the legend of mz shalot

Mz Shalot lived at the end of the last lane off the main road before the esplanade along the river. In a rambling old white weatherboard house. Just beyond her place is the path to the wetlands. Every day she walked down to the esplanade, along the river, round by the pub and back along Terry Street past the shop and the post office. Except Tuesdays. On Tuesdays she caught the ten o'clock bus to the city. I followed her one day but she just sat in the mall. She always wore her brown raincoat, sensible black lace up shoes, a scarf around her head and dark glasses, even when it rained. Except Tuesdays. On Tuesdays she did not wear the headscarf. The local newspaper reported her missing presumed drowned after the awful floods last spring.

Vicky Court is our local historian. I asked her to do a thingo on Mz Shalot for her history stall at the annual arts and craft fair this year. It keeps her busy. Some people don't like Vicky, they say she is a nosy parker. Francie calls her Victoria. She can't stand her. I like Francie.

Vicky did a thing on old Ted down the road instead. Honestly there was not much to tell. When I asked her about Mz Shalot she said there was nothing to tell. The son she had located was no help.

So I asked around. Phil who has had the local shop for zonks said yes, he knew Mz Shalot. She came to the shop most days. She never spoke, only nodded. He reckoned she lived on baked beans, white bread and bacon. That's what she bought. Tony at the Post Office, cum bank, cum news agency etc, said she had used an old blue commonwealth bankbook like you don't see any more. Her name was Evangeline Shalot. The electoral rolls were no help and there was no birth, death or marriage certificate to be found.

Doris who is ninety this year said Evie Shalot had lived at Pipers End all her life. Like herself. She said she was a silent sort of creature, even at school, without any friends. But she remembered that she had won Miss Australia one year. Or maybe it was Miss Pipers End the year they had the regatta. Francie said she was actually a duchess, had been jilted at the altar in England by a prince or maybe a duke, and had arrived home with twin boys. But she was a queer sort and kept to herself.

No, none of that is true said Betty. She won the lottery the year her mother died. At one stage she went off to America and bought those boys from some orphanage there. She was a terrible mother.

Old Ted, the non-hero of the arts festival history display, said she was a looker when she was young but would't have anything to do with the local lads. She was on herself. Thought she was some lady muck thing.

Rachel, who has just retired from her life long job as the doctor's receptionist , said Mz Shalot was an interesting case. She was related to royalty. When she bought the twins back from France she hinted they were the sons of a prince who met with an unfortunate accident. Come on Rachel. Mz Shalot never got that many words together! No she said. But she did bring them in for regular checks that had to be posted off somewhere.

On the way to the wetlands last week I passed the house. It looks the same. Closed venetian blinds, trimmed grass, one geranium down the side and the rambling buttonhole rose coming through the front fence. There was a car in the drive. I thought he was a shabby real estate bloke so I asked him if the place was for sale. No he said. I can't sell it till she has been missing for seven years. Seven bloody long years. Take a gamble Lizzy, I said to myself. Are you her son?

Well out it all tumbled.

That bloody woman, Victoria something or other, came nosing round after she went missing, but I told her there was nothing to tell.

In a way there wasn't. But in another way there was. This is Philip's story.

His name is Philip Pennycourt. Dr Philip Pennycourt. He had been born a Shalot but changed his name as soon as he grew up. He has a brother named Jason. He is still a Shalot. Their childhood was strange, silent, isolated, and without much comfort. He always thought Jason was his twin. Looking out for Jason has been his life's preoccupation. Jason is two sandwiches short of a picnic. He had looked out for him at school and protected him at home when the welfare called. Made sure he had enough to eat. Though the welfare were mighty helpful at times he said. They arranged a special school for Jason and books and a scholarship for himself.

His silent mother, he said, was a cleaning maniac. She mopped the old wooden floors everyday with an old fashioned mop and wring bucket. The floors were permanently wet and smelt of pine o'clean. When they were smaller she stripped them every afternoon when they came in, tossed all their clothes in the washing machine including the canvas shoes they wore, and put them in the bath tub. Scrubbed them with Dettol. We always wreaked of disinfectant he said. He left home when he turned seventeen and took Jason with him. Worked at night and studied all day. But Jason went nutty and got into heaps of trouble, ended up in court and was committed to the nuthouse. I had seen Jason sometimes when he visited his mother. A big awkward man, lumbering in white gumboots behind her.

When he had waded through all the necessary study, intern stuff etc., Philip said he bought a practice in the Redhills district to be close to Jason. He doctors two days a week, raises miniature pigs and grows organic vegies. He is available for emergencies – both man and beast. Jason was placed in group homes when they closed the nuthouse down. But his brain, what there was of it, is so addled by alcohol that he is now cared for at St Jude's Hospice in the city. Philip visits once a month.

One day he arrived with two old brown suitcases. The only things she left he said, apart from her clothes.

Mz Shalot had been born Evangeline Gamel Pennycourt in 1931. Her father was Gamel Augustus Pennycourt. Her mother was Colette Senne originally from Lyon. At thirty-nine Gamel was expecting to become the 6^th Baron Mulcarster when his brother was dying of tuberculosis. But on his deathbed the dying brother's wife produced a son and Gamel took off to London. Here he met Collete and they were married on 7 December 1904. She was twenty-one and he was forty-one. 

In 1907 they somehow ended up in Australia and bought their block of land at Pipers End. No one knows how. No one knows why. No one remembers. Their only child was born when Colette was forty-eight and Gamel sixty-eight. Colette’s diaries start with Evangeline's birth. Hardly diaries but a starting point.

August 15, 1931 – had the child

January 1932 – Gamel and I look at the child

September 19 1932 – child walked Gamel built fence

January 1937 – child started school at the convent in Singlefield

March 1939 – Sister Evangeline says the child played up in sewing - she is calling herself Shalot

What happened?

Miss Pinner took sewing. In grade three all the girls had to make a sewing bag, embroidering their name in red chain stitch across the blue gingham. Christ they were eight! Check it out - it's in the old Ed Department archives. Evangeline pointed out to Miss Pinner that while she had twenty letters to chain stitch, Sue Kay only had six. So between them Sister Evangeline and the young Evangeline came up with the name Shalot. Six letters. One would like to speculate but come on that's enough poetic licence.

January 1941 – Gamel becomes the 7^th Baron Mulcarster

The 2^nd World War is taking its toll. One Baron down

March 1941 – sailing April 7 - have to take child

May 1941 – Gamel had heart attack. Buried at sea

So that was a bit short for his Baron-ship. But Gamel's death had left his wife and daughter well off. There is a photo of Mulcarster castle, Ireland, in the diary. So now Mz Shalot is actually the Hon. Evangeline Shalot but not a lady. Her mother is a lady.

May 1945 – war ended bonfire down on the esplanade Evie stayed out all night.

I'd like to take a bit of poetic licence with that one.

January 1948 – Evie new bathers for beach girl competition

Oh come on Colette don't tease – where's the photo?

June 1950 – need to go to hospital what about Evie

Lady Colette Edith Senne died 5 January 1951 according to the Registrar. The cause of death kidney failure.

Philip is unable to throw any light on the next twenty years of his mother's life except that old passports show that a woman by the name of Lady Evangeline Pennycourt travelled to Ireland a number of times. So she took a bit of poetic licence with the Lady bit! Maybe she went to look at the castle he said.

The next items of interest are appointments for his mother in 1968 onwards at the Monaster University, medical research department. In fact both he and Jason were born at Monaster and when he looked into it he found they were not twins. Records show in fact they were born eleven months apart, the result of early fertility trials. He presumes he got the gung ho sperm from one of the young doctors while Jason got the short end of the stick from some dead-beat druggie short of cash. Yes they paid them to jerk off he said. That's the way it worked. 

He can shed no light on why or how his mother got into this or who their biological fathers are. Records are absent. He thinks he probably has dozens and dozens of half siblings scattered around the country. So much for the legendary paternal duke or prince, although as he points out one would probably have just as many half siblings. It's why he does'nt have children. Don't talk about the ethics he said – there aren't any.

The rest is history he said. Or not even history. You know the rest. She was such a silent woman. The original environmentalist. Not much of a carbon footprint for eighty years of walking. Off she went. To quote T S Eliot: not with a bang but a whimper.

So there Vicky, there was a story. But Victoria as always, has to have the last word. She has started her story Mz Shalot was an Alien...

the dance of life

the dance of life

The she-oaks whispered in the soft morning light of Saturdays when the small girls chattered their way along the zig-zag, a sandy track that wandered along the river bank. The Saturday morning dancing lesson. Children with names like Wendy, Sally and Jenny. And Beatrix Maree. And the dancing teacher was called Honey. She was smooth and brown.

Heel toe tap, heel toe tap across the polished boards of the huge sunroom that looked out across the town's gardens and the river. Little patent leather black shoes that tap,tap, tapped over the wooden floor and little skirts that whirled and showed lacy knickers.

Little plaid skirts that were attached to flannelette bodices kicked and spread their pleats as the little girls twirled in the sunshine. Soft black lace up shoes for the Scottish and Irish dances that did not tap and required more skill and discipline than seven year old children could muster to put them into dances. Not for these children the Royal Ballet Corps or the River Dancers.

When she was ten the school invited an itinerant teacher to teach dance. It was the year of the square-dance - four couples doing do-si-dos and swing your partner round the square in embroidered blouses and full floral skirts. White sockets and the first of the slip-on shoes. Beatrix Maree was a major player and her partner was called Max. They were the star performers at the school ball the year before high school. She fell in love for the first time but he ended up marrying her best friend at eighteen because she was pregnant. When he was fifty he danced off with another eighteen year old who has since danced on to better things.

Moving to the sounds of the sea and the storms along deserted winter beaches and down country lanes to the sound of the wind. Growing legs that were longer than her mother's, Beatrix Maree grew and danced awkwardly into adolescence.

Dancing in the gym. It was 1952 and the radio had just begun playing the Hit Parade. Pop music was readying itself for rock and roll and Elvis. The elderly parents shuddered at the sound of Little Richard and Doris Day. However the children were still taught to dance the formal styles, the Pride of Erin and the Viennese waltz were still required to launch them into society and being a debutante was high on the agenda.

Long dark green woollen box pleated tunics with a belt drawn tightly round middles that were not yet waists replaced the twirling skirts. White starched collars and the school tie knotted neatly at the throat. Black lisle stockings held up by slipping suspender belts that slipped and slid across non-existent hips. That lost the little button that grabbed the top of the stocking. And so the stockings were always slipping, slipping down to wrinkle around the ankle.

In the dusty school gym, waltzing to classical tunes and the Mocking Bird Hill. Foxtrotting neatly to Percy Stranger and Blue Moon. Barn dancing progressively around a circle so the fifty three hot sweaty lads could put their hand around a female waist too close to the undeveloped breast.

It was at this time that Beatrix Maree fell in love for the second time. With a boy called Ray who was a senior. Perfectly in tune with each other they waltzed and danced the lunch times away in perfect harmony. She sat in class and hummed the current pop tune – a song that went something like this - you're my Ray of sunshine you light up all the room - and so on. Meaningful music of the 50s. She loved it. They never spoke a word. He would stroll up, raise a blonde eyebrow and they would dance, float and dream. Sometimes they won prizes for they were very good dancers. He went to ballroom dancing lessons after school. Beatrix Maree pleaded but her elderly mother thought that would be too silly.

No one knows what happened or how it ended. Beatrix Maree thinks the boy called Ray probably left school and she fell in love with a boy called Robert, a boy called John and a boy called Ian.

In the late 1950s there were dances held regularly in every large town and city across Australia. Thousands of young people went to these dances which were usually held on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. Young women were girls until they got pregnant and married usually by 21. Boys stayed boys until their forties. Girls sewed dancing dresses from brocade and satin and if you were poor it was taffeta. Petticoats were full and lacy before they became stiffened by wire and rope. Belts were wide and waists were thin unless you were unlucky and got pregnant.

The progressive barn dance had progressed from the school gym to the dance floor proper. Girls were passed along a circle of never ending young men who smelt of Californian Poppy or Brylcreem or perspiration – sometimes all three. The smart ones twirled you twice before tossing you to the next boy who aimed to catch you on the move. Some had pimples and bad breath and others were just too old for the young girls they were asking to take home.

It was the time of the big dance band. In fact some of them were small orchestras. Many of them became famous in their own way. They were the local Benny Goodmans, the Glen Millers of Australia. Bit they did not attract the individual attention from girls that later bands and groups attracted. For important dances and balls they played till dawn and people danced all night. At the time there was a popular drawing that appeared on cups, cards, ashtrays and assorted merchandise of a very pregnant woman holding her arched and aching back singing -I should have danced all night - from her cartoon bubble. It was all class and culture in the 1950s.

Beatrix Maree was nearly fifteen when her elder sister and fiancee took her to her first adult dance. A bit young even by today's standards. She wore a beautiful sky blue frock with a fitted lace bodice and a full, full net skirt dotted with sequins over miles and miles of silk taffeta. There seemed to be thousands of elegant and sophisticated couples, the women in all shades of glamorous colour, sweeping magnificently round the floor.

In the darker background of the City hall Beatrix Maree found the Head Prefect, a sound and sensible lad who went on to become a research scientist in America. He lurched forward and grabbed her for a dance breathing a beery breath over her face as he led her in stops and starts around the floor. She told her elder sister who smiled knowingly and said – grow up.

At midnight the leader of the big band, a man called Pickering, asked if anyone was celebrating their birthday. Beatrix Maree went forward, all blue and sparkling and glowing from the dancing. How old sweetie? he asked. Fifteen she squeaked. Who brought this child to this dance - he roared into the microphone – take her home at once. And the band played happy birthday while the crowd cheered and Beatrix Maree danced her birthday waltz with her sister's fiancee.

In 1960 Beatrix Maree and her friend Josie went wandering to bigger cities, dancing their way through a summer of sunburn and lovemaking in the backs of cars. In Melbourne they danced the power-house* where couples were packed so tightly together all they could do was wriggle and smile to the sounds of early rock. To the beachside suburbs of the east coast where the lighting was dim and people power-housed or tangoed depending on the crowded floor. To the northern cities where rock and roll left them exhausted and tested their trust in the boys, who swung them wildly and slid across the floor to catch them just in time. Real smart asses those Sydney lads. To Geelong where Chubby Checker introduced the twist for the first time in Australia. Twisting the night away, the days away, and finally the year away. And Beatrix Maree did not fall in love once.

Suddenly the years collapsed and Beatrix Maree had children to dance with, to sling on her hip and twirl through the spring garden. To play dancing tunes on the old wooden piano and watch them dance like elephants, like fairies, like small lovers in love with their mother.

Beatrix Maree sent the children to dancing lessons but the teacher's name was no longer Honey. It was a name like Judith. Her dancing lessons were conducted in a converted garage – no sunshine, no windows. The children wore fancy costumes that were too sensual, too adult, and the choreography was more suited to well developed young women than children of five and seven. One day the children walked home from dancing through the suburban streets, across the highway, and up the long, long lane that led to the house. A thunderstorm, fierce and frightening, sent the children scrambling to a stranger's house for shelter. The fear of thunderstorms became greater than the joy of dancing and the children stopped going to the grey garage with a cement floor.

Beatrix Maree danced her way through folk festivals in the 1970s, through the country halls where the new movements of music were being explored, at cabarets leftover from the 1960s and through the dreaded country and western nights of the 1980s. Then along came nightclubs where she danced with friends who were equally intent on the individual dance, the Isadora Duncans of the 20^th century. Her grown up daughters joined her and sometimes the whole family danced and sang as if this was their own venue, their family floor.

When Beatrix Maree turned 50 she hired the band, the cafe and the crowd. She dressed herself in beads and chiffon and danced until she could dance no more. It was a dance remembered by all. Beatrix Maree had decided that public dancing was over.

Now she dances with her grandsons. To twirl along the beach in the face of the stiff sea breeze. To play the tune on the piano, the tune to dance to. And to be sure she had perfect partners for a while – adoring and embracing. One day she will put on her silk and taffeta and take her grandsons to a dance, to waltz and float until there is no dance left in her grandmother body.

*http://www.rowinghistory-aus.info/club-histories/power-house/03-1.php

short story -on my grandmother's grave grape hyacinths grow

In books you read of people who keep their grandmothers in an urn on the mantelpiece. Their ashes that is. People do not seem to keep their grandfathers in the same way. Perhaps grandfathers are not a part of the domestic scene in the same way that women are.

My grandmother was not kept in an urn, reduced to ashes. She is buried in the same grave as my grandfather in the cemetery at Wynyard. My aunt, the artist, and the eldest in the family, organised a garden grave in amongst the granite that was popular after the Second World War. Each spring, grape hyacinths, violets and freesias bloom amongst the weeds. My mother complained each year of having to weed the grave. It was a playground designed for children and long before I could understand the concept of death I was drawn to the little white wooden crosses at the bottom of the cemetery. They were down a dip and not seen readily from the main paths. My mother said they were pauper graves. Some of them had white picket fences around them and they looked like children's cots. I grieved for these babies and children who were not alive.

Felicity asked me how I felt when Lesley and I collected my baby grandson Hamish's ashes.

We had waited days in a town where we no longer belonged, staying with friends and relatives, forging a relationship between two families who had little in common but the dreams of a small baby. The time was strangely long. Pathologists were not available to release the body for some days and the thought of him lying on a cold hard slab at the hospital was never far from our thoughts.

The young adults wiped themselves out with dope and serapax, drove my car far too fast and avoided talking to the older generation. The undertakers wanted to insist on decoration for the small white coffin but Lesley was adamant, she only wanted red carnations and gypsophila from my sister's garden. She wanted no decoration, no religion and no ritual. I wrote the ceremony over the next few days and it lasted less than five minutes.

Days went by and the minutes seemed like days, stretching through sixty long seconds. Sometimes I sat on the beach with Felicity, on smooth black basalt rocks. It was the middle of summer and there must have been people everywhere but my memory is like a Matisse painting, of two flat figures, pasted forever on the flat landscape.

Six days after he died there was a pathologist available. We did not know what he would find but we were all nervous. What if Hamish had been ill and we had failed to notice. How could we have missed it. He was a big healthy two month old child with a strong personality. A big handsome baby who turned people's heads from the time he was born.

The Coroner phoned me late in the evening of the sixth day to say there was no reason for his death and that his death certificate would indicate sudden infant death syndrome. The funeral for immediate family went ahead the next morning five days after his death. I wore the dress I had worn the week before to my eldest daughter's wedding. Lesley wore my niece's hat she had worn for her wedding. There was something of my mother in Lesley at that time. Everything had to be quite correct, including the small veil that hid her eyes.

After the funeral we had lunch at my niece's, and my sister made endless cups of coffee and tea. Hamish's father and his family stood across the large room gazing outwards through the windows across the water, like statues from Easter Island, not seeing and still.

Some years ago Baxter's daughter had a baby when she was fourteen. Baxter had herself been pregnant with her daughter at fifteen. She had moved to Tasmania in the early seventies with the child and bought a piece of land behind Sheffield on a hippy commune. After she and the child had built a shanty and survived on dreams for a few years, she found that she missed Sydney and her career. The daughter was left for months at a time with neighbours, church people, old folks and anyone who was interested. Baxter felt that it would help the girl to grow up with a broad understanding of life.

She was a beautiful child, unkempt, clothed in hand me downs and what ever came her way. When she was ready for secondary education Baxter organised for her to reside in a boarding home for old men, tucked away in a side road in the country. A private sort of affair that probably had no licence. Baxter's daughter was bright, articulate, interested in life but strangely unaware. Children at school complained that she smelt and she was reported to the authorities. But she went missing completely.

She had found a horse in the paddock next door and taught herself to ride bare back. The son of the family who owned the horse was twenty-two and Baxter's daughter fourteen when she fell in love and pregnant within the month. His family was Jewish, practicing Jews. I keep shaking my head but up the back of Sheffield in the seventies there was a strange mixture of folk. T hey took Baxter's daughter into their home and the child too when he was born.

After two years when Baxter's daughter was sixteen she took her child and asked for help. The Government housed her in a unit amongst a set of twelve units, which were all occupied by single older women. It was right on a major arterial road into the town and had no fence or barrier between the front door and the road. The Jewish family got as far as the Family Court in an attempt to gain custody of the child but found they had failed to register his birth. Baxter's daughter was fined $60.

Jessie was blonde, blue eyed and bright. In fact he was a child who sparkled. His mother adored him and cuddled him continuously. She said she had never been cuddled as a child. She was hoping Baxter would come down to the shanty for Christmas but she had not heard from her for years. She gathered around her the lost and forlorn. I remember a small weedy lad of fourteen who had never known his mother being cuddled and comforted by her. She was generous with what she had, both materially and emotionally. And all the kids that gathered around her loved Jessie.

When he was killed by a car after running on to the road one evening, the police wanted to charge Baxter's daughter with negligence. They knew it would not stick but they thought it would teach her a lesson. Baxter's daughter and the kids around managed the funeral as best they could. They bought new clothes for him and asked me to dress him for his funeral.

Jessie had been dead for a week and he was badly injured in the accident. The undertakers had requested a closed coffin but Baxter had arrived from Sydney and wanted to see the grandson she had never known. Baxter was the first person I met who had one name only. She said she saw it on a bill board one night and it seemed anonymous enough, even for her.

When we had finished dressing Jessie and wrapped him in a blanket Baxter nursed her daughter who in turn nursed her son Jessie. They were crying and Baxter's daughter said to me, look Nessa. Mummy is cuddling me and I am cuddling Jessie. We are all cuddling each other.

At the grave side the people from the American church sang there is a place for little children beyond the bright blue sky. The grey sky drove rain needles into our eyes. The older women from the other units shivered apart in their cardigans and tut tutted to each other. All the kids and Baxter were crying. With all their hearts they wanted to believe there was a place – a somewhere beyond the bright blue sky. They were children themselves.

It was a bleak scene from Wuthering Hights on a bleak hillside with no head stones, no crosses, no memorials - only small dull plaques in the grass.

Like everything else Baxter's daughter moved on. She was already pregnant again, with a daughter, and Baxter took her home to Sydney.

,

After the funeral for Hamish the families went home, and Lesley and I waited another two days for his ashes. On the evening that he was cremated Lesley and I went for a long walk along the river. As the tide turned, a soft breeze talked itself through the wattle trees along the banks and blew softly in our faces. This was about the time Hamish's spirit had been released. Later when I felt the soft easterly breeze tossing my paper lanterns in the hall I said to myself, Hi Hamish.

On Saturday morning we drove to the funeral parlour in Lesley's car, a small beat up Gemini, to collect Hamish's ashes. I can remember feeling relief, an unexpected feeling. Relief that we had Hamish back and knew where he was, with us. After all those days of having been without him.

The car was packed full with cribs and prams and baby gear and Lesley's friend and Lesley’s friend’s baby in the back. Lesley sat in the front with the small plastic box of Hamish on her knee and I said be careful. I drove with the seat jammed forward and my knees jammed against the dashboard for four long hours. I was worried about an accident and I have no recall of any detail of that long trip home.

We took the plastic box apart and Hamish went into a Chinese pot, like the grandmothers in the novels. For a while he sat beside my bed and then he travelled with Lesley on her trips away. For a long time he sat on the wooden cupboard in the dining room and during the Saturday morning housework I would sometimes lift the little china lid and say Hi Hamish.

Before Lesley left for England we walked to the cliffs and tossed his ashes into a wild cove where the sea drives in fiercely from the south. Lesley kept some ashes to scatter in England but returned -with them intact and her dreams in tatters. We returned to the same spot and scattered the rest into the same wild sea, green and deep with foam cascading down the cliffs as each wave withdrew. I said to Lesley, look. As each wave breaks into the cove there is a small but perfect rainbow. Where, she said disbelieving. Then we watched as the pure winter sunshine worked its magic.

I sometimes miss having his ashes around. I go down to the cliffs and watch the ocean and look at the wildflowers and marvel a little at how inevitable everything is. One day I took my eldest grandson down there and we saw an albatross and a sea hawk over the ocean as we sat on the edge of a cliff eating fish and chips. There were brilliant flashes of kingfishers in the banksias. A day of magic.

My grandson said, gee Nan this would be a great track for my motorbike. Dad said if I could find a track I could bring it down and he and I could go together. I’ll bring it down next time and we can do wheelies all up this track. And I said yes.

Felicity will have collected Jack, her father's ashes by now. Western society is not tolerant of ritual outside the norm. Where do you put your Dad when you pick him up in a beautifully hand made wooden box? Do you put the seatbelt on? Could you put it in the boot? Or on the back seat?

I can remember travelling with Father Casey once when Marnie was a baby to see an old woman near Sheffield, to give her holy communion. Father Casey was Irish, loved golf and women and drink, and was a notoriously bad driver. As we went round a bend things slid off the back seat and he said, oh sorry Lord. Mary can you pick our Lord up and put Him back on the seat? And he was perfectly serious.

Felicity says she will scatter Jack's ashes in the garden at Elliott and across the winning tine of the Burnie Gift, as Jack was a famous trainer of runners. She will have to do this at night as the scattering of ashes in a public place is an offence.

It is the habit for humans to return. To my grandmother's grave to find grape hyacinths still flowering half a century later. To the wild edge of the Somerset cemetery where heaths and daisies hide the space where my father lies. To the green green grass where a small plaque says my mother lies deep and deeply buried. To the cliffs.

I have this vision of Felicity and me, making the trip, sitting alone in the great grandstand at West Park in our old age, in our warm woollen overcoats. We will make a toast to the sometime and the somewhere, and cheer Jack over the finishing line.

short story - whatever happened to Beatrix Maree

In a small white cottage in Launceston, Tasmania, a woman called Beatrix Maree Henry conducted a nursing home for birthing mothers. Business was slow during the early 1940s. The War had taken most of the available sperm bank overseas to fight on the beaches.

A small white woman in her late forties presented at the nursing home to produce an unwanted fourth child. Reality was elusive and birth pain unacceptable. The new wonder drug "Twilight Zone" gave the reluctant mother several dreamy days of non-reality in which the pain separated itself from her body. The Macquarie Dictionary advises that ‘twilight sleep’ is a state of semi-consciousness produced by hypodermic injection of scopolamine and morphine in order to effect painless child birth. Police records indicate that the small woman roamed the nearby streets in her French lawn nightdress for three days without even feeling the cold of a Tasmanian mid winter.

Beatrix Maree Henry was particularly kind to the small middle aged woman during this time. On a Thursday the woman gave birth to a surprisingly large and healthy female child. The child was named Beatrix Maree after the woman who brought her into the world. The small woman and her elderly husband had not discussed names.

The child was remarkably alert and vigorous given the drugged state of the mother prior to her birth. A woman was engaged to care for the child and to see to her daily needs.

Beatrix's early memories focus on nightmares that thrashed the high ceiling of her huge white bedroom. The War was raging and her father listened to the short wave radio reports late into the night while the small child clung to his legs. At the end of the street where the child lived, war posters dominated the billboard. Two children in rags clutching each other - one child on crutches with a leg missing. The Red Cross needs your help. The Red Cross needs your help. The Red Cross frightened Beatrix Maree.

Young men left the local railway station in their new khaki uniforms. Proud to be Australian. Brave and blonde. They leant out of the train carriages to wave to mothers, wives and sweethearts who wept in the cold half-light. The town sang "wish me luck as you wave me good-bye" without realising that words need meanings.

The child in bed would be filled with fear. Fear of the War. Fear of the Germans. Fear of the Japs. Fear of the guns. Fear of the men. A fear that was black and inside her. When the fear became too great, she would race across the miles of polished tiles, through the arch of the entrance hall to the warm and comfortable bed of her parents. The voice lay lost inside her. The parents remained asleep. She struggled back to the small white cold bed to wait for the first light of morning.

Sometimes the child was sent to the aunts. The aunt who loved children and the aunt who was an artist. Spinster women in their sixties. Remarkable women who rescued the child from her nightmares and took her into their warm and cosy bed when the nights grew cold. Remarkable women who taught the child to read and write. To play the piano. To draw and colour. To know the names of flowers and birds. To swim in the salty river.

When the child was four the War ended. The War to end all wars. All the bells in the town rang. The bells in the Catholic churches competed with the bells in the Church of England near the city square. People lined the streets and cheered. The aldermen gave the children small silk British flags and brown paper bags of hard brown lollies. A bonfire was built near the show ground and the flames rose gloriously with sky rockets into the starry sky.

The child's name was in the local paper twice that summer. She had insisted on swimming in the local swimming lessons. Adults had given way at her fierce insistence. On the day of testing she was left till last. Furious she fronted the beginning tape and began to dog paddle. Twenty-five yards later she demanded recognition. On the day the certificates were handed out the child received hers last. The pest of a child. A man from the local paper took her photograph and reported the story - that the child was a remarkable.

Her mother took some notice and sent to the local paper a poem the child had written. A poem about 'the baby Jesus. The child won the prize which was signed by an important woman. A book of small moral verses with a red cord through the binder. A remarkable poem the woman said.

This was the summer the child started school. Too early, her father's friends and the aunts said. On the first day the child took her notebook and pencils and wrote a story for her aunts. The nun in charge found that she was writing words and took a ruler and smacked the small fingers. Whack! Whack!

The child's father had to be summoned from his work at the City Hall. The child bawled loudly and long. Tears and snot running down the father's suit. The father sent for the aunts. This child is a most remarkable child the aunts told the teacher and the father. She must not be hit.

Beatrix Maree stopped writing and was afraid to sleep. She was sent to the aunts and was allowed to sleep during her days. To draw and paint and write into the night. To play the piano, to sing and tell stories in the half-light. To climb into bed between the warm soft bodies of the aging aunts. To have dreams that were no longer nightmares.

Beatrix Maree's first interest remained writing and her visual art was a sideline until she met the artist Hilary Meyer in the late 1960s. Since then painting has been her major interest. She has produced a large oeuvre of figure subjects including many vivid and unusual images of women and an interesting collection of autobiographical essays.

She sits in her, garden of red poppies and tells her grandchildren and great nephews about the aunts. The women who saved her from reality and allowed her to dream. Introduced her to the twilight zone.

short story - Mrs p and the Jellybean factory

Mrs Psozcowski's dog is dead. Mrs P lives round the road in an old beach shack. It is one of the few that survived the middle class suburban spread to the beach.

Where's your dog, I asked her.

He is dead, she says. He was seventeen. Her accent is still guttural and she hisses when she uses the letter S. She seems a lot older and walks with a staff. There is no way you could call it a walking stick.

A man in the Polish community gave him to her for company. He was the second dog she had owned and I asked her one day why she called the gentle golden labrador Brute. She said she heard women at the day centre say - oh my husband is a brute - and she thought it meant a darling. But she knows better now. He is buried quite deep in the sandy soil in her garden, wrapped in an old duvet she brought with her when she came to Australia.

Once upon a time, she tells me, one day I had a husband and two sons. My husband was a gypsy boy and his family did not approve. But we were very much in love. When the War came to Budapest my husband had to go out and be labour on the farms with other gypsy men but I think they just hid them in barn.

I had forgotten, she says, that I ever had a husband.

I like to think that he was dashing and handsome, flashy in bright clothes and that he fell head over heels in love with little Mrs P when she was young. I look at her now and I can see that she is quite old. I do not know what she would look like as a young girl.

I had to go to work in a factory, she says. I have always worked in factories except once when I was in Australia I worked for the Government department. That was just another factory.

She smiles to herself.

The factory I first worked in was in Budapest, in 1944. All the women had to work so I worked in the button factory with my friends. You think that will be nice to make buttons but I was at the end of the factory where all the buttons were still grey. I had to sort the shapes and take out the ones that were mistakes. The factory floor was damp cement and there was no money for the heating so we were always damp and cold. That is how I remember. But on Friday nights we always had a dance in the canteen and we had to dance with each other because we were very lonely and we did not have our men. This was a very happy time.

The woman who looked after my children let one get very sick and he died in the hospital. I had no money for the funeral so the priest buried him in a shroud and I had to say thank you very much. Humph, she says. Thank you very very much. After that my youngest child went to stay with my sister in the country.

After the War Budapest was not such a beautiful place any longer. Many of the gypsy men did not come home. We waited at the station on Thursday nights when the trains came in from the north with men who had been fighting and were now mending and coming home. Many people left with their money to, go to America. The man who owned the button factory sold it and I had to go and work in the factory that sorted feathers for pillows and duvets. We were not allowed to wear any jewellery in that factory and I lost my wedding ring when I put it in my pocket. It was just a little thing of twisted wire dipped in something shiny but I thought it was very valuable then.

Mrs P speaks while she breathes out. It feels as though she is blowing her story at me. She gets this effect by adding the letter H to many of the English words that start with a vowel. We sit down together to feed the ducks and I think I must bring my grandson to join in. We have a group of chestnut teals that live in the shallows on the beach with a very old and bedraggled goose. We don't know where the goose came from but it protects the ducklings from the seagulls.

At the feather factory I got very ill she tells me. All that dust. I came out in rashes and coughed all night. The doctor told me I could not work there any more. It was when I thought my husband would still come home and every thing would be all right. But the government changed at this time and things became very cruel. I am always looking like one of the old Magyars and I was very sick and upset when two friends say to me let us go Nashi, let us go, and so I went. I was so sick I did not even think of my son who was twelve by then.

We caught trains and had to hide and sometimes we walked and got lost and I got so thin I had to tie my skirt to my tummy. It was the first time I could see the sea. Oh, the blue and the white of it - and the smell. I want to have it always I said to my friends. In Italy we got on a ship with all the rest of our money to go to somewhere I had not heard of and I thought oh dear are they taking me to Austria. But I came to Australia and I went to Melbourne where I lived with my girlfriend for a long, long time.

Mrs P ends many of her sentences with a question in her voice, and her eyes. I rarely reply because this is her story.

This is so long ago, she says. I really forgot I had a husband and children once upon a time. My son who lived with my sister wrote to me once when he was a grown man but it would not be the same would it when you think you have a child and he turns out to be a man.

My girlfriend and I worked in a button factory in Port Melbourne for a long time. But always on the grey shapes and never, never do I get to the colours. But oh dear what does it matter. We had lovely dances at the pub on Saturday nights and all the girls from the factory would dress up and put bright red lipstick on.

Her eyes drift away remembering.

We were like fairies on the Christmas tree. Do you do that here she asks. What, wear red lipstick or put a fairy on the tree? She laughs out loud and I can see that she has only a few teeth left. Something I had not noticed before.

I thought I would go mad at that factory, she says, but sometimes I think it is out of order, the story I mean. I worked in a paper factory and I had to sort out the bags that were not stuck properly. Brown paper bags, she says with a sigh. But at night we went to night school to learn to write English and we would walk down after school at Port Melbourne and smell the sea and I was very, very happy with my girlfriend. There were not a lot of men for us to get a new man from. We were in our thirties but we were very happy and did not make rows or remember things that would be too hard to feel.

After I learnt English I could go to work for the Government department. A wicked sparkle comes to her eye. It is just like the factory, she says in amazement, but at the end of the day everybody goes home and we have made nothing! She looks at me and grins - don't tell me, she says, you don't make anything at the end of the day too? Oh no! And she laughs through her whole body.

When I worked for the Government department I wear very smart clothes she says. Lots and lots of lipstick and I have to keep the seams straight in my new nylon stockings. I go into the city everyday and I forget to smell the sea and then my girlfriend died and I had not noticed she was even sick. It was worse than my son dying because my girlfriend had been all of my life for many years and she went back with me to when we were girls in Budapest. She was very ill but waited for me to see she was ill before she went to the doctor. But I did not see. I was too busy being a new girl in the city. A very smart new girl.

This is the most I have ever heard Mrs P say in one breath and I have to listen carefully because she becomes quite upset when she talks about her girlfriend.

Ach, she sighs, that was a long time ago.

After my girlfriend died I could just leave a job and get another one. There were lots of jobs in Melbourne then and you could just walk out and get another one the same day. So I worked in lots of factories and they were all the same. I was very miserable. I stayed on at the little house in Port Melbourne where I had lived with my girlfriend. I would sit down on the wall at the beach and smell the salt and hear the seagulls. They make a sound like you feel when you are lonely.

I was not very well in myself you must understand. She looks at me to see if I am listening.

Then one day I got sick of the sewing, singlets I think, at the factory I was working at, all the other ladies were different. They were not very friendly and some had come to Australia from other places. I just got up and I walked out. I caught trams all day till out in a suburb I had not been to before I saw the notice on a door. Vacancies. Here I thought is where I go next. The women were very gay and happy and they hugged me a lot because I had been crying from catching those trams all day and remembering my girlfriend and all of my life had gone.

In the factory part I was in we made jellybeans. I was allowed to pack the coloured lollies into the little bags so the colours showed.

She smiles remembering and her eyes almost disappear as she laughs.

The women, ah those women, she says. They told their stories all day. The jellybeans would go past on the long belt and I had to sometimes pick out the ones that had missed their colour. A lot of the women were older than me, with lots of things that had happened to them. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. But they made a joke of it and would cry too. Sometimes both together.

She looks at me and laughs again.

And on Friday nights we went to the hotel and we danced with each other because you must understand we had no men, she tells me. No men at all. We would hug each other and laugh and dance together. A bit like a long time ago before my girlfriend was my girlfriend in Budapest. These were the happy times in all the factories I worked in, all my life.

She suddenly sighs and looks at the ducks. They have finished eating our bread and are no longer squabbling.

Then they sold my house, she says. The house my girlfriend and I had lived in for such a long time. She turns to look at me and says - that was a terrible time.

So I packed up all our things and I came to Tasmania, I thought it was far away and I got a job at the chocolate factory. They fixed it up in Melbourne because I was not well again you must understand. But when I came to Tasmania I was very lonely at first. I was going one day with one of my friends from the factory to visit her grandchild who was sick and I did not remember if I even had a grandchild. I saw this little house just here by the beach, ah with the colour of the sea and the smell, and I bought it with all the money I had been saving. I did not always spend much money on things like fancy clothes or a car. I had saved for a long time but I forgot what I was saving for. That was just a long time ago.

She shakes her head a little and laughs. She stamps her staff into the damp sand and my small dog barks at her. Then she starts talking again.

When I stopped working at the factory, the chocolate factory, I started to go to the day centre. Oh my dear, she says, there are a lot of unhappy people there. So I go a lot of days just to talk to them. I think I started going after I had not been well and I could not remember some things. But the best thing is to live by the sea and I go for walks every day and I smell, oh yes I smell the sea.

But I have to go alone now that Brute is dead.