor so he could too. The dominant female, Dame Miriam McDonald, was dashing from one end of the enclosure to the other at about seventy miles an hour. Ronnie Corbett was trying to keep up.

  ‘Day two and he’s done in,’ said on-screen Gramps.

  ‘Poor Ronnie Corbett.’ The light-coloured male ostrich finally stalled and collapsed, and the larger black female pranced off and shrugged with contempt. ‘Like getting dumped on The Love House, isn’t it?’

  ‘Except these birds are wearing more clothing!’ said Gramps.

  The track was becoming beaten. Just five hundred metres from home and it felt like proper bush, except for the architect-designed two-storey number nestled among the trees: McBean House, owned by Maz and Ciara, who had air-conditioning and a pool and were not afraid to use them. Whenever it was forty plus, it was open house at theirs.

  ‘Hey, why have we gone past our place?’ Vonny had only just looked up from her phone.

  ‘Dropping Dad’s chainsaw at the Ryans’. Won’t be long.’

  Vonny slumped in her seat. Everything not on-screen was so annoying. ‘Was it the lesbians?’ she asked, checking out Maz and Ciara’s.

  Fran thought they’d abandoned the chain migration convo. ‘Unfortunately, no,’ she said. Ash Mountain was unnerved by the kind of joy Maz and Ciara shoved in their faces – theatre trips and open houses! – which is why there’d been a for-sale sign in their garden for eighteen months. ‘Nup,’ she said, ‘this chain migration started in 1901, which is when…’

  ‘Federation,’ Vonny, messaging her friends at the same time, said. ‘History-lesson time: gonna kill my mother.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s not it.’ Fran always used to get a little carsick on this track. She opened the window in case. ‘In 1901 the brothers came to Ash Mountain.’ This was a new theory for Fran, but she thought it a goody – that before the internet, the colleges were like niche sites on the deep web, bringing people together from every which way, a community of individuals with one thing in common: boys age eleven to sixteen. ‘And that caused the one chain migration that has thrived since the Irish.’ She reached the end of the tree-lined driveway and parked by the bean garden. ‘Perverts,’ she said, popping the boot and turning to Vonny. ‘So just take it in for me, hey?’

  ‘What? Me? No way. In there?’

  The Victorian weatherboard farmhouse was in need of a paint, and the wrap-round veranda could do with some repair, but it was still the prettiest place Fran had ever seen. ‘Knock on the door, give it to whoever answers, and we’re outta here.’

  ‘What if a sexual pervert answers?’

  ‘Jeez, okay, we’ll both go in. And out. In and out.’ She switched off the engine and said to Gramps: ‘Won’t be long,’ but he’d turned his video off, probably when she started talking about the brothers. She took a breath and got out of the car. It was time to face Brian Ryan Junior again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Thirty Years before the Fire

  The last time Fran spoke to Brian Ryan Junior she was fifteen, around Vonny’s age, and walking back from town along Ryan’s Lane. The Blue Light Disco was on that night, and Fran was thinking about how great she was going to look in her new acid-wash jeans, when his father, Brian Ryan Senior, appeared on the track about a hundred metres ahead.

  ‘Fran! Fran Collins, stand in the middle of the road, there. Stop! Do not move!’ He rustled people as he did his sheep, retching orders in guttural shards. ‘FRAAAAAN!’

  She would always obey Brian Ryan Senior, who, after all, may have been asking her to freeze in order to save her life. There was obviously a nearby snake, bull, plague of locusts, truck, bogan, kangaroo, boarder, priest, brother, nun, spider, ostrich, magpie…

  ‘Stand there Fran, good – I’m letting some sheep out of this paddock.’

  She began breathing again, phew.

  ‘They’ll run towards you but if you don’t move they’ll stop. Okay? Just don’t move and they will stop.’

  Fran did not have time to consent before at least fifty sheep poured out onto the road ahead. One looked her way, causing several to turn and check her out too, because she was standing still like that, in the middle of the road.

  She understood why they charged.

  ‘Don’t move! Fran, do not move,’ Brian Ryan Senior said.

  At least two hundred sheep there were, but they were attacking as one, with so many eyes and so many hoofs that were swirling and merging and thundering at her, no way were they going to stop.

  She did a netball dodge and scaled a tree.

  ‘Stupid idiot girl!’ Brian Ryan Senior said, setting off after his scattering flock – for several days, rumour had it.

  His geeky seventeen-year-old son, Brian Ryan Junior, skulked after him, stopping at the foot of Fran’s tree as if by accident and not looking up to say: ‘You need a hand down?’

  ‘No,’ said Fran, and when he started walking off, she added ‘Weirdo’.

  Fran had spotted the acid-wash jeans in the window of the London Emporium two weeks prior to the Blue Light Disco. Ash Mountain’s answer to a department store was located beside Gallagher’s Bakery on North Road. It was a double-fronted weatherboard cottage with quaint verandas and a creaky door that it took a lot of courage to open. Three times in the last fortnight Fran had chickened out – first, a group of boarders were walking by; next time she spotted Tricia Gallagher inside; time after that, someone had put flowers on The Spot where her mum died and she had to go home and cry. The street was clear of aggressors and grief now, and Tricia was in hospital due to a sheep-dipping incident. Safe, she went in.

  This would be her debutante disco. For many hours she had imagined herself arriving at the dance wearing the acid-wash jeans – Wow, you look amazing, everyone would be saying, Check your figure, girl! – and her chest was spasming as the shop’s door creaked closed behind her. Mrs Beatrice Gallagher, reading a magazine at the counter, hadn’t approved of Fran since she won Best and Fairest at netball (Tricia, her most talented daughter, won Most Improved). She had fifties, curly dark hair and cats-eye glasses, which she looked over to accuse her only customer thus: ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Just looking,’ Fran said, too nervous to approach the subject of the jeans in the glass enclosure. She knew she would need the assistance of the mother of her frenemy in order to pull this off, but was still unsure how best to get it. Her father had given her a fifty-dollar note the night before, and it was wet in her palm. She had planned it all out. She was going to buy the acid-wash jeans, and the Olivia Newton John off-the-shoulders lavender top she had spied
on the sales rack from the window. She would also require a new pair of shoes to set the whole thing off, as her own collection consisted of one pair of thongs, two pairs of runners, one pair of Blunnie boots, and one pair of black school shoes.

  There was one of everything in the London Emporium – one wedding dress, one debutante dress, one blue tie, one 34B bra, one pair of acid-wash jeans, one lavender off-the-shoulders Olivia Newton John top. Fran had prayed the previous night that the jeans would be a size ten because she suspected that something had happened around her thigh area recently. Having examined the tag from outside, she knew the jeans were the same cool brand Erin Donoghue wore to Margherita Delia’s sixteenth, but she did not know the price, or the size. Please be ten, please be ten. She was heading towards the cabinet. Soon, she would ask Mrs Gallagher if she could try them on, please.

  ‘Trying ’em on or what?’ Mrs Gallagher was behind her, with keys.

  ‘Not sure.’ Fran tried her best to be nonchalant, which made Mrs Gallagher huff and about-face. Fran found herself shrieking, which was not in the plan at all: ‘Okay, I’ll try them on, yeah, that’d be great.’

  The opening of the glass cabinet was a solemn ceremony, which Mrs Gallagher undertook with great slowness. Fran was hyperventilating with anticipation when the ritual ended and the jeans were handed over. There was only one changing room, directly beside Mrs Gallagher’s counter, and the curtains did not meet. Fran took off her shoes and began to pull the jeans up under her dress, catching the old bag perving twice before realising the sad truth. The acid-wash jeans would not pass her thighs. She twisted her back while reading the label: size eight, bugger. $49.99. Damn. ‘Ow.’

  ‘Need a hand?’

  Oh Lord, this was not the voice of the mother, but of Tricia Gallagher herself, who was supposed to be in hospital. ‘Oh, hi, Tricia. No, no, all good.’ It wasn’t, though. Fran’s back-twisting injury was the kind that makes breathing hurt, so she decided to do that very little. There was no way to get the jeans on, and it was proving very difficult to get them off, particularly while not breathing.