Nine Days before the Fire
‘Ned Kelly’s dad escaped from there,’ said her dad, who was not present in the flesh, but speaking from the iPad. He’d been bashful at first, had refused to turn on the video at his end, but obviously couldn’t resist. ‘Blasted a hole in the old jail the size of an Irishman,’ he said. ‘They built this tower after that.’
They were at the top of the monument, a place Fran always visited when she was home. She put a coin in the telescope and did a slow 360: there was the city smog, there was the new new highway, there was the water tank, there was a digger digging. ‘And no-one’s escaped since,’ she said.
She was ill-balanced when a boarder appeared from behind the bend in the inner staircase of the tower. Her dad’s screen banged the bluestone wall, which made him joke-wince, which made Vonny laugh when she shouldn’t have because this was one of the things that provoked boarders.
‘On you go,’ said Boarder #1, flattening himself against the wall and checking out sixteen-year-old Vonny as she slithered past.
There were only three, thankfully. They weren’t in uniform, but wearing city-slicker casuals the locals wouldn’t be caught dead in. Even these three were dapper, and they were the dregs of the college, boys who no-one wanted in the summer, bar the clergy.
The boarders remained elevator-silent till they reached the lookout, then one yelled: ‘Mountain Slut!’
Fran assumed they’d yelled it to her, then realised that she 25was now a mountain hag. It was her daughter who was a Mountain Slut. Her head heated as the boys laughed.
‘Ignore them,’ said Vonny when they were outside. ‘Anyway, it’s kind of nice to be called a slut for a change. Race you down?’ Vonny had inherited her mother’s competitive gene, and was off already.
Fran extended the buggy, took hold of the handles, and jogged down the track, her on-screen dad reacting to unexpected potholes with an ‘arghhh’ and a ‘weeee!’.
The centre of the thriving metropolis of Ash Mountain was three blocks away. Fran and Vonny headed into Gallagher’s Bakery, leaving the window of the four-wheel drive open so her dad could talk to passers-by. He was really getting into the stick thing, and began immediately: ‘Boo!’
Henry Gallagher, dressed in his standard shorts/long socks/hat combo, dropped his shopping bag. ‘Jesus Christ! Is that you Collins, you bastard? What’s your head doing on a pole! Haha!’ His wife Shirley had gone nuts apparently, hadn’t left the house in years. The shopping was his job.
Since selling the pharmacy five years back, Gramps greeted everyone the same way: ‘How’s that nasty rash?’
‘Itchy,’ Henry Gallagher was saying. ‘Haha, have you lost weight, mate? No really, how you going?’
Vonny ordered three snot blocks from Tricia, the third Thomas Gallagher girl and the meanest.
‘What are you doing for the fete?’ Tricia asked.
Fran’s blank look encouraged her to explain:
‘Australia Day, next Monday on the oval. There’ll be games and cakes and rides and stuff. Vonny, you should come.’ 26
Fran always intervened on behalf of her daughter, and was always in trouble for it afterwards. ‘You mean Invasion Day?’ she said.
Vonny rolled her eyes and tried to make herself smaller, which meant Fran was a bad mother yet again, and that Tricia could add another point to their imaginary scoreboard. Thirty years, and they were still neck and neck.
‘It’s gonna be respectful and inclusive,’ said Tricia.
Fran was surprised she knew the word inclusive. As for respect, what did she ever know about that?
‘We’ve got a competition going among the ethnic minorities in town for the best knitted cat,’ Tricia said. ‘Vonny, maybe you could try one, y’know, seeing as how you’re…’ – Tricia whispered the next word as if it was a made up thing – ‘indigenous … One I made earlier!’ she said, pulling a gnarly woollen cat from under the counter. It was life-sized; striped blue, white and red, and scattered with southern stars. Tricia’s ethnic minority was obviously ‘Australian’.
‘Cats are certainly appropriate for Invasion Day,’ Fran said, attempting to stand the feral beast on the bench, but its legs were wonky and it fell into the curried egg.
‘I’ll knit a mixed-up bastard!’ Dante had just walked into the bakery and joined the growing line for sandwiches. He kissed his mum, tickled his huffy half-sister, and set about making everyone laugh.
Dante was the best thing about Ash Mountain, and everyone knew it bar Tricia, whose withering look indicated that she did not approve of foul-mouthed bastards with snobby-slut mothers and allegedly aboriginal daughters.
Tricia had a couple of mixed-up bastards of her own from her cousin Chook, so she could stop with that superior look right now. 27
‘I’m not sure mixed-up bastard is a minority community here,’ said Fran, giving Tricia twenty dollars and herself a point.
‘Biggest in town!’ said Stephen Oh, who was behind her in the queue. ‘Only one that really took hold.’
‘Come to think of it, why has there been no chain migration since the Celts?’ This was from Verity O’Leary, president of the Country Women’s Association and next in the line adjacent, which was for hot food. ‘That’s how it worked: word of mouth, O’Donaghue to O’Donaghue, Gallagher to Gallagher. Stephen, did you not tell your family and friends about Ash Mountain?’
Stephen reddened because the busy shop had gone silent. ‘I told them. But they mostly settled in Leopold. It’s … it’s near, um, the beach.’
Verity and most of the room recoiled, as the in-lander locals did not like to hear mention of the beach. Stephen was fully aware of the error he had made.
‘They’ll be filling the town pool soon, God willing,’ said Verity, who was wanting three curry pies with sauce.
‘There has been chain migration since the Irish, you know,’ said Fran. They’d just passed the Monument Reserve and were now taking in Shitboxville, home to the never-seen commuters.
‘Do you know anyone who lives in there?’ Gramps hated commuters, they got their prescriptions in Melbourne at lunchtime and their groceries trucked in from Green Creek.
‘True, they don’t count,’ said Fran. ‘Guess again.’ They drove past the Ash Mountain sign and onto the dirt track. 28To the left was the dilapidated farmer’s cottage that Dante had rented since his glorious return from overseas. There were numerous rusty vehicles and some old furniture in the front yard. Out back was a rickety corrugated iron water tank, which was open at the top and held up by metal stilts.
‘Hey, Dad!’ Fran waved at their brown brick house to the right. Her real-life dad was with Vincent and Nurse Jen in the living room, his wheelchair facing the thin slice of yellow garden in front of the veranda. Every beaten, grassless foot of the rest of the property was allocated to the two elderly ostriches, still running in order to attract, activities that did not naturally fit together for Fran.
She parked just past the drive to take a look, turning her dad’s monitor so he could too. The dominant female, Dame Miriam McDonald, was dashing from one end of the enclosure to the other at about seventy miles an hour. Ronnie Corbett was trying to keep up.
‘Day two and he’s done in,’ said on-screen Gramps.
‘Poor Ronnie Corbett.’ The light-coloured male ostrich finally stalled and collapsed, and the larger black female pranced off and shrugged with contempt. ‘Like getting dumped on The Love House, isn’t it?’
‘Except these birds are wearing more clothing!’ said Gramps.
The track was becoming beaten. Just five hundred metres from home and it felt like proper bush, except for the architect-designed two-storey number nestled among the trees: McBean House, owned by Maz and Ciara, who had air-conditioning and a pool and were not afraid to use them. Whenever it was forty plus, it was open house at theirs.
‘Hey, why have we gone past our place?’ Vonny had only just looked up from her phone. 29
‘Dropping Dad’s chainsaw at the Ryans’. Won’t be long.’
Vonny slumped in her seat. Everything not on-screen was so annoying. ‘Was it the lesbians?’ she asked, checking out Maz and Ciara’s.
Fran thought they’d abandoned the chain migration convo. ‘Unfortunately, no,’ she said. Ash Mountain was unnerved by the kind of joy Maz and Ciara shoved in their faces – theatre trips and open houses! – which is why there’d been a for-sale sign in their garden for eighteen months. ‘Nup,’ she said, ‘this chain migration started in 1901, which is when…’
‘Federation,’ Vonny, messaging her friends at the same time, said. ‘History-lesson time: gonna kill my mother.’
‘Yeah, but that’s not it.’ Fran always used to get a little carsick on this track. She opened the window in case. ‘In 1901 the brothers came to Ash Mountain.’ This was a new theory for Fran, but she thought it a goody – that before the internet, the colleges were like niche sites on the deep web, bringing people together from every which way, a community of individuals with one thing in common: boys age eleven to sixteen. ‘And that caused the one chain migration that has thrived since the Irish.’ She reached the end of the tree-lined driveway and parked by the bean garden. ‘Perverts,’ she said, popping the boot and turning to Vonny. ‘So just take it in for me, hey?’
‘What? Me? No way. In there?’
The Victorian weatherboard farmhouse was in need of a paint, and the wrap-round veranda could do with some repair, but it was still the prettiest place Fran had ever seen. ‘Knock on the door, give it to whoever answers, and we’re outta here.’
‘What if a sexual pervert answers?’ 30
‘Jeez, okay, we’ll both go in. And out. In and out.’ She switched off the engine and said to Gramps: ‘Won’t be long,’ but he’d turned his video off, probably when she started talking about the brothers. She took a breath and got out of the car. It was time to face Brian Ryan Junior again.