As Mary stepped into the river, she prayed it would be over soon.
Unlike her five siblings she had always shied from the swimming days here. She’d never learned to swim.
She would rather sit on the bank and read a book, or watch as her sisters did slow crawls in their swimming costumes, and her brothers jumped off the trees into the water.
Today, Mary had loaded large rocks into her thigh level dress pockets. She felt the water lapping over them now as her feet felt their way over the murky riverbed, into the deep.
It was just three hours since her gossip neighbour, Myrtle Fyfe, had come to her house, without her usual smirk, and without her vicious group of friends.
“I’ve seen your Barry,” she said in her thick Scottish accent. “Half an hour ago, at the Thornbury Theatre. He was with ….with her. I thought you should know.”
Message conveyed, Mrs Fyfe donned a fake expression of concern; her eyebrows furrowed like a cartoon character’s. But she said nothing else.
Didn’t offer a hand. She turned and left. No doubt to let everyone in the neighbourhood know about poor Mary Jeffery and her faithless husband.
Mary didn’t waste time. She went into the house and roused her three boys, all aged under four. She dressed them and brought them into her parents’ house at the end of the street.
The house was unusually empty, but she could hear a party in the yard of the neighbours. She rushed into the house, gave the older boys a sleeping draught and laid them on a bed in the sleepout at the rear. She shushed the baby and rocked him till he closed his eyes, and she put him down in a drawer.
She kissed all the boys, and cried softly. She would never see them again.
She closed the door to the house softly, and walked down the road to the train station. She got off three stations down, at Westgarth, then caught a tram up High Street to Thornbury Theatre.
She ordered a spider and sat in the cinema café, with a good view to the exiting moviegoers.
After half an hour, the patrons from A Star is Born came out. It was the hit movie of 1937.
And there he was – her husband, Barry, on the arm of a woman who must be Ivy Marshall.
Ivy’s hair was garishly peroxide blonde and she wore too much makeup. She wore a sheer, knee-length navy blue dress that plunged at the bust.
Barry, in a suit and hat, was laughing at a joke she made. He glanced over. And saw Mary. He stared for a few beats, then made out that he had not seen her.
They exited the theatre and walked up the street. So she – the mother of his children – wasn’t even worth his time. Worth a ‘’sorry’’. She didn’t exist, in his mind.
Mary did not bother to chase after them, make a scene. Many times, at home, she’d accused Barry of seeing someone, but he’d always violently denied it.
Now here was proof. Mary was finished with fighting. Ivy could have him.
She left her hat, bag and coat on the café chair. She caught a train to Victoria Park.
It was starting to rain and the wind whipped her hair as it unravelled out of its bun. She started to run, down to the river. She couldn’t swim. It was the easiest way. She was crying. She shed her shoes as she ran through the streets, like a mad woman. She felt mad.
The swimming spot on the river was deserted when she arrived, and no wonder, the weather was terrible.
The sorrow lay on Mary’s shoulders like a heavy blanket. No one in her family had ever divorced – it was a shame she couldn’t bear.
She had asked her mother, Jinny, what to do. Jinny had counselled Mary to stick by Barry. She was a wife, now, and her duty was to Barry and their little boys. Life as a single mother didn’t bear thinking about.
Mary knew her parents would take good care of the boys, as would her two older sisters. Rose was married with two children and Nell was also married and childless, but a doting auntie.
The boys were in safe hands, and were young enough not to remember Mary.
As the cold water came up to her shoulders, Mary felt a stab of shame at committing the sin of suicide.
Her father Sam, a preacher, would be mortified. Would he give her a Christian funeral?
But she had already let him down, let them all down, by somehow sending her husband into another woman’s arms.
She couldn’t deny the pleasure she felt, on some level, at hurting Barry, for all he’d done to her.
Luring her with promises of eternal love. Showing her glimpses of a happy family. Then slapping her in the face by flaunting his mistress in public, where friends and family would all know how little he valued her.
Seeking solace, Mary thought back to when she was 10 years old, lined up in the pew at church, and the hymns of hundreds of Sunday services came back and rushed into her ears. She started to sing, before she stepped into the final deep, the water moving much faster now.
She said the Lord’s Prayer, prayed to God that He would take her swiftly. And her high voice wavered as she sang her favourite hymn. How Great Thou Art. No one watched as her head went under the water. And there Mary Jeffery drowned, one cold, windy April day.
Author: Carolyn Webb Page 1 of 2
His eyes were boring into me. If looks could kill I’d be dead in seconds.
I looked behind me, and back at him. “What?” I said.
But there were just the two of us – me and the elderly man – in the train from the city to Hurstbridge.
It was one of those interminable, off peak train rides where the driver goes at snail’s pace, stops at every signal and has a natter to all the Met staff he sees at stations.
The bloke in my carriage was up the other end, leaning on a pole, but he strode towards me. He came close, and sat down in the window seat opposite me, without asking.
“Excuse me,’’ I said. “You didn’t ask me.”
“Ask what?” he said.
“Whether you can sit there.”
“Doesn’t look like it’s occupied.”
I made an exaggerated glance behind me. “My boyfriend. He’s due to get on at the next station. So, sorry. It’s taken.”
“I won’t be long. You’re that girl, aren’t you?” he said, and there was that hostile glare again. He had strange swampy green eyes. He was pale and wiry with white hair and he had a bristly, semi-Hitler moustache.
“I have never met you in my life,” I said.
He was still glaring at me, as if I’d just smeared dog poo on him.
The train had just halted between stations again, somewhere near Ivanhoe. It was a fine, cool day with sun streaming through the windows.
“Er, listen, mate, I have to get off at this stop, so sorry I have to be going,’’ I said, as I stood up.
“No.’’ He said.
“ExCUSE me?” I said. “Are you the police? No? Then get out of my way,’’ I said, a little freaked out by now.
His spindly leg shot out and blocked me from the aisle. I pushed against it. It was surprisingly strong. I went to step over him but he pushed me back into my seat with a palm to my upper arm.
“That is assault. You are in big trouble,’’ I said, taking out my phone, my hands shaking as I tried to key in my PIN. My fingers wouldn’t work.
“You’re not going anywhere. You’re from Watsy,’’ he said.
“PARDON me?” I asked, although I knew he meant Watsonia. Although as far as I knew, I’d never admitted to anyone being from Watsonia. Let alone being from Watsy.
“I used to run the milk bar on Watsonia Road,’’ he said. “Back in the 1970s.” His voice rose and he looked to be revving up for a big yarn. “You and your sister.”
“Y-e-e-s,’’ I said, thinking that if I could, I’d be backing out of this carriage slowly, my hands up.
“You came in to the shop. The summer of ’77. Am I right? You stole a packet of chips. Samboy salt and vinegar. I’ll never forget it.
“You got your sister to create a diversion, to start crying or something. You pinched the chips. And you ran.’’
“I’ve got it all written down here,’’ he said, bringing out a thick exercise book, and flicking through it.
Its pages were divided into columns, and crammed with scribbled entries in different coloured ink. Under “name” it had “McDonald girl” and “son of butcher”. “Yes, here it is, dark haired Simpson girl. That’s you.”
I looked frantically at the ceiling as the train got going again – did they have security cameras on these trains?
‘’Well missy,’’ he said, and he was shouting now. ‘’You ruined me!’’
‘’Excuse me?’’ I was so gobsmacked I could hardly speak.
“Oh, you deny it do you? You RUINED ME.’’ He was standing on his seat, hands on hips.
There was a very good chance he would topple over if we went round a bend. ‘’My income dived. I had to close the shop. My marriage broke up. I started drinking, went to the pokies….’’
“Look man,’’ I said. “M-m-maybe you should get off at the Heidelberg. At the Austin – you can see a nice doctor there,’’ and I jumped over the seats behind me, ran up the end of the carriage and made a run for a door, or at least the emergency speaker.
“But you don’t deny it, DO YOU?” He shouted. His knees were a little creaky as he stood up, and he was slow to start after me.
The train was going at glacial speed, but finally, it was almost at Eaglemont. Where there would be no one around. I punched in my phone PIN again. ‘’No battery’’ it said and the screen went black.
The man was almost there, and he pulled out a knife. ‘’Well, you’re not getting away with it, Missy,’’ he said as he lunged at me. I blocked it with my phone and the knife ripped my favourite leather phone cover.
Before he had time for another blow, the train stopped at Eaglemont. It seemed an eternity of grappling with and fending off my assailant as the little door button turned green and opened as I punched it.
I ran, up and down those infernal Eaglemont hills, for what seemed like eternity, until my lungs almost burst. After I got my breath back, I ducked into a milk bar.
I’d have killed for some salt and vinegar chips, right then, so I chucked a stone at the window, to create a diversion. I didn’t have money on me, but that had never stopped me in the past.
“What a crazy day,” I thought to myself, and I got my second wind as I sprinted off with the chips, the shop owner shouting and swearing behind me.
“Solstice!” her mother shouted from the other side of the house. “Have you got your robe?! And your coat? And your boots? It’ll be cold out.”
“I’m not going,” said Sally. “And it’s Sally, not Solstice. Solstice is a made up, crappy name.”
“What?” her mother, Griselda, was at the bedroom door now. “what did you say?”
“I said I hate the name Solstice. I get teased about it at school. The other kids say it must be the name of a dishwashing detergent. You can call me Sally from now on.”
Sally swallowed. It was not like her to defy her mother, who tended to be overwhelming. But she was 16, and she sensed the time had come.
Griselda was, for once, lost for words for a bit, then found her voice. “Why would you want an everyday, boring name that everyone else has? Do you want to be a sheep? Solstice means….”
“Yes, yes, I was conceived on the shortest day of the year,” said Sally, in a monotone. “And I should be blessed with my individuality bestowed on me….but Mum, I hate it.”
Sally paused for a minute to gather her courage. “And…..and I don’t want to go to the bonfire.”
Griselda, dressed in a tie dyed heavy long green dress, black boots and a hippy knitted hat that tamped down her long purple hair, just stared at Sally, her black eyes boring into Sally’s in the usual intimidating way.
The look of disbelief rapidly dissolved into anger, like a bank of blackening clouds rolling across the sky.
“You WILL come to the solstice,” said Griselda, her voice rising alarmingly, taking steps towards Sally, who was sitting on her bed, her back to the wall. “It’s important to me, to your brother Element and to Bronson….”
“I hate Bronson. That’s a shit name too,” said Sally, her own anger bubbling up alarmingly. “He’s a bully and a shit. How long have you been seeing him now? He’s not my Dad. And his real name is Brian. And your real name is Nicole.”
“Solstice, this is NOT a conversation for right now,” said Griselda, her teeth now gritted, and her fists closed at her sides. “We are going to go to that bonfire. We are going to dance. We are going to chant….”
“….and smoke a lot of weed and drink a lot of goon….’’ Said Sally, rather nastily, she knew, but she also felt a shot of joy. “You know it’s just a crock of shit, all that hippy bullshit, Mum.”
“Do NOT call me Mum!!! It’s Griselda……
“Nan told me it’s a made up name. Your real name is Nicole Irene Cockburn. Pronounced Coburn. You went to a Catholic school. Nan says you’re a drug addict. I want to go and live with Nan.”
Griselda strode across the room and held her hand up as if to slap Sally. She looked like it was a supreme effort to resist. Griselda dropped her hand, hard against her own thigh. She grabbed Sally’s arm and pulled on it. Sally resisted, and Griselda tried to drag her out of the room.
“F–k OFF Mum.”
“Come on. Bronson’s getting the car ready,” said Griselda. “I’m getting Element from his room.”
“Element doesn’t want to come, either….MUM. That’s what I’m calling you now. And if you don’t split up from that f–kwit Branson, who groped me last week, by the way, in the lounge room, I’m definitely going to stay with Nan. Nan’s already said she’s filled out the forms to send to child protection. I told her about all the enemas, the colonscopies, the dope you guys smoke, the goon, the times you pulled me out of school to do tie dying and forest bathing, the witch meetings we had to go to….’’
“Wash your mouth out, Solstice. I am not a witch. I will NOT have you talking like that. Come on, let’s go to the bonfire. It’s winter solstice! There’ll be kale chips! And kombucha!”
“It’s Sally, Mum. My name is Sally! Sorry but I can’t take it anymore. Nan told me that when you were 16, you ran away from home. You couldn’t hack Nan and Pop’s straight lifestyle so you ran off to a commune with your boyfriend Genesis. Whose real name was Brad, from next door.’’
“So consider this my running away. I want to go to school. Go to uni. Get a good job in finance. Earn a lot of money and live in the suburbs. Drink wine and gin and tonics. Have children and …and…. Get them vaccinated. And they’ll call me Mum, not some crappy made up shit name like Solstice…..’’
Sally was sobbing now, prostrate on the bed.
Griselda sighed loudly, and groaned. She turned on her heel, left the room and slammed the door.
Bronson was hanging around in the living room, in his tattered robes, his hair and beard long, his feet bare. In one hand was a lit spliff, and he dragged on it, not concerned by Griselda’s agitated state.
“Hey babe,” he said, as though he’d just woken up, which he probably had.
“What’s up?”
“Eh!” sighed Griselda, loudly. “Solstice cracked the shits over the bonfire, I think we’ll have to go without her. She was yankin’ my chain, threatening to run of and be a square. She’s at that age. I was a shit, too at that age.”
“yeah babe”: said Bronson, giving Griselda a kiss and stroking her arm. “She’s a teenager, man, she’ll be OK.”
And with that, they rounded up Element, and headed off to their friends’ farm to the bonfire, and where Element, being 10, was still happy to run around with his friends, scare the chickens and goats and chuck all sorts of stuff into the fire.
I love I love my little COLANDER girl!
Yeah, sweet COLANDER girl!
I love I love my little COLANDER girl!
Every single day of the year.
John Tully was trying to do the dishes, but his brother Fred was being particularly obnoxious today.
Fred picked up the old colander from the clean dish rack, and flicked it, like it was a top hat, on and off his head.
John could have clocked him, right then and there, with a saucepan, but remembered that Fred had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. John had thought their late parents would have approved Fred moving in with him, but John was beginning to feel uneasy with that decision.
Online forums warned him people with dementia could get pretty challenging. Walking around the house in the nude, blabbing all day about nothing, or mistaking their coffee cup for a phone.
John sent a silent curse to his wife, Sheila, for leaving on a cruise last week, and for Fred’s wife, Toni, for dying six months ago. They both would know what to do right now.
Fred was in full dance mode. It reminded him of the 1960s when Fred’s favourite annoying habit was to plague his younger brother with puns based on popular songs.
Today they were called Mondegreens. But John believed Fred invented them, back then. He’d sing Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy, and try to kiss John on the cheek. The Ants Are My Friends and make little ant moves with his fingers up John’s arm.
Fred would point and sing There’s a Bathroom On Your Right to Creedence’s lyric There’s a bad moon on the rise, whenever they passed in the corridor at home.
Each time, back then, John would shove Fred into a wall, or flick him with a teatowel, or there’d be a full on brawl, which Fred, no matter what a hiding he got, would emerge from with a silly grin, saying “I gotcha” as he ran for his life.
But Fred knew full well that John had a particular hatred for Neil Sedaka songs. There was pop, and then there was fairy floss, and John thought Sedaka was a crock.
Unfortunately, at one point in their youth, that seemed to be all that was on the radio station their Mum played. All day it would be Oh Carol, or Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen or Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.
Mum had no idea what she’d unleashed because it sent John straight into Black Sabbath, the Rolling Stones, The Who and Jimi Hendrix, which proceeded to plague her with from his room for a number of years before he moved out.
—
But back to 2019 – John was woken from his reverie by Fred tapping on his head with that f—in colander again, then shaking it and singing loudly in his ear:
January: you start the year off fine
February you’re my little Valentine
March I’m gonna march you down the aisle
April you’re an Easter Bunny when you smile
Yeah Yeah Yeah My heart’s in a whirl
I love I love I love my little COLANDER girl
Every day (every day) Every day (every day) of the year!
—
John was NOT in the mood. Just today, he’d been told his services at the hardware store were no longer required. Josie had the guts to inform him that he was too old and they needed to hire 15-year-olds. Sorry.
John’s wife, Sheila, was evidently more concerned these days in hanging out (i.e. getting drunk) with her mates than spending time with him. (“You wouldn’t mind if I went on a two month cruise, would you John?” she asked. “You’ll love spending time with Fred.” John did credit that she managed not to smirk).
To top it all, John was sure he had cancer. If it wasn’t the dodgy bladder, it was the sun spots or that cough he’d develop lately. He didn’t reckon he had much time left.
Meanwhile Fred was into a new verse. And only getting louder.
Maybe if I ask your Dad and Mom (June)
They’ll let me take you to the junior Prom
(July) like a fire cracker all aglow
(August) when you’re on the beach you steal the show
It was then that John cracked.
“Fred!!” he shouted, after Fred grabbed his shoulder to emphasise the singing.
John grabbed the colander out of Fred’s hand and whacked it at Fred. Not hard, but it hit Fred in the face and he went off balance in shock and fell backward.
Fred hit his head on the kitchen bench, so hard it sounded like a sledge hammer hitting a solid object.
Fred fell like a tree, sideways, and like a dead weight on to the floor.
For a few seconds, John stood there in shock. He bent down, and tried to slap Fred. He poured water on him. In panic, now, he checked his pulse. Nothing. John put his hand over Fred’s mouth and nose. No air was coming out.
He did chest compressions and mouth to mouth, but it was futile. Fred was dead.
John squatted there in the kitchen, his head in his hands, for what seemed like a long time.
Yes, Fred was a pain in the arse, but he didn’t deserve to die.
He’d have to tell the police, Fred’s kids and Sheila, wherever she was, what happened.
Then John felt a tickle in his throat and it wasn’t a cough.
John was overcome by uncontrollable laughter, so hard it made him cry.
There were bizarre colander shaped dots imprinted on Fred’s nose. Fred would find it funny, he was sure.
John had believed Neil Sedaka was the death of good music but his music had actually caused the death of Fred.
It would be a weird one to put on the death certificate: death by colander.
It was 3am. Pitch black. Dead quiet outside, as she schlepped, for the fourth time that night, to the toilet, which was across the hall and kitchen.
Her bladder was playing funny buggers but it was no laughing matter at all. She wasn’t a man with an enlarged prostate, so what was the deal with that? Was she getting kidney cancer? Probably.
And she just could not stay asleep. Every night, she’d sleep for the first three hours then toss and turn, wide awake, until morning.
She’d tried all the usual tricks. Have a glass of milk (cue more toilet trips), toss and turn (no joy), lie stock still (she just got bored), or listen to terrible overnight radio (why did they always play some god-awful 1950s drama serial just as she woke up? Or some talkback caller droning on about his psoriasis?).
As for TV, forgeddaboutit. She’d rather go out and mow the lawn than tolerate those Fat Blaster machine advertorials or re-runs of Bewitched.
She tried reading a book. That, at least, was fairly pleasant, but gnawing away in her head was the through that, every hour, two hours, then three, was hacking into her total sleep hours.
In short, she couldn’t win, short of taking drugs.
She wasn’t yet that desperate, but she had a feeling it was any day now.
She’d end up a hopelessly addicted hag, sitting with a hat and a sign on Swanston street, peddling for money to score.
With that happy thought, Monica entered the kitchen door and made her usual glance around to check for serial killers. Or ghosts. Or a serial killer’s ghost. She chuckled.
And screamed loudly enough to wake the dead, and backed against the kitchen bench. Sitting on a kitchen chair, his legs crossed on the table, was what looked like a giant smurf.
Bare blue chest and face, and white cap and trousers. This one had a black moustache, black eyes and a three day growth.
Monica was frozen, backed against the bench, metres away from him, while one arm groped behind her back for her mobile phone.
Damn! She’d left it on the bedside table – her latest offering to the sleep Gods was to look up obscure historical figures on Wikipedia in the hope she’d bore herself to sleep.
“There’s my purse – take it,” she croaked. “What else do you want? My laptop. It’s old, but it works. A-a-and there’s a jar with a few coins in the pantry. Here. Take the car keys. Car’s out in the car port.”
OK, she was being a bit generous, but she was panicking, her heart was galloping. She just wanted this freak out of here.
He just peered at her with his little beady black eyes, as though she’d been speaking Swahili. He grinned, and promptly yawned.
“Who are you? And why are you dressed as a Smurf?” she said, a little impertinently. But grumpiness was a known side-effect of insomnia.
The Smurf spoke in a high pitched whine, sounding like a jockey. “I’m not a Smurf,” he said, frowning. “I’m a dwarf. I’m Sleepy.”
“Yeah and I’m the Queen of England. Now I don’t know what drugs you’re on, or what riches you think I might have but I can assure you there’s nothing to steal, apart from what I’ve told you about.
“So would you please get out of my house?”
“No,’’ squeaked Sleepy. “I’m on a mission.”
Monica pinched her hip, hard, to check whether she was dreaming. “Owww” she heard herself say.
“I am prepared to cure you of insomnia,” said Sleepy. “I can get you eight hours’ sleep a night.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “And in return, I want….”
She gasped in horror.
“Ahhh, naaah, no,” said Sleepy. “Look, I know I’m attractive, I hate to disappoint you, but sorry love. I’m gay.”
“Then what?” she said. “What do you want.”
“In return,” he said, “I want your soul, your first born and I’ll give you blocked ears once a year.”
Monica rubbed her eyes. She really didn’t have to think about it for long.
“I’ll take it,” she said.
Sleepy looked stunned. “You what?”
“I’ll take it. Insomnia’s a bitch. I’d do anything to end it. Anything!!!”
“Well, uh, Ohhh K then!”
Sleepy sat up and magically a large sheet of paper, written in illegible ink script appeared from behind his back. He handed her a giant feathered fountain pen.
She didn’t have her glasses, but she gathered it was mostly in the vein of “and according to the party of the first part, I hereby declare that heretofore…”
She signed on the dotted line.
Sleepy disappeared in a puff of blue smoke.
Monica proceeded to the toilet. Look, weirder things had happened while she’d been wide awake at stupid o’clock.
She went back to bed, switched off the light, and the iPhone, and slept the sleep of the dead, for the first time in five years.
Stuff the consequences. Here was sleep, sweet sleep.
Staggering a little. He’s nice and sozzled. Cooked. It’s warm, even here in the hills. Sunny and bright.
Curiously, there’s not a car in sight as he makes his way to his house, on Dodds Road.
His brother Sean insisted on driving him home, after a smashing Christmas feast at their sister Karen’s, on account of Michael being pissed as a newt, as Sean put it.
The brothers had a minor brawl that almost came to blows, over whether Sean would drop Michael off at his doorstop, not on the main road. “No, no, you’ll drop me right here, it’ll be great, thanks,’’ said Michael.
“No, let me get you to your house, you’re too drunk…..” said Sean.
Michael: “No, drop me here, I said..” and so on, and so forth.
Michael being the oldest, by 18 months, and the most stubborn, he won the argument, with Sean swearing and hitting the steering wheel as he stopped to let Michael off.
Michael chuckled as he headed down a rather steep hill. He was now a little weary, he realised. He stopped in front of a tree for a piss and was halfway through when he heard the car motor.
A little Japanese model. Quiet. In good nick, thought Michael, absently, ever the ex-mechanic. Manual. But someone was crunching the gears something shocking.
Just as he was zipping up his fly, he turned and saw a flash. Brakes squealing. A deep thud. Searing pain.
And that was the end of Michael O’Shea.
—
The Honda’s gears crunched but the tyres held firm as Zarah Metcalfe swerved around the diabolical Dandenongs corners and zipped up and down hills en route to her ex-husband’s home in Belgrave.
It was Christmas Day, late afternoon, and Zarah’s nerves were completely shot through. She was pretty sober – well, she’d had a few sherries making the trifle this morning.
She felt she needed a few beverages because she was stressed to the max. A good table red would hit the spot right now.
“You need to slow down. Calm down,” said a little voice in her head. But she was too frazzled to listen.
Six months before, her mother had died, and her father couldn’t cope. Lately he’d started acting erratically, leaving the stove on after a cup of tea, leaving the front door wide open, leaving dirty clothes on the floor at his house in Belgrave.
He’d called that morning to say he couldn’t do Christmas this year. It was too sad. “I’m sad, too Dad, but I’m coming around and we’ll have lunch,’’ said Zarah.
She’d dropped her kids, Cooper and Jackson, off at her ex-husband Darren’s house that morning, after they’d opened their presents.
At her Dad’s that morning, she roasted a chicken and made a trifle, with copious sherry, and laid the table with festive decorations as she vacuumed, cleaned the grotty bathroom and put some washing on.
Dad, meanwhile slumped on the lounge chair, nursing a whiskey or four, as he flipped morosely between silly Christmas movies on TV. She shook him awake for lunch and he downed a few bites before falling asleep in his dining chair.
Zarah allowed herself some tears as she gazed at a photo of her mum, Jess. “I wish you were here, Mum,” she sobbed. She picked up Dad and put him to bed, switching the air conditioning on, as it had warmed up.
It was time for Zarah to go to work. She was a bartender at the Burvale Hotel. Her shift started at 5pm.
She’d left a note for Dad and was getting into her Honda at about 4pm when she got a phone call from her ex husband’s bimbo girlfriend, Mel.
“Sorry, ah, Saaaahrah,” said Mel, “can youse come and pick Jackson and Cooper up? Right now?” She had a nasal accent and an irritating upward inflection.
“We’re due at my Mum’s at five,” Mel continued. “She’s in Werribee, at the other side of town. We have to leave.”
“Well the boys will have to go with you,” replied Zarah. “You know I have to work tonight. That was the deal.”
“Sahhhrah, they’re not my kids,” said Mel, with a decided edge to her voice, keeping it low, presumably so Darren couldn’t hear. “They’ve been fucken little pricks, if you wanna know the truth. I’m not puttin’ up with them one more minute. Youse can have ‘em.”
Zarah did not have the strength to argue. She said OK. She had never brought her kids to work. Her boss, Larry, would be angry. But she had no choice.
The roads, on the way to Darren’s at Kilsyth, were eerily clear.
Zarah’s mind kept screening three films in her head, one after the other: her Dad, was he losing his mind? Fucking Mel, and Zarah got angrier by the minute at that bitch who’d stolen her husband and now hated her kids. And work. She couldn’t afford to be late. But she had to bring the kids.
She drove the curves of Olinda, one after the other. Her phone rang on the seat beside her. She turned for a second to see who it was.
Then a thump. She screeched the car to a halt and got out.
Her heart stopped. She’d hit someone. An old man. He was flat on his front. Motionless. She looked around. No one in sight.
The car had just a faint abrasion. The sun shone through the trees. Birds chirped. She took his pulse. Nothing. She held her hand up to his mouth. No breath.
As if she were a robot, she returned to her car, got in and drove off. She would tell no one. Her Dad relied on her. Her kids lived for her. She couldn’t go to jail.
“Sorry old man. I didn’t mean it. It’s been a shitty Christmas. For both of us.
“Merry Christmas,” she added, and started to laugh, hysterically, tears coursing down her cheeks as she revved the engine and headed for Darren’s place.
Unlike her five siblings she had always shied from the water here. She’d never learned to swim.
She would rather sit on the bank and read a book, or watch as her sisters did slow crawls in their swimming costumes, and her brothers jumped off the trees into the water.
Today, Mary had loaded large rocks into her thigh level dress pockets. She felt the water lapping over them now as her feet felt their way over the murky riverbed, into the deep.
It was just three hours since her gossip neighbour, Myrtle Fyfe, had come to her house, without her usual smirk, and without her vicious group of friends.
“I’ve seen your Barry,” she said in her thick Scottish accent. “Half an hour ago, going in to a picture at the Thornbury Theatre. He was with ….with her. I thought you should know.”
Message conveyed, Mrs Fyfe donned a fake expression of concern; her eyebrows furrowed like a cartoon character’s. But she said nothing else.
Didn’t offer a hand. She turned and left. No doubt to let everyone in the neighbourhood know about poor Mary Jeffery and her faithless husband.
Mary didn’t waste time. She went into the house and roused her three boys, all aged under four. She dressed them and brought them into her parents’ house at the end of the street.
The house was unusually empty, but she could hear a party in the yard of the neighbours. She rushed into the house, gave the older boys a sleeping draught and laid them on a bed in the sleepout at the rear. She shushed the baby and rocked him till he closed his eyes, and she put him down in a drawer.
She kissed all the boys, and wept.
She closed the door to the house softly, and walked down the road to the train station. She got off three stations down, at Westgarth, then caught a tram up High Street to Thornbury Theatre.
She ordered a spider and sat in the cinema café, with a good view to the exiting moviegoers.
After half an hour, the patrons from A Star is Born came out. It was the hit movie of 1937.
And there he was – her husband, Barry, on the arm of a woman who must be Ivy Marshall.
Ivy’s hair was peroxide blonde and she wore too much makeup. She wore a sheer, knee-length navy blue dress that plunged at the bust.
Barry, in a suit and hat, was laughing at a joke she made. He glanced over. And saw Mary. He stared for a few beats, then made out that he had not seen her.
They exited the theatre and walked up the street. So she – the mother of his children – wasn’t even worth his time. Worth a ‘’sorry’’. She didn’t exist, in his mind.
Mary did not bother to chase after them, make a scene. Many times, at home, she’d accused Barry of seeing someone, but he’d always violently denied it.
Now here was proof. Mary was finished with fighting. Ivy could have him.
She left her hat, bag and coat on the café chair. She caught a train to Victoria Park.
It was starting to rain and the wind whipped her hair as it unravelled out of its bun. She started to run, down to the river. She couldn’t swim. It was the easiest way. She was crying. She shed her shoes as she ran through the streets, like a mad woman. She felt mad.
The swimming spot on the river was deserted when she arrived, and no wonder, the weather was terrible.
The sorrow lay on Mary’s shoulders like a heavy blanket. No one in her family had ever divorced – it was a shame she couldn’t bear.
She had asked her mother, Jinny, what to do. Jinny had counselled Mary to stick by Barry. She was a wife, now, and her duty was to Barry and their little boys. Life as a single mother didn’t bear thinking about.
Mary knew her parents would take good care of the boys, as would her two older sisters. Rose was married with two children and Nell was also married and childless, but a doting auntie.
The boys were in safe hands, and were young enough not to remember Mary.
As the cold water came up to her shoulders, Mary felt a stab of shame at committing the sin of suicide.
Her father Sam, a preacher, would be mortified. Would he give her a Christian funeral?
But she had already let him down, let them all down, by somehow sending her husband into another woman’s arms.
She couldn’t deny the pleasure she felt, on some level, at hurting Barry, for all he’d done to her.
Luring her with promises of eternal love. Showing her glimpses of a happy family. Then slapping her in the face by flaunting his mistress in public, where friends and family would all know how little he valued her.
Seeking solace, Mary thought back to when she was 10 years old, lined up in the pew at church, and the hymns of hundreds of Sunday services came back and rushed into her ears. She started to sing, before she stepped into the final deep, the water moving much faster now.
She said the Lord’s Prayer, prayed to God that He would take her swiftly. And her high voice wavered as she sang her favourite hymn, Amazing Grace. No one watched as her head went under the water. And there Mary Jeffery drowned, one cold, windy April day.
.
—
After two years of hard slog, that very morning, he and Greenaway had finally found gold in their pans from their endless sieving at Savage Gully.
They whooped and hugged and shared more than a dram of whiskey. Their hoots went out to an indifferent forest; in the Tasmanian wilderness, there was no one else around for 100 miles.
It was mid winter, and although they largely lived off the land – hunting and fishing and growing their own food – their meagre finances were rapidly dwindling and times lately had been grim indeed.
The rain returned with a vengeance, and they retired to their respective tents, having an early night, warm under their sheepskins.
The forest closed in around Michael O’Reilly and he got the heebeejeebies.
He’s never got used to the weird animal calls and wind in the trees of the dense wilderness. He would be glad to be out of here, as soon as possible.
But something else was gnawing at him. He soon realised that the gold they’d panned today was a fair haul, but was only enough to buy one man a bit of land, or a house, or a flock of sheep. It wouldn’t sustain two men.
The rain put paid to further panning for two days, but the men felt they’d earned a rest. But a thought came in to O’Reilly’s head.
If Greenaway were to …. disappear, who would even know? Greenaway had intimated he wasn’t married, and his family were dead. An unholy plot formed. If O’Reilly bashed Greenaway with a large rock, and pushed the body down a chasm, then the gold would be O’Reilly’s.
In the second tent, 20 feet away, Thomas Greenaway was tossing and turning. He had a sore head from the whiskey he’d imbibed, and it was impossible to get comfortable with just sheepskin and a layer of canvas between his body and the rocky ground.
Greenaway’s mind was racing. He knew that the gold they’d found was only just enough to make a living for one man, and that man was him.
O’Reilly, although a hale fellow at his best, was an ex-convict, a fact Greenaway had stumbled on by meeting an old mate of O’Reilly’s in Burnie just before they set out for the wilderness.
O’Reilly was an old man, Greenaway reasoned. He’d lived a tough life, sure, but a full life. What if O’Reilly were to have… an accident with the fire? No one would miss him. Oh, sure, Greenaway would miss the old Irish imp’s bawdy company over the fire.
But the gold would be his, alone. Greenaway was a young man, still, and could start afresh with a good sum, and not have to share it.
WARATAH COURIER
GOLD FEVER LED TO KILLING, SAYS PRIEST
Tuesday June 25, 1882.
All Souls Parish, Waratah
The Reverend Stephen parsons related a curious incident to the congregation at his monthly service at Waratah Church on Sunday.
He told the story of two gold prospectors, Messrs O’Reilly and Greenaway.
Rev. Parsons heard the tale from a parishioner, an Owen Jones, who had happened upon a frightful melee while walking through forest up Savage River way.
Mr Jones, an itinerant miner, had heard of the pair’s gold claim and wished to enquire of their progress, hoping to find work with them.
As he approached their remote camp on Wednesday last, in heavy undergrowth, he heard shouts and screams.
Mr Jones witnessed an older, wiry, heavily whiskered man, now known to him as O’Reilly, wielding a heavy fry pan. Jones said that O’Reilly crept up behind a young, tall, black haired man from behind and whacked him with the pan in the head.
The younger man, who Jones later learned was named Greenaway, had been tending a cooking fire, and although weakened by a blow to the head, grabbed the dry end of a burning log from the fire, and turned and thrust it as O’Reilly, hitting him in the chest.
There ensued an alarming brawl between the two men – a hand to hand wrestle involving eye gouging, punching, kicking and screaming.
Jones was, at this time, too far away to intervene, and he feared for his life; the men were demented, he said.
O’Reilly grabbed a length of pipe and with an animalistic cry, charged at Greenaway, spearing him in the stomach.
With a flare of final energy, Greenaway removed a cooking knife from his belt, and stabbed O’Reilly to the head. Both men fell slowly to their knees, and keeled over, face forward.
Having rushed to the campsite and ascertained both men’s demise, Mr Jones rushed many miles to Waratah to alert Mr Bowen, the police sergeant.
The bodies were conveyed to Sully’s hotel for the inquest; the causes of death attributed to murder related to a hot blooded disagreement.
From Jones’s account of the men’s argument, it seems that the deceased had, of late, discovered a measure of gold at their long standing Savage River claim, and it was thought that each party wished to dispose of his rival in order to keep all the riches to himself.
In his sermon, Reverend Parsons said it was a grave example of gold fever: how the prizing of money over brotherly love can lead to the savage expression of men’s worst nature.
That is to say, said the good Reverend, that money is the root of all evil. “And let this be a lesson to this community.”
A loud “Amen” was the heartfelt response from the congregation.
Mr O’Reilly and Mr Greenaway will be laid to rest at a graveside service in the church yard to-morrow.
The author has chosen to keep this piece only for the group. Who knows, maybe it’s going to appear as a book soon. In the meantime, check out some of the other excellent bits of writing floating around here.
And all through the house
Not a creature was stirring
Not even a louse.
The lice had been busy
Feasting on kids
Their hair and their eyebrows and even eyelids.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds
Except for the itching all over their heads.
Myself as the louse mum, ensconced in a cap
Had just settled my brain for a long winter nap
When out in the laundry there arose such a clatter
I sprung from the bed to see what was the matter
Human mother was wielding a lotion or two
‘Anti-Lice’ said the label
And a deep breath I drew.
The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below
When what do my wandering eyes should appear
But a long line of children,
Their hair wet, eyes clear.
The Mum of the house in a hectoring voice
Said, ‘you’re all getting shampooed,
‘You don’t have a choice.’
I knew in a moment twas curtains for us
I gathered my babies with minimum fuss.
I said, ‘against Quitnits we haven’t a chance.
‘We must snuggle together and dance our last dance.’
All too soon there were floods,
There was soap, there was pain.
We lice shivered and sang out our final refrain.
I remembered the season
That Christmas was nigh.
and I managed to say as we sighed our last sigh.
I farewelled my kids as they flushed out of sight,
‘Happy Christmas to all.
‘And to all a good night!’