The Best Australian Stories 2010 (23 page)

That's it, keep those weevilly eyes slipping and sliding, every which way but mine. Now why would that be? Come on, Bill, look at me. Fine upstanding citizen like yourself, all done up in your best Sunday-go-to-meeting suit: surely you can look a poor widow woman in the eye …

Can't, can you? Not so long, though, Billy boy, not so long since you couldn't keep your eyes off me, never mind your hands. Look at you: hair all neatly combed over your bald spot, pink snags of fingers squeezing your hat half to death: scared, aren't you? Scared your lady customers won't be coming to you for their best topside roast any more, isn't that it? Real butcher's hands that they are too, sawing the mouths off your poor horses, reefing them in to plunge and leap and make you look flash. Jesus, if you'd been on your own two feet that first time I saw you, we'd not be here this day. But you were up on that lovely grey mare, spitting image of my Red's Misty …

Those were the days. Red on Misty and me on my own Nellie, cantering down the Melbourne road to St Francis's church at first light, and the priest stood smiling at the altar; riding back with a ring on my finger and the whole world shining. Those were the days … Every man and his dog out celebrating the independence of Port Phillip, the independence of us: singing ‘It's a Long Way to Tipperary,' racing the last mile home …

My own Tipperary man, Red Kelly: and a thousand times the man you'll ever be, Bill Frost. Poor soul, the grog buried him long before I ever did … but even blind drunk, even when he couldn't have bitten his own thumb, he'd never have come creepy-crawling around like you, Billy boy. What, ten quid and a horse if I'd drop the case? That's all you thought I was worth? Or never mind me, your own baby daughter: ten lousy quid?

Forgotten, have you? Well, I haven't: galloping into our yard, your horse in a lather and yourself the same, couldn't wait to get your hands on me. Soft touch that I was; not like that Bridget Cotter. Hard as nails, that one. Only one kind of screwing for her, screwing a ring onto her fat finger …

There she is, set down next to you: Mrs Lady Butcher ma'am, with her paisley shawl and her shiny black beads. Did you ever see the like? Mutton, mutton dressed as lamb. Stick a sprig of mint in her gob and you'd never know the difference.
Jack Sprat
could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean … and so between them both,
you see, they scraped the platter clean … between them both
, hear that, Billy boy? It takes two; tell that to your side of lamb dressed up in her best bib and tucker. As for that poker-faced bitch set next to her, that's the same constipated cow as took one look at me coming down Bridge Street and sent all her good lady friends scuttling across the road, hands over their mouths like I was some sort of contagious disease …

No surprises, of course. Annie, with your moaning and groaning about what I was in for, did you think I didn't know? That I needed my own daughter to tell me? Look at them: just look at them with their corsets and their net gloves and their lace collars, they're flesh and blood for all that. Same as me. ‘Fallen' woman? Tripped is more like it, and I'll bloody trip him …

Yesterday we had an adjournment. Big word for putting off. Had they nothing better to do? But Mr Pow had witnesses to call. Conjure, more like. Mine have come of their own accord, I've had no need of adjournment. Get on with it, that's what I say.

The entire congregation's here: gents all shaved and spat and polished, ladies with their frills and fringes, sighing and sucking and shaking their heads. The McBeans, that McCormick woman, Whelans, Halls: that Constable Flood. Now there's another smarmy bugger …

It's a wonder the ladies would be seen in the same room. The Notorious Mrs Kelly: I could be catching. Like the pregnancy, I hear that's contagious. Jesus, the looks of some of them, it'd want to be an immaculate bloody contagion. As if the Victorian police aren't righteous enough without their womenfolk setting themselves up in holy orders, holier than thou or me or any bloody one.

Steady, Nell, steady. Calm yourself. What's the only difference between you and them? You took a man at his word. More fool you.

How would they cope, with their picket fences and their geraniums and their doilies, how would they cope with snakes and poddy calves and clearing land? Never mind raising a family. Oh, Ned does his damndest when he's there; but most of the time he's not.

It's only natural. A woman needs a man, a man needs a woman. Somebody to have and to hold. To lose him … cuts the heart out of you.

You carry on, of course. No choice. But a hand with the fencing or the splitting gives you one less thing to worry about; a squeeze of your hand or a smiley word brightens you up; and at the end of the day it's easy to close your eyes just for a minute, let him stroke your hair back from your forehead …

At least I know how to love. Which is more that this congregation of buttoned lips and boned bodices ever will. A gold band and a cold hand: what they get and what they give. Oh, and reputation. Pass the reputation please. Pillars of the church, every last one of them. No wonder our constables are the miserable mongrels they are, squashed up next to a bloody pillar all night.

I could have been Mrs Frost. Mrs Frost, she'd have had to be a pillar too, swapping recipes and pruning roses, tittupping along the road on some sway-backed lady's hack. Jesus, I wouldn't last a day! No, I'm well out of it. But that doesn't let you off the hook, Billy boy; bad enough that an innocent bairn gets branded bastard instead of you. Still can't look me in the eye, can you? Well, I'll look you, I'll damn well make sure at least baby Ellen gets a fair go ...

A fair go: all we've ever wanted. Same as anybody else.

Adjournment: when was the last time they adjourned sooling the law onto the Kellys? And what sort of a law is it when you give a man a bite to eat and a taste of whisky and next thing the lickspittle rat's reported you for selling grog? Ah but the Law, the big bloody ‘L' Law, the Law's for everybody. Not just for squatters with their long acres. The Law is set down in black and white; it's printed out in the Matrimonial Statute. God help the child, she's yours as well as mine, Bill. The least you can do is provide for her.

Will the first witness for the plaintiff please step up …

Head up, Annie, love, that's it! Hand on the Bible, tell them the truth. That's it.

Poor soul, struggling along without her Alex, and their first baby dead in her cot. Like my own Mary Jane, all those years ago. You never forget, never. I can still see the wee face, still feel how cold … but you carry on. You have to.

No point just moping till the boys get home. No point in just giving up the ghost. You'll get no thanks for that. Ask Ned. If the Kellys know nothing else, they know to stand up for themselves because sure as hell nobody else is going to. It's like the song:
Oh,
what can a man do when the world is his foe … but bend the brow bravely
and go away far, to follow good fortune, and get home in the war …

It's a war all right.

Thank you, Mrs Gunn, you may stand down.

Ma knew it'd be like this. I warned her, I did. You sure you want to go through with it, the naming, the shaming? I've no call to be shamed, says she. I'm a Quinn and a Kelly and proud of it. Dear Ma: the straight back of her, chin up, spark in the eye: no stopping her once she gets that spark. Thought you were on to a good thing, didn't you, Bill Frost? God's gift to women, she'd be so pleased, so grateful … no. Not my mother. Not Ellen Kelly.

A congregation, Ma called it: and so it is. That Bridget's face would curdle milk. If you didn't know better, you'd think Ma was the defendant, not the complainant. The complainant, Mrs Kelly. Kelly. That's it. The name. When're they ever going to listen to a Kelly? She'd have been better off taking the ten quid.

Maggie says it's our new sister we've to think of, little Ellen, that the child's not to blame for her father. Maggie's Ma all over again. Heart of a lion. I get too agitated …

Why does everything always have to go wrong? Alex, you fool, why'd you have to get caught? Three years: how am I going to manage for three years? Women can't shift loads and fell trees. What am I going to do?

All Ma wanted was a man about the place again: bit of comfort for her, bit of help with the boys, bit of security. Did everything for him, cooked, stitched, gave him a warm bed; bugger didn't know when he was well off. Damn him to hell for the liar and cheat that he is …

The nerve of her: I could never speak out like that. But that's her. Any time her boys were in trouble, she was there too, tearing strips off whoever was there to tear strips off. Got them off more than once as well. But I've never seen her so set on winning as she is this time …

God, I wish Ned was here. He'd make them take notice. To think of him, him and my Alex, eating their hearts out inside those cold grey walls: it's enough to make you weep. Weep: women must weep. Sometimes I think that's all they bloody do …

Where's your fighting spirit, Annie? That's Ma. Or Maggie: we can't take this lying down, Annie. Too bloody right, goes Ma, that's what got me into this mess in the first place. You have to laugh …

Dear Ma. Look at her now, chin up, taking in every word Mr McDonnell's saying. Matrimonial Statute: the legal responsibility of the defendant …

Mr Pow will now open the case for the defendant …

You wouldn't believe a word of it. The nerve of her, answering Mr Pow back like that: brazen. Absolutely brazen. Contradicting him without so much as a blush! Running that shanty out at Eleven Mile: there's more than sly grog on offer there, that's for sure. Riding astride: if that's not a red rag to a bull, I don't know what is.

Red rag to a Bill. Wait till I get him home, I'll give him Simson's boundaries; it weren't no boundaries he was riding. Wouldn't put it past him to have scuffed his boots on purpose.

Not that you can blame him, really. It's the old Adam; they can't help themselves. Woman like that, flaunting herself: rolls the eyes, flashes the ankle and he's gone. Hopeless. They're all the same. At least this'll teach him, once and for all. Your wild oats are well and truly sown, William, and don't you forget it.

She's showing her colours now. Oh yes, stamp the foot, toss the head! What, swore he'd make an honest woman of you, did he? Don't you shrug your shoulders at me, Bill Frost, you're not done sleeping on that sofa yet …

Reliable witnesses? What reliable witness would be seen dead next nor near Eleven Mile Creek? Her and those larrikin sons of hers, you can tell the way they've been dragged up … that poor Julia McCormick. Face on fire, only telling the story. No wonder she gets palpitations. Not that the sight of blood worries me, being a butcher's wife; but to untie the parcel that's put in your hands and be looking at a set of calves' testicles! Hacked off, balls stuck together, all black blood and flies. With a note to cap it all:
Go tie
these to Jeremiah's cock and you'll maybe get a decent shag out of him
. Decent? Those Kellys wouldn't know the meaning of the word.

That judge hit the nail on the head, him with the big nose and dopey looking eyes. Sir Redmond Barry. Offenders, he called them, offenders who oppressed respectable inhabitants. Like me. Or Julia. He said they were murderers every one, that it was the authorities' duty to exact vengeance and instil the fear of God into them. Just so, say I. Just so!

I mean to say, what decent woman would stand up in court and sue for her own bastard? Is it anything but flaunting herself and what she did to get it? A mockery of marriage and decent women, that's all it is. And her a Catholic baptised! How she can walk into church and raise her eyes to the Blessed Mother of God …

There's some cold cuts and a nice bit of pickle for lunch. That leftover potato, I'll make some potato bread. At least you're sure of the potatoes over here, not got the blight to worry about. Six months, they said, for the ship with the mail; what wouldn't I give to see their faces when they hear I'm married!

Apparently her people, the Quinns, they're from the North. Ulster. Maybe that explains it.

It appears to the Bench that men who are so foolish as to give rein to their carnal desires cannot be immune to the consequences of their indulgence. They must expect a penalty for their actions. Clearly, the plaintiff was also in fault for allowing such advances; however, as the defendant is in a position to contribute to the child's support, the defendant is ordered to pay five shillings a week for two years, with seven pounds, two shillings and six pence cost; further, to find two securities of twenty pounds each to ensure fulfilment of the order.

*

‘Here's to your very good health, Mrs Kelly. Death to the Saxon!'

‘Thank you, my friends, thank you! I'll drink to that!'

‘Ma, did you see the look on fat Bridget's face when the magistrate told Bill he had to pay the penalty? I thought she was going to explode!'

‘I did, Annie, I did. Wait till she gets him home, she'll have his guts for garters, I'm telling you! Serve him bloody well right, too. As for that holy bloody Mary next to her, snapping the string on her rosary beads, down on her knees, bum in the air, scuttling round, that scared she'd miss one! Jesus, I laughed!'