Blood Stain

by Peter Lalor

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  The wedding night histrionics gave David Kellett some hint of what lay ahead. He’d already had a taste of Katherine’s formidable sex drive, which was something he could handle. What young bloke couldn’t? If you had a goer you thanked your lucky stars and Dave had a goer on his hands all right. Yet there was this idea she had that everything had to be done the way Barbara had done it. If Ken and Barbara fucked five times on the wedding night then they had to too. Things were always done the way Ma Knight said or there was hell to pay. That was a lesson that was reinforced with bruises on young limbs. You didn’t give any lip back to Ken or Barb. Hell no. And now she does as they did. Forget the fact that this was the 1970s, a decade after the generation gap had apparently appeared. Barbara said a man should hang out the washing. Dave hung out the washing. She said a woman controlled the money. Kath controlled the money. Knickers were never to be hung on the outside of the line. Dave learned that lesson very early and was always careful about that. It sent her right off if you got the little things like that wrong.

  She was paranoid about her knickers, you had to hang them inside the line surrounded by her other clothes. You couldn’t hang them on the outside of the line. She was paranoid over that. If I hung clothes upside down or the wrong way she would rave and rant, scream and yell.

  Kath turned to her mother for counsel on all manner of things, right down to the nitty gritty of the bedroom. ‘She told her mother I was nothing short of an animal in bed—she confided in her mother with anything,’ Kellett recalls.

  Dave started having problems with this little matter of what he came to term her ‘psychotic ways’. As the years went by the little bloke noticed his young bride’s ability to switch from apparent equanimity to murderous rage in the blink of an eye. And then back again. Every time it was like a bomb blast. Glass shattered in nearby windows, eardrums popped and furniture shattered. Then she’d dust herself off and pretend like nothing ever happened. Maybe even buy you a nice present to make up for it. Oh, and gave you a wild ride in the sack too. That always took the edge off things.

  It didn’t take Dave long to realise he’d chained himself to a pit bull and when its moods turned to black he would be the closest thing to its snapping jaws.

  Poor Shorty ended up, as his dear old mum said, ‘wrapped around her little finger’. If not there, then on the end of her fists. At times he was like a clown with an enraged rodeo bull. He had placed himself in the line of attack and sometimes seemed to be doing his damnedest to provoke it. Egg her on. Ask her for one when she was worked up. And she towered over him, always having a crack at his head.

  The first two years were good, plenty of fucking and fighting, camping and carousing. She was one of the boys and loved to get out and have a good time.

  Kellett has fond memories of the early days. They lived in Muswellbrook before shifting up to Aberdeen, where he bought a house near the railway tracks on Short Street with money from his family. It wasn’t much of a street, just a dirt track that ran off the highway. Between the road and the railway line near the top pub. You turned off at the service station near the silos. There were only two or three other houses there.

  You had the trucks on the highway and the coal trains on the other side, but it was a quiet little cul-de-sac and it was theirs. You could pick up chunks of coal from the tracks for the fire and grain from the silos for the chooks. That saved a few bucks.

  She was good company, she could be very, very loving—a marriage made in heaven. She could be so nice, buy me chocolate out of the blue, buy me a beer, always buy me a beer. Prefer me to drink at home rather than go out.

  Maybe her young groom’s idea of heaven doesn’t quite tally with the one promised in the Bible, but he’d married a willing sexual partner and a good companion.

  Sometimes when things got hot he’d get a backhander, but he says, and she confirms, he never hit back. It wasn’t in his make-up to hit women; he’d been raised properly. He’d walk away or give her a cheeky line to square up.

  —How’s about a fuck?

  —Go pull ya’self.

  Kellett learned, like the others, that Katherine’s explosions had a regular bonus for partners. To make amends she would turn on her sexual charm.

  She’d get down on her knees and look up at you with those loving eyes as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and she’d be so sorry. Everything would be right after that.

  Katherine was learning the art of manipulation, learning to control others by fear or favour. A little present or a knife to the throat. A fuck or a fight. Whatever worked best. Emotionally stunted though she might be, she was cunning. And, she had learned to like the power fear gave her. It was something she knew at home and probably developed at school. A way to keep the smart kids down, to fend off the teasing.

  Kellett was even more unsettled by her affection for her abattoir knives. She cherished them and wouldn’t let him go anywhere near them. When they’d had a flat in Muswellbrook, Katherine went for them for the first time in his presence. The bloke in the flat next-door had pig dogs for hunting and if there was one thing she hated it was barking dogs. One day when Kellett was at work they really started to yap. She got herself into a right state before picking up the knives and heading over to sort them out. She was infuriated. She confronted the bloke and told him she’d ‘cut their fucking throats’ if they didn’t stop. It was a big call; these were hunting dogs that would have made it pretty tough for her to get anywhere near them, but she wasn’t being rational at the time. The bloke let her rant for a while and she left. He waited for Kellett to get home and told him the next time his missus came around threatening him he’d loose the dogs on her.

  Kellett had the odd beer with him and they got over it. It was a woman’s thing. Didn’t come between the blokes. He didn’t think too much about the incident. Barking dogs gave him the shits too. Still, she loved those knives.

  The slightest little thing could send her off. It could be watching a TV program on the news or the next-door neighbour’s dog barking and then she would just snap, totally snap and just throw something through the window at the dog—the closest thing at hand. It might be a fry pan, it might be a cup, anything, it wouldn’t matter and then she’d be just… so calm. I always thought it would be something she would grow out of.

  She was obsessed with those fucking knives from the moment she got ‘em. She wouldn’t ever let me use ‘em. They were her life.

  Later on she did cut a dog’s throat. A little dingo pup. But that was another bloke. Another episode. Anyway, she said, he asked for it.

  Kath was developing a menacing air. A worker at the meatworks remembers she used to nick the arteries on the animals to watch them bleed. She was a bit of a loner there, mainly mixed with her family, but there was one time in the packing room when she held another woman up with a knife. Held it to her throat. That was crossing the line big time. If there was one code among the workers, it was that you were careful with your knives and if there was a fight they were never raised. Too many people took bad cuts from slight accidents, just brushing one of those blades could open you right up. You had to respect them, but not Kath. She loved those bloody knives.

  Mavis Paulger, Kellett’s mother, remembers the first time she met Katherine the girl admitted to her new mother-in-law that she couldn’t cook. Mrs Paulger was impressed by her honesty. She noted the thin young woman was fairly subdued, but apparently in control of her son and the family monies. The mother-in-law remembers the couple were very proud of the house at Short Street that she and her husband had helped them buy. Kath controlled the family purse and would walk a long way to save a couple of cents. She was a bit of a spendthrift and over the years developed a pawing love of money. That first time Mrs Paulger came down to visit, she went with Kath to her family home and Barbara told her the girl didn’t know how to boil water and had never learned to cook. Her mum was wondering what they’d been eating at Short Street. Mavis tried to help and taught
the young girl a little homecraft while she was at it. All the time wondering what sort of upbringing lets a young woman loose on the world without the ability to boil water.

  During that visit Barbara told Kellett’s mother that there was a wild streak running through the female side of the family. And, while it appeared to have missed Joy, it was as wide as the Hunter Valley in Katherine.

  A visit to the Knight clan was something of an eye-opener for Mrs Paulger: her son had certainly chosen a colourful group of in-laws for himself. Hillbillies is what the Americans would call them. There was just a strange air about the place. Too many men.

  After a year together, he and Kath decided they were ready to start a family and so she went off the pill. She was 19 when she got knocked up, spent her twentieth birthday vomiting. She had a lot of trouble with morning sickness. It knocked her about almost every time, but before she’d gone full term the world had started to turn away. Dave was starting to wander around town. ‘I had a few morals in the early days of our marriage. I remained faithful up until she was four months pregnant.’

  Although it seems she didn’t know at the time, Kath had her suspicions. She was an intensely jealous girl who would grow into an intensely jealous woman. There were dark clouds gathering in the ranges, but nobody could have foretold just how long and fierce this storm would be, except Barbara, who had clearly warned Kellett of the consequences of playing around.

  Strange things started to happen close to the birth of the child. While Katherine was in Muswellbrook hospital the house caught fire. Kellett was asleep in bed and got a little burnt before escaping. He didn’t smoke in bed and there was no sign of an electrical fault. The police suspected arson. It looked like somebody might have kicked something through the back door. Many years later the whole place would burn down. Katherine was edgy and suspicious. Dave was cagey and nervous.

  Melissa Ann Kellett was born 11 May 1976. Two days after Mother’s Day, but close enough to make it a special thing for Katherine. There was some argument over the name, but Kellett won out and the girl was named Melissa Ann Kellett. Melissa was a girl he knew. Later Kath and her family would say he put on a right turn at the hospital because he wanted a boy, saying he turned the air blue with his language. He says the only argument was over naming the child. Whatever happened, it did not bode well for the first-time parents. This should have been a happy time but there were thunder claps and lightning in the distance.

  A first-time mother can do it pretty tough, but Melissa’s first months were very difficult for Katherine, who became more paranoid about her husband and his absences. She suspected something was going on and began to rumble. They were arguing and separated for a while. He seemed toey. She was getting agitated. She could sense something. Then, in early July, when the baby was only seven weeks old, things got really heated. There was an argument and she tried to stab him with a broken beer bottle. Or something like that. It’s all become confused. Kellett sent her off to her parents, who gave her a gob full. She could be a mad bitch, the brothers would say. Kellett decided to escape. Life was just getting too hairy.

  He planned it carefully, unwilling to face her with the news. ‘She would’ve fucking killed me, I could never have told her.’

  He gave in his notice to the manager at the abattoir, swearing him to secrecy about his plans and then jumped into his HR Holden 186 with his new girlfriend before anybody knew anything. Melissa was just two months old, Kath was 20. Dave had had the car fixed up at the local service station before he left; it was just at the end of Short Street, about 50 metres from the house. Old Hoppy Sullivan had done the job for him. And then he was in the car, checking the rear vision mirror as he raced up through the mountains toward Queensland.

  I left her a note saying I was leaving … I couldn’t stand her mood swings, her psychotic ways.

  I didn’t set out to deliberately have an affair; I got sick of… her psychotic ways, the mood swings. She could be as calm as Hannibal Lecter and then she could go into a frenzy and smash, it wouldn’t matter what, and then she’d say sorry the next day.

  I told her parents. Her mother told me she’ll hunt me down.

  And, in a way, she did. Katherine was crazy with despair. Broken and angry. Veering madly between the two states. Dave reckons she told the cops he was going to Queensland and he was carrying drugs. They stopped him and pulled the car to pieces at Wallangarra on the border but found nothing. If dobbing him into the cops was Katherine’s attempt at payback it was half-hearted. However, her emotional turmoil was anything but. She was hysterical. Abandoned and anguished. A scorned woman. Ken and Barbara tried to help her, but even they couldn’t cope. She was carting the knives around, talking nonsense and threatening to kill Melissa. They knew she could be like this, but this time it was real bad. Even Barbara couldn’t get her back on the leash.

  One day she went completely berserk. The police were called and she was admitted to St Elmos Psychiatric Hospital in Tamworth. She’d been saying she was going to kill Melissa. There were rumours she had swung her around by her ankles. She told the doctors she’d tried to stab Kellett with a beer bottle. He’d left her. Katherine was admitted to the hospital on a Schedule 2 because she was dangerous to others and not under proper care and control. She said she would kill herself. They found her agitated and depressed and kept her there for two weeks. They treated her with antidepressants and then sent her home.

  What else could you do? She was sad and angry, but she wasn’t mad and over time she calmed down. There’s no slot for people like this. You can’t keep them in a straight jacket just in case. Katherine clearly had a personality disorder of some form and it was common for people like that to behave frantically when abandoned. It wasn’t something you got locked up over. Still, she was an accident waiting to happen.

  Around this time Mrs Paulger got a phone call from a Tamworth psychiatrist about her daughter-in-law and recalls the doctor saying that Katherine should never have had children. It made her wonder what the hell was happening down there.

  After that it got really rough. Joy told Katherine that Kellett had left with another girl. It was something she couldn’t handle. Who could? There was a suggestion the girl was pregnant. It was like being chopped off at the knees.

  Sergeant Lyne’s wife, Betty, recalls standing on the verandah of the station house when Katherine arrived in an agitated state, talking nonsense. She pushed the baby into her arms. It was a Sunday, but Betty can’t remember what happened after that, well, nothing until she was bringing Kath lunch in the cells a few days later. It was all so long ago. And so sad.

  Katherine had never been a person to care what others thought and this would develop over the years to the point where she didn’t give a flying F. Let ‘em look. Fuck ‘em all. Even if she did care, she had no control over her anguish and now she was ready to take it to town. After all, they had provided the girl and fixed the car. They knew about it. The little town of Aberdeen was to witness a storm it talks about to this day, whispering just in case a Knight walks in.

  On Monday 3 August 1976 a terrible mournful sound disrupted the sleepy trade on the main street. A couple of men outside the old CBC Bank looked up and saw young Katherine Kellett coming up the road, dishevelled and wailing and throwing a pram from one side of the footpath to the other. Jagging it violently from left to right. She was out of her mind with grief and at any moment it looked like she would let go and the baby would fly into the path of oncoming traffic. The good citizens of Aberdeen turned their backs or ducked for cover. A mad woman had been let loose on the town and nobody knew what to do. You couldn’t go near her, that much was obvious. She looked fearsomely strong.

  The railway line runs through the heart of Aberdeen, but it’s in a cutting so it’s hidden from the top end of town. The locals say that Kath took Melissa down there and put her on the tracks, knowing the southbound train was due any minute and would finish her off. Lorna Driscoll, who’s got a dusty old fashioned corner store
with a petrol bowser out the front, reckons she saw Kath coming up the road. Lorna was outside her house on the other side of the tracks. Kath came over and grabbed an axe from her neighbour’s woodpile and start to run around with it. Running amok, trying to punch a hole in her despair. Lorna struggles to describe the fury and energy Kath had at that moment. It was like nuclear fission. You wouldn’t have messed with her.

  Doors slammed closed and people ran for cover, pulling their curtains closed and putting their eyes to the cracks. Lorna’s neighbour was hysterical with fear but Kath wasn’t after them. Old Ted Abrahams came up from the track with the baby. Lorna saw him.

  Ted was a war veteran who was doing it a little tough. He had a plate in his head and a short temper which was often baited by other men at the meatworks. He was laid off after hitting his head during a fight with another bloke in the showers. He spent a month in hospital with a fractured skull. He’d seen a terrible plane crash in New Guinea during the war. In 1943 a bomber landed on an Australian convoy killing 69 soldiers. It was the largest single accident of World War II involving Australian soldiers. It shook him right up. He’d been in Egypt and then New Guinea, where he got hurt and sent home. He didn’t have a good war, but he was a harmless old bloke if you left him alone and he liked to keep to himself to wander the outskirts of town. Ted lived in a shack near the silos on the other side of the line from where Katherine and Kellett lived and would collect grain and coal from the sidings. Ted’s shack burned down one year so he moved to a half-built house with no roof, but that burned down too. This particular day he emerged from the railway depression with Melissa in his arms. Told people he’d found her on the tracks.